THE STORY OF MY STRUGGLES
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
ARMINIUS VAMBÉRY:
His Life and Adventures.
Imperial 16mo, cloth, 6s. Boys' Edition, crown 8vo, cloth gilt,
gilt edges, 5s.
THE STORY OF HUNGARY.
Fully Illustrated. Large crown 8vo, cloth, 5s. (THE STORY OF THE
NATIONS SERIES.)
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN.
[Illustration: PROFESSOR VAMBÉRY AT THE AGE OF 70
(_Photo by Strelisky._)]
THE STORY OF MY STRUGGLES
THE MEMOIRS OF ARMINIUS VAMBÉRY
PROFESSOR OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGES
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BUDAPEST
VOLUME I
[Illustration: Logo]
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE . 1904
(_All rights reserved._)
Preface
Authors of Autobiographies are much exposed to fall into
self-glorification. If I nevertheless have undertaken to write the
following pages, I have done so because of the unexpectedly favourable
criticism which the first two chapters of my book--_Life and Adventures
of Arminius Vambéry, Written by Himself_--met with in England and in
America. In this book I tried to lay before the public an account of
such travels and wanderings of mine as were not comprised in my first
book on Central Asia, and in addition I thought it advisable to give a
few outlines of my juvenile adventures and struggles. Strange to say it
was the narrative of the latter which elicited the particular interest
of my readers, as I noticed from the many letters I received from the
most distant parts of Europe and America.
Well, I said to myself, if such short sketches of my curious career have
evoked this interest on the part of my readers, what will be the
impression if I draw the picture of my whole life and of all the
vicissitudes I went through from my childhood to my present old age?
This is the main reason of the issue of the present volumes. Keeping in
mind the Oriental proverb, "To speak of his own self is the business of
the Shaitan," I have reluctantly touched upon many topics connected with
my personality, but events are mostly inseparable from actors, and
besides I have found encouragement in recalling the appreciation Britons
and Americans are habitually ready to accord to the career of self-made
men.
There are besides other motives which have served as incentives to these
pages. The various stages of my life have been passed in various
countries and societies, and a personal record of men and events dating
from half a century back may not be without interest to the present
generation. Unchecked by conventional modesty and false shame, I have
related all I went through in plain and unadorned words, and if I have
not concealed facts relating to my very humble origin and to the
mistakes I committed, neither have I thought it necessary to leave
unmentioned the result of my labours and the honours entailed by them.
It is now forty years ago since I had first the honour of coming before
the British public, and my desire to be thoroughly known by it may be
pardoned.
A. VAMBÉRY.
Contents
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
MY ANTECEDENTS AND INFANCY 1
CHAPTER II.
JUVENILE STRUGGLES 33
CHAPTER III.
THE PRIVATE TUTOR 69
CHAPTER IV.
MY FIRST JOURNEY TO THE EAST 105
CHAPTER V.
MY SECOND JOURNEY TO THE EAST 161
CHAPTER VI.
THE RETURN TO EUROPE 203
Illustrations
PROFESSOR VAMBÉRY AT THE AGE OF SEVENTY _Frontispiece_
PROFESSOR VAMBÉRY IN HIS EIGHTEENTH YEAR _Facing page 35_
My Antecedents and Infancy
CHAPTER I
MY ANTECEDENTS AND INFANCY
"_Cogito ergo sum!_" Yes, I am here, but the date of my birth I cannot
positively state, as I have no means of ascertaining it. I had the
problematic good fortune to be born of Jewish parents, and as at that
time the Jews in Hungary were not compelled by law to be regularly
registered, and the authorities were satisfied with such scanty
information as the parish documents afforded, I have not been able to
get any official certificate as to the date of my birth. My mother told
me that I was born shortly before my father's death on St. Joseph's Day,
and as my father was one of the last victims of the cholera which began
to scourge the land in 1830, I cannot be far wrong in giving the year of
my birth as 1831 or 1832.
