Chapter XXXII: The Family Pedigree

The town of Temesvár contains a population of 33,000 souls, and produces a medley that almost outdoes even Pest itself. Here are Greeks, Wallachs, Hebrews, Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians, a sprinkling of Turks, and a large proportion of Magyars. It consists of an inner town and an outer one, the former surrounded by strong fortifications. Wherever one looks there are bastions and ditches, and great guns and little guns menacing us in all directions, and seeming to dodge our movements continually. Never by any chance do we get out of the way of those guns. As we walk along the road by the side of the people’s park, there is one facing us the whole way; as _we_ turn to the left it seems to turn also. Never can I forget the expression of that one gun, which, for nearly half the day, fixed its hideous muzzle upon us like a great unblinking eye, and kept me in a state of nightmare throughout the live-long hours of slumber.

There has been good reason in the past, however, for all these hostile demonstrations; for Temesvár has twice played a very important _rôle_ in Hungarian history. The town contains but few old buildings, having been nearly destroyed during the bombardment of 1849, when a thousand shells were sent into it, and nearly every house reduced to a heap of ruins. The greatest victory gained by the Imperial army over the Hungarians was fought here under General Haynau.

The Palace, built in 1443 by John Hunyad, one of Hungary’s last kings, has been entirely restored, and is now used as a prison. At the present time Temesvár is one of the prettiest, cleanest, and brightest little towns in the whole of Hungary. The houses are new and lofty and have an Italian look, except beyond the gates where they are nearly all of one story.

The now smiling and beautiful plains surrounding Temesvár were once a huge morass infested with fevers of the most pestilential description, the whole district of the Banát at the close of the last century--up to which time it was the frequent theatre of Moslem incursion--being scarcely better than an uncultivated swamp. After the final expulsion of the Turks, however, foreigners were summoned to people this “luxuriant wilderness,” and Greeks, Bulgarians, Servians, Germans, and even French and Italians availed themselves of the invitation, till the rich alluvial prairie, hitherto unturned by the plough, was soon converted into a fertile garden. The soil yielded the most extraordinary crops, fortunes were speedily made, and some of the wealthiest Hungarian families of the present day are said to be the descendants of poor adventurers in the Banát.

The climate of this region during the summer is all but tropical, and the rich, black, loamy soil capable of producing almost any crop. Besides Indian corn, tobacco, flax, hemp, and sunflowers--from which oil is made--rice also grows in the marshy districts. Nor is cotton missing, for in one district in the Banát we recognised the pretty serrated leaf, and white, fluffy balls of the useful plant.

At Temesvár we took the train to our next destination, our lumbering old carriage coming with us on a truck.

Leaving the old town we travelled through dense forests, and passed the castle where, as the Austrians say, Görgei capitulated, but where the Hungarians, on the contrary, declare that he turned traitor to his country.

In the plains the wheat and rye are being cut, and how many sweet pictures we see! Whole families in brilliant costumes grouped round their _szekér_, or _Leiterwagen_, resting from their toil in the drowsy noontide, and some of them fast asleep. Presently we stop at a station close to a large and thickly populated village, inhabited exclusively by Bulgarian colonists. Their costume is not only distinct, but they retain their own language, and make themselves intelligible to the Hungarians by a smattering of Magyar. In a short time, arriving at Szaderlak, we find ourselves in a district peopled by a race who originally migrated from the Black Forest; almost every village we pass being denizened by a separate and distinct nationality, none of whom can understand the next. And now, leaving villages behind, we are again out on the rolling plains, with their immense herds of horses, cows, and swine. Although the various herds intermingle, they know their owners and their owners know them, and at the sound of the various horns at morn or eve, as at Fűred, they all “sort themselves” and run off helter-skelter to their own villages, which are sometimes many miles away. If the traveller make any sojourn on the Alfőld he will observe that every Sunday morning each peasant takes to his own particular quadrupeds a small quantity of salt and corn, and as soon as his form is seen approaching, when yet a mere speck in the distance, they race off to meet him, the pigs with loud and indignant squeak bringing up the rear.

As we approach the river Marős the plains are almost under water, and there are signs of inundation everywhere. How one pities the peaceful dwellers in the vicinity of these ungovernable rivers! A little further and we come to the Marős itself, winding over its shallow bed, a clear stream reflecting the sunlit sky, with the curious old boats carrying merchandise seen here and there floating calmly on its still and glassy surface. But leaving the plains behind we soon enter a beautiful valley hemmed in by lofty hills, one of which is crowned with an ancient Burg, the first of those many “peasant-fortresses” which, during the troublous times of Turkish invasion, formed a line of fortifications extending throughout this eastern portion of Hungary.

