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[Illustration]
JAVA FACTS AND FANCIES
by
AUGUSTA DE WIT
With 160 Illustrations
London
Chapman & Hall, Ltd.
1905
[Illustration]
When the Lady Dolly van der Decken, in answer to questions about
her legendary husband's whereabouts, murmured something vague about
"Java, Japan, or Jupiter," she had Java in her mind as the most
"impossible" of those impossible places. And, indeed, every schoolboy
points the finger of unceremonious acquaintance at Jupiter; and
Japan lies transparent on the egg-shell porcelain of many an elegant
tea-table. But Java? What far forlorn shore may it be that owns the
strange-sounding name; and in what sailless seas may this other Ultima
Thule be fancied to float? Time was when I never saw a globe--all spun
about with the net of parallels and degrees, as with some vast spider's
web--without a little shock of surprise at finding "Java" hanging in
the meshes. How could there be latitude and longitude to such a thing
of dreams and fancies? An attempt at determining the acreage of the
rainbow, or the geological strata of a Fata Morgana, would hardly
have seemed less absurd. I would have none of such vain exactitude;
but still chose to think of Java as situate in the same region as the
Island of Avalon; the Land of the Lotos-Eaters, palm-shaded Bohemia by
the sea, and the Forest of Broceliand, Merlin's melodious grave. And it
seemed to me that the very seas which girt those magic shores--still
keeping their golden sands undefiled from the gross clay of the outer
world--must be unlike all other water--tranquil ever, crystalline,
with a seven-tinted glow of strange sea-flowers, and the flashing
of jewel-like fishes gleaming from unsounded deeps. And higher than
elsewhere, surely, the skies, blessed with the sign of the Southern
Cross, must rise above the woods where the birds of paradise nestle.
Where is it now, the glory and the dream? The soil of Java is hot
under my feet. I know--to my cost--that, if the surrounding seas be
different from any other body of water, they are chiefly so in being
more subject to tempest, turmoil, and sudden squalls. I find the benign
influences of the Southern Cross--not a very brilliant constellation by
the way--utterly undone by the fiery fury of the noonday-sun; and have
learnt to appreciate the fine irony of the inherited style and title,
as compared with the present habitat, of the said Birds of Paradise.
And yet--all disappointing experience notwithstanding, and in spite
of the deadly dullness of so many days, the fever of so many sultry
nights, and the homesickness of all hours--I have still some of the
old love for this country left; and I begin to understand something of
the fascination by which it holds the Northerner who has breathed its
odour-laden air for too long a time; so that, forgetting his home, his
friends, and his kindred in the gray North, he is content to live on
dreamily by some lotos-starred lake; and, dying, to be buried under the
palm-trees.
AUGUSTA DE WIT.
FIRST GLIMPSES
[Illustration: "A "brownie" of that enchanted garden that men call
Java."]
[Illustration]
My first impression of Java was not that of effulgent light and
overpowering magnificence of colour, generally experienced at the
first sight of a tropical country; but, on the contrary, of something
unspeakably tender, ethereal, and soft. It was in the beginning of
the rainy season. Under a sky filmy with diaphanous fleecy texture,
in which a tinge of the hidden blue was felt rather than seen, the
sea had a pearly sheen, with here and there changefully flickering
white lights, and wind-ruffled streaks of a pale violet. The slight
haziness in the air somewhat dulled the green of innumerable islets
and thickly-wooded reefs, scattered all over the sea; and, blurring
their outlines, seemed to lift them until they grew vague and airy as
the little clouds of a mackerel sky, wafted hither and thither by the
faintest wind. In the distance the block of square white buildings on
the landing-place--pointed out as the railway station and the custom
houses--stood softly outlined against a background of whitish-grey sky
and mist-blurred trees.
Slowly the steamer glided on. And, as we now approached the roadstead
of Batavia, there came swimming towards the ship numbers of native
boats, darting out from between the islets, and diving up out of the
shadows along the wooded shore, like so many waterfowl. Swiftest of
all were the "praos'" very slight hulls, almost disappearing under
their one immense whitish-brown sail, shaped like a bird's wing, and
thrown back with just the same impatient fling--ready for a swoop and
rake--so exactly resembling sea-gulls skimming along, as to render the
comparison almost a description. On they came, drawing purplish furrows
through the pearly greys and whites of the sea. And, in their wake,
darting hither and thither with the jerky movements of water-spiders,
quite a swarm of little black canoes--hollowed-out tree-trunks, kept
in balance by bamboo outriggers, which spread on either side like
sprawling, scurrying legs. As they approached, we saw that the boats
were piled with many-tinted fruit, above which the naked bodies of
the oarsmen rose, brown and shiny, and the wet paddle gleamed in
its leisurely-seeming dip and rise, which yet sent the small skiff
bounding onward. They were along-side soon, and the natives clambered
on board, laden with fragrant wares. They did not take the trouble
of hawking them about, agile as they had proved themselves, but
calmly squatted down amid their piled-up baskets of yellow, scarlet,
crimson, and orange fruit--a medley of colours almost barbaric in its
magnificence, notwithstanding the soberer tints of blackening purple,
and cool, reposeful green; and calmly awaited customers. Under the
gaudy kerchiefs picturesquely framing the dark brows, their brown
eyes had that look of thoughtful--or is it all thoughtless?--content,
which we of the North know only in the eyes of babies, crooning in
their mother's lap. And, as they answered our questions, their speech
had something childlike too, with its soft consonants and clear
vowels, long-drawn-out on a musical modulation, that glided all up
and down the gamut. They had a great charm for me, their flatness of
features and meagreness of limbs notwithstanding; and I thought, that,
if not quite the fairies, they might well be the "brownies" of that
enchanted garden that men call Java.
