Miklós Zeidler

English Influences
on Modern Sport in Hungary

 

...

The original meaning of the English word "sport" derives from late medieval disport "to amuse, divert oneself". That would also describe something similar in Hungary too- at least up to the start of the 19th century. It is interesting to note, though, that the both the English and French-speaking worlds the word has also managed to hang on to that earlier meaning. In Hungary, where it is first documented in the mid-19th century, the word "sport" and its derivatives, as the epigraph to this article illustrates, was already more fitted to the manifestations of modern sport.
The emergence of modern sport in the sense that we use it today can be tied to certain intellectual and political strands and changes around the year 1800.
Eighteenth-century Enlightenment and utilitarianism, coming on the heels of the Renaissance and humanism, mounted a vigorous and, it seems, decisive fresh attack, philosophically and politically, against the medieval outlook that avoided (and even condemned) verisimilitude in representations of the body and considered cultivation of the body as a worldly vanity and, thus, loathsome or uncalled for. Classicism and Romanticism in 19th century art, fuelled by admiration and respect for the culture of antiquity, and again in part following the lead given by the Renaissance, revived those ideals of the ancients of which the cult of physical perfection and competition formed an integral part. Of the sciences, it was medicine first and foremost that stepped forward to argue in countless tracts the case for taking care of the body, with physical exercise as one of the warranties of a healthy lifestyle. As the spread of the middle classes proceeded apace, sport was given a further boost as a way of adding the finishing touches to a complete character and personality. With their growing prosperity, and thus ability to "afford" leisure time, the middle classes were able to devote themselves increasingly to the modern physical culture. While in many respects they conformed to the
example set by the high-born, when it came to lifestyle choices, bit by bit they stripped the aristocracy of its monopoly on physical training as a leisure pursuit.
Further impetus was given to the dissemination and systematisation of fitness by the advent of the levée en masse for the modern army. At the time of the Napoleonic wars, virtually every state was forced to set up a standing army based on universal manhood service, which suddenly imposed a demand for efficient and consistent methods for getting tens and hundreds of thousands of conscripts to acceptable standards of physical fitness.

[...]

Precursors in Hungary

This process was seen in Hungary, too, albeit- in line with the country's general laggardliness- with a certain delay. The stimuli came, for the most part, from abroad, with the Hungarian aristocracy importing then-fashionable forms of amusement (and physical training), while Hungarian physicians passed on to the public the instruction they had acquired during their medical training outside the country or picked up from treatises on new approaches in medicine.
These works, which were usually either based on, or actual translations of, books by German or, less commonly, French authors, were addressed to an educated public, though there were instances where a version in rhyming verse was also produced, clearly intended for wider educational purposes. This particular one undoubtedly had the ambition of offering instruction to the illiterate masses in the elements of hygiene, health and physical exercise By their personal example a number of the magnates led the way in promoting and spreading the idea of sport as recreation, physical exercise and competition. Among them was Count István Széchenyi, who put money behind his advocacy of horse racing, fencing and rowing, held demonstration 'swims' on the Danube and also tried out hill-climbing, walking and tennis. Count Móric Sándor, who was known as 'the Demon Horseman', was famed, even notorious, across Europe principally for his feats of horsemanship. His exemplary strength was greatly diminished by the fact that the stunts he showed off on horseback and with a carriage came close to insanity, stirring up scandal as well as wonder, putting at risk the lives of horses and people. In 1850, he was unfortunate enough to be dashed from his horse head-first onto an iron railing and so badly concussed that he passed his remaining days, until his death in 1878, leafing through an album of pictures of his feats. An exceedingly popular aristocrat of the Reform Age, the Transylvanian Baron Miklós Wesselényi, inherited the physical strength and hot temper of his like-named father, 'the Buffalo of Zsibó'. Called 'the Hungarian Hercules', he was a superb fencer, marksman and swimmer, undertook long forced marches, and was among the country's foremost experts on equestrianism and horse breeding. He was on close friendly terms with Széchenyi from the early 1820s onwards, and that grew over time into a committed political alliance between the two on the political, social and economic reforms they thought were needed in Hungary. Encouragement of physical education for the young was one of the planks in the programme that they endorsed. Count Ádám Kendeffy, another Transylvanian, was also a distinguished athlete: a renowned horseman, marksman, fencer and dueller, for a bet he once swam one hundred lengths of the 50-yard swimming pool at Kolozsvár (Cluj, Romania) without a pause.

