# Max Havelaar (Nahuijs)/Chapter 20

Layout 2
[Composed by Stern.]
It was evening. Tine was reading in the inner gallery; and Havelaar was drawing an embroidery pattern; little Max was putting together a puzzle picture, and was getting angry because he could not find that red lady’s body.
“Will it be right so, Tine?” asked Havelaar. “See, I have made this palm a little larger. . . it is exactly Hogarth’s line of beauty.”
“Yes, Max! but these lace-holes are too near each other.”
“Are they? And the others?”
“Max! do let me see your trousers, . . . have you that stripe?”
“Ah! I remember where you embroidered that, Tine!”
“Not I—where then?”
“It was at the Hague, when Max was ill, and we were so frightened because the physician said that he had such an uncommonly shaped head, and that so much care was ​required to prevent congestion of the brain. . . then you were busy with that stripe.”
Tine went and kissed the little one.
“I have found her stomach, I have found her stomach!”
cried the little boy gaily; and the red lady was complete.
“Whose bedtime is it?” asked the mother.
“Mine; but I have not yet supped,” said little Max.
“You shall have some supper first of course.”
And she rose up, and gave him his simple supper, which she seemed to have fetched out of a well-secured cupboard in her room; for the noise of many locks had been heard.
“What are you giving him?” asked Havelaar.
“Oh, don’t be uneasy! It is biscuit out of the tin box from Batavia, and the sugar too has been kept under lock and key.”
Havelaar’s thoughts turned again to the point where they had been interrupted.
“Do you know,” he continued, “that we have not yet paid that doctor’s bill? . . .”
“Oh! that is very hard!”
“Dear Max, we live so economically here, we shall soon be able to pay all: moreover, you will certainly soon be appointed Resident, and then all will be arranged in a little time.”
“That is exactly the thing that makes me sad,” said Havelaar. “I should be so unwilling to leave Lebak. . . . ​I will explain that to you. Don’t you believe that we loved our Max more after his illness? Now, it appears to me that I shall love poor Lebak still more, after it has recovered from the cancer from which it has suffered for so many years. The thought of promotion frightens me, and yet on the other side, when I think again that we have debts. . . .”
“All will be right, Max! even if you had to go from here, then you could help Lebak afterwards on being made Governor-General.”
Then came wild lines in Havelaar’s pattern——there was anger in those flowers, . . . those strips were sharp, angular, crossing each other. . . . Tine understood that she had said something wrong.
“Dear Max!” she began kindly.
“A curse on it! . . . Will you have them starve so long? . . . . Can you live on sand?”
“Dear Max! . . .”
But he jumped up from his chair, and there was no more drawing that evening.
He went up and down in the inner gallery, and at last he spoke in a tone which would have sounded rough and hard to every stranger, but which was thought of quite differently by Tine.
“A curse on this indifference, this shameful indifference! Here I have waited a month for justice, and meanwhile the poor people are suffering terribly. The Regent seems ​to calculate upon nobody daring to take it up against him—look. . . .”
He went into his office, and came back with a letter in his han a letter which lies before me, reader!
“Look, in this letter, he dares to make me proposals about the kind of labour which he intends to have done by men whom he has summoned unlawfully. . . . is not that shamelessness going too far? And do you know who these persons are? They are women with little children, with sucklings; women who are pregnant, who have been driven from Parang-Koodjang to the capital, to work for him——there are no more men! And they have nothing to eat, and they sleep on the road, and eat sand. . . . Can you eat sand? Must they eat sand till I am Governor-General?
“Curse it! . . . .”
Tine knew very well with whom alone Max was angry, when he spoke thus to her whom he loved.
“And,” continued Havelaar, “that is all on my responsibility. If at this moment some of these poor creatures are wandering there outside, and seeing the light of our lamps, will say: ‘There lives the wretch who ought to protect us; there he sits quietly with wife and child, and draws embroidery patterns, while we lie here like dogs on the road, and starve with our children!’ Yes, I hear it, I hear it; that cry for vengeance upon my head! . . . . here, Max, here! . . . .”
​And he kissed the child with a wildness which frightened it.
“My child, if they tell you that I am a wretch, who had no courage to do justice, that so many mothers have died by my fault; if they tell you that the neglect of your father stole away the bliss of your life. . . . Max, bear witness how I suffered!”
And he burst into tears, which Tine kissed away. Then she put little Max to bed—a mat of straw—and when she returned found Havelaar in conversation with Verbrugge and Duclari, who had just come in. The conversation was about the expected decision of the Government.
