20, July 1937
Dear Abby:
Blessings on you for your good letter of June 10th which came yesterday, and I shall show my pleasure by answering it immediately, but it means a 10 weeks lull between times; yours was 39 days by date, but I can't make out the postmark. Yesterday was a good bag - letters from Eva with enclosures from Fred, Laura and Lenette (an account of the Centennial from the Alumna point of view), a letter from Fredda (mostly department affairs and plans for next year), one from Kathleen, and one from my Chicago friend, Mrs. Laing. They are not all being answered today.
So many changes at M.H.C. It will be worse than when I was away for two years. And such a sad year - deaths and departtures. I was much interested in the Chalmers move and Mary Ashby's new honors and position. I used to hear a great deal about Kenyon when I lived in Ohio. Some of the boys I knew went to Kenyon Military Academy which grew into a college some years ago - it has had plenty of time since my youth.
(My typing is more than usually bad - so is Corona; it is protesting about over-work in its old age; it wants sometimein the pasture. It also ought to be humored with a new ribbon. But do forgive it all, and know that I know it is bad.)
I arrived in Java June 11th, a day late, but that was not bad when we left Calcutta a week late, to my great pleasure, so that I had come [sic] time in Darjeeling and Kalimpong after the trek. It is so good to be here again, and although there are very few who were here when I was here in 1931, and no one whom I really knew except Mr, van Woerden at Tjibodas, I am very happy and having a beautiful time. I ought to be lonesome, but I am not; I am enjoying my work too much for that. It is lovely to work without distractions - no committees, no classes, no interruptions, no diversions or anything at all. My work is very interesting; I am all "het up" over filmy ferns. I never intended to work on them when I was here before, but I am deep in it now and find there is much to do. So says Professor von Goebel, and he was dead right. How I do wish he was still alive; he died two or three years ago at the age of 79 - and I never saw him, but had such nice letters from him.
At first I worked on the ferns I brought from India and found them, especially the one I got at Vellore when I went to see Wellsey, very interesting - most unusual; then I started some cultures from the garden here and then June 30th went to Tjibodas for 6 days. Tjibodas is the mountain laboratory, 1 1/2 hours by motor, and at an altitude of 4500 ft. where it is pleasantly cool.
(It is not bad here - warm at mid-day but cool enough for a cotton blanket at night - nothing like Madras at this season.) Such wonderful forests and a coolie to go with me and show me the path, carry the vasculum, and cut a path through the jungle where needed with his vicious knife! Such filmy ferns, tree ferns, all sorts of epiphytes, and trees so high that it cricked my neck to try to seem the tops and yet stay near enough to see the tree, a few orchids but not as many as in Sikkim!
It was good to see Mr. van Woerden again, such a nice young Hollander (her [sic] has been out 10 years) with a delightful wife; he speaks English but not fluently and she not at all so we talked German and my German is schlect and I have no grammar when I am trying to think how to say what I want to say. Mr. van Woerden has dropped the word "holen" from his English vocabulary; I quite missed it.
Mr. van Woerden escorted me up the Gedah on a trip of a day and a half, an ascent of 3500 ft. in a walk of 10 miles on a lovely wood road and path; it took us just under four hours and we arrived at 11:55; had lunch, rested and then went collecting for two hours - wonderful collecting ground for ferns at Lebak Saat. We stayed in the little rest house with one room fitted up for a laboratory - each of us in our little cubicle at night sleeping on the floor on a mattress - the two coolies carried the bedding, food clothing and collections. We really needed two but Mr. Boudijn said always took two whether he needed them or not as one coolie was afraid alone.
We saw panther tracks - the only large animal still extant on the Gedeh - and I asked if there was any danger, not that I was timid merely prudent. Mr. van Woerden said we would make a big noise if one appeared and he flapped his arms to demonstrate part of the treatment. I am rather sorry that we had no chance to try his technique. There used to be rhinoceros there, and Kandang Badek, the saddle between the Gedeh and the Pangrango, means Rhinoceros House; it is a three-minutes walk from Lebak Saat.
We lived out of tin cans at Lebak Saat - Huts pot mit spek; Sauerkool, etc. We did have a piece of a roast chicken and some fresh fruit as well as a tin of logan berries and a tin of jam.
Mr. van Woerden has done so much since I was there before and he knows where to find almost everything, but we went a place he had never been, hunting for a fern for me - that was where we saw the tracks.
At Tjibodas I went out just with the coolie, and there was the language question. I am becoming profieicnt [sic] in sign language - I call it proficient when I can indicate what stage of fern I want. I was hunting for both early and late stages of Marattia (late for me and early for Professor Thomson of Toronto). At first the coolie would look for only late stages - that was my usual collection - and as the plants were on a very steep slope I was glad to have help in inspecting the plants, but I finally demonstrated a fern leaf unrolling and he got the idea. I was tempted to sit on the ground and do it as we did once in a class in "interpretive dancing" at M.H.C., but I restrained myself; I was afraid he would think it a Water Lily, or that I was ill, or be too diverted to hunt. I can also demonstrate toast; you may remember that there is no toast with a Dutch breakfast, and I had no one to tell the cook at Tjibodas except in between times when I saw Mr. van Woerden.
