The first engagement I obtained in this manner was with Mr. Rosenberg, in Kutyevo, a village in Slavonia. He was the eldest son of the family, only a few years my senior, who had to do some business for his father at the St. Joseph fair, and amongst other things had also to find a teacher for his younger brothers and sisters. The young man had looked at me, somewhat abashed, but I began to talk to him in fluent French, of which he had some faint notion, and this had its effect; he took a liking to me, engaged me, and a few days later I went with him by steamer to Eszegg, and from there by carriage to the village of Kutyevo in a charming valley of the Slavonic mountains. My reception at Mr. Rosenberg's house was just as unfortunate as when I first came to Nyék—that is to say, they thought I looked too young, that my cheeks were too red, and that with such attributes I should probably lack the dignity and gravity so indispensable to a teacher. The principal cause of this fear seems to have been Miss Emily, the eldest daughter of the house, a charming girl of sixteen, who also was to refresh herself at the fountain of my wisdom, and according to the mother's judgment the small difference in age between teacher and pupil might lead to grave consequences. As things turned out the good lady was not far wrong in this. Otherwise they were all very kind to me. I had a good room, excellent food, and as I had to teach only six hours a day, I had time enough to devote myself with all my might to philological studies. It was here that I first began to give my studies a definite direction, for after acquiring a so-called knowledge of several European languages I passed on to Turkish, and therewith turned my attention to Oriental studies. The consciousness of having missed the help of regular schooling, and the formal discharge in the ordinary course, caused me many pangs of conscience, for I knew it was all through my own unpardonable recklessness, namely, in neglecting twice over to save the sixteen florins wherewith to redeem the school certificate. I reproached myself most unmercifully, called myself a good-for-nothing, and determined henceforth to work with unremitting zeal, to make use of every moment, and by increased diligence to redeem the past. In my excessive remorse I even went so far as to write in Turkish characters—so as not to be read by any one else—on my books, on my writing-table, on the walls of my room, such words as "Persevere!" "Be ashamed of yourself!" "Work!" These were to act as a stimulant and constant warning not to fall again into the same error.
I could the more easily keep this firm resolve to myself, as my linguistic studies had now carried me beyond the mere mechanical committing of passages to memory, and enabled me to enjoy the more intellectual pleasure of reading the classical works of foreign lands. This filled my leisure hours with exquisite delight. Was it the loneliness of village life which made work such a recreation to me, or was it the glorious feeling of being able to read these master-works of other nations in the original tongue? Enough, my pleasure in reading was unbounded; every thought seemed divine, every metaphor a veritable gem of poesy; and my reading, or more often reciting, was constantly interrupted by exclamations of surprise and admiration, and the margins of the various texts were covered with notes and comments expressive of my rapturous appreciation. The works which at that time especially took my fancy were: The Seasons, by Thomson; the Henriade, by Voltaire; the Sonnets of Petrarch; and above all the Gerusalemme Liberata of Tasso. For hours together I could sit spellbound by the simple and beautiful account of the heroic deeds of love, or drink in with delight the exquisite description of the changing seasons. The noble battle before the walls of Jerusalem or the charming disquisitions of Thomson, all had the same magic charm for me. The precursors of awakening spring or the glories of an English summer landscape filled my cup of delight to the very brim, and the winter picture of the homely company gathered round the crackling cottage fire brought me into an equally enthusiastic frame of mind. When reading the Henriade I was particularly fascinated by the heroic figure of Henry IV.; while the Sonnets of Petrarch were the silent interpreters of my awakening passion for the daughter of the house, and I would gladly have substituted the name of Emily for that of Laura, if the rhythm and the Argus eye of "Mamma" had not prevented me. Tasso's immortal epic exercised a truly magic charm upon my youthful imagination. I liked best to read out of doors, far from all human sounds; it seemed to suit my imaginative fancy; and as long as the weather was fit my favourite spot used to be on a hill just outside the village, overshadowed by a large cherry-tree, and close to a gently murmuring stream. There in the early morning hours, and in the evenings between five and eight I used to while away my time in the company of my favourite poets. There I repeated the sonnets of Petrarch, with my eyes fixed upon the house where Emily dwelt. There I recited my Tasso with wild enthusiasm, and it was there that one afternoon I was so absorbed in that wonderful passage where the poet compares the battle of the Saracens before Jerusalem to claps of thunder and flashes of lightning, that I had never noticed the gathering thunderstorm over my own head; I did not hear the peals of thunder and heeded not the lightning, until I was rudely awakened from my trance by the rain coming down in torrents, and wetting me to the skin. Often I was so oblivious of everything, that I held