Max Havelaar (Nahuijs)/Chapter 9

by Multatuli

Layout 2

Chapter IX.

[Continuation of Stern’s composition.]

Reader, I would give anything to know exactly how long I could let a heroine float in the air, while I described a castle, without exhausting your patience, and causing you to look wearily aside, before the poor creature reached the earth? If my tale demanded such a caper, I should prudently choose a first storey for my point de départ, and a castle of which but little could be said. Once for all, however, I will make you easy on that head:—Havelaar’s house had no storeys at all, and the heroine of my book,—the lovely, faithful, ansprüchlose Tine, a heroine!—never jumped out of the window.

When I ended the foregoing chapter, with a reference to some variation in the next, it was rather a rhetorical artifice, and to make a good ending, than because I meant that the next chapter should only be valuable as a change. A writer is vain as a——man. Slander his mother, or ridicule the colour of his hair, say that he has an Amsterdam accent, such as no Amsterdammer ever had,—perhaps he will forgive you these things; but never say anything against him as an author——for this he will not forgive. If you don’t think my book a good one, and you happen to meet me, just act as if we were strangers to each other.

No, even such a chapter “for a change” appears to me, through the magnifying-glass of my vanity as an author, to be most important and indispensable; and if you do not read it, and afterwards feel disappointed with my book, I shall not hesitate to tell you that your not reading it was the cause of your inability to appreciate my book, for the chapter you omitted was just the most essential of all——I therefore—for I am a man and an author—should hold every chapter to be essential which you had passed over with unpardonable readerlike levity. I imagine that your wife asks, “What do you think of that book?” And you say, for instance—[horribile auditu to me]—with the pomp of diction peculiar to married men—

“Humph! so-so.—I don’t know yet.”

Well then, barbarian! read on; what is most important is about to commence. And with trembling lips I look at you, and measure the thickness of the turned leaves——and I look on your face for the reflection of that chapter “that is so important,”——“No,” I say, “he has not yet jumped up——embraced somebody in ecstasy——his wife perhaps——” But you read on. It appears to me that he has already had “the important chapter”——you have not jumped up at all, and have embraced nothing——

And fewer and fewer grow the leaves under your right thumb, and my hope for that embrace becomes fainter and fainter:

“Yes, truly, I reckoned on a tear!”

And you have finished the novel to “where they have met each other,” and you say, yawning—[“that is another expression of true eloquence”]—

“Not much——it is such a book as is often written now-a-days!”

But don’t you know, monster, tiger, European reader! don’t you know that you spent an hour in biting my soul as a tooth-pick; in gnawing and chewing the flesh and bone of your species? Man-eater! my soul was in that which you have ruminated on as once eaten grass. That was my heart that you swallowed there as a dainty bit, for I put my heart and my soul into that book: and so many tears fell on that manuscript, and my blood went back from the veins to the heart, as I wrote on, and I gave you all this; and you bought this for a few pence—and you say “Humph!”

The reader understands that I do not speak here about my book.

So that I will only say, that I quote the words of Abraham Blankaart^[1]——

---

“Who is that Abraham Blankaart?” asked Louise Rosemeyer, and Fred told her, which gave me much pleasure; for this gave me an opportunity to get up and make an end of the reading—for this evening at least. You know that I am a coffee-broker—[No. 37 Laurier Canal]—and that I live for my profession; you will therefore be able to judge how little pleased I was with the work of Stern. I had hoped it would be about coffee, and he gave us——yes, Heaven knows what! He has already had our attention during three parties, and, what is worse, the Rosemeyers like it, I make a remark, he appeals to Louise. Her approbation, he says, is dearer to him than all the coffee in the world, and moreover, when my heart burns, etc.—[look at that tirade, page so-and-so, or rather don’t look for it at all.] There I am, and don’t know what to do! That parcel of Shawlman’s is a true Trojan horse; even Fred is corrupted by it. He helped Stern, as I perceive, for “Abraham Blankaart” is too Dutch for a German. Both are so very self-sufficient that I am truly perplexed with the matter. Worse still, I made an agreement with Gaafzuiger for the publishing of a book about the Coffee-Auctions. All Holland is waiting for it, and there Stern goes quite another way. Yesterday he said: “Be at your ease; different roads lead to Rome: wait for the end of the introduction”—[is all this only “introduction?”]— “I promise you that all will come down to coffee—coffee, coffee, and nothing but coffee.” “Think of Horace,” he continued; “has he not said, ‘Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit’——Coffee with something else? And do you not act in the same way, when you put sugar and milk in your cup?” And then I am forced to be silent; not because he is right, but because I and the firm Last and Co., have to take care that old Mr. Stern does not fall into the hands of Busselinck and Waterman, who would serve him very badly, because they are bunglers.

