Géza Buzinkay

The Prince of Wales Incognito

 

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In the 1880s he stayed longer and visited not only Budapest. On those occasions, however, the schedule remained just as tight and was similar in content to his first visit. Hungarian journalism was changing rapidly, and there is more - though not necessarily more accurate - information available about the Prince's visits. At the time of the 1873 visit, the only news gatherers were the lithographically produced Österreichische Correspondenz, the Pester Correspondenz, and the Országgyuýlési Értesítő (Parliament Bulletin), among which the Austrian paper served as the primary source for foreign newspapers. In the following decade the situation changed. In 1881 the Hungarian News Agency, MTI, was establish-ed, and it provided subscribers with a wire service of domestic news. In 1875 the lithographically produced newspaper Budapester Correspondenz was founded, and soon there was also a Hungarian version.32 The papers now had their own reporters, who, like the men who worked for the news agencies, recorded the speeches they heard in shorthand. This was probably also the case for personal names, many of them unfamiliar to those who took them down, which were thus reproduced - in shorthand and subsequently in longhand - in a variety of garbled spellings. This was particularly true in the case of English names, which are sometimes impossible to identify from their appearance in the Hungarian press, although the haste with which notes were taken and the way words were misheard has left many Hungarian names similarly unrecognizable. However, there were now more reports, and articles were more detailed than before. The papers printed the entire guest lists of receptions, dinners, soirées and balls, recorded the table settings and the menus, described the furniture in the hotel rooms, suites and ball rooms visited by the Prince of Wales, and thus give a fascinating glimpse into the social environment in which he found himself.
The people who surrounded the Prince in Hungary were almost exclusively members of the aristocracy, in part because he was in constant and close contact with Count István Károlyi, the popular president of the National Casino, and Count Tasziló Festetics, who, in 1880, married Lady Mary Hamilton, the sister of one of the Prince of Wales's great friends (who would accompany him to Budapest the following year). Joining them during the 1888 visit was Colonel of the Hussars Lajos Esterházy (perhaps the Count to whom Gyula Krúdy referred in his stories about Róza). The noblemen with whom the Prince associated belonged to that landed aristocracy which, in the second half of the nineteenth century, continued to exert its public influence and demand a political role. Even those who cultivated their Hungarian identity were nonetheless cosmopolitan. Theirs was a colourful and opulent lifestyle. The Prince, who was always smiling and turning graciously towards everyone in his company, seems nevertheless to have known what to think about Hungarian aristocrats. This is evident from a comment he made, which the press presented as a bon mot, while being shown round the vast cellars of wine merchant Ferenc Jálics on King (Király) Street (the other location other than the Town Hall where a number of non-aristocrats was present). On hearing that the cellars covered an area of exactly one acre, he exclaimed, "Look here, this respectable gentleman is quite able to make a living from one acre of land while you, sirs, with your income from forty or fifty thousand acres, like to complain that you are not able to make ends meet."

In the 1880s the Prince of Wales came to Hungary on three occasions, and each time he spent a few days in Budapest. Between 12 and 16 May 1881 he stayed at the Európa Hotel. Four years later, from 28 September to 4 October 1885, he was the guest of Count Tasziló Festetics in Somogy county, went shooting in Berzence, made a short visit to Festetics's Keszthely Palace, and finally travelled to Budapest, where he stayed until 12 October as the guest of Count Alajos Károlyi, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador to Great Britain, in his palace near the National Riding School (today No. 3 Pollack Mihály Square). His most extensive stay in Hungary, and his shortest visit to Budapest, took place in 1888. After Francis Joseph had presented the Prince of Wales with the 12th Hussar regiment (made him Honorary Colonel) the Prince participated in the autumn military exercises and, donning his Hussar colonel's uniform, visited his regiment, which was stationed in Miskolc. The 12th Hussar regiment was known as the "Palatine Hussars", because until 1848 the honorary colonel had always been the Palatine of Hungary. The regiment had earned a reputation for bravery in the Napoleonic Wars. As it was returning from Bohemia to join the 1848 revolution, it was repeatedly forced to engage those who pursued it. It lost half its men, but its patriotism and fighting spirit remained intact. The Prince grew fond of his Hussar colonel's uniform; in 1891, for example, he wore it to a gala performance at the Opera during the visit of the German Emperor William II, to London.
During the 1888 visit to Hungary the Prince of Wales went shooting with Francis Joseph at the royal palace in Gödöllő and also with Count Tasziló Festetics in Keszthely, and he went on a bear hunt with Crown Prince Rudolph in Görgény in Transylvania. Before his stay in Transylvania he went down to Bucharest and Sinaia for four days, at the invitation of the new king of Romania. That left him with only a day or two for Budapest, just long enough to pass through. On 12 October he bade what was to be his final farewell to Budapest in the royal waiting room at the Western Railway Station. After a few days in Vienna, he boarded the Orient Express on 18 October for his journey home.

