[COMPOSED BY STERN.]
“And may we now hear why you were suspended?” asked Duclari.
“Oh yes; for as I can assure you of, and even prove, the truth of all
that I say on the subject, you will see that I did not act rashly, when
I, in telling the story about that lost child, did not quite disregard
the scandal of Padang; because you will think it very credible, as soon
as I shall have made you acquainted with this General in affairs that
concern myself.
“There were in my accounts at Natal inaccuracies and omissions. You
know how every inaccuracy ends in loss: inaccuracy never increases
money. It is pretended that I was short of thousands. But, observe,
they did not tell me that so long as I was at Natal. Quite unexpectedly
I received an appointment in the highlands of Padang. You know,
Verbrugge, that in Sumatra an appointment to the Padang highlands is
considered as more profitable and more agreeable than one in the
Northern Residency. As the Governor had visited me a short time
before—by and by you will know why, and how—and things had happened in
my house, in which I thought I had acted as a man; I accepted this
appointment as a distinction, and set out from Natal for Padang. I made
the passage on board a French ship, the ‘Baobab,’ of Marseilles, which
had loaded pepper at Atchin, and, of course, on arriving at Natal was
in want of fresh water. As soon as I arrived at Padang, with the
intention to depart from there to the interior, I wished, as in duty
bound, to visit the Governor, but he sent word that he could not
receive me; and, at the same time, that I must delay my setting out for
my new situation till further orders. You may believe that I was very
much surprised at that,—the more so because he left me at Natal in a
humour which made me think that he entertained a high opinion of me. I
had but few acquaintances at Padang, but from the few I had, I heard,
or rather perceived, that the General was very angry with me. I say
that I perceived it, because, at a country place such as Padang was
then, the goodwill of many can serve as a thermometer of the favour in
which one stands in the eye of the Governor. I felt that a storm was
near, without knowing from which point of the compass the wind would
come. As I was in want of money, I asked one and another of my friends
to lend me some, and was quite astonished that I was met everywhere by
a refusal. At Padang, as everywhere else in the Indies, there is great
liberality in this respect. In every other case, a few hundred guilders
would have been lent with pleasure to a Controller who had been
detained on his journey contrary to his expectations. But I was refused
every assistance. I pressed some to tell me the cause of this distrust;
and by little and little I got to know at last that in my money matters
at Natal faults and oversights had been discovered, which now caused me
to be suspected of dishonest administration. That there were faults in
my administration I was not surprised to hear; the contrary would have
surprised me; but I wondered that the Governor, who had himself
witnessed how I had always to struggle far from my office with a
discontented population, ready to revolt at any moment;—that he, who
had himself given me credit for what he called ‘manliness,’ could
accuse me of dishonesty, as he knew better than any one that there
could be no other question than that of ‘force majeure.’ And though
this force majeure was denied, though they wanted to make me
responsible for faults that had happened at moments when I, often in
danger of my life, far away from the cash or anything connected with
it, had to intrust others with the administration of it,—even if it was
expected that I, while doing one thing, ought not to have neglected the
other, even then my only fault would have been a carelessness that had
nothing in common with dishonesty. Moreover in those days there were
many instances in which the Government took into consideration this
difficult position of their functionaries in Sumatra; and it seemed to
be accepted as a principle on such occasions that some allowance should
be made. It only required that these functionaries should make good the
deficiency, and the word ‘dishonest’ was never pronounced without very
clear proofs. This was so much a custom that I myself told the Governor
at Natal, that I feared I should have to pay a good deal, after my
account had been examined at the offices at Padang, whereupon he
replied, shrugging his shoulders: ‘Ah! ... those money matters ...’ as
if he himself felt that matters of smaller importance ought to give
place to those of greater.
“I readily admit that money affairs are important; but, however
important in themselves, they were in this case subordinate to other
branches of duty and business. If through carelessness or oversight
some thousands [86] failed in my administration, I call this no trifle;
but if these thousands failed in consequence of my successful efforts
to prevent a revolt, that would have devastated the district of
Mandhéling with fire and sword, and that would have brought back the
Atchinese to the haunts from where we had just driven them, with great
sacrifice of blood and treasure, then the magnitude of the short-coming
disappears, and it seems even a little unjust to make him refund who
has saved infinitely more important interests. Yet I thought such a
repayment right; for the non-exaction of it would lay one open to a
charge of dishonesty.
