BUDAPEST.
After my nocturnal adventure in Prague, I made up my mind that if I
wanted to do Austria thoroughly in a fortnight it was absolutely
necessary I should have someone familiar with the tongues of Bohemia and
Hungary, to say nothing of Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Montenegro. I met
Herr Julius, cosmopolitan courier, promiscuously at a café in Vienna. We
fell into conversation, and I secured him then and there to accompany me
upon my Hungarian explorations. Herr Julius not only speaks German,
French, English, Italian, and Spanish fluently, but is as a native when
it comes to Czechish and Magyar and Croatian.
Herr Julius shares with Albert Edward a taste for good cigars and
high-class cookery. In other matters he has a frugal mind. He delights
in bargains, and points with pride to his success in various parts of
the world. Herr Julius is an object-lesson in economy. He shows me his
umbrella, and his face lights up with pride as he informs me that he has
had it for some years, and that he bought it for eight shillings in
Cairo. He takes off his hat, pats it lovingly, and tells me that he got
it in the winter of 1889 in Naples for four shillings and sixpence. He
asks me what I think of his boots. I admire them, and he explains that
he purchased them of a waiter at Seville for two shillings, because they
had been left behind by a German prince who died in the hotel. Charmed
by these revelations, I venture to ask him what he paid for his suit,
and instantly his face assumes an expression of triumph. He asks me to
guess. I guess five pounds. ‘No, sir,’ he exclaims, with a grin that
displays every tooth in his head, and he has an excellent set; ‘for dis
suit I give two pounds five in Tottenhams Court Road more two year ago.
Ah, what a suit! I put him away every winter and he comes out die nexto
sommer every year better he was before.’
The most picturesque way of going to Budapest from Vienna is naturally
down the Danube. But there are slight difficulties in the way. The
steamer leaves at seven in the morning, and that means getting up at
four o’clock at your hotel. Four o’clock is not my usual hour of rising.
It is nearer my usual time of going to bed, and, much as I wanted to
take the Danube trip, I could not contemplate that early departure
without a shudder. But Herr Julius came to the rescue. ‘You shall go on
board the night before, you see, sir,’ he said, ‘and there you shall
sleep comfortable, and no get up till so you choose.’ I agreed that this
would be one way out of the difficulty, but as I was desirous to go to
the Theater an der Wien in the evening, in order to see ‘Heisses Blut,’
a play which had gained considerable vogue in Vienna, I explained that I
should have to come on board rather late. ‘That shall not matter,’
replied Herr Julius, ‘you shall pack everythings, pay your bill, go to
the theatre, and I shall take your everythings on board de shiff and
make you secure one nice cabines. Is that good?’
We took a ‘fiaker’ that afternoon, and drove to the ship, which was
lying alongside the quay. There was only one official on board, and he
received us with a bow so low that his front hair swept a lot of
coal-dust from the deck. This official was the second steward. We
explained our needs, and he immediately placed the entire vessel at our
disposal. It was rarely that passengers came on board at night, but we
were welcome. A bed should be made up for the gentlemen in a cabin. The
kitchen would be shut at eleven, but cold meat and bread and wine should
be left out, and he (the under-steward) would remain ever at the
gentlemen’s service. The preliminary arrangements were made, the
under-steward swept the deck again with his front hair, and Herr Julius
and your humble servant drove back to the town.
I packed and saw my luggage loaded on a cab and taken to the quay, and
then I went to the theatre and was hugely entertained by ‘Heisses Blut,’
a musical absurdity written around a well-known Hungarian actress,
Fräulein Palma. At ten I left the theatre, made my way to the ship,
found an excellent supper waiting for me, went to bed, and slept
soundly. When I awoke the ship was well on her way down the Danube, and
the excellent Herr Julius was knocking at my cabin-door with a cup of
strong tea and the information that it was a fine day, and that there
was nobody on board but ourselves, ten dwarfs, a giant, and a performing
boarhound.
