The pessimistic tone of Continental fiction, and its pronounced preference for minute and morbid analysis, are quite revolutionizing the modern novel. Fiction is ceasing to be a branch of art, and fast becoming, instead, a branch of science. The aim of the novelist, apparently, is to lecture instead of to amuse his readers. Plot, incident, and description are being sacrificed more and more to the dissection of peculiar and abnormal types of character, and the story is too often lost in physiological details or psychological studies. The wave of Naturalism, as it is called (though nothing could really be more unnatural), has spread from France all over Europe. The Spanish and Italian novels are but pale reflections of the French novel. The German Naturalists have all the qualities of the French School, minus its grace. In Holland, the so-called Sensitivists are at great pains to combine a coarse materialism with a sickly sentimentality. Much more original, but equally depressing, is the new school of Scandinavian novelists represented by such names as Garborg, Strindberg, Jacobsen, Löffler, Hamsun, and Björnson (at least in his later works), all of whom are more or less under the influence of Ibsenism, which may be roughly defined as a radical revolt against conventionality. In point of thoroughness some of these Northern worthies are not a whit behind their fellow craftsmen in France. The novel of the year in Norway for 1891 was a loathsomely circumstantial account of slow starvation. There is a lady novelist in the same country who could give points to Zola himself; and nearly every work of Strindberg's has scandalized a large portion of the public in Sweden. Nay, even remote Finland has been reached at last by the wave of Naturalism in fiction, and Respectability there is still in tears at the perversion of the most gifted of Finnish novelists, Juhani Aho. In the Slavonic countries also the pessimistic, analytical novel is paramount, though considerably chastened by Slavonic mysticism, and modified by peculiar political and social conditions. Though much nobler in sentiment, the novel in Poland, Russia, and Bohemia is quite as melancholy in character as the general run of fiction elsewhere. A minor key predominates them all. There is no room for humour in the mental vivisection which now passes for Belles-lettres. We may learn something, no doubt, from these fin de siècle novelists, but to get a single healthy laugh out of any one of them is quite impossible.
There is, however, one country which is a singular exception to this general rule. In Hungary the good old novel of incident and adventure is still held in high honour, and humour is of the very essence of the national literature. This curious isolated phenomenon is due, in great measure, to the immense influence of the veteran novelist, Maurus Jókai, who may be said to have created the modern Hungarian novel,1 and who has already written more romances than any man can hope to read in a life-time. Jókai is a great poet. He possesses a gorgeous fancy, an all-embracing imagination, and a constructive skill unsurpassed in modern fiction; but his most delightful quality is his humour, a humour of the cheeriest, heartiest sort, without a single soupçon of ill-nature about it, a quality precious in any age, and doubly so in an overwrought, supercivilized age like our own. Lovers of literature must always regret, however, that the great Hungarian romancer has been so prodigal of his rare gifts. He has written far too much, and his works vary immensely. Between such masterpieces, for instance, as "Karpáthy Zoltán" and "Az arány ember" on the one hand, and such pot-boilers as "Nincsen Ordög," or even "Szerelem Bolondjai," on the other, the interval is truly abysmal. But that such a difference is due not to exhaustion, but simply to excessive exuberance, is evident from the story which we now present for the first time to English readers. "A tengerszemü hölgy" is certainly the most brilliant of Jókai's later, and perhaps2 the most humorous of all his works. It was justly crowned by the Hungarian Academy as the best Magyar novel of the year 1890, and well sustains the long-established reputation of the master. Apart from the intensely dramatic incidents of the story, and the originality and vividness of the characterization, "A tengerszemü hölgy" is especially interesting as being, to a very great extent, autobiographical. It is not indeed a professed record of the author's life-like "Emlékeim" (My Memoirs) for instance. It professes to be a novel, and a most startling novel it is. Yet in none of Jókai's other novels does he tell us so much about himself, his home, and his early struggles both as an author and a patriot; he is one of the chief characters in his own romance. Of the heroine, Bessy, I was about to say that she stood alone in fiction, but there is a certain superficial resemblance, purely accidental of course, between her and that other delightful and original rogue of romance, Mrs. Desborough, in Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson's "More New Arabian Nights," though all who have had the privilege of making the acquaintance of both ladies will feel bound to admit that Jókai's Bessy, with her five husbands, is even more piquant, stimulating, and fascinating than Mr. Stevenson's charming and elusive heroine.
R. NISBET BAIN.
[1] I do not forget Kármán, Jósika, and Eötvös, but the former was an imitator of Richardson, and the two latter of Walter Scott.
[2] I say "perhaps," as I can only claim to have read twenty-five out of Jókai's one hundred and fifty novels.
SEA-EYES—MONSIEUR GALIFARD—THE FIRST NEEDLE-PRICK
Never in my life have I seen such wonderful eyes! One might construct a whole astronomy out of them. Every changeful mood was there reflected; so I have called them "Eyes like the Sea."