In four hours’ time we reach the plains again and come to the end of our journey. Arriving at the station, we see beyond its enclosure a white carriage and four white horses driven by a white man, waiting to take us across the green and boundless wastes to the home of András’s master, at which we are to stay some days. Casting our eyes round the whole circle of the horizon, however, we see no road whatever. Have we to cross these interminable plains hap-hazard, with nought but the sun to guide our wanderings? Nothing is visible but a long line of white cloud creeping along the ground. But leaving the station behind we soon enter the white cloud, and find that it covers a sandy track which itself forms the roadway, and before we have proceeded half a mile we feel we have swallowed a sand-bank, and, like the horses, the carriage, and the driver, become covered from head to foot with dust. There have been no inundations here at all events, for the ground is as parched as on the desert of Arabia, and instead of pitying the inhabitants of the district of the fertilising Marős, we almost envy them.

The horses gallop the whole way, and our seven miles of road are happily soon covered. In rather less than forty minutes we see through our sand-bedimmed eyes a group of _robinias_ similarly powdered, and in their midst a large one-storied building. Passing through the open gates and a long sweeping carriage drive, we come to anchor at a broad flight of steps, where, seen through the dust that has followed us even here, stands a spectre in black, who, descending the steps in question with measured stately gait, welcomes the ghosts within the carriage and assists them to alight. And we soon hear the words, “My sweet servant,” followed by “My sweet master,” as the white form of András appears, who, stooping low, kisses with deepest reverence the black spectre’s hand.

Other dark forms now appear, coming from the back premises, and there are loud acclamations at the sight of András, and a shower of “_per Kends_” (“your Graces”) falls broad-cast, as these polite people greet each other according to the approved mode of salutation amongst servants in Hungary.

As usual the mansion consists of one story only, and covers a large area. There are no passages, and each room is approached through another. The living rooms form a cluster in the centre of the building, and are connected by lofty folding-doors, all of which being open, give an appearance of space and grandeur to the whole. Although of the very simplest order in architectural design, the mansion is luxuriously furnished, and seems strangely out of keeping with its surroundings. It is heated throughout by hot air, and none of the stoves, which form such an ugly feature in German houses, are visible.

It is only above the roads that the cloud of dust I have alluded to hovers, and, our rooms looking out upon the Alfőld, we see before us a graceful landscape covered with vast stretches of Indian corn, the tall stems of which, already drooping with their ripening ears, are golden in the setting sun. Whilst dressing for dinner, which was at half-past seven, I watched from my window the great scarlet ball sink beneath the horizon, till the plains, drinking in the splendours of the sky, were as a crucible blending all the rainbow’s tints into one delicious harmony.

We found a large family party assembled at dinner: the dowager, our host’s mother, a widowed sister and her son and daughter, besides the young wife--a beautiful woman and a true specimen of Magyar, possessing those graceful and winning manners which are such a charm in all Hungarian society.

During dinner the conversation turned upon the Magyar language, and the obstacles to its acquisition which beset foreigners, the principal one arising from the fact that the prepositions and possessive pronouns instead of preceding are made to follow the noun, and become affixes to it. From this cause a whole sentence of six or seven words is sometimes capable of being expressed in one only; our hostess naïvely instancing two combinations illustrative of the lengths to which this peculiarity of the language may be carried, namely,--“_Hamegkőpenyegesittelennittehhetnélek_,” a word signifying “If I could deprive you of your clothes!” and another--“_Legellenallhatlanabbaknak-bizonyultak_”--meaning “They have proved themselves the most irresistible;” and, as she did so, she uttered these to us unpronounceable syllables with so sweet an intonation that they made us in love with the language.

To render the above peculiarity, so aggravating to foreigners, intelligible to the reader, I will give one or two examples explanatory of the construction of the language in this respect. And first, when András addresses, in the words “my sweet master” and “my sweet mistress”--“_édes uram_” and “_édes asszonyom_”--the substantive nouns are _úr_ and _asszony_, the final syllables, _am_, _om_, being merely the possessive affixes. Again, _anyá_ (mother) becomes, with the possessive pronoun _my_ affixed to it, _anyám_; whilst to instance an example in which both pronoun and preposition are used, we will take the word _haz_ (a house). _Haz-am_ (my house), followed by the preposition _ba_ (_in_, which is affixed to the pronoun), becomes _hazamba_ (in my house).