I soon made friends with the dwarfs. Four of them were the smallest
little fellows I have ever seen. They had been all over France and
Germany, and had been touring for two years in Spain. The giant also was
affable, and an American travelling with them as lecturer favoured me
with much curious information.
Budapest is, as the guide-books say, ‘picturesquely situated’ on both
sides of the Danube; Buda is on one side, and Pest is on the other. It
takes you a little time after you arrive in Hungary to find out where
you actually are, because the Hungarians in their intense Magyarism have
abolished all German names, signs, notices, and indications. A
traveller, for instance, who wanted to get off the Danube steamer at
Pressburg, the first big stopping-place in Hungary one gets to after
leaving Vienna, would probably pass Pozsony by. But Pozsony is
Pressburg, though there is nothing but your guide-book to let you know
it. At one time in Hungary names of streets, etc., were put up in the
two languages; now the German is all taken down and Magyar reigns
supreme.
No national movement in Europe has of late years made such tremendous
strides as Magyarism. The Hungarians have Home Rule, and mean to stick
to it. The Emperor of Austria reigns only as King of Hungary. Hungary
has its own Parliament, makes its own laws, and has its own
postage-stamps. The Austrians are not so unpopular as they were in years
gone by, when the Hungarians called them ‘damned Germans;’ but there is
still a strong feeling against Austrian interference. As I write these
lines all Budapest is bubbling over with excitement about the death of
General Klapka, the hero of Komorn, one of the patriots of the former
stormy days. Klapka died in one of the hotels here. The Austrian
officials--so the Hungarians say--tried to get him buried quietly and at
once, whereupon Budapest rose up, and the voice of the Magyar was heard
in the land. ‘Is he a drowned dog, this our hero,’ the Hungarians said,
‘that he should be flung into the earth at once? No! we--we his
fellow-countrymen, his fellow-sufferers in days gone by, his
fellow-patriots now, will honour him dead as we loved him living!’ And
so General Klapka had a grand Hungarian funeral, and thousands upon
thousands of Hungarians flocked to the ceremony.
There are two things you never get away from in Budapest--red pepper,
called páprïka, and czigani, or gipsy music. On every table you have
dark red pepper in a salt-cellar, and in every hotel you find the gipsy
band worrying away at the fiddlestrings.
The Hungarian ladies are famed for their beauty, and Budapest has a
reputation which would not recommend it as a summer residence to Messrs.
M’Dougall and Parkinson. The poet might here indulge in ‘a dream of dark
women’ to his heart’s content. The baths for which Budapest is renowned
are conducted on principles not altogether in accordance with English
ideas of morality, and are frequently meeting-places for affairs of
gallantry. The modest Englishman with insular prejudices has all his
work cut out to avoid blushing at the propositions which are made to him
by the couriers and guides attached to the principal hotels,
propositions made not with a grin and a whisper, but with a stately bow,
and in the ordinary tone of general conversation.
The Hungarian or Magyar language is startling in its peculiarities. When
you wish to bid anyone good-day you say ‘Yonapol,’ and if you meet
anyone to whom you wish to be polite you say ‘Alarzatos Szolgaya'--‘I am
your humble servant.’ That is the ‘Adieu’ of Hungary, and takes the
place of the Viennese ‘I kiss the hand.’ Everybody in Hungary is ‘your
humble servant.’
My favourite stroll in Budapest when I am tired of red pepper and the
gipsies is the bridge which connects Buda and Pest and makes them one
town. The Danube here is 1,800 feet broad, and until the bridge was
built in 1849 the only means of connection was a bridge of barges, and
in the winter, when the Danube was swollen, this was frequently unsafe,
and all connection between the two towns was suspended. The English
engineers, Clark and Tiernay, built this bridge, but the opposition of
the Hungarian nobles was tremendous. They had the right of crossing the
old bridge free by reason of their rank, but Baron Sma, of Vienna, who
found the £500,000 necessary for the undertaking, claimed the right to
levy toll for the space of eighty-five years, and so everyone has to pay
toll at the present day. The Hungarian nobleman still feels that he is
sacrificing himself to ‘a d----d German’ every time he pulls out the
kreuzers demanded by the bridge-keepers.
