My favourite stroll in Budapest when I am tired of red pepper and the gipsies is the bridge which connects Buda and Pest and makes them one town. The Danube here is 1,800 feet broad, and until the bridge was built in 1849 the only means of connection was a bridge of barges, and in the winter, when the Danube was swollen, this was frequently unsafe, and all connection between the two towns was suspended. The English engineers, Clark and Tiernay, built this bridge, but the opposition of the Hungarian nobles was tremendous. They had the right of crossing the old bridge free by reason of their rank, but Baron Sma, of Vienna, who found the £500,000 necessary for the undertaking, claimed the right to levy toll for the space of eighty-five years, and so everyone has to pay toll at the present day. The Hungarian nobleman still feels that he is sacrificing himself to ‘a d——d German’ every time he pulls out the kreuzers demanded by the bridge-keepers.
The old Hungarian prejudices remain, but, alas! the old Hungarian costumes are rapidly disappearing. The young noblemen still drive four spanking horses in a mail-phaeton, and now and then one sees the Hungarian coachman in high boots, light blue coat and silver buttons, and the pork-pie hat with long ribbons hanging down behind it. But the bulk of the populace have abandoned high boots and frogged coats, and now and then one even sees a tall hat on a Hungarian head.
The high Wellington boots are still worn by the peasant women and the peasant men, but not by the better classes. The high hat is not so generally adopted as modern trousers and boots, because for many years it was the sign of a ‘German.’ Herr Julius can remember the day when a man in a high hat was yelled at by the roughs wherever he went, and many a luckless owner of a chimney-pot was bonneted in public amid the jeers of the bystanders. ‘A Schwoab!’ the people would cry directly they espied the obnoxious topper. ‘A Schwoab’ means a German, and sounds suspiciously like ‘a swab.’ ‘Német’ is another name for a German. I am assured this feeling has passed away, but I know better. ‘The King of Hungary’ comes to his palace at Buda now for three months in the year, and the Austrians talk their German language and wear their chimney-pots without being insulted; but the Hungarians still look upon all things Austrian askance, and it did not need the demonstration and the speeches which the recent attempt to bury Klapka György Tabornok quietly has called forth to prove that the patriotic Magyar still chafes beneath the Austrian yoke.
I am going to the theatre in Budapest to see a Magyar melodrama, entitled ‘A Betyár Kendöje’ ('The Brigand’s Handkerchief'). They call the theatre a Szinház. That is a little startling, but when you have got accustomed to fogado for a hotel, and you have to tell the porter to look after your podgyars for luggage, and you learn that ó nö is an old woman, and that Vienna is Bécs, and bor is wine, and viz—not namely—is water, and Isten is God, you are prepared for anything.
I like fruit, but when the waiter asks me if I will take some ‘gyümöics’ I hesitate. (In parentheses, the most exquisite thing I have eaten in Hungary is the fogas, a Lower Danube fish. Cold, with sauce Tartare, it is delicious. The red-pepper dishes I have not fallen so violently in love with, although páprïka huhn and gulyás are by no means to be despised.)
I started to go to the theatre the other night, but I found that the play was ‘Hamlet, Dankiralfy,’ which is ‘Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,’ and I thought better of it. It may interest the general reader to know that the performance took place on Vasárnap (which is Sunday), Május 22-én, and was ‘Eredeti népszinmü dalokkal 4 szakaszban. Irta Abonyi Lajos. Zenéjét Nikolics Sándor.’
The Magyar melodrama, entitled ‘The Brigand’s Handkerchief,’ turned out to be a very old friend. It was only ‘Falsely Accused’ in a foreign language. A Hungarian brigand, having behaved badly to his young wife and attempted to murder her to slow music in the snow, she leaves him and enters the service of a dear old lady under an assumed name. The dear old lady’s son falls in love with her, and asks her to marry him. But she says there are reasons which stand in the way, and, being the leading lady, has a long soliloquy all to herself in the centre of the stage. In the meantime the brigand has fallen into the toils of a gipsy girl, who dances Hungarian dances and sings Hungarian songs at a low Hungarian public-house. The brigand is made drunk with fourteen bottles of wine and fourteen lighted candles, and agrees to go out at night with the gipsy girl and do a little house-breaking. I can’t tell you why, when the fourteen bottles are placed on the table for the brigand, a lighted candle is placed by each bottle. It seemed to me a fearful waste of tallow, but I presume it is a custom of the country.
The gipsy lady dresses herself up as a man, and puts pistols in her belt, and off she goes with the brigand straight to the house of the dear old lady at midnight. All is quiet, only the unhappy wife is about, and she has just packed up everything she has in the world in a small pocket-handkerchief, and is about to leave the house of her benefactress clandestinely, in order to avoid the pathetic love-making of her young master. The brigand and brigandess enter. The wife, who has returned to her bedroom for a pocket-handkerchief—one her husband gave her on her wedding-day—comes out, and is about to be shot by the brigandess, when the brigand starts, and exclaims in the Magyar language, ‘Heaven, it is my long-lost wife!’ and dashes the pistol from his fair (or, rather, dark) accomplice’s hand, while the injured wife falls fainting on the floor. At that moment the young master, having heard a noise, rushes in; the brigandess escapes, but the brigand is seized after a violent struggle, thrust into an inner room, and the keys turned upon him. Then off rushes the young master to fetch a policeman. The wife recovers, says, ‘O Isten’ (Isten is the Magyar for the Deity), ‘my husband will be executed if he is caught and recognised as the notorious brigand.’ So she unlocks the door, and promptly bids him leave by the window, which he does, after giving off a short speech.
You can guess the rest. When the police enter and find the man gone and the girl trembling, they at once accuse her of being an accomplice, and of having let the robber in and also of having let him out. The man has dropped a pocket-handkerchief of a peculiar pattern. On searching the girl they find one of the same make in her pocket. Evidently they were accomplices. So the girl is arrested.
The last act takes place at the police-station. The heroine has a bad time and weeps, but refuses to clear herself. Enter the brigand husband, who says, ‘I am here. I am So-and-so, the notorious brigand. I broke into the house. This woman released me because I was her husband. See, here are the other five handkerchiefs of half a dozen I inherited from my mother. The sixth I gave to Marie on our wedding-day, and that is how our handkerchiefs are of the same pattern.’ The police at once arrest the husband, and the wife is free. The husband is dragged off. A shot is heard. He has killed himself. At that moment the young master rushes in, and exclaims, ‘Marie, will you marry me now?’ Marie falls into her young master’s arms and says, ‘Yes—if you will wait.’ I think she added, ‘Until after the funeral,’ but I am not sufficiently master of Magyar to commit myself absolutely on the point.