With your permission, reader! I give vent to my feelings, and in order that you, after reading what Stern has written—[have you really read it?]—should not pour out your wrath on an innocent head,—for what man will employ a broker who scolds him for a man-eater?—I take it for granted that you are convinced of my innocence. I cannot exclude young Stern from a share in my book, now that matters have gone so far. Louise Rosemeyer when she comes out of church—[the boys appear to wait for her]—asks if he will come early in the evening to read a good deal about Max Havelaar and Tine.

But as you bought or borrowed the book trusting in the respectable title, which promises something worth reading, I acknowledge your claims to something that is worth your money, and, therefore, I once more write a couple of chapters. You, reader, do not go to the parties of the Rosemeyers; and therefore you are more fortunate than I am, who have to hear all! You are at liberty to pass over the chapters that have a flavour of German excitement, and to read only what has been written by me, who am a respectable man and a coffee-broker.

With surprise I learnt from Stern’s scribbling and Shawlman’s parcel the fact that no coffee is planted in the district of Lebak. That is a great mistake, and I shall consider my pains largely rewarded, if the Government, through my book perceives this fault.

From Shawlman’s papers it would appear that the soil in these regions is not fit for coffee-culture; but that is no excuse; and I maintain that it is an unpardonable neglect of the interests of Holland generally, and of the coffee-brokers in particular; yes, of the Javanese, neither to make the round fit for coffee—[the Javanese have nothing else to do]—or, if they think this impossible, to send the men who live there to other places where the ground is good for coffee.

I never say anything that I have not well considered, and I dare affirm that I here speak with a knowledge of business, because I have maturely considered this matter more than once since I heard Dominé^[2] Wawelaar’s sermon on the Fast-day^[3] for the Conversion of the Heathen.

That was on Wednesday evening. You must know that I punctually fulfil my obligations as a father, and that I take the moral education of my children very much to heart. As Fred has during the last few days assumed something in tone and manner which displeases me—[that confounded parcel is the cause of it all]—I have given him a good lecture, and said, “Fred, I am not satisfied with you: I always set you a good example, and you forsake the right path; you are conceited and troublesome; you make verses, and you have kissed Betsy Rosemeyer. The fear of the Lord is the source of all wisdom: therefore you must not kiss the Rosemeyers, and you must not be so conceited. Immorality leads to destruction: read the Scriptures, and mark that Shawlman. He left the ways of the Lord: now he is poor, and dwells in a little garret; that is the consequence of immorality and bad conduct; he wrote improper articles in the Indépendance and let the ‘Aglaja’ fall: such are the consequences of being wise in one’s own eyes. He does not now know what o’clock it is, and his little boy wears knee-breeches. Think that your body is a temple of God, and that your father has always had to work very hard for his bread—[it is the truth]. Raise your eyes upwards, and endeavour to become a respectable broker when I go to Driebergen.^[4] And consider all those men, who will not listen to good counsel, who trample upon religion and morality, and see yourself in these men. Do not think yourself equal to Stern, whose father is so rich, and who will always have money enough, even if he does not like to become a broker. Only think that wickedness is always punished: look again at that Shawlman, who has no winter overcoat, and who looks like a clown. Pay attention when you are at church, and you must not fidget so much on your bench, as if you were annoyed; and do not wait for girls when the service is over, for that destroys all chance of edification. Do not make Mary laugh when I am reading the Bible at breakfast; all this should not be in a respectable household.

“You have also drawn caricatures on Bastianus’ desk when he was not at the office on account of the gout, which continually plagues him,—this keeps them in the office away from their work; and you may read in the Word of God that such follies end in ruin. This Shawlman did the same when he was young: when a child he beat a Greek on the Wester Market; now he is idle, conceited, and sickly. Do not always make fun with Stern; his father is rich; and do as if you did not see it, when he makes wry faces to the bookkeeper, and when he is busy with verses outside the office. Tell him that he had better write to his father that he likes our Company very much, and that he is so contented here, and that Mary has embroidered slippers for him. Ask him, if he thinks that his father will go to Busselinck and Waterman, and tell him that they are low fellows. Do you see that you will in this way bring him into the right path? you owe this to your fellow-creatures, and all that verse-making is nonsense. Be just and obedient, Fred, and do not pull the maid-servant’s dress when she brings tea into the office; and do not make me ashamed that she spills it; and St. Paul says, that a son must never vex his father. These twenty years I have frequented the Exchange, and I may say, that I am esteemed there at my stall. Therefore listen to my exhortations, Fred; fetch your hat, put on your coat, and go with me to the prayer-meeting: that will do you all the good in the world.”

