Max Havelaar (Siebenhaar)/Chapter 9
I would give a good deal now, reader, to know exactly how long I could keep a heroine floating in the air, before you would, during my description of a castle, throw my book down in disgust without waiting till the poor creature came down to the ground. If in my story I required such a leap from the blue, I should certainly, by way of precaution, choose a first floor as starting-point for her jump, and a castle about which there was not much to say. However, make yourself easy: Havelaar’s house had no storeys, and the heroes of my book—good heavens! dear, trusty, irreproachable Tine, a heroine! she never vaulted out of a window.
When I closed the last chapter with a hint of some variety in the next one, it really was more an oratorical trick, with the object of making an ending that caught on, than that I actually intended you to believe that the next chapter would have no other value than “variety.” A writer is vain, just like a . . . man. Speak ill of his mother or of the colour of his hair, say that he speaks with an Amsterdam accent—which fault no Amsterdammer ever admits—perhaps he will pardon you. But . . . never touch the outside of the smallest subdivision of a subordinate particle of something that has lain by the side of his writing . . . for then he will not forgive you! If, therefore, you don’t think my book beautiful, and you should meet me, pretend that we don’t know each other.
No, even a chapter “for variety” appears to me, through the magnifying-glass of my writer’s vanity, highly important and even indispensable; and if you were to skip it, and after that showed no due appreciation of my book, I should not hesitate to reproach you with this skipping as the cause of your being unable to pronounce an opinion on my work, since it was exactly the essential portion you had not read. In this way I should—for I am a man and a writer—consider as essential every chapter you had skipped with unpardonable reader-levity.
I picture to myself how your wife asks: “Is there anything in that book?” And you answer, for instance—horribile auditu for me—with the wealth of words characteristic of married men:
“Hm . . . well . . . I don’t know yet.”
Why, then, barbarian, read on. The all-important thing is just at your gate. And I gaze at you with trembling lips, and measure the thickness of leaves turned over, and on your face I search for the reflection of the chapter that is so beautiful . . .
“No,” I say, “he has not got to it yet. Presently he will jump up, in ecstasy he will embrace something, perhaps his wife . . .”
But you read on. The “beautiful chapter” must be passed, I think. You have not jumped up at all, you have not embraced . . .
And ever thinner grows the volume of leaves under your right thumb, and ever more meagre grows my hope of that embrace . . . yes, faith! I had even made sure of a tear!
And you have read the novel through to “where they get each other,” and you say yawning—again a form of eloquence in the state of wedlock:
“Why . . . well! It’s a book that . . . hm! Well, they write such a lot nowadays!”
But know you not then, monster, tiger, European, reader, know you not then that you have just whiled away an hour chewing my spirit like a toothpick? Gnawing and biting flesh and bone of your own kindred? Cannibal, in it was my soul, my soul that you have chewed for the second time as a cow chews grass! It is my heart you have just swallowed as a delicacy! For in that book I had put both this heart and soul, and so many tears fell on the manuscript, and my blood oozed from my veins as I wrote on, and I gave you all this, and you bought it for a few pence . . . and you say: “hm!”
The reader will understand that I am not here speaking of my book.
So I just wish to say, in the words of Abraham Blankaart[1] . . .
“Who’s Abraham Blankaart?” asked Louisa Rosemeyer, and Frits told her, to my great delight, for it gave me an opportunity of getting up and, at any rate for that night, making an end of the reading aloud. You know that I am a coffee-broker—Laurier Canal, No. 37—and that I sacrifice everything for my profession. Anyone will therefore realize how little satisfied I am with Stern’s work. I had hoped for coffee, and he gives us . . . ay! heaven knows what.
Already for three evenings of our “party” he had occupied us with his composition, and, worst of all, the Rosemeyers think it beautiful. At least so they say. Whenever I make any remark, he appeals to Louisa. Her approval, he says, weighs more with him than all the coffee in the world, and, moreover, “when my heart glows” . . . etc.—Look up this tirade on page so and so; or rather, don’t look it up.—So then, there I am, not knowing what to do next! That parcel of Shawlman’s is truly a Trojan horse. Frits also is being perverted by it. He has, I notice, helped Stern, for that fellow Abraham Blankaart is far too Dutch for a German. They are both such pedants that I am really getting perplexed about it. The worst thing is that I have made a contract with Ripesucker for the publication of a book that is to deal with the coffee-sales—all Holland is waiting for it—and just imagine how that Stern suddenly goes on a different tack altogether! yesterday he said: “Don’t worry, all roads lead to Rome. Just now wait for the end of the introduction”—is all this still only an introduction?—“I promise you”—he really said: “I forspeak[2] you”—“that finally the thing will resolve itself into coffee, coffee! into nothing but coffee! Think of Horace,” he continued, “has not he already said: ‘omne tulit, punctum, qui miscuit’ . . . coffee with something else? Do not you act in the same way, when you put sugar and milk in your cup?”