“I understand very well that the Resident is in a difficult position,” said Duclari. “He cannot advise the Government to accept your proposals, for then too much would be brought to light. I have been long in Bantam, and know much about it,—more than you, Mr. Havelaar! I was here as sub-lieutenant, and in that position one hears things that the native does not dare to tell the functionaries. But if now, after an open investigation, all this comes to light, the Governor-General will summon the Resident to account for it, and ask him how it is that he has not discovered in two years what was obvious to you immediately? He must, therefore, prevent that investigation.
“I have considered that,” replied Havelaar, “and put on my guard by his endeavours to move the Regent to ​say something against me, which seems to show that he will try to remove the question, for instance, by accusing me of. . . . I know not what; I have covered myself against that by sending copies of my letters direct to the Government. In one of these letters, I beg to be called to account, if perhaps it should be pretended that I had done something wrong. If, now, the Resident of Bantam attacks me, no decision can be made, according to justice, before I have been heard—that is allowed even to a criminal—and I have done nothing wrong. . . .”
“There is the post!” said Verbrugge.
Yes, it was the post!—the post that brought the following letter from the Governor-General of the Dutch Indies to Havelaar, late Assistant Resident of Lebak:—
“Official.—No. 54.
“Buitenzorg, 23rd March 1856.
“The manner in which you have acted on the discovery or supposition of wrong-doing on the part of the chiefs in the district of Lebak, and your attitude towards your superior, the Resident of Bantam, have excited, in a high degree, my displeasure. In your acts there is not only a want of the deliberate judgment, caution, and prudence so indispensable to a functionary intrusted with power in the interior of Java (sic), but also notions of insubordination to your immediate superior. Only a few days after your appointment to your present office, you made the head of the native Government of Lebak the subject ​of irritating examinations, without first consulting (sic) the Resident. In these examinations you found cause, without substantiating your accusations against that chief by facts (sic), much less by proofs, to make proposals which tended to subject a native functionary of the rank of the Regent of Lebak (a man of sixty years, but still a zealous servant, related to neighbouring influential Regents, and of whom favourable testimony has always been given) to a morally quite annihilating treatment. Moreover, you have, when the Resident did not feel inclined to give his consent to your proposals, refused to satisfy the just desire of your superior, that you should say openly what you knew of the actions of the native Government of Lebak.
“Such conduct merits all disapprobation, and sanctions belief in your incapacity to bear office in the interior Government of Java. I am therefore obliged to dismiss you from your employment as Assistant Resident of Lebak.
“Yet, in consideration of the favourable reports received formerly of you, I have not found cause to deprive you of the prospect of again getting a situation in the Government of the interior. I have therefore given you the temporary appointment of Assistant Resident of Ngawie. On your behaviour in this office, it will entirely depend whether you remain a functionary in the service of the Government.”
“We go from here, dear Tine,” said Havelaar; and he gave the letter to Verbrugge, who read the document with Duclari.
Verbrugge had tears in his eyes, but did not speak. Duclari, a very polite and well-bred man, burst out with a wild curse.
“G———, I have seen rogues and thieves in the Government here, . . . they have gone from here with honours, and to you they write such a letter!”
“It is nothing,” said Havelaar; “the Governor-General is an honest man, . . . he must be deceived; though he could have guarded himself against that deceit, by first hearing me. But I will go to him, and show him how matters stand here. . . he will do justice, I am certain of it.”
“But if you go to Ngawie. . . .”
“I know this for certain. The Regent of Ngawie is related to the Regent of Bantam. I should have to do the same at Ngawie that I have done here: that would be a useless journey.
“Moreover, it was impossible for me to serve the trial as if I had behaved ill. . . . and, finally, I see that to put an end to all this deceit, I can no longer be a functionary. ​As functionary, there are too many persons between me and the Government who have an interest in denying the misery of the population. There are other reasons that prevent me from going to Ngawie. There was no vacancy there; there has been one made for me——Look here!”
And he showed in the Javanese newspaper, which had come by the same post, that indeed, in the same decree of the Government whereby he was appointed Assistant Resident of Ngawie, the Assistant Resident of that place was appointed to another district where there was a vacancy.
“Do you know why I have to go to Ngawie, and not to the district where there was a vacancy?
“I will tell you——the Resident of Madioen, to which Ngawie belongs, is the brother-in-law of the late Resident of Bantam. I have said that such scandalous things went on here,——that the Regent had had such bad examples. . .”
“ Ah,” eried Verbrugge and Duclari at the same time. They understood why Havelaar was transferred to Ngawie in particular, to be tried if he would perhaps correct himself.