There is every indication that the Prince of Wales enjoyed his visits to Hungary, and that he had more interest in, and affinity towards, this country than what would have been required simply by good form. The feeling was mutual, as the Hungarian press repeatedly shows. "The Prince is quite an amiable figure", wrote Pesti Hírlap, "his face reminds one of familiar Hungarian faces... one feels almost tempted to address him in Hungarian." Kálmán Mikszáth, the rising star of Hungarian journalism and belles lettres, put it similarly when he said, "It is wonderful how the Prince of Wales has that Hungarian quality about him, and the mysterious force that draws him here and binds us, as it were, is apparent everywhere. Because he can really have no interest in coming here other than personal inclination. Even the cleverest man could find no other reason."
The Prince of Wales often made comments that his hosts could easily take as compliments, saying the same things with reservations elsewhere lends a certain authenticity even to the compliments. Even Ármin Vámbéry, who was dissatisfied with conditions and society in Hungary, relates how the Prince once said to him, "There is no country in Europe in which I feel more at home than here." In Vasárnapi Ujság an old acquaintance related the Prince's words, "Heaven knows why I am so fond of Hungary. I am always happy to come, and I leave with a heavy heart. It seems to me that I can find many of the pleasant traits in the Hungarian nation that so captivated me during my travels to India with the gallant Radoputana people [the Sikhs], but here the Eastern characteristics are combined with more than one splendid aspect of Western culture, all the more captivating to strangers."

It seems that the more familiar the Prince grew with Hungary, the more he liked it. Hungarian music, or rather popular tunes, which he encountered when he bought those flasks in 1873, delighted him so much that he appointed first Lajos Berkes, and later his son Béla, and their band almost as court musicians, taking them with him wherever he went and inviting them to his court in England. He even had his own favourite Hungarian tunes. There were times when he went daily to opera performances at the National Theatre, the Opera House or the People's Theatre, and of course he paid his respects to the star of the Hungarian musical stage, Lujza Blaha, "the nation's nightingale". On 13 May 1881 it was at his special request that the People's Theatre performed Ferenc Csepreghy's successful folk operetta Piros bugyelláris (The Red Purse), starring Lujza Blaha. Although he arrived only in the middle of the first act, "after the first act, Mrs Blaha, on the arm of Count István Károlyi, came to the lobby of the Prince's box where the Prince personally offered her a large bouquet of white roses and lilies-of-the-valley, bound with a wide, dark red and purple ribbon." There is no mention in the press reports of the Prince's visits to Ilka Pálmai, the prima donna of the People's Theatre, whom Krúdy referred to as a close acquaintance of the Prince of Wales.

