Max Havelaar (Siebenhaar)/Chapter 1
I am a coffee-broker, and live at 37, Laurier Canal. I am not in the habit of writing novels, or things of that kind, and I have, therefore, been a long time making up my mind to buy two extra reams of paper and start on the work that you, dear reader, have just taken up, and that you must read if you are a coffee-broker, or if you are anything else. Not only have I never written anything that resembled a novel, I do not even like reading things of that sort, as I am a business man. For years I have asked myself, what is the use of them, and I am amazed at the impudence with which a poet or story-teller dares try to stuff you with crammers about events that never took place, and, more often than not, could not take place. If in my line—I am a coffee-broker and live at 37, Laurier Canal—I furnished particulars to a principal (a principal is a man who sells coffee) which contained but a small part of the untruths that are the main body of poems and novels, he would at once transfer his business to Busselinck & Waterman. They are coffee-brokers also, but you need not know their address. I, therefore, take very good care not to write novels or furnish other untruthful statements. And I may say that I have always noticed that people who mix themselves up in such business usually come to a bad end. I am forty-three years of age, I have been on the Exchange for twenty years, and I can therefore present my credentials, if a man of experience is required. I have seen a mighty lot of firms go down! And usually, on thinking over the causes, I came to the conclusion that they lay in the wrong start given to most of them in their youth.
I only say: truth and common sense, and I stick to it. Naturally I make an exception on behalf of the Holy Word. The error starts as early as Van Alphen,[1] who, in his poems given us to read as children, starts with the first line about those “sweet young creatures.” What the deuce could move that old gentleman to pass himself off as a worshipper of my little sister Gertrude, who had sore eyes, or of my brother Gerard, who was always fiddling with his nose? And yet he says he “sang those little poems urged by love.” I often thought as a child, “My good man, I should like to meet you, and if you should refuse me the marbles I should ask you for, or else my full name in pastry letters—I am called Batavus—I should take you to be a liar.” But I have never seen Van Alphen. He was dead already, I believe, when he told us that my father was my best friend—I preferred Paulie Winser, who lived next to us in the Batavier-street—and that “my little dog” was so “grateful.” We did not keep dogs, because they are so dirty.
Nothing but lies! And so the course of education goes on. The new little sister has come from the greengrocer in a large cabbage. All the Dutch are brave and generous. The Romans were glad that the Batavians allowed them to live. The Bey of Tunis used to get colic when he heard the flutter of the Dutch flag. The Duke of Alva was a monster. The low tide of 1672 lasted a little longer than usual, for the sole purpose of protecting Holland. Lies! Holland remained Holland for the simple reason that our old people looked after their business, and because they had the true Faith. That is the point!
And a little later again there are still further lies. A girl is an angel. He that first discovered this, never had any sisters. Love is bliss. One takes flight, with some object or other, to the ends of the earth. The earth has no ends, and also that love is nonsense. No one can say that I do not live decently with my wife—she is a daughter of Last & Co., coffee-brokers—no one can say anything about our marriage. I am a member of “Artis.”[2] She has a shawl that cost ninety-two guilders, and yet between us there has never been any talk of such a silly love which at all costs wanted to live at the end of the world. When we were married, we made a trip to The Hague—there she bought flannel, of which I am still wearing undervests—and, further than this, love never drove us into the world. Therefore, it’s all silliness and lies!
And would you think, then, that my marriage must be less happy than that of people who for love go into consumption, or tear their hair out by the roots? Or would you imagine that my household is one atom less well regulated than it would be if seventeen years ago I had told my sweetheart in verses that I wanted to marry her? Nonsense! Yet I might have done so just as well as anyone else, for versifying is a trade, certainly less difficult than turning ivory. Why else are lozenges with rhymed mottoes so cheap?—Frits says: “caramels,” I don’t know why.—And just ask the price of a set of billiard-balls!
I have nothing against verses in themselves. If one wishes to make the words fall into line, all right! But don’t say anything that is not true. “The raindrops pour, the clock strikes four.” This may pass, if the rain really does pour, and it is four. But if it should be a quarter to three, I, who do not place my words in line, can say: “The raindrops pour, and it is a quarter to three.” But the versifier is bound to the hour of four by the downpour of the first line. For him it must absolutely be four o’clock, or there may be no pouring rain. Even a quarter to four is forbidden by the metre. So then he sets about perverting the truth! Either the weather must be changed, or the time. And so one of them must be a lie.
And it is not only those verses that lure the young to untruth. Just go to the theatre and listen to the lies that are there served up. The hero of the piece is pulled out of the water by a man who is on the verge of bankruptcy. For this he gives him half his fortune. Such a thing can’t be true. When recently on the Prince’s Canal my hat blew into the water—Frits says “was blown”—I gave the man who brought it back to me twopence, and he was satisfied. Now I know perfectly well that I should have had to give a little more if he had pulled out my person, but certainly not half my money. For is it not obvious that in this way one would only have to fall into the water twice to become a pauper? And the worst of such shows on the stage is that the public gets so accustomed to all these untruths, that they admire and applaud them. I should just like to throw the whole pit into the water, to see whether any of them had been in earnest about that applause. I, who like truth, give warning to everyone that, for fishing out my person, I will not pay so much salvage money. Those who are not satisfied with less, may leave me where I am. Only on a Sunday I should be prepared to give a little more, as then I wear my chased gold watch-chain and frock coat.
