The Phoenix Land (17 page)

Now, as the writing of these memoirs has brought me to that place where I was to spend so many months during which my home country was soaked by the blood-stained waves of
political
change, my memories of you, dear Holland, still touch my heart. You were then like a peaceful sunny harbour that gave shelter from those all-consuming hurricanes. You were like one of those happy Pacific islands that were never touched since no typhoon could breech its ring of rosy coral reefs.

Chapter Eight

It was at our charming old-fashioned hotel, the Oude Doelen, that I was to meet János Pelényi and his charming mother, who had come to The Hague on business concerning the Protestant Church. We soon became fast friends.

Not one of my old Dutch friends – and there had never been many – were living in The Hague.

On arriving my first action had been to visit the former Austro-Hungarian Embassy. I say ‘former’ because I found that big building now divided in two: to the left were the Hungarians, while the Austrians were to the right. The big central hall was a sort of no-man’s-land where the carpet in the middle of the room served as a national frontier. I took it that the edge of the carpet was the real boundary, but I have no doubt that the carpet itself was considered to belong to Austria, since her citizens had usually been wily enough to secure the best part of communal property for themselves.
‘Kleine Fische, gute Fische!’
38

A few weeks before my old friend, Lajos Széchenyi, who had been our ambassador, had died, so I found there only the chargé d’affaires, Count Calice, and Elek Nagy. They were both
kindness
itself; and Nagy, who had useful connections through his wife, proved helpful in many ways.

I find it hard now to recall exactly what I did in those first few weeks. I can still call to mind all sorts of faces, figures, situations and impressions but without any logical sequence so I cannot now put them in chronological order. Accordingly, I will recount them at random, just as one glances at odd snapshots as one lights upon them in an album of some long past journey.

My memories are of many different kinds, both good and bad. In The Hague at that time were gathered together many people who, like me, had been tossed this way and that by the storms of war until they found themselves on this narrow strip of land: just as floodwaters carry all kinds of flotsam along, only these are left, cast up on an alien shore.

So here are a few portraits. Let us start with Prince Blücher. Gebhardt Lebrecht, Fürst Blücher von Wahlstadt, was the grandson of the Blücher of Waterloo, that famous
‘Marschall Vorwärts’
– ‘Field Marshal Onwards’. He had a magnificent head and was the image of his great forebear, of whom I had seen
several
portraits in Berlin. On the day of those three battles at Quatre-Bras, Aliance and Waterloo, when already a 73-year old veteran, he had four horses shot from under him, had spent eighteen hours in the saddle until he was hurled into a ditch by the French attack and still, in spite of his great age, seemed the youngest of all those present on the battlefield.

From remarks he would drop from time to time I fancy that the grandson must have led an adventurous life. He was the heir to enormous estates in Silesia
39
, yet he had lived for many years in South Africa on a remote plantation surrounded by blacks. He would speak about America and India as if he had spend a long time in both places and not just for pleasure but for business, and he would also speak with authority about breeding hunters and racehorses in Germany. With him one felt that he had lived through many vicissitudes and weathered many storms. His wife – Evelyn Stapleton-Bretherton – was a beautiful Englishwoman who had been thought by some Germans to be in the English intelligence service. Who knows? If so it might explain why they were then living in The Hague. It is equally possible that it was merely that she was anxious to get back to England and could make contact with her family more easily from Holland. After a while she was able to get home. When I knew her she was
working
on her memoirs, which were later to be published. I had a feeling that there had been some trouble with Emperor Wilhelm, although one day she showed me a photograph of herself launching a warship, which could hardly have been possible without the emperor’s approval. They seem to have been great
friends with Prince Heinrich of Prussia, who had served in the German navy, and always spoke warmly of him. It was, of course, true that the emperor was not on good terms with his younger brother, who had always been more popular in England than he was
40
.

Blücher, always broadminded and objective, was blessed with boundless good will and sound judgement. It was out of sheer friendliness that he arranged for me to meet Colonel Oppenheimer, the British military attaché.

This proved to be quite an adventure, as much secrecy was involved. Blücher lived on the Vyverbergh in that street next to where the nobles used to have their fishponds. Sometimes I had to go there at night and was accustomed to taking different detours – going one way, returning another – so it was always a good half hour to get to or from my hotel, even though it was barely five minutes’ walk away. The Hague was then thought to be a hive of spies and counter-spies (I never noticed any!). I then had to wait for a sign before I was allowed to ring the bell, and there were many other things I had to look out for before leaving the house.

Any respectable citizen, seeing me lurking there in the street until a streak of light from some window would send me
hurrying
to the door, must have thought either that I was bent on some lover’s tryst or that I myself was the jealous Othello waiting for the seducer with a murder weapon concealed about my person.

Today I would have thought myself ridiculous and would have been inclined to laugh about it had not the root cause of all these precautions been so tragically serious.