“After waiting for many days, you may conceive with what feelings I
received at last from the Governor’s Secretary a letter, in which I was
given to understand that I was suspected of dishonesty, and I was
ordered to reply to a number of charges that had been made against my
administration. Some of them I could explain immediately, for others I
wanted to look at documents, and, above all, it was most important for
me to look into these matters at Natal. I could have examined clerks
and other employés, to ascertain the causes of the mistakes, and very
likely I should have succeeded in my endeavours to clear up all. The
neglect, for instance, to book money that had been sent to
Mandhéling—[you know, Verbrugge, that the troops in the interior are
paid out of the Natal exchequer]—or something like that, which I
should, perhaps, have seen immediately, if I could have examined into
it on the spot, as having been the cause of these sad faults. But the
General refused to let me go to Natal. This refusal caused me to pay
still more attention to the strange manner in which this accusation of
dishonesty had been brought forward against me. Why had I been suddenly
transferred from Natal, and under colour of good intentions to me, if I
was really suspected of dishonesty? Why did they communicate to me that
disgraceful suspicion only for the first time, when I was far from the
place where I should have had an opportunity to clear myself? And above
all, why had these affairs been brought against me in the most
unfavourable light, contrary to the usual custom, and to justice?
“Before I had replied to all these observations as well as I could
without written or verbal information, I learned that the reason why
the General was so angry with me was—
“‘Because I had opposed him so much at Natal,’ in which, as was added,
‘I had done wrong.’
“Now, then, I saw it all. Yes, I had opposed him; but with the innocent
idea that he would esteem me because I had opposed him; but after his
departure nothing made me suppose that he was angry with me on that
account; stupid as I was, I had accepted the favourable transfer to
Padang as a proof that he had thought my opposition very noble. You
will see how little I knew him then. But when I heard that this was the
cause of the severity with which my money administration was condemned,
I was at peace with myself. I answered every point as well as I could,
and ended my letter, of which I still have a copy, with the words, ‘I
have answered the observations made on my administration as well as is
possible without consulting documents or having recourse to local
investigation. I beg your honour, on all benevolent considerations, to
excuse me. I am young and insignificant in comparison with the power of
the dominant ideas, which my principles compel me to oppose; but I
remain, nevertheless, proud of my moral independence, proud of my
honour.’
“The following day I was suspended on the plea of dishonest
administration. The officer of justice was ordered to fulfil my office
and duty; and such was my position at Padang, when scarcely
twenty-three years of age. I contemplated the future that must bring me
infamy. People advised me to appeal on the score of my youth; for I was
still under age when the pretended mistake occurred. But I would not do
that. Had not I thought, suffered, and I daresay laboured too much
already, to advance the plea of youth? You may see from the end of the
letter above named, that I would not be treated as a child, I who had
done my duty at Natal against the Governor, and like a man; and at the
same time, you may perceive from this letter, how unfounded the
accusation was which they brought to bear against me; for a guilty man
writes in another style. I was not, however, taken into custody; though
this ought to have been done, if this accusation had been well founded.
Perhaps this apparent neglect was not without foundation, for a
prisoner must be housed and fed. As I could not leave Padang, I was in
reality still a prisoner, but a prisoner without shelter and without
bread. I had often written, but without success, to the General,
requesting that he would not prevent my departure from Padang, for,
even supposing me to be guilty, no crime was punishable with
starvation.
“After the Council of Justice, which was at a loss how to deal with the
affair, had found a way out of the difficulty by declaring itself
unable to decide, because a prosecution for crime in the service of the
country could not be held without the authorization of the Government
at Batavia, the General kept me, as I said, nine months at Padang.
“At last he himself received instructions from headquarters to let me
set out for Batavia.
“A few years afterwards, when I had some money——dear Tine, you had
given it me——I paid some thousand guilders to clear the Natal accounts
of 1841 and 1842, and then a person, who may be considered to represent
the Government of the Dutch Indies, said, ‘I would not have done that
in your place.... I should have drawn a bill of exchange on eternity.’
“Ainsi va le monde!”
