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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. And 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
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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 come the chirping of crickets, and the deep-breathed fragrance of flowers - tuberose, gardenia, and datura, nocturnal blossoms. Framed between pillars and architraves, 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
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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 hill-tops, and cascades of massive foliage, making a blackness against skies all limpid with diffused starlight. Between the vaguely-discerned stems, little lights 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?’ That was the only sound I heard all the time. Silence and darkness all around, and overhead the sinuous course
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of the sky, like a pale river between shores of blackness flowing between the dense summits of the waringin-trees. 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 cirele 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- | |
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lamps seemed all to have been scattered from that central glow. As we drew nearer, its cloud-like 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
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wide awake up to quite nine o'clock, I saw it as plain as could be, growing up around the lamp, with the ground-glass 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
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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 gold-lace 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, 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 yearning. 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 charac- | |
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ter 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 had 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
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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 talent 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 the 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 department are elderly gentlemen: therefore, all chiefs of departments like cards. Hence these many and long drawn out parties, where I sat at little green tables until, dear God! those very
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tables seemed asleep, and my faint heart was all but standing still.
But I played on. For my three partners did; and they had excellent reasons for so playing on. Though, to the superficial observer, they were taking their pleasures laboriously, they took better things than their pleasure: a chance of preferment. They had 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 a 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 her sitting down to a game, notwithstanding her declared and organic inability, was to him the
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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 is most affable over pâté 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 practice of chirping, snatches of Strausz waltzes
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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 that ninth one, 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. The hours strike in vain on his deaf ears. 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 his 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 dressing-room, off the verandah. This is sublime
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courage, indeed. As one looks at him, one is reminded of Indian braves, who, at the first outburst of the war-whoops, put on their very best paint, and their shiniest mocassins, and hurry to the gathering of the chiefs, there to dance the war-dance: not inelegantly or without hidden meaning: each prance and twirl, a prophesy 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 systems of amusement considered as a means to preferment. For the triumphs 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
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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:
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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 far off, and drink sherry out of little glasses, and 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 frightens, and the greatest man of all - not Lancelot, or any lesser man, 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
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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 these 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 bureaucratic 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
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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 thus gradually discarding, is that one of the extreme importance and super-eminence 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. Whilst 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
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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 of 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 com- | |
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position, he will take his pseudo-royalty seriously, and strictly exact homage. But, in the opposite case, and when he is even 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 one of the precipitous Preanger roads, when the horse stumbled and fell, his light dog-cart was upset, and he himself flung out of seat. He had barely recovered from this stunning fall, when he caught sight of the 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:
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In the Intest cholera-scare, an old lady, widow of a comptroller, had been left the sole European resident of her station, all the others having left it for the hills. The Resident, surmising inability to meet the expenses of travel to be the reason of her staying on, offered to convey here 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 this?
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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 Netherlands-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 sixteenth-century family mansion on the Heerengracht, solid, imposing, and gloomy as a fortress, contrasts with an airy Batavin bungalow, where birds build their nests on the capitals of the columns, and the whiteness of the floor is tinged with slanting
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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: superfluities, however, abound. And what was that saying about the wisdom of striving for the superfluities and caring naught for the necessaries of life? Existence in Netherlands-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 Netherlands-Indian. In the mother country, a man's house is his castle: but in Java it is the castle
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of his guest. And his guest is, practically, whoever likes to be one. 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, children, servants, and all. I know I am speaking within the mark: having myself been one of nine guests; and, of these, four had been staying for some weeks already at a hospitable house in Batavia. And in Java - as Batavians call the interior in contradistinction to the capital of the island - where hotels are bad and railways few and far between, it is by no means rare
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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
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the ‘pavilion’ as indispensable a part of the house as the bath-room and the kitchen. A ‘pavilion’ is a small building of two or three rooms, surrounded by a verandah, contiguous to the servants' quarters, and communicating by a covered walk with the house. Thus, though within his host's gates, the guest lives, so to say, in his own tent; coming and going as he pleases, and enjoying the society of his friends or a solitude which nobody will think of disturbing, as the mood prompts him. Sometimes the pavilion is let. But generally it remains dedicated to uses of hospitality, and still awaits the ‘coming and going man,’ as the Dutch phrase has it. And 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
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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
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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 on it; and the great staircase has an oaken balustrade richly sculptured in the style of the later Renaissance. This was a house for a prosperous merchant to live and die in, and to leave as a goodly inheritance to sons who would live there in their turn. 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 thick old walls, nor a plank rotten in the floor. Yet, it had been
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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 and rapidly, it could not but be that points of view and opinions must likewise change. As a result, 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. Delicacy, chivalry, what one might call the decorum of the heart, sometimes are wanting. The general tone is somewhat ‘robustious’; this is perhaps an effect of the climate and soil, allegorically speaking. One hears many and strange things justified or at least excused on that score. 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.
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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 of that hard work done under such unfavourable circumstances nor so much of that home sickness and anxiety and lonely sorrow so bravely borne as in Batavia.
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