Genealogy not being one of my favourite subjects, I will not trouble the
reader with a detailed account of my pedigree. As far as I know, my
great-great-grandfather came from the worthy little town of Bamberg, and
when the Emperor Joseph II. commanded his Jewish subjects to take a
surname, my grandfather, who was born in Hungary, took the name of the
town of his ancestors, and was entered as Bamberger. As time went on the
"B" was changed into "W," and my father wrote his name as Wamberger,
although he made but little use of this registered name, for in those
days the Orthodox Jews followed the Oriental custom, according to which
the father's name is the one generally used, and the family name is
merely of official importance. My father was not only a devout Jew, but
also a distinguished Talmudist who often spent whole days and nights in
study, without troubling himself much about mundane affairs. Religious
zeal and love of learning are the two powerful levers of this especially
Jewish erudition, and its disciples who regard intellectual and
religious attainments as one and the same thing necessarily live in a
visionary world into which none but theologians of Asiatic creeds can
penetrate, and which has long since been closed to Christian divines,
whose doctrines are so permeated with scepticism. According to my
mother's saying, my father must have caught this fever of fanatical
enthusiasm in his early youth. In ordinary life he was diffident and
awkward, and when he came to woo her in her father's house at
Lundenburg, in Moravia, his appearance had caused much secret amusement
to the girls of the Malavan family. But my mother, a beautiful girl of
eighteen, had soon taken a liking to the bashful young scholar, who had
bright eyes and pleasant features to recommend him. She had been brought
up by a stepmother, and from her earliest youth had tasted many a time
from the bitter cup of life. She hoped to find happiness at the side of
an earnest and religious-minded man, and so easily yielded to the
persuasions of her Orthodox father, and left her home and her birthplace
to follow the Talmudist, of whom as yet she knew but little, into
Hungary to the town of St. Georghen, in the Presburger county, where my
father, as a native of the place, hoped to get the appointment of
under-rabbi.
But, as is only too well known, theologians of all times and religions
have always evinced an unconquerable hatred, jealousy, and bitterness
towards men of their own profession, and the darts thrown by the
religious zealot are known to be far more venomous than those of the
hunter after worldly treasures. The Talmudists of St. Georghen, whose
number must of necessity have been very limited, were not exempt from
this vice, and as my father's quiet, modest nature could not cope with
his antagonists, the hope of preferment vanished more and more into the
background, and the darkened horizon of the poor man's future was now
only illumined by the steady glimmer of his enthusiasm for his studies.
While musing and speculating upon the intricacies of the Mishna and
Gemara, the good man quite forgot that the modest dowry which my mother
had brought with her could not last for ever, and was not inexhaustible
like the bottomless discussions and arguments of his favourite study,
and that in order to live one had to look beyond the world of books into
the busy market-place of everyday life. Soon my mother had to rouse him
to the realisation of this cruel necessity. She was fully aware of the
gravity of the situation, and all the ways and means by which the clever
but young and inexperienced woman had tried to ward off the evil day
proved fruitless. At one time she advised her husband to commence a
fruit and corn business, then they tried to keep a public-house, but
when everything failed the pious Talmudist was forced to become a
hawker, and buying the agricultural products from the farmers in the
neighbouring villages to try to sell them again at a small profit. What
terrible martyrdom this must have been to the inspired Talmudist--to
leave his study and his books and to go hawking among the raw Slavonic
peasants of the neighbourhood! What self-sacrifice, to leave the
multi-coloured, visionary fields of "Halacha" and "Hagada," and to
descend to the vulgar occupation of bargaining and bartering for a sack
of beans or peas, a sheep- or a goat-skin. My mother often recalled it
with tears in her eyes, for she was deeply attached to my father. She
shared his enthusiasm for study, she sympathised in his mental
struggles, but the voice of hunger is peremptory; she encouraged and
helped him, and my poor father hardly ever lost his patience. One wet
day in autumn, having bought a cowhide, yet damp, from a butcher at
Ratzersdorf, he flung it over his shoulder on the top of a heavy load he
was carrying. Thus laden he reached home late in the evening, wet
through and tired out after wading through the deep mud. My mother
awaited him with the frugal evening meal, but he, throwing down his load
on the floor, went straight into his little study, where he buried
himself in his books; and when my mother, tired of waiting, came to look
for him, she found him as deep in his studies as if he had been sitting
there the whole day. A man of such habits and tendencies was not likely
to succeed in looking after the temporary needs of his family. It is
therefore not surprising that my mother, with her practical common
sense, at last came to the conclusion that it would be best to leave her
husband to his books, and herself to look after the support of the
family. And so my mother became a business woman. She went out into the
world while my father sat at home in his study and took care of the
house. A sad change of places, which pleased my mother only in so far
as, being a pious Jewess, she thought she was doing a work well pleasing
to God. But the interests of the family suffered greatly, for as she was
inexperienced in the struggle for existence, our poverty increased
rapidly, and when the destroying angel, the cholera, at that time
ravaging Europe, swept over North-West Hungary also, and snatched away
my father, my mother, at the age of twenty-two, was left a widow with
two children in the greatest distress.
This terrible blow, the misery of it, and the feeling of loneliness in a
strange land filled the young, energetic woman with unwonted activity.