So I have spoken, and I am convinced that I made some impression, above all because Dominé Wawelaar had for his subject:—The love of God evident in His wrath against unbelievers.—(Samuel’s reproof of Saul: 1 Sam. xv. 33.)

I continually thought, while listening to his sermon, how great is the difference between human wisdom and divine. I have already told you, that in Shawlman’s parcel, there is, amongst much rubbish, a great deal of what appeared to be sound common sense; but of how little significance is this; when compared with such language as that of Parson Wawelaar. And not from his own strength,—for I know Wawelaar, and consider him to be a man of middling capacity—his eloquence is given him by the power that cones from above. This difference was still more obvious, because he hinted at many things, about which Shawlman himself had written; for you have seen, that in his parcel, he speaks much about Javanese and other Pagans—[Fred says that the Javanese are no Pagans; but I call every one who has a wrong faith a Pagan]. From the Dominé’s sermon I got my idea of the unlawful revocation of the coffee-culture at Lebak, about which I shall say more by and by; and because, being an honest man, I am not willing that the reader should receive nothing for his money, I will here communicate some extracts from the sermon, which I consider particularly touching. He had proved in a few words from the above-named text the love of God, and very soon went on to the point in question, viz., the conversion of Javanese, Malay, and other Pagan races, whatever may be their names.

“Such, my beloved! was the vocation of Israel”—[he meant the destruction of the inhabitants of Canaan]—“and such is the vocation of Holland! No, it shall not be said that the light which beams upon us has been put aside under a bushel, nor that we grudgingly communicate the bread of life. Glance at the islands of the Indian Ocean, inhabited by millions and millions of children of the accursed son—and of the rightly accursed son—of the noble, God-serving Noah. There they creep in the disgusting snake-holes of Pagan ignorance, there they bow the black woolly head under the yoke of selfish priests. There they worship God, invoking a false prophet that is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord; and, beloved! as if it were not enough to obey a false prophet, there are even those among them who worship another God, or rather other gods; yes, gods of wood and stone, which they themselves have made in their own image—black, abominable, with flat noses, and devilish. Yes, beloved! tears almost arrest me; for deeper still is the depravity of the race of Ham. There are amongst them, that know no God under any name whatever; who think it sufficient to obey the laws of society; who consider a harvest-song, wherein they express their joy on the success of their labour, as a sufficient thanksgiving to the Supreme Being who made the harvest ripen.

“There are ignorant men, my beloved, who think that it is sufficient to love wife and child, and not to take from their fellow-beings what does not belong to them, and that they may then calmly lay down their heads and sleep! Do you not shiver with horror at this picture? does not your heart shrink when you think of what will be the fate of all those fools as soon as the trumpet shall sound which will summon the dead and separate the faithful from the unfaithful? Do you not hear? Yes, you do hear; for from the text you have perceived that your God is a mighty God, and a God who will inflict vengeance—yes, you hear the breaking bones, and the crackling of the flames in the eternal Gehenna, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth: there, there they burn and perish not, for the punishment is eternal:—there the flame licks with a never-satisfied tongue the screaming victims of unbelief:—there the worm dies not that gnaws their hearts through and through without destroying them, that there may always remain a heart to gnaw in the breast of the God-forsaken. Look how they strip off the black skin of that unbaptized child, that, scarcely born, was slung away from the breast of its mother into the abyss of eternal damnation——”^[5]

[Now, at this moment a woman fainted away.]

“But, beloved,” continued Dominé W., “God is a God of love. It is not His will that the sinner should perish, but that he should be saved by His mercy in Christ, through faith! And therefore Holland has been selected to save as many as can be saved of these miserable creatures. Therefore He has given power to a country small in extent, but great and strong by the knowledge of God,—power over the inhabitants of those regions, that they may be saved from the torments of hell by the holy, never sufficiently to be praised Gospel. The ships of Holland navigate the great waters, and bring civilisation, religion, Christianity, to the erring Javanese. No, our happy Holland does not desire salvation for itself alone;—we wish to communicate it to the unfortunate creatures on far-off strands, that there lie bound in the fetters of unbelief, superstition, and immorality,—and the contemplation of the duties that rest on us shall be the seventh head of my sermon.” For what preceded was the sixth.