long discourses with birds or flowers or grass-blades, and never stopped until some passer-by interrupted the current of my thoughts. Thus it came about that at a very early age Mother Nature had become so dear to me; and a fine morning not only put me in good trim for the whole day, but for many days after. I always chose the most secluded spots for my favourite studies—places where I could be safe from sudden interruptions; and so, living in a world of flowery imagery, and burning with the fire of enthusiasm and fantasy, I began to build my airy castles for the future. To the seven languages I knew I had gradually added Spanish, Danish, and Swedish, all of which I learnt in a comparatively short time, sufficiently at any rate to appreciate the literary productions of these various countries. I revelled in the poetry of Calderon, Garcilazo de la Vega, Andersen, Tégnér, and Atterbon, but at the same time I made steady progress in Turkish, for in my passion for learning, strengthened by an ever-growing power of retention, I had indeed accomplished wonders. Whenever in my readings I came upon words that I did not know the meaning of, I wrote them down and committed them to memory, at first from ten to twenty per day, but gradually I managed to learn as many as eighty or even a hundred, and to remember them also. With a determined will, a young man in the vigour of youth can do almost anything. True, I made many mistakes, and often had to unlearn again what I had learnt; many a time I found myself on the wrong track, but there was always satisfaction in the consciousness that I had not wasted my time, that I had not squandered the precious years of my youth. In this consciousness I boldly faced the future with all the disappointments which possibly might await me in the thorny path of life, whether owing to accident or to my own fault.
The happiness of my idyllic rest and careless existence in the beautiful valley of the Slavonic mountains came abruptly to an end; and after a sojourn of eighteen months in Kutyevo, my fair, smiling sky was once more darkened by gathering clouds. As teacher I had fulfilled my duty; as pedagogue Mr. Rosenfeld was satisfied with me, but as man, i.e., young man, my conduct was considered objectionable and detrimental to the reputation of the young lady, who was expected to make a good match. As already noted, my eyes were rather too frequently fixed upon the shining orbs of the charming Miss Emily; and although the latter, more from plutocratic pride than innate prudishness, took good care not to give the poor, lame tutor the slightest encouragement, the parents nevertheless thought it necessary to guard against such an eventuality, and decided to dismiss me. The actual cause which hastened this decision was, as far as I can remember, a lesson in writing. For when I noticed that Miss Emily did not form some of her letters quite correctly, I took hold of her hand to guide it. The contact with the white, plump little hand—although at first I managed to guide it mechanically—soon sent the fire of passion tingling into my finger-tips, and when a gentle pressure revealed the fact that not mere caligraphic zeal but another motive stirred within me, the young lady jumped up, gave me an angry look, and left the room. This decided my fate, and I was dismissed.
The announcement was grievous, even painful to me, not so much because I had to leave my quiet haven of rest, and the beacon of my first and only love, but because here, as in Zsámbokrét, I had proved to be a very bad financier. Of the considerable salary of 600 florins per annum, I had spent most on books and clothes, and only saved enough to take me to Pest, and on to Duna Szerdahely, where at my mother's special request I had decided to go, as she had a great desire to see me after an absence of several years. The parting from this quiet spot, where I had spent the happiest eighteen months of my life, was very hard indeed, and when I took leave of the old cherry-tree, under whose shade I had spent so many blissful hours with the intellectual heroes of Italy, England, France and Spain, I cried for hours, and with good reason, for never again in all my life have I had moments of such pure enjoyment.
It goes without saying that during my stay in Slavonia I made myself thoroughly acquainted with the Illyric, i.e., South-Slavonic language, both written and conversational. Well stocked with knowledge, but poor in purse, I now had to face my mother, in whose eyes the material side of life had most value. A few new clothes in my knapsack and a silver watch in my pocket could not satisfy her; she upbraided me with lack of practical common sense, and always wanted to know whither the knowledge of so many languages would lead me, and whether, considering all the time spent in study, I could not get a regular position or appointment of some kind. Higher aims were beyond the ken of the good, practical woman, and although always full of affection for me, she could not help now and then expressing her anxiety as to my future, and hinted that I should have done better to follow the regular course of study, take my degree at the University, and become a doctor of medicine. I tried once or twice to explain to her that the knowledge of so many, and especially of Oriental, languages might one day make me famous; that I might become interpreter at one of the embassies; but she was quite unable to take this in. The uncertainty of my future troubled her much, and it grieved me deeply not to be able to make her see it in a different and better light. After a short visit I again took leave of her, once more to throw myself into the world's turmoil.
