Round About the Carpathians

by Andrew F. Crosse

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.