Tales From Jókai

by Mór Jókai

[3] John Smith.

[4] Martin Cock.

In 1856 Jókai broke entirely new ground by starting the first Hungarian illustrated comic paper, under the title of Nagy Tükör (Great Mirror), but better known by its later title of Üstökös (The Comet), which he edited for the next fourteen years. Inestimable were the services which Üstökös rendered to Hungary. It taught the nation to laugh and live in hope of better times. It was also the training school of the first Magyar caricaturists and comic artists. Jókai himself contributed to it with his pencil as well as his pen, and some of the best comic cuts in the Üstökös were by "Kakas Márton." In course of time all the comic talent of the nation was attracted to the Üstökös, and a whole army of notable humorists supported its editor. It was in the columns of the Üstökös that Arany's famous satire, "Poloska," first appeared; it was the Üstökös which discovered and educated János Jánko, the prince of Magyar caricaturists; it was the Üstökös which refused to take the gendarmes or the censorship too seriously, and scourged with its satiric lash the blunders and absurdities of the Bach régime, which laboured so hard to germanize Hungary.

The Üstökös had a literary supplement to which Jókai contributed numerous novels. It was here that appeared his masterly little tale "A debreceni lunatikus" and the great romance "Rab Raby," in which the utter impossibility of reforming a high-spirited nation against its will is so dramatically demonstrated. This story is also remarkable for the best existing characterization of Kaiser Joseph II.

Journalism and caricature indeed represent but a tithe of Jókai's work during this period. The revolutionary war was no sooner over than he began to write that series of novels and tales which was to make him famous throughout Europe. Roughly speaking, these earlier novels fall into two categories: (1) battle-pieces, descriptions of the vicissitudes of the late war, recounted with all the vividness of an alert spectator, who was also a born story-teller; and (2) historical romances of the long Turkish captivity under which Hungary had groaned from the beginning of the sixteenth to nearly the end of the eighteenth century. Among the first set may be mentioned, "Forradalmi és csataképek" (Revolutionary and Battle-pieces) 1850, and "Egy bujdosó naplója" (Diary of an Outlaw) 1851; while the latter set includes, "Erdély aranykora" (The Golden Age of Transylvania) 1852, with its sequel, "Torökvilág Magyarorszagon" (The Turkish World in Hungary), 1853. These tales of the Turkish rule in Magyarland, independently of their æsthetic value, were veritable parables. Every one who read them when they first came out, knew very well whom he was to understand by "The Turks." Every one knew that the author had only given the griefs and grievances of the Magyars an historical setting and an oriental colouring to evade the scrutiny of the censorship. Every one knew that the author's patriotic allusions and attacks applied as much to the Austrian tyranny of the nineteenth as to the Ottoman tyranny of the seventeenth century. Through the woof of these gorgeously oriental stories could be read the transparent reminder and encouragement that the kingdom had survived a worse overthrow than the present one, and that if Magyarland rose again from her grave, it would not be the first time she had done so. Even the terrible Turkish deluge had not swept away the Hungarian nation. Light had followed upon darkness; there was hope in the future because the past had never been desperate. As historical romances, moreover, both these tales stand very high, higher even than the romances of Sienkiewicz, because they possess humour, a quality in which the great Pole is deficient. In both cases, Jókai based his narrative on the contemporary chronicles of Cserey, who lived at Prince Michael Apafy's court. He found most of his characters ready to hand, and where Cserey fails him, Jókai's own historical imagination fills up the gaps. It is true that in the obviously invented portions of these stories (e.g. the Azraele episodes), the daring fancy of the author sometimes carries him far beyond the bounds of even poetic licence. It is equally true that both stories suffer from want of unity; they are rather loosely connected series of brilliant pictures than one continuous narrative. But the dramatic force, the fascinating style, and the inexhaustible inventiveness of the author, carry his readers breathlessly over every obstacle, and they contain some of the finest humour, and some of the most splendid descriptions of natural scenery in modern literature.

The admiration excited by these noble productions rose still higher, when, in 1853-1854, Jókai published his two great social romances, "A Magyar Nábob" (The Hungarian Nabob), and its sequel, "Kárpáthy Zoltán" (Sultan Karpathy), which, in the opinion of some Hungarian critics, indicate the high-water mark of his authorship. In my opinion the first of these novels, which paints to the life the old Hungarian aristocracy of the earlier part of the last century in the person of János Kárpáthy, is incomparably the best. The sequel, besides the inevitable objection that it is a sequel, suffers from ultra-sensibility and a moralizing tendency. The hero of "Kárpáthy Zoltán" can scarce be said to belong to real life at all, and he is plainly meant to be the model, the ideal of the rising generation. The story is also far too long. But it contains many brilliant episodes, amongst them the famous description of the terrible overflow of the Danube in the thirties, and numerous passages of almost faultless beauty. On December 11, 1858, Jókai was elected a member of the Hungarian Academy, and his name was henceforth numbered among the national classics.

