ARRIVAL IN TRANSYLVANIA—FIRST IMPRESSIONS.
The War Office, whose ways are dark and whose mysteries are
inscrutable, had unexpectedly decreed that we were to exchange Galicia
for Transylvania.
The unaccountable decisions of a short-sighted Ministry, which, without
ostensible reason, send unfortunate military families rolling about
the empire like gigantic foot-balls—from Hungary to Poland, down to
Croatia, and up again to Bohemia, all in one breath—too often burst on
hapless German _ménages_ like a devastating bomb, bringing moans and
curses, tears and hysterics, in their train, according as the sufferer
happens to be of choleric or lachrymose temperament. Only those who
have lived in this country, and tasted of the bitter-sweets of Austrian
military life, can tell how formidable it is to be forced to pack up
everything—literally everything, from your stoutest kitchen-chairs
to your daintiest egg-shell china—half a dozen times during an equal
number of years.
For my own part, however—and I am aware that I am considered singular
in my views—I had little objection to being treated in this sportive
fashion, as long as it gave me the opportunity of seeing fresh scenes
and different types of people. There are two sides to every question, a
silver—or at least a tin-foil—lining to every leaden cloud, and it is
surely wiser to regard one’s self as a tourist than as an exile?
What if crockery perish and mirrors be shivered in the portentous
flitting? Dry your eyes, and console yourself by gazing at mountains
new and lakes unknown. And if furniture be annihilated, and your grand
piano-forte reduced to a wailing discord, what of that? Such loss is
only gain, for in return you will hear the music of unknown tongues and
the murmur of strange waters. If the proceeding be often illogical, the
change is always welcome; and on this particular occasion I secretly
blessed the playful impetus which had sent our ball of fate thus high
up in the air, to alight again in the land beyond the forest.
It was in the beginning of April that we started on our journey, and in
Galicia we left everything still deep in ice and snow; but scarce had
we passed the Hungarian frontier, and got down on to the broad plains,
when a warm, genial breeze came to meet us and tell us that winter was
gone. The snow left us by degrees, and with it the poverty-stricken,
careworn expression peculiar to Poland; spring flowers ventured out
of their hiding-places, singly at first, then in groups of twos and
threes, till they grew to extensive patches of gold or sapphire blue,
pressing up to the rails on either side of our way. Greasy _kaftans_
began to give place to sheepskin _bundas_, and pointed mustaches became
more numerous than corkscrew ringlets. The air seemed full of joyous
music—the voice of the lark and the strains of a gypsy fiddler
alternately taking up the song of triumph over the return of spring.
The railway communications are very badly managed, so that it was only
on the evening of the second day (fully forty-eight hours) that we
arrived at Klausenburg, where we were to stop for a night’s rest. It
would hardly have taken longer to go from Lemberg to London.
Coming from the Hungarian plains, the entrance into Transylvania is
very striking, as the train dashes along narrow winding valleys, where,
below, a green mountain torrent is breaking over gray bowlders; and
above, the cliffs are piled up so high and so near that only by craning
our necks out of the carriage-window can we catch a glimpse of the
sky above. Unfortunately, the early darkness had set in long before
we reached Klausenburg, so that I had no opportunity of observing the
country immediately round the town.
Fresh from Polish hotels as we were, the inn where rooms had been
secured struck us as well kept and appointed, though I dare say that
had we come from Vienna or Paris it would have appeared just fairly
second-rate. The beds were excellent, the rooms clean; the doors could
actually be locked or bolted without superhuman effort; the bells could
really ring, and what was stranger yet, their summons was occasionally
attended to.
I was somewhat disappointed next morning when daylight came round again
and showed me the environs of the town. Pretty enough, but tame and
insignificant, with nothing of the sublime grandeur which the entrance
into the land had led me to expect. The town itself differed but little
from many other Hungarian towns I had seen before, and had indeed an
exclusively Hungarian character, being the winter resort of the Magyar
aristocracy of Transylvania.
The present town of Klausenburg, or, in Hungarian, Kolosvar, lying
three hundred and thirty-five metres above the sea-level, and built
on the site of Napoca, a Roman city, was founded by German colonists
about the year 1270-1272, and was for many years exclusively a German
town, where Hungarians were only tolerated on sufferance and in one
restricted quarter. By degrees, however, these latter obtained a
preponderance; and finally, when the Unitarian sect made of Klausenburg
its principal seat, the Saxons withdrew in disgust from the place
altogether.