The construction of verbs too in Magyar differs so widely from that of any other European language that a perfect knowledge of it is extremely difficult to the foreigner, who seldom acquires it perfectly. The structure of the language in some measure resembles Turkish, Magyar, and Finnish, being connected with those of Mongolia and Turkestan just as English is with Persian and Sanscrit. The Magyar language is said to have undergone no changes whatever; that spoken by the Hungarians of to-day being identical with that of the Magyars on their conquest of the country. A great many Turkish, Slavonian, as well as Greek, Italian, and German words have crept in; but all those essential to express common wants are the same as in the language of the Fins at the present time.

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The drawing-room was full of English books, some of which were translated into the Magyar language. Hungarian literature is not as yet in a very advanced stage, neither, as a rule, are the Hungarians a very reading people. They have their own novelists, but greatly prefer English authors. They do not, however, care for the “sensational,” preferring the sentimental and romantic.

In their cheap journalistic literature the kind of pabulum known as “penny dreadful” does not exist. The Hungarians of the lower class do not care to take their “horrors hot;” and such things as delight an Englishman of the same calibre fall flat upon the mental palate of a Hungarian.

There is nothing half so charming as a visit to a Magyar family. There is a well-bred ease and cordiality of manner about the Hungarians, that make the guest feel perfectly at home immediately he enters the house. There is no _géne_, and the visitor becomes instantly as one of the family circle.

The following morning, whilst the lord of the domain was closeted with his _Ispán_ (steward), we walked to some of the tenants’ cottages, accompanied by his wife. Although we went into six, I do not think we saw as many children. The Magyars seldom have large families; and so often are they childless that it is a common thing for them to adopt the child of a wandering Slovak, and bring him up as their own. There is also a great mortality amongst children on the Alfőld, the chief reason assigned being the earthen floors; their aged also being said to suffer intensely from rheumatism, from the same cause.

Surrounding these dwellings was a small garden fenced in with the dried stalks of Indian corn, and nothing could have looked more comfortable than the interior of each one, which bespoke the existence of rude plenty. Yet the inhabitants were but the cultivators of the soil, synonymous with our English labourers. On our return we passed through the farm-buildings, and were shown the stud, consisting of about twenty horses. In the adjoining coach-house were carriages of all descriptions and of the most primitive design; whilst in the centre stood one the precise nature of which it was not easy to define.

“That,” remarked our host, who had now joined us (pointing in the direction of the nondescript vehicle in question), “is the family pedigree.” And its history, narrated by himself, showed how appropriate was its title. It had in fact begun its career by being a modest species of _britzska_, but ended in becoming a house on wheels, a veritable genealogical tree.

Our host, unlike his Magyar tenantry, was blessed with a “quiverful,” having eight children, the eldest of whom numbered little more than as many years, all having arrived with the greatest punctuality like daisies and buttercups in May. When the third “hardy annual” was old enough to take his daily exercise with his parents, the _britzska_ was converted into a _barouche_. On the death of our host’s father, at which epoch the dowager took up her abode in the country château of her son, an excrescence was added to the back in the form of a “rumble,” to which the “hardy annuals” were transferred in her favour; and when the sixth arrived, our pater-familias resorted to the ingenious expedient of having the carriage closed in after the manner of a _landau_, and the hood elevated to the top after the fashion of a _banquette_ on the summit of a _diligence_. At last twins came; upon which happy occurrence two small seats were attached to the inside of the doors, which were ingeniously contrived to let up and down like a bracket.

“In this carriage,” he remarked triumphantly, when he had finished its history, his whole countenance beaming with benevolence and paternal pride, “we all travel together to Pest, where we have our winter residence.”

One can picture to one’s self the start. The host and hostess, the dowager--our host’s mother--his sister, the eight small blessings, the governess, the lady’s maid, the footman, the postilion, the six horses and the dowager’s lap-dog; in all a Noah’s Ark of twenty-three bipeds and quadrupeds!

In the early evening our host took us for a long drive across his estate, and as our way was fortunately not confined to the sandy wastes we traversed yesterday, we were not smothered with dust as on our way from the station. Never can I forget that drive, or the railway speed at which we skimmed over the level surface of the _puszta_. Railway speed! It is nothing to it--not that of Hungarian railways, at any rate. We absolutely flew on the wings of the wind. The pace at which a good team of Hungarian horses go is the most madly exciting thing possible to conceive.

The domain of our host covered a large area of _puszta_; but it was small, he assured us, compared with many, which often cover from thirty to forty square miles; whilst formerly there were instances in which some were even seven and eight hundred miles in extent. It is difficult for us, who live in our “tight little island,” to comprehend the existence of such vast estates belonging to one individual. Yet they were managed with great exactness under stewards, the labourers and their families sometimes consisting of an army of from a thousand to fifteen hundred souls. The word _puszta_, now so commonly and incorrectly applied to the great plains, originated in these estates; a nobleman’s property, which was farmed by his own labourers--that is to say, where there were no peasants, and consequently no forced labour--having been called a _puszta_. The revenues are often as enormous as the domains themselves; and the flocks that graze the land not under cultivation numbering hundreds of thousands, remind one of patriarchal times; whilst the ingatherings of wheat, rye, rape, and other cereals grown on the estate each amount to hundreds of thousands of bushels annually.

