at the time staying with friends in the Salemba quarter; and we had a
drive of nearly an hour through avenues of tall waringin trees. There
was no wind, not the faintest breath of air; all that world of leaves
stood unstirred; summits broad as hilltops, and cascades of massive
foliage, making a blackness against skies all limpid with diffused
starlight. Between the vaguely-discerned stems, the little lights,
which fruit vendors keep twinkling all the night through, would now and
then flare up, and a reddish arm be revealed, the portion of a face,
and some fruits in a basket. Once, too, we saw the shining of a fire
with some native watchmen crouching around it, their faces strangely
distorted in the ever-writhing and shifting light. One of them shouted
out a hoarse "who goes there?" That was the only sound I heard all the
time. Silence and night all around; and overhead, like some pale river
winding along between shores of darkness, the gleaming course of the
sky between the dark waringin-tops. We might have been in the heart
of a woodland, miles away from the populous city, when suddenly the
horses turned a corner, and there burst upon us the great white blaze
of the palace, shining beyond intervening darknesses. It seemed like
a low-hanging lightning-cloud, with myriads of little flames, like
sparks of Saint-Elmo's fire hovering around, above, and underneath.
Those aloft hung immovable: the steadfast stars; lower down, immovable
too, a wide-swung circle of seemingly larger luminaries defining a
tract of darkness; within that flame-bound space, trembling hither and
thither, fitful will-o'-the wisps; and, without the shining boundary,
rushing lights that darted by and suddenly stood, and then with jerks
and stops drew ever nearer to the great effulgent cloud. The lights
of stars, lanterns, oil-wicks, and carriage-lamps seemed all to have
been scattered from that central glow. As we drew nearer, its cloudlike
aspect changed to the semblance of an alabaster grotto, the fire in its
white core streaked with lines of black; and these lines broadened and
lengthened until they grew into solid shafts; when the columns of the
loggia stood revealed, rising from the height of a marble terrace.
I ascended the white steps. I was in the very heart of the light. The
pillars, the floor, the walls, and the ceiling seemed to be made of
light. And, suddenly, I had a sense of home-coming. Why, I knew all
this very well! I had known it for years, for ever so long, ever since
the time when I listened to fairy tales, and in the beautifully-bound
book--I must not touch it, and I kept my hands behind my back to
withstand the temptation--was shown the picture of the castle where
the Sleeping Beauty lived. At night, lying wide awake up to quite nine
o'clock, I saw it as plain as could be, growing up around the lamp,
with the groundglass shade for a cupola. Later on, when I could read
myself, and also climb trees as the boys in the village had taught
me, sitting all through the drowsy summer afternoons in the forked
branch of an old, crooked pear-tree, with Hans Andersen's tales on my
knees, I rebuilt the Castle on a bolder scale for the Little Mermaiden.
Alas! she was never to live there! Until, at last, when Romeo crossed
the threshold, and Juliet turned and stood at gaze, a burst of music
flooded the widening halls, entwined couples moved like flowers that
sway in the evening wind, and, between the tall columns, I caught a
glimpse of the sky and "all the little stars." Now, I had entered the
palace myself. The great La France roses, and the Maréchal Niel that
fell in showers of gold over the edge of the marble urns, had budded in
my dream-garden. The music played; and in the vast hall I knew so well,
the polonaise began to unwind its slow coils, with a flash of goldlace
and of diamonds, a gleaming of bare shoulders, and a wavy movement of
silken trains, whose hues enriched the pale marble underfoot.... "We
should move into this place, I think," said my partner.
