The Phoenix Land (9 page)

One can only imagine what traces such memories can leave.

Mihály’s other grandmother, wife of Count György Károlyi
19
, was a frequent visitor at Föth during his uncle Sándor’s time. She was much older than my aunt Clarisse, and one could sense that those revolutionary times held no romantic aura for her but rather were a cruel and unforgettable reality. She hated Franz Joseph and everything Austrian and German. It is said that she
had always been a woman of passion. She had also been very fond of her brother-in-law, Lajos Batthyány who had been arrested in her apartment
20
.

Haynau stepped in and signed the death warrant. After Batthyány’s death she went abroad and did not return until after her husband’s death, which took place years after the 1868 Compromise. Abroad she was a famous hostess, filling her drawing-room with Hungarian political exiles; but any of these who applied for an amnesty and went home were at once branded as traitors. Under her influence, her sons were to take part in all sorts of
émigré
plots against the Habsburgs. I knew her as a silent woman with a hard mouth from which issued hard cruel words. We children were all afraid of her.

All that I have just recounted should explain the passionate pro-1848 partisan feeling that pervaded the Károlyi house and spread from the masters, through the children, even to the domestic servants. In some ways it is surprising that so late in the nineteenth century the Károlyi family should have remained so
‘kuruc’
-minded, more so than most other aristocratic families
21
.

This was in some measure true for many of the aristocratic families, although after the 1868 Compromise most of them took this stand only as a sort of
‘fronde’
of the greater magnates against any form of government, who were apt to treat the flaunting of such opinions as a kind of sporting amusement. In fact ‘they only did it to annoy!’
22

This rebellious attitude did not arise because many of their estates lay far from Vienna, in the eastern part of the country, but because, as a consequence of the family habit of often marrying their cousins, they had fewer relations abroad than had those families
23
who lived further to the west. There were, as it happens, many important Hungarian families, many of them Transylvanian, who had fewer foreign ties but who were
nevertheless
by no means as chauvinistic as the Károlyis. Despite all the other influences, what was, in my opinion, a far more potent memory in the Károlyi family was the legacy of the part played by their ancestor, Baron Sándor Károlyi, the
‘kuruc’
general who played a leading part in making the peace of Szatmár.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Hungarian nationalist feeling began to take formidable shape, most historical writing began to be significantly coloured by this view of the nation’s history and has remained so to our time. It is not difficult to understand how our historians were unable to free themselves of the bias created by the national struggle for freedom from the authoritarianism of Vienna and why this bias should have continued so long. It was finally checked by Kálman Thaly, who declared himself the ‘Chronicler of Prince Rákóczi’. The effect of this one-sided reporting of our history was that any important figure tainted with sympathy for the ‘enemy’ (i.e. the Habsburgs) was either only cursorily mentioned or else severely maligned. Historical impartiality was almost totally lacking, as was any attempt to put Hungarian matters in context with events outside our borders. Without such historical comparisons events in Hungary are barely comprehensible. Our historians would write as if Hungary was a solitary island in an ocean of
Nothingness
, or as if they inhabited a world that contained nothing but Hungarians. (The term ‘the Hungarian Globe’ was invented to mock this sort of thinking.) In the second half of the nineteenth century this feeling came to infect an entire generation who were to believe it passionately. This same generation, who were to brand Görgey as a traitor, naturally declared Sándor Károlyi to have been many times worse. Nobody then bothered to ask themselves what would have happened if Görgey had not capitulated at Világos; nor did they recall that the Peace of Szatmár was most advantageous not only for Hungary but perhaps also for Rákóczi had he accepted it. ‘Generals Görgey and Károlyi were both traitors!’ was everyone’s opinion, and Károlyi was censured the most because, while Görgey only just escaped execution, Károlyi was rewarded with grants of land. This was the ‘historical truth’ taught in our schools, and that is where I first heard of it.

It seems likely that all this must have had a deep-seated effect on the descendants of the
‘kuruc’
General Károlyi; and it may well be that it was in exaggerated chauvinism that they sought justification and absolution for their ancestor.

I do not know this. It is only presumption. However, I do know that for Mihály himself the Treaty of Szatmár was a sore
point, especially when he learned what his teachers and guardians – indeed everyone by whom he was surrounded – believed. We spoke of it occasionally, and it was always as of something ineradicably shameful, barely even to be admitted.

Everything I have just written concerns only the invisible forces that were continually present and influenced him, so that it was as if a stealthy process of capillary action determined Mihály’s motivation. His uncle Sándor (mine too by marriage) was the most important and lasting influence in the formation of his opinions and convictions.

Sándor Károlyi was the founder of the Hungarian
Cooperative
Movement. He was a magnificent man, completely selfless and without personal ambition. He was intensely
patriotic
and wanted only to be of service to his countrymen. He was filled with youthful energy and even in old age would express his opinions with almost warlike energy. He was exceptionally well read and had a truly global vision.