[Illustration: "Fishing-praos, their diminutive hulls almost
disappearing under the one tall whitish-brown sail, shaped like a
bird's wing and flung back, as if ready for a swoop and rake."]
[Illustration: "The ship lay still, and we trod the quay of Tandjong
Priok."]
But alas! for day-dreaming--the gruff authoritative voice of the
quartermaster was heard on deck; and--after the manner of goblins at
the approach of the Philistine--all the little brownies vanished. They
were gone in an instant: and, in their pretty stead, came porters,
cabin-stewards with trunks, and passengers in very new clothes. For we
were fast approaching; and, presently, with a big sigh of relief, the
steamer lay still, and we trod the quay of Tanjong Priok.
It would seem as if the first half hour of arrival must be the same
everywhere, all the world over; but here, even in the initial scramble
for the train, one notices a difference. There is a crowd; and there
is no noise. No scuffling and stamping, no cries, no shouting, no
gruff-voiced altercations. All but inaudibly the barefooted coolies
trot on, big steamer-trunks on their shoulders; they do not hustle,
each patiently awaiting his turn at the office and on the platform;
and, as they stand aside for some hurrying, pushing European, their
else impassible faces assume a look of almost contemptuous amazement.
Why should the "orang blanda"[1] thus discourteously jostle them? Are
there not many hours in a day, and many days to come after this? And do
they not know that "Haste cometh of the evil?"
[1] "People from Holland" the name for Europeans generally.
The train has started at last, and is hurrying through a wild, dreary
country, half jungle, half marshland. From the rank undergrowth of
brushwood and bulrushes rise clumps of cocoanut palms, their dark
shaggy crowns strangely massive above the meagre stems through which
the distant horizon gleams palely. In open spaces young trees stand out
here and there, half strangled in the festoons of a purple-blossomed
liana that trails its tendrilled length all over the lower shrub-wood.
Thickets of bamboo bend and sway in the evening wind.
To the right stretches a long straight canal, dull as lead under
the lustreless sky; the breeze, in passing, blackens the motionless
water, and a shiver runs through the dense vegetation along the
edge--broad-leaved bananas, the spreading fronds of the palmetto, and
mimosas of feathery leafage, above which the silver-grey tufts of
bulrushes rise. After a while the jungle diminishes and ceases; and a
vast reach of marshy country stretches away to the horizon. We neared
it as the sun was setting. Though it had not broken through the clouds,
the fiery globe had suffused their whiteness with a deep, dull purple
as of smouldering flames. A tremulous splendour suddenly shot over
the rush-beds and rank waving grasses of the marshy land; the shining
reed-pricked sheets of water crimsoned; and along the canal moving like
an incandescent lava stream, the broadly curving banana leaves seemed
fountains of purple light, and the palmetto and delicate mimosa fronds
grew transparent in the all-pervading rosiness--almost immaterial. Even
after the burning edge of the sun, perceived for a brief moment, had
sunk away, these marvellous colours did not fade; softly shining on
they seemed to be the natural tint of this wonderful land--independent
of suns and seasons. Then, all at once, they were extinguished by the
rapidly-fallen dusk, as a fire might be under a shower of ashes; and, a
few minutes after, it was night.
At the lamplit station of Batavia I hailed one of the vehicles waiting
outside--a curious little two-wheeled conveyance, which, with its
enormous lanterns, airily supported roof, and long shafts between
which a diminutive pony trotted, looked like a fiery-eyed cockchafer
that darts about, moving its long antennae. I hoisted myself on to
the sloping seat, and, for some time was driven through an avenue,
the trees on either side of which made a cloudy darkness against
the pale strip of sky overhead. There was an incessant high-pitched
twittering of birds among the leaves; and, every now and then, a
fragrance of invisible flowers came floating out on the windless air.
We passed a tall building, shimmering white through the darkness--the
Governor-General's palace I was told. Then the horse's hoofs clattered
over a bridge, and, past the turn of the road, a long row of brilliant
windows flashed up, with a white blaze of electric light in the
distance.