When first I met pretty Bessy, we were both children. She was twelve years old, I was a hobbledehoy of sixteen. We were learning dancing together. A Frenchman had taken up his quarters in our town, an itinerant dancing-master, who set the whole place in a whirl. His name was Monsieur Galifard. He had an extraordinarily large head, a bronzed complexion, eyebrows running into each other, and short legs; and on the very tip of his large aquiline nose was a big wart. Yet, for all that, he was really charming. Whenever he danced or spoke, he instantly became irresistible. All our womankind came thither on his account; all of them I say, from nine years old and upwards to an age that was quite incalculable. I recall the worthy man with the liveliest gratitude. I have to thank him for the waltz and the quadrille, as well as for the art of picking up a fallen fan without turning my back upon the lady.
Bessy was the master's greatest trouble. She would never keep time; she would never take to the elegant "pli," and he could never wean her from her wild and frolicsome ways. Woe to the dancer who became her partner!
I, however, considered all this perfectly natural. When any one is lovely, rich, and well-born, she has the right to be regarded as the exception to every rule. That she was lovely you could tell at the very first glance; that she was rich anybody could tell from the silver coach in which she rode; and by combining the fact that every one called her mother "Your Ladyship" with the fact that even the "country people" kissed her hand, you easily arrived at the conclusion that she must be well-born. Her lady-mother and her companion, a gentlewoman of a certain age, were present at every dancing lesson, as also was the girl's aunt, a major's widow in receipt of a pension. Thus Bessy was under a threefold inspection, the natural consequence of which was that she could do just as she liked, for every one of her guardians privately argued, "Why should I take the trouble of looking after this little girl when the other two are doing the same thing?" and so all three were always occupied with their own affairs.
The mother was a lady who loved to bask on the sunny side of life; her widowhood pined for consolation. She had her officially recognised wooers, with more or less serious intentions, graduated according to rank and quality.
The companion was the scion of a noble family. All her brothers were officers. Her father was a Chamberlain at Court; his own chamber was about the last place in the world to seek him in. The young lady's toilets were of the richest; she also had the reputation of being a beauty, and was famed for her finished dancing. Still, time had already called her attention to the seriousness of her surroundings; for Bessy, the daughter of the house, had begun to shoot up in the most alarming manner, and four or five summers more might make a rival of her. Her occupation during the dancing hour was therefore of such a nature as to draw her somewhat aside lest people should observe with whom and in what manner she was diverting herself, for there is many an evil feminine eye that can read all sorts of things in a mere exchange of glances or a squeeze of the hand, and then, of course, such things are always talked to death.
But it was the aunt most of all who sought for pretexts to vanish from the dancing-room. She wanted to taste every dish and pasty in the buffet before any one else, and well-grounded investigators said of her, besides, that she was addicted to the dark pleasure of taking snuff, which naturally demanded great secrecy. When, however, she was in the dancing-room, she would sit down beside some kindred gossiper, and then they both got so engrossed in the delight of running down all their acquaintances, that they had not a thought for anything else.
So Bessy could do what she liked. She could dance csárdás3 figures in the Damensolo; smack her vis-à-vis on the hands in the tour de mains, and tell anecdotes in such a loud voice that they could be heard all over the room; and when she laughed she would press both hands between her knees in open defiance of Monsieur Galifard's repeated expostulations.
[3] The national dance of Hungary.
One evening there was a grand practice in the dancing-room. With the little girls came big girls, and with the big girls big lads. Such lubbers seem to think that they have a covenanted right to cut out little fellows like me. Luckily, worthy Galifard was a good-natured fellow, who would not allow his protégés to be thrust to the wall.
"Nix cache-cache spielen, Monsieur Maurice. Allons! Walzer geht an. Nur courage. Ne cherchez pas toujours das allerschlekteste Tänzerin! Fangen sie Fräulein Erzsike par la main. Valsez là."4 And with that he seized my hand, led me up to Bessy, placed my hand in hers, and then "ein, zwei."
[4] "Don't play hide-and-seek, Master Maurice. Off you go! 'Tis a waltz, remember. Come, come! courage. Don't always pick out the worst partner. Take Miss Bessy by the hand. Waltz away!"
Now, the waltzes of those days were very different from the waltzes we dance now. The waltz of to-day is a mere joke; but waltzing then was a serious business. Both partners kept the upper parts of their bodies as far apart as possible, whilst their feet were planted close together. Then the upper parts went moving off to the same time, and the legs were obliged to slide as quickly as they could after the flying bodies. It was a dance worthy of will-o'-the-wisps.
The master kept following us all the time, and never ceased his stimulating assurances: "Très bien, Monsieur Maurice! Ça va ausgezeiknet! 'Alten sie brav la demoiselle! Nix auf die Füsse schauen. Regardez aux yeux. Das ist riktig. Embrassiren ist besser als embarrasiren! Pouah! Da liegst schon alle beide!"5
[5] "Very good, Master Maurice! That's capital! Hold the lady nicely! Don't look at your feet. Look at her eyes. That's right! To embrace is better than to embarrass. Pooh! There, they both are together!"
No, not quite so bad as that! I had foreseen the inevitable tumble, and in order to save my partner I sacrificed myself by falling on my knees, she scarcely touched the floor with the tip of her finger. My knee was not much the worse for the fall, but I split my pantaloons just above the knee. I was annihilated. A greater blow than that can befall no man.
Bessy laughed at my desperate situation, but the next moment she had compassion upon me.