The old Hungarian prejudices remain, but, alas! the old Hungarian
costumes are rapidly disappearing. The young noblemen still drive four
spanking horses in a mail-phaeton, and now and then one sees the
Hungarian coachman in high boots, light blue coat and silver buttons,
and the pork-pie hat with long ribbons hanging down behind it. But the
bulk of the populace have abandoned high boots and frogged coats, and
now and then one even sees a tall hat on a Hungarian head.
The high Wellington boots are still worn by the peasant women and the
peasant men, but not by the better classes. The high hat is not so
generally adopted as modern trousers and boots, because for many years
it was the sign of a ‘German.’ Herr Julius can remember the day when a
man in a high hat was yelled at by the roughs wherever he went, and many
a luckless owner of a chimney-pot was bonneted in public amid the jeers
of the bystanders. ‘A Schwoab!’ the people would cry directly they
espied the obnoxious topper. ‘A Schwoab’ means a German, and sounds
suspiciously like ‘a swab.’ ‘Német’ is another name for a German. I am
assured this feeling has passed away, but I know better. ‘The King of
Hungary’ comes to his palace at Buda now for three months in the year,
and the Austrians talk their German language and wear their
chimney-pots without being insulted; but the Hungarians still look upon
all things Austrian askance, and it did not need the demonstration and
the speeches which the recent attempt to bury Klapka György Tabornok
quietly has called forth to prove that the patriotic Magyar still chafes
beneath the Austrian yoke.
I am going to the theatre in Budapest to see a Magyar melodrama,
entitled ‘A Betyár Kendöje’ ('The Brigand’s Handkerchief'). They call
the theatre a Szinház. That is a little startling, but when you have got
accustomed to fogado for a hotel, and you have to tell the porter to
look after your podgyars for luggage, and you learn that ó nö is an old
woman, and that Vienna is Bécs, and bor is wine, and viz--not namely--is
water, and Isten is God, you are prepared for anything.
I like fruit, but when the waiter asks me if I will take some ‘gyümöics’
I hesitate. (In parentheses, the most exquisite thing I have eaten in
Hungary is the fogas, a Lower Danube fish. Cold, with sauce Tartare, it
is delicious. The red-pepper dishes I have not fallen so violently in
love with, although páprïka huhn and gulyás are by no means to be
despised.)
I started to go to the theatre the other night, but I found that the
play was ‘Hamlet, Dankiralfy,’ which is ‘Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,’ and
I thought better of it. It may interest the general reader to know that
the performance took place on Vasárnap (which is Sunday), Május 22-én,
and was ‘Eredeti népszinmü dalokkal 4 szakaszban. Irta Abonyi Lajos.
Zenéjét Nikolics Sándor.’
The Magyar melodrama, entitled ‘The Brigand’s Handkerchief,’ turned out
to be a very old friend. It was only ‘Falsely Accused’ in a foreign
language. A Hungarian brigand, having behaved badly to his young wife
and attempted to murder her to slow music in the snow, she leaves him
and enters the service of a dear old lady under an assumed name. The
dear old lady’s son falls in love with her, and asks her to marry him.
But she says there are reasons which stand in the way, and, being the
leading lady, has a long soliloquy all to herself in the centre of the
stage. In the meantime the brigand has fallen into the toils of a gipsy
girl, who dances Hungarian dances and sings Hungarian songs at a low
Hungarian public-house. The brigand is made drunk with fourteen bottles
of wine and fourteen lighted candles, and agrees to go out at night with
the gipsy girl and do a little house-breaking. I can’t tell you why,
when the fourteen bottles are placed on the table for the brigand, a
lighted candle is placed by each bottle. It seemed to me a fearful waste
of tallow, but I presume it is a custom of the country.
