_In the Palace of Prince and Princess K----_
_By Mina MacDonald, English Companion to the Two Daughters of a
Hungarian Magnate_
These experiences of an English girl throw a new light on the
character of the Hungarian noble families. At the outbreak of the
War, she was companion to the two daughters of a Hungarian Prince who
resided in the vicinity of Pressburg. This gave her an opportunity
of gauging the sentiments of those connected with the House of
Hapsburg. They discussed the War with frankness in her presence.
The family treated her precisely as one of their own and at no time
considered her as an "enemy alien." In the preface to her narrative,
Miss MacDonald says: "If other British subjects in Austria proper
were treated more rigorously, they must lay the blame on instructions
received from Berlin. My own experiences in the Hungarian family
during the throes of a World War may, perchance, induce British (and
American) readers to think more highly of the gallant Magyar race."
Selections from her narrative are here presented by courtesy of her
publishers, _Longmans, Green and Company_.
[5] I--THE CASTLE IN THE CARPATHIANS
The village of K---- stands in a pleasant mountain valley among the
White Carpathians on the borders of Moravia.... It cannot even lay
claim to the various dissensions of its neighbouring town S---- where
representatives of every race, religion, and political party to be
found in Austria and Hungary, keep the town like a boiling pot. It is
far otherwise in K---- which is solidly and frankly Clovak, Catholic,
and anti-Austrian. The peasants who, with the exception of the priest,
the schoolmaster and the inn-keeper, constitute the population of
village, are all dirty, drunken, hard-working, and intelligent.
* * * * *
The Schloss is an old white building full of beauty and interest, built
on the hill below the village, in the midst of a park where Maria
Therese used to hunt.... The gardens which surround the Schloss are
so beautifully laid out and so ornamented with fountains and statues
that K---- is known to Hungarians as the Miniature Versailles; the head
gardener being a person of such serious importance in K---- that even
the Herrschaft at the Schloss speak of and treat him not as an ordinary
gardener but as a Man of Art. Indoors, too, the house confirms its
reputation of being a small Versailles, for the collection of pictures
and antiquities, begun centuries ago, is pursued by the Prince of
to-day with vigour, and carping guests have been heard to remark that
though there wasn't a chair in the Schloss but had a history and a
value that made ordinary mortals' hair stand on end, there also wasn't
one that offered any ease or comfort except in the Prince's den where
all was modern--but sacred to the Prince.
Life was always merry at the Schloss, and it was a very jolly party
that Excellenz von R---- found gathered there when she arrived hot and
cross from Vienna, on June 28, 1914, bringing her bad news. We were:
the Prince and Princess--the best-natured and most happy-go-lucky of
all hosts and hostesses; their daughters, Claire aged twenty-one,
fair, blue-eyed and very beautiful, and Billy aged eighteen, large
and dark and interested in all things pertaining to sport; General
T----, round, white-haired, and explosive--once Commandant of a very
famous Galician fortress, but now living in irksome retirement in
Vienna; his son Walther, a lieutenant of Uhlans, known to us as "The
Babe"; finally, myself, known to everybody as Jerry--a name which no
circumstances could make beautiful, and which became heart-breaking
when invariably pronounced there as "Sherry."
Everybody knew and liked Excellenz von R----, who was a very gay and
enterprising old lady, and Claire, Billy, and I who had looked forward
in pleasure to her coming, awaited her at the gates and clambered
into the carriage from both sides as it passed--for Jan, the coachman
who had driven Excellencies to and from the Schloss for the past
twenty-five years, found it beneath his dignity to stop at the gates to
take us in, so we tumbled in as best we could on and around Excellenz,
whose face was long and tragic.