Past the resplendent shop-windows on the left side of the street--the
other remaining dark, featureless--a leisurely crowd moved; open
carriages, bearing ladies to some evening entertainment, bowled along;
a many-windowed club-building blazed out; a canal shone with a hundred
slender spears of reflected light--I had reached my destination, the
suburb of Rijswijk.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
A BATAVIA HOTEL
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
If, in this commonplace-loving age, there be one thing more commonplace
and utterly devoid of character than another, it is a hotel. Hotels!
where are railroads there are they. The locomotive scatters them
along its shining path together with cinders, thistleseeds, and
tourists. They are everywhere; and everywhere they are the same. The
proverbial peas are not so indistinguishably alike. Surely, a whimsical
imagination may be pardoned for fancying a difference between the pods
"shairpening" in some Scotch kailyard, the petits-pois coquettishly
arranged in Chevet's shop-window, and the Zuckererbsen mashed down to
a green pulse in some strong-jawed Prussian's plate--a difference, the
far and faint and fanciful analogy to the more obvious one between
the gudeman, the French chef, and the Königlich Preussischer Douanen
Beamten Gehilfe who own the said peas. But a hotel, on whatever part
of Europe it may open its dull window-eyes, has not even a name native
of the country, and declaring its citizenship. The genius of speech
despairs of making a difference in the name, where there is none in
the thing; and thus, from Orenburg to Valentia, and from Hammerfest
to Messina, a hôtel is still called a hôtel, and the traveller still
expects and finds the same Swiss portier and the same red velvet
portières, the same indescribable smell of sherry, stewed-meat,
and cigars in the passages, the same funereally-clad waiters round
the table d'hôte, and the same dishes upon it. Thus I thought in
my old European days. But, since, I have come to Java, and I have
seen a Batavia hotel--_a rumah makan_. Ah! that was a surprise, a
shock, a revelation--I would say "un frisson nouveau" if Batavia and
shivering were compatible terms. "Un étouffement nouveau" better
expressed my sensations, as it flashed upon me in full noon-day glory.
Noon is its own time, its hour of hours, the instant when those
opposing elements of Batavia street-life--the native population most
conspicuous of a morning, and the European contingent preponderant in
the evening--attain that exact equipoise which gives the place its
particular character; and when the conditions of sky, air, and earth
are attuned to truest harmony with it.
The great, strong, full noon-day sun beats on the stuccoed buildings,
heating their whiteness to an intolerable incandescence. It has set
the garden ablaze, burning up the long grey shadows of early morning
to round patches of a charred black, that cling to the foot of the
trees; and making the air to quiver visibly above the scorched yellow
grass-plots. Among their dark leafage, the hibiscus flowers flare
like living flame; and the red-and-orange blossoms, dropping from the
branches of the Flame of the Forest, seem to lie on the path like
smouldering embers. Through this blaze of light and colour, move
groups of gaudily-draped natives--water-carriers, flower-sellers,
fruit-vendors, pedlars selling silk and precious stones--their heads
protected from the sun by enormous mushroom-shaped hats of plaited
straw, and their shining shoulders bending under a bamboo yoke, from
the ends of which dangle baskets of merchandise. Small, brown, chubby
children, a necklet their one article of wear, are gathering the tiny,
yellow-white blossoms that bespangle the grass under the tanjong trees.
Grave-faced Arabs stride past. Chinamen trudge along--lean, agile
figures--chattering and gesticulating as they go.
[Illustration: "A seller of fruit and vegetables his baskets dangling
from the ends of a bamboo yoke."]
But, among the crowd of orientals, no Europeans are seen, save such
as rapidly pass in vehicles of every description, from the jolting
dos-à-dos onwards--with its diminutive pony almost disappearing between
the shafts--to the elegant victoria drawn by a pair of big Australian
horses. But, even when driving, the noon-day heat is dangerous to the
Westerner; and the European inmates of the hotel are all in the dark
cool verandahs, enjoying a dolce far niente enlivened by chaffering
with the natives and drinking iced lemonades, the ladies--here is
another surprise for the newcomer!--all attired in what seems to
be the native dress of sarong and kabaya! A kabaya is a sort of
dressing-jacket of profusely-embroidered white batiste, fastened down
the front with ornamental pins and little gold chains; and under it is
worn the sarong, a gaudily-coloured skirt falling down straight and
narrow, with one single deep fold in front, and kept in place by a silk
scarf wound several times round the waist, its ends dangling loose.
With this costume, little high-heeled slippers are worn on the bare
feet; and the hair is done in native style, simply drawn back from the
forehead, and twisted into a knot at the back of the head. Altogether,
this style of attire is original rather than becoming.
And, if this must be confessed of the ladies' costume, what must be
said of the garb some men have the courage to appear in? A kabaya,
and--may Mrs. Grundy graciously forgive me for saying it! for how
shall I describe the indescribable, save by calling it by its own
by me never-to-be-pronounced name?--A kabaya and trousers of thin
sarong-stuff gaily sprinkled with blue and yellow flowers, butterflies,
and dragons!
[Illustration: "Pine-apples and mangosteen, velvety rambootan and
smooth-skinned dookoo."]