Havelaar was about to recommence the narrative, which his guests
expected from him, and wherein he was to explain in what and why he had
so opposed General van Damme at Natal, when Madam Slotering appeared in
her fore-gallery, beckoning to the policeman who sat on a bench near
Havelaar’s house. The policeman went over to her, and then said
something to a man who had just entered the grounds, probably intending
to go to the kitchen that was behind the house. Our company would
probably have paid no attention to this, if Madam Havelaar had not said
that afternoon at dinner that Madam Slotering was so shy, and appeared
to exercise a sort of control over every one that came into the
grounds. We saw the man, who had been called by the policeman, go to
her, and she questioned him, apparently much to his dissatisfaction. At
least he retraced his steps, and was soon outside. “I am very sorry for
that,” said Tine; “perhaps it was a man selling fowls, or vegetables; I
have nothing yet in the house.”
“Then send some one after him,” replied Havelaar; “you know that native
ladies like to exercise power. Her husband was formerly the first man
in the place, and however small an Assistant Resident may be as an
individual, he is in his own district a petty king: she is not yet
accustomed to dethronement. We must not grudge this small pleasure to
the poor woman; act as if you did not perceive it.”
This was not difficult for Tine; she had no desire for power.
A digression is necessary here, and I even intend to digress about
digressions. It is not easy for an author to sail exactly between the
two rocks of the too much or too little, and this difficulty is
enhanced if one describes situations that have to remove the reader to
unknown countries. There exists too nice a connexion between the places
and the events for us to be able to abstain entirely from describing
the former; and to avoid the two rocks, already mentioned, becomes
doubly difficult for him who has chosen the Indies for the scene of his
narrative. For whereas the author who deals with European situations
may suppose many affairs to be known, on the other hand he whose story
refers to the Indies has continually to ask himself whether the
non-Indian will rightly understand this or that. If the European reader
thinks of Madam Slotering as lodging with the Havelaars, as would be
the case in Europe, it must appear incomprehensible that she was not
present with the company that took coffee in the fore-gallery. I have
certainly already observed that she lived in a separate house; but to
understand this aright, and also events to be described, it is indeed
necessary to make you acquainted with Havelaar’s house and grounds. The
accusation often made against the great artist who wrote Waverley, that
he often abuses the patience of his readers by devoting too many pages
to topography, seems to me to be unfounded, and I believe that in order
to judge of the appropriateness of such descriptions, one has only to
consider—Was this topography required exactly to convey the impression
which the author wanted to communicate to you? If so, do not be
offended because he expects you to take the trouble to read what he had
taken the trouble to write. But, if it was not required, then throw the
book aside; for the author who is empty-headed enough unnecessarily to
give topography for ideas, will be very seldom worth reading, even when
at last his topography is at an end. But the judgment of the reader
about the necessity of a deviation is often false, because he cannot
know before the catastrophe what is necessary, and what not, to the
systematic development of the situation; and when after the catastrophe
he reads the book again—of books which one reads but once I do not
speak—and even then thinks that this or that digression could have been
omitted without marring the impression of the whole, the question
remains whether he would have had the same impression of the whole if
the author had not conducted him thither in a more or less artificial
manner, just by means of the digressions which seem to him to be
superfluous.
Do you think that the death of Amy Robsart would have touched you, if
you had been a stranger in the halls of Kenilworth? And do you think
that there is no connexion—connexion through contrast—between the rich
dress wherein the unworthy Leicester showed himself to her, and the
blackness of his soul? Do you not understand that Leicester—every one
knows this who is acquainted with him from other sources than the novel
only—was infinitely worse than he was painted in Kenilworth? But the
great novelist, who liked better to charm by an artistic arrangement of
colours than by coarseness of colour, thought it beneath him to dip his
brush in all the mud and all the blood that clung to the unworthy
favourite of Elizabeth. He wished to point out only one spot in the
mud-pool; but he knew how to present such spots vividly to the eye, by
means of what he put in juxtaposition, in his immortal writings. He who
thinks that all this juxtaposition may be rejected as superfluous,
quite forgets that in so doing in order to bring about effects, one
would be obliged to go over to the school which, since 1830, has
flourished so long in France; though I must say to the honour of that
country, that the authors who in this respect have offended the most
against good taste have been valued most in foreign countries, and not
in France itself. The authors,—I believe that this school is now no
more,—thought it easy to dip their hands in pools of blood and throw it
in great spots on the picture, in order to be able to see them from a
distance. To be sure they are easier to paint, those rough lines of red
and black, than the beautiful lines in the calyx of a lily. Therefore
that school generally chose kings for the heroes of narratives by
preference, from the time when the nations were still in their infancy.