Apart from providing a personal example, these magnates- the founding fathers of Hungarian sport in the modern era- also helped the spread of various sports by setting up institutions and prizes. They considered patronage to be an obligatory service to the nation (this they emphasized in their appeals to broaden the donor base), and a number of foundations were operated and directed in that spirit. One such foundation was the National Fencing Institute of Pest, inaugurated in 1825, which Count Sándor Keglevich kept going for a year from his own resources with the following goal:

that mastery of fencing might be one of the skills that should be an effective barrier. to all kinds of immorality, and on the other hand, the surest means to true manliness and the development of physical strength, a defender of honour, cultivator and protector both of mental boldness and physical exercises.

Further patrons did indeed step forward, following a reorganisation in 1832. Founding members who donated a sum of 400 florins (or the annual 6 per cent interest of 24 florins on that sum) were free to enrol in the school an honest, native Hungarian commoner, at least 12 years of age and not working as a servant, who was unable to afford the tuition fees. Among the 69 private individuals who featured in the list of the Institute's founding members in 1836, we find 24 counts and 14 barons (including Kendeffy, Sándor, Széchenyi and Wesselényi); beside 17 of the names is a key, a symbol showing they held the title of Royal Chamberlain.
A similar path was taken by the Fencing School of Kolozsvár (Cluj), which, with the assistance of Kendeffy and Wesselényi, grew out of a fencing school run by a retired Italian army officer by the name of Gaetano Biasini. In early 1834, on the model of the school in Pest, this was turned into a private foundation, its 26 founders, all of them Transylvanian noblemen. In return for payment of the by then customary annual sum of 24 florins they were able to sponsor a Hungarianspeaking pupil of clean morals and good family who was unable to bear the costs of instruction. Here, too, the founders placed the focus on fencing, because they saw it as a means both to meeting national defence needs and a superb discipline for acquiring gentlemanly manners.
Aristocrats, with Széchenyi again to the fore, were also active in supporting the establishment of regular horse racing in Hungary. It was they who attended to the construction of a racecourse in 1827; they who put up the first prize moneys; they who formed a majority in the sport's organising body; they who went in for quality in horse breeding. It was in aristocratic circles that the fashion for hunting with hounds spread in the 1810s. Széchenyi, who had taken part on several occasions in hunts on the estates of the Counts Esterházy on the Danube island of the Csallóköz (Z·itny´ Ostrov, Slovakia), was already busying himself in 1823 with trying to float a foundation. A fox-hunting society that he founded for purposes of jointly sharing the costs attracted 27 members, 25 of whom were members of the Upper House in the country's Diet.
Széchenyi's attempt to set up the first "centre for sport" in Hungary, however, failed, though in December 1825 the Count offered to put up 400 florins for a hall for indoor ball games. What was missing was either a permit from the chancellor, fearful of a ball-playing younger generation engaging in political agitation, or a proper site for the building. It was only in 1841 that the Hungarian palatine, Archduke Joseph, made over a plot of land in the Lipótváros district of Pest for the riding school, sports hall and fencing school envisaged by the Hungarian Animal Breeding Society- of which Széchenyi was director- and based on the National Riding School set up by István Heinrich, a captain of hussars. It got as far as having designs drawn up by József Hild, the busiest architect of the day; however, subscribers to put up the 150,000 florins needed for construction were not forthcoming, so the drive foundered The Boathouse was another of Széchenyi's undertakings. In 1841, with 55 friends, most of them aristocrats, the Count set up a Buda-Pest Boating Club to encourage rowing on the Danube for recreational rather than competitive purposes.
A timber boathouse in which to keep the boats, purchased at exorbitant expense in England, was opened in 1842 on the Danube embankment in front of the Lloyd Palace building, just under the then still unfinished Chain Bridge.
Széchenyi would proudly show it off to acquaintances who were visiting Pest.
As interest slackened, that enterprise, too, soon faded, though it was resuscitated during the 1850s, largely through the efforts of the capital's burghers.
Those burghers had an even bigger part in the popularisation of gymnastics in Hungary. Pest's (indeed the country's) first enduring school for gymnastics, catering for both boys and girls, was opened by Ignác Clair in 1833. The institution was turned into a private company in 1839, with the training of gymnastics instructors as well as physical education as part of its objectives. For a single downpayment of 200 florins, or an annuity of 12 florins, members had the right to enrol a single pupil at the school, which became known as Pest Gymnastics Ltd, or the Pest Model School for Physical Training. Although the company had illustrious shareholders like Széchenyi and Lajos Kossuth, who by then had made a name for himself nationally as a radical liberal politician and was from the middle nobility, the main body of subscribers was made up of the well-off citizenry of Pest-Buda (mostly of ethnic German background).
Bathing was enjoyed by still wider circles. With its profusion of thermal springs, the municipalities of Buda, Pest and Óbuda- not as yet united- had a tradition going back to the Middle Ages, which had been reinforced by the more refined bathhouse culture fostered by Hungary's Turkish conquerors. In the first half of the 19th century, of course, there were still very few Hungarians who could actually swim. Nevertheless, the frequenting of public baths contributed significantly to the evolution of physical culture, with the baths becoming at one and the same time venues for hygiene, grooming, recreation and taking care of the body, as well as creating an opportunity for methodical physical exercise and even competition.