But now a new career, the career of politics, was about to be thrown open to Jókai. At the beginning of 1860 it was becoming pretty evident that that monstrously artificial amalgamation, the unified absolute Austrian Monarchy of 1849, was weakening in every joint, and that no amount of forcible riveting could keep it together much longer. Warned by the loss of the Italian provinces, the statesmen of Vienna were now inclined to follow different political principles, and recognizing that the depressed and embittered Hungarian nation must be an important factor in any political reconstruction, they were now prepared to make certain substantial, if limited, concessions to the Magyars. The October diploma of 1860 explained his Majesty's views on the subject, and the Hungarian Estates were summoned in April, 1861, to consider the Imperial offer of a new constitution, which would have degraded Hungary into a mere province of the Austrian Empire. The Austrian statesmen imagined that the spirit of the Hungarian nation had been broken by twelve years of oppression. They were mistaken. The Magyars would have nothing to say to the proposed central Reichstag, which was to assemble at Vienna as the representative of all the lands of the Hapsburg monarchy, Hungary included. Under the masterly guidance of Francis Deák, the Hungarians insisted on the legal continuity of the Hungarian State, and would accept nothing short of full autonomy. Jókai took part in the Diet of 1861 as deputy for Siklos, and a member of the uncompromising party whose motto was: "All or nothing." On May 24 he delivered his maiden speech, and was instantly recognized as one of the best debaters in the House. He was no impassioned orator, as from his writings we might have been led to suppose he would be; but adopted from the first a quiet, conversational style, appealing generally to right feeling and common sense; whilst his unfailing wit and humour invariably charmed his audience, even when he took the unpopular side, which he sometimes felt bound to do, for, though a consistent Liberal he was always far above party prejudice. On the dissolution of the short-lived Diet of 1861, which was far too independent for the Austrian Government, the constitutional struggle was carried on in the public press, where Jókai was one of the foremost champions of Magyar rights. In the most dangerous times, when the sensitive central Government frequently flung journalists into prison for a single word, Jókai in the Üstökös worried the authorities with all the darts and arrows of his wit and humour, and in 1863, when he founded Hon (The Country), as the political organ of Coloman Tisza and his colleagues, he brought to bear the heavier ordnance of reason and argument. He had to go to Vienna in person to solicit permission to bring this journal out, and had first to promise that he would not attack the Government.

"I promise heartily to support the Vienna Government," answered Jókai, "if only it will endeavour to do justice to the Hungarian nation, and fulfil its legitimate wishes." The Hon had only been out a week when a catastrophe occurred which must be told in Jókai's own words: "I had founded a political paper. I was its responsible editor and publisher. My assistants were the matadors of the Liberal party. We soon had a large public. . . . One day an admirably written article was sent to me, signed by one of the most illustrious of the Hungarian magnates (Count Alexander Zichy). Without more ado I published it. It was a loyal, patriotic article, on purely constitutional lines, showing, in the most matter-of-fact way, the justice and the necessity of constitutional government for Hungary. Because of this article the Governor brought both the Count who wrote it, and the editor who inserted it, before a court-martial. He signified to the pair of us beforehand that he meant to make a three months' job of it. The court-martial consisted of a colonel, a major, a captain, a senior and a junior lieutenant, a sergeant, a corporal, and a private, the last four of whom were Czechs. Before this 'areopagus' I delivered a powerful defence in German, to which they naturally replied: 'March!' The tribunal condemned us to twelve months' hard labour in irons, on bread and water, with loss of nobility and a fine of eleven hundred florins. When the sentence was read out, I said to the President: 'This is very odd, the Governor promised us only three months.' To this the President replied, with a smile: 'Yes, three months for the incriminatory article, but nine more for your high-flying defence.' Our sentence was for no offence against the press laws. Oh dear no! We were condemned for inciting to a breach of the peace. Count Zichy and I had been throwing stones at the windows and breaking the gas-lamps. It was as public brawlers that we were sent to cool our heels in jail. . . . Nevertheless, the whole of my life in prison was a mere joke. . . . The Commandant himself, with whom I lodged, came every day to tell me funny stories, and then took me out for long country walks. He had my writing-table, my books, my carpentering and sculptural tools brought into my 'dungeon,' and there it was that I turned out the bust of my wife. The Commandant, also, was passionately fond of carpentering, so we worked together at our lathes as if for a wager. I was also allowed to have with my bread and water the best that money could purchase from the inn. In the afternoon my friends from the Casino Club looked in to play cards with me. . . . Once I took my fellow prisoner and my jailor to my villa at Svabhegy, where my wife had made ready for me a splendid supper. I tapped my new wine, and we amused ourselves to such a very late hour, that when we returned to my dungeon it was as much as we could do to make them let us in again. And then my visitors! In the whole course of my life I never received so many visitors as during the month that my year's captivity lasted. . . . I was sought out by all sorts of good friends, who came from far—lords and ladies, countesses and actresses. . . . In fact, I had too much of a good thing. How could I work when my admirers were crowding at my lathe all day long? At last, with tears in my eyes, I had to beg my jailor to sentence me to solitary confinement for a couple of hours every day, and wrote on my door the hours when I was free to receive company. 'Wasn't I in prison?' I asked."

After the dissolution of the Diet, the provisional government did all in its power to cajole the opposition and make the nation accept the October diploma; but its efforts were frustrated by the tact and the tenacity of Deák, and, in 1865, his Majesty was again obliged to summon the Diet in which Jókai once more represented Siklós. Even now the Austrian statesmen were very reluctant to compose their differences with Hungary on equal terms; but the disasters of the intervening Austro-Prussian war made them, at last, more compliant. After Sadowa, a composition with Hungary became absolutely necessary for the very existence of the Austrian Empire; the idea of a unified composite state was definitely abandoned; the Hungarians, following the advice of Deák, loyally co-operated in bringing about a composition[5] on equal terms with Austria, and on June 8, 1867, the crown of St. Stephen was placed upon the head of his Apostolic Majesty. Hungary had once more become independent.

[5] Curiously enough the German word Ausgleich has generally been used in England to designate this arrangement. Yet Ausgleich and its Hungarian equivalent Kiegyezés simply mean composition.