Yes, that same stage corrupts many, more even than do the novels. It is so spectacular! With just a little tinsel and paper-lace, everything there looks so very alluring. For children, I mean, and for people who are not in business. Even when these actor-people seek to represent poverty, their presentation is always false. A girl whose father has become a bankrupt works to keep the family. All right. There you see her on her chair sewing, knitting, or embroidering. But now you just count the stitches she makes during the whole Act. She talks, she sighs, she runs to the window, but never a stroke of work. The family that can subsist on this labour requires very little. This kind of girl is, of course, the heroine. She has thrown a few seducers down the stairs, she keeps crying: “O, my mother, O, my mother!” and therefore represents virtue. What kind of virtue is that, which takes a whole year to make a pair of woollen stockings? Does not all this inculcate false conceptions of virtue, and of “working for a living”? All silliness and lies!
Then her first lover—formerly a copying clerk, but now rolling in riches—suddenly returns, and marries her. More lies. A man with money does not marry a girl out of a firm that has failed. And if you think that on the stage this may pass as an exception, still my remark stands, that one perverts the sense of truth in the people, who take the exception as the rule, and that one saps public morality be accustoming them to applaud on the stage what, in the world, every respectable broker or merchant considers the most ridiculous lunacy. When I was married, there were thirteen of us in the office of my father-in-law,—Last & Co.—and there was plenty doing!
And still further lies on the stage. When the hero with his stiff stage-step goes off to save his oppressed country, why does the double back door invariably open of its own accord? And again, how can the person who speaks in verse foresee what the other will answer, so that it will be made easy for that other to rhyme? When the general says to the princess: “Madam, to close the gates your foes have dared,” how does he know in advance that she will say: “Then bravely let the trusty sword be bared”? For just suppose that she, learning that the gates were closed, replied that in this case she would wait a while until they were opened again, or that she would come back a little later, what would become of metre and rhyme? Is it not then acting a barefaced lie, when the general looks into her face inquiringly to learn what she means to do about those closed gates? And again: suppose the good lady had been rather inclined to retire for a night’s rest, instead of insisting on baring something? Nothing but lies!
And then this rewarded virtue! Oh, Oh, Oh! I have been a coffee-broker for seventeen years, Laurier Canal, No. 37—and therefore have seen a good deal, but I always feel greatly annoyed to see the dear good truth so twisted round. Rewarded virtue? Does not that make virtue an article of trade? The world is not like this, and it’s a good thing that it isn’t. For what merit would there be in virtue if it were rewarded? Why then always this pretence of infamous lies?
Take, for instance, Lucas, our warehouseman, who already worked with the father of Last & Co.—the firm was then Last and Meyer, but the Meyers have long been out of it—he surely was a virtuous man. Never a bean was short, he went regularly to Church, and he did not drink. When my father-in-law was at Driebergen, he looked after the house, the safe and everything. One day he received seventeen guilders too much at the Bank, and he took them back. He is now old and rheumatic, and can serve no longer. So now he has nothing, for there is much work with us, and we require young people. Well then, I consider Lucas very virtuous, but does he get rewarded? Does any prince come along to give him diamonds, or any fairy who butters his bread? Not a bit of it! He is poor and remains poor, and this is as it should be. I cannot help him—for we require young people, as we have so much business—but even if I could, what merit could he still claim if in his old age he could suddenly lead an easy life? Then every warehouseman would surely become virtuous, and everyone else too, which cannot be God’s intention, as in that case no special reward would remain for the good hereafter. But on the stage they twist this round. All, all lies!
I also am virtuous, but do I ask a reward for this? When my business flourishes—and it does—when my wife and children are healthy, so that I have no bother with doctor and chemist . . . when year after year I can put by a little sum for my old age . . . when Frits grows up a smart boy, to take my place later on when I retire to Driebergen . . . then, you see, I am quite contented. But all this is a natural effect of the circumstances, and of my looking after the business. For my virtue I claim nothing.
And yet that I am virtuous is plain from my love of truth. This, after my devotion to the faith, is my strongest characteristic. And I wish, reader, you were convinced of it, as it is the excuse for my writing this book.
A second trait of mine, which dominates me as strongly as my love of truth, is a passion for my occupation. Let me state that I am a coffee-broker, Laurier Canal, No. 37. Well then, reader, it is my scrupulous love of truth, and my zeal for my business, that you must thank for the fact that these pages have been written. I will tell you how this has happened. As I am taking leave of you for the moment—I am due on ’Change—I shall presently invite you to a second chapter. So au revoir!
Just wait, put it into your pocket . . . ’tis but little trouble . . . it may come in handy . . . just see, here it is: my address-card! The “Co.” is myself, since the Meyers are out of it—old Last is my father-in-law.
Last & Co.
Coffee-brokers
Laurier Canal, No. 37.