As my self-conceit had grown with the acquisition of so many languages, and the stimulus of praise, which up to now had only been vouchsafed to me by the lower classes of society, had puffed me up with egotism, I fancied myself worthy of something better than the humble position of tutor in a Jewish family. I even imagined that my capacities and learning ought to secure me a position under Government, and for this purpose I travelled to Vienna, where I hoped to obtain from the Minister of Foreign Affairs an appointment as interpreter. Of course I failed; for in the first place I was a perfect stranger and had no introductions, and in the second place I was absolutely ignorant of the preliminary steps that had to be taken; of the pedantic and tortuous passages of Austrian bureaucracy. Realising the fruitlessness of my efforts, I endeavoured to get private lessons. I advertised in the Vienna newspapers; but the high-flown announcements of my mezzofantic perfections remained without the slightest result, and the worthy ladies' tailor, in whose house on the high-road I had hired a bed on the fourth story, was much wiser than I, for he advised me to leave Vienna and go back to Pest, as long as I still had a few books and some clothes to dispose of to defray the travelling expenses; otherwise, he said, I should fare badly.
I was bound to acknowledge that the tailor had more common sense than I, and the only reason that I did not immediately act upon his suggestion was that I had still a lingering hope that the acquaintances I had made in Vienna might yet shed a little brightness over the horizon of my future career. I had had the good fortune of making the personal acquaintance of some linguistic celebrities. In the hotel "The Wild Man" in Kärthner Street I had met the great Orientalist Baron Hammer Purgstall, who had introduced me to the young Baron Schlechta, and encouraged me to persevere in the study of Turkology. The old gentleman spoke to me of my very learned countrymen in Turkology, Gévay and Huszár, and was of opinion that we Hungarians had most exceptional advantages for the study of Oriental languages. I also came into contact with the great Servian poet and writer, Vuk Karačič. Under his humble roof on the Haymarket I was urged to take up the study of the South-Slavonic tongue; and his daughter, a highly cultured lady, took a special interest in my destiny, and was much surprised when I recited with pathos long passages from Davoria, viz., Heroic Songs. Mr. Rayewski, the priest of the Russian Embassy, also received me kindly. The good man wanted to win me for Russian literature, perhaps also for its orthodoxy, for he gave me Russian books, and advised me to make a journey to St. Petersburg, whereas I afterwards took my way in quite a different direction. There certainly was no want of good advice, friendly hints and encouragements, but a beautiful lack of practical help.
It was well for me that I turned my back on the beautiful Imperial city of the Danube to try my fortune once again in Pest, where, as Hungarian, I felt more at home. I alighted at a house in the street of the Three Drums, No. 7. It was a house on the level, with a long court, and inhabited for the greater part by poor people who could only pay their rent by letting one or two beds to third parties and sharing their one living room with several others. I lived at door No. 5 with Madame Schönfeld, a certificated nurse, who had but little practice, and an invalid husband into the bargain. Therefore she had four beds for hire put up in her room, in which eight persons, i.e., two in each bed, were accommodated. Poor artisans who spent their days in the workshop had here their night-quarters, and I, a special favourite of the childless Madame Schönfeld, had the privilege of receiving for my bedfellow a thin tailor-lad, who, because of his lanky proportions, did not take up quite so much room in the bed, and so allowed me a certain amount of comfort; for although we lay in bed sardine fashion it happened sometimes that the more corpulent and stronger bedfellow kicked his mate out of bed in the night. In these surroundings, which cannot exactly be called regal, I awaited the favourable moment at which that friend of my fortunes (Mr. Mayer, already mentioned) should provide me with another appointment as tutor. Weeks and months passed by, during which time I had to subsist on the scanty remuneration given for private lessons. The more I advanced in my studies the more painful it was to teach French or English for two or three florins per month; but my poverty-stricken appearance denied me entrance into the better circles of the capital, and as I had no friends I hesitated to approach any one who might possibly have lent me a helping hand. The remembrance of house No. 7 in the street of the Three Drums recalls a series of privations and sufferings in which hunger, that bitter enemy of my younger days, plays a principal part. As long as this terrible tyrant plagued me I was rather spiritless and depressed, and it was only in my books that I could find comfort against the gnawing pain; for although the Latin proverb rightly says, "Plenus venter non studet libenter," I nevertheless have experienced that with an empty or half-satisfied stomach my intellectual elasticity has been greater and my memory intensified so that I was able to accomplish extraordinary things.
