Letters of a Javanese Princess

by Raden Adjeng Kartini

In the beginning we made the stupidest mistakes, but we have improved slowly and we feel in fine good humour. Roekmini declared once that she had dreamed in French, she was with Chateaubriand and in Louisiana, the beautiful country of which he wrote.

The French language has many resemblances to ours, and the "h" is exactly like ours. Our new friend said to her husband, "They are anxious to learn languages, how glad I should be to teach them myself."

Yesterday I received a letter from her; it was twenty pages long. She wrote so affectionately and said that she felt that she would see us again. "Trust to the future," she wrote. And I will trust, so long as I know that I have you and her on my side. Her letter made me ashamed just as yours do; you and she think too well of me.

And yet, Stella, life is so full, of riddles and of secrets. Human beings are subject to change and it is not always from feeble character. Circumstances can come into life, which in the twinkling of an eye will turn a hero into a coward. Do not judge any deed, never mind how base it may appear, till you know all the causes which lead to it.

I have experienced much in these last days, many different emotions. First I was almost in despair because my dream of freedom seemed to lie deeply buried in the ground.

Then the friends from Batavia came and such happiness came over me that it overwhelmed me; I was as though intoxicated! and then I was frightened and awakened by a pain so heavy that I thought I should not be able to breathe; that was not on account of myself, but of another whom I love with my whole soul.

Why must happiness and misery follow one another so quickly?

Poor dear Father, he has suffered so much, and life still brings him new disappointments. Stella, my Father has no one but his children. We are his joy, his consolation, his all. I love my freedom, the idea is always with me and the fate of my sisters goes to my heart; I would be ready for any sacrifice by which good could come to them. I should only look on it as happiness—the greatest happiness that could ever come to me in life. But my Father is dearer to me than all these put together.

Stella, call me a coward, call me weak, for I cannot be anything else; if Father is set against this dedication of myself, never mind how my heart may cry out, I shall hold it still.

I have not the courage to wound that true heart that beats so warmly for me, and to make it bleed again; for it has bled all too much already and I myself have not been altogether without guilt.