page_title: Henry van Dyke Jr.
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Henry van Dyke Jr. / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo postcard of Henry van Dyke offering prary services at the Mount Rubidoux Easter Sunrise services in Riverside, California on March 23, 1913.
context_page_description: Henry Jackson van Dyke Jr. was an American author, educator, diplomat, and clergyman.
context_section_description: He served as a professor of English literature at Princeton between 1899 and 1923.  Among the many students whom he influenced was, notably, future celebrity travel writer Richard Halliburton (1900–1939), Editor-in-Chief, at the time, of the Princeton Pictorial.
  Van Dyke chaired the committee that wrote the first Presbyterian printed liturgy, The Book of Common Worship of 1906. In 1908–09 Dr. van Dyke was a lecturer at the University of Paris.
  By appointment of President Woodrow Wilson, a friend and former classmate of van Dyke, he became Minister to the Netherlands and Luxembourg in 1913. Shortly after his appointment, World War I threw Europe into dismay. Americans all around Europe rushed to Holland as a place of refuge. Although inexperienced as an ambassador, van Dyke conducted himself with the skill of a trained diplomat, maintaining the rights of Americans in Europe and organizing work for their relief. He later related his experiences and perceptions in the book Pro Patria (1921).
  Van Dyke resigned as ambassador at the beginning of December 1916 and returned to the United States. He was subsequently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received many other honors.
  Van Dyke was a friend of Helen Keller. Keller wrote: "Dr. van Dyke is the kind of a friend to have when one is up against a difficult problem. He will take trouble, days and nights of trouble, if it is for somebody else or for some cause he is interested in. 'I'm not an optimist,' says Dr. van Dyke, 'there's too much evil in the world and in me.  Nor am I a pessimist; there is too much good in the world and in God. So I am just a meliorist, believing that He wills to make the world better, and trying to do my bit to help and wishing that it were more.'"
  He officiated at the funeral of Mark Twain at the Brick Presbyterian Church on April 23, 1910.
  Van Dyke died on April 10, 1933. He is buried in Princeton Cemetery.  A biography of Van Dyke, titled Henry Van Dyke: A Biography, was written by his son Tertius van Dyke and published in 1935.
caption: Henry van Dyke offering prayer at the 1913 Easter Sunrise Services in Riverside, California, atop Mount Rubidoux
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