And then I have to be silent. Not because he is right, but because I owe it as a duty to the firm Last & Co. to see that old Stern doesn’t go over to Busselinck & Waterman, who would serve him badly because they are tricksters.
To you, reader, I pour out my heart, and in order that, reading Stern’s scribbling—have you really read it?—you may not pour out your anger on an innocent head—for I ask you, who will engage a broker that calls him a cannibal?—I insist on convincing you of my innocence. For it is plain I cannot push Stern out of the firm of my book, now that things have gone so far that Louisa Rosemeyer, when she comes from Church—the boys seem to wait for her—asks whether he’ll come early in the evening, so that he may read them a lot about Max and Tine.
But as you will have bought or hired the book relying on the respectable title, which promises something solid, I recognize your claim to a good thing for your money, and therefore am now again writing a couple of chapters myself. You don’t belong to the club of the Rosemeyers, reader, and are therefore more fortunate than I, who have to listen to it all. You are at liberty to skip the chapters that smell of German excitability, and to take notice only of what is written by myself, who am a respectable man, and a coffee-broker.
I have been amazed to learn from Stern’s scribblings—and he has shown me from Shawlman’s parcel that it is true—that there are no coffee-plantations in that division of Lebak. This is very wrong, and I shall consider my trouble amply rewarded if my book succeeds in drawing the Government’s attention to such an omission. It is supposed to be shown in those papers of Shawlman’s that the soil in those parts is not suitable to coffee-growing. But this is in no way an excuse, and I maintain that they are guilty of unpardonable neglect of duty towards Holland in general and the coffee-brokers in particular, ay, even towards the Javanese themselves, in not either changing that soil—after all, the Javanese have nothing else to do—or, if they think this cannot be done, sending the people that live there to other parts, where the soil is good for coffee.
I never say anything that I have not thoroughly considered, and I venture to say in this case I am speaking with intimate knowledge, as I have maturely reflected on the matter, especially since I heard the sermon of the Reverend Twaddler at the prayer-service for conversion of the heathen.
That was last Wednesday night. You must know reader, that I scrupulously fulfil my duties as a father, and that the moral training of my children is a thing very near to my heart. Now as for some time Frits has shown something in his tone and manners that doesn’t please me—it all comes out of that confounded parcel!—I gave him a sound lecture that day and said:
“Frits, I am not satisfied with you! I have always pointed out the right way to you, and yet you will take the crooked path. You are pedantic and troublesome, and you write verses, and you have given Betsy Rosemeyer a kiss. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom, so you must not kiss the Rosemeyers, and you must not be so pedantic. Immorality leads to perdition, my boy. Read the Scriptures, and just look at that Shawlman. He strayed from the ways of the Lord: now he is poor, and lives in a miserable little apartment . . . there you have the consequences of immorality and bad conduct! He wrote unbecoming articles in the Indépendance, and he dropped the Aglaia. That’s what one comes to, when one is wise in his own eyes. Now he doesn’t even know the time, and his little boy wears only half a pair of trousers. Remember that your body is a temple of God, and that your father has always had to work hard for a living—it’s the truth!—therefore lift up your eyes to heaven, and see that you grow up to be a respectable broker by the time I retire to Driebergen. And do watch all the people who refuse to listen to good advice, and who trample religion and morality under foot, and take warning from their example. And do not place yourself on an equality with Stern, whose father is rich, and who will have enough money in any case, even if he won’t be a broker, and though he may now and then do something that’s wrong. Do remember that all evil is punished: only look again at that Shawlman, who has no overcoat, and who looks just like a comedian. Do listen carefully at Church, and don’t sit there wriggling in all directions on your seat, as if you were bored, my boy, for . . . what must God think of that? The Church is His sanctuary, you see! And don’t wait for young girls when Church is over, for that takes away all your edification. And also don’t make Mary giggle when I read the Scripture at breakfast-time. That is not becoming in a respectable household; and then you have drawn funny figures in Bastians’ ledger, while the man has been away again—as he’s always having lumbago—that keeps the men in the office from their work, and it says in God’s Word that such follies lead to perdition. That Shawlman also did improper things when he was young: as a child he struck a Greek in the Westermarket . . . now he is lazy, pedantic, and sickly, so you see! Don’t always then be making jokes with Stern, my boy, his father is rich, you must remember. Pretend not to see it when he is making faces at the book-keeper. And when outside the office he is busy making up verses, just casually remark to him that he is very well off being with us, and that Mary has embroidered slippers for him with real floss-silk. Just ask him quite of your own accord, you know!—whether he thinks his father is likely to go to Busselinck & Waterman, and tell him they are tricksters. You see, one owes a warning like that to one’s neighbour—I mean you’ll put him into the right way by it—and . . . all this verse-making is nonsense. You be good and obedient, Frits, and don’t pull the servant by her skirt when she brings tea to the office, and don’t put me to shame, for she’ll spill the tea, and St. Paul says a son should never cause his father sorrow. I’ve been on ’Change for twenty years, and feel justified in saying that I am respected at my pillar. So listen to my exhortations, Frits, and be good, and now get your hat, and put on your coat: and come with me to the prayer-service, that will do you good!”