But all this is only an induction into that supreme mystery, celebrated
at noon, the rice-table. Here is indeed, "un étouffement nouveau." All
things pertaining to it work together for bewilderment. To begin with;
it is served up, not in any ordinary dining-room, but in the "back
gallery," a place which is a sight in itself, a long and lofty hall,
supported on a colonnade, between the white pillars of which glimpses
are caught of the brilliantly-flowering shrubs and dark-leaved trees
in the garden without. In the second place, it is handed round by
native servants, inaudibly moving to and fro upon bare feet, arrayed
in clothes of a semi-European cut, incongruously combined with the
Javanese sarong and head-kerchief. And, last not least, the meal itself
is such as never was tasted on sea or land before. The principal dish
is rice and chicken, which sounds simple enough. But on this as a basis
an entire system of things inedible has been constructed: besides
fish, flesh, and fricassees, all manner of curries, sauces, pickles,
preserved fruit, salt eggs, fried bananas, "sambals" of fowl's liver,
fish-roe, young palm-shoots, and the gods of Javanese cookery alone
know what more, all strongly spiced, and sprinkled with cayenne. There
is nothing under the sun but it may be made into a sambal; and a
conscientious cook would count that a lost day on which he had not sent
in at the very least twenty of such nondescript dishes to the table of
his master, for whose digestion let all gentle souls pray! And, when to
all this I have added that these many and strange things must be eaten
with a spoon in the right hand and a fork in the left, the reader will
be able to judge how very complicated an affair the rice-table is, and
how easily the uninitiated may come to grief over it. For myself, I
shall never forget my first experience of the thing. I had just come in
from a ride through the town, and I suppose the glaring sunlight, the
strangely-accoutred crowd, the novel sights and sounds of the city must
have slightly gone to my head (there are plenty of intoxicants besides
"gin" _vide_ the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table). Anyhow, I entered
the "back gallery" with a sort of "here-the-conquering-hero-comes"
feeling; looked at the long table groaning under its dozens of
rice-bowls, scores of dishes of fowls and fish, and hundreds of
sambal-saucers, arrayed between pyramids of bananas, mangosteens, and
pine-apples, as if I could have eaten it all by way of "apéritif;"
sat me down; heaped my plate up with everything that came my way;
and fell to. What followed I have no words to express. Suffice it to
say, that in less time than I now take to relate it, I was reduced to
the most abject misery--my lips smarting with the fiery touch of the
sambal; my throat the more sorely scorched for the hasty draught of
water with which, in my ignorance, I had tried to allay the intolerable
heat; and my eyes full of tears, which it was all I could do to prevent
from openly gushing down my cheeks, in streams of utter misery. A
charitable person advised me to put a little salt on my tongue, (as
children are told to do on the tail of the bird they want to catch). I
did so; and, after a minute of the most excruciating torture, the agony
subsided. I gasped, and found I was still alive. But there and then I
vowed to myself I would never so much as look at a rice-table again.
[Illustration: "The big kalongs hanging from the topmost branches in a
sleep from which the sunset will presently awaken them."]
I have broken that vow: I say it proudly. It is but a dull mind which
cannot reverse a first opinion, or go back upon a hasty resolve. And
now I know _how_ to eat rice, I love it. Still, that first meal was a
shock. It suddenly brought home to the senses what up to that minute
had been noted by the understanding only: the fact of my being in a
new country. The glare of the garden without, the Malay sing-song of
those dark bare-footed servants, the nondescript clothes of the other
guests, united with the tingling and burning in my throat to make me
realise the stupendous change that had come over my universe, the
antipodal attitude of things in Europe and things in Java. I had the
almost bodily sensation of the intervening leagues upon leagues, of the
dividing chasm on the unknown side of which I had just landed. And it
fairly dizzied me.
Now, the natural reaction following upon a shock of this kind throws
one back upon the previous state of things--in the case the ways and
manners of the old country--and one stubbornly resolves to adhere to
them. But, though this may be natural, it is not wise. I, at least,
soon discovered for myself the truth of the old sage's saw: "Vérité
en deçà des Pyrénées, erreur en delà," as applied to the affairs of
everyday life; the more so, as oceans and broad continents, the space
of thousands of Pyrenean ranges, separate those hither and thither
sides, Holland and Java. The home-marked standard of fit and unfit
must be laid aside. The soul must doff her close-clinging habits of
prejudiced thought. And the wise man must be content to begin life over
again, becoming even as a babe and suckling, and opening cherub lips
only to drink in the light, the leisure, and the luxuriant beauty of
this new country as a rich mother's milk--the blameless food on which
to grow up to (colonial) manhood.