She took a young companion from Lundenburg into the house to look after
the children, in order that she might devote herself more entirely to
her business. She laboured without interruption, and in the second year
of her widowhood she had the satisfaction of seeing her cellar stocked
with good wine, her storehouse full of corn, and her inn one of the most
frequented in the little town of St. Georghen. She was getting on very
well indeed, but in order to extend her business she thought a man's
support was necessary, so she married again. Her husband was a young man
of her own age, who came from Duna Szerdahely, and was now to be the
father of the orphans (_i.e._, my sister and myself) and my mother's
protector and companion. Whether my mother was induced to take this step
under the pretext used by all young widows, or whether she really needed
assistance, I cannot and dare not investigate. One thing is certain, she
did not improve her condition, for Mr. Fleischmann, as her second
husband was called, was a kind-hearted, easy-going man, but by no means
industrious or enterprising. He helped to spend the money, but not to
make it. And when, after the first year, my mother upbraided him for his
idleness, he declared that here, among strangers, he should never get
on, but if my mother would go with him to his native town he was sure
that there, surrounded by his relatives and friends, he should be far
better able to attend to his duties as head of the family.
And so it came about that my mother, and we with her, left St. Georghen
and settled at Duna Szerdahely, from which place I date my intellectual
awakening, for I look upon this town, and not the one where I first
beheld the light, as my real birthplace. I must at that time have been
about three years old, and my recollections of my first home are very
vague indeed. But I clearly remember one scene. I was playing about
under the big oblong table of the public room, while on the knobs round
about the table small miniature loaves were strung together, which I ate
one after the other, for even then I was known for my large appetite.
These gastric feats were interrupted by the entrance of several guests,
who playfully blew the froth of their beer glasses down upon me. It gave
me a fright which I remember to this day. Other incidents of my infancy
have also left a vague impression upon my mind. Thus, for instance, I
remember quite distinctly the morning when I got up with a pain in my
foot, and began to limp. Coxalgia had then taken hold of me, and I began
to go lame with my left leg, an affliction for which no cure could be
found, as will be further related in the course of this narrative. I can
slightly remember our move, which was effected on a large waggon, but I
have no distinct recollection of anything during the first two or three
years in Duna Szerdahely, my adopted native town.
Where other children find roses on their path, and the blue sky of
golden youth is for ever smiling down upon them, I found nothing but
thorns, privation, and misery. It soon became evident that our
stepfather, as already mentioned, although a good-hearted man, possessed
none of those qualities which everybody needs in the struggle of life;
how much more, then, a man who has a whole family dependent upon him!
The small capital which my mother had brought with her from St. Georghen
soon dwindled away. Poverty entered the house and peace departed, and
the children had to suffer much through the mother's ever-increasing
despondency. The public-house had to be given up, and we tried a fresh
departure, viz., the sale of leeches. This was a sort of family trade of
the Fleischmanns in Duna Szerdahely, or rather a miserable sort of
hawker's business. The brothers Fleischmann bought from the peasants the
leeches found in abundance in the neighbouring swamps, and after sorting
them they sold them to the apothecaries of Northern Hungary.
At a very early age I was initiated into the details of the trade. The
leeches had to be sorted according to size, and put in linen bags about
40 centimeters long; they were bathed twice in the twenty-four hours, an
operation at which the children assisted, but I had great difficulty in
overcoming a feeling of repugnance when I had to separate the wretched
creatures from the slimy substance. It happened sometimes that the
leeches escaped in the night from the bag, if it had not been securely
enough fastened, and crawled about in the room which served us all as
bedroom. As we children had to sleep on the floor, for lack of a
bedstead, sometimes the one, sometimes the other of us would wake with a
sudden fright, for the hungry animals used to get hold of our toes, or
some other member, and quietly begin to suck. Then, of course, there was
a general commotion; the creatures had to be searched for with a light,
and replaced in the bag. The tragi-comedy of these nocturnal scenes
highly amused us children.
The weal and the woe of the family, which meanwhile had increased from
four to six and seven, depended entirely upon the demand for, and the
price of, leeches. In Hungary, bleeding was still in fashion, but as
medical science in its steady growth began to prohibit all methods for
reducing the blood, the demand for leeches necessarily became less; and
as their value decreased, the poverty in our home increased. The rosy
days of childhood were for me days of suffering and privation and want.
Sometimes the pinch of poverty was terrible to bear, especially when my
stepfather was on one of his hawking tours, which often took weeks.
