Mr. C. Graadt van Roggen was a Dutch jurist and journalist, editor of the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, who in February 1933 met the ophthalmologist Dr. J. Tijssen aboard the steamer Baloeran of the Rotterdamsche Lloyd and wrote from their conversations the three letters on Tijssen’s work in the kampongs of Atjeh which were reprinted in 1934 as Een strijd in Atjeh (1934). He died shortly afterwards, and the pamphlet was published in part as an act of remembrance for him.
Life
He was twenty-eight years old at the time of the voyage. He had worked for a short period as a journalist in the Indies and was returning to his former function, an editorship at the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant. Wanting, his editor, described him in the foreword as “de 28-jarige mr. C. Graadt van Roggen” and as “den jongen vurigen idealist.”
Half a year after the shipboard meeting the mourners stood at Westerveld about his bier. Many expressions of the most intimate sympathy had come in, Wanting recorded, from that Indies where he had lived and worked so very, very briefly. “In dien korten tijd had Indië de liefde van zijn jong warm hart veroverd en Indië had dat gevoeld.” — In that short time the Indies had conquered the love of his young warm heart, and the Indies had felt it. With his receptive temper and quick intellect he had entered into that world, bewildering for a newcomer, and when he was back in the Netherlands his stories about the Indies were “een en al gloed.”
The letters
The three letters were datelined a/b. „Baloeran”, Februari 1933. The doctor had come aboard at Belawan, had played bridge with the English planter’s wife from Malakka, and had spent his mornings in the writing saloon filling great sheets. One afternoon his glass stood beside the journalist’s, and the conversation began.
Wanting characterised the resulting text as showing first the journalist and second the man: the conscientious journalist never for a moment forgets that it is not he who is speaking, and renders what is told as objectively as possible, yet the artistic writer cannot so far deny himself but that he gives the story relief and life by small telling particulars that lend it “een ongewone frissche charme.”
The letters were written under the pressure of the mail schedule: the ship was passing Suez, the passengers had won the sweepstake with a camel that plodded along the canal, and the letter had to be finished at Port-Saïd for the air mail at Caïro. “Dus snel, dokter, wij moeten verder.”
The closing scepticism
The passage of the letters most quoted by Wanting is Graadt van Roggen’s reflection on whether Tijssen’s cause could find a hearing: “Wanneer ik hem hoor praten, moet ik glimlachen. Zou het eenvoudig vertellen van dezen man niets vermogen voor zijn doel? Zou het werk zelf niet spreken voor hem? Ik heb hem dat vertrouwen niet volkomen kunnen geven, geloof ik, tusschen Colombo en Port Said. Misschien dat Holland het kan, dat er onder mijn lezers zijn, die het kunnen tusschen den Helder en Maastricht?” — When I hear him talk, I must smile. Would the simple telling of this man avail nothing for his object? Would the work itself not speak for him? I have not been able, I believe, to give him that confidence completely, between Colombo and Port Said.
Wanting found this light scepticism from so young a mouth “ietwat beschamend voor ons levenden en ouderen,” — somewhat shaming for us living and older people, and observed that Graadt van Roggen himself would have wished nothing better than that its groundlessness should appear.
See Also
- J. Tijssen
- H. Wanting
- Een strijd in Atjeh (1934)
- Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant
- Baloeran
- Vereeniging SIMAVI
- Belawan
- 1933
- 1934
Source
Een strijd in Atjeh (Een oogarts op het oorlogspad), door Mr. C. Graadt van Roggen, met een voorrede van den heer H. Wanting, redacteur Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg, uitgave van de Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934), pp. 1–2, 3–16.
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Een strijd in Atjeh (Een oogarts op het oorlogspad) by Mr. C. Graadt van Roggen (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg for the Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.