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.
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.
The houses of some rich Chinamen in the Kampong Bahru neighbourhood are truly splendid; the most modest ones still have an air of comfort. According to the ideas of the inhabitants, there are none absolutely squalid. All these houses are, at the same time, shops. They are, in a way, wonderful people, these sons of the Celestial Empire, merchants, in one way or other, all of them. There is, of course, a difference. There is the foot-sore "klontong" trudging trough the weary streets all day, and shaking his rattle as he goes, to advertise the reels of cotton and the cakes of soap in his wallet; and, again, there is the portly millionaire, who entertains army officers and civil servants in his own profusely-decorated mansion; but the difference is one in degree only, not in kind. Amid the pomp and circumstance of the one condition, and the squalor of the other, the individualities are the same, the attitude of mind and the habits of thought identical, the sum and substance of a Chinaman's life in Java being expressed in "the making of bargains." He could as soon leave off breathing as leave off buying and selling; trading seems to be his natural function. And this, one fancies, is the great difference between his race and ours; and the true secret of their superiority as money-makers. A Caucasian, if he is a merchant, is so with a certain part of his being only—during certain hours of the day, in his own office. A Chinaman is a merchant with his whole heart, his whole soul, and his whole understanding, a merchant always and everywhere, from his cradle to his grave, at table, at play, over his opium-pipe, in his temple. Trade is the element in which he lives, moves, and has his being. His thoughts might be noted in figures. The world is to him one vast opportunity for making money, and all things in it are articles of trade; which, in Chinese, means gain to him, and loss to everybody else. He has few wants, infinite resources, and the faith (in himself) that removeth trading towns. Small wonder if he succeeds.
I fancy it would be quite a practical education in the principles of business, to watch the career of one of these Chinamen, from the hour of his arrival at Tanjong Priok onward. At first, you see him trudging along with a wallet, containing soap, sewing cotton, combs, and matches. After a few months, you find him in your compound surrounded by the whole of your domestic staff, to whom he is selling sarong cloth and thin silks. When a year has gone by, a coolie trudges at his heels panting under a load of wares, the samples of which he subjects to your approval with the most correct of bows. Have but patience, and you will find him in a diminutive shop, where somehow he finds place for a settee in the corner, a mirror on the wall, and all around such a collection of articles as might fitly be termed an epitome of material civilization. Nor does he stop in that tiny shop. A few years later, he will be taking his ease behind the counter of a spick-and-span establishment in the camp; and, if, by chance, you get a glimpse of his wife, you will be astonished at the size of the diamonds in her shiny coil of hair. Our friend is on the high road to prosperity now, which leads to a big house separate from the shop. Before he is fairly fifty, he has built it, high and spacious, with an altar to the gods and to the spirits of his ancestors set in the midst of it, and a profusion of fine carving and gilding, of embroidered hangings and lacquered woodwork all around. He will invite you for the New Year's festivities now, and, if your wife accompanies you, introduce you to his spouse, resplendent as the rainbow in many-tinted brocades, and more thickly covered with diamonds than the untrodden meadow with the dews of a midsummer night. He talks about the funeral of his honoured father, which cost him upward of three thousand pounds sterling; and he will ask your advice, over the pine-apples and the champagne, about sending his son to Europe in one of his own ships, that the youth may see something of the world, and, if he so list, be entered as a student at the famous university of Leijden.
A COLONIAL HOME
"It is the North which has introduced tight-fitting clothes and high houses." Thus Taine, as, in the streets of Pompeii, he gazed at nobly-planned peristyle and graceful arch, at godlike figures shining from frescoed walls, and, with the vision of that fair, free, large life of antiquity, contrasted the Paris apartment from which he was but newly escaped, and the dress-coat which he had worn at the last social function. And a similar reflection crosses the Northerner's mind when he looks upon a house in Batavia.