But to return to that first "rice-table." After the rice, curries,
etc. had been disposed of, beef and salad appeared, and, to my
infinite astonishment, were disposed of in their turn, to be followed
by the dessert--pine-apples, mangosteens, velvety "rambootans," and
an exceedingly picturesque and prettily-shaped fruit--spheres of a
pale gold containing colourless pellucid flesh--which I heard called
"dookoo." Then the guests began to leave the table, and I was told
it was time for the siesta--another Javanese institution, not a whit
less important, it would appear, than the famous rice-table--and
vastly more popular with newcomers. Perhaps, the preceding meal
possesses somniferous virtue; or, perhaps, the heat and glare of the
morning predispose one to sleep; or, perhaps--after so many years of
complaining about "being waked too soon"--the sluggard in us rejoices
at being bidden in the name of the natural fitness of things, to "go
and slumber again." I will not attempt to decide which of those three
possible causes is the true one; but so much is certain: even those who
kick most vigorously at the rice-table, lay them down with lamb-like
meekness to the siesta. I confess I was very glad myself to escape into
the coolness and quiet of my room. Plain enough it was, with its bare,
white-washed walls and ceiling, its red-tiled floor and piece of coarse
matting in the centre, its cane-bottomed chairs. But how I delighted in
the absence of carpets and wall-papers, when I found the stone floor so
deliciously cool to the feet, and the bare walls distilling a freshness
as of lily-leaves! The siesta lasted till about four. Then people began
to hurry past my window, with flying towels and beating slippers,
marching to the bath-rooms. And, at five, tea was brought into the
verandah.
Then began the first moderately-cool hour of the day. A slight breeze
sprang up and wandered about in the garden, stirring the dense foliage
of the waringin-tree, and making its hundreds of pendulous air-roots
to gently sway to and fro. A shower of white blossom fluttered down
from the tanjong-branches, spreading fragrance as it fell. And, by and
by, a faint rosiness began to soften the crude white of the stuccoed
walls and colonnades, and to kindle the feathery little cirrus-clouds
floating high overhead, in the deep blue sky where the great "kalongs"
were already beginning to circle.
At six it was almost dark.
The loungers in the verandah rose from their tea, and went in. And,
some half-hour later, I saw the ladies issue forth in Paris-made
dresses, the men in the garb of society accompanying them on their
calls, for which I was told this was the hour. The "front gallery" of
the hotel, a spacious hall supported on pillars, was brilliantly lit.
A girl sat at the piano, accompanying herself to one of those weird,
thrilling songs such a Grieg and Jensen compose. And when I went in to
the eight-o'clock dinner, the menu for which might have been written
in any European hotel, I had some trouble in identifying the scene
with that which, earlier in the day, had so rudely shocked my European
ideas. I half believed the rice-table, the sarongs and kabayas, and
the Javanese "boys" must have been a dream, until I was convinced of
the contrary by the sight of a lean brown hand thrust out to change my
plate of fish for a helping of asparagus.
[Illustration]
THE TOWN
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
It is only for want of a better word that one uses this term of "town"
to designate that picturesque ensemble of villa-studded parks and
avenues, Batavia. There is, it is true, an older Batavia, grey, grim
and stony as any war-scarred city of Europe--the stronghold which the
steel-clad colonists of 1620 built on the ruins of burnt-down Jacatra.
But, long since abandoned by soldiers and peaceful citizens alike,
and its once stately mansions degraded to offices and warehouses, it
has sunk into a mere suburb--the business quarter of Batavia--alive
during a few hours of the day only, and sinking back into a death-like
stillness, as soon as the rumble of the last down-train has died away
among its echoing streets. And the real Batavia--in contradistinction
to which this ancient quarter is called "the town"--is as unlike it as
if it had been built by a different order of beings.
It is best described as a system of parks and avenues, linked by many
a pleasant byway and shadowy path, with here and there a glimpse of
the Kali Batawi gliding along between the bamboo groves on its banks,
and everywhere the whiteness of low, pillared houses, standing well
back from the road, each in its own leafy garden. Instead of walls, a
row of low stone pillars, not much higher than milestones, separates
private from public grounds, so that from a distance one cannot see
where the park ends and the street begins. The shadow of the tall
trees in the avenue keeps the garden cool, and the white dust of the
road is sprinkled with the flowers that lie scattered over the smooth
grass-plots and shell-strewn paths of the villa.
Among the squares of Batavia, the largest and most remarkable by far is
the famous Koningsplein. It is not so much a square as simply a field,
vast enough to build a city on, dotted from place to place by pasturing
cattle, and bordered on the four sides of its irregular quadrangle by
a triple row of branching tamarinds. From the southern distance two
aerial mountain-tops overlook it. The brown bare expanse of meadowy
ground, lying thus broadly open to the sky, with nothing but clouds and
cloudlike hill-tops rising above its distant rampart of trees, seems
like a tract of untamed wilderness, strangely set in the midst of a
city, and all the more savage and lonely for these smooth surroundings.
Between the stems of the delicate-leaved tamarinds, glimpses are caught
of gateways and pillared houses; the eastern side of the quadrangle
is disfigured by a glaring railway-station; and, notwithstanding,
it remains a rugged solitary spot, a waste, irreclaimably barren,
which, by the sheer strength of its unconquered wildness, subdues its
environment to its own mood. The houses, glinting between the trees,
seem mere accidents of the landscape, simply heaps of stones; the
glaring railway-station itself sinks into an indistinct whiteness,
dissociated from any idea of human thought and enterprise.