Having dined before starting, the usual dinner hour in Hungary being two o’clock, we were enabled to prolong our drive, and did not return until a late hour in the evening.

“They are dancing the _csárdás_,” exclaimed our host, as we approached a number of labourers’ dwellings and saw the red petticoats spinning round and round. “Would you like to see it? They dance it every evening; but this is evidently one got up for a particular occasion, for the girls are in full fig, and I hear the clash of spurs as the Magyar dandies knock their heels together to keep time to the scraping of the gipsies’ fiddles.”

It was a pretty scene: the rapid movements of the dancers in their gay costumes, the picturesque background of low sheds covered with the large round leaves of the melon, its tendrils hanging in graceful festoons, and its golden fruit resting on the thatch. We might have been witnessing a Spanish saraband.

The Hungarians dance for their very lives. To them the practice of the Terpsichorean art is no mere languid and graceful undulation of the figure, but a perfect wild _abandon_ of mirth; and they whirl, and spin, and gyrate with the velocity of dervishes, until their long black locks stand out straight, and their faces are ablaze with heat and excitement.

Watch them as they perform the _csárdás_--their national dance--to the strange wild harmony of the _Czigánok_! Watch them as they balance themselves backwards and forwards whilst adapting their subtle movements to the measure of its animating strains!

The _csárdás_ is essentially pantomimic, and describes by mute action the unquiet “course of true love.” The music is at first slow, and the couples walk up and down the room together in a stately manner; then, affecting to have made each other’s acquaintance, and fallen victims to the tender passion, the music grows more lively, and the “courtship” begins in earnest.

The lover advances towards his _innamorata_, she coyly responds and they spin round together for a few seconds, when, as if thinking she has given him too much encouragement, the maiden retires pouting, whereupon he again approaches, but this time she turns her back upon him and dances off in a contrary direction. Following her, however, he overtakes and seizes her round the waist, and away they go again whirling deliriously, until she manages to extricate herself from his grasp. Shy and friendly by turns, now encouraging her partner, and now retreating with offended dignity, the lover at length becomes chagrined at her caprices turns his back upon her, and they dance _dos à dos_ for a while with indignant gestures, till the maid with signs of repentance seeks reconciliation. The music grows faster and faster, the lovers, in the ecstasy of reunion, whirl and twirl madly, nor do they stop until both are quite giddy and out of breath, when, retiring from the scene, another couple takes their place, and the performance begins again.

The _csárdás_, of course, varies slightly in each instance, according to the locality and the spirit of the dancers, but the subject remains the same--love, courtship, jealousy, disappointment, reunion, and happiness “ever after.” Sometimes, in the closing scene, it winds up by the lover throwing himself on his knees before his mistress, whilst she dances round him in token of her complete triumph. Several couples are always occupied at the same time in this dance, in one phase or other of the would-be courtship; whilst the men’s hats, decorated with fresh flowers, the women got up in the most coquettish and picturesque costumes imaginable, the stamping of feet, clashing of spurs, and wildly exciting strains of the gipsies, as they saw away madly at their violins, all combine in rendering the _csárdás_ a most interesting and animating spectacle. Nor is it danced only by the peasants: it is seen in the ball-rooms of the nobles even at the capital, where a gipsy-band is always summoned to accompany it.

The most interesting place in which to witness it is the harvest-field, where, laying down their sickles, half-a-dozen of them will often stand up, as if seized by some irresistible impulse, and begin dancing all amongst the sheaves of corn.

Besides the national _csárdás_, however, there is one called the _Loshau csárdás_, a very slow dance, but it is by no means a favourite with the Magyars, who, so calm and phlegmatic in their ordinary moments, are wont during recreation to give themselves up to the wildest excitement. A third is often seen in the east of Hungary, where a number of men, linking arms, form a ring and dance together, accompanying their gyrations with clapping of hands, shouts, and stamping of feet, whilst the fair ones remain outside the magic circle, till an intrepid Adonis, breaking from his companions, seizes one of them round the waist and waltzes with her for awhile, after which he returns to the ring, and another repeats the ceremony.

But whatever be the form which the Hungarian dance assumes, its constant theme is love, just as patriotism and the joys of home are the chief subjects of their song.