Hungarian Sketches in Peace and War Constable's Miscellany of Foreign Literature, vol. 1

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Title: Hungarian Sketches in Peace and War

Constable's Miscellany of Foreign Literature, vol. 1

Author: Mór Jókai

Commentator: Emeric Szabad

Release Date: May 2, 2010 [EBook #32204]

Language: English

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HUNGARIAN SKETCHES

IN

PEACE AND WAR.

FROM THE HUNGARIAN OF

MORITZ JÓKAI.

WITH PREFATORY NOTICE BY

EMERIC SZABAD,

Author of Hungary Past and Present.

EDINBURGH: THOMAS CONSTABLE AND CO.

HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO., LONDON.

JAMES M'GLASHAN, DUBLIN.

MDCCCLIV.

CONSTABLE'S MISCELLANY

OF

FOREIGN LITERATURE.

VOL. I.

EDINBURGH: THOMAS CONSTABLE AND CO.

HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO., LONDON.

JAMES M'GLASHAN, DUBLIN.

MDCCCLIV.

EDINBURGH: T. CONSTABLE, PRINTER TO HER MAJESTY.

CONTENTS.

PREFACE.

Jokai is one of the most popular of the Hungarian prose writers of fiction that sprang up a few years before the late war. His wit, flowing style, and vivid descriptions of Hungarian life as it is, joined to a rich fancy and great intensity of feeling, soon made him a favourite with Hungarian readers.

Among the earlier of his productions, those best known are a novel entitled, The Common Days, and a collection of minor tales, published under the title of Wild Flowers.

The present volume has been written for the most part since the late memorable national movement, and embodies descriptions of several of the direst scenes in the civil war which devastated Hungary from the year 1848 to 1850.

Most of the Hungarian literati were, at the close of the war, either roaming in foreign countries, or wandering in disguise through their native land; and the field of literature for a long time threatened to remain neglected and barren—a monument of national grief and desolation! Those patriotic writers who had for years wielded the pen with the noblest impulses thought to do their duty best by letting their highest faculties lie dormant; and laid aside the lyre rather than bring unacceptable offerings to a fatherland laid low, and at the mercy of foreign swords. And who will deny that there is sometimes great virtue in silence, and that the tongue that speaks not is often more eloquent and heroic than that which dares to utter sublime truths even at the foot of the gibbet? Many of the noble-hearted of Hungary resigned themselves to such a martyr-like silence, and persevere in it to the present day; while the great bulk of the people, unwilling to enhance the triumph of their victorious enemies by a show of unavailing lamentation, followed their example. Pesth, which had been the scene of literary activity, was at once deserted; the bards of Hungary, abandoning their homes to the wantonness of a foreign soldiery, went back to the districts whence they had come, there to mingle with those peasants whose chivalry and patriotism afforded constant themes to their lyres. Their renewed intercourse with their rustic countrymen served again to revive their hopes, quenched as in the grave.

In the sketches of Jokai, the reader will find many original delineations of Hungarian life among the middle-class nobility—a race of men whose manner of life and thought cannot fail to be interesting, however cursorily described. But the Hungarian peasant is in his way no less attractive. Nothing can be wilder than his dress, consisting of a sheepskin cloak (bunda), or a similar habit of the coarsest cloth, a shirt, scarcely reaching below the waist, and wide linen drawers, to which boots do not often form the necessary complement; yet his easy demeanour, delicate feelings, and especially his language, are such as to put him on a level with the educated classes. In conversation he will often use a more dignified style than a noble, who, by his exclusive privileges, has had ample scope for oratory in the county assemblies—select with astonishing tact the best lyrical productions of the day, and immortalize the lay by a tune of his own composition. These qualities of the Hungarian rustic—an insight into whose character will be given to the reader by a few camp scenes contained in this volume—must appear the more striking if we remember that the class to which he belongs was for centuries in a state of serfdom, from which it was only liberated by the late Revolution.