[Illustration: "A triple row of branching tamarinds."]
[Illustration: "The idyllic Duke's park, very shadowy, fragrant, and
green."]
Now and then a native traverses the field, slowly moving along an
invisible track. He does not disturb the loneliness. He is indigenous
to the place, its natural product, almost as much as the cicadas
trilling among the grass blades, the snakes darting in and out among
the crevices of the sun-baked soil, and the lean cattle, upon whose
backs the crows perch. There is but one abiding power and presence
here--the broad brown field under the broad blue sky, shifting shades
and splendours over it, and that horizon of sombre trees all around.
This vast sweep of sky gives the Plein a tone and atmosphere of its
own. The changes in the hour and the season that are but guessed at
from some occasional glimpse in the street, are here fully revealed.
The light may have been glaring enough among the whitewashed houses
of Ryswyk and Molenvliet--it is on the Plein only that tropical
sunshine manifests itself in the plenitude of its power. The great sun
stands flaming in the dizzy heights; from the scorched field to the
incandescent zenith the air is one immense blaze, a motionless flame in
which the tall tamarinds stand sere and grey, the grass shrivels up to
a tawny hay, and the bare soil stiffens and cracks.--The intolerable
day is past. People, returning home from the town, see a roseate
sheen playing over roofs and walls, a long crimson cloud sailing high
overhead. Those walking on the Plein behold an apocalyptic heaven and a
transfigured earth, a firmamental conflagration, eruptions of scarlet
flame through incarnadined cloud, runnels of fire darting across the
melting gold and translucent green of the horizon; hill-tops changed
into craters and tall trees into fountains of purple light. And many
are the nights, when, becoming aware of a dimness in the moonlit air,
I have hastened to the Koningsplein, and found it whitely waving
with mist, a very lake of vapour, fitfully heaving and sinking in the
uncertain moonlight, and rolling airy waves against a shore of darkness.
[Illustration: "The Business-quarter of Batavia."]
The seasons, too--how they triumph in this bit of open country! When,
after the devouring heat of the East monsoon, the good gift of the
rains is poured down from the heavens, and the town knows of nothing
but impracticable streets, flooded houses, and crumbling walls, it is
a time of resurrection and vernal glory for the Plein. The tamarinds,
gaunt gray skeletons a few days ago, burst into full-leaved greenness;
the hard, white, cracked soil is suddenly covered with tender grass,
fresh as the herbage of an April meadow under western skies. In the
early morning, the broad young blades are white with dew. There is a
thin silvery haze in the air, which dissolves into a pink and golden
radiance, as the first slanting sunbeams pierce it. And the tree tops,
far off and indistinct, seem to rise airily over hollows of blue shade.
[Illustration: "A footsore Klontong trudging wearily along."]
Not far from the Koningsplein there is another square, its very
opposite in aspect and character--the idyllic Duke's Park very shadowy,
fragrant, and green. One walks in it as in a poet's dream. All around
there is the multitudinous budding and blossoming of many-coloured
flowers, a play of transparent bamboo-shadows that flit and shift over
smooth grassplot and shell-strewn path, a ceaseless alternation of
glooms and glories. Set amidst tall dark trees, whose topmost branches
break out into a flame of blossom, there stands a white pillared
building, palace-like in the severe grace of its architecture. Is it
the Renaissance style of those gleaming columns and marble steps,
or that name of "the Duke's Park," or both, that stir up the fancy
to thoughts of some sixteenth-century Italian pleasaunce, such as
Shakespeare loved as a setting for his love-stories? A Duke as gentle
as his prince of Illyria, Olivia's sighing lover, might have walked
these glades, listening to disguised Viola as, all unsuspectedly, she
wooed him from his forlorn allegiance.
The irony of facts has willed it otherwise.
[Illustration: The Chinese quarter.]
A duke it was, sure enough, who stood sponsor to the spot. But as
(according to French authorities) there are fagots and fagots, even
so there are Dukes and Dukes--and vastly more points of difference
than of resemblance between Viola's gentle prince, and the thunderous
old Lord of Saxen-Weimar, to whose rumbling Kreuzdonnerwetters and
Himmel-Sakraments this abode of romance re-echoed some fifty years ago.
A distant relative to the King of the Netherlands, he was indebted
to his Royal kinsman's sense of family duty for these snug quarters,
a very considerable income (from the National Treasury) and the post
of an Army Commander, which upheld the prince in the pensioner. His
tastes were few and simple, and saving the one delight of his soul,
a penurious youth, and the hardships of the Napoleonic supremacy
having so thoroughly taught him the habit, that it had become a second
nature to him; and would not be ousted now by the mere fact of his
having become rich. He was proud of his parsimony too, prouder even
than of his swearing, remarkable as it was; and, amidst the pomp and
circumstance he had so late in life attained to, neglected not the
humble talents which had solaced his less affluent days. So that,
looking upon the many goodly acres around his palace, lying barren
of all save grass, flowers, blossoming trees, and such like useless
stuff, he at once saw what an unique opportunity it would afford him
for the exercise of his favourite virtue. And, setting about the matter
in his own thorough-going way, he cut down the trees, ploughed up the
grassplots, and had the grounds neatly laid out in onion-beds, and
plantations of the sirih, which the Javanese loves. Here one might meet
the Duke of a morning--a portly, bald-pated, red-faced old warrior with
a prodigious "meerschaum" protruding from his bristling white beard,
stars, crosses, and goldlace all over his general's uniform, and a pair
of list slippers on his rheumatic old toes. An orderly walked behind
him, holding a gold-edged sunshade over his shining pate. And, every
now and then, the Duke would stop to look earnestly at his crops; and,
stooping with a groaning of his flesh, and a creaking of his tight
tunic, straighten some trailing plant, or flick an insect off the sirih
leaves.
