Budapest, Friday, January 8th. I lunched today with Consul-General Coffin and dined with Countess Sigray.
Saturday, January 9th. Yesterday on my arrival in Budapest I found awaiting me an invitation from Count Albert Apponyi to visit him at his castle at Eberhard, near Pozsony. I left Budapest at eight, reached Pozsony about eleven, and drove to Eberhard, where I was received by the Count.
I was extremely impressed on meeting Count Apponyi. I had anticipated something unusual, but he was quite beyond my expectations. He is about six feet three inches tall, has a splendidly erect carriage, and is a most impressively handsome man. He has a broad well-shaped forehead sloping back steeply, splendid blue-gray eyes, the biggest thinnest nose in the world, enormous nostrils, a strong sensitive mouth, and a grayish square-cut beard. The “grand old man of Hungary” looked up to his title.
He has been a member of the Hungarian Parliament for forty-two years and has several times held ministerial portfolios. His progressive ideas have usually landed him in the position of leader of the opposition. He has invariably been Hungary’s representative at all international meetings, peace conferences, and inter-parliamentary unions. He is a decade ahead of his day and generation, being probably the most progressive man in all Hungary. This, coupled with his blood, his magnificent appearance, and his wonderful education, make him an extraordinary power in the affairs of the kingdom. He has twice been in America. He has several times visited ex-President Roosevelt at the White House and at Sagamore Hill, and the Colonel has been a guest here at Eberhard. The Count also knows intimately such men as Lowell, Untermyer, Butler, and Taft, and appreciates their ideas,—“the American idea” as he calls it. It is no wonder that the other less advanced Hungarian nobles criticize his ideas and methods.
The Count’s French is exquisite, and he speaks English as I have seldom heard it spoken,—as the cultivated Frenchman speaks French,—with purpose, with science, as an art. His enunciation is wonderful and he instinctively picks out words to aid rhythm and enunciation. Of his native language, Hungarian, and of his German, I am not capable of judging.
I admired the Count’s library. Three sides of the big room were covered with filled shelves, which lapped over into the rooms on either side. Such a conglomeration of books;—leather bindings, cloth, paper, stacks of pamphlets, all jumbled together and yet in order. The books were indiscriminately in French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Italian, English, and Greek, all languages which the Count knows with great thoroughness. In reply to my admiring comment, he looked around the library a bit sadly, I thought, and said slowly: “Yes, it means much to me. It has grown out of my life.”
The Apponyi castle has stood in its present shape for over two hundred years. Like all contemporaneous residences of feudal chiefs, it was built primarily for defense and this determines its general structure. It is square with a great court in the center, in the middle of which is a well-house. The castle walls are of stone nearly three feet thick, plastered over with cement and painted white. It is two stories high with a steep ungabled roof and is virtually guiltless of architecture. The only entrance to the building is through an archway leading under the front face into the interior court. No outside windows existed in the original structure but many have since been cut into it. The castle reveals many signs of age. The floors in all the halls and rooms, except those of the salons, are of stone, and little uneven hollows on their surfaces show where the feet of many generations have left their mark. The libraries and salons, six or seven in number, were remodeled some time during the last century and are remarkably fine.
At present one side of the castle has been converted into a hospital and here some twenty-five wounded Hungarian soldiers are cared for.