Amongst the obligations which we have to fulfil respecting these poor Pagans were named—

1. “The giving of large sums in money to the Missionary Societies.
2. “The support of the Bible Societies, in order that they may be able to distribute Bibles in Java.
3. “The erection of ‘places for religious purposes at Harderwijk’ for the use of the colonial recruiting depôt.
4. “The writing of sermons and religious songs proper to be read and sung to the Javanese by the soldiers and sailors.
5. “The formation of an association of influential men, whose duty it would be to supplicate our most worthy King——
   1. “Only to appoint such governors, officers, and employés as can be regarded as steadfast in the true religion.
   2. “To allow the Javanese to visit the barracks, the ships of war, and merchantmen, that by intercourse with Dutch soldiers and sailors they may be instructed in the kingdom of God.
   3. “To prohibit the acceptance of Bibles or religious treatises as payment in public-houses.
   4. “To stipulate in the conditions of the opium license^[6] in Java, that in every opium-house a number of Bibles must be provided, in proportion to the apparent number of visitors of such a place; and that the farmer binds himself not to sell any opium, unless the buyer takes a religious treatise at the same time.
   5. “To order that the Javanese be by labour educated to the kingdom of God.
6. “The giving of large sums of money to the Missionary Societies.”

I know that I have given the last statement under No. 1; but he repeated it, and such a superfluity seems to me to be very explicable in the enthusiasm of discourse.

But, reader, did you pay attention to No. 5 (e.)? Now then; that was what put me so much in mind of the Coffee-Auctions and the pretended sterility of the soil of Lebak, that you will not be surprised, on my assuring you, that this matter has not been for a moment out of my thoughts since Wednesday evening. Dominé W. read the reports of the missionaries; nobody can dispute his thorough knowledge of the business. Well then,—when he, with these reports in his hands, and his eyes turned to God, asserts that much labour will be favourable to the conquest of Javanese souls to the kingdom of God, then I may certainly assume that I am not so far from the truth, when I say that Lebak will do very well for coffee-culture; and more still, that the Supreme Being perhaps made the ground unfit for coffee-culture, only in order that by the labour that is necessary to construct another soil there, the population of that province may be made fit for salvation.

I do hope that my book will fall under the King’s eye, aud that it may be very soon apparent in enlarged Auctions, how strong a relation there is between the knowledge of God and the well-known interest of all citizens. Look how the simple, humble Wawelaar, without wisdom of men—[the fellow never set foot in the Exchange]—but enlightened by the Gospel, which is a lamp to his path, suddenly gives me, a coffee-broker, a hint which is not only important to all Holland, hut whereby I may be able to go perhaps five years earlier to Driebergen, if Fred behaves well—[he was very quiet during the sermon]. Yes, labour, labour, that is my maxim; labour for the Javanese, that is my principle, and my principles are sacred to me.

Is not the Gospel the summum bonum? Is there anything better than salvation? Is it not, therefore, our duty to make sure the salvation of these men? And when labour is necessary for that——I myself have frequented the Exchange for twenty years——can we then refuse labour to the Javanese, when it is necessary for his soul, in order that it may not be tormented hereafter? Selfishness! it would be abominable selfishness if we did not employ all possible efforts to save those poor erring men from the terrible future which Dominé Wawelaar so eloquently described. A lady fainted when he spoke of that black child; perhaps she has a little boy of dark features——such are women!

And should not I insist upon labour,—I, who think from morning till evening only about business? Is not even that book, which Stern makes me dislike so much, a proof how good my intentions are for the welfare of the country, and how I like to sacrifice all for that? And when I have to labour so hard, I who was baptized (in the Amstel Kirk), is it not lawful to exact of the Javanese, who has still to earn his salvation, that he should employ his hands?

When that Society—[mean No. 5 (e.)]—is formed, I will join it, and endeavour to engage the Rosemeyers to join it too, because the sugar-refiners have also an interest in it, though I do not believe that they are very particular in their ideas,—I mean the Rosemeyers, for they have a Roman Catholic servant. In any case, I shall do my duty. That I promised myself while returning home with Fred from the prayer-meeting. In my house the Lord shall be served, I will take care of that; and with the more zeal, the more I perceive how wisely all has been settled, how good the ways are by which we are conducted to the hand of God, how He wills to preserve us for eternal and temporal life——for that ground at Lebak can be very well fitted for coffee-culture.

 

1. One of the characters of a Dutch novel much in vogue some fifty years ago.
2. “Dominé,”—title of Dutch clergymen.
3. Literally, “day of prayers.”
4. Driebergen,—a village of country-seats; the summum bonum of a successful Amsterdam trader’s aspirations.
5. Dominé Wawelaar and the Holy Willie of the Scottish poet Burns appear to have been brought up in the same school of theology.
6. The opium trade is a monopoly of the Dutch Government!!