"The Duke was in his kitchen-garden,
A counting of his money,"
as one might vary the nursery rhyme.
[Illustration: "The West monsoon has set in, flooding the town."]
For money it was he counted, when he gazed so long and earnestly at his
vegetables--the alchemy of his thrifty imagination turning every young
stalk and sprouting leaflet into a bit of metal, adorned with his Royal
kinsman's effigy. And when the green pennies-to-be were plentiful,
well content was the gardener; and if not--"Mountains and vales and
floods, heard Ye those oaths?" Tradition has kept an echo of them.
They were something quite out of the common order, and with a style
and sound so emphatically their own as to baffle imitation, and render
description a hopeless task.
[Illustration: "The Kali Batawi on its way through the Chinese
quarter."]
Nor did this originality wear off as, in the course of time, the worthy
Duke began to forget the language of the Fatherland. For, losing his
German, he found not his Dutch, and the expressions he composed out
of such odds and ends of the two languages, as he could lay tongue
to, would have astonished the builders of Babel Tower. Fortunately,
however, his anger was as short-lived as it was violent, and, when the
last thunderclap of Kreuzmillionen Himmels Donnerwetter had gradually
died away in an indistinct grumbling, he would summon his attendant
for a light to rekindle his pipe with a "come now, thou black pigdog"
that sounded quite friendly. A kind-hearted old blusterer at bottom,
he treated his dependents well and never sent away a beggar pennyless.
"Doitless" I should have written, for his donations never exceeded that
amount.
There is a tale of an A. D. C., his appointed almoner for the time,
having one day come to him with a subscription-list on which the
customary doit figured as His Serene Highness the Duke of Saxen
Weimar's contribution; and hinting at what he considered the
disproportion between the exiguity of the gift, and the wealth and
worldly station of the giver. He must have been a very rash A. D. C.
The Duke turned upon him like a savage bull. And, after a volley of
oaths: "Too little!" he roared: "Too little!" and again, "Too little! I
would have you know, younker! that a doit is a great deal when one has
nothing at all!"
It was a cry de profundis--laughable and half contemptible as it
sounded, the echo from unforgotten depths of misery.
He had known what it meant "to have nothing at all." Wherefore, and
for those winged words in which he uttered the knowledge, let his
onion-beds be forgiven him. Of the outrage he committed, only the
memory is left--the effects have long since been obliterated: bountiful
tropical nature having again showered her treasures of leaf and flower
over the beggared garden, and re-erected in their places the green
towers of her trees.
[Illustration: Entrance to a rich Chinaman's House.]
Rijswijk, Noordwijk, and Molenvliet, the commercial quarters of
Batavia, are more European in aspect than the Koningsplein; the
houses--shops for the most part--are built in straight rows; a pavement
borders the streets, and a noisy little steam-car pants and rattles
past from morning till night. But, with these European traits, Javanese
characteristics mingle, and the resulting effect is a most curious
one, somewhat bewildering withal to the new-comer in its mixture of
the unknown with the familiar. Absolutely commonplace shops are
approached through gardens, the pavement is strewn with flowers of the
flame-of-the-forest: and, at the street-corners, instead of cabs, one
finds the nondescript sadoo, its driver, gay in a flowered muslin vest
and a gaudy headkerchief, squatting cross-legged on the back seat.
Noordwijk is unique, an Amsterdam "gracht" in a tropical setting.
Imagine a long straight canal, a gleam of green-brown water between
walls of reddish masonry--spanned from place to place by a bridge,
and shaded by the softly-tinted leafage of tamarinds; on either side
a wide, dusty road, arid gardens, sweltering in the sun, and glaring
white bungalows; the fiery blue of the tropical sky over it all.
Gaudily-painted "praos" glide down the dark canal; native women pass up
and down the flight of stone steps that climbs from the water's edge to
the street, a flower stuck into their gleaming hair, still wet from the
bath; the tribe of fruitvendors and sellers of sweet drinks and cakes
have established themselves along the parapet, in the shade of the
tamarinds; and the native crowd, coming and going all day long, makes a
kaleidoscopic play of colours along the still dark water.
From the little station at the corner of Noordwijk and Molenvliet,
a steam-car runs along the canal down to the suburbs; every quarter
of an hour it comes past, puffing and rattling; and every time the
third-class compartment is choking full of natives. The fever and the
fret of European life have seized upon these leisurely Orientals too.
