The Phoenix Land

by Miklos Banffy

  A man’s character is only formed after the impressions of childhood and early youth have become blended with the indefinable and hidden influences both atavistic and of more immediate heredity. When, like soft clay, the newborn human spirit has been first fashioned by the firm hand of the modeller and then allowed to set and harden, this is the moment the final character emerges, fixed for life. While the part played by heredity will always remain elusive and uncertain, the influences of a man’s early years are not difficult to unfurl if we know where to seek and consider seriously what we find. I must therefore go back many years to start this search, and I fear it may prove a lengthy process.

  Károlyi was a child of first cousins, and it is possibly this which resulted in his being born with a harelip and cleft palate, and so weak and puny that no one thought he would survive for long. His mother was already suffering from tuberculosis when he was born and was to die scarcely three years later.

  The two orphans she left were cared for by their grandmother, who was also my aunt. She surrounded the child with constant care and careful nursing. He had to be shielded from everything, for everything harmed him. He was like a hothouse plant, so weak and pale that it had to be sheltered even from the slightest breath. Until he was fourteen years old one could hardly understand what he said; but then old Professor Bilroth from Vienna was induced to try a hazardous operation on his palate, which at least made it easier for him to enunciate his words more clearly. He then had to learn how to speak properly and, showing much willpower, he achieved this by endless exercises, daily repeating words and phrases ever more loudly until his speech was so improved that it became almost, although never quite, that of those born with a normal palate. This built-in physical handicap was to remain with him for life: never admitted, sometimes, perhaps, temporarily out of mind, but nevertheless always there, like some congenital stigma.

  Thus we can find already present from birth some of the most important formative elements in building the young Mihály’s character. One of these was the physical handicap that which was to inspire Mihály’s lifelong battle to prove himself as good as anyone else – the spirit of ‘I’ll show you!’ – a battle of willpower that had always to be waged in silence. It is terrible to think what it must mean, in the life of a small boy, to have to fight every day of one’s life to overcome a genetic handicap. Furthermore, one can but imagine the feeling of humiliation at being forced to wage this constant battle just to arrive where every other child starts. This is the other most important outside influence in forming the young Károlyi’s character.

  Of course, something of this only appeared occasionally in his early days. When it did, it was to have all the more acute an effect. It was even a humiliation for the child to realize that he was given special consideration because he was physically so much weaker than other children. His faults would be forgiven him because of this very fragility; and all this because he was an incomplete being, almost a cripple. Things would happen that would all at once bring these ever-present feelings to the surface as a vivid and wounding reality. This would be provoked, for example, on the rare occasions when he found himself with other boys, usually relations of his own age, adolescents who, filled with an arrogant joy in their own strength, barely concealed their contempt for a weak undersized boy of their generation who had a speech defect to boot. This situation was graphically described by Ferenc Molnár in his novel Boys of Pál Street.

  Such an experience must always be both painful and troubling. On a boy who has led a secluded life, cosseted and protected like a hothouse plant, it will have a far greater effect than on those who have already have had a normal exposure to the hardening experiences of everyday life. In Mihály’s case, it was also provoked when I, never particularly athletic myself, forgot how much weaker he was and put him to shame in some boyish wrestling or other gymnastic activity. Although I remember how careful I was, when we were small boys, not to let this happen, once or twice in all those years of our youth, I grew careless. I understood then what I am writing about now.

  I have now described the most important factors that were to result in three of his most marked characteristics – his ‘I’ll show you!’ reaction to the cruelties of fate and the humiliations they provoked; the hothouse atmosphere in which he had been brought up protected from all contact with real life; and thirdly, the fact that, because he was an orphan burdened with a severe physical handicap, he had all his life been treated as the most important person in the narrow little world of which he was the central figure.

  We have just described the internal spiritual effects of his social background and physical condition. Now we should examine the external visible ones.

  Firstly, there was the cultural atmosphere of the house in which he was raised, and its particular political and social aura.

  I write ‘particular’ because the intellectual life of that family home was permeated by an exaggerated veneration for the ideology of the party that fought for Hungary’s independence in 1848 and consequently for the strong anti-Austrian and anti-Habsburg feelings it inspired.

  This atmosphere was personified by the master of the house, Sándor Károlyi, and his wife Clarisse, both of whom belonged to that generation that had lived through Hungary’s fight for freedom and the years of oppression that had followed. Both they and their contemporaries had enthusiastically imbibed in their youth the heady notions of self-sacrifice enshrined in the political slogans of the 1840s, but, protected by their wealth and social position, they were never personally to experience the devastation and misery caused to so many by the revolutionary war. Of course, they had suffered many anxious moments, witnessed scenes of high drama and endured much sadness and worry; and therefore the pain those past days recalled for them was mingled with a sense of romantic excitement and the sparkle of heroic battles. What sorrows they had were those of their youth and, although kept alive, were only enshrined in some scintillating golden web of memory.

  Count Sándor Károlyi had been an officer in the hussars at the age of seventeen and later – so it was said – had been an active participant in the Komárom Conspiracy15. His father, the old István Károlyi (whom I never knew) was imprisoned for years at Olmütz and Kufstein for having himself raised the regiment in which his son Sándor had served16.

  Sándor’s wife – my aunt and Mihályi’s grandmother on his mother’s side – had two brothers who fought on the Hungarian nationalist side. There were many exciting tales told about their escape and time spent in hiding. As a teenage girl she had lived with my grandparents at the house on Széchenyi Square opposite the ‘New Building’17 in Budapest, to which they had retired in 1850 after the storm. Sometimes at dawn there could be heard the crackling of gunfire from the fortress-like barracks just across the square’s gardens. This meant that an execution was taking place, probably of some martyr to the Hungarian nationalist cause, although, except on one occasion, they did not know for sure who it was. The exception was when they executed Prince Voronievsky, who, on the eve of his death, had somehow managed to get a message to my grandmother and her daughters18. He had known them in Kolozsvár when he had been with the army of Bem. It was said that he had been in love with my Aunt Clarisse, and that that is why the message had been sent to them. It asked for their prayers, as his turn would come on the following day!

  One can only imagine what traces such memories can leave.

  Mihály’s other grandmother, wife of Count György Károlyi19, 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 apartment20.

  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 families21.

  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 families23 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 di
fferent 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.