I shall never forget how, on so many evenings, standing with his back to the fire, he would talk to us: two growing youths in our last years at school and first at university. He was a
wonderful
talker, often using paradox with many unexpected twists, explaining brilliantly the problems of the world and its economy. He would use much fantasy in his exposition of an almost utopian vision, and his deep erudition and passionate expression held for us a special magic. I can recall, even now, how he stood there, in front of the fireplace in his somewhat sombre study, always with his hands in his pockets. His short, thick, bristling hair seemed to have a halo round it caused by the light of two wall brackets behind him. With his legs spread wide apart, he would sway slightly from side to side as if impelled by some inner rhythm. He had a hard ascetic face with a firm chin ending in a pointed beard, and his thin lips, although often giving a hint of a smile, were set in a somewhat cruel line. He seemed to be without pity, either for himself or others, while his general demeanour was that of a man burdened with some deep mystery, the mystery of an ancient conspirator. He never spoke about himself, and many times, as we listened to him, I was to ponder upon how little we knew about him, either of his secret and
passionate past, or even of what might have still remained with him. Only occasionally did we stumble over some fact, hitherto unmentioned, which would throw light on otherwise hidden depths. For example, I once discovered by chance that Sándor Károlyi, that devout Catholic aristocrat, had once been a freemason. This must have come about because many of the conspiracies in the cause of national freedom had been organized through the Masonic lodges. It was whispered that at the time of the Klapka-Komárom Movement he had himself shot dead one of the leaders of the secret organizing committee who had betrayed their cause. According to another version he had merely assisted at a duel whose details, at the time of writing, have not yet come to light.

I also learned another unexpected thing about him. When Alajos Károlyi, who had been Austro-Hungarian ambassador in London, died and, as was the rule, his insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece was returned to the emperor, Franz Joseph sent word unofficially to Sándor Károlyi that he intended to offer it to him, the rule being that it could never be held at the same time by more than one member of the same family. Károlyi replied that before the monarch distinguished him with his family’s highest order he ought to know that it was he who financed Lajos Kossuth in his exile by sending money to him, ostensibly from the booksellers as the proceeds of his books since he knew the old revolutionary would never otherwise have accepted it. Károlyi wrote that he did not feel it right that he should accept the Habsburg’s highest decoration when he was ensuring a comfortable old age to the dynasty’s greatest enemy. The offer was then withdrawn. It was, however, a measure of the old emperor’s fair-mindedness that after Kossuth’s death he at once sent the insignia of the Golden Fleece to Sándor Károlyi.

I would ponder on these things while I was in that dark room listening spellbound by the brilliance of his talk. He was imbued with the French manner of thought, so different from the German works of political economy with which, nevertheless, he was perfectly familiar. His talk scintillated with humour, using all kinds of jokes and bizarre anecdotes to add spice to the driest
of themes. He often spoke in broken sentences that, although not always finished, still maintained a unity of sense and faith.
Hundreds
of differing subjects would meet and find a place in what he would tell us. The world believed him to be essentially
conservative
and pro-clerical, and to a certain point this was true, although he differed in many ways from others of the same mind, who would have listened in astonishment if they had been present at those dissertations in front of the fireplace when he talked about his own special enthusiasms such as the OMGE (the National Hungarian Agricultural Society) and the Hangya Central Cooperative Society and credit-unions. Sometimes he would hold forth about the future, prophesying the
transformation
of the world we knew, the disappearance of great estates – even of personal property – and the eventual realization of new social doctrines of which, in his view, the best for all humanity would be based on cooperative lines. This, he postulated, was the only form that he hoped would finally emerge from the mists of time.

These evening performances had the effect of stimulating our imagination, partly perhaps because of their rhapsodic delivery and daring content. His sparkling words would evoke in us heady trains of thought, no matter what great world subjects were being dissected. Maybe because it was he, the personification of the true oligarch and lord of Hungary’s greatest private fortune, who was foreseeing the future success of radical ideas – even to their
compulsory
adoption – and emphasizing that in a cooperative system lay our only salvation that we saw something very touching in him, even if this view held also something of affectation. The paradox would be underlined when he, as he sometimes did with conscious self-irony, included cruel biting criticisms of that very society of which he himself was one of the chief pillars.

These gymnastic displays of fantasy and extraordinary ideas formed a deep impression on us both, and we would listen for hours sunk deep in great leather-covered armchairs.

It was at this time, under the spell of Uncle Sándor’s ideas, that I wrote a short essay on the credit-unions in Transylvania, as my uncle’s views had had the immediate effect of crystalizing
for me their possible implications for the land of my birth. Unfortunately, later – it was my own fault – I was to separate myself from the circle over which my uncle presided.

Sándor Károlyi’s early teaching was to have more lasting effect upon Mihály who, as I was often to remark, due to his exceptional birth and circumstance, was later to become a
political
leader. When he became chairman of the OMGE and
principal
spokesman for the radical Independence Party, I frequently heard echoes of Uncle Sándor’s utopian ideas for the world’s future, although in other forms – and unfortunately with quite other effects – than he would ever have imagined. All the same it is equally clear that in Mihály there was a clash of many
opposing
ideologies and that he believed in them all with equal
passion
. One of these was an ineradicable Hungarian patriotism, another a hatred of all things German; and a third the
inward-looking
‘Hungarian Globe’ mentality which I have already
mentioned
; and yet in contrast he believed firmly in the ideal of world citizenship, and the germs of all these beliefs had been bred in him years before in the memories of Uncle Sándor’s talk – but the sown seed brings different harvests depending on ground upon which it has fallen
24
.

When Mihály was growing into a young man, he left his grandparents’ house and went to live in the Károlyi Palais in Egyetem utca in the old quarter of Pest
25
. He had a huge allowance – two thousand crowns a month – although this barely covered the cost of keeping his twelve horses. I understand that in his will, Mihály’s father had indicated that he wanted his son to be brought up as a horseman. The five hundred or so crowns that were left for him to spend were quite inadequate to pay for the style of living expected of a young man in his position, owner of vast country estates as well as the great townhouse, with all the claims so many people had on him. This was the time we both first joined the Kaszino Club.

In those days the Kaszino was not the somewhat sleepy club it was to become after the Great War. Then it throbbed with life. Nightly there was lavish entertaining in what was one of Budapest’s most expensive eating-places. There was continual
cigány
music and social revelry in the great rooms on the ground floor, while upstairs, on the first floor, there was gambling for enormously high stakes.