The Lieutenant-Governor of Malacca--A Charming Household--The Old
Stadthaus--A Stately Habitation--An Endless Siesta--A Tropic
Dream--Chinese Houses--Chinese Wealth and Ascendency--"Opium
Farming"--The Malacca Jungle--Mohammedan Burial-Places--Malay
Villages--Malay Characteristics--Costume and Ornament--Bigotry and
Pilgrimage--The Malay Buffalo
STADTHAUS, MALACCA, January 21-23.
This must surely fade like a dream, this grand old Stadthaus, this
old-world quiet, this quaint life; but when it fades I think I shall
have a memory of having been "once in Elysium." Still, Elysium should
have no mosquitoes, and they are nearly insupportable here; big spotted
fellows, with a greed for blood, and a specially poisonous bite, taking
the place at daylight of the retiring nocturnal host. The Chinese
attendant is not careful, and lets mosquitoes into my net, and even one
means a sleepless night. They are maddening.
I was introduced to my rooms, with their floors of red Dutch tiles,
their blue walls, their white-washed rafters, their doors and windows
consisting of German shutters only, their ancient beds of portentous
height, and their generally silent and haunted look, and then went to
tiffin with Mr. and Mrs. Biggs. Mr. Biggs is a student of hymnology,
and we were soon in full swing on this mutually congenial subject. Mrs.
Biggs devotes her time and strength to the training and education of
young Portuguese girls. I pass their open bungalow as I go to and from
the Governor's cottage, and it usually proves a trap.
Captain Shaw, who has been for many years Lieutenant-Governor of
Malacca, is a fine, hearty, frank, merry, manly, Irish naval officer,
well read and well informed, devoted to Malacca and its interests, and
withal a man of an especially unselfish, loving, and tender nature,
considerate to an unusual degree of the happiness and comfort of those
about him. Before I had been here many hours I saw that he was the
light of a loving home.* He can be firm and prompt when occasion
requires firmness, but his ordinary rule is of the gentlest and most
paternal description, so that from the Chinese he has won the name of
"Father," and among the Malays, the native population, English rule, as
administered by him, has come to be known as "the rule of the just."
The family, consisting of the Governor, his, wife, and two daughters
just grown up, is a very charming one, and their quiet, peaceful life
gives me the opportunity which so rarely falls to the lot of a traveler
of becoming really intimate with them.
[*I should not have reproduced this paragraph of my letter were Captain
Shaw still alive, but in five weeks after my happy visit he died almost
suddenly, to the indescribable grief of his family and of the people of
Malacca, by whom he was greatly beloved.]
The Government bungalow, in which I spend most of my time, is a
comfortable little cottage, with verandas larger than itself. In the
front veranda, festooned with trailers and orchids, two Malay military
policemen are always on guard, and two scornful-looking Bengalis in
white trousers, white short robes, with sashes of crimson silk striped
with gold, and crimson-and-gold flat hats above their handsome but
repellent faces, make up the visible part of the establishment. One of
these Bengalis has been twice to Mecca, at an expense of 40 pounds on
each visit, and on Friday appears in a rich Hadji suit, in which he
goes through the town, and those Mussulmen who are not Hadji bow down
to him. I saw from the very first that my project of visiting the
native States was not smiled upon at Government House.
The Government bungalow being scarcely large enough for the Governor's
family, I am lodged in the old Dutch Stadthaus, formerly the residence
of the Dutch Governor, and which has enough of solitude and faded
stateliness to be fearsome, or at the least eerie, to a solitary guest
like myself, to whose imagination, in the long, dark nights, creeping
Malays or pilfering Chinamen are far more likely to present themselves
than the stiff beauties and formal splendors of the heyday of Dutch
ascendancy. The Stadthaus, which stands on the slope of the hill, and
is the most prominent building in Malacca, is now used as the Treasury,
Post Office, and Government offices generally. There are large state
reception-rooms, including a ball-room, and suites of apartments for
the use of the Governor of the Straits Settlements, the Chief-Justice,
and other high officials, on their visits to Malacca. The Stadthaus, at
its upper end on the hill, is only one story high, but where it abuts
on the town it is three and even four. The upper part is built round
three sides of a Dutch garden, and a gallery under the tiled veranda
runs all round. A set of handsome staircases on the sea side leads to
the lawn-like hill with the old cathedral, and the bungalows of the
Governor and colonial chaplain. Stephanotis, passiflora, tuberose,
alamanda, Bougainvillea, and other trailers of gorgeous colors, climb
over everything, and make the night heavy with their odors. There must
be more than forty rooms in this old place, besides great arched
corridors, and all manner of queer staircases and corners. Dutch tiling
and angularities and conceits of all kinds abound.
