# Letters of a Javanese princess/Chapter 72

LXXII
Rembang, June 28th, 1904.
WE do not go out often, and we entertain very little, yet my life is always full. Splendid! I divide my days between my dear husband, my housekeeping, and my children—both my own and the adopted ones. And these last take the largest share of my time and attention. When father is at work, then the children work with me from nine until twelve o'clock. At half-past twelve, father finds a troop of clean-faced but very hungry children. At half-past one the little ones are sent to bed, and if father is in bed, and I am not too tired, I work with the young girls. At four o'clock I preside at the tea-table. When the little ones have drunk their milk and have bathed, they can drive the fowls to the coops, or walk with us, or play in the garden. We amuse ourselves for a little, and prattle about everything or about nothing.
When our little troop comes in, then we are done with play. Father sits down to read the paper, and they range themselves around mother. I sit in a rocking-chair with the two smallest on my lap, a child on each arm of the chair and the two eldest at my knee. We tell stories; soon afterward supper-time comes around. We eat early with the little ones, the smallest of all sits next to mother. The little fellow has taken upon himself the task of lifting the glass cover for mother. No one must take that little work away from him, and if he is not allowed to do it, he knows it is because he has deserved a punishment.
​At eight o’clock the little treasures are sent to bed. And we parents sit up and talk to each other till Klaas Vaak drives us to the poeloe kapok, and this is not so late as at Japara, for we get up very early in the morning.
Sunday is a holiday for both of us. We begin it always with a walk; after that I teach my girls cooking, and then the mother and wife can do the things for which she has not had time during the week. It is not much that she can do, for my husband is happier when I sit by him. He charms me sometimes with beautiful gamelan music and songs. I think it is delightful in my husband to add the songs. For the gamelan music alone makes too great an impression upon me. It takes me back to times of which I must not think. It makes me weak and sad.
So the days fly by, calm, quiet and peaceful as a little brook deep in the forest.
If the child that I carry under my heart is a girl, what shall I wish for her? I shall wish that she may live a rich full life, and that she may complete the work that her mother has begun. She shall never be compelled to do anything abhorrent to her deepest feelings. What she does must be of her own free will. She shall have a mother who will watch over the welfare of her inmost being, and a father who will never force her in anything. It will make no difference to him if his daughter remains unmarried her whole life long; what will count with him will be that she shall always keep her esteem and affection for us. He has shown that he respects women, and that we are one in thought, by his desire to trust his daughter wholly to me.
Oh, if you only knew the things that slander has spread abroad about me! What I heard before my marriage was praise compared to what I have since learned. My husband must indeed have had courage, to offer me his heart, his hand, and his name. He had heard many things ​concerning me, but never a single word of praise; still, in his heart there was a conviction, which nothing could shake, that we were the bearers of new ideas, which were incomprehensible to the great multitude, who scorned us because they could not understand. When his first wife was still living, he would always take my part when they dragged my name through the mud. She had been so anxious to know me and during her last illness, she slept with my portrait in her hand. And he had a premonition that some day I should play an important role in his life. Every one here in the house had been interested in me. So there are premonitions, secret longings, that come often as forerunners of what will happen in the future. Only I alone did not think, did not dream that this would be my future existence.
I am not giving my little ones any vacation; they will have one in September when my child is born. For the first fortnight I must rest, and then my baby will go into the schoolroom. I have already prepared a corner where baby can sleep, while mother and little sisters and brothers study. Now we shall have something à la Hilda Van Suylenburg—a mother who with a suckling baby goes out to work.
* ↑ To Mevrouw Abendanon.
* ↑ In Java it is customary to take an hour's rest in the afternoon.