The roots of Ester from Amsterdam
by Marco Leeflang
The surname of Ester is a well kept secret.The prince de Ligne, who has talked often to Casanova and who read the Memoirs fresh from Giacomo's pen, recollects that Ester was "la fille du riche banquier Hope".
The "Brockhaus manuscript" mentions only "Mr. D.O." and sometimes an "Op" might be guessed underneath an erasure. The link between DO and Hope is being explained by the fact that in French the H is not pronounced, and thus mr. D.O. would stand for "monsieur d'(H)ope".
But as this banker Hope had no daughter speculations began. Maybe it was a niece...
An interested director of the Amsterdam city archives, H.Hardenberg, following the same line of the unpronounced H, came up with the idea that an Amsterdam mayor, Henrik Hooft, might be the man. D.Hoek, in his book Casanova in Holland (1977), has worked this out. It was instantly ridiculed by mrs van Eeghen, a great historian of Amsterdam in the 18th century.
A third option came from the freemasons whose lodge, La Bien Aimée, Casanova visited on November 30th, 1759. Maybe the banker Joan Frederik d'Orville, president of this lodge, could be Ester's father... But like Hope he had no daughter...
It may well be that there was no real Ester, and that she is a composite of several memories. Whatsoever, the only hard facts we have are in the manuscript text of the Histoire de ma vie (vol.5, ch. 6). And for those who would like to chew a bit longer on Ester's surname I looked up, in Dux where nowadays a copy of the Brockhaus manuscript is available, what exactely Casanova wrote and crossed out:
Copyright by Marco Leeflang, Utrecht
2000.