Then, when the money he had left behind had come to an end, we had to
live on black bread, potatoes cooked in various ways, beans, peas, and
lentils. Coffee and milk were luxuries, and meat we only had in very
small portions on Saturdays and feast-days. Many a time we had not even
bread, and I have a lively recollection of the queer manner in which we
managed to get hold of some. Our house, a poor, dilapidated little place
on a level with the ground, stood at the extreme end of the little town,
on the borders of a willow-grove, and close to the large piece of waste
ground where wandering gipsies used to set up their black tents. Thus at
a very early age I became interested in gipsy life. I distinctly
remember the camp of these brown children of the East. Some of them were
almost naked, others dressed in rags, but never failed to display large
silver buttons on their tattered garments. My first impressions of
nomadic life I received through these people. They belonged to the tribe
known in Hungary as the "Wallachian Gipsies," a remarkable people,
wilder and more lawless than the half-civilised tribes. They lived by
stealing, fortune-telling, and tinkering, and were so hardened that in
the bitterest weather they would camp in the open. The next morning the
children would be packed into a kind of feather-bed, which was slung
over the horse's head, forming bags on either side; and so the journey
was resumed, the mother generally sitting on the horse, the bigger boys
and the men going on foot.
The road leading to the villages situated on the island Schütt, between
Duna Szerdahely and Komorn, went past our house, and as on Fridays all
the beggars of the neighbourhood were allowed to beg for alms of any
description in the market-places, mendicants of all ages and both sexes
might be seen on such days making their way past our house towards those
places. The picture of the horrible, motley caravan of feigned and real
cripples, blind, dumb, and lame folks, of lepers and paralytics, in
their dirty, tattered garments, fills me with dismay even now. The
phantoms of the past are ever before my eyes. And it was with these
miserable, offensive creatures that I had to barter on Friday afternoons
for the bread and other victuals they had collected during the
day--money seldom came their way--in exchange for one or two bottles of
brandy. It was indeed a bitter piece of bread, grudgingly bestowed by
dirty, sickly hands. Nevertheless, it was welcome food to us in our
starving condition. In my earliest youth I made the acquaintance of that
terrible spectre, hunger, and even in subsequent stages of my life he
has often been my companion; my battles with this monster were certainly
not amongst the lightest I have had to fight.
In spite of everything I grew up strong and healthy, and, with the
exception of one illness when I was three years old--and of which I
have some remembrance, because my mother, in obedience to a superstition
prevalent in Hungary, sold me for a few kreuzer to another woman, in the
hope that God would ward off the impending danger, and be moved to
clemency towards the possibly sinless new mother--I have not known a
day's illness in the whole of my life. From early spring till late
autumn I went about generally barefooted and scantily clothed. In the
summer I slept by preference in the yard, under the overhanging roof of
our house, instead of in the close bedroom, and I slept so soundly that
not even a thunderstorm roused me until my naked feet were soaking wet
with the pouring rain. My rosy, chubby cheeks, my bright, black eyes,
and my curly hair found favour with the women folk; and whenever I came
in the market-place the farmers' wives petted and fondled me, and always
made the same remark, "Pity the little Jew is crooked." Personally, I
did not trouble much about this bodily defect. With my crutch tucked
under the left arm, I went about quite happily, and even tried to run
races with my companions. But when I had to give up the race on account
of my lame leg, and came home crying, my mother used to comfort me with
the words: "My child, thou wilt do better than any of thy companions,
but thou must have patience and perseverance."
My bodily affliction, however, was a grievous thorn in my mother's eye.
Her vanity was wounded, and her one aim and object was to rid me of the
evil. What has she not done to effect this? The ways and means by which
she endeavoured to cure me pass all description. The most out-of-the-way
remedies and magic cures were resorted to. I was not only bathed in
various kinds of herbs, rubbed with all possible and imaginable salves
and greases, but the strangest magic charms were tried at my expense.
And when everything failed I was placed at midnight at the crossing of
the road, to fall under the spell of passing old gipsy women. But worst
of all were the experiments of miracle-mongers or quacks. At one time
one such appeared in the shape of a Catholic priest, in the village of
Rudnó, in North Hungary, and no sooner had my mother heard of him than
she left the family in charge of her relatives, and undertook the long,
laborious journey to find him. As there were no railways, we travelled
on foot, a charitable farmer sometimes giving us a lift on his loaded
cart. And so we trudged on for many weary days, until the wretched
little village was reached. My poor destitute mother had to slip a fee
into the hand of the landlady of this clerical charlatan before we could
be admitted, but the gentleman of the black cowl did not waste many
words with his patients. He casually looked at my crooked leg, wrote a
prescription--the apothecary being partner in this holy business--and I
was dismissed with the promise of a speedy recovery. Even to this day I
marvel how my mother, a thoroughly clever, capable woman--although she
could neither read nor write--was so desperately entangled in the meshes
of superstition, and that no amount of disillusion could save her from
falling into the same error again.