My room opens on one side upon a handsome set of staircases under the
veranda, and on the other upon a passage and staircase with several
rooms with doors of communication, and has various windows opening on
the external galleries. Like most European houses in the Peninsula, it
has a staircase which leads from the bedroom to a somewhat grim,
brick-floored room below, containing a large high tub, or bath, of
Shanghai pottery, in which you must by no means bathe, as it is found
by experience that to take the capacious dipper and pour water upon
yourself from a height, gives a far more refreshing shock than
immersion when the water is at 80 degrees and the air at 83 degrees.
The worst of my stately habitation is, that after four in the afternoon
there is no one in it but myself, unless a Chinese coolie, who has a
lair somewhere, and appears in my room at all sorts of unusual hours
after I think I have bolted and barred every means of ingress. However,
two Malay military policemen patrol the verandas outside at intervals
all night, and I have the comfort of imagining that I hear far below
the clank of the British sentries who guard the Treasury. In the early
morning my eyes always open on the Governor's handsome Mohammedan
servant in spotless white muslin and red head-dress and girdle,
bringing a tray with tea and bananas. The Chinese coolie who appears
mysteriously attends on me, and acts as housemaid, our communications
being entirely by signs. The mosquitoes are awful. The view of the
green lawns, the sleeping sea, the motionless forest of cocoa-palms
along the shore, the narrow stream and bridge, and the quaint red-tiled
roofs of the town, is very charming and harmonious; yet I often think,
if these dreamy days went on into months, that I should welcome an
earthquake shock, or tornado, or jarring discord of some rousing kind,
to break the dream produced by the heated, steamy, fragrant air, and
the monotonous silence.
I have very little time for writing here, and even that is abridged by
the night mosquitoes, which muster their forces for a desperate attack
as soon as I retire to the Stadthaus for two hours of quiet before
dinner, so I must give the features of Malacca mainly in outline.
Having written this sentence, I am compelled to say that the feature of
Malacca is that it is featureless! It is a land where it is "always
afternoon"--hot, still, dreamy. Existence stagnates. Trade pursues its
operations invisibly. Commerce hovers far off on the shallow sea. The
British and French mail steamers give the port a wide offing. It has no
politics, little crime, rarely gets even two lines in an English
newspaper, and does nothing toward making contemporary history. The
Lieutenant-Governor has occupied the same post for eleven years. A
company of soldiers vegetates in quarters in a yet sleepier region than
the town itself. Two Chinese steamers make it a port of call, but,
except that they bring mails, their comings and goings are of no
interest to the very small English part of the population. Lying
basking in the sun, or crawling at the heads of crawling oxen very like
hairless buffaloes, or leaning over the bridge looking at nothing, the
Malays spend their time when they come into the town, their very
movements making the lack of movement more perceptible.
The half-breed descendants of the Portuguese, who kept up a splendid
pomp of rule in the days of Francis Xavier, seem to take an endless
siesta behind their closely covered windows. I have never seen an
Englishman out of doors except Mr. Hayward, the active superintendent
of military police, or Mr. Biggs, who preserves his health and energies
by systematic constitutionals. Portuguese and Dutch rule have passed
away, leaving, as their chief monuments--the first, a ruined cathedral,
and a race of half-breeds; and the last, the Stadthaus and a flat-faced
meeting-house. A heavy shower, like a "thunder-plump," takes up a part
of the afternoon, after which the Governor's carriage, with servants in
scarlet liveries, rolls slowly out of Malacca, and through the
sago-palms and back again. If aught else which is European breaks the
monotony of the day I am not aware of it. The streets have no
particular features, though one cannot but be aware that a narrow
stream full of boats, and spanned by a handsome bridge, divides the
town into two portions, and that a handsome clock-tower (both tower and
bridge erected by some wealthy Chinese merchants) is a salient object
below the Stadthaus. Trees, trailers, fruits, smother the houses, and
blossom and fruit all the year round; old leaves, young leaves, buds,
blossom, and fruit, all appearing at once. The mercury rarely falls
below 79 degrees or rises above 84 degrees. The softest and least
perceptible of land and sea breezes blow alternately at stated hours.