I am aware that Pompeii and Batavia, pronounced in one breath, make a shrieking discord, and that, between a homely white-washed bungalow, and those radiant mansions which the ancients built of white marble and blue sky, the comparison must seem preposterous. And, yet, no one can see the two, and fail to make it. The resemblance is too striking. The flat roof, the pillared entrance, the gleam of the marble-paved hall, whose central arch opens on the reposeful shadow of the inner chambers, all these features of a classic dwelling are recognized in a Batavia house. Evidently, too, this resemblance is not the result of mere mechanical imitation. There are a consistency and thoroughness in the architecture of these houses, a harmony with the surrounding landscape, which stamp it as an indigenous growth, the necessary result of the climate, and the mode of life in Java, just as classic architecture was the necessary result of the climate and the mode of life in Greece and Italy. If the two styles are similar, it is because the ideas which inspired them are not so vastly different. After all, in a sunny country, whether it be Europe or Asia, the great affair of physical life is to keep cool, and the main idea of the architect, in consequence, will be to provide that coolness. It is this which constitutes a resemblance between countries in all other respects so utterly unlike as Greece and Java, and the difference between these and Northern Europe. In the North, the human habitation is a fortress against the cold; in the South and the East, it is a shelter from the heat.
There is no need here of thick walls, solid doors, casements of impermeable material, all the barricades which the Northerner throws up against the besieging elements. In Italy, as in Greece, Nature is not inimical. The powers of sun, wind, and rain are gracious to living things, and under their benign rule man lives as simply and confidingly as his lesser brethren, the beasts of the fields and forests and the birds of the air. He has no more need than they to hedge in his individual existence from the vast life that encompasses it. His clothes, when he wears them, are an ornament rather than a protection, and his house a place, not of refuge, but of enjoyment, a cool and shadow spot, as open to the breeze as the forest, whose flat spreading branches, supported on stalwart stems, seem to have been the model for its column-borne roof.
The Batavia house, then, is built on the classic plan. Its entrance is formed by a spacious loggia, raised a few steps above the level ground, and supported on columns. Thence, a door, which stands open all day long, leads into a smaller inner hall, on either side of which are bedrooms, and behind this is another loggia—even more spacious than the one forming the entrance of the house—where meals are taken and the hot hours of the day are spent. Generally, a verandah runs around the whole building, to beat off both the fierce sunshine of the hot, and the cataracts of rain of the wet, season. Behind the house is a garden, enclosed on three sides by the buildings containing the servants' quarters, the kitchen and store rooms, the bath-rooms, and stables. And, at some distance from the main building and connected with it by a portico, stands a pavilion, for the accommodation of guests;—for the average Netherland-Indian is the most hospitable of mortals, and seldom without visitors, whether relatives, friends, or even utter strangers, who have come with an introduction from a common acquaintance in Holland.
It takes some time, I find, to get quite accustomed to this arrangement of a house. In the beginning of my stay here, I had an impression of always being out of doors and of dining in the public street, especially at night, when in the midst of a blaze of light one felt oneself an object of attention and criticism to every chance passer-by in the darkness without. It was as bad as at the ceremonious meals of the Kings of France, who had their table laid out in public, that their faithful subjects might behold them at the banquet, and, one supposes, satisfy their own hunger by the Sovereign's vicarious dining.
In time, however, as the strangeness of the situation wears off, one realises the advantage of these spacious galleries to walled-in rooms, and very gladly sacrifices the sentiment of privacy to the sensation of coolness.
For to be cool, or not to be cool, that is the great question, and all things are arranged with a view to solving it in the most satisfactory manner possible. For the sake of coolness, one has marble floors or Javanese matting instead of carpets, cane-bottomed chairs and settees in lieu of velvet-covered furniture, gauze hangings for draperies of silks and brocade. The inner hall of almost every house, it is true, is furnished in European style—exiles love to surround themselves with remembrances of their far-away home. But, though very pretty, this room is generally empty of inhabitants, except, perhaps, for an hour now and then, during the rainy season. For, in this climate, to sit in a velvet chair is to realize the sensations of Saint Laurence, without the sustaining consciousness of martyrdom.—For the sake of coolness again, one gets up at half-past five, or six, at the very latest, keeps indoors till sunset, sleeps away the hot hours of the afternoon on a bed which it requires experience and a delicate sense of touch to distinguish from a deal board, and spends the better part of one's waking existence in the bath room.