In his stately homes the Prince of Wales was surrounded by numerous Hungarian objets d'art. Mihály Zichy produced paintings for Balmoral Castle, and for Sandringham church he had Joseph Edgar Böhm, a Hungarian by origin, create a commemorative marble plaque featuring the portrait of his sister. Also of Hungarian origin was Heinrich von Angeli, a professor at the Wiener Akademie, who painted a full, life-size picture of the Prince of Wales, which the Prince gave to the National Casino in 1888, having been made an honorary member. He also took to England the three ceremonial outfits (one in brown, one dark blue and one light yellow) trimmed with "genuine precious stones", which were made for him in 1881, as well as the Hussar's uniform, which he sometimes sported in London.
Besides art, the Prince of Wales was interested in everything to do with Hungarian civilisation. In 1873 he visited the Hungarian pavilion at the Vienna World Fair, and in 1885 he spent several hours each day for a week at the Hungarian National Exhibition, carefully perusing the industrial hall, the trade and ethnographic sections, and the horse breeding exhibitions. Finally, even during his short 1888 visit to Budapest, he inserted into his schedule visits to the museum of trade and the wine exhibition. Of course, during each of his visits he went to horse shows and the races, dogs and horses being his first passion. He even went to the races on Sunday, something that Queen Victoria, the austere guardian of Protestant virtues, opposed. The Prince's Budapest hosts were eager to supply good excuses for it, while at the same time trying to keep it secret; a handful of papers reported the news, nevertheless. In 1881 he bought a splendid carriage and four from Count Béla Zichy.
Moreover, the Prince of Wales began to explore the Hungarian language. As a child he had learned several languages and never felt inhibited in Hungarian company, since everyone in his circle spoke German, French and English. Still, he mentioned more than once that he would like to learn Hungarian. Although he was a little apprehensive about the difficulties of this language, he included some Hungarian phrases in his toasts. Ármin Vámbéry recounted how, in 1885, "... he remembered several Hungarian phases he had read at the exhibition, and repeated them to Vámbéry as a display of his Hungarian proficiency."
Nevertheless, the Prince of Wales could not simply be a private person, nor just an aristocrat with a passion for travelling - he was the heir to a throne. Although Queen Victoria kept him away from public affairs and domestic politics, he was allowed to show interest in diplomacy, especially during Lord Salisbury's term in office as foreign secretary between 1885 and 1892 with whom he was on friendly terms. Whether or not this was the reason, the fact is that although the Prince's 1888 journey was supposed to be a private visit, and although he was travelling incognito, the trip included a number of official events befitting a ruler or crown prince. Such events included Francis Joseph presenting him with a Hussar regiment; his taking part in military manoeuvres; his troop inspections; his special invitation to a hunt at the palace of the emperor and king in Gödöllő; and his hour-long conversations with Ármin Vámbéry about particularly important issues regarding the British Empire's Turkish or Indian policies. And sentiments of "good friendship" must have given way to political considerations vis-ŕ-vis an agreeable country which, nevertheless, was part of an Austro-Hungarian Empire sliding into an ever closer alliance with Germany. Presumably, the Prince must have grown tired of socialising with Hungarian aristocrats, no matter how colourful, easygoing and cosmopolitan they may have been. He was too democratic and open in spirit to be satisfied with the social isolation in which they lived, and perhaps he drew his own - political - conclusions from this. By 1888 it should have become
clear that the Hungarians' hopes, expressed in 1881, of enjoying an enduring friendship and the patronage of a major power, were dissolving in the mist of illusion.
Following the Prince of Wales' departure on 16 May 1881, the paper of the governing party, A Hon, whose editor-in-chief was the novelist Mór Jókai, wrote, It is safe to say that the English Crown Prince's amusements in Budapest leave a more effective legacy than merely the memories of a time pleasantly spent here. The prospective ruler of the world's most powerful empire has come to know the Hungarian nation first-hand, a nation which, twenty years ago, a monarch who governed general opinion called 'anonymous'. He saw for himself that 'we exist'. We showed ourselves as no better and no worse, no smaller and no larger, than we are. We did not unearth any of our rarities just to dazzle him, nor did we parade before him in assumed splendour; what he saw here was our daily life. And that is what he grew to love. For Hungary, his fondness shall one day prove to be a blessing.

Jenő Rákosi, a prolific author and journalist, the most influential press baron of the following decades and a man of more emotional temperament, put it this way, When you leave we cry after you with a sigh, if only we had a Prince such as you!
May God be with you, magnificent Prince, may you live happily in your happy country and may good fortune follow you your whole life through! Once the crown weighs heavy on your brow and you ponder the fate of your great Empire, you must know that there is a nation beyond your borders, small in number but strong of heart, which loves you.
You have captivated it.

Géza Buzinkay
is Senior Research Consultant at The Budapest History Museum. He has authored nine books on the history of journalism, cultural history and museology. He is Editor of the quarterly Magyar Média/Hungarian Media.