The nights are very still. The days are a tepid dream. Since I arrived
not a leaf has stirred, not a bird has sung, the tides ebb and flow in
listless and soundless ripples. Far off, on the shallow sea, phantom
ships hover and are gone, and on an indefinite horizon a blurred ocean
blends with a blurred sky. On Mount Ophir heavy cloud-masses lie always
motionless. The still, heavy, fragrant nights pass with no other sounds
than the aggressive hum of mosquitoes and the challenge of the
sentries. But through the stormy days and the heavy nights Nature is
always busy in producing a rapidity and profusion of growth which would
turn Malacca into a jungle were it not for axe and billhook, but her
work does not jar upon the general silence. Yet with all this
indefiniteness, dreaminess, featurelessness, indolence, and silence, of
which I have attempted to convey an idea, Malacca is very fascinating,
and no city in the world, except Canton, will leave so vivid an
impression upon me, though it may be but of a fragrant tropic dream and
nothing more.
Yesterday Mrs. Biggs took me a drive through Malacca and its forest
environs. It was delightful; every hour adds to the fascination which
this place has for me. I thought my tropic dreams were over, when seven
years ago I saw the summit peaks of Oahu sink sunset flushed into a
golden sea, but I am dreaming it again. The road crosses the bridge
over the narrow stream, which is, in fact, the roadway of a colored and
highly picturesque street, and at once enters the main street of
Malacca, which is parallel to the sea. On the sea side each house
consists of three or four divisions, one behind the other, each roof
being covered with red tiles. The rearmost division is usually built
over the sea, on piles. In the middle of each of the three front
divisions there is a courtyard. The room through which you enter from
the street always has an open door, through which you see houses
showing a high degree of material civilization, lofty rooms, handsome
altars opposite the doors, massive, carved ebony tables, and carved
ebony chairs with marble seats and backs standing against the walls,
hanging pictures of the kind called in Japan kakemono, and rich bronzes
and fine pieces of porcelain on ebony brackets. At night, when these
rooms are lighted up with eight or ten massive lamps, the appearance is
splendid. These are the houses of Chinese merchants of the middle
class.
And now I must divulge the singular fact that Malacca is to most
intents and purposes a Chinese city. The Dutch, as I wrote, have
scarcely left a trace. The Portuguese, indolent, for thc most part
poor, and lowered by native marriages, are without influence, a most
truly stagnant population, hardly to be taken into account. Their poor-
looking houses resemble those of Lisbon. The English, except in so far
as relates to the administration of government, are nowhere, though it
is under our equitable rule that the queerly mixed population of
Chinese, Portuguese, half-breeds, Malays, Confucianists, Buddhists,
Tauists, Romanists, and Mohammedans "enjoy great quietness."*
[*By the census of 1881 the resident European population of the
Settlement of Malacca consists of 23 males and 9 females, a "grand"
total of 32! The Eurasian population, mainly of Portuguese mixed blood,
is 2,213. The Chinese numbers 19,741, 4,020 being females. The Malay
population is 67,488, the females being 2,000 in excess of the males,
the Tamils or Klings are 1,781, the Arabs 227, the Aborigines of the
Peninsula 308, the Javanese 399, the Boyanese 212, and the Jawi-Pekans
867. Besides these there are stray Achinese, Africans, Anamese,
Bengalis, Bugis, Dyaks, Manilamen, Siamese, and Singhalese, numbering
174. The total population of the territory is 93,579, viz., 52,059 males
and 41,520 females, an increase in ten years of 15,823. The decrease in
the number of resident Europeans is 31.9 per cent. In "natives of India"
42 per cent., and in "other nationalities" 48.9 per cent. On the other
hand the Chinese population has increased by 6,259 or 46.4 per cent.,
and the Malays by 11,264, or 19.3 per cent. The town of Malacca contains
5,538 houses, and the country districts 11,177. The area of the
settlement is 640 square miles, and the density of the population 146 to
the square mile; only twelve of the population are lunatics.]
Of the population of the town the majority are said to be Chinese, and
still their crowded junks are rolling down on the north-east monsoon.