Now, a bath in Java is a very different thing from the dabbling among dishes in a bedroom, which Europeans call by that name, even if their dishes attain the dimensions of a tub. Ablutions such as these are performed as a matter of duty; a man gets into his tub as he gets into his clothes, because to omit doing so would be indecent. But bathing in the tropics is a pure delight, a luxury for body and soul—a dip into the Fountaine de Jouvence, almost the "cheerful solemnity and semi-pagan act of worship," which the donkey-driving Traveller through the Cevennes performed in the clear Tarn. A special place is set apart for it, a spacious, cool, airy room in the outbuildings, a "chamber deaf to noise, and all but blind to light." Through the gratings over the door, a glimpse of sky and waving branches is caught. The marble floor and whitewashed walls breathe freshness, the water in the stone reservoir is limpid and cold as that of a pool that gleams in rocky hollows. And, as the bather dips in his bucket, and send the frigid stream pouring over him, he washes away, not heat and dust alone, but weariness and vexatious thought in a purification of both body and soul, and he understands why all Eastern creeds have exalted the bath into a religious observance.
Like the often-repeated bath, the rice table is a Javanese institution, and its apologists claim equal honours for it as an antidote to climatic influences. I confess I do not hold so high an opinion of its virtues, but I have fallen a victim to its charms. I love it but too well. And there lies the danger, everybody likes it far too much, and, especially, likes far too much of it. It is, humanly speaking, impossible to partake of the rice table, and not to grossly overeat oneself. There is something insidious about its composition, a cunning arrangement of its countless details into a whole so perfectly harmonious that it seems impossible to leave out a single one. If you have partaken of one dish, you must partake of the rest, unless you would spoil all. Fowl calls to fowl, and fish answers fish, and all the green things that are on the table, aye, and the red and the yellow likewise, have their appointed places upon your plate. You may try to escape consequences by taking infinitesimal pinches of each, but many a mickle makes a muckle, and your added teaspoonfuls soon swell to a heaped-up plate, such as well might stagger the stoutest appetite. Yet, even before you have recovered from your surprise, you find you have finished it all. I do not pretend to explain, I merely state the fact.
Records have survived of those Pantagruelic feasts with which the great ones of the mediæval world delighted to celebrate the auspicious events of their lives, and the chronicler never fails to sum up the almost interminable list of the spices and essences with which the cook, on the advice of learned physicians, seasoned the viands, in order that, whilst the grosser meats satisfied the animal cravings of the stomach, those ethereal aromatics might stimulate the finer fluids, whose ebb and flow controls the soul, and the well-flavoured dishes might not only be hot on men's tongues but eke "prick them in their courages." They pricked to some purpose, it seems. And, if the spice-sated Netherlands-Indian is a comparatively law-abiding man, it must be because battening rice counteracts maddening curry. But for this providential arrangement, I fully believe he would think no more of battle, murder, and sudden death than of an indigestion, and consider a good dinner as an ample explanation of both.