The uselessness of the Rudnó prescription was still fresh in our minds,
when the fame of a new Wonder-doctor in the village of Gròb, in the
Neutraer county, was spread abroad, and my mother at once set out again.
The miraculous cure-worker this time was not a priest, but an ordinary,
ignorant peasant who could neither read nor write. We went to see him at
his farm, and when he heard that there was good wine to be had in Duna
Szerdahely, he at once offered to go home with us to effect the cure. A
cure indeed! So barbarously cruel and drastic was the remedy, that no
man with any proper feeling would have subjected an animal to it. For
five days running my leg had to be held over hot vapours every morning
for a certain length of time to soften the sinews and fibres, as the
peasant-doctor explained. Then on the sixth day the great operation took
place. My mother was sent out of the house, and I was made to lie down
on the floor, two strong gipsies acting as assistants, holding me tight,
the one by the shoulders, the other by the feet. Then the peasant threw
himself with all his weight upon the crippled knee, which formed almost
a right angle. A terrible crash--and I knew no more. When I came to
myself again, my poor weeping mother was on her knees beside me. She
caressed me and gave me something to drink. The injured leg was now put
between rough wooden splints and tightly bandaged. Curative measures of
this kind were in vogue in Hungary in 1836, and they are so still, not
only in Hungary, but in other countries of civilised Europe! Of course
the operation was without success. When the splints were removed, and I
could go about again, the old mischief returned, the crutch had again to
be resorted to, and I have gone through life limping, not altogether to
my disadvantage, as the subsequent pages will show.
Apart from this bodily defect I enjoyed good health as a child,
notwithstanding the chary and very primitive nourishment I received, and
in spite of the many miseries to which I was exposed on account of
insufficient clothing. Sometimes I was inclined to envy the better lot
of my schoolfellows and companions, and was unhappy in consequence, but
this early hardening process was the very best training I could have had
for my later career. The sufferings and privations I had later to bear
as Mohammedan mendicant friar seemed to me not much harder nor more
trying than what I had to go through in my youth.
This much as regards my physical bringing up. As for my intellectual
accomplishments, the reader must first be made acquainted with the
literary demands which, to the Orthodox Jew of those days, were
inseparable from a righteous and God-fearing life. Just as the
Mohammedan understands by learning merely religious knowledge, by
erudition merely a thorough acquaintance with the Koran and ritualistic
observances, and sees the ideal of education only in theological
accomplishments, so also the Jew regards a knowledge of the Holy
Scriptures as the only essential thing, and the study of the Talmud is
his chief accomplishment. Young lads, therefore, are first of all taught
to read Hebrew, and when they have become familiar with the letters of
the foreign tongue, they proceed to translate the Hebrew text according
to a very primitive method. They are told a few words here and there,
and have to make out the sense as best they can. Then, as a third stage,
they come to the grammar, the actual study of the language. Schools in
general were conducted much on the same primitive principle. Any Jew
with a sufficient knowledge of the Holy Scriptures was authorised to set
up an educational establishment, and the success of the school depended
in most cases upon the greatest number of successful pupils and on the
smallness of the school fees. The pedagogic talent of the teacher also
carried some weight, _i.e._, whether he made much or little use of the
birch rod; for the schools where stripes and swollen cheeks were not so
frequent were naturally favoured by soft-hearted mothers. I received my
elementary education in a third-rate school; but an inborn brightness
of intellect and good memory enabled me soon to rise above my
schoolfellows, and I was qualified to enter the best-known school of the
place at a much reduced fee. I learned with pleasure and facility, and
had a special liking for learning by heart. I had but to read a Hebrew
text two or three times to be able to say it off by heart without much
prompting. The teacher had noticed this, and of course my mother knew
it, for she used to say, "His father was a great scholar, he is bound to
have plenty of brains."
Nevertheless she kept me rigorously at my lessons, and when I went to
bed I had to put my books, often big folios, under my pillow, "for,"
said my mother, "knowledge will get into thine head over night, right
through the bolster," which I believed literally. Yes, my mother was a
remarkable woman. Blind superstition and rare common sense alternated in
her. She had a most extraordinary energy, and was a type of the Jewess
of the Middle Ages, full of ancient principles and maxims, sometimes
showing themselves in a tenacious clinging to the old faith, sometimes
conforming to existing circumstances. If there was a thunderstorm in the
night she would quickly make a light, open the Bible at the Creation
story, and exclaim, "Behold, O God, Thou hast created the world, destroy
not Thine own handiwork." Her memory was marvellous. She could remember
the smallest details of her early childhood, and told me often what her
mother had said to her about the Frenchmen after the battle of
Austerlitz. How they overran the country in the neighbourhood of
Lundenburg, and how the grenadiers forced their way into the houses,
crying for "_Café! Café, sacré nom de Dieu!_" I think I must have
inherited my memory from my mother.