Independently of the various other calamities which prevented the development of the physical and mental resources of Hungary during the last three hundred years, the feudal system alone was an insurmountable barrier in the way of progress. The privileged classes were for the most part devising how to kill the time, while the labour of the peasant provided them with the means of gratifying their propensities, rarely disquieted by the backward state of the country, which in their eyes seemed all perfection. Properly speaking, it was only since the year 1825 that matters had begun to exhibit a material change in this respect. Many of the most conceited and thoughtless among the nobles had gradually allowed themselves to be convinced that arts and sciences might add to the charms of an easy life; and that national greatness demanded something more than hospitable roofs, fertile plains, and vast herds of cattle. The political and literary activity displayed by Counts Szecheny and Kolcsey found noble followers, and produced unexpected and astonishing results during the last twenty-five years. Still, compared with other countries, the progress of literature was slow; and the works of the most popular authors, though thrown off in comparatively small impressions, were long of reaching second editions. The cause of this result must be sought in the fact that reading is by no means universal among the Hungarians. Among the nobles, who had the means of buying books, only a few cared to do so, while the condition of the peasants prevented them from becoming in any way the patrons of literature. This apathy was undoubtedly owing in great part to the absence of a central national government; the effect of Hapsburg rule had always been to crush the political institutions of the country, and repress its noblest efforts, regarded as the sure forerunners of revolution. The Court of Vienna, besides excluding from public office and emolument such as were known for their independent principles and national feelings, now began gradually to arrogate to itself the right of censorship—an institution which alone would have sufficed to cripple the intellectual progress of the country.

Such, however, was the mental activity of the present generation, that Hungarian literature, despite the numerous obstacles it had to encounter, made rapid progress, and created in the minds of the people a spirit of inquiry and a desire after intellectual pursuits hitherto unknown. Never before had the cultivated tongues of the West been so much studied, or so many valuable translations made from the German, French, and English literatures. That the influence of the first was originally the strongest, and that several of the leading writers in philosophy and history took for their model the German school, will appear no matter of surprise. The rising writers of a more recent date, however, insensibly turned their attention to the more lively literature of France, and afterwards to that of Britain; and while some read with rapture the fictions of Scott, Bulwer, and Dickens, politicians learned to admire the doctrines of Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham. Of poets, none were more extensively read and more generally admired than Byron and Moore. Thus did the merely literary progress march on boldly and combine with the new political movement to further a change which had already made itself felt in every grade of society, and which was the more remarkable and satisfactory from having followed a too long period of stagnation.

A few words will suffice, and perhaps not be superfluous, to bring to the English reader's mind the deplorable causes of this long neglect.

The fifteenth century, which illumined the sky of Italy, and thence reacted on the rest of Europe, brought for Hungary nothing but an endless series of wars, distinguished by dazzling military achievements, against the hosts of the Sultans, and turning out in the end but useless victories, productive of most ruinous effects and general exhaustion. The next age proved still more disastrous. The race of the Hunyadis, who in the preceding century had struck terror into the hearts of the Ottomans, had disappeared; the weak princes that ruled after them perished among the carnage of battle, to leave the crown of St. Stephen vacant, and to open a way for the Hapsburgs to the Hungarian throne. At this juncture, coinciding with the great religious movement in Germany, which was rapidly spreading to the banks of the Theiss, the position of Hungary became more desperate than ever, although the events that followed far surpassed the gloomiest anticipations. While the majority of the people chose a native for their king, a part of the aristocracy declared for Ferdinand of Austria. The rival kings, unable to vanquish each other, called in to their aid the two most powerful monarchs of Europe. The former invoked the assistance of Solyman the Great; Ferdinand found a willing ally in his brother, Charles V. Thus it happened that, till the beginning of the eighteenth century, Hungary presented the aspect of a vast camp, exposed to the insolence of foreign mercenaries and the tyranny of the Hapsburg emperors, and at once protected and laid waste by its allies the Turks. Unfortunately, the Mussulman military colonies, which subsisted in Hungary from the time of Solyman to Achmet III., while adding to the distress of the people continually menaced by famine even during the years of temporary peace, were more ignorant than those whom they affected to protect, and therefore failed to produce on the Hungarians those effects which the Moors, in circumstances somewhat similar, had wrought upon the Spaniards. Nor is anything now left to call to mind the presence of the Turks in Hungary, except a few words that slipped into the Hungarian language.

The state of the country in the eighteenth century, somewhat relieved by the reign of Maria Theresa, was, after such a long series of calamities, not much calculated to foster the cultivation of science and poetry; nor did any fresh symptoms of the national life spring clearly into view before the beginning of the present century. True, that even amid the storms of the past generations, there appeared from time to time writers, whose names survive to the present day. But, with a few exceptions, chiefly in the department of poetry, all the works of that time were but insipid imitations which aspired to be thought original, but were little fitted either to please or to instruct.