“And there is still another reason why I cannot go there,” said he. “The present Governor-General will soon resign,——I do not know his successor, nor what I may expect of him. In order to do something in time for ​those poor people, I must speak to the present Governor before his departure, and if I went now to Ngawie, that would be impossible. . . . Tine!”
“Dear Max!”
“You have courage, have you not?”
“Max! you know I have courage when I am with you.”
“Good!”
He went and wrote the following, in his own opinion an example of eloquence:—
“Rankas-Betong, 29th March 1856.
“To the Governor-General of the Dutch Indies.
“I have had the honour to receive the official letter of your Excellency of the 23d inst., No, 54. In reply to that document, I feel constrained to beg your Excellency to grant me an honourable discharge from the service of the Government.
(Signed) “Max Havelaar.”
It needed not so long a time at Buitenzorg to grant the asked-for discharge, as was needed to decide how Havelaar’s accusation could be turned away. For the latter a month was required, and the news of the discharge arrived in a few days at Lebak.
​“God be praised,” said Tine, “that you can be your own self at last.”
Havelaar received no instructions to surrender the Government to Verbrugge; he therefore awaited his successor. The latter was a long time in coming, because he had to travel from a remote corner of Java. After waiting three weeks, the ex-officio Assistant Resident of Lebak, who had, however, still acted as such, wrote the following letter to the Controller Verbrugge:—
“No. 153.
“Rankas-Betong, 15th April 1856.
“To the Controller of Lebak,
“You know that I have received at my own request an honourable discharge from the service of the Government by decree of 4th inst., No. 4. Perhaps I should have acted rightly, if, on the receipt of this decree, I had resigned my office of Assistant Resident immediately; as it seems to be an anomaly to fulfil a function without being a functionary.
“Yet I received no instructions to surrender my office, and partly from the idea of the obligation not to leave my post without being duly relieved, partly from causes of subordinate interest, I waited for the arrival of my successor, thinking that that functionary would arrive soon, at least this month.
“Now I hear from you that my successor may not be ​“expected so soon——you have, as I think, heard this news at Serang,—and at the same time that the Resident was astonished that I, in the very peculiar position in which I am, have not yet asked to be allowed to transfer the Government to you. Nothing could be more agreeable to me than this news, for I need not assure you, that I, who have declared myself unable to serve otherwise than I have done, who have been punished for this way of serving with censure, with a ruinous and discreditable transfer, with an order to betray the poor men who confided in my good faith, with the choice also between dishonour and starvation. . . . that I had to consider with pains and care, everything if it was in harmony with my duty, and that the most simple matter was difficult for me, placed as I was between my conscience and the principles of the Government, to which I owe fidelity as long as I am not freed from my functions. This difficulty showed itself principally in the reply which I had to give to plaintiffs.
“I had once promised to betray nobody to the rancour of his chiefs;—once I had, imprudently enough, given my word for the justice of the Government.
“The poor population could not know that this promise and this bail had been denied, and that I, poor and impotent, stood alone with my desire for justice and humanity.
“And people went on complaining. It was painful, ​after the receipt of the missive of 23d March, to sit there as a supposed refuge, as a powerless protector.
“It was heart-rending to hear the complaints of ill-treatment, extortion, poverty, hunger, whilst I myself had, with a wife and child, to meet hunger and poverty!
“Neither could I betray the Government, I might not say to these poor people: ‘Go and suffer, for it is the will of the Government that you should suffer extortion.’
“I might not avow my impotence, one as it was with the shame and unconscionableness of the Governor-General’s counsellors.
“Here is what I replied:
“ ‘I cannot help you immediately, but I will go to Batavia; I will speak to the Governor about your misery. He is just, and he will assist you. Go now quietly to your home; do not oppose, do not remove—wait patiently: I think, . . . . I hope that justice will be done!’
“So I thought, ashamed as I was of the violation of my promise of help, to bring my ideas in harmony with my duty to the Government, which pays me still this month, and I would have continued thus till the arrival of my successor, if a particular occurrence had not obliged me to-day to put an end to this equivocal position. Seven persons had complained: I gave them the above-mentioned reply. They returned to their homes. The district chief met them on the way. He must have for​bidden them to leave their village again, and taken away (as I am told) their clothes, to oblige them to remain at home. One of them escaped, came to me again and declared ‘that he did not dare to return to his village.’
“What I ought to reply to this man, I did not know. I could not protect him;——I might not avow my impotence; I would not prosecute the accused chief, because this would have appeared as if the matter had been picked up by me, pour le besoin de ma cause I did not know what to do. . . . .
“I charge you, until further instructions from the Resident of Bantam, with the Government of the district of Lebak, from to-morrow morning.—The Assistant Resident of Lebak,
(Signed) “Max Havelaar.”