My knowledge up to my eighth year consisted chiefly of the Pentateuch
with commentary, the Prophets, and other Biblical stories, besides
Hungarian and German, reading and writing. I felt quite at home in the
five books of Moses, and in the Prophets I was sufficiently versed to
recite and translate long passages from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Treassar, and
other Holy Scriptures. These accomplishments gave me a certain standing
among my schoolfellows, and the teacher used to bring me forward as a
kind of specimen of his teaching; for whenever a father came to the
school to introduce his promising offspring, I was called up and
examined to prove by my answers the zeal and skill of the teacher.
To be thus gazed at in one's youth has its dangers, for it is apt to
make one somewhat vain, and it might easily have grown into self-conceit
if my mother's warning words had not from time to time acted like a
shower-bath on the fire of my youthful imagination. "Thou art nothing
yet, thou knowest nothing yet," said she; "the son of my first husband
must be the first of all the boys." And what my mother meant by _the
first_ was not confined to the Jewish schools at Duna Szerdahely. For
she intended me to excel not only in Jewish but also in Christian
learning. Devout and God-fearing though she was, she seems soon to have
come to the conclusion that the study of Thora and Talmud may be all
very well to open the gates of Paradise, but that they are of little use
to help one on in the world, and that under the altered conditions of
the time the disposition which reduced my father to beggary would be of
still less use to me. In short, my mother had made up her mind that I
was to relinquish the study of Jewish religion and direct my attention
to a worldly career, and that the son of the Rabbi and Talmudist was to
become a universal scholar. The boldness of this plan can only be fully
appreciated by those who have known some of the aspirations of the life,
the ways of thinking, and the horrible fanaticism of the Jews of those
days.
In my youth the Jewish community of Duna Szerdahely had the reputation
of being the most devout, the most zealous congregation of Hungary, in
no wise tinged with doctrinal innovations; the most devout of all
Europe, in fact, with the exception of a few Russian and Polish
communities, celebrated for their Chasidendon, or zeal. It was a piece
of pure unalloyed mediæval conceit, with all its wildly fanatical
fancies and impossibilities; a pure counterfeit of that religious life
the dark shadow of which in my after life, during my sojourn with the
Moslems of Bokhara, has filled me with horror. In this superabundance of
religious enthusiasm, in this frightful labyrinth of ritualistic
cavilling and grievous superstition, I spent my childhood. Summer and
winter, early in the morning and late at night, I never neglected at the
first sound of the wooden hammer on the door--this replaced the bell
which calls the Jews to worship--to speed towards the synagogue, where
my strong young voice at a very early age was heard above all the
worshippers, and stamped me as a boy of marked Divine favour.
I would rather have died of hunger than have taken a mouthful of food
which had not been prepared according to the established ritual, or than
partake of meat or milk food without observing the necessary interval of
six hours, or, worst of all, than incur pollution by contact with that
most monstrous of all creatures--the swine! For fear of baring my head I
wore my cap right down over my ears, and when some mischievous Christian
lads once forcibly took it from me, I trembled all over like an aspen
leaf, and imagined that I should straightway be committed to the awful
tortures of the Gehenna. In order not to have to say the word _Kreutz_
(cross), I always said _Schmeitzer_ instead of _Kreutzer_. When I passed
a crucifix I always turned my head the other way, and murmured words of
disgust, or secretly spat on the ground. If by chance on Saturday, the
day of absolute rest, I found a copper or silver coin on the ground, I
pushed it along with my foot (as it was a sin to touch it with my hand),
and in holy dread covered it up with dust and dirt, so that I might find
it again next day. A religion which has to instruct its confessors in
these minutest details, which prescribes how he must eat, drink, walk,
stand, sleep, dress, cleanse his body outwardly and inwardly; how to
associate with women and how to comport himself during different natural
occurrences--such a religion necessarily exercises a profound influence
upon the youthful mind, it absorbs him entirely, it captivates his
senses and his thoughts. I found exactly the same thing in after years
among the Moslem youths of Turkey and Persia. There, as here, faith
really manifests itself merely in outward appearances, in a ritual which
is observed with the greatest exactitude, and it is therefore not
surprising that the young Jew, like the Moslem, when in after years he
begins to inquire into things for himself, breaks the fetters and
becomes a freethinker. This total revolution of ideas may be explained
as the natural result when two such widely different elements come into
contact with each other.
