The murder scene of the book was described as: One eye was a shapeless mass, half pulp and jelly; the other stared out of the oval socket, like a large dull melancholy opal.

The reviewer in "Het Nieuws van de Dag" was not amused by the play and wrote: it may be fashionable for moonstruck youngsters and abnormal young and old ladies; those who still have some common sense will be cured after they have seen this theatrical performance of "Footsteps of Fate".

[7] The Dutch stage critic A.C. Loffelt wrote that if he had been responsible for the dramatization of Footsteps of Fate he would have bought a gun and shot himself morally.

[10] On the occasion of the publication of Eline Vere and Footsteps of Fate in February 1891 in an extraordinary meeting of the Association of Dutch Teachers a lecture was held about fatal determinism.

[11] In this meeting J. van Loenen Martinet described the fatalism in the novels of Couperus as a symptom of a disease which consisted of a determinism that denied the facts of moral life.

As a result of this contact the wife of Couperus, Elisabeth Couperus-Baud, received order to translate Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray into Dutch.

[13] Present day literature scientists believe that Couperus was inspired by Henrik Ibsen's Gespenster when writing Eline Vere and Footsteps of Fate.