The gipsy lady dresses herself up as a man, and puts pistols in her
belt, and off she goes with the brigand straight to the house of the
dear old lady at midnight. All is quiet, only the unhappy wife is about,
and she has just packed up everything she has in the world in a small
pocket-handkerchief, and is about to leave the house of her benefactress
clandestinely, in order to avoid the pathetic love-making of her young
master. The brigand and brigandess enter. The wife, who has returned to
her bedroom for a pocket-handkerchief--one her husband gave her on her
wedding-day--comes out, and is about to be shot by the brigandess, when
the brigand starts, and exclaims in the Magyar language, ‘Heaven, it is
my long-lost wife!’ and dashes the pistol from his fair (or, rather,
dark) accomplice’s hand, while the injured wife falls fainting on the
floor. At that moment the young master, having heard a noise, rushes in;
the brigandess escapes, but the brigand is seized after a violent
struggle, thrust into an inner room, and the keys turned upon him. Then
off rushes the young master to fetch a policeman. The wife recovers,
says, ‘O Isten’ (Isten is the Magyar for the Deity), ‘my husband will be
executed if he is caught and recognised as the notorious brigand.’ So
she unlocks the door, and promptly bids him leave by the window, which
he does, after giving off a short speech.
You can guess the rest. When the police enter and find the man gone and
the girl trembling, they at once accuse her of being an accomplice, and
of having let the robber in and also of having let him out. The man has
dropped a pocket-handkerchief of a peculiar pattern. On searching the
girl they find one of the same make in her pocket. Evidently they were
accomplices. So the girl is arrested.
The last act takes place at the police-station. The heroine has a bad
time and weeps, but refuses to clear herself. Enter the brigand husband,
who says, ‘I am here. I am So-and-so, the notorious brigand. I broke
into the house. This woman released me because I was her husband. See,
here are the other five handkerchiefs of half a dozen I inherited from
my mother. The sixth I gave to Marie on our wedding-day, and that is how
our handkerchiefs are of the same pattern.’ The police at once arrest
the husband, and the wife is free. The husband is dragged off. A shot is
heard. He has killed himself. At that moment the young master rushes in,
and exclaims, ‘Marie, will you marry me now?’ Marie falls into her young
master’s arms and says, ‘Yes--if you will wait.’ I think she added,
‘Until after the funeral,’ but I am not sufficiently master of Magyar to
commit myself absolutely on the point.
Some years ago the crowded house which greeted this Magyar melodrama
would have been impossible. Half the audience, though Hungarian, would
not have understood their own language. They would have wanted it
translated into German.
To understand the immense strides which Magyarism has made one must look
back a little. To-day hardly a German word is to be heard in the
thoroughfares, and no German words disfigure the public announcements,
the sign-posts, the playbills, or the street corners. There are many
thousands of Hungarians who do not even understand German. Think of
this, and then remember that in 1840 a movement for the reintroduction
of the Magyar language at the University of Pest met with but scant
encouragement outside the town. The police then spoke German, the army
spoke German, the lectures of the University were delivered in Latin. Up
to the year 1790 there was not even a professor at the University who
_spoke_ Magyar. To-day in the towns everything is Magyar and nothing is
German.
To-day (it was ‘to-day’ when this was written), in the hotel at which I
am staying, the patriots have a dinner. Their dining-room adjoins the
writing-room in which I am penning (or rather pencilling) these lines.
Great speeches are being made, and every now and then the room rings
again with the Magyar cries of ‘Elyen! Elyen!’ (Bravo! bravo!) and
‘Hayunk, hayunk!’ (Hear, hear). There is in the room, writing, a young
man with a coal-black beard, fierce gleaming eyes, and the milk-white
teeth for which the Magyars are renowned. He listens to the speeches
that come through the closed door, and presently, as one of the speakers
makes a great point amid a roar of applause in the next room, he springs
to his feet and shouts ‘Elyen! Elyen!’ too. Then, catching my astonished
gaze, he smiles, begs me to excuse him, and explains that he is the son
of a Hungarian exile, that he was born in Egypt, whither his father
fled to escape imprisonment for his political opinions in the days of
tyranny, and that he is thinking of those years of exile now, and the
father who died in a far-off country for love of his native land.