I am not exaggerating when I say that during this interval of my professional duties I devoted daily ten or twelve hours assiduously to linguistic studies. To the Romanic and Germanic languages I had added the study of the Slavonic dialects. The Slovak dialect I had learned conversationally at St. Georghen and Zsámbokrét; Illyric at Kutyevo; I had also studied the literatures of these languages. I now applied myself to learn Russian, which of course was a comparatively easy matter, and I revelled in the works of Pushkin, Lermontoff, Batyushka, Dershavin, and other northern writers. I particularly enjoyed changing about from one poet to another, wandering from north to south, from east to west. Now I read a few pages from the Orlando Furioso, then again a few verses from the Fountain in Bagtcheseraj of Pushkin, and from the Prisoner of the Caucasus. Here an Andalusian picture unrolled itself before my eyes—a charming scene on the glorious Ebro, with its pastoral groups, from Galatea or Estrée. Next I admired a northern sea-fight from the Frithiof Sága, or amused myself with Andersen's Fairy Tales, or the simple popular songs of Gusle by Vuk Karačič. My joy and my delight were boundless; my eyes shone, my cheeks were flushed. Every fibre in my body tingled with the excitement of the lyric or epic contents of these various works. One can only read with such thorough appreciation, such deep feeling, in one's early twenties, when the knowledge of the language has been acquired with much trouble and alone and when abhorring and despising the mundane character of one's surroundings, and carried away on the wings of one's heated imagination, one roams about in higher spheres. The contrast of my own enthusiastic imagination and the life of the people with whom I associated was about as great as one can well conceive. Bartering Jews of the most prosaic type, artisans, day-labourers, and shop-assistants, their only thought how to earn a few coppers, and to spend them again straight away; menders and cleaners of old clothes, poor women and pedlars—such were the people I associated with, and who, looking upon me as half demented, sometimes pitied and sometimes mocked me. In the winter-time it was very hard, for then I had to suffer from cold as well as hunger, especially when the public reading-room of the University was closed, and I was reduced to sit in Madame Schönfeld's parlour in the Three Drums Street, where no fire was provided in the daytime. In broad daylight it was not so bad, for I could jump up and run up and down to get warm. But when it grew dark I was obliged to go to the Café Szégedin round the corner of the Three Drums Street; and there, huddled up in a corner of the room, I read my books by the light of a flickering lamp, regardless of the frantic noise of the gambling, laughing, bartering crowd. As I could not pay an entrance fee I had to go home before the gate was locked. Generally I found all in bed, and continued my studies by the light of a tallow candle stuck in a broken candlestick, while the sleeping inmates of the room accompanied my recital—for I always read aloud—with a snoring duet or terzet, without my interfering with their sleep or they with my reading. I allowed myself but very little sleep at that time, for in the early morning I had to give a lesson next door to the son of Mr. Rosner, the owner of a coffee-house, for which I received every day a mug of coffee and two little rolls. Two rolls, and my ferocious hunger! What a contrast! I could easily have demolished half a dozen, and I had earned them too; but man, whether the owner of a coffee-shop or of a rich gold-mine, always seeks to make all he can out of the wretchedness of his fellow-creatures, and this sad truth I had to realise very early.
At last the weary time of waiting came to an end and I was released from my uncomfortable position. After several afternoons spent on the rack at the Café Orczy, my deliverer, the agent Mayer, succeeded in getting me an appointment with the wealthy Schweiger family in Kecskemét, where I was well paid, well cared for, but was also hard worked. Here I spent a year profitably. I had to teach for eight or nine hours daily; two or three hours were spent over toilet and meals, and when I add that my private studies occupied at least six hours a day, one sees how little time I could afford to give to rest, and how very few were the pleasures in which, at that period of the never-returning spring of life, I was able to indulge. And yet I am told that in those days I was always bright and merry, sometimes even quite reckless and extravagant in my mirth—a characteristic which did not agree well with my position of tutor. My pupils, who were only three or four years younger than myself, made good progress in their studies, but their education left much to be desired. In Kecskemét, where I had more money at my disposal than ever before, and where I was able to procure the expensive books necessary for the study of Oriental languages, I made Turkish and Arabic my chief objects of study. At that time Professor Ballagi lived in that neighbourhood, and he lent me Arabic books. Thus I was able, assisted by my knowledge of Hebrew, to make rapid progress in the second Semitic language, and by the help of Arabic also to perfect myself in Turkish. The strange characters, the difficulty of learning to read, and the want of dictionaries, which were too expensive for me to buy, were terrible obstacles in my way; often I was almost driven to distraction, and the hours spent in the shady little Protestant churchyard of Kecskemét, where I loved to linger near the grave of two lovers, will ever remain in my memory.