(From the mid-19th century, it became customary in Pest and Buda to grant anyone who passed the "test" of swimming across the Danube, or swimming the stretch downstream from Margaret Island to Csepel Island reduced entry prices for use of the swimming-pools that were set up along the river's banks.) Bathing thus represented a transition between physical and mental refreshment and sport, and since the bathhouses were frequented by virtually all classes of society, they became the most effective institutions for propagating the idea of a healthy lifestyle and physical exercise.
All in all, although certain antecedents or seeds of modern sports were present in Hungary, the conditions were nonetheless still lacking for these to give rise to something qualitatively new within a short time. Initiatives to transplant and take up foreign models were uncommon and not infrequently fizzled out in the absence of a broad middle class with the responsiveness to novelty, flexibility of thought, know-how and wealth, qualities which made this stratum elsewhere willing and suited to embrace modern sport. Distrust on the part of the court at Vienna was also an obstacle: during the Reform Age, Habsburg absolutism did not look kindly on even the slightest sign of an evolving civil society in Hungary and rarely acceded to the foundation of social organisations or independent societies, clubs and institutions. Sadly, the following statement sums it all:

Small swimming-pools in the Danube, a gymnastics institution, an aristocratic fencing circle, skating in winter on the frozen lake in the City Park or on the Rákos brook- that is what sporting life in Pest amounted to in the thirties and forties.

[...]