The transformation necessarily depends to a great extent upon the
natural tendencies of the individual. As long as I attended the Jewish
school, and all contact with the Christian world was prohibited, there
could of course be no question of scepticism with me. It was really my
mother who gave the initiative; for, as already mentioned, she meant me
to have a secular education. Regardless of the harsh criticism of our
fellow-believers, she removed me from the Jewish school, and placed me
in the elementary school maintained by the Protestant community. Here I
was taught from Christian books, attended the catechising, and received
such elementary notions of geography and natural history as the
extremely primitive school-books then in use in Hungary were able to
furnish. The description of the earth was contained in a little book in
verse, called "Kis tükör," or "Small Mirror." Natural history was
limited to the description of a few animals, and instead of the
Hungarian mother-tongue we were initiated into the elements of Latin. It
was, to say the best of it, very meagre fare which Christian culture
vouchsafed to me, but it was so totally different from my former
studies, which dealt only with events that happened thousands of years
ago, that even these scanty morsels convinced me of the greater
sustaining power and interest of the intellectual food here offered. The
intercourse with Christian companions of my own age also made me freer
and less prejudiced, for I played with them and made friends, without,
however, entering their houses or touching the food and cakes they
offered. This, both my mother and I felt, would be rank apostasy, and
would be going a little too far for the only son of the former rabbi!
But the ice was broken. True, I had not yet dared to climb over the wall
of partition which, on account of my bringing up, separated me from the
outer world, but I began to cast furtive glances over to the other side,
and when my mother, little by little, made me familiar with the idea of
following a secular career and becoming a doctor, the thick clouds of
orthodox religious views soon dispersed, the horizon widened, and with
ecstasy my childish eye roamed over those distant regions of delight.
I may have been about ten years old then. My plans for the future were
made, but the means to carry them out cost my dear mother unspeakable
anxiety. The poverty and misery of the family had now reached a climax.
My elder sister had already gone to service, and in order that I might
not take the bread out of the children's mouths my mother made up her
mind, though with a heavy heart, to send me also out of the house. I
went as apprentice to a lady tailoress, whose son I instructed in the
Hebrew language, in return for which she boarded me and initiated me in
the mysteries of sewing together light cotton and linen materials.
The three hours which I spent in the fulfilment of my pedagogic duties
were pleasant enough. It flattered my vanity to teach a boy of my own
age, but all the more disagreeable was the time which I had to spend
sitting at the round table among my companions and the more advanced
pupils in the tailor's trade. Here I had always to bear mocking remarks
about my clumsiness; they were always finding fault with me, and often
gave me palpable instruction how to hold my needle and thimble, how not
to crush the stuff unnecessarily, and so on. In short, the initiation
into the noble art of tailoring was embittered for me to such an extent
that after the first month had elapsed I complained to my mother with
tears. She realised the mistake she had made, and encouraged me to hold
out at least until the winter was past and she should have secured a
good appointment for me. It cost me much to consent, but my mother's
admonitions and the consciousness that during the bitter winter weather
I should at least have a warm room and tolerable food, whereas I used to
have to go all the way to school scantily dressed and with a few warm
potatoes in my pocket for breakfast, conquered at last. I became
reconciled to my disagreeable lot, until with the awakening of the
spring the hope of improving my condition also awoke in me, and glimmers
of future possibilities rose before my mind's eye.
I had now reached my eleventh year, and made up my mind to leave not
only my home, but also the town in which my mother, the only being who
cared for me, lived.
To set out into the world at eleven years of age, in poverty and
misery, with a crutch as companion, away from a mother's loving
sympathy, henceforth to wander among strangers, and to be subject to
their cold gaze, surely this is a cruel trial and hard to bear for a
young, sensitive child. The thought of it frightened me; it weighed me
down and forced tears from my eyes--tears which flowed the more
abundantly when I saw by my mother's red eyes that she also struggled in
vain to keep them down.
But what was to be done? In my dire distress and utter helplessness
there seemed no other way open to reach that goal to which my natural
propensities appeared to point. My mother encouraged me by saying, "Thou
canst not and darest not be an ordinary man. The spirit of thy learned
father is in thee. Thou must study and become a doctor; and in order to
commence thy studies at the college of St. Georghen, where thy name is
known and they will take an interest in thee, thou must earn a few
florins first, for I can give thee at best only a change of linen and a
suit of clothes for the journey. Yes, my child, thou wilt have much to
bear, many hardships to suffer, but mark what I say--we must not mind
the trouble. _During the first part of the night we must prepare the bed
on which to stretch ourselves during the latter part._"
Such and similar admonitions and encouraging words were oft repeated.