In the year 1658, Klausenburg was besieged by the Tartars. The Turkish
Sultan having deposed George Rakoczy II. for acting against his
will, sent hither the barbarians to devastate the land. Burning and
pillaging, the wild hordes reached Klausenburg (then a Saxon city),
and standing before its closed gates, they demanded a ransom of thirty
thousand thalers for sparing the town.
Martin Auer, the Klausenburg judge and a brave Saxon man, went out
to meet the enemy with a portion of the required money. The Tartars
threatened to murder him for not bringing the whole of what they
asked, but Auer divined that not even the payment of the entire thirty
thousand thalers would save the town from pillage. The Tartars intended
to take the sum, and then to sack the city. So he begged to be suffered
to go as far as the town gates in order to persuade his fellow-citizens
to deposit the rest of the money; but when he had reached within
speaking distance, he cried out to his countrymen,
“Friends and citizens! I have come hither under the feint of persuading
you to pay the rest of the fine demanded by the Tartars; but what I
really advise is for you to keep your money and resist the enemy to the
last; trust them not, for however much you pay, they will not spare
you. For my part, I gladly lay down my life for the good of my people.”
But hardly had he finished speaking when the Tartars, guessing at the
purport of his words, laid hold of the brave Saxon and dragged him off
to a cruel death.
A peculiar characteristic of Klausenburg are the Unitarian divorces,
which bring many strangers on a flying visit to this town, where the
conjugal knot is untied with such pleasing alacrity, and replaced at
will by more congenial bonds.
To attain this end the divorcing party must be a citizen of
Klausenburg, and prove his possession to house or land in the place.
This, however, is by no means so complicated as it sounds, the
difficulty being provided for by a row of miserable hovels chronically
advertised for sale, and which for a nominal price are continually
passing from hand to hand.
House-buying, divorce, and remarriage can therefore be easily
accomplished within a space of three or four days—a very valuable
arrangement for those to whom time is money. By this convenient system,
therefore, if you happen to have quarrelled with your first wife on
a Sunday, you have only to take the train to Klausenburg on Monday,
become Unitarian on Tuesday, buy a house on Wednesday, be divorced on
Thursday, remarried on Friday, and on Saturday sell your house and
turn your back on the place with the new-chosen partner of your life,
and likewise the pleasant _arrière-pensée_ that you can begin again _da
capo_ next week if so pleases you.
I went to visit this street for sale, which presents a most doleful
aspect. As the houses are continually changing hands, none of the
transitory owners care to be at the expense of repairs or keeping in
order; therefore rotten planking, hingeless gates, broken windows, and
caved-in roofs are the general order of the day. A row of card-houses
merely to mark this imaginary sort of proprietorship would equally
fulfil the purpose.
The town is said to be unhealthy, and the mortality among children
very great. This is attributed to the impurity of the drinking-water,
several of the springs which feed the town wells running through the
church-yard, which lies on a hill.
To our left, about an hour after leaving Klausenburg, we catch sight
of the Thorda Cleft, or _Spalt_—one of the most remarkable natural
phenomena which the country presents. It is nothing else but a gaping,
unexpected rift, of three or four English miles in length, right
through the limestone rocks, which rise about twelve hundred feet at
the highest point. Deep and gloomy caverns, formerly the abode of
robbers, honey-comb these rocky walls, and a wild mountain torrent
fills up the space between them, completing a weirdly beautiful scene;
but on our first view of it from the railway-carriage it resembled
nothing so much as a magnified loaf of bread severed in two by the cut
of a gigantic knife.
I do not know how geologists account for the formation of the Thorda
Cleft, but the people explain it in their own fashion by a legend:
The Hungarian King Ladislaus, surnamed the Saint, defeated and pursued
by his bitterest enemies the Kumanes, sought refuge in the mountains.
He was already hard pressed for his life, and close on his heels
followed the pagans. Then, in the greatest strait of need, with death
staring him in the face, the Christian monarch threw himself on his
knees, praying to Heaven for assistance. And see! He forsaketh not
those that trust in Him! Suddenly the mountain is rent in twain, and a
deep, yawning abyss divides the King from his pursuers.
[Illustration: THE THORDA SPALT.]