After such a gloomy past as has been here shortly described, it will seem very natural, that with the awakening of the national mind the career of literature, suddenly interrupted by the late war, should be bold, steadily progressive, and triumphant, despite the narrow and contemptible canons of censors. As to prose fiction, it must be observed that it is of quite recent growth. The beginning of this species of composition was made about fifteen years ago by Baron Nicholaus Josika, who soon found successful rivals in Kuthy and Baron Eötvös. Jokai, who is now the favourite of the public, belongs, as has been already observed, to the younger staff of writers.

It would be a mistake to imagine, from the Eastern origin of the Magyars, that the tales and romances to be found in the Hungarian language bear any resemblance to the Arabian Nights, or the familiar poetry of the East in general. None of the writers above mentioned carries the reader to fairy realms, and superhuman characters. In plot, tendency, and execution, Hungarian prose fiction is identified with the modern novel of the rest of Europe—deriving, withal, its most pleasing characteristics from the peculiar features of Hungarian life and history, as well as from the native idiom, which differs entirely in its figures, and many of its expressions, from the other cultivated languages. It must, however, here be added, that the more the time approached to the great catastrophe, the more the general literature partook of a political character—a circumstance attributable to the censorship, which did not allow political questions to be discussed in their proper place. The novel or romance writer, not being so suspicious to the censor as the politician, often intermingled his love scenes and adventures with single touches, unfinished periods, and marks of exclamation, which escaped the vigilance and attention of the scissors-holder, but were only too well understood by those to whom they were addressed. Even the literary journals, sternly interdicted from meddling with politics, swarmed with allusions to the questions of the day; and while tending to cultivate the taste of the public, their usefulness was greater than might have been expected in rearing new labourers for the field of literature. In the presence of a public eminently conservative as regards book buying, not a tenth part of the more highly gifted youth would have gone farther than the composing of some slight specimens while at college, had it not been for the encouragement given by three weekly journals. The first of these periodicals, entitled the Honderu, was started by Lazarus Horvath, a gentleman who had travelled much in Europe, and was familiar with high life, and who is known as the unsuccessful translator of Childe Harold. The two other journals, started afterwards, were conducted by Frankenburg and Vachot. It was through the medium of these latter papers that the young bard Petöfi sent forth his wild, touching strains, and that Jokai, his intimate friend, became gradually known, when the unexpected events of 1848 changed the face of the whole country. Disastrous civil feuds, commenced on the one hand by the Slavonic population in the south of Hungary, and on the other by the Wallachians or Roumins in Transylvania, were followed by a desolating general war; and for nearly two years nothing was heard but the din of arms. Two or three daily papers alone testified that literary life was not yet extinct in the nation. As almost every one did who felt in any way capable of serving his country, Jokai followed the Government (obliged to abandon the capital to the Austrians in the beginning of 1849) to the town of Debreczin, on the other side of the Theiss, where he conducted for a short time a small political Journal. The rapid progress of the Hungarian arms in the same year, followed by the Russian invasion, was, as the reader may be aware, suddenly converted into a most disastrous defeat. The subjugated country was handed over to General Haynau; the nationality of its people was destroyed, and its noblest defenders fled into other lands, or awaited certain death in their own. The country people, struck with fear and amazement, confined themselves in sombre silence to their homes, which were filled with disguised literati, and other classes of delinquents; the different races of the population, their hands yet wet with blood, gazed confusedly on the ruins of their own working; the streets of Pesth, the gay capital, were deserted, and the single voice that broke the deep silence was that which pronounced in its official organ sentences of death, imprisonment, and confiscation. In such a state the country continued for several months, when even Haynau, a few days before being removed from his post, began to loathe his work, and to sign pardons as carelessly as he had hitherto subscribed sentences of death. It was at that juncture that a few straggling literati, gradually assembling at Pesth, commenced to issue a literary periodical, to which Jokai largely contributed. The press, it must be observed, was placed under the control of the police, established on an Austrian model. The head and chief members of the police belonging to the other parts of the Austrian empire, and totally ignorant of the Hungarian language, were naturally obliged to employ some natives to peruse the literary productions and translate their contents; after due consideration of these, the verdict was passed. The consequence of such a state of things was, that very frequently a single seemingly portentous phrase, or even the mere title, doomed to oblivion the most innocent work of the brain, while more substantial writing was allowed to make its way into the country, and frequently to be again prohibited, after having become familiar to thousands.