As I remarked before, the coasting trade of the Straits of Malacca is
in their hands, and to such an extent have they absorbed the trade of
this colony, that I am told there is not a resident British merchant in
Malacca. And it is not, as elsewhere, that they come, make money, and
then return to settle in China, but they come here with their wives and
families, buy or build these handsome houses, as well as large
bungalows in the neighboring cocoa-groves, own most of the plantations
up the country, and have obtained the finest site on the hill behind
the town for their stately tombs. Every afternoon their carriages roll
out into the country, conveying them to their substantial bungalows to
smoke and gamble. They have fabulous riches in diamonds, pearls,
sapphires, rubies, and emeralds. They love Malacca, and take a pride in
beautifying it. They have fashioned their dwellings upon the model of
those in Canton, but whereas cogent reasons compel the rich Chinaman at
home to conceal the evidences of his wealth, he glories in displaying
it under the security of British rule. The upper class of the Chinese
merchants live in immense houses within walled gardens. The wives of
all are secluded, and inhabit the back regions and have no share in the
remarkably "good time" which the men seem to have. Along with their
industrious habits and their character for fair trading, the Chinese
have brought to Malacca gambling and opium-smoking. One-seventh of the
whole quantity of opium exported from India to China is intercepted and
consumed in the Straits Settlements, and the Malacca Government makes a
large revenue from it. The Chinaman who "farms the opium"--i.e., who
purchases from the Government the exclusive right to sell it--pays for
his monopoly about 50 pounds per day. It must be remembered, however,
that every man who smokes opium is not what we understand by an
"opium-smoker," and that between the man who takes his daily pipe of
opium after his supper, and the unhappy opium-slave who reduces himself
to imbecility in such dens as I saw in Canton, there is just as much
difference as there is in England between the "moderate drinker" and
the "habitual drunkard." Slavery is prohibited in Malacca, and slaves
from the neighboring State fly for freedom to the shelter of the
British flag; but there is reason to suppose that the numerous women in
the households of the Chinese merchants, though called servants, are
persons who have been purchased in China, and are actually held in
bondage. Apart from these exceptions, the Chinese population is a
valuable one, and is, in its upper classes, singularly public-spirited,
law-abiding, and strongly attached to British rule.
I saw no shops except those for the sale of fish, fruit, and coarse
native pottery, but doubtless most things which are suited to the wants
of the mixed population can be had in the bazaars. As we drove out of
the town the houses became fewer and the trees denser, with mosques
here and there among them, and in a few minutes we were in the great
dark forest of cocoa, betel, and sago palms, awfully solemn and
oppressive in the hot stillness of the evening. Every sight was new,
for though I have seen the cocoa-palm before, the palm-fringes of the
coral islands, with their feathery plumes have little kinship with the
dark, crowded cocoa-forests of Malacca, with their endless vistas and
mysterious gloom. These forests are intersected by narrow, muddy
streams, suggestive of alligators, up which you can go in canoes if you
lie down, and are content with the yet darker shade produced by the
nipah, a species of stemless palm, of which the poorer natives make
their houses, and whose magnificent fronds are often from twenty to
twenty-two feet in length. The soft carriage road passes through an
avenue of trees of great girth and a huge spread of foliage, bearing
glorious yellow blossoms of delicious fragrance. Jungles of sugar-cane
often form the foreground of dense masses of palms, then a jungle of
pine-apples surprises one, then a mass of lianas, knotted and tangled,
with stems like great cables, and red blossoms as large as breakfast
cups. The huge trees which border the road have their stems and
branches nearly hidden by orchids and epiphytes--chiefly that lovely
and delicate one whose likeness to a hovering dove won for it the name
of the "Flower of the Holy Ghost," an orchid (Peristeria elata) which
lives but for a day, but in its brief life fills the air with
fragrance. Then the trees change, the long tresses of an
autumn-flowering orchid fall from their branches over the road; dead
trees appear transformed into living beauty by multitudes of ferns,
among which the dark-green shining fronds of the Asplenium nidus,
measuring four feet in length, specially delight the eye; huge
tamarinds and mimosa add the grace of their feathery foliage; the
banana unfolds its gigantic fronds above its golden fruitage; clumps of
the betel or areca palms, with their slender and absolutely straight
shafts, make the cocoa-palms look like clumsy giants; the gutta-percha,
india rubber, and other varieties of ficus, increase the forest gloom
by the brown velvety undersides of their shining dark-green leafage;
then comes the cashew-nut tree, with its immense spread of branches,
and its fruit an apple with a nut below; and the beautiful bread-fruit,
with its green "cantalupe melons," nearly ripe, and the gigantic jak
and durion, and fifty others, children of tropic heat and moisture, in
all the promise of perpetual spring, and the fulfillment of endless
summer, the beauty of blossom and the bounteousness of an unfailing
fruitage crowning them through all the year. At their feet is a tangle
of fungi, mosses, ferns, trailers, lilies, nibongs, reeds, canes,
rattans, a dense and lavish undergrowth, in which reptiles, large and
small, riot most congenially, and in which broods of mosquitoes are
hourly hatched, to the misery of man and beast. Occasionally a small
and comparatively cleared spot appears, with a crowded cluster of
graves, with a pawn-shaped stone at the head of each, and the beautiful
Frangipani,* the "Temple Flower" of Singhalese Buddhism, but the "Grave
Flower" of Malay Mohammedanism, sheds its ethereal fragrance among the
tombs. The dead lie lonely in the forest shade, under the feathery
palm-fronds, but the living are not far to seek.