You see, the affliction of the king is represented on paper by cries of
the people: his anger gives the author an opportunity to kill thousands
on the field of battle: his errors give room to paint famine and
plague—suchlike things give work to rough pencils. If you are not
touched at the sight of the corpse that lies there, there is room in my
narrative for another man, convulsed with pain, and still shrieking.
Did you not weep for the mother, who sought in vain for her
child?—Well, I will show you another mother, who sees the quartering of
her child. Did you remain unmoved at the martyrdom of that man?—I
increase the number a hundredfold by torturing ninety-nine at his side.
Are you hardened enough not to shudder when seeing this soldier, who,
in the besieged fortification, devours his left arm because of
hunger...?—
Epicure! I propose you give order, “Right and left wheel, form circle,
left files eat left arms of right files ... march!”
Yes, in this manner, artificial horrors become folly ... which en
passant I would fain prove.
And yet we would be reduced to this if we condemned too soon an author
who wished to prepare you for his catastrophe without having recourse
to these screaming [87] colours. But the danger of the other extreme is
still greater. You despise the efforts of coarse literature, which
thinks it must take your feelings by storm with such rough weapons; but
if the author falls into the other extreme, if he sins by too much
deviation from the principal matter, by too much pencilling, then your
anger is still greater, and quite right; for then he has bored you, and
that is unpardonable.
If we walk together and you stray every moment from the road, and call
me into the underwood only with the intention to prolong the walk, I
think this disagreeable, and intend to walk alone for the future. But
if you can show me there a plant which I did not know before, or in
which I may see something that I overlooked, if you show me from time
to time a flower, which I like to pluck and carry in my button-hole,
then I forgive your deviation from the road; yes, I am grateful for it.
And even without flower or plant, when you call me aside to show me
through the trees the path that we shall walk upon by and by, but which
now is still far from us in the depth, and which winds itself as a
scarcely perceptible line through the field there below, then likewise
I do not take this deviation amiss. For when at last we have arrived
thus far, I shall know how our road has wound——through the mountain,
how it is that the sun, that was a few minutes ago there, is now on our
left; why that hill is now behind us, whose summit was just now before
us ... then through that deviation you have made it easy for me to
comprehend my walk——and to comprehend is to enjoy.
Reader, I have often in my narrative left you on the broad way, though
it has cost me much not to take you with me into the underwood. I was
afraid that the walk would weary you, as I did not know if you would be
pleased with the flowers and plants which I would show you; but as I
believe that you will afterwards be pleased to have seen the path we
shall walk upon presently, I am obliged to tell you something about
Havelaar’s house.
You would be very wrong to form your ideas of a house in the Indies
according to European notions, and to think of a heap of stones, small
rooms piled upon large rooms, with the street before it, neighbours
right and left, whose household gods lean against yours, and a little
garden with three gooseberry-bushes behind. With a few exceptions, the
houses in the Indies have but one storey. The European reader will
think this very strange, for it is a peculiarity of civilisation, or
what passes for it, to consider strange all that is natural. The Indian
houses are quite different from ours, but they are not strange; our
houses are strange. He who was the first to allow himself the luxury of
not sleeping in the same room with his cows, put the second room of his
house not upon, but next to the first, for to build them all on the
ground is both more simple and more comfortable. Our high houses owe
their origin to want of space: we seek high in the air what we miss on
the ground; and so every maid-servant, who in the evening shuts the
window of her bed-room under the eaves, is a protest against this
crowding, even when she is thinking, what I can readily believe, of
something else.
In those countries, also, where civilisation and over-crowding of the
population have not yet pushed mankind high up, because of the pressure
below, the houses are of one storey, and Havelaar’s did not belong to
the few exceptions to this rule. On entering, ... but no, I will give a
proof that I abandon all claims to the picturesque, “Given,” an oblong:
divide it into twenty-one parts, three in breadth, seven in depth. You
give each of these partitions a number, beginning with the upper corner
on the left-hand side, from there to the right, so that four comes
under one, and so on.