Then Havelaar departed with wife and child from Rankas-Betong. He refused all escort. Duclari and Verbrugge were deeply touched at the leave-taking. Max was likewise moved; above all, when he found at the first stage a great number of persons who had gone secretly from Rankas-Betong to bid him a last farewell.
At Serang, the family was received into the house of My. Slymering, with the ordinary Indian hospitality.
In the evening many visitors came to the Resident. They said they had come to say farewell to Havelaar, and Havelaar received many an eloquent shake of the hand. . .
​But he had to go to Batavia to speak to the Governor-General.
When they arrived there, he sought for an audience. This was refused him, because his Excellency had a pain in his foot.
Havelaar waited till the foot was cured. Then he again sought an audience.
His Excellency “had so much to do that he had been obliged to refuse an audience even to the Director-General of Finance, and could not see Havelaar.”
Havelaar waited till his Excellency should have struggled through all this; meanwhile he felt something like jealousy for the persons who had to help his Excellency in his labour, for he liked to work quickly and hard, and generally so much business disappeared under his hand. This was, however, out of the question. Havelaar’s labour was heavier than labour. . . . He waited.
He waited. At last he again sought an audience. He received an answer that his Excellency could not see him, as he had too much to do, being on the point of departure.
Max sought the favour of his Excellency to be heard for half-an-hour as soon as there should be some space between two “businesses.”
At last he heard that his Excellency would depart the next day! That was a thunderbolt for him. Still he believed with spasmodic energy that the resigning Governor ​was an honest man, and had been deceived. A quarter of an hour would have sufficed to prove the justice of his cause, and it appeared that this quarter of an hour would not be granted him.
I find among Havelaar’s papers the copy of a letter which he seems to have written to the retiring Governor-General, on the last evening before his departure to the mother country. In the corner I find the words written in pencil “not exact,” which gives me to understand that some phrases were changed in copying. I make this observation in order that no doubt may arise regarding the authenticity of the other official documents which I have communicated, and which have all been signed by another hand for exact copy; I mention this, because of the want of literal conformity with this document. Perhaps he to whom this letter was addressed may feel inclined to make public the exact text; then one may see how far Havelaar deviated from this copy.
“Batavia, 23d May 1856.
“Your Excellency,—My official request, by missive of 28th February, to be heard on the affairs of Lebak, has remained unanswered.
“Neither has your Excellency thought fit to grant my repeated request for an audience.
“A functionary, who was ‘favourably known to the Government’ (I quote your Excellency’s own words),​—one who has served his country in these regions for seventeen years,—one who not only never neglected his duty, but who conceived what was good with unexampled self-sacrifice, and who chose to sacrifice all for honour and duty,—such a one your Excellency has placed beneath the criminal, for the criminal is at least heard.
“That they have deceived your Excellency with regard to me, I understand, but that your Excellency did not catch the opportunity to escape from this deceit, I do not understand. To-morrow your Excellency goes from here, and I may not let you depart without having said once more that I did my duty,—only my duty,—with judgment, with calmness, with humanity, with moderation, and with courage.
“The grounds on which is based the censure contained in your Excellency’s missive of 23d March are entirely invented and false. I can prove this, and it would have been proved already, if your Excellency had granted me half-an-hour’s interview, if your Excellency could have found half-an-hour to do justice.
“This you could not; and an honest family has been ruined.
“Yet I do not complain of this.
“But your Excellency has sanctified the system of abuse of power, of plunder and murder, by which the poor Javanese suffer, and I complain of that.
“That is what I complain of!
​“Your Excellency, blood cleaves to the money saved out of the Indian salary thus earned! Once more I beg for a moment’s interview, be it this night, be it early to-morrow! And again I do not ask this for myself, but for the cause which I defend, the cause of justice and humanity, which is, at the same time, the cause of good policy.
“If your Excellency can reconcile it with your conscience, to depart from here without hearing me, mine will be quiet in the persuasion that I have endeavoured all that I could to prevent the sad bloody events, which will soon be the consequence of the self-willed ignorance in which the Government is left as regards the population. . . . .
(Signed) “Max Havelaar.”
Havelaar waited that evening. He waited the whole night. He had hoped that perhaps anger at the tone of his letter would bring about what he had tried in vain to obtain by moderation and patience.
His hope was vain. The Governor-General departed without having heard Havelaar. . . .
Another Excellency had retired to the mother country to rest!
