Carrying a commission from the weekly de Haagsche Post, the famous author Louis Couperus embarked on a journey to the Dutch East Indies, China and Japan in 1921. As the paper’s ‘special correspondent’, he was to write over forty travel letters about the Dutch colony in southeast Asia, to be printed in the magazine on a weekly basis. In 1923 his Indies travel letters were published and marketed in a collection entitled Oostwaarts (Eastwards). Set on great luxury, Couperus stipulated the then astronomical amount of thirty thousand guilders as his fee and coverage of travelling expenses, both for himself and for his wife Elisabeth Couperus-Baud, who accompanied him. In his travel letters, Couperus presents himself as a ‘tourist’, complete with all the attendant stereotypical connotations this carries (such as his ‘guileless naivete’). A ‘fully fledged’ tourist Couperus was not, however. That appellation is usually reserved for travellers who have earned at home the money they spend during their travels.
The writer Louis Couperus, his wife Elisabeth Couperus-Baud and Adriana Westenenk-Nering posing with some indigenous children at Lake Toba in Sumatra. [KITLV 19685]