I met Oppenheimer several times and so was able to discuss my information with him, always tailoring what I had to say to his English way of thinking. Finally I gave him a memorandum that differed in form only slightly from that I had presented to Treub, the Dutch minister of commerce. In this I described the real situation in Hungary, how the Bolshevik was rapidly
spreading
there and how this also exposed a dangerous threat to the rest of Europe.

Colonel Oppenheimer was a charming and highly intelligent man, and I was truly sorry to hear, some years later, that he had 
had a fatal accident when climbing Mont Blanc. He was then working for the League of Nations at Geneva.

As well as Prince Blücher there were some other Germans at The Hague, a number of whom had their comic sides.

Among them were several titled ladies, most of whom – with the exception of one princess who was shortly to leave us – were real figures of fun. These were those poor millionaire American girls who, before the war, had been married for their money – not for anything else, I swear. These were the cotton, oil and sausage queens who had brought with them bulky fortunes that, as the war revealed, had been the only reason for such unselfish
love-matches
. From the outbreak of war not a cent had been received from America, and now they had come to The Hague, where they hoped they would be able to get money from overseas. However, nothing arrived and they suddenly found themselves poor and forced to live miserable lives, which surprised them no end. Of course they were outraged at their new lives, not the least because along with the money the husbands had disappeared too. Few people went to see them, and so, poor lambs, they were forced to make do with each other. And what did the poor abandoned ladies do all day? They played bridge hour-in and hour-out for quarters or tenths of a cent and that mainly on credit. I only went to see them once or twice as their company could only be enjoyed as a spectacle. They were rather like those big fat ducks that spend their days in plaintive quacking at the dried-up end of the pond.

I did not rely only on Oppenheimer in my efforts to find contacts in England. I had some other sources to tap as well. One of these led me to a man of somewhat dubious reputation but who was one of those interesting characters that come to the surface in wartime.

He was a Mr Leipnik, of Hungarian descent but long resident in England. As far as I could gather he was regarded everywhere,
at home as well as abroad, as a most suspicious character. The intelligence bureaux of the central powers believed him to be an Allied spy, while our embassy at The Hague only communicated with him indirectly because they thought that, even if he were not a spy for the
Entente
, he must at least be an agent for the British. I needed someone like that, as I had to employ any means possible to get to our former enemies. Accordingly, I went to see him. As far as I could make out he had worked in England as a journalist and had earned himself something of a reputation, writing principally on sociological matters. He had prophesied the downfall of the central powers in the newspapers of several neutral countries and had suggested that salvation would only be found in the some system of universal brotherhood, such as a League of Nations. It is possible that someone had paid him to take this line, but it is equally possible that he did so from
personal
conviction. What, however, is certain is that in him there was an even stronger streak of personal ambition. This became clearer to me as I got to know him better.

Mr Leipnik lived at Scheveningen in one of those enormous fashionable hotels built along the seashore.

When I went to see him there it was February, and the
six-storey
hotel, the last before one reached the northern dunes, had a forlorn air since most of the hundreds of windows were closed and the portico boarded up. Everything that during the high season in summer would be bright with flowers and colour and new paint, was shabby, grey and battered. Everywhere, including the garden, seemed abandoned and strewn with rubbish. To reach his tiny room on God knows which upper floor I had to climb up a service stair. There, at last, I found the excellent Mr Leipnik.

He was a short man, thin and grey and wrinkled. His face was lined with deep furrows, and he was as yellow as a lemon. Also, alas, just as sour!

After a few polite preliminaries, I went straight to the point. How could I get to England?

‘If I knew that I’d be there myself!’ was the answer.

This was not a promising start, but as I persevered it soon became clear that my visit was for nothing.

He abused the English passionately – and every other
Entente
nation as well – complaining bitterly that during the war ‘they’ had all been only too happy to make use of him but now, now ‘they’ didn’t care a hoot.

After hearing this I might just as well have gone straight back to The Hague, but now he started to interest me as an example of human oddity, and so I stayed, smoking innumerable cigarettes, and from time to time throwing in a word or two to keep him talking. This he did, airing countless grievances. He went on for a long time, talking without cease even when it started to get dark, walking up and down in that little room which was barely four metres from the door to the window
overlooking
the sea.

He abused everybody: he hated everybody. He declared that ‘they’ all owed everything to his noble ideas and generous spirit. Károlyi and Jászi had taken all their ideas from him but had no idea how to realize them – and not only that but they were stupid enough now not even to seek his advice.

It was the same with Lloyd George and Clemenceau – and Salandra – and everyone else too. They had without exception battened on him and stolen his ideas and were now merrily living it up in luxurious Parisian palaces, eating and drinking and
toasting
each other while he, the great Leipnik, was totally excluded. Even though their success was due to his wonderful ideas, they would not give him any credit. Of course they were full of envy and without talent, and so they saw to it that he was not only squeezed out and kept away from their counsels but also
condemned
to live here, in the misery of this shabby cold room,
staring
at the bleak ocean from the unheated squalor of this dreadful hole! This was their gratitude. This, their thanks, and this was how he was treated!

He went on for a long time, not exactly in these words, but endlessly repeating a theme that never changed.