Now, as to what they clothe themselves withal. Taine's opinion concerning tight fitting clothes has been mentioned—viz: that they are an invention of the North. A fortnight in Batavia will explain and prove the theory better than many books by many philosophers; and, moreover, cause the most sartorially-minded individual to consign the "invention" to a place hotter than even Java. Like the habitations, the habits of European civilization are irksome in the tropics; and, for indoor-wear at least, they have suffered a sun-change into something cool and strange—into native costume modified in fact. Now, the outward apparel of the Javanese consists of a long straight narrow skirt "the sarong" with a loose fitting kind of jacket over it,—short for the men, who call it "badjoo," and longer for the women who wear it as "kabaya": which garments have been adopted by the Hollanders, with the one modification of the sarong into a "divided skirt" for the men, and the substitution of white batiste and embroidery for the coloured stuffs of which native women make their kabayas, in the case of the ladies. On the Javanese, a small, spare, slightly-made race, the garb sits not ungracefully; narrow and straight as it is, it goes well with contours so attenuated. But on the sturdier Hollander the effect is something appalling. An adequate description of the men's appearance in it would read like a caricature; and though, with the help of harmonious colours and jewellery, the women look better when thus attired, the dress is not becoming to them either, at least in non-colonial eyes. The æsthetic sense shies and kicks out at the sight of those straight, hard, unnatural lines. Modern male costume has been held up to ridicule as a "system of cylinders". The sarong and kabaya combine to form one single cylinder, which obliterates all the natural lines and curves of the feminine form divine, and changes a woman into a parti-coloured pillar, for an analogy to which one's thoughts revert to Lot's wife. But, though utterly condemned from an artistic point of view, from a practical one it must be acquitted, and even commended. In a country where the temperature ranges between 85° and 95° Fahrenheit in the shade, cool clothes which can be changed several times a day, are a condition not merely of comfort, but of absolute cleanliness and decency, not to mention hygiene. For it is a noteworthy fact that the women, who wear colonial dress up to six in the evening, stand the climate better than the men, who, in the course of things, wear it during an hour or an hour and a half at most, in the day. And it must be admitted that both men and women enjoy better health in Java, under this colonial regime of dressing than in the British possessions, where they cling to the fashions of Europe.
As for the children, they are clad even more lightly than their elders, in what the Malay calls "monkey-trousers", chelana monjet, a single garment, which, only just covering the body, leaves the neck, arms, and legs bare. It is hideous, and they love it. In German picture-books one sees babes similarly accoutred riding on the stork, that brings them to their expectant parents. Perhaps, after all, monkey-trousers are the paradisiacal garment of babes; and it is a Wordsworthian recollection of this fact, that makes them cling to the costume so tenaciously.
One cannot speak of an "Indian" child, and forget the "babu," the native nurse, who is its ministering spirit, its dusky guardian angel, almost its Providence. All day long, she carries her little charge in her long "slendang," the wide scarf, which deftly slung about her shoulders, makes a sort of a hammock for the baby. She does not like even the mother to take it away from her; feeds it, bathes it, dresses it prettily, takes it out for a walk, ready, at the least sign, to lift it up again into its safe nest close to her heart. She plays with it, not as a matter of duty, but as a matter of pleasure, throwing herself into the game with enjoyment and zest, like the child she is at heart; so that the two may be seen quarrelling sometimes, the baby stamping its feet and the babu protesting with the native cluck of indignant remonstrance, and an angry "Terlalu!" "it is too bad!" And, at night, when she has crooned the little one to sleep, with one of those plaintive monotonous melodies in a minor key, which seem to go on for ever, like a rustling of reeds and forest leaves whilst the crickets are trilling their evensong, she spreads her piece of matting on the floor, and lies down in front of the little bed, like a faithful dog guarding its master's slumbers.
As for the other servants, their name is Legion. A colonial household requires a very numerous domestic staff. Even families with modest incomes employ six or seven servants, and ten is by no means an exceptional number. The reason for this apparent extravagance is, that, though the Javanese is not lazy—as he often and unjustly is accused of being—yet he is so slow, that the result practically is the same, and one needs two or even three native servants, for work which one Caucasian would despatch in the same time.
All these have their own quarters in the "compound" and their own families in those quarters; they go "into the house" as a man would go to his office; coming home for meals, and entertaining their friends in the evening, on their own square of matting, and with their own saffron-tinted rice, and syrup-sweetened coffee.
Such then, is the setting of every-day existence in Java.
As for the central fact, it is less interesting than its circumstances, in so far as it is more familiar. The three or four great conceptions which determine the home-life of a people—its ideas social, ethical, and religious concerning the relations between parent and child, and between men and women—are too deeply ingrained into its mental substance to be affected by any merely outward circumstances. Therefore, home-life among the Hollanders in Java, is essentially the same as among Hollanders in their own country. Still there is difference, that it has more physical comfort, and less intellectual interest. The climate, it seems to me, is in a high degree responsible for both these facts.
