A shame that with this small income he straight away got engaged to a real nonna called Miss Hendrix; very soon got married and landed with his wife in a campong house. To add to the misery the woman became insane; however Agness has not been allowed to see that.
I didn’t stay long in Soerabaja; one evening I was the guest of my former doctor in Malang, Joopie Haak, who now was the directing officer of health and chief of the Hospital and that evening lots of memories from that pleasant time were brought up.
Because of the interruption of my journey I came back more than a week later in Batavia than was planned and there were piles of work waiting to be finished, whilst the case Fischer and v. Steeden demanded my personal attention; so I was extra busy in those days.
From Arnhem I did some outings to Nymegen so I could visit Mrs. de Vries; her husband had died in Genoa and his funeral just took place when I was in Paris. She had been left in very favourable financial circumstances and lived in a very beautiful house in the new part of the city.
After my trip as lover’s postman to Meppel in August 1907 I went from Deventer via Zutphen and Arnhem back home. In Zutohen I could come to the conclusion that Lotje was well housed with the cousins, at least she was cheerful and according to her own words “ very content”, a shame that this favourable situation only lasted a short time, because one fine day Betsy Kerlen came purpusely to the Hague to ask me to take Lotje as soon as possible away from her sisters because lately she was unmanageable and depressing to the nervous system of the three sisters. So Lotje came home again and we had to look for another board for her once again.
On the 3rd day the planned boattour through the canal started already at 8 o’clock and we stopped after an hour steaming at a large flour factory of which the inspection took nearly 2 hours; the factory was situated on both sides of that canal, the machines on the left banks and the storage sheds on the right banks, alongside of which the railway traffic ran. The transport of the bags with flour was run along a conveyer belt next to which was a footpath so one could keep an eye on the belt; we were invited along this path to follow the belt and were very surprised to be on the top story of the storage sheds, a remarkable realisation.
During those days my in besan v.Z.Jut had to go to Holland for good because of illness; in the Indies he already had gone through an operation on his liver which left him with a fistula.
The management in de Witte had laid up a large quantity of firewood, for which even a couple of warehouses on the Korte Vijverberg were rented; this did’t mean that they shouldn’t be economical with the supply and not start the central heating before November; when we had repeatedly freezing weather in October, we couldn’t even play billiards then.
The wedding took place on the 18th September at the Townhall here and was followed by a lunch in our house, after which the just married couple left for their honeymoon to Valkenburg in Limburg.The day was spoiled by Henri, who fell ill and after the ceremony at the Townhall went straight to Delft to bed, he had contracted angina badly and it left him with rheumatoid pains, of which he still suffered for some time.
We were sitting at the table with more than 400 guests and it was noticeable, that the service in this large restaurant was so bad; namely that it took more than 45 mins before all guests were served wine. When this was done they painted the town and tongues were wagging. Many members came out quite eloquently, but the after mobilisation so tastelessly discharged Commander in Chief of Army and Navy General Snijder bore the palm. He, who in 1877 served under me as lieutenant, held such a brilliant clear as glass speech, that everyone became speechless; this again warmed my militairy heart.
She stayed with her former landlady and in 1923 could get a month’s holiday at our house in the Laan van Meerdervoort, from where she also paid a visit to Mrs. Verwey ( formerly Mrs. Koot ) in Leimuiden. She knew how to behave herself so well that with Christmas at the instance of Dr. Sano she could get leave again to be present at the party which Johan gave in the Laan van Oldenbarneveldt.
I now noticed that the 2nd operation was much more serious than the 1st one. With much more care I was taken w to my room and put in my bed, whilst my right eye was covered up and they urged me to stay on my back and not to move at all. I wasn’t allowed to have any visitors for the first few days, on the third day only Carey or Piet were allowed to come and look for a moment; lucky no complications occurred and the situation improved all the time and I was allowed to receive visitors the first few days sitting in bed and quite soon sitting at the table; however I was not allowed to move my head and every time I was being fed by nurse Hazewinkel, a cousin of the surgeon.She was a big woman, who in all views took very good care and after about 8 days let me have a nice bath..
These small pictures were in stereo, taken by Opa Kerlen with a special tool/camera. They are not sharp at all when enlarged, so here they are in their original format.
In 1923 Opa and Oma were on leave in the Netherlands and Opa decided to hire a boat so his sons and cousins could make a 14 day trip over some Dutch lakes and canals. He had promised Hans this for some time.
From the book I quote:
Over the last few days I’ve been popping “Kerlen” into browsers and a myriad of Genealogy sites in the hope of finding more Kerlens, more information, anything! I started at the most logical place. The top of our known family tree. There’s not much around about Gerard Kerlen. It’s like he just appeared from nowhere and decided that Zutphen was the place he’d like to live and start off a family called Kerlen.
Copied from J.G. Kerlen’s memoirs:
Boy does this family like their “Js” and “Gs”! The especially like the combination JGK. In the picture above there are three Kerlens with these initials. My dad, my eldest son and I all carry these initials.
On 15th November 1890 my grandmother Carolina Juliana was born in Rotterdam. When she was a little girl her parents took her to the D.E.I. They lived in Semarang. When she was 19 years old she met my grandfather Johan and in March 1911 they got married there.
My grandparents Johannes Kerlen and Johanna van Weel moved from the Dutch East Indies to The Netherlands for a short while (about two years) and finally moved to South Africa in 1960. Their first house was on 2nd Avenue in Linden, Johannesburg and then moved to 84 1st Street Linden. They lived in the house until Oma’s death in 2010.
I’ve been casually researching the family name for a long time. Whilst randomly searching the internet for the name Kerlen I came across this little village/hamlet in France called Kerlen. You’ll notice from the screenshot that several other nearby places start with “Ker”. I am led to believe that this may mean “House”. I vaguely remember coming across something once that explained that Kerlen meant: House of Len.
There is a French connection to the Kerlen family. Apparently it is a French Hugenot name. An anecdotal tale from my Opa to my mother explains that Kerlen is a derivative of another similar French name. How true that is I don’t know.