Since I cam [sic] back from Tjibodas I have been as busy as a hive of bees making cultures and examining them. I must have nearly 60 going now, but some of them - most of them are for present use, just for early stages. My lovely basket which Mrs. Thivy gave me for carrying my ferns would be totally inadequate for my present collection, and no ship bed would be large enough to accomodate them by day. I doubt if I can carry more than 30. I bought some new petri dishes, 8 cm, diam so that they would take less space when travelling, and paid $.75 apiece - I think that is about twice what they would be in America. The working day is from 7 to 2, but I can never get there earlier than 7:30 and often it is 7:45, but I always stay until 2 or 2:15, being refreshed by a cup of coffee at 11 and perhaps a banana then or later.
The last week I have been going back in the afternoon, which is heresy. One of my companions in the laboratory works in the afternoon, Mr. Duyfjes, as he had only a month's holiday from his teaching in Samarang (central Java, north). There are only four of us, the other two being Mr. Rant, an elderly man who is much of an invalid and works 8 to 11 only; and the Acting Chief of the Laboratory, Miss Reijkebush. Miss Reijkebush, Mr. Duyfjea and I form the Coffee Club and Miss R. does the work. We take little or no time off to eat, so busy are we. It is such a nice laboratory and I have everything I need. Now if my ferns only grow properly!!!
The Hymenophyllums and Trichomanes (the filmy ferns) and [sic] quick in the early stages, so they keep me on the jump, but slow up later and may take 4-5 years to mature. I am the right age for such a piece of work - old enough to know that five years are not long.
My laboratory companions are very pleasant and I enjoy them; they all speak English but are rather slow at understanding and it cramps my style - I much check my natural pace considerably. They have very little practice in hearing English in Java.
In the afternoon after the hearty Dutch lunch, the proper thing is to sleep; I rest but seldom sleep; then tea at 4 - tea and no food. Then if it is not too hot I take a walk either in the gardens or exploring Buitenzorg which is considerable of a place and I have not yet walked all over it. I devote my evenings to Botany and German, usually the combination as much that I want to read is in German, but I also have Miss MacDougall's copy of the Oxford Book of German Verse. Dinner is at 8. I have eaten every meal alone since I came to Java except when I was on the Gedeh with Mr. van Woerden, and several meals which I ate with a young woman from Batavia who was also at the Rest House part of the time I was in Tjibodas.
It is so queer to be in a place where I speak no language of the country. Even the hotel proprietor speaks no English and we have to talk German together; his wife speaks a little but she prefers to talk German with me. I know no news - reading with a dictionary is difficult. I am developing skill at guessing the foods on the menu. It is a very pleasant hotel with excellent food. I would get fat if I ate the "gek. aardappelen" which appear usually twice a day and are eaten in quantity by most of the Dutch, but I can resist them. The lunch and dinner are built on the same principal and equally heavy - plenty of meat foods and gek aardappelen, but there is always enough without the latter so I skip them. We have Reijst-tafel only on Sunday, alas, but such a meal as it is!!!! I usually do sleep Sunday as a result, perhaps.
The hotel has a main building and a series of one-story rooms with verandahs, or rather a long row of rooms opening onto a long verandah which has partitions about 6 ft. high. The verandahs are our living-rooms. My desk, and desk chair, my small table and 2 easy chairs are on the verandah. It is a very pleasant system. My next door neighbor is a botanist at the Proefstation and is working on Amorphophallus, an Arum in which I became interested in Sikkim. Mr. Wit. He has just acquired a bird as Mr. Wit's hopes - that it will make the seeds germinate, a thign which they have been refusing to do.
I wonder if I may hope to hear from you again. I shall have a long lean season when I leave Java, probably Aug. 13th from Sourabaya. I run on a close margin in getting back, but why worry - I shall catch up wome [sic] time. Fredda write[s] enthusiastically about the substitute for her work - Miss Geraldine Whiting who is to live in Dickinson House. We are due in Los Angeles Sept. 17th and they say they are not likely to be late, and might even be early. It is the M.V. (not S.S.) SILVERWILLOW of the Silver Java Line, and if I need to know anything special please write me there. I presume Mr. Ham will think me an irresponsible person, if he has any occasion to think of me.
Some one was good enough to send me the Holyoke Transcripts of May 7,8, and I read every word except the names of all of the delegates.
To think of having a wedding in the department - no, we never did, not yet .... My birthday had no celebration, not even an orange squirt. I shall have it when I return, after the habit of royalty, but there will be no strawberry shortcake. Eva will come to S.H. in September.
But enough of this rambling on .. it was so good to hear from you. I am not at all lonely here, but I would enjoy a proper companion, yes, I would. Love to you and Charlotte, and others at your discretion,