That’s how I talked to him, and I’m convinced that I made an impression on him, especially as the Reverend Twaddler had chosen for the subject of his address: the love of God manifested to Saul: I Sam. xv: 33b.
In listening to that sermon I kept thinking what a difference as of day and night there is between human and divine wisdom. I have already said that in Shawlman’s parcel, among a lot of trash, there certainly are one or two things that stand out by their soundness of reasoning. But, dear me, what a poor show these things make when compared with such language as that of the Reverend Twaddler! And that is not by his own power—for I know Twaddler, and look upon him as a man who really does not soar high—no, by the power that comes from above. This difference came out the more clearly because he touched upon certain matters that were also dealt with by Shawlman, for, as you have seen, there was much in his parcel about the Javanese and other heathens. Frits says the Javanese are not heathens, but I call anyone a heathen who has a wrong faith. For I hold on to Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, and I feel sure so will every respectable reader.
As I have drawn from Twaddler’s address my conclusion with regard to the wrongfulness of abandoning the coffee-culture in Lebak, to which I shall again refer presently, and also because as an honest man I do not wish that the reader shall receive nothing for his money, I shall here give a few fragments of the sermon which were most particularly striking.
He had briefly proved God’s love from the words of the text quoted, and had quite rapidly passed on to the point that was really the issue, namely the conversion of the Javanese, Malays, and whatever other names those peoples may have. And this is what he said about that subject:
“So then, belovèd ones, this was the glorious mission of Israel”—he referred to the extermination of the inhabitants of Canaan—“and this also is the mission of our own Holland! No, it shall not be said that the light which shines upon us will be hidden under the bushel, nor that we are niggardly in sharing with others the bread of eternal life! Cast your glance upon the islands of the Indian Ocean, inhabited by millions upon millions of the children of the rejected son—and of the rightly rejected son—of the noble and God-beloved Noah! There they crawl about in the loathsome serpent-holes of heathenish ignorance, there they bow the black and frizzy-haired head under the yoke of self-seeking priests! There they pray to God under invocation of a false prophet, who is an abomination in the sight of the Lord! And, belovèd! there are even those who, as though it were not enough to obey a false prophet, there are even those who pray to another God, nay, other gods, gods of wood and stone, which they themselves have made after their image, black, horrible, with flat noses, and devilish! Yea, belovèd—tears almost prevent me from continuing—deeper even than this is the corruption of the Race of Ham! There are those among them who know no God, under whatever name! There are those who deem it sufficient to obey the laws of civic society! Those who deem a harvest song, wherein they express their joy at the success of their labours, as sufficient thanks to the Supreme Being by Whom that harvest was allowed to ripen! Out there live lost ones, my belovèd—if so horrible an existence may bear the name of living!—out there one finds creatures who hold that it is enough to love wife and child and not to take from their neighbour what is not theirs, in order to be able at night to lay down their heads peacefully to sleep! Do you not shudder at that picture? Do your hearts not shrink with terror at the thoughts of what will be the fate of all these fools, as soon as the trumpet shall sound, waking the dead for the sundering of the just from the unjust? Hear ye not?—yea, ye do hear, for from the text words I have read you have seen that your God is a mighty God, and a God of just revenge—yea, ye hear the cracking of the bones and the hissing of the flames in the eternal Gehenna where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth! There, there they burn, and perish not, for everlasting is the punishment! There, with never-satiated tongue, the flames lap at the shrieking victims of unbelief. There dies not the worm that gnaws their hearts through and through without ever destroying them, so that for ever there will be a heart to gnaw at in the breast of the godless! See, how the dark skin is stripped from the unbaptized child that, scarce born, has been flung away from the breast of the mother into the pool of everlasting damnation. . . .”
Here a woman fainted.
“But, belovèd,” continued the Reverend Twaddler, “God is a God of Love! It is not His will that the sinner shall be lost, but that he may be saved by the Grace, in Christ, through Faith! And therefore our Holland has been chosen to save what may be saved of those miserable ones! Therefore has He, in His inscrutable Wisdom, given power to a land of small compass but great and strong in the knowledge of God, power over the dwellers in those regions, that by the holy and ever inestimable Gospel they may be saved from the punishment of hell! The ships of our Holland sail the great waters to bring civilization, religion, Christianity, to the lost Javanese! Nay, our happy fatherland does not covet eternal bliss for itself alone: we wish to share it with the wretched creatures on the distant shores, who lie bound in the fetters of unbelief, superstition, and immorality! The consideration of the duties that are laid upon us to this end will form the seventh part of my address.”