"Wait a bit," said she, "and I'll sew it up with my darning-needle." Then she fished up a darning-needle from one of the many mysterious folds of her dress, and, kneeling down before me, hastily darned up the rent in my dove-coloured pantaloons, and in her great haste she pricked me to the very quick with the beneficent but dangerous implement.
"I didn't prick you, did I?" she asked, looking at me with those large eyes of hers which seemed to speak of such goodness of heart.
"No," I said; yet I felt the prick of that needle even then.
Then we went on dancing. I distinguished myself marvellously. With a needle-prick in my knee, and another who knows where, I whirled Bessy three times round the room, so that when I brought her back to the garde des dames, it seemed to me as if three-and-thirty mothers, aunts, and companions were revolving around me.
MY FIRST DISTINCTION—MY FIRST GRIEVANCE—THE DAMENWALZER—THE FRIGHTFUL MONSTER—THE READJUSTED SCARF—THE SECOND NEEDLE-PRICK
I am really most grateful to Monsieur Galifard. I have to thank him for the first distinction I ever enjoyed in my life. This was the never-to-be-forgotten circumstance that when my colleagues, the young hopefuls of the Academy of Jurisprudence at Kecskemet, gave a lawyers' ball, they unanimously chose me to be the elötánczos.6 To this day I am proud of that distinction; what must I have been then? On the heels of this honour speedily came a second. The very same year, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, on the occasion of the competition for the Teleki prize, honourably mentioned my tragedy, "The Jew Boy," and there were even two competent judges, Vörösmarty and Bajza,7 who considered it worthy of the prize.... When, therefore, I returned to my native town, after an absence of three years, I found that a certain renommée had preceded me. I had also very good reasons for returning home. The legal curriculum in my time embraced four years. The third year was given to the patveria, the fourth year to the jurateria.8 Every respectable man goes through the patveria in his own country, but the jurateria at Buda-Pest.
[6] The dancer who leads off the ball.
[7] Two of the most eminent Hungarian poets.
[8] Different branches of Hungarian law.
And I had something else to boast of, too. In my leisure hours I painted portraits, miniatures in oil. So well did I hit off the Judge of Osziny (and he did not give me a sitting either) that every one recognised him; but a still greater sensation was caused by my portrait of the wife of the Procurator Fiscal, who passed for one of the prettiest women in the town.
And yet, despite all this, when in the following Shrovetide the Lord Lieutenant gave a ball to the county (they were something like Lord Lieutenants in those days), I was not called upon to open the ball! Ungrateful fatherland!
And who was it, pray, who caused me this bitter slight? A dandy, who did not belong to our town at all; a certain Muki Bagotay, of whom the world only knew that he had been to Paris, and was a good match. In my rage I had resolved not to dance at the Lord Lieutenant's ball, although I had received an invitation. Moreover, my indignation was increased by the circumstance that rumour had already designated Bessy as the semi-official partner of the opener of the ball.
However, Nemesis overtook the pair of them.
At this ball Bessy wore a frisure à l'Anglaise, which did not suit her face at all; and I rejoiced beforehand at the misadventure I clearly foresaw, for I was certain that her flying dishevelled hair would catch in the buttons of her partner's dress-coat.
As for Muki Bagotay himself, the first time we cast eyes upon him, my young brother and I immediately agreed that it was an absolute impertinence to be so handsome. Only a romance-writer has the right to produce such perfect figures; they have no business to exist in reality. I comforted myself with the reflection that such a handsome fellow must be a blockhead. I didn't know then that dulness was fashionable. Why, even gold has a dull ring!
But I was a very inexperienced youngster in those days. I had no down on my face, I did not know how to smoke, I would not have drunk wine for worlds, and had never even looked a lady in the face.
But, as I said before, Nemesis overtook them.
The dance opened with a waltz. If I had been master of the ceremonies, I should have started with a körmagyar.9 Ah! that körmagyar. That is something like a dance. It requires enthusiasm to dance that, and you want eight or sixteen couples to dance it properly, and all thirty-two dancers must dance it with histrionic precision, and that was not an easy thing to do, I can tell you. But, then, Bagotay was all for waltzes. The "Pecsovics"!10
[9] An old Hungarian round dance.
[10] One who preferred foreign and especially Austrian customs to Hungarian.
But there's a Nemesis!
It was the regular custom then for the band to play ten or twelve bars of each dance before it began, and then stop for a few moments so that the public might know whether the next dance was to be a polka, quadrille, or waltz. Muki Bagotay did not know this (what did he know, forsooth?), so when the band gave the usual signal, he took his partner on his arm and started off with her in a fine whirl, till the band suddenly stopped, and they found themselves high and dry at the other end of the room with no music for their feet to dance to; so they had to sneak back shamefacedly to the place from whence they had started. Bessy was furious, and Muki was full of excuses; you would have taken them for a married couple of six months' standing. Serve them right!
I did not watch them dance any more, but sat down in a corner and sketched caricatures on the back of my invitation card. Then I made my way to the buffet to drink almond-tea, and gathered round me two or three blasé young men, like myself weary of existence. Let the gay company inside there try and amuse themselves without our assistance if they could!