Since then, I have been to many entertainments. It is but honest to
say that at some I have enjoyed myself exceedingly, pouring rains,
and the croaking of frogs, almost in the house, notwithstanding; and
that at others I have felt my eyes burning with tears of suppressed
yawning. It is true this has not happened often; but, when it has, not
all the stars in their courses, nor all the constellations in their
fixed places, could inspirit me; and the perfume of the tuberoses gave
me a headache. I look at these things by gas-light now; and some of
them I find curious and not altogether beautiful. One especially: the
official character of social life in the best circles. It seems as if
discipline regulated matters of pleasure as strictly as matters of
business. A man will go to his chief's party as he would to his office
of a morning, never dreaming of staying away; and imposing old ladies
resent the presence of the wrong partner at a whist table, as if it
were an obstacle in their husband's career. It is as if they could
not, even for one evening, forget the struggle for existence, and as
if they regarded a dinner or a dance as an engagement with the enemy;
a brisk assault to carry by storm some place that has long stood a
regular siege--a lively skirmish in which everything that comes to
hand is a weapon for either attack or self-defence. One cannot be too
well equipped, in this great battle of official life. Intellect is
an excellent weapon, but it is not the only one; and though zeal is
indispensable, it is not enough. There are too many intelligent and
conscientious men jostling each other already. To pass them by, the
ambitious man must be more than merely intelligent and conscientious.
He must choose some special talent--any talent provided it be special.
Where merits are equal, the supererogatory decides the contest. For a
man at all well born and well bred, accomplishments of the social order
are the easiest to acquire; besides, these seemingly futile things are
in reality most important. It is the men of the world who get the good
places; while stay-at-home drudges may after ten years still stay at
home and drudge. Accordingly, social accomplishments are what a wise
man will strive to acquire. And, before anything else, let him see that
he plays a good game of cards. All elderly gentlemen like cards; all
chiefs of departments are elderly gentlemen; therefore, all chiefs of
departments like cards. Hence these many and long-drawn-out parties,
where one sits at little green tables until, dear God! those very
tables seem asleep, and the faint heart is all but lying still. And
hence the patience and the stoical courage, with which ambitious men
endure the trial. Though, to the superficial observer, they are only
taking their pleasures laboriously, they take better things than their
pleasure: a chance of preferment. They have heard ballads being sung
and said about the man who stormed the high places with his chair for
a steed and a pack of cards for shield and spear, and utterly defeated
and drove out the garrison of quill-armed men. These things have been.
And once upon a time, there was a Head of Department, who held the
official virtues to be statistics, discipline, and cards: but the
greatest of these was cards. By his play, he judged a man. A woman he
did not judge at all, conceiving her to be a non-card-playing being.
And a woman sitting down to a game, notwithstanding her declared and
organic inability, was to him the abomination of desolation. But let
young civil servants come to him! And happy that young civil servant
who could, and would, and did stand up to him, and even defeat him
utterly, to the greater glory of cards! For this man was a truly great
soul; and he preferred the honour of the game very far indeed to his
own as a player.
Still, as all roads lead to Rome, so a good many lead to preferment.
If one great man loves cards, another is partial to a good dinner, and
most affable over paté de foie gras and a bottle of Burgundy. And a
third--this one, presumably, the proud father of pretty daughters--has
a predilection for dances. So that a man may choose his own path
upwards; and, if he will not play, why, he may dance.
And dance they do in Batavia, with fervour and assiduity. On
east-monsoon nights, when the very crickets judge it too hot for
the exertion of chirping, snatches of Strausz waltzes may be caught
floating out on the heavy air; and luminous shapes be seen twirling
in some brilliantly-lighted front-gallery. Out of every ten persons
you meet, nine are enthusiastic waltzers; and the fieriest fanatic
of them all is sure to be a young civil servant thus "with victory
and with melody" pursuing his upward path to the heights of official
honours. Nothing arrests him in his career. The gallery too narrow for
his evolutions does not exist. One exhausted partner after another he
has led back to her mamma and the restorative champagne-cup, and his
ardour is not a whit abated, though his hair seems to be sprinkled with
diamond-dust, and its cheeks have sunk to the pallor of that wilted
lily, his collar--the last of the posy gathered at home, and thrown
away drooping into a corner of the dressingroom, off the verandah. This
is sublime courage, indeed. As one looks at him, one is reminded of
Indian braves, who, at the first outburst of the war-hoop, put on their
very best paint and shiniest mocassins, and hurry to the gathering of
the chiefs, there to dance the war-dance; not inelegantly, nor without
hidden meaning: each prance and twirl a prophecy of scalp-wreathed
triumphs.
