From a wedding comes a wedding; same story here: for some time de Jongh had already madly fallen in love with my favourite sister Mina and for a long time didn’t have any success, probably because as a jealous brother I adviced her against it every time.
Every Wednesday I was used to play, when my parents were with the family Muzerie, a party quadrille and stay at home with Mina. We made music then and I treated us with a stone bottle of punch, which we could buy for 40 cents in those days; clearly I couldn’t stand the company of the stiff man from Brabant and Mina knew to organise that the guy went out.
Well it seems that on the wedding day of Cato he knew to manipulate Mina’s heart in such a way, that she finally gave him the “yes” word and I had to greet him the next day as my next brother in law. To my regret he didn’t shift and I had to share my room with him till the end.
A short time before my departure to Indie my mother’s friend Diepenheim came back as retired Director of Finances; my father wanted me to be introduced to him in order to obtain introductions to families on Java. So with my father I then paid a visit to his furnished quarters in the Spuistraat and after my father told him the purpose of his visit the tall and stately old man asked me if I as engineer officer wouldn’t know how to go through the world on my own two legs; to my confirming answer he replied: then you don’t need any introduction of me.
Afterwards he did write about me though and so has been helpful to me, as I later on in Indie found out.
My last happy days were those of the Hague’s fair wich nowadays already belongs to history. A short description may follow here:
Along both sides of the Lange Voorhout, on the Plein and on the Buitenhof all kinds of stalls were erected; merry-go-rounds, plays and horsegear; in the stalls anything was for sale, like poffertjes, wafflefritters, griddle cake, fancy goods, jewellery, Tyrol gloves etc. too much to specify completely. All day long a stream of people was walking around and it seemed like everyone wanted to spend their last 10cents.
footnote: poffertjes are mini pancakes, made with yeast and so will rise, butter and icing sugar on top.
People drank a great deal in the Haagsche Bosch it was a true orgy at times. Still, it was possible to enjoy oneself in a proper way and with a small group of youngsters I definitely enjoyed myself. Each of us took a girlfriend along and I had as Dulcinea Marie Roermeester. The pleasures at the fair have costed me a fair amount and had torn a big hole in the second part of the still to be received wages, but who cares!
I had agreed with my parents that I would send them 40 guilders a month so they could pay off the debts I had left behind, on top of which the sum of 400 guilders for the piano I had bought; as soon as everything had been paid they were allowed to keep the money themselves.
We had agreed to the purchase of this piano since music had become a kind of passion to me; at the commencement of the French opera season I had taken a subscription for 30 guilders and so for little money I saw the whole repertoire of that year’s particularly good company; I bought the music of the beautiful aria’s; sometimes even a whole score and practices constantly, so that I even could play a whole lot of operamusic by heart, something which has given me a lot of pleasure later on.
Before I get off the chapter “fair’ I would just like to show how the relationship to my father was; we sat with our little group at the fritter stall of Lypn, when we made the plan also go to the latest show of the circus; so I just went home to aks for the frontdoor key; this was plainly refused by my father and after a heavy discussion I did decide to go back to the group.
I rowed on that night with my friends and we closed off in the early hours of the morning with a cup of coffee at the Rhynspoor station ( nowadays S.S. ).
Lajin dholo lajin sekarang; nowadays people do give the frontdoor key to their children, even to the housemaid.
A few days after the fiar I had to leave my parent’s home to depart for Harderwijk to be incorportated with the detachment supply troops, which was supposed to sail away on 25th May from Nieuwdiep.
footnote:
Malay meaning:difference between then and now.
The afternoon of my departure was very sad, my fahter was very quiet, my mother and sisters continuesly in tears; especially my younger sister Sophie, a TB like creature, couldn’t control herself. I had great difficulty to compose myself and was glad when this came to and end and I could go to the Rhynspoor station under the sole guidance of my adspirant brother in law de Jongh. There was only one girl of our club at the station, namely Marie Bals Brega; who, although she had a limp, still married an East Indian civil servant and whom I later met as the wife of a resident.
The farewell with de Jongh was obviously extremely calm and we parted as good friends, the train departed and I stood on my own two legs.