Suddenly some one tapped me on the shoulder with a fan, then I recognised a voice; it was Bessy. "What," she said, "not content with flying from the dancing-room yourself, must you keep away other dancers also! Come back, sir! A Damenwalzer is beginning."
For the privilege of a Damenwalzer I capitulated unconditionally of course. Having completed the turn round the room with my partner, I led Bessy back to her mother, and thanked her for the never-to-be-forgotten distinction. She had to be off again almost immediately, for the voice of the master of the ceremonies announced a cotillon. The couples flew round with the velocity of will-o'-the-wisp. But her mother remained where she was, and there was an empty chair beside her.
"You are quite forgetting your old acquaintances," said she, breathing heavily (she was stout and suffered from asthma). "You don't trouble your head about us now you have become a famous man."
A famous man! What! then does she also know that the Academy of Sciences honourably mentioned my tragedy? No, no! My other fame it was that had reached her—my pictorial successes.
"We have seen the lovely portrait that you painted. Yes, it was Madame Müller to the life—just as she looked fifteen years ago. Why did you not rather paint her daughter, she is much prettier? But you don't like painting girls, do you—you are afraid it is a losing game, eh?"
The lady had certainly very peculiar expressions.
Of course I could only reply that I was not a bit afraid, and that if they would let me, I should have the greatest pleasure in painting Miss Bessy.
She was gracious enough to give her consent. The only thing was to fix when it should be. It could not be at once, as for some days after a ball young ladies do not look their best. Then they had to get ready for another dancing party, or were busy, and on Sundays they went to church. At last, however, after much calculation, a day was hunted up on which Bessy was free to sit to me.
Then there was another question for consideration: was the portrait to be painted on ivory with water-colours, or on linen with oils? "Ivory is better," I insinuated, "because one can always wipe off a portrait in water-colours with a wet sponge whenever one likes."
The lady remarked the self-reproach, and was gracious enough to neutralize it by a contradiction.
"Then I declare for oils, for we wish to keep the picture for ever."
I felt that I could have done anything for her.
Meanwhile the cotillon had come to an end. Bessy returned to her mother, and the companion also resumed her place. The chair which I had appropriated belonged to her, and resigning it to its lawful possessor, I would have withdrawn, but the lady considered it her duty to present me to the ruling planet of the day, Muki Bagotay, who was escorting back his partner. She immediately acquainted him with my artistic qualifications, and made it generally known that I was going in a few days to paint her daughter's portrait.
On the afternoon of the day appointed I appeared at Bessy's house. I had sent on beforehand my easel and my canvas by our servant. I found not a single soul of a lackey either in the passage or the ante-chamber. I was obliged to stand there and wait till some one came to announce me, and in the meantime I could not help overhearing the conversation in the adjoining room.
"You are a good-for-nothing rascal yourself—a shameful, impertinent fellow!"
I recognised the voice of the mistress of the house.
In reply came a protesting shriek.
"Where is there a stick?" cried the lady.
And at the same instant a hoarse voice replied: "Madame, vous êtes une friponne!"
A pretty conversation truly. I had certainly arrived at the wrong time.
Meanwhile the door opened, and the flunkey came in rubbing one of his hands with the other; he was evidently in pain.
"Have you been beaten?" cried I, in amazement; to which he angrily replied: "No! I have been bitten."
What, actually bitten the footman!
"Would you kindly walk in, sir; they are waiting for you."
The moment I entered the room this enigmatical state of things was immediately plain to me. The personage to whom her ladyship was meting out these offensive epithets, and who was returning her such contemptuous replies, was a grey parrot who had just bitten the lackey in the finger and been chastised for this misdeed. The whole company was in the utmost excitement. There was a large assembly both of ladies and gentlemen; amongst the latter my eye immediately caught sight of Muki Bagotay. But the chief personage was the parrot. He was a grey-liveried, red-tailed, big-billed monster, and he stood in the middle of the tea-table in a threatening attitude. Somehow or other he had contrived to open the door of his bronze cage, and in a twinkling he stood in the midst of the tea-things on the covered table. "Oh, I only hope he won't get on my head!" cried a somewhat elderly lady, holding on to her chignon with both hands. Nobody dared to assume the offensive. The footman who had attempted to seize the fugitive had already been laid hors de combat by the winged rebel, while the parlour-maid declared that she would not go near him if they gave her the whole house. The lady of the house meanwhile was making little dabs at the bird with a small Spanish cane, and calling it all sorts of abusive names; but the warlike pet always grasped the end of the cane with its strong beak, while he repaid with interest the injurious epithets bestowed upon him.
When I joined the company I was scarcely noticed and the lady of the house, in reply to my salutation, "I kiss your hand," said, "You infamous scoundrel!" though she immediately added, "I did not mean you."—"You're one yourself," retorted the bird.
"Come now, find a rhyme to that, Mr. Rhymster!" said Mr. Muki Bagotay. The wretch was apostrophizing me.—Rhymster, indeed!
"Don't go near it!" cried Bessy; "he might bite your hand, and then you would not be able to paint me."
