The Project Gutenberg EBook of Small Souls, by Louis Couperus

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Title: Small Souls

Author: Louis Couperus

Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

Release Date: October 2, 2010 [EBook #34021]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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SMALL SOULS

BY

LOUIS COUPERUS

Author of "The Footsteps of Fate," etc.

TRANSLATED BY

ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1914

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

This story is translated from the Dutch of Louis Couperus, the foremost
novelist in a country which has lately had the good sense to join the
Berne Convention. Friends who have seen my version in manuscript suggest
to me that certain details of the action and dialogue strike an exotic
note to English ears and may therefore need some interpretation. But I
could not bring myself to burden a work of fiction with an array of
foot-notes nor to believe that it is really necessary to explain to
readers of Couperus' fellow-countryman, "Maarten Maartens," that Dutch
men and women of the upper classes still call their parents "Papa" and
"Mamma," as the English did in the sixties, and still drink tea after
dinner, as the English did in the forties; that, in Holland, persons of
quality are not addressed by their titles in conversation; that it is
not quite correct, or that it is at least a departure from the
aristocratic tradition, for a lady of family _not_ to wash up her own
breakfast-china at the table; that the Dutch speak of Java as India and
sometimes marry native wives, who, _nihilo obstante_, are "received" by
the "family" at home.

I have done my best, by a complicated and perhaps only partly successful
system of italics, hyphens and dots, to render the various
eccentricities of speech of Cateau van Lowe, Adolphine van Saetzema and
Aunt Ruyvenaer. The few Malay words employed by the last-named, by Otto
van Naghel's wife and by her native nurse are explained in notes as and
when they occur.

_Small Souls_ is the first of a series of four novels describing the
fortunes of t