I left Budapest on Monday morning by the Orient express for Munich, and
Herr Julius, who saw me to the railway-station, wept on my breast and
whiled away the time with anecdotes of his past career. Herr Julius had
once saved a nice little fortune--many thousands of florins--and he
wanted to invest it. He knew many of the financial barons of Vienna. He
asked their advice, and, acting on it, he bought the ‘obligations’ of a
local company. These obligations cost him five hundred florins each, and
they were soon to be worth a thousand, and Herr Julius would make a fine
thing of his investment. But the best laid schemes o’ mice and men gang
aft a-gley, and the great ‘krach’ came suddenly, and with it widespread
ruin. Companies were scattered before the winds like chaff. Great
financial houses came tumbling down as though they had been built of
cards, and Vienna rang with the cries and curses of the ruined and
undone. The ‘obligations’ which Herr Julius had bought rattled down in
value till at last they became almost worthless. In despair the poor
fellow was glad to take five florins each for the ‘obligations’ for
which he had paid five hundred, and he was lucky to get that, for a day
or two afterwards the bubble burst utterly, and the ‘papers’ he had held
were not worth a kreuzer each!
‘Ah, sir,’ says Herr Julius, his eyes filling with tears, ‘after that my
little fortune was gone, not for months did I sleep. I beat my breast, I
tore my hair, I could eat nothings; my life was to me one great burthen.
At last I say to myself, Julius, old man, this does not do; your little
fortune it has gone, but you must cheer yourself and begin again the
battle of life. So one day I say to myself, I will forget, I will drown
care, I will go out and enjoy myself, and laugh with the rest. The first
day that I shake the sorrow from my mind I go to the Prater in the
afternoon. I enter the third coffee-house; I sit in the garden and
listen to the band. I drink my beer and feel hungry. The man come with
salami; I say I will eat, and I buy for twopence halfpenny some salami.
‘Well, sir,’ continued Herr Julius, ‘the man he weigh me out my salami,
and he spread out a piece of paper, and he put upon it my six slices. I
drink a good draught of beer. I pick up my salami, and I say, “Julius,
after all life is good, still can you have your beer and salami.” At
that moment my eye it catches the piece of paper. I look at it. It has
print on it. It has a number. Ach, leiber Gott! it is my “obligation”
for which I have paid once five hundred florins. On that has the sausage
man served me with twopennyworth of salami! That night again I sleep
not.’
I express my sympathy with Herr Julius, and the Orient express steams
into the station. In his excitement at bidding me farewell Herr Julius
drops his overcoat, which he carries over his arm. Instantly the
platform is spread as for a feast. Herr Julius has carefully collected
the débris of dinners for which I have paid without availing myself of
all the privileges to which I am entitled. Oranges roll about in every
direction; sweet biscuits are crushed under the heels of hurrying
porters; pink prawns and white radishes make the dull platform gay with
colour; the wing of a fowl and the leg of a goose fall together on to
the line. Here is a piece of cheese, there half a dozen lumps of sugar.
Herr Julius gives a wild shriek, falls upon his hands and knees, and
proceeds to gather up the fragments that remain. And while he is still
collecting these remnants of our many feasts the engine whistles, and
the Orient express bears me away. I thrust my head out of the window,
and the last glimpse I get of Herr Julius shows me that remarkable man
busily engaged in picking gravel and cinders from a small piece of
Gruyère cheese. I paid for it, and he is determined that it shall not be
wasted.
I only spent one day in Munich, and then I fled to the Bavarian Alps.
The customs of the city were too much for me. From early morn till late
at night the Munichers drink beer and eat radishes the size of turnips.
I had great difficulty, not being Sandow, in lifting up the mug of beer
which was brought to me at a beer-garden. Putting it down I found a
sheer impossibility. But I sat at a table with a fine young Bavarian,
who put away ten huge mugs of the national beverage in rapid succession.
I was taken to one garden--the Lion Brewery Garden--where the average
sale is 10,000 litres a day, and there are fifty such establishments in
full swing in Munich.