A tour in the Preanger: The tea gentry and their women

By Tineke Hellwig

BANDUNG (JP): Fifty-five Dutch tourists conducted tour of West Java's tea plantations in July, known as the 1995 Tea Tour. For the larger part, this group of travelers, whose ages ranged from 13 to 80 years old, consisted of descendants of the Heren van de Thee (tea gentry), as in the title of a Dutch historical novel by Hella Haasse (1992, serialized in Indonesian in the Kompas daily between September and December 1993). These people still refer to West Java as Preanger.

The children of Albertus van der Hucht (1762-1812) and Caroline van Wijnbergen (1771-1842) first came to the Dutch East Indies in the 1840s. They and their relatives became heavily involved in the cultivation of tea, and later kina and rubber, in West Java.

The 1995 Tea Tour was motivated by an interest in both family history and modern Indonesia. The family ties of the extended van der Hucht-Holle-Kerkhoven-Bosscha clan tightened when the novel Heren van de Thee turned out to be an enormous success. Print after print of this fascinating piece of fiction found its way into the Dutch bookstores, and it was widely discussed and reviewed.

The framework of this trip was to visit a number of tea plantations, previously owned by the tea gentry: Gunung Mas in Puncak; Parakan Salak, not far from Sukabumi; Malabar; Gambung and Negla, in the Pengalengan area; and Cisaruni, close to Garut. All of the plantations are now under the direction of PT Perkebunan XI-XII-XIII, the Indonesian state-owned company which is responsible for tea production and processing.

PT Perkebunan's president, R.G.S. Soeriadanoeningrat, and Sultoni Arifin, director of the Research Center for Tea and Cinchona, were the hosts of the tea tourists. They and their staff presented their Dutch guests with one highlight after another, leaving them with impressions they will never forget.

The festive dinner program at the Malabar estate was not only filled with top quality Sundanese performances by Gugum Gembira's group, Jugala, but even included a concert of the Sari Oneng gamelan ensemble, which belonged to Adriaan Holle at Parakan Salak as early as the 1850s. In 1956 the large gong of Sari Oneng was accidentally shipped to Holland, and was not returned until 1989. Nowadays, the gamelan is an exhibit at Museum Prabu Geusan Ulun, run by the Pangeran Sumedang foundation. It was a great honor for the overseas visitors that the gamelan was transported to Malabar for this occasion.

Parakan Salak was where it all started for the tea gentry. On July 4, 1844, Willem van der Hucht, thirty-one years old, obtained from the Indies government the tea contract for Parakan Salak. One-hundred-and-fifty-one years later, on exactly the same date, the tea group was warmly welcomed at the same place by directors and managers of PT Perkebunan XII. They had prepared fifty-five young damar trees to be planted by the Dutch participants, each marked with a participant's name.

Unusual event

Among the crowds of villagers who gathered for this unusual event was an old woman who had been a tea picker for Tuan (Master) Alex -- Alex Holle -- who died in 1955. A walk through the remains of the Patamon building brought various memories back to the three daughters of Marcel Huguenin, for whom this was their childhood home until 1958. They met with two former family servants, Pak (Mr.) Mad'sari and Pak Madsa'i. Madsa'i saved the life of one of the girls in her youth when she almost drowned in the swimming pool. Although she remembers the accident well, it was only on this trip that she realized who rescued her.

Somewhere behind the Patamon building members of the first generation of the van der Hucht are buried: Willem's wife Jannetje, two of their children, and his brother Jan Pieter. All four died within two years of their arrival between 1844 and 1846. The beginning was definitely not a smooth and easy one, and Willem's nephews Holle and Kerkhoven were to continue what he had started.

While the exact location of the graves at Parakan Salak is unknown, visits to four other graves made it possible to commemorate the Dutch ancestors. In Sinagar, Nagrak Utara, Pak Ujum and his daughter Sarifah take care of the grave of Eduard Julius Kerkhoven, Willem's nephew.