But dancing--like virtue--may be argued to be its own reward. And, as
such, it but partially fits into the system of amusements considered as
a means to preferment. For the triumph of the principle, commend me to
a reception. Each great man's day--for it is his, observe, and not his
wife's--is announced beforehand in the newspapers, or printed, one in a
long list, on a separate slip of paper, which you must stick up in the
corner of your mirror, so that there shall be no pretext for ignorance.
To make assurance doubly sure, you put a pencil mark against the name
and "day" of your own particular great man. On the appointed date, as
the clock strikes seven, you go. From afar you see the blaze of his
front gallery; the drive shines with multitudinous carriage-lamps,
and every now and then, as another vehicle draws up, the master of
the house is seen descending the verandah-steps, to help some lady to
alight from her carriage, with grave courtesy offering her his arm
to conduct her towards the hostess. She rises, extends a welcoming
hand, begs her newly-arrived guest to be seated, and resumes a languid
conversation with the great lady at her right. Unless, indeed, the new
arrival be a greater lady, in which case the former occupant will cede
to her the place of honour, and content herself with the next. Soon,
around the big marble-topped table, the circle is drawn, one-half of it
shining like the rainbowed sky; the other black as innermost darkness;
one semi-circle of women; another of men; as strictly separated as
we are taught that the sheep and goats shall be, on a certain day. I
cannot but think that the men must be conscious of the fact, and its
dire symbolism. For, as often as not, they get up, and stand unhappily
together in the farthest corner of the verandah, and, with cigars and
cigarettes, make little clouds to hide themselves from the children of
the light shining afar off, and drink sherry out of little glasses, in
deep meditation. Until, suddenly, the booming of the eight o'clock gun
breaks the spell. Every watch is taken out of every waistcoat-pocket,
and set aright. Every countenance brightens, and the greatest man of
all--"not Lancelot, nor another," for his life!--catching a look from
his lady, sitting mournful in her place, steps forward, and boldly
claims her for his own again. Then the others follow, the host still
conducting each fair one back to her carriage; and in another moment
the verandah is left desolate, and that reception is a thing of the
past.
Not more than two or three of the guests have interchanged a word with
either host or hostess beyond the conventional phrases of welcome and
good bye; and unless some members of the same coterie have been sitting
together,--Batavia society is as full of coteries as a pine-apple is of
seeds--they have not had much conversation among themselves either. Of
pleasure, there has been nothing, of profit so much as may be derived
from seeing and being seen. It is almost as it was at the Court of
Louis XIV. Acte de présence has been made: and that is all; but, as it
seems, it is enough. This is, indeed, a triumph of the bureaucratie
principle.
In "Java"--as the Batavians call the rest of the island, in curious
contradistinction to the capital--this principle rules with even
greater despotism: it assumes the importance of an article of faith.
Batavia, after all, that "suburb of the Hague," is too much influenced
by the manners and opinions of the Mother Country to be accounted
a colonial town. And, among the colonial ideas it is gradually
discarding, is that one of the extreme importance and supereminence of
office. In Holland, society metes with a different measure. And the
knowledge, perpetually forced on him, that the Honourable of Batavia
must sink into plain Mr. Jansen or Smit of the Hague, is sobering
enough to keep the vanity of even the most arrogant official within
decent limits. Not to mention the fact that, among his fellow-citizens,
there is a large proportion of non-officials, not at all eager to
acknowledge even his temporary superiority. But in "Java," where
communication with the civilized world is much less frequent and much
more difficult, old colonial notions have retained their pristine
vigour. The "Resident" of a little Java station is still very much what
his predecessor, the "Merchant," was in the days of the East-India
Company: a veritable little king. The gilt "payong" held over his
head on official occasions seems a royal canopy, and his gold-laced
uniform-cap a kingly crown in the eyes of his temporary subjects. The
native chiefs revere him as their "elder brother." His own subordinates
naturally look up to him. The planters, who, in their transactions with
the native population--bad keepers of contracts, on the whole--are
dependent upon his decision, need to be, and to continue on good terms
with him. And when it is further taken into consideration that the
social life of the station must be exactly what he chooses to make
it, it will be evident why even absolutely independent persons should
seek to be in his good graces. Thus the man lives in an atmosphere
of adulation. If there be a lack of humour or an abundance of vanity
in his composition, he will take his pseudo-royalty seriously, and
strictly exact homage. But, in the opposite case, and even when he
is averse to it, it will be still pressed upon him. An anecdote
illustrating this was told me, the other day, by an official, himself
the object, or, as he put it, the victim, of this particular kind of
hero-worship.