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
10 11 12
13 14 15
16 17 18
19 21 21
The first three numbers together form the fore-gallery, which is often
open on three sides, and whose roof is supported in the front by
pillars. From there, one enters by two folding doors, the inner gallery
which is represented by the three following numbers. The partitions 7,
9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, and 18, are rooms, most of them being connected
by doors with each other. The three last numbers form the open gallery
behind, and what I have not mentioned is a sort of closed inner gallery
or passage. I am very proud of this description. [88]
I do not know what expression is used in Holland to give the idea
conveyed in the Indies by the word “estate.” “Estate” is there neither
garden, nor park, nor field, nor wood, but either something, or that,
or altogether, or none of these. It is the ‘ground’ that belongs to the
house, in so far as it is not covered by the house; thus, in India, the
expression, “garden and estate” would be a pleonasm. There are no
houses, or very few, without such ground. Some estates contain wood,
and garden, and field, and make you think of a park; others are
flower-gardens; elsewhere, again, the whole estate is one large
grass-field; and lastly, there are some very simple ones reduced to a
macadamised square, which is perhaps less agreeable to the eye, but
which promotes cleanliness in the houses, because many insects are
harboured by grass or trees.
Havelaar’s “estate” was very large; yes, however strange it may sound,
it might be called on one side boundless, as it was bordered by a
ravine that extended to the shores of the Tji-Udjung, the river that
surrounded Rankas-Betong with one of its many windings. It would be
difficult to say where the ground of the Assistant Resident’s house
ended, and where the common commenced, as the great ebb-tides and
floods of the Tji-Udjung, which at this time had drawn back its shores
as far as the horizon, and which at another time filled the ravine up
to very near Havelaar’s house, changed its limits every moment. This
ravine had always been a thorn in the eye of Madam Slotering,—that was
very clear. The vegetable growth, everywhere so rapid in India, was
always particularly luxuriant, on account of the mud that was left
behind, to such an extent that, though the rising and falling of the
water happened with a force that rooted up and carried away the
underwood, a little time was sufficient to cover the ground with a
shagginess which rendered the clearing of the grounds, even near the
house, very difficult. And this would have been no little grief even to
one who was not a mother. For not to speak of all sorts of insects that
generally flew during the evening round the lamp in such a multitude
that to read and write became impossible, which is very tiresome in
many parts of the Indies, there were a number of snakes and other
animals in the underwood, not only in the ravine, but even found every
moment in the garden, near and behind the house, or in the grass of the
square in front.
Standing in the fore-gallery with the face to this square, one’s back
was to the house; on the left was the building with the offices, the
counting-house, and the place for meetings, where Havelaar had spoken
that morning to the chiefs, and behind that was the ravine which
extended to the Tji-Udjung. Exactly opposite the offices was the old
mansion of the Assistant Residents, which was now temporarily inhabited
by Madam Slotering; and as one could reach the estate by two ways that
were approached on both sides by the grass-fields, of course every one
who came on the estate to go to the kitchen or stalls that were behind
the principal building, had either to pass the offices or Madam
Slotering’s house. On one side of the principal building, and behind
it, was the very large garden, which had excited the joy of Tine,
because of the many flowers which she found there, and above all,
because there little Max could so often play.
Havelaar had made his excuses to Madam Slotering for not having yet
paid her a visit; he would go there next morning, but Tine had been
there and made acquaintance with her. I have already said that this
lady was a so-called “native,” who spoke no other language than Malay.
She had intimated her desire to keep her own household, to which Tine
readily agreed. And she did not comply for want of hospitality, but
chiefly out of fear that she, just arrived at Lebak, could not receive
Madam Slotering so well as she considered she ought under the peculiar
circumstances in which she was placed. True, this lady, who understood
no Dutch, need not have apprehended any harm from the narratives of
Max, as Tine had said; but she understood that more was required than
not to harm the Slotering family, and the scanty kitchen, in connexion
with the intended economy, made her consider the intention of Madam
Slotering very wise. It is also doubtful whether, had the circumstances
been otherwise, the intercourse with a person who spoke only one
language, wherein nothing is printed that civilizes the mind, would
have conduced to mutual pleasure. Tine would have kept her company as
much as possible, and would have spoken much with her about the
“kitchen” and “puddings,” but this would always have been a sacrifice,
and it was therefore thought much better that matters had been arranged
through Madam Slotering’s voluntary retirement in such a manner as left
every one in perfect liberty. Yet it was curious that this lady had not
only refused to take part in social dinners, but that she even made no
use of the offer to have her food prepared in the kitchen of Havelaar’s
house, and this reserve went a little too far, as Tine said, for the
kitchen was large enough.