The rest of the country between Klausenburg and Hermanstadt is bleak
and uninteresting—it is, in fact, as I afterwards learned, one of the
few ugly stretches to be found in this land, of which it has so
often been said that it is all beauty. A six hours’ journey brought us
to our destination, Hermanstadt, lying at the terminus of a small and
sleepy branch railway. Unfortunately, with us also arrived the rain,
streaming down in torrents, and blotting out all view of the landscape
in a persistent and merciless manner; and for full eight days this
dismal downpour kept steadily on, trying our patience and souring our
tempers. What more exasperating situation can there be? To have come
to a new place and yet be unable to see it; as soon be sent into an
unknown picture-gallery with a bandage over the eyes.
There was, however, nothing to be done meanwhile but to dodge about the
town under a dripping umbrella and try to gain a general idea of its
principal characteristics.
A little old-fashioned German town, spirited over here by supernatural
agency; a town that has been sleeping for a hundred years, and is only
now slowly and reluctantly waking up to life, yawning and stretching
itself, and listening with incredulous wonder to the account of all
that has happened in the outside world during its slumber—such was the
first impression I received of Hermanstadt. The top-heavy, overhanging
gables, the deserted watch-towers, the ancient ramparts, the crooked
streets, in whose midst the broad currents of a peaceful stream partly
fulfil the office of our newer-fashioned drains, and where frequently
the sprouting grass between the irregular stone pavement would afford
very fair sustenance for a moderate flock of sheep, all combine to give
the impression of a past which has scarcely gone and of a present which
has not yet penetrated.
There are curious old houses, with closely grated windows whose iron
bars are fancifully wrought and twisted, sometimes in the shape of
flowers and branches, roses and briers interlaced, which seem to
have sprung up here to defend the chamber of some beautiful princess
lying spellbound in her sleep of a hundred years. There are quaint
little gardens which one never succeeds in reaching, and which in
some inexplicable manner seem to be built up in a third or fourth
story; sometimes in spring we catch a glimpse of a burst of blossom
far overhead, or a wind-tossed rose will shower its petals upon us,
yet we cannot approach to gather them. There is silence everywhere,
save for occasional vague snatches of melody issuing from a half-open
window—old forgotten German tunes, such as the “Mailüfterl” or
“Anchen von Tharau,” played on feeble, toneless spinnets. There are
nooks and corners and unexpected flights of steps leading from the
upper to the lower town, narrow passages and tunnels which connect
opposite streets.
“These are to enable the inhabitants to scuttle away from the Turks,”
I was told, my informant lowering his voice, as if we might expect
a row of turbans to appear at the other side of the passage we were
traversing. “There is our theatre,” he continued, pointing to a dumpy
tower bulging out of the rampart-wall. One of the principal strongholds
this used to be, but its shape now suited conveniently for the erection
of a stage, and the narrow arrow-slits came in handy for the fixing-up
of side-scenes.
Many more such old fortress-towers are to be found all over the town,
some of which are now used as military stores, while others have been
converted into peaceable summer-houses. At the time when Hermanstadt
was still a Saxon stronghold each tower had its own name, as the
Goldsmiths’ Tower, the Tanners’, the Locksmiths’, etc., according to
the particular guild which manned it in time of siege.
From one of these towers it was that the Sultan Amurad was killed by an
arrow when besieging the town in 1438 with an army of seventy thousand
men.
The whole character of Hermanstadt is thoroughly old German, reminding
me rather of some of the Nuremberg streets or portions of Bregenz than
of anything to be seen in Hungary.
The streams which run down the centre of each street are no doubt as
enjoyable for the ducks who swim in them, as for young ladies desirous
of displaying a neat pair of ankles; but for more humdrum mortals
they are somewhat of a nuisance. They can, it is true, be jumped in
dry weather without particular danger to life or limb; but there are
many prejudiced persons who do not care to transform a sober round
of shopping into a species of steeple-chase, and who will persist in
finding it hard to be unable to purchase a yard of ribbon or a packet
of pins without taking several flying leaps over swift watercourses.
Much of the life and occupations of our excellent Saxon neighbors
is betrayed by these telltale streamlets, which, chameleon-like,
alter their color according to what is going on around them. Thus on
washing-days the rivulet in our street used to be of a bright celestial
blue, rivalling the laughing Mediterranean in color, unless indeed the
family in question were possessed of much scarlet hosiery of inferior
quality, in which case it would assume a gory hue suggestive of secret
murders. When the chimney-sweep had been paying his rounds in the
neighborhood, the current would be dark and gloomy as the turbid waters
of the Styx; and when a pig was killed a few doors off—But no; the
subject threatens to grow too painful, and I feel that a line must be
drawn at the pig.
