Return to Buda-Pest--All-Souls' Day--The cemetery--Secret burial of
Count Louis Batthyanyi--High rate of mortality at Buda-Pest.
Some matters of business recalled me to Buda-Pest in the midst of a
round of visits in Transylvania. The great hospitality of my new friends
would have rendered a winter in that delightful country most agreeable,
but the holiday part of my tour was over, and circumstances led me to
pass some months in the capital.
I got back just in time for All-Souls' Day. The _Fête des Morts_ is
observed with great ceremony throughout Hungary, especially at
Buda-Pest. In the afternoon of this day a friend and myself joined the
throng, who were with one accord making their way eastward along the
Radial Strasse, the great thoroughfare of Pest. It appeared as if the
whole population of the town had turned out; private carriages,
tramways, droskies alike were all crammed, driving in the same direction
with the ceaseless stream of pedestrians. It was the day for the living
to visit their dead! Attired in black, almost every one carried a
funeral wreath; even the poorest and the humblest were taking some
floral offering to their beloved ones who sleep for evermore in the
great cemetery.
There is a dynamic force in the sympathy of a crowd. I had the sensation
of being carried along with the moving masses, without the exercise of
my own will, I hardly know how one could have turned back. And on we
went, the light of the short winter day meanwhile fading quickly into
the gloom of night. Once beyond the gaslighted streets, the sense of
darkness in the midst of the surging multitude was oppressive and
unnatural. We were borne on towards the principal gate of the cemetery,
and here the effect was most striking. We left the outer darkness, and
stepped into an area of light; beyond the belt of cypress and of yew
there was so brilliant an illumination that it threw its glowing
reflection on the clouds that hung pall-like over the whole city.
In all that crowded cemetery--and it is crowded--there was not a single
grave without its lights. The most ordinary had rows of candles marking
the simple form of the gravestone; but there were costlier tombs, with
an array of lamps in banks of flowers beautifully arranged; and in the
mausoleum of Batthyanyi the illuminations were effected by gas in the
form of architectural lines of light. At this point the crowd was
greatest. To visit the tomb of the martyred statesman is deemed a
patriotic duty. The particulars relating to the disposal of Count
Batthyanyi's body after his judicial murder in 1849 are not very
generally known; the facts are as follows.
At the close of hostilities in 1849, Haynau, commissioned by the Vienna
Government, condemned people to death with unsparing barbarity--it was a
way the Austrians had of stamping out insurrections. Amongst their
victims was Count Louis Batthyanyi, some time President of the Hungarian
Diet. Haynau wanted to have him hung at the gallows, but he was
mercifully shot, at Pest on the 6th October 1849. It is said that the
infamous Haynau was nearly mad with rage that his noble victim escaped
the last indignity of hanging. His remains were ordered to be buried in
a nameless coffin in the burial-ground of the common criminals,.and for
many years it was supposed that he had received no other sepulchre. This
was not so, however, for two priests who were greatly attached to the
magnate's family procured possession of his body, and secretly conveyed
it to the church in the Serviten Gasse, where they built up the coffin
in the wall, and carefully preserved it for years. When the
reconciliation with Austria took place, concealment being no longer
necessary, they revealed their secret. The coffin was then opened, and
it was found that the features of the unfortunate Batthyanyi had been
singularly well preserved. Several who had fought for freedom by his
side in 1848 looked once more on the face of their leader. The
subsequent funeral in the new cemetery was made the occasion of a very
marked display of patriotic feeling. Later an imposing monument was
erected, but Count Batthyanyi's best and most enduring monument is the
part he took in the emancipation of the serfs.
Turning aside from the public demonstrations around the tombs of poets
and patriots, we wandered down the more secluded alleys of the cemetery.
In a lonely spot, quite away from the crowd and the glare, we came upon
an exquisite little plot of garden with growing flowers, shrubs, and
cypress-trees, tended, one could see, with loving care, "and in the
garden there is a sepulchre." I shall not easily forget the look of
ineffable grief visible on the face of an elderly man who was arranging
and rearranging the lights round and about the family grave. We noticed
that the names on the slab were those of a wife and mother, followed by
her children, several of them, sons and daughters, the dates of their
decease being terribly close one upon another. I had a conviction that
the lonely man we saw there was the only survivor of his family; I feel
sure it must have been so. It was very touching the way in which he
(aimlessly, it seemed to me) moved first this light and then the other,
or grouped them together around the vases of sweet flowers that decked
the graves. It was all that remained for him to do for his beloved ones;
and we could see the poor man was vainly occupying himself, lingering
on, unwilling to leave the spot!
We had not much fancy for returning amongst the patriotic crowd gathered
about the gaslighted Valhalla, so we made our way out.
We English must have our say about statistics whenever there is a
wedding or a funeral, and as a fact Buda-Pest comes out very badly in
its death-rate. It is only within the last two or three years that they
have taken to publish the comparative returns of the capital cities of
Europe, and now it appears that Buda-Pest is in the unenviable position
of having on an average the highest death-rate of any European town! By
some this is attributed to the great excess of infant
mortality--consolatory for the grown-up people, as reducing their risk;
but the children, who die like flies before they are twelve months old,
may say with the epitaph in the country churchyard--
"If then we so soon were done for,
What the deuce were we begun for?"
I do not speak as one with authority, but duly-qualified persons tell me
that nursery reform is much needed in Hungary. I know not what it is
they do with the children, only it seems the system is wrong somewhere,
as the bills of mortality clearly testify.
Then, again, the position of Pest is not healthy; it lies low, indeed
some part of the city is built on the old bed of the Danube. The
drainage, however, is very much improved of late years, and the
magnificent river embankments have done much to obviate the malaria
arising from mud-banks.