Max Havelaar (Siebenhaar)/Chapter 3
Next day, when I returned from ’Change, Frits said somebody had been to see me. From the description it was the Shawlman. How had he found me? . . . well, yes, the address-card! It really made me think I would take my children away from school, for it’s just a bit too much, after twenty or thirty years, to be still pursued by a schoolmate who wears a shawl instead of a coat, and who does not know the time. Also, I have forbidden Frits to go to Westermarket when there are any booths.
The day after that I received a letter together with a large packet. I will let you read the letter:
“Dear Drystubble!”
I think he might just as well have said “Dear Mr. Drystubble,” as I am a broker.
“I was at your house yesterday, as I wished to ask you a favour. I believe you are in affluent circumstances! . . .
That is true: there are thirteen of us in the office.
“. . . and I should like to be allowed to use your credit in order to carry out a project which is of great importance to me.”
One really would think it was a question of an order for the Springsale!
“Through an unfortunate chain of circumstances I am at present somewhat in need of money.”
Somewhat? He hadn’t a shirt on. That’s what he calls “somewhat”!
“I cannot give my dear wife all that is needful to make life pleasant, and the education, also, of my children is, from a financial point of view, not what I wish it to be.”
To make life pleasant! Education of the children! You would think he wished to take a box at the opera for his wife, and send his children to a boarding school in Geneva. Mind you, it was late in the year, and pretty cold . . . well, he lived under the tiles, without fire! When I received that letter, I did not know this, but later on I was at his place, and to this day I feel annoyed about the silly tone of his epistle. Hang it, when a man is poor, he may as well say that he is poor! There must be poor people, that is necessary in Society, and it is God’s will. If he will only not beg for alms and will trouble nobody, I have no objection whatever to his being poor; but he has no right to put all this gloss on the matter. Listen further:
“As it is my duty to provide for the needs of those belonging to me, I have decided to utilize a talent which I believe is given to me. I am a poet . . .
Pshaw! You know, reader, what I and all sensible people think about poets.
. . . “and writer. From my childhood I have expressed my emotions in verse, and also in later times I wrote down daily what passed through my soul. I imagine that among all these writings there are some articles that have a certain value, and I am looking for a publisher for these. But this is exactly the difficulty. I am unknown to the public, and publishers value a work more according to the established name of the author than according to its contents.”
Just as we do coffee according to the name of the brands. Certainly! How else?
“If therefore I may assume that my work is not entirely without merit, this naturally would only be proved after publication, and the printers just as naturally ask for payment in advance for printers’ wages, etc. . . .
And they are quite right.
“. . . which at present I cannot conveniently afford. As, however, I am convinced that my work would cover expenses, and would confidently pledge my word on this, I have, encouraged through our meeting the day before yesterday . . .
He calls that “encouraged”!
“. . . decided to ask you whether you would be my guarantor with the publisher for the cost of a first issue, were it only of a small volume. I leave the choice of the first attempt entirely to you. In the packet herewith forwarded you will find many manuscripts, and they will show you that I have thought much, worked much, and experienced much . . .
I have never heard that he was in business.
“. . . and if the gift of right expression is not altogether wanting in me, it will certainly not be owing to lack of impressions that I should fail to succeed.
“In anticipation of a kind reply, I sign myself your old schoolmate . . .”!
And his name was written underneath. But I do not mention it, as I am not fond of getting a man talked about.
Dear reader, you can imagine how I was taken aback, when it was suddenly suggested that I should be raised to the position of verse-broker. I feel sure that if “Shawlman”—I think I shall just give him that name—had seen me in the daytime, he would not have addressed such a request to me. For then gentility and respectability cannot be hidden. But it was in the evening, so I don’t feel concerned about it. It is self-evident that I’ll have nothing to do with this nonsense. I should have got Frits to take the parcel back, but I did not know his address, and I heard nothing from him. I thought he might be dead, or ill, or something of the kind.
Last week it was the Rosemeyers’ turn for the party which we give alternately. They are sugar people. Frits went for the first time. He is sixteen years old, and it seems to me a good thing for a young man to go out into the world. Otherwise he may only go to the Westermarket, or some such thing. The girls, before dinner, had been playing the piano and singing, and during dessert they were teasing each other about something that appeared to have taken place in the drawing-room, while we were having a game of whist, something that seemed to concern Frits. “Oh, yes, Louise,” exclaimed Betsy Rosemeyer, “you did cry! Papa, Frits has made Louise cry!”
My wife at once said that in that case Frits should not again come to any party. She thought he had pinched Louise, or something else unseemly, and I also was just about to add a word to the point, when Louise exclaimed:
“No, no! Frits has been very nice! I wish he would do it again!”
What could it be? He had not pinched her, he had given a recitation, that was it!
Of course the lady of the house always likes to see her guests amused during dessert. It fills a void. Mrs. Rosemeyer—the Rosemeyers want to be called “Mrs.,”[1] as they are sugar people and own a share in a ship—Mrs. Rosemeyer guessed that what had made Louise cry would also entertain us, and asked Frits for an encore; he had turned as red as a turkey. I could not think for the world what he had given them, for I knew his repertoire to a t. It was: “The Wedding of the Gods,” “The Books of the old Testament in Rhyme,” and a passage from “The Wedding of Kamacho,” which the boys always find so amusing because there is something in it about “giglamps.” What there could be in any of these to draw tears, was a puzzle to me. It is true, girls like that are easily made to cry.
“Come on, Frits! Oh, yes, Frits! Go on, Frits!” So they went on, and at last Frits began. As I do not like to keep the reader in suspense, I will just say at once that at home they had opened Shawlman’s packet, and from it Frits and Mary had extracted an amount of wiseacredom and sentimentality, which afterwards brought a good deal of trouble into our home. Yet I have to admit, reader, that this book you are reading also came out of the packet, and of this fact I shall afterwards give a proper account, for it is of importance to me that I be considered as a person who loves the truth, and who looks after his business. Our firm is “Last & Co., Coffee-brokers, Laurier Canal, No. 37.”
Frits then recited a thing which was all nonsense from beginning to end. It was all disconnected. A young man was writing to his mother that he had been in love, and that the girl had married someone else—I think she was quite right—but he, in spite of this, always loved his mother. Do the last few lines I have just written seem clear to you or not! Do you consider that it should have taken much longer to say it? Well, I ate some bread and cheese, then peeled two pears, and had half finished munching a third, before Frits had done with the story. But Louise again cried, and the ladies said it was very pretty. Then Frits, who seemed to think he had done something quite grand, told us that he had found the thing in the parcel of the man who wore a shawl, and I explained to the gentlemen how it had got into my house. But I said nothing about the Greek girl, as Frits was present, and I also said nothing about Kapel-lane. Everyone considered I had done the right thing in getting rid of the man. You will see presently that there were other things also in that parcel, things of a more solid nature, and of these some will go into this book, as the Coffee-sales of the Trading Company are connected with them . . . for I live for my trade.
The publisher asked me afterwards whether here I would not add what Frits had recited. I don’t mind giving some lines from it on which I want to comment later on, provided it be understood that I personally never have anything to do with things of this kind. Lies and silliness, from beginning to end! I will only add that the story seems to have been written about 1843 in the neighbourhood of Padang, and that this is an inferior brand. I mean of coffee.
To the love by God’s hand planted
In the heart when life was granted,
Ere the child’s first accents rang?
Ere, at mother’s breast, he first
Drew, scarce from the womb delivered,
Milk of life to quench his thirst,
Light that in her fond eyes quivered?”
- ↑ For a married woman of the lower middle-class the title is “juffrouw,” the same as for an unmarried woman.