They'd terrify me, eh? It only needed that. I instantly went straight for the bird. I would have done so had it been the double-headed Russian eagle itself. Was it divination which made me hit upon the proper word to say to such a human-voiced monster? "Give me your head!" said I. And at that word the terrible wretch bobbed down his head till he was actually standing on his curved beak, while I scratched his head with my index finger, which gratified him so much that he began to flutter his wings.
Then I hazarded a second command.
"Give me your foot!"
And then, to the general amazement, the parrot raised its formidable three-pronged foot and clasped me tightly round the index finger with its claws; then it seized my thumb with its other foot, and allowed me to lift it from the table. Nor was that all. While I held it on my hand, just as the mediæval huntsmen held their falcons, the parrot bent its head over my hand and began to distribute kisses; but finally he went through every variation of the kiss till it was a perfect scandal. The ladies laughed. "Who ever could have taught him?"
"I got the bird during the lifetime of my late lamented husband," explained the lady of the house, with some confusion.
Finally, the conquered sphinx affectionately confided to me his name: "Little Koko! Darling Koko!" But I transferred Koko from my fist to his cage, and put him on to the swinging ring, which he seized, and began to climb upwards with his beak. He was a veritable triped! On settling comfortably in his ring, he made me a low bow, and cried with a naïve inflexion of voice—"Your humble servant!"
"Positively marvellous!" gasped the lady-mother; "you ought really to be a tamer of animals!"
"I mean to be."
"Indeed! And what sort of beasts will you tame?"
"Men!"
Not one of them understood me.
"Well, Mr. Poet," joked Muki Bagotay, "the ballad was a success; now let us see whether the picture also will be superlative."
"How do you want to see it?"
"So!" and with that he stuck his eye-glass into the corner of his nose.
"Then you're just mistaken!" said I, "for when I paint a portrait nobody is allowed in the room except myself and the sitter."
The whole company was amazed. Every one fancied that it would have been a public exhibition, and so they had all congregated together to see how a person's eye, mouth and ear came out. A large round table had been prepared for me, in order that a whole lot of them might sit around it with their hands on their elbows, and give me general directions as I went along: That eye a bit higher! that ringlet a little lower! A little more red here, and a little more white there! However, I declared plainly that I would not paint before a crowd; it was the rule in painting, I said. When portraits were being painted, nobody must be in the atelier but the painter and his model. Barabás,11 too, always made that a rule.
[11] Michael Barabás, a famous Hungarian painter, born at Markosfalu in 1810.
My resolution produced an imposing effect on the company. It's a very nice thing when a man can do something which nobody else can! They had to agree that Bessy and I should sit alone in a little side room, which had only one window, and the lower part of even this window had to be covered by a Spanish screen so as to get a proper light. And nobody was to disturb us so long as the sitting lasted.
The first sitting did not last long. In oil painting, the image should first of all be painted under, that is to say, with dull neutral colours. In those days I had never heard of such a thing as a first coating; while it is in this stage the picture is not fit to be looked at. It is absolutely hideous, and the better the likeness, the worse it looks. I allowed nobody to look at it, not even Bessy. I locked up the first essay in my painter's knapsack; it was a miniature. At this stage it was quite sufficient if the insetting had succeeded, with the figure in profile, but the countenance quite en face; the shadows piled up, but the background merely thrown out tentatively, and the fundamental colours of the dress just insinuated. Every one will see that this last part is the hardest of all.
The company was very much deceived in its expectations when it was informed that I had nothing to show it. Every one had expected that in an hour and a half I should have finished the eye or the mouth at any rate; they now thought to themselves that nothing at all would come of it.
"Well, but will Bessy look pretty in this dress?" asked her mother.
What could I do at such a question as this but look silly? As if I knew whether Bessy had had a pretty dress on or not! All I knew was that I had had to use for it a little "English lake," some "Neapolitan yellow," "Venetian white," and just a scrinch of "burnt ochre."
"I can tell you that it was a very tiresome amusement," said Bessy. "The face a little more that way—Not so serious—Not so smiling—Don't sit so stiffly—Raise your finger—Don't move about so much.—And you've laid so much licorice-juice on my portrait that they'll fancy I'm a gipsy girl."
I hastened to assure her that this was only laying the ground work, and that on the morrow it would be a much merrier business.
The next day I was there again after an early dinner. In the forenoon I was with my chief at the office. Thus before dinner I was a lawyer, and after dinner I was artist, poet, and reciter.
This time there was no company. The picture proceeded briskly, and the members of the family were allowed to come in from time to time, one by one, and have a peep at it.
I had now begun to study the face more in detail. It was an interesting head. The face was almost heart-shaped, terminating below in a little chin which was delicately divided by a single dimple. There were spiral-like lips of dazzling red enamel; a slightly retroussé nose, with vibrating nostrils; round, rosy-red cheeks, with little beauty spots here and there, which I christened "black stars in the ruddy dawning heavens!" Her densely thick hair curled naturally, and gleamed like golden enamel, diminishing, after the manner of Phidias' ideal Venus, the smoothest of foreheads, and fluttering the most roguish of little ringlets over the blue-veined temples. (How could I help learning by heart such minute details when every one of them passed beneath my brush?) But what my brush could not possibly reproduce was her marvellous pair of eyes. They drove me entirely to despair. I really believe that even if I had been a true artist instead of a wretched dilettante, I should never have been able to conjure forth their secrets. Just when I was thinking I had fixed them, her eyes would flash, and my whole work was thrown away. At last I had to be content with a dreamy expression, which pleased me, at any rate, best. The inspecting family trio said that they had never seen such an expression on Bessy's face; nevertheless they acknowledged, with one voice, that it was a speaking likeness.