Enough, my good Stern! I, Multatuli, take up the pen. You are not called upon to write Havelaar’s biography. I created you: I brought you over from Hamburg: I taught you good Dutch in a very short time: I made you kiss Louise Rosemeyer, of the Rosemeyers, who trade in sugar. . . . it is enough,——Stern! you may go.
“This Shawlman and his wife. . . .”
Stop!! miserable spawn of dirty covetousness and blasphemous hypocrisy! I created you:——you have grown into a monster under my pen:——I am disgusted with my own creation. . . . choke yourself with coffee and begone!
Yes, I, Multatuli, “who have suffered much,”——I take the pen. I do not make any excuses for the form of my book,——that form was thought proper to obtain my object. That object has a double end——
In the first place, I would bring forward something which may be preserved as a holy poosaka by “little Max” and his sister, when their parents have died of sheer want.——I would give to these children a testimonial from my own hand.
​And in the second place, I will be read! Yes, I will be read! I will be read by statesmen, who are obliged to pay attention to the signs of the times; by men of letters, who must also peep into the book of which so many bad things are said; by merchants, who have an interest in the coffee-auctions; by lady’s-maids, who read me for a few farthings; by Governors-General in retirement; by Ministers who have something to do; by the lackeys of these Excellencies; by mutes, who, “more majorum,” will say that I attack God Almighty, where I attack only the god which they made according to their own image; by the members of the Representative Chambers, who must know what happens in the extensive possessions over the sea, which belong to Holland. . . . .
Ay, I shall be read!
When I obtain this I shall be content. For I did not intend to write well. . . . . I wished to write so as to be heard, and, as one who cries “Stop thief!” does not care about the style of his impromptu address to the public, I too am indifferent to criticism of the manner in which I cried my “Stop thief!”——
“The book is a medley; there is no order, nothing but a desire to make a sensation. The style is bad; the author is inexperienced; no talent, no method.”. . . .
Good! good! . . . . . all very well! . . . . . but the Javanese are ill-treated!
​For, the merit of my book is this:—that refutation of its main features is impossible. And the greater the disapprobation of my book, the better I shall be pleased, for the chance of being heard will be so much the greater;—and that is what I desire.
But you, whom I dare to interrupt in your business, or in your retirement, ye Ministers and Governors-General—do not calculate too much upon the inexperience of my pen. I could exercise it, and perhaps, by dint of some exertions, attain to that skill which would make the truth heard by the people. Then I should ask of that people a place in the Representative Chambers, were it only to protest against the certificates which are given vice versa by Indian functionaries.
To protest against the endless expeditions sent, and heroic deeds performed against poor, miserable creatures, whose ill-treatment has driven them to revolt.
To protest against the cowardice of general orders, that brand the honour of the nation, by invoking public charity on behalf of the victims of inveterate piracy.
It is true those rebels were reduced by starvation to skeletons, while those pirates could defend themselves.
And if that place were refused me, . . . . if I were still disbelieved. . . .
Then I should translate my book into the few languages that I know, and the many that I yet can learn, to put ​that question to Europe, which I have in vain put to Holland.
And in every capital such a refrain as this would be heard: “There is a band of robbers between Germany and the Scheldt!”
And if this were of no avail? . . . .
Then I should translate my book into Malay, Javanese, Soondanese, Alfoer, Boegi, and Battah.
And I should sharpen Klewangs, the scimitars and the sabres, by rousing with warlike songs the minds of those martyrs whom I have promised to help——I Multatuli would do this!
Yes! delivery and help, lawfully if possible;—lawfully with violence, if need be.
And that would be very pernicious to the coffee auctions of the Dutch Trading Company!
For I am no fly-rescuing poet, no soft dreamer, like the down-trodden Havelaar, who did his duty with the courage of a lion, and endured starvation with the patience of a marmot in winter.
This book is an introduction. . . .
It shall increase in strength and sharpness of weapons, according as it may he necessary.
Heaven grant that it may not be necessary! . . . .
No, it will not be necessary! For it is to thee I dedicate my book: William the Third, King, Grand Duke, Prince, . . . more than Prince, Grand Duke and King, ​. . . .Emperor of the magnificent empire of Insulind, which winds about the equator like a garland of emeralds! . . . .
I ask Thee if it be thine Imperial will that the Havelaars should be bespattered with the mud of Slymerings and Drystubbles; and that thy more than thirty millions of Subjects far away should be ill-treated and should suffer extortion in thy name?
Edinburgh: T. Constable,
Printer to the Queen, and to the University
* ↑ In the original MS. the author wrote: “I know his successor, I know what I may expect of him.” This was changed against the will and without the knowledge of the author. We give this note with the authorization of the author.
* ↑ Literally—“For the manner in which I served.”