[*Plumieria sp.]
It is strange that I should have written thus far and have said nothing
at all about the people from whom this Peninsula derives its name, who
have cost us not a little blood and some treasure, with whom our
relations are by no means well defined or satisfactory, and who, though
not the actual aborigines of the country, have at least that claim to
be considered its rightful owners which comes from long centuries of
possession. In truth, between English rule, the solid tokens of Dutch
possession, the quiet and indolent Portuguese, the splendid memories of
Francis Xavier, and the numerical preponderance, success, and wealth of
the Chinese, I had absolutely forgotten the Malays, even though a dark-
skinned military policeman, with a gliding, snake-like step, whom I
know to be a Malay, brings my afternoon tea to the Stadthaus! Of them I
may write more hereafter. They are symbolized to people's minds in
general by the dagger called a kris, and by the peculiar form of frenzy
which has given rise to the phrase "running amuck."
The great cocoa groves are by no means solitary, for they contain the
kampongs, or small raised villages of the Malays. Though the Malay
builds his dismal little mosques on the outskirts of Malacca, he shuns
the town, and prefers a life of freedom in his native jungles, or on
the mysterious rivers which lose themselves among the mangrove swamps.
So in the neighborhood of Malacca these kampongs are scattered through
the perpetual twilight of the forest. They do not build the houses
very close together, and whether of rich or poor, the architecture is
the same. Each dwelling is of planed wood or plaited palm leaves, the
roof is high and steep, the eaves are deep, and the whole rests on a
gridiron platform, supported on posts from five to ten feet high, and
approached by a ladder in the poorer houses, and a flight of steps in
the richer. In the ordinary houses mats are laid here and there over
the gridiron, besides the sleeping mats; and this plan of an open
floor, though trying to unaccustomed Europeans, has various advantages.
As, for instance, it insures ventilation, and all debris can be thrown
through it, to be consumed by the fire which is lighted every evening
beneath the house to smoke away the mosquitoes. A baboon, trained to
climb the cocoa palms and throw down the nuts, is an inmate of most of
the houses.
The people lead strange and uneventful lives. The men are not inclined
to much effort except in fishing or hunting, and, where they possess
rice land, in ploughing for rice. They are said to be quiet,
temperate, jealous, suspicious, some say treacherous, and most bigoted
Mussulmen. The women are very small, keep their dwellings very tidy,
and weave mats and baskets from reeds and palm leaves. They are clothed
in cotton or silk from the ankles to the throat, and the men, even in
the undress of their own homes, usually wear the sarong, a picturesque
tightish petticoat, consisting of a wide piece of stuff kept on by a
very ingenious knot. They are not savages in the ordinary sense, for
they have a complete civilization of their own, and their legal system
is derived from the Koran.
They are dark brown, with rather low foreheads, dark and somewhat
expressionless eyes, high cheek bones, flattish noses with broad
nostrils, and wide mouths with thick lips. Their hair is black,
straight and shining, and the women dress it in a plain knot at the
back of the head. To my thinking, both sexes are decidedly ugly, and
there is a coldness and aloofness of manner about them which chills one
even where they are on friendly terms with Europeans, as the people
whom we visited were with Mrs. Biggs.