The head was now ready, the dress was to remain till to-morrow.
On that day there was a préférence party in town at the General's. Bessy's mother was an enthusiastic préférence player.... Consequently she was not at home. The aunt alone remained as the guardian of maidens, and she used generally to take a nap in the afternoon, or play patience. I don't know who presided over Bessy's toilet on this occasion, perhaps nobody. That clean-cut, pale pink bodice on other days had given full scope to her charming figure; but on this particular day it was more insinuating than ever. It seemed to me as if the frill of English tulle had crept considerably lower down the shoulder, nay, lower still.
One cannot imagine a lovelier masterpiece of a creative hand than that bust. And it is a painter's right, nay, his duty, not merely to look, but to observe. A dangerous privilege. My hand trembled, I seemed to freeze, and yet beads of sweat stood out upon my forehead.... She, too, seemed to remark my agitation. A roguish flame sparkled in her eye. She was now not a bit like her yesterday's portrait. She seemed to be flouting me. And I was putting that treacherous frill of tulle to rights in the picture, putting it where it ought to have been. That is what I really call "corriger la fortune."
At this sitting the face was completely finished, and the dress also was painted. I thanked the fair self-sacrificing victim, and told her that she might now look at the picture; it was ready. The girl rose from her chair and peeped over my shoulder. She looked at the picture and laughed in my face.
"Why, you've readjusted the frill of my dress, haven't you?" said she.
"So you wore it like that purposely, eh?"
"Then was there something you didn't want to see?"
"There was something I didn't want other people to see."
"Well, now, I've been looking at you for days and days, and I've observed something on you which is very nasty, and which I don't like at all."
"I had no idea you gave me so much of your attention."
"It is only a mere speck, no bigger than the eye of a bean."
"What can it be?"
"The wart on your right hand."
And, indeed, on my right hand, just below the thumb, was a not very ornamental excrescence, which everybody could see when I was writing or painting.
"I cannot cut it out, because it is just above the artery. I showed it to a doctor, and he said it would be a rather dangerous operation."
"What does the doctor know about it? I'll destroy it for you; it won't hurt you. I learned it at school from my school-fellows. I'll destroy it in a moment."
"By incantations, eh?"
"Oh, dear no! It will smart dreadfully. But if a girl can stand it, you can."
I consented.
She lit a candle forthwith, and placed it on the table beside me. Then she produced a darning-needle from somewhere (I thought of the other darning-needle), took firm hold of it, shoved it right down to the very roots of the wart, held up my hand, and placed the head of the needle in the candle flame till it was heated to a white heat. And all the time her wondrous eyes were opened round and wide, and looked straight into my eyes with irises turned downwards. It is thus that the demons of hell must look upon those whom they are roasting!
"Does it hurt?" she hissed between her teeth. She appeared to be in a state of ecstatic delight.
"It hurts, but it is not the needle."
"Well, now you can take your wart away with you."
Two days after, the calcined wart fell from my hand, leaving behind it a little speck no bigger than a lentil; and that speck is there still, and is of a whiteness which contrasts strongly with the colour of the rest of the hand. And every day I set to work writing, I must needs look at this little white spot, and when I have looked at it long, it seems to me as if her face were appearing before me in the midst of this tiny circle just as it looked then; and then that face runs through all its variations down to that last shape of all, which still startles me from my slumbers.
MY MASTERPIECE AND MY HUT
In the later stages of the painting we could converse. Indeed, conversation is necessary for completing one's study of one's subject, and prevents, besides, the constraint of sitting from becoming too tiresome.
"Have you read the poems of Petöfi?"12
[12] The Burns of Hungary.
"Oh, at our house we read nothing."
"Why not?"
"Because those who come to see us bring no books with them."
"Then don't you get any newspaper?"
"Oh, yes, the Journal des Demoiselles; but it's a frightful bore."
"A Hungarian paper would be better, the Pesti Divatlap, for instance."
"I'll tell my mother to order it. You write for it sometimes, don't you?"
"Yes."
"What?"
"The description of a desert island among the sedges."
"Have you ever been on this desert island?"
"No; I only imagine it."
"What's the good of that?"
"It's part of a romance I'm working at."
"Ah, so you write romances! Will you put us into them?"
"Oh, no! Romance writing does not consist in merely copying down all that one sees and hears about one."
"I should like to know how you set about it?"
"First of all I think out the end of the story."
"What, you begin at the end?"
"Yes. Then I create the characters of the story. Then I deal out to these characters the parts they must play, and the vicissitudes they must go through down to the very end of the story."
"Then, according to that, none of it is true?"
"It is not real, perhaps, but it may be true, for all that."
"I don't understand. And how much time do you take to write a story? I suppose it will come out?"
"Certainly."