He was driving at a rapid pace, down a precipitous road, when the horse
stumbled and fell, his light dogcart was upset, and he himself flung
out of the seat. He had barely recovered from the stunning fall, when
he caught sight of his secretary--who had been following in his own
carriage--coming bounding down the steep road like a big india-rubber
ball, rolling over and over in the dust. "Hullo, Jansen! have you been
upset, too?"--"No, Resident," sputters the fat little man, scrambling
to his feet again, "but I thought, the R-Resident l-l-leaps, I leap,
too!"
And here is the pendent:
In the latest cholera-scare, an old lady, the widow of a comptroller,
had been left the sole European resident of her station, all the others
having left for the hills. The Resident, surmising inability to meet
the expenses of travel to be the reason of her staying on, offered
to convey her to a bungalow in the hills, which his own family was
then occupying. The old lady came to thank him for the proposal. But
she could not, she said, accept it. She judged her hour had come;
and she was not afraid of death. Only one favour she would beg from
the Resident. It should be remembered that her husband had been a
comptroller, and that, as his widow, she was in rank superior to all
the European inhabitants of the station, coming second after the
Resident himself. Now her request was this; would the Resident be so
good as to leave written instructions, in case they both should die, to
the effect that her grave should be dug next to his?
One would expect such an excess of bureaucratic etiquette to breed
dullness and constraint unspeakable. And it certainly somewhat galls
the new-comer. But it is all an affair of custom, and, after a while,
these ceremonious manners come to seem as natural and necessary as
the ordinary courtesies of life, and not a whit more detrimental to
the pleasantness of social intercourse. Indeed, one sometimes sees
positions reversed, and Netherland-Indians accusing Hollanders of
stiffness. And it must be owned that the new-comer in Batavia Society,
is struck by a certain grace and easiness of manner that contrasts
forcibly with the somewhat frigid reserve of the typical Hollander: as
forcibly as a seventeenth-century family mansion on the Heerengracht,
solid, imposing, and gloomy as a fortress, contrasts with an airy
Batavia bungalow, where birds build their nests on the capitals of
the columns, and the whiteness of the floor is tinged with slanting
sunbeams and reflections of tall-leaved plants. And, analogous
contrasts meet one at every step. Life here has less dignity than it
has in the mother country; but it has more grace. Of its--real or
seeming--necessaries, not a few are lacking. But what was that saying
about the wisdom of striving for the superfluities, and caring naught
for the necessaries of life? Existence in Netherland-India is based
upon this principle. The superfluous is striven for--the richness and
the romance of things: and everyday-life is the more acceptable for it.
The comparatively poor in the colony fare better than the comparatively
rich at home. They have more leisure, greater comforts, and better
opportunities for amusement. Hence, the prevalence of "mondain" manners.
Hospitality is another characteristic of the average Netherland-Indian.