A continual temperature of about 90 degrees is not favourable to the growth of the finer faculties, in Northerner's brains at least. The little band of eminent men who have gone up from Java to shine in Dutch Universities must be regarded as a signal exception to a very general rule. Besides, the heat is so grave an addition to the already heavy burden of the day, that one requires all one's energies, both of body and soul, to conscientiously discharge one's ordinary duties; and there is no surplus left to devote to literary, artistic, or scientific pursuits. There are no theatres, no operas, no concerts, no lectures, no really good newspapers, even, in Java. There could not be, where there is so little active public life. So that a man's one relaxation after a hard day's work—unless he looks at dances and dinners in that light—must be found in his own house.
One continually hears the phrase in the East, "our house is our life." Naturally, therefore, the house is made as pleasant as possible, and as comfortable, not to say luxurious. Incomes are proportionately very much higher in Java than in Holland—without financial advantage as an incentive nobody would accept life under tropical conditions—and the better part of the money is spent on good living in the majority of cases. Even families of comparatively moderate means have a roomy house, a sufficient domestic staff, and keep a carriage and a good table.
And as to the heat, which assuredly is a discomfort, and no trifling one, the accepted mode of life does much to palliate it, not only by the regime of housing, feeding, and dressing, but almost as much by the way the day is divided. Work is begun early, so as to get as much as possible done in the cool hours; between nine and five everybody keeps indoors; and those who can snatch an hour of leisure after the one o'clock rice-table, spend it in a siesta. Only in the early morning, and in the evening does one see Europeans about. Not even the greatest enthusiast for cricket and tennis dare begin games earlier than half-past four.
Formerly this was different.
On old engravings, one may see the tall sombre houses which the first colonists built on those "grachts" now long since demolished. One may mark them walking home from a three hours' sermon in broadcloth mantles, and velvet robes, giving solemn entertainments in their trim gardens along the canal, with the sun in noon-day glory over-head, and generally ignoring the trifling differences between Amsterdam and Batavia. They fought very valiantly for their ancestral customs; but very few returned to tell of the fight.
Since, people have reflected that a live Netherland-Indian is better then a dead Hollander. And, giving up a fight, in which defeat was all but certain, and success worse than useless, they have effected a compromise with the climate. In Java they do as Java does, from sunrise to sunset. But, with the congenial cool of the evening, they resume their national existence, the garb, the manners and the customs of Holland. At seven there is a general "va et vient" of open carriages bearing women in light dresses, and men in correct black-and-white to a "reception" in some brilliantly-lighted house; and for a few hours, the life of Home is lived again.
Outside is the black tropical night, heavy with the scent of invisible blossoms, pricked here and there by the yellow spark of some trudging fruitvendor's oilwick. The small fragment of Europe with that tall-colonnaded marble-paved loggia, with its gliding figures of men and women, is, stands an Island of Light among the waveless seas of darkness.
SOCIAL LIFE
The social life of Batavia has a physiognomy of its own; curious enough in some of its features. But it is not this which strikes the new-comer most forcibly. In certain Byzantine mosaics, the figure represented is entirely eclipsed by the magnificence of the background: the eye must grow accustomed to the splendour of the gold and precious stones surrounding it, before it can take in the lines of the face. In a similar manner, no surmise can be formed as to the character of Batavia social life before the charm has, at least in part, passed off, which its setting casts over the critical faculties. It moves in romance; it is surrounded by beauty; its conditions and circumstances are in themselves a source of delight. It would seem almost enough for a feast, in the cool of the evening, to sit under the verandah, marking on the gleaming marble floor half-reflections as in tranquil waters under a tranquil sky seen from afar; and the rich strange green, relieved against blackness, of the plants on the steps outside, their every leaf and shoot shone upon by the lamplight, standing out sparkling against the ebon wall of night. From without, there comes the chirping of crickets, and the deepbreathed fragrance of flowers—tuberose, gardenia and datura, nocturnal blossoms. Framed between pillars and architrave, great rectangles of sky are seen, interstellar azure, and the countless scintillation of stars. Environings such as these shed a grace and dignity even over the actions of daily life. When the scene is in itself fair, it is transfigured into what seems the vision of a poet.
Shortly after my arrival, I was invited to a ball at the palace. I was 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.