"Ah, yes, 'tis an easy thing for you to do! You have a rich aunt at Ó Gyalla, and you've only got to say a word to her and she'll get your book printed for you. I suppose you've only got to ask her?"
"I shall not tell my rich aunt a word about it."
"Then you'll get your book printed at Fani Weinmüller's, I suppose. Now listen, that won't do at all. I knew an author who published his own book and went from village to village, and persuaded every landed proprietor to buy a copy from him. That is a rugged path."
"My romance will not be one of those which the author himself has to carry from door to door; it will be one of those for which the publisher pays the author an honorarium."
She absolutely laughed in my face.
And after all, when you come to think about it, surely it is somewhat comical when a person comes forward and barefacedly says, "Here, I've written something in which there is not one word of truth, and nevertheless I insist upon people reading it, and paying me for writing it."
"Do you fancy, Miss Bessy, that Petöfi was not paid for his poems? He got two hundred florins for 'Love's Pearls.'"
"'Love's Pearls'! And pray what are they?"
"Lovely poems to a beautiful girl."
"And did he get the girl?"
"No, he did not."
"Well, now, that is a nice thing. A fellow courts a girl, puts his feelings into verse, finally gets a basket13 from her, and then demands that this basket should be filled for him with silver pieces."
[13] The Hungarian "Kosarat kapni," like the German "einen Korb bekommen" (to get a basket), is the equivalent of our "to get a flea in one's ear," i.e., "a rejection."
The same day I sent her Petöfi's "Love's Pearls," and his "Cypress Leaves" also.
I resumed my portrait painting three days afterwards, and immediately asked her whether she had taken up "Love's Pearls."
"Oh, yes; I took them up to dry flowers in them."
"But I suppose you've just dipped into the 'Cypress Leaves'?"
"I don't like such things. I always burst into tears; and then my nose gets quite red."
I did not pursue the subject further.
Miss Bessy hastened, however, to sweeten my bitter disappointment with the delightful intelligence that, at my suggestion, mamma had at once subscribed to the Pesti Divatlap, and for six months, too.
I was there when the postman brought the first four copies of the paper. In those days every paper had to be sent through the post in an envelope, postage stamps had not yet been invented....
After the solemnity of breaking open the envelope, the assembled womankind naturally looked to see if there were any pictures, especially pictures of the fashions.
Was it not called "Divatlap"?14 And a fashionable journal it really was. That worthy, high-souled patriot, Emericus Vahot, was labouring with iron determination to make fashion a national affair.
[14] Fashionable journal.
"Well, whoever wore that might exhibit herself for money!" That was the universal verdict of the ladies. They alluded to one of the fashion patterns.
The illustrated supplement to the second number was Gabriel Egressy as Richard III., in the dream scene, surrounded by spectres; the picture was sketched by our countryman Valentine Kiss.
Her ladyship asked me which was the head of the principal figure, and which the feet. And I must confess that I myself could not quite make out how Richard III. had got his head between his knees.
With the illustrated supplement to the third number, however, they were quite satisfied. It was Rosa Laborfalvy15 as Queen Gertrude, by Barabás, a work of real artistic merit. This interested the ladies greatly.
[15] Jókai's future wife, as will be seen in the sequel.
"They say she has such wonderful eyes that there's nothing like them anywhere," said Miss Bessy.
The logical consequence of this should have been a contradiction accompanied by a flattering compliment on my part; but all at once it was as if something so squeezed my throat that I absolutely could not get the courtly expression out anyhow. "I have never seen her," I replied.
At the end of the fourth number was a lithograph representing a slim, youthful figure, and beneath it was written the name, Alexander Petöfi. It was one of the best sketches of Barabás. It is the one absolutely faithful portrait of the immortal poet. As such he was known by all those who lived with him, that eye gazing forth into the far distance, that mouth opened prophetically, those hands crossed behind him as if he would hide something in them. The whole portrait seems to say, "I will be Petöfi"; all the other portraits say, "I am Petöfi."
This picture produced a great impression upon the ladies, for the appearance of a lithographed portrait in a journal was a great event. In those days there were none of the beneficent penny papers, whose right of existence is considered amply justified if the frontispiece represents some one battering an old woman's head in with an axe. Only great and famous patriots enjoyed the distinction of figuring on title-pages, and photography was not yet invented.... The appearance, then, of Petöfi's portrait in an illustrated supplement of the Divatlap created quite a sensation.... The companion at once undertook to read the book of verses which had been sent to the house by me. Bessy, on the other hand, desired to know whether she would find anything of mine in the portion of the journal devoted to the Belles-Lettres. Immediately afterwards she actually hit upon it. It was a portion of my romance, which appeared there under the title of "Az ingovány oáza"—"The Oasis of the Fens."
"Well, I mean to read this at once."
I gave her plenty of time to do so, for I only appeared again after the lapse of several days.
She really had read it. It was the first thing she told me.
"Now I am curious to know," she added, "what was the beginning of the story and what will be the end? You know, don't you?"
"How can I help knowing?"
"But I don't understand the title. Where does the 'oiseau'16 come in?"
[16] The Hungarian oáza (oasis) and the French oiseau are pronounced so very much alike, that the ill-instructed Bessy, who had never heard of the former, not unnaturally confounded them.