In the mother country, a man's house is his castle; but in Java it is
the castle of his guest. And his guest is practically, whoever likes,
a relation, a friend, a mere acquaintance, an utter stranger, his name
not so much as heard of before, who comes "to bring the greetings of a
friend"--as the pretty, old fashioned phrase has it: and he will meet
with the most cordial of welcomes. People are not content with simply
receiving a guest: they feast him. And, when hospitality is offered,
it is meant, not for days, but for weeks. To stay for two or three
months at a friend's house is nothing out of the common; and this not
for a single person merely, but for a whole family--parents, servants,
and all. I know I am speaking within the mark: having myself been one
of nine guests, four of whom had been staying for some weeks already
at a hospitable house in Batavia. And in "Java"--where hotels are bad
and railways few and far between, it is by no means rare to find an
even more numerous company foregathered at the house of the Resident,
who thus "does the honours" of an entire district; or at the bungalows
of rich planters, jealously competing with the official for what they
consider the privilege rather than the duty of hospitality. They
exercise it in a truly princely way. A well-known tea-planter, some
time ago, celebrating his silver wedding, commemorated the event by
an entertainment, which lasted for three days, and to which a hundred
and fifty guests were invited. Bamboo huts had been erected for those
who could not be accommodated in the house; barns were converted into
ball-rooms and dining-halls; and the native population of half the
district came and was welcomed to its share of the feast.
This, of course, is a signal instance; but the tendency which it
illustrates is a very general one, so much so, in fact, that it has
influenced domestic architecture, and rendered the pavilion (the
colonial equivalent for our "spare room") as indispensable a part of
the house as the bath-room and the kitchen.--Sometimes indeed the
pavilion is let. But generally it remains dedicated to the uses of
hospitality, and still awaits the "coming and going man," as the Dutch
phrase has it. At its door welcome for ever smiles, and farewell goes
out weeping.
Welcome. Farewell. Here, in Batavia, the short significant words ever
and again fall upon the ear, recurrent in conversations as the deep,
dominant bass-note that sends a repeated vibration through all the
changes and modulations of a melody; far off and distinct, as the
moan of circling seas, heard in the central dells of an island where
the clear-throated thrushes sing. The sensation of the temporary,
the transitory, and the uncertain that thrills the atmosphere of a
sea-port is in the air of this seemingly-quiet inland town. It is a
common saying here, that one should not make plans for more than a
month beforehand. But even a month seems almost too bold a reaching
into futurity, when every day is full of chances and changes, and the
aspect of things alters over-night. A promotion, an attack of fever, a
fluctuation in the sugar or tobacco-market, a letter from Holland--and
friends are separated, homes broken up, and careers changed.
The effects of this living on short notice, if I may so call it, are
perceptible in everything pertaining to colonial customs, ideas, and
society. I entered, the other day, one of those ancient mansions long
ago degraded to offices of "the old city." The armorial bearings of the
patrician, who built it in the beginning of the century, still ornament
the entrance. There are stucco mouldings over the doors that lead into
the great, half-dark chambers. A trace of gold and bright colours
is still discernible on the blinds of the tall lattice windows, the
glass of which shines with the iridescent colours that so many days of
sunshine and of rain have wrought into it; and the great staircase has
an oaken balustrade richly sculptured in the style of the 17th century.
The paint might be gone, the mouldings choked with dust and cobwebs,
the sculptured ornaments of the balustrade defaced; but there was not a
stone loose in those massive old walls nor a plank rotten in the floor.
Yet, it had been abandoned. And so has the conception of life, of which
it was the visible and tangible expression. Much hard-and-fastness of
tradition and convention has been done away with. Where circumstances
change so frequently opinions must likewise change. As a result a
certain liberality of thought has come to be a characteristic of
colonial society. There is something generous and truly humane in the
opinions one hears currently professed, and the courage to act up to
these convictions is not wanting. But on the other hand delicacy,
chivalry, and what one might call the decorum of the heart, are on
the whole sadly wanting. The general tone is somewhat "robustious";
this is perhaps an effect of the climate and soil. On the whole, and
to give a general idea of Batavia society, I fancy one might compare
it to that of some rich provincial town. There is the same eagerness
for precedence, the same intimacy and tattle and neighbourly kindness,
the same high living and plain thinking. But, in the little provincial
town, there is not such freedom from narrowness and prejudice, nor is
there so much hard work done under such unfavourable circumstances, nor
so much home sickness and anxiety and lonely sorrow so bravely borne,
as in Batavia.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
GLIMPSES OF NATIVE LIFE
[Illustration]
[Illustration]