A school for native girls had been the dream of Kartini and her sisters. With her, the idea had become almost an obsession. Her longing for education had gathered force and widened in its significance. It no longer meant the shaping of an independent career for herself, but a means to an end of work among her people.
Dr. Abendanon, in describing the first meeting with Kartini, said that when she and her sisters came forward in their picturesque native costume they made a most charming impression, but the charm was heightened when they spoke to him in fluent Dutch. Kartini said that a girls' school was the subject nearest her heart but asked that it also be a vocational school, fitting the girl for self-support should she desire it.
The influence and friendship of the Abendanons became a great comfort and support to Kartini. Mevrouw Abendanon was called Moedertje (little mother) and many letters were written to her.
Kartini was never able to go to Holland and study. Although her disappointment was intense, she became convinced that her influence among her own people would be stronger if she remained at home, free in their eyes from the possibility of contamination by foreign ideas.
Acting upon the advice of Mevrouw Abendanon, she opened a school at home for little girls. With the help of her sisters she instructed them in elementary branches, in sewing and in cooking.
At last she obtained the permission of her father to continue her own studies at Batavia. But she did not go to Batavia. Nor did she leave the house of her parents in the way that she had planned.
She fell in love like any Western girl, and was married in 1903 to Raden Adipati Djojo Adiningrat, Regent of Rembang. He had been educated in Holland, and had many enlightened ideas for the advancement of his people.
The dreams of Kartini were as his own, she had his full sympathy and their work in the future would be carried on together. Both of them were interested in the ancient history of Java, the sagas and stories of the past. They wished to make a collection of these, they also felt a warm interest in the revival of Javanese art, in wood carving, textile weaving, dyeing, work in gold and copper and tortoise shell.
After Kartini was married her little school was continued at Rembang, and some of the wood carvers who had been working under her supervision at Semarang were anxious to follow her to her new home.
"Although I am a modern woman what a strange bridal dower I shall have," she writes to Mevrouw Abendanon in discussing the plan for moving the little children she was teaching and the wood carvers to Rembang.