"It is the North which has introduced tight-fitting clothes and high houses." Thus Taine, as, in the streets of Pompeii, he gazed at nobly-planned peristyle and graceful arch, at godlike figures shining from frescoed walls, and, with the vision of that fair, free, large life of antiquity, contrasted the Paris apartment from which he was but newly escaped, and the dress-coat which he had worn at the last social function. And a similar reflection crosses the Northerner's mind when he looks upon a house in Batavia.
I am aware that Pompeii and Batavia, pronounced in one breath, make a shrieking discord, and that, between a homely white-washed bungalow, and those radiant mansions which the ancients built of white marble and blue sky, the comparison must seem preposterous. And, yet, no one can see the two, and fail to make it. The resemblance is too striking. The flat roof, the pillared entrance, the gleam of the marble-paved hall, whose central arch opens on the reposeful shadow of the inner chambers, all these features of a classic dwelling are recognized in a Batavia house. Evidently, too, this resemblance is not the result of mere mechanical imitation. There are a consistency and thoroughness in the architecture of these houses, a harmony with the surrounding landscape, which stamp it as an indigenous growth, the necessary result of the climate, and the mode of life in Java, just as classic architecture was the necessary result of the climate and the mode of life in Greece and Italy. If the two styles are similar, it is because the ideas which inspired them are not so vastly different. After all, in a sunny country, whether it be Europe or Asia, the great affair of physical life is to keep cool, and the main idea of the architect, in consequence, will be to provide that coolness. It is this which constitutes a resemblance between countries in all other respects so utterly unlike as Greece and Java, and the difference between these and Northern Europe. In the North, the human habitation is a fortress against the cold; in the South and the East, it is a shelter from the heat.
There is no need here of thick walls, solid doors, casements of impermeable material, all the barricades which the Northerner throws up against the besieging elements. In Italy, as in Greece, Nature is not inimical. The powers of sun, wind, and rain are gracious to living things, and under their benign rule man lives as simply and confidingly as his lesser brethren, the beasts of the fields and forests and the birds of the air. He has no more need than they to hedge in his individual existence from the vast life that encompasses it. His clothes, when he wears them, are an ornament rather than a protection, and his house a place, not of refuge, but of enjoyment, a cool and shadow spot, as open to the breeze as the forest, whose flat spreading branches, supported on stalwart stems, seem to have been the model for its column-borne roof.
"Compound" of a Batavia house.
The Batavia house, then, is built on the classic plan. Its entrance is formed by a spacious loggia, raised a few steps above the level ground, and supported on columns. Thence, a door, which stands open all day long, leads into a smaller inner hall, on either side of which are bedrooms, and behind this is another loggia—even more spacious than the one forming the entrance of the house—where meals are taken and the hot hours of the day are spent. Generally, a verandah runs around the whole building, to beat off both the fierce sunshine of the hot, and the cataracts of rain of the wet, season. Behind the house is a garden, enclosed on three sides by the buildings containing the servants' quarters, the kitchen and store rooms, the bath-rooms, and stables. And, at some distance from the main building and connected with it by a portico, stands a pavilion, for the accommodation of guests;—for the average Netherland-Indian is the most hospitable of mortals, and seldom without visitors, whether relatives, friends, or even utter strangers, who have come with an introduction from a common acquaintance in Holland.
It takes some time, I find, to get quite accustomed to this arrangement of a house. In the beginning of my stay here, I had an impression of always being out of doors and of dining in the public street, especially at night, when in the midst of a blaze of light one felt oneself an object of attention and criticism to every chance passer-by in the darkness without. It was as bad as at the ceremonious meals of the Kings of France, who had their table laid out in public, that their faithful subjects might behold them at the banquet, and, one supposes, satisfy their own hunger by the Sovereign's vicarious dining.