They have abandoned their sirih-chewing and day-dreaming upon the
square of matting in the cool corner of the house, the dusty path along
which they used to trudge in Indian file, when there was an urgent
necessity for going to market; and behold them all perched upon this
"devil's engine," where they cannot even sit down in the way they
were taught to, "hurkling on their hunkers."
[Illustration: "A glimpse of the river as it glides along between the
bamboo groves of its margins."]
The skippers and raftsmen are more conservative in their ways--owing,
perhaps, to their constant communion with the deliberate stream, which
saunters along on its way from the hills to the sea, at its own pace.
They take life easily; paddling along over the shifting shallows and
mud-banks of the Kali (river) in the same leisurely way their forbears
did; conveying red tiles, bricks, and earthenware in flat-bottomed
boats; or pushing along rafts of bamboo-stems, which they have felled
in the wood up-stream. As they come floating down the canal, these
rafts of green bamboo, with the thin tips curving upwards like tails
and stings of venomous insects, have a fantastical appearance of
living, writhing creatures, which the native raftsman seems to be for
ever fighting with his long pole. After dark, when the torch at the
prow blazes out like the single baleful eye of the monstrous thing,
the day-dream deepens into a nightmare. And, shuddering, one remembers
ghastly legends of river-dragons and serpents that haunt the sea,
swimming up-stream to ravish some wretched mortal.
The native boats appeal to merrier thoughts. With the staring
white-and-black goggle eyes painted upon the prow, and the rows of red,
yellow, and green lozenges arranged like scales along the sides, they
remind one irresistibly of grotesque fishes for those big children,
the Javanese, to play with--at housekeeping. For keep house they do in
their boats. They eat, drink, sleep, and live in the prao. A roof of
plaited bamboo leaves helps to make the stern into the semblance of a
hut; and here, whilst the owner pushes along the floating home by means
of a long pole and a deal of apparent exertion, his wife sits cooking
the rice for the family meal over a brazier full of live coals; and
the children tumble about in happy nakedness. Javanese babies, by
the way, always seem happy. What do they amuse themselves with, one
wonders? They do not seem to know any games, and playthings they have
none, except the tanjong-flowers they make necklaces of, and perchance
some luckless cockroach, round whose hindmost leg they tie a thread to
make him walk the way he should. Their parents, Mohammedan orthodoxy
debars them from the society of their natural companions--dogs; and, as
for cats, that last resource of unamused childhood in Europe, they hold
them sacred, and would not dare to lay a playful hand upon one of them.
Yet, there they are--plaything-less, naked, and supremely happy.
Their parents, for the matter of that, are exactly the same; they
seem perfectly happy without any visible and adequate cause for such
content. As long as they are not dying--and one sometimes doubts if
Javanese die at all--all is well with them. The race has a special
genius for happiness, the free gift of those same inscrutable powers
who have inflicted industry, moral sense, and the overpowering desire
for clothes upon the unfortunate nations of the North.
Following the left-ward bend of the canal, past the sluice, and
the Post Office,--the most hideous structure by the bye that ever
disfigured a decent street--one comes to the bridge of Kampong Bahru;
and, crossing it, suddenly finds oneself in what seems another
quarter of the globe. Tall narrow houses, quaintly decorated and
crowned with red-tiled roofs, that flame out against the contrasting
azure of the sky, stand in close built rows; the wide street is
full of jostling carts and vans, fairly humming with traffic; and
the people move with an energy and briskness never seen among
Javanese. This is the Chinese quarter. There are three or four such
in the town, inhabited by Chinese exclusively. This habit of herding
together--though now a matter of choice with the Celestials--is the
survival of a time when Batavia had its "camp" as mediæval Italian
cities had their Ghetto: a period no further back than the beginning of
the last century.
[Illustration: Procession at the funeral of a rich Chinaman.]
[Illustration: Funeral Procession on its way to the Chinese Cemetery.]
[Illustration: Burning of symbolical figures at a Chinese funeral.]
At that time, when Chinese immigration threatened to become a danger
to the colony, the then Governor-General, Valckenier, took some
measures against the admittance of destitute Chinese, which, however
well-designed, were so clumsily executed as to spread the rumour
that the Government intended to deport even the Chinese residents of
Batavia. A panic broke out among them, and then a revolt, in which they
were soon joined by their countrymen from all over the island. After a
desperate struggle, atrocities innumerable both suffered and inflicted,
a siege sustained, and an attack of fifty and odd thousand beaten back
by their two thousand men, the Hollanders succeeded in putting down the
rebellion, and the enemy fled to the woods and swamps of the lowlands
around Batavia. A few months later, however, a general amnesty having
been granted, such of them as had escaped from famine and jungle-fever
returned, and a special quarter was assigned to them, where it would
be easy both to protect and to control them. There they have since
continued to live.
[Illustration: "The deliberate stream sauntering along at its own pace
on its way from the hills to the sea."]