Eduard Julius, who managed the Sinagar tea estate, was highly unconventional in his private life. He never officially married, but that did not mean he lacked female companionship. Rumor has it that during his life he had several nyais, local women who served as both his housekeepers and concubines. Only one of them is known to us by name, the Chinese Goei La Njio, who gave birth to two daughters and one son. Those three children were acknowledged by their father and given the Kerkhoven family name.

As Eduard Julius' Dutch relatives considered his sexual behavior highly inappropriate, they hushed up his marital status in public. In spite of the stigma attaching to his nyais, the three mixed-blood children were accepted by unmarried aunts in Holland for a "proper" Dutch education and in that way were Europeanized. Eduard Jullius' son Adriaan returned to his native soil to become a successful and well-respected manager in Panumbangan.

As Adriaan kept up the taboo and never spoke openly of his mother Goei La Njio, she remains surrounded by mystery. According to the official family tree she died in Sinagar in 1871. However, Hella Haasse suggests in her novel that Goei lived much longer and left her Dutch master to marry a Chinese man. A direct descendent on the tea tour confirmed that there was all kinds of speculation circulating in the family about what happened to his Chinese great-grandmother after her liaison with Eduard Julius.

As for the other women in Eduard Julius' life, Sarifah told the tea tourists at the grave that every year people who claim to be descendants of his illegitimate children still come to visit, and she showed the group a guest book with addresses in Cibadak, Sukabumi, Depok and Jakarta. Has the time come, after so many decades in which the Dutch family felt embarrassed about Eduard Julius' sexual practices, to pay attention to the forgotten blood ties with those who stayed behind in Indonesia?

Similar rumors about nyais and illegitimate children circulate on the Malabar plantation in the Pengalengan area. Here K.A.R. Bosscha was in charge from 1896 to 1928. Bosscha, whose name is inextricably linked with the Bosscha Observatory in Lembang, was also co-founder and chairman of the Technical University in Bandung, now the Bandung Institute of Technology. Like Eduard Julius, K.A.R. never had an official spouse, but several villagers in the area claim to be descendants of the well-known juragan sepuh (senior master).

Reflecting on those colonial days in the 1990s, one wonders what made these white men so attractive that women were willing to live with them as nyais, serving them in all respects, even bearing them children out of wedlock.

Of course, local feudalistic customs justified the widespread practice in which men of wealth and high status (sultans, pangeran) picked beautiful young girls as their gundik (mistress) to keep them as long as they pleased. And, as the stories go, the girls' families even felt proud when their daughters or granddaughters were chosen by a man of power.

The white male colonizers probably looked on the local aristocrats as their role models. It was comfortable for them to have a nyai, as it meant all their needs were taken care of. Unfortunately we do not know what the women went through as they served men who were culturally and racially different. Maybe they were not as happy as their masters, being on the lower end of the power scale.

K.A.R. Bosscha's monumental grave, erected in 1928, is still in tact. Here too the tea tourists planted fifty-five trees, rasamalas this time, in a piece of forest that Bosscha wanted to be preserved.

Main characters

For her novel Hella Haasse chose Rudolf E. Kerkhoven and his wife Jenny Roosegaarde Bisschop as the main characters, and therefore Dutch readers know their personalities and inner lives best of all. At the age of eighteen Rudolf was left in the Netherlands when the rest of the family settled in the Indies where his father was to manage the tea and later cinchona estate of Arja Sari, south of Banjaran. When Rudolf had completed his university education, he too came to Java in the hope that he and his father would work together. To his disappointment this expectation was never realized. After a period of apprenticeship at Sinagar with his uncle Eduard Julius, Rudolf started his own estate in Gambung in 1874 which, at the time, consisted of overgrown neglected coffee shrubs. It was at Gambung that he raised his family of five children after he had met with and married Jenny.

Rudolf was passionate about Gambung, about his work, conquering the jungle, experimenting (successfully) with Assam tea and turning it into a flourishing business. It probably would not be too bold to state that Gambung was his first "bride" in the Indies, and that, during his married life, he maneuvered himself into a "triangular relationship" with Gambung and Jenny.