Most of the sketches contained in this volume, and which Jokai wrote under the name of Sajo, underwent this fate. The latest production of Jokai's pen is a novel entitled The Magyar Nabob, which is highly praised. His strictly historical pieces, depicting scenes of the civil war, though recalling the more vividly to mind the dreary and not yet forgotten past, were most eagerly read in Hungary; nor will the English reader peruse without deep emotion the fate of the Bardy family, contained in this volume.

Within the last two years, the state of literature in Hungary, if judged by the number of new books published, appears astonishingly progressive. The chief reason of this phenomenon may be found in the denationalizing measures of the Government, attempting to suppress the national idiom by excluding it from the public schools, and substituting in its place the German—a policy attempted without success by Joseph II. about the end of the last century.

That the people—though now perhaps more willing than ever to give their full support to literature—are inclined to look with some suspicion at the productions of a press in the hands of foreign authorities, and that many branches of a more serious nature than novel-writing must remain excluded from the sphere of literary activity in a country subjected to martial law, need hardly be remarked.

Besides, some of the more prominent and elder authors still persevere in their sad mournful silence, while others have sunk from a state of patriotic gloom into mental imbecility. But whatever shape Hungarian literature may henceforth assume, it is undoubtedly true that much that has issued within the last few years from the Hungarian press is worth translating; and I believe that the present volume, presented in a faithful and easy translation, and likely to be soon followed by several others of a similar class, will be found to introduce the English reader to scenes hitherto undescribed, and to characters as interesting as unusual.

Emeric Szabad.

HUNGARIAN SKETCHES.

DEAR RELATIONS.

One evening, towards the end of summer, my uncle, Lorincz Kassay, the sub-sheriff of the county, was seated on a bench before his porte-cochère, which stood wide open, without bar or gate, as beseemed the entrance to the house of an hospitable Hungarian gentleman.

True, half a dozen dogs, nearly as large as bears, were lying lazily about the court, and might have rendered the entrance embarrassing to persons of hostile intention; but as for strangers in general, these honest guards were too well accustomed to see them treated as the angels were by Abraham, to take any further notice than by a friendly bark, and a slow shake of the tail.

Uncle Lorincz Kassay sat enjoying his pipe, and calling across the road to his assistant, who was likewise seated at the door of his house, enveloped in the same comfortable fumes. The conversation might have been carried on with more facility had one of these worthy gentlemen crossed to the other side—the road being wide, and a stentorian voice necessary to make one's-self understood—but the mud lay so deep between the two houses, that it was severe work for carts and carriages to get through; and when it was absolutely necessary to cross the road, the passenger was obliged to make a considerable circuit, by the garden and meadow, holding on by the rail, besides returning the same way: consequently Uncle Lorincz and his ally found it less troublesome, and more convenient on the whole, to exert their lungs in the manner above mentioned.

Meanwhile my readers may be curious to learn how I am related to this worthy gentleman; but this indeed I cannot tell. I only know that he is called by all who know him Lorincz Kassay, bacsi;¹ and I would advise my friends likewise to adopt him as such, for he is a thoroughly honest and honourable country gentleman, and will never give them cause to blush at his name. Let us keep up the good old Magyar custom of calling our elders by the familiar titles of uncle and aunt, while we are privileged to those of nephews and nieces.

[1] Bacsi, contraction for batya—elder brother, or uncle.

Uncle Lorincz belonged to that medium class whose duty is to manage the laws and rights of the people, keep up their national prerogatives, look after their interests, in short, to labour without noise or fame,—a man of whom neither history nor poets speak, for the upright and honourable man is not so rare a character among us as to render it necessary to emblazon his name in history; and what could a poet make of an honest man who has neither romance enough to carry off his neighbour's wife, nor to shoot his best friend through the head for looking askance at him? Such a man as Uncle Lorincz, for instance, who comes into the world without the aid of star or horoscope, grows up without becoming a virtuoso on the piano, goes through his classes satisfactorily, and without occasioning any mutiny, and, finally, returns like a dutiful son to his parents, who assist him to look out for a good wife, whom he marries without any poetical occurrences; and who, when his parents are gathered to their fathers, inherits their blessing and their property unencumbered by debt—for this class of our countrymen consider debt as a species of crime; their principle being that an honest man should not spend more than his income. This principle had taken such root in Uncle Kassay's mind, that, rather than run up an account at the shoemaker's, he has been known, in his scholar days, to feign illness and keep his room, when his boots needed mending, until the necessary money arrived from home; and the same sense of honour, combined with the most lavish hospitality, characterized him through life.

