Monday, January 4th. In Hungary there are few princes or dukes; the highest nobles are counts, whose titles retain something of the old significance of hereditary rulers of a “county.” The serfs have only recently been liberated and to all intents and purposes the feudal system still exists, in spirit if not in form. Among the counts in Hungary, several stand out conspicuously above the rest; among them are the Karolyis, the Apponyis, the Hunyadis, and the Wenkheims, all of whom are interconnected by marriage and close social relations. These people maintain themselves on their vast estates like rulers of small principalities.
At the request of the Countess X. I had written to her mother, the Countess W., before leaving Vienna, and found her answer awaiting me at the Consul’s office when I arrived in Budapest. I learn that she also communicated with Count Berchtold, the Prime Minister of the Empire, with Count Szecsen, ex-Ambassador to France, and with the Hungarian Premier, so that in case I missed her letters (she sent me one to Vienna and one to Budapest) these gentlemen would see to it that I went to visit her, as she wished to thank me personally for what I had been able to do for her daughter, and also to hear direct news of her grandchildren.
I left Budapest early this afternoon and arrived after dark at Békéscsaba, which is about half-way to Belgrade. I was met by a majordomo who appropriated my luggage and led me to a private car on a private railroad belonging to the Countess. We started immediately and ran in about twenty minutes to the gate of the estate where she usually resides. Here I was carefully transferred into a waiting carriage and was tenderly tucked into numerous fur rugs by two or three strong men. The two splendid horses turned through the gates for a ten-minute drive across a beautiful park to the castle—and such a castle! It is equal in size and charm to some of the famous French châteaux along the Loire which I studied last spring.
I was carefully unpacked again under a splendid porte-cochère and ushered by numerous flunkies into the presence of the Countess. She received me in a tremendous room with a lofty ceiling, and in a preliminary talk of an hour she took off the first keen edge of her appetite for news.
My bedroom is perfectly huge and has two ante-rooms—for the personal servants whom I do not possess. We dined at eight, there being at the table, besides the Countess, a daughter and her companion, a Frenchwoman. During dinner the Countess mentioned that the war necessitated frequent readjustments in the management of her estates; that the military authorities had recently taken another five hundred of her men for service in the army. She asked me if I enjoyed hunting and, upon receiving an affirmative answer, said that she would send me for an hour or two with the pheasants in the morning. She warned me that the shooting would be poor because no care had been taken of the preserves since her sons departed for the war.
Békéscsaba, Tuesday, January 5th. I was awakened at nine by a valet who came in, opened the blinds, shut the windows, brought the breakfast specified by me last night, and assisted me to bathe and dress.
At ten I paid my regards to the Countess and then the chasseur-en-chef who was to take me for the morning’s sport was presented to me. I climbed into a shooting wagon, which then drove across fields some twenty minutes to a woody country. I was provided with two beautiful little English “16-bore,” one of which was carried by a loader who walked always behind my right elbow. The game was pheasants, partridges, and hares, the latter perfectly enormous, being thirty inches long when held up by the feet. While hunting I was followed at a respectful distance by the shooting wagon in which I was expected to ride when going farther than fifty yards, and by another wagon which was to carry the game I was expected to kill. The game was all natural wild game, not the domesticated kind of the English system. The chasseur had with him a dozen peasant boys as beaters. I “walked up” and “flushed” game myself, except when there was a particularly good bit of cover; then I was conducted ahead with many bows to a well-selected spot, whereupon the beaters in a line began at a distance of a hundred yards and “worked through,” knocking their sticks together, a process that several times resulted in my being absolutely overrun by a burst of pheasants flushing from all directions, flying at all heights and angles and traveling like bullets. In two hours I killed seventy-three pheasants and partridges and twenty-three hares, and this in spite of the fact that my shooting was erratic. Thus at one spot I killed eight pheasants with as many shells without changing my feet (it was there that the loader was useful) and then a few minutes later missed five running.
At noon the young Countess drove out with her French companion to join me. She watched the shooting until half after twelve and then drove me home for luncheon. It is the custom for the men who start shooting early to be sought out and brought home to luncheon by the ladies, or to be joined by them for lunch in the woods in case of an all-day shoot. The game is shot only by the nobles and their guests and there seem to be no Robin Hoods among the devoted peasantry.
If this shooting to which I had been treated was considered by the Countess to need an apology, I was curious to ascertain what she called really good hunting, and so I propounded the question. She replied quite seriously that the best shooting to be had upon her estates was hare shooting and that on a good day five guns were usually expected to kill four thousand between the hours of ten and three.