Of Jenny we know more than we do about the anonymous women in the lives of Eduard Julius Kerkhoven and K.A.R. Bosscha. The picture of her life is not a happy one, however. Jenny was born and bred in the Indies. As one of the granddaughters of Marshall Daendels, she believed that a curse rested upon her and her relatives.

The first few years of married life were peaceful and harmonious for her and Rudolf, but soon the isolation of the plantation and the pregnancies which took a toll on her body turned her into a gloomy person. Her husband's obsession with his work became a major cause of discontent for Jenny. On her return from a visit to Europe she became so depressed about living at Gambung that she took her own life at the age of 49.

Rudolf and Jenny's graves, along with one of the many governesses who were hired to teach the children, survived the destruction of World War II. Out of respect for their former tuan the local people made sure that the graves were not destroyed by the Japanese.

The marble plaques, however, had been lost over time, and new ones were affixed in a ceremony led by Marga Kerkhoven, one of their grandchildren, assisted by Gambung's current director, Dr. Sultoni Arifin. Marga spoke in both Dutch and Indonesian and addressed the spirits of her grandparents in Sundanese, a language her grandfather learned to speak well.

It was a touching moment, the more so because the tea tourists felt as if they knew Rudolf and Jenny from reading the novel. And, as Dr. Sultoni conveyed to the group, many Dutch tourists have made the pilgrimage to their graves over the past couple of years, out of sheer curiosity after having read the book. Apparently fiction appeals to the reader's imagination more than any historical study would.

The last day of the tour saw a visit to the Cisaruni plantations, previously known as Cikajang, south of Garut. For the tea clan Garut is closely associated with the figure of K.F. Holle, who started his career at Cikajang, soon to establish his own estate, Waspada.

The eldest representative of the second generation, K.F. Holle had a sincere interest in the Sundanese language and culture and made many efforts to improve the standard of living of the local population. He earned the title mitra noe tani, friend of the farmers. Not all of his Dutch relatives at the time agreed with his far-reaching concerns for the Indonesian subordinates in whom he invested much of his energy and money.

The tea tourists came to Garut with a very special request to the regent, Drs. Toharudin Gani. After K.F. Holle's death in 1896 a monument was erected in the town square. According to eye witnesses, the three-meter-tall obelisk was buried when the Japanese invaded to save it from destruction. It should still be there, under the ground, they told the regent, and the Holle family members, in particular, would be most grateful if he would have it unearthed.

Next year will be the 100th anniversary of K.F. Holle's death, they pointed out. Would it not be timely to have this historical landmark re-erected, the more so as it may become a tourist attraction in time?

Overwhelmed

After ten days of traveling the Dutch travelers felt overwhelmed by the hospitality, generosity and friendliness of their Indonesian hosts. Every activity on the program had been taken care of in all detail and had been carried out smoothly and efficiently. More than once they had asked themselves: Why are we being treated this way? Why are we welcomed with music and dances, almost like kings; or like our ancestors, the colonial rulers?

This year Indonesia celebrates its 50th anniversary of independence. The signs and decorations along the roads leave no doubt that this year's Aug. 17 was a date of utmost importance. How do Indonesians live with their colonial past? What are their views and feelings towards their former colonizers?

These questions are not easy to answer. Generally speaking, one does not notice feelings of resentment or rancor toward the Dutch, but of course there is more than the eye can see, at different levels and among different people.

As for the Tea Tour, naturally economic interests were also at work, since it represented 55 tourists from the affluent West who could afford to pump money into the tourist industry. Moreover, PT Perkebunan XI-XII-XIII is a modern company which has a product to sell: tea. Maybe among those 55 Dutch some would become new customers, promoting Preanger tea in their home country?

The tea gentry does not exist anymore: The colonial past is long gone, while R.G.S. Soeriadanoeningrat and the PT Perkebunan directors manage the plantations in a modern, business-like way. Still, their kindness and hospitality left the Dutch group with many feelings of affection toward them and towards the country in which their grandparents and great grandparents worked and lived.

The trees that were planted will, it is hoped, grow tall and strong, symbolizing an ongoing connection between the past, the present and the future.