Having been directly called upon by the county, he had accepted the situation of szolgabiro or sheriff—which the Hungarian takes upon himself ex nobili officio—from a generous sense of duty, rather than for the lucrative advantages attached to it, which by no means compensate for the dinners he is obliged to give; but he readily makes a sacrifice for the honour of the employment, and the confidence of the people in that incorruptible conscience which is chosen as the earthly providence of an entire district, to keep order and administer justice among twenty or thirty thousand people.

At the time our story commences, Lorincz and his worthy assistant were actually discussing some affair of great moment across the road, when their attention was attracted by shrill voices, and, looking in the direction of the sounds, they perceived a conveyance which it will be worth while to describe at length, as such things are not to be met with every day, particularly now that railroads are making so great innovations in our old habits and fashions.

It was a gentleman's calèche; the leather was somewhat spotted and gray, which may be easily accounted for, however, by the continual roosting of poultry on its roof. When or where the machinery had been contrived, it would be impossible to decide, for, according to historical date, suspended calèches existed in the days of Lajos I. The form of the body might be compared to a water-melon cut in half, which body was so convulsed by its four high springs at each irregularity of the road, that the tongues within ran the risk of being severed in twain when they attempted to speak, while their owners would certainly have been pitched out, had they not held well on by the sides. It was as impossible to open the doors as it was to shut them, for which reason they were permanently secured by well-knotted ropes. Above the two hinder wheels a large bundle of straw was attached, which threatened at every jerk to light on the heads of the inmates. Before this worthy ancestral memorial three very quiet horses were attached, a pie-bald, a bay, and a white, all three up to their ears in mud, and assisting one another with their shaggy tails to whip the reins out of the coachman's hand, while their hides exhibited various graphic traces of the whip.

In truth, the noble animals did not lack good-will, but only the necessary capabilities for the station they now filled, being honest cart-horses, neither born nor bred to draw an iron-springed calèche; and, sensible no doubt of their inability, they paused every ten minutes to draw breath instead, and to regard each other with doleful expressions.

On one of these occasions—namely, when the horses paused, and did not seem disposed to proceed further—one of the four individuals inside thrust forth a head, and called in a shrill voice to the coachman to stop.

The voice proceeded from one of the fair sex, whom we cannot at present describe, as the shawls and mufflers in which she was enveloped only permitted a glimpse of her respectable nose to be seen; three other individuals filled the vehicle. Beside the lady sat a figure in a fur mantle, whose only visible points were a vast beard and a meerschaum pipe, the bowl of which must have been guarded by some singular providence, from having its neck broken at every jolt of the carriage.

Opposite to mamma sat a hopeful sprig, whose head was so well thrust into his lambskin cap, that only two scarlet ears protruded to view, turning and perking with unwearied scrutiny to suit their owner's curiosity. The last place was occupied by a smaller boy, whose large wondering eyes were fixed on the muddy world around, and whose legs and feet coming constantly in contact with those of the gentleman opposite, obliged the latter to draw up in the most inconvenient manner possible.

The horses having again paused, the lady, working her way with great exertions through various cloaks and mufflers, called to the coachman as before to stop, and, addressing one of the bystanders, who stood gaping at the carriage, asked various questions relative to the position of Mr. Lorincz Kassay's house; and having received satisfactory answers, she once more muffled herself in her wrappings, and desired Marczi to proceed; on which he gave a lash to one horse, and the half-turned pole giving a blow to the second, the third took the hint, and they all three began to move, and proceeded in order for a few minutes, until they arrived in the village, where they once more paused and hung their heads, while the lady, for the third time, called to Marczi to stop, fixing as usual on some person whom she wished to address.

This time, the gentleman of the fur cloak and meerschaum pipe, losing all patience, cried out, Zsuzsi, my dear, why the tartar are you calling to Marczi again, when the plague is our having to stop so often?

Cannot you see, you thick-skull? rejoined the fair lady sharply, that is just the reason I call to him to stop, that folks may not see we cannot get on!

Fortunately the last person addressed happened to be the sheriff's footman, who offered to conduct them to the house, desiring the coachman to follow, which was easy to say, but not so easy to put in execution, until the good steeds had recovered breath in due time.

Meanwhile, Uncle Lorincz, observing that the carriage was coming to his house, blew the embers out of his pipe, and arranging his beard in two points, advanced to meet his guests. After a good deal of labour, the vehicle at length struggled into the court, and, unfortunately, in the confusion occasioned by the general efforts to rise from the heaps of wrappings, the good man managed to tread on some sensitive member of his wife's