They steeled my courage, and when the appointment of teacher in the
house of the Jewish inn-keeper in the village of Nyék--about two hours'
distant from Duna Szerdahely--was offered to me, I accepted it
gratefully, and accompanied by my mother, with my crutch and a small
bundle on my back, I left the place where I had spent the days of my
childhood, to undertake the office which was to furnish me with the
means to commence my new career.
Leaving the dusty road for a short cut across the fields, we soon
reached Nyék; and when my mother introduced me to my future principal,
the man curiously eyed the insignificant, poorly dressed appearance of
the crippled teacher, and during the low, whispered conversation I
frequently caught the words, "Too young, too small." A Jew from
Szerdahely who knew me happened to be present; he was kind enough to
speak a good word for me by saying, "Never mind the outside; it's the
inside you want. The lad is crammed full of book-learning; he knows the
Prayer-book and the Pentateuch by heart, and if Moritz--that was the
name of my future pupil--has but a spark of intelligence in him, he will
get on well with him."
Meanwhile the mother and the son had also come in, and while the former
gazed with a scarcely concealed smile, as if to say, "He will hardly be
a match for my Moritz," the latter glared at me with open dislike, and
tearing himself away from his mother he ran into the garden. Such a
reception was not calculated to inspire me with courage, or to paint my
future duties as mentor in too rose-coloured a light. I stood there for
some time perplexed and broken-hearted; and it was the more difficult to
collect myself, as the pain of having to part with my dear mother took
all my spirit away. My mother, of course, suffered still more keenly,
but not a trace of her inner struggle did she betray; she remained a
little while longer with me, and, after warmly embracing me, she took
her leave and went with me into the garden. Stepping lightly over the
threshold, and looking back only once or twice she swiftly walked home
the same way we had come. There I stood, broken-hearted, gazing after my
mother as she disappeared in the distance, and overcome with sorrow I
sank down, kissed the threshold which her foot had so lately touched,
and cried bitter tears of despair over the hardness of my lot.
From this prostrate condition I was suddenly roused by a rough touch on
the shoulder, and when I looked round Moritz stood before me. He grinned
and said, "Teacher, come to dinner." Obeying this summary call, I
entered the room where the family was already seated at table, but I
could hardly touch anything, and although some good-natured souls tried
to cheer me up, several days passed before I could get used to the new
condition of things and properly fulfil such duties as were entrusted to
me. For I was not only teacher, but also house-servant and waiter. Four
hours a day I had to instruct "dear Moritz" in writing, reading, and
arithmetic, and in the Pentateuch, but early in the morning and late in
the evening I had to provide the peasants going to or coming back from
the field with wine and brandy, and on Friday afternoons--_i.e._, before
the beginning of the Sabbath--I had to clean the boots of all the family
and brush the clothes. How my master came upon the idea of combining
these various offices, and making me the "boy of all work," as I had
specially been engaged as teacher, is a mystery to me to this day. The
Oriental says, "Man loads the ass as much as he can, but not as he (the
ass) likes," and this proverb the inn-keeper of Nyék seems to have
followed. I performed my duties to the best of my ability; but I soon
noticed that whereas the peasants always found the measure of spirituous
liquor offered to them too small or too deficient, my pupil found the
time of intellectual "dressing" always far too long, and together with
his mother complained to his father that I overburdened his mind. If I
had not made the mistake of treating my pupil, out of school hours, as
my companion and playmate--which seemed so natural because we were of
the same age--I might perhaps have impressed him more, but the anomaly
of attempting to combine in one person playfellow and teacher revenged
itself bitterly upon me; for once when, carried away by my professional
zeal, I upbraided my pupil in rather strong language for his
carelessness and stupidity, the rascal, who was much bigger and stronger
than I, attacked me, threw me on the floor, gave me a terrible
thrashing, and when at last my cries brought his mother on the scene,
she had much difficulty in liberating me from the hands of my
obstreperous pupil. The "dear boy" received a reprimand for the
impropriety of his behaviour, and then things went on as usual. This
first failure of my pedagogic capability was followed by many others. In
my capacity of waiter and shoe-black I could, to a certain extent,
maintain the credit and dignity of my office, but as teacher I was less
fortunate, since occasional fits of playfulness and merriment did not
agree with the gravity of my position as mentor. I soon wearied of my
false position, and counted myself fortunate indeed when the six months
were over and I could return to Szerdahely with my earnings--_eight
florins_ (sixteen shillings)--in my pocket.
Juvenile Struggles
[Illustration: VAMBÉRY IN HIS EIGHTEENTH YEAR.
_To face Page 35._]