[Illustration: OLD FORTRESS-TOWER ON THE RAMPARTS AT HERMANSTADT.[3]]
Such is the every-day aspect of affairs; but in rainy weather these
little brooklets, becoming obstreperous, swell out of all proportions,
and for this frequent contingency small transportable bridges are kept
in readiness to be placed across the principal thoroughfares of the
town. After a very heavy thunder-plump in summer, even these bridges do
not suffice, as then the whole street is flooded from side to side, and
for an hour or so Hermanstadt becomes Venice—minus the gondolas.
These occasional floodings give rise to many amusing incidents, as that
of an officer who, invited to dinner by the commanding general, beheld
with dismay the dinner-hour approach. He had only to cross the street,
or rather the canal, for at that moment it presented the appearance of
a navigable river. Would the waves subside in time? was his anxious
question as he gazed at the clock in growing suspense, and dismally
surveyed his beautifully fitting patent-leather boots. No, the waves
did not subside, and no carriage was to be procured, the half-dozen
_fiacres_ of which Hermanstadt alone could boast being already engaged.
The clock struck the quarter. “What is to be done?” moaned the unhappy
man in agony of spirit, while the desperate alternatives of swimming or
of suicide began to dance before his fevered brain. “A boat, a boat, a
kingdom for a boat!” he repeated, mechanically, when it struck him that
the quotation might as well be taken literally in this case, and that
in default of a boat, he had three good steeds in his stables. “Saddle
my horse—my tallest one!” he cried, excitedly; “I am saved!”—and so
he was. The gallant steed bore him through the roaring flood, bringing
him high and dry to the door of his host, with patent boots intact.
* * * * *
Meanwhile—to return to the subject of my first days at Hermanstadt—the
rain had continued to fall for a whole week, and I was beginning to
lose all patience. “I don’t believe in the mountains you all tell me
about!” I felt inclined to say, when my first eight days had shown me
nothing but leaden clouds and dull gray mists; but even while I thought
it, the clouds were rolling away, and bit by bit a splendid panorama
was unfolding before my eyes.
Sure enough, they were there, the mountains I had just been insulting
by my disbelief, a long glittering row of snowy peaks shining in the
outbursting sunshine, so delicately transparent in their loveliness,
so harmonious in their blended coloring, so sublimely grand in their
sweeping lines, that I could have begged their pardon for having
doubted their existence!
As one beautiful picture often suffices to light up a dingy apartment,
so one lovely view gives life and interest to a monotonous county
town. It takes the place of theatres, art galleries, and glittering
shop-windows; it acts at times as a refreshing medicine or a
stimulating tonic; and though I saw it daily, it used to strike me
afresh with a sense of delightful surprise whenever I stepped round the
corner of my street, and stood in face of this glorious tableau.
The town of Hermanstadt lies in the centre of a large and fertile
plain, intersected by the serpentine curves of the river Cibin, and
dotted over by well-built Saxon villages. To the north and west the
land is but gently undulating, while to the east and south the horizon
is bounded by this imposing chain of the Fogarascher Hochgebirg,
their highest peaks but seldom free from snow, their base streaked by
alternate stretches of oak, beech, and pine forests.
At one point this forest, which must formerly have covered the entire
plain, reaches still to the farther end of the town, melting into the
promenade, so that you can walk in the shade of time-honored oak-trees
right to the foot of the mountains—a distance of some eight English
miles.
To complete my general sketch of the town of Hermanstadt, I shall
merely mention that although our house was situated in one of the
liveliest streets, yet the passing through of a cart or carriage
was a rare event, which, in its unwonted excitement, instinctively
caused every one to rush to their windows; that the pointed irregular
pavement, equally productive of corns and destructive to _chaussure_,
seems to be the remnant of some mediæval species of torture; that gas
is unknown, and the town but insufficiently lighted by dingy petroleum
lamps.
Probably by the time that Hermanstadt fully wakens up to life again,
it will discover to its astonishment that it has slept through a whole
era, and skipped the gas stage of existence altogether, for it will
then be time to replace the antediluvian petroleum lamps, not by the
already old-fashioned gas ones, but by the newer and more brilliant
rays of electric light.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Reprinted from a publication of the Transylvanian Carpathian
Society.