For that which had preceded was the sixth. Among the duties we had to fulfil on behalf of those poor heathens were named the following:
- Giving liberal contributions in money to the Union of Missions.
- The support of the Bible Societies, in order to enable them to distribute Bibles in Java.
- The promotion of religious meetings in Harderwyck, on behalf of the Colonial Enlistment-Depot.
- The writing of sermons and religious hymns, suitable for soldiers and sailors to read and sing to the Javanese.
- The formation of a society of influential men, whose task will be to petition our revered King:
- Only to appoint such Governors, oficers and officials as may be considered to stand firm in the true faith.
- To have permission granted to the Javanese to visit the barracks, and also the men-of-war and merchantmen lying in ports, so that by intercourse with Dutch soldiers and sailors they may be brought up for the Kingdom of God.
- To prohibit the taking in payment of Bibles or religious tracts in public houses.
- To make it a provision in the conditions of the opium-concession in Java, that in every opium house there shall be kept a stock of Bibles, in proportion to the probable number of visitors to the institution, and that the concessionary shall undertake to sell no opium without the purchaser taking a religious tract with it.
- To command that the Javanese shall be led to God by labour.
- Giving liberal contributions to the Union of Missions.
I am aware that I have already given the last item under No. 1, but he repeated it, and in the heat of his discourse such superfluity appeared to me quite explicable.
But, reader, have you noticed No. 5 e? Well, it was just that proposal which reminded me so strongly of the coffee-sales, and of the pretended unsuitability of the soil in Lebak, that it will now no longer seem so strange to you when I assure you that since Wednesday night the matter has not been out of my thoughts for a single moment. The Reverend Twaddler read out the Reports of the missionaries, so nobody can deny him a thorough knowledge of these matters. Well then, if he, with those Reports before him, and his eye fixed on God, maintains that much labour will favourably affect the conquest of the Javanese souls for God’s Kingdom, then surely I may conclude that I am not speaking altogether beside the truth when I say that coffee can be perfectly well grown in Lebak. And more than this, it is even possible that the Supreme Being has made the soil there unsuitable for coffee-growing for no other purpose than that the population of those parts, through the labour that will be necessary to transport a different soil there, shall become ready to accept salvation.
I do hope my book will come under the eye of the King, and that soon an increase in the sales will testify how closely the knowledge of God is connected with the well-understood interest of the whole middle-class community! Just see how a simple and humble man like Twaddler, devoid of the wisdom of humanity—the man has never set foot in the Exchange—but enlightened by the Gospel, which is a lamp on his path, has suddenly given me, a coffee-broker, a hint which not only is of importance to all Holland, but which will enable me, if Frits behaves himself—he sat fairly still in Church—to retire to Driebergen five years earlier. Yes, labour, labour, that’s my watchword! Labour for the Javanese, that’s my principle! And my principles are sacred to me.
Is not the Gospel our highest good? Does anything rank above salvation? Is it not then our duty to save those people? And when, as a means thereto, labour is necessary—I myself have laboured on ’Change for twenty years—may we then refuse labour to the Javanese, knowing that his soul is so pressingly in need of it to escape the burning fire hereafter? It would be selfishness, shameful selfishness, if we did not make every effort to guard those poor erring ones against the terrible future the Reverend Twaddler has so eloquently described. A lady fainted when he spoke of that black child . . . perhaps she had a little boy who was somewhat dusky. Women are like that!
And ought not I to insist upon labour, I who do nothing but think of business from morning until eve? Is not even this book—which Stern is making such an annoyance to me—proof of my sincere good wishes for the welfare of our fatherland, proof of how I would sacrifice everything to that? And when I have to labour so hard, I who was baptized—in the Amstel-street Church—may one not then exact from the Javanese that he, who still has to win his salvation, shall put his hand to the plough?
If that Association—I mean for 5 e—is formed, I’ll join. And I shall also try to persuade the Rosemeyers, as the sugar-refiners are also interested, although I don’t think they are too “all right” in their ideas—I mean the Rosemeyers—for they have a Roman Catholic servant.
Anyhow, I’ll do my duty. This I promised myself when I went home from the prayer-meeting with Frits. In my house the Lord shall be served, I shall see to that. And this with all the more zeal, as I see more and more how wisely everything is arranged, how loving are the ways by which we are led at God’s hand, and how He wishes to save us both for the eternal and the temporal life; for the soil at Lebak can perfectly well be made suitable for coffee-culture.