The women were lounging about the houses, some cleaning fish, others
pounding rice; but they do not care for work, and the little money
which they need for buying clothes they can make by selling mats, or
jungle fruits. Their lower garment, or sarong, reaching from the waist
to the ankles, is usually of red cotton of a small check, with stripes
in the front, above which is worn a loose sleeved garment, called a
kabaya, reaching to the knees, and clasped in front with silver or
gold, and frequently with diamond ornaments. They also wear gold or
silver pins in their hair, and the sarong is girt or held up by a clasp
of enormous size, and often of exquisite workmanship, in the poorer
class of silver, and in the richer of gold jeweled with diamonds and
rubies. The sarong of the men does not reach much below the knee and
displays loose trousers. They wear above it a short-sleeved jacket, the
baju, beautifully made, and often very tastefully decorated in fine
needlework, and with small buttons on each side, not for use, however.
I have seen one Malay who wore about twenty buttons, each one a diamond
solitaire! The costume is completed by turbans or red handkerchiefs
tied round their heads.
In these forest kampongs the children, who are very pretty, are not
encumbered by much clothing, specially the boys. All the dwellings are
picturesque, and those of the richer Malays are beautiful. They rigidly
exclude all ornaments which have "the likeness of anything in heaven or
earth," but their arabesques are delicately carved, and the verses from
the Koran, which occasionally run under the eaves, being in the Arabic
character, are decidedly decorative. Their kampongs are small, and
they have little of the gregarious instinct; they are said to live
happily, and to have a considerable amount of domestic affection.
Captain Shaw likes the Malays, and the verdict on them here is that
they are chaste, gentle, honest and hospitable, but that they tell
lies, and that their "honor" is so sensitive that blood alone can wipe
out some insults to it. They seclude their women to a great extent, and
under ordinary circumstances the slightest courtesy shown by a European
man to a Malay woman would be a deadly insult; and at the sight of a
man in the distance the women hastily cover their faces.
There is a large mosque with a minaret just on the outskirts of
Malacca, and we passed several smaller ones in the space of three
miles. Scarcely any kampong is so small as not to have a mosque. The
Malays are bigoted, and for the most part ignorant and fanatical
Mohammedans, and I firmly believe that the Englishman whom they respect
most is only a little removed from being "a dog of an infidel." They
are really ruled by the law of the Koran, and except when the Imaum,
who interprets the law, decides (which is very rarely the case)
contrary to equity, the British magistrate confirms his decision. In
fact, Mohammedan law and custom rule in civil cases, and the Imaum of
the mosque assists the judge with his advice. The Malays highly
appreciate the manner in which law is administered under English rule,
and the security they enjoy in their persons and property, so that they
can acquire property without risk, and accumulate and wear the
costliest jewels even in the streets of Malacca without fear of robbery
or spoliation. This is by no means to write that the Malays love us,
for I doubt whether the entente cordiale between any of the
dark-skinned Oriental races and ourselves is more than skin deep. It is
possible that they prefer being equitably taxed by us, with the
security which our rule brings, to being plundered by native princes,
but we do not understand them, or they us, and where they happen to be
Mohammedans, there is a gulf of contempt and dislike on their part
which is rarely bridged by amenities on ours. The pilgrimage to Mecca
is the great object of ambition. Many Malays, in spite of its expense
and difficulties, make it twice, and even three times. We passed three
women clothed in white from head to foot, their drapery veiling them
closely, leaving holes for their eyes. These had just returned from
Mecca. The picturesqueness of the drive home was much heightened by the
darkness, and the brilliancy of the fires underneath the Malay houses.
The great gray buffalo which they use for various purposes--and which,
though I have written gray, is as often pink--has a very thin and
sensitive skin, and is almost maddened by mosquitoes; and we frequently
passed fires lighted in the jungle, with these singular beasts standing
or lying close to them in the smoke on the leeward side, while Malays
in red sarongs and handkerchiefs, and pretty brown children scarcely
clothed at all, lounged in the firelight. Then Chinese lamps and
lanterns, and the sound of what passes for music; then the refinement
and brightness of the Government bungalow, and at ten o'clock my chair
with three bearers, and the solitude of the lonely Stadthaus.