I explained to her that the "oáz" was not a flying fowl, but a plot of verdure concealed in the desert.
"Then why don't you write 'island'?"
She was right there.
"Apropos of island," she continued, "I often see you from the verandah of our island summer-house walking up and down in front of our garden; yet you never give us so much as a glance, though we make noise enough."
"That is quite possible. At such times I am immersed."
"Immersed in what?"
"In working at my romance."
"Working and walking at the same time?"
"Such is my habit. I work out the whole scene in my head first of all, down to the smallest details, so that when I sit down it is a mere mechanical a-b-c sort of business."
"Then according to that, when you are marching with rapid strides up and down that long path, you neither hear nor see anything?"
"Pardon me, I see grass, trees, flowers, birds, stumps of trees, and huts of reeds overgrown with brambles. Amongst all these I weave my thoughts like the meshes of a spider's web. And I hear, too. I hear the piping of the yellow-hammer, the twittering of the titmouse, the notes of the horn from distant ships, the humming of the gnats, and they all have something to whisper to me, something to tell me. A buzzing wasp lends wings to my imagination; but if I meet a human face, the whole thing flies out of my thoughts, and a single 'your humble servant' will dissolve utterly my fata Morgana, until I turn back and reconstruct the ends of my spider's-web among the freshly-discovered reed-built huts, tree-trunks and trailing flowers, when the well-known voices of the dwellers in the wilderness bring back to me again my scattered ideas; then I retreat into the little wooden summer-house in our garden, and there, disturbed by nobody, I transfer to paper the images which stand before my mind."
And Bessy, contrary to my expectation, didn't laugh at this elucidation. On the contrary, she had grown quite serious. The expression of her eyes now resembled the expression which I had given them in her portrait.
"And this gives you pleasure?" she whispered. "It is just as if a man were to set off dreaming after taking care beforehand that all his dreams should turn out beautiful."
"Mr. Muki Bagotay," announced the footman.
I took up my hat. I could not endure that fellow. He had already enjoyed everything in reality which existed for me only in imagination....
The little wooden hut there in the orchard on the Danubian islet (whether it is still there I know not) was the most splendid palace in which I ever dwelt. 'Twas there I wrote my first romance. It is true that it had to put up with a lot of criticism, that first romance. What, indeed, did a young mind which knew nothing of men or of the world understand about romance writing? And yet I loved my first work, just as much as a man loves his first-born, though it may be deformed by all sorts of physical and spiritual defects. How plainly I still see before me those large, wide-spreading Reineclaude trees, crammed with fruit ripe to bursting, which covered the little hut. A little farther off was an apple-tree covered with blood-red fruit, and then a second with taffety white, and a third with velvety apples. From the open door of the hut one could see right along the overgrown path, which was bordered on both sides by bowery vines. When the warm blood-red rays of summer pierced through the meshes of the foliage, it seemed as if every shadow was of green-gold. Far away on the banks of the Danube could be heard the delusive echoes from the military band in the "English Garden," whilst closer at hand the yellow-hammer piped, and a frog here and there croaked in the irrigating trenches. I was writing the hardest part of my romance—the love part, that most undiscoverable of all unknown worlds. One may write down a description of the marsh world from the imagination, but not a description of the world of love. If the heart has not already discovered it, the head can tell us nothing at all about it.
All at once the green-gold shadows were lit up by something bright. She was standing there in the door of my hut, dressed in a white frock, with a straw hat fastened to two blue ribbons hanging upon her arm, and her dishevelled locks floating down her shoulders. For a moment I fancied that the dream-shapes of my imagination had taken bodily form. Then her ringing peal of laughter assured me that a living person stood before me.
"How did you come here?"
"How? Why, by walking over the soft grass, of course."
"Alone?"
"Alone! Why not? Whom should I have brought with me, I should like to know? I suppose I may come to a neighbour's garden unattended?"
It was quite true that our gardens were only about a hundred feet apart, lying one on each side of the common path, which ran right through the island.
"You don't seem to give me a very hearty reception," pouted she, as she entered my hut.
My head began to swim.
"On the contrary, I am overjoyed at the honour you do me, and I'll gather for you at once some of our princely plums."
Nobody else had such plums then, and it was a good excuse, besides, for quitting the hut.
"I did not come for the sake of your princely plums; I filch them long before you ever taste them. I have come now to see how you make up your romance."
I pointed out to her that here was the paper and there the pen, and all a man had to do was to take up the pen, and it went on writing of its own accord.
"Then you don't peep into any book first of all?"
"You can see that I am provided with no tools of that sort."
"Well, now, sit down, and I'll sit down beside you and see how you write."
And then, not waiting for an invitation, she sat down at the end of my sofa, driving me into the dilemma of sitting down by the table, willy-nilly, likewise. I may mention that my hut was so narrow that the table reached from the door to the window.
"I can't write a word, though, at this moment," said I.
"Why? Because I'm here?"
"Naturally."
"Then read me what you have just written."
"There's a lot of it."
"So much the better. I can remain here all the longer."
"Won't they miss you at home?"
"They know that I am sure to turn up again."
Nemo profeta in patria.