Count István Széchenyi and racing at Pest

In England there are nevertheless just three things that, in my opinion, a person should study, with all the rest amounting to nothing: the constitution, machines and horse breeding," Széchenyi noted in his diary entry for 13 December 1815, when he was setting off back home from his first trip to England. Although he was subsequently to acknowledge and, indeed, help to strike roots for a wide range of other English innovations and institutions in Hungary (e.g. men's clubs, joint share companies, bridge building, the water closet, sports and games), at that period in his life he truly did concern himself most of all with the "horse business." A former hussar captain, who had given years of service in the Napoleonic wars, an enthusiastic gentleman-rider and a patriot who became increasingly vocal about the lamentable slackness of the Hungarian economy, he saw many opportunities in horse breeding as an activity that was not at all foreign to the "national character" and that was useful both for the economy and for the military. He returned to his estate at Nagycenk, near Sopron, with 18 English horses, engaging the services of a certain Edmond Jones as a trainer. The latter brought over another horses a year later, and thereafter Széchenyi continued to purchase bloodstock from England on a regular basis. Although these business dealings were not attended by much success, Széchenyi entered horses time and time again for sweepstakes on the Simmeringer Haide, just outside Vienna, and at the racecourses maintained by Count József Hunyady at his Upper Hungarian estates of Ürmény and Holics (Mojmírovce and Holic´ in Slovakia). According to notes made by the ageing Hunyady, a total of nine race days were held on the mile-and-a-half-long straight racecourse at Ürmény between May 1814 and April 1821, while the Emperor Francis I in person attended a meet at Holic´ on August 1816.
Other aristocrats also imported considerable quantities of stock from England. In 1814 Count János Trautmannsdorf, Master of the Horse, was the first to bring English thoroughbreds to Hungary, breaking a path later trodden by Counts Széchenyi, Hunyady, Sándor, Baron Wesselényi, Prince Pál Esterházy, Counts István and Gusztáv Batthyány, Count Ferenc Béldi, Counts János and József Csekonics, Counts Károly and Mihály Esterházy, Count Miklós Festetics, Count György Károlyi and Count Tamás Nádasdy. At first their ranks were dominated by "Arabomaniacs", who had a preference for thoroughbred Arab stock, but later on the balance tipped over to the "Anglomaniacs", who also swore by stock with Eastern blood- but in the form of thoroughbreds foaled and raised in England.
As 1820 passed into 1821, Széchenyi committed himself wholeheartedly to the horse racing business. He made plans to write a book about the breeding of horses, to convert his property into a stud and to purchase more English bloodstock. His ambition was clearly formulated in his diary on 1 February 1821: "Let Hungary have me to thank for good horses!" Six weeks later, meeting in Vienna with Hunyady, Count László Festetich, Count Lajos Károlyi and Baron Joseph Brudern, he pledged to put up an annual prize of 100 gold ducats for the best racehorses. The first race was held as early as 18 April. In July, Széchenyi had a 30-point draft of the rules printed at Debrecen, both in Hungarian- Projektuma a Magyarországon felállítandó Lovas-pályázás törvényeinek (Proposal for the Laws of Horse Racing to Be Established in Hungary)- and German. Not content to leave it at that, he tried to obtain public and official backing for racing in Hungary. On 8 December, he was granted an audience with the emperor, and starting on 11 January 1822, the group conferred in Vienna on four successive Fridays. As Hunyady had died in the meantime, it was Széchenyi who submitted the petition to the emperor. A year later, he was again spending time in anterooms for interviews with him and in the Chancellery on the matter of horse racing in Hungary, all to no avail. The court was nervous about permitting any public events that might attract big crowds. A factor which played a part in that rejection was the poor regard in which Széchenyi was held in the highest circles. He was subjected to criticism on account of his frequent quarrels, his repeated airing of real and imagined grievances, and his sometimes scandalous love affairs.
Sensitive to extremes and himself prone to extremes, his temperament drove him into ecstasies of enthusiasm and into depths of gloom that may well have foreshadowed the full-blown manic-depressive disorder from which he was later to suffer. Some people were entranced by Széchenyi's impetuousness; others considered his unpredictable mood changes to be signs of unsociableness and unreliability.
In 1826, finally, after protracted debate, Vienna for the first time assented to public horse races, initially at Simmering at the end of March, then at Pozsony (Bratislava in Slovakia) on 9 April and 28 May, while the Hungarian Diet was in session in the city. Széchenyi attended both of the latter race meetings, along with several thousand other spectators, but he took little pleasure in the racing, merely commenting sniffily- no doubt partly on account of lost wagers- on the "extraordinarily tatty" turnout of the spectacle.28 With permits from the court, the obstacles put in the way of organising horse racing in Pest also melted away, and that autumn, Széchenyi, together with Wesselényi, Baron Lőrinc Orczy, Baron József Wenckheim and Captain Nepomuk János Heinrich, a burgher from Pest, sought suitable sites to hold such an event in Pest or Buda. On 16 November, they inspected a huge piece of farmland on the south-eastern outskirts of Pest, near the Soroksár road, that certain brothers Schmidt rented from József Mayerffy, brewer and county court judge. The Horse Racing Society of Pest paid the Schmidts a rental of 400 florins per year for the land, and it was there that, on 9 April, 1827 a right-handed oval course of 2.34 km (a mile and a half) with a 1 km (five furlongs) finishing straight was marked out, and within a few weeks a timber stand with 52 boxes had been erected. Opposite, on the inside of the course, there was a weighing room and a raised platform for the race judges with, still further in, a hurdle course. Leading up to the stand, a fine, tree-lined avenue planted the autumn before had already started to take shape.29
The first race day at which leading breeders and horse-owners from the provinces had the chance to compete was held on 6 June 1827 in front of 15,000 spectators. The organisers, who almost without exception were well-known aristocratic owners, were well aware that against their thoroughbreds the throng of provincial horsemen who had proudly entered mounts had no chance at all. However, in order to hold the interest of the public, they started off the day straight away with a four-heat sweepstakes race in which any Hungarian horse, without restriction, could be entered. Sweepstakes like that offered a spectacle that was at once magnificent and wild: "It was strange to see," Széchenyi wrote a decade and a half later:

While twenty or thirty horses of mostly diverse breeds set off together, the horseman on one was half-naked, another was in a braided suit, and a third was in a baggy shirt; all, except for ours, with no check on their weights; and the spectating multitude urged on the already very fired-up competitors so much that in the end, amid all the great din and "gee-ups", the disciplined and cool-headed English horseman usually reached the winning post on our horse- in accordance with our instructions- a little bit ahead.

In the end, the winner in the field of 27 was Babieka, a six-year-old stud owned by György Károlyi, but the count grandly distributed the 33 gold ducats prize money among the 17 peasant owners and riders. Care was also taken that they should be allowed a taste of victory, with separate heats being arranged for peasant horses, and even a consolation race for the losers. The next day was the occasion for the "Race for First Prize", in which 24 horses competed for a cup worth 100 pieces of gold. This was won by Al-Borak, a chestnut mare owned by Wesselényi that was stabled at Széchenyi's Nagycenk estate. More races went ahead on 8, 9 and 15 June, with total prize money amounting to 3,091 silver florins (or 687 gold ducats). Apart from the domestic press, several Viennese papers also carried reports on the races, generally full of praise and restrained in their criticisms.
The Horse Racing Society of Pest published each year a Gyepkönyv (Turf Book) in which it gave detailed reports on all the races that had been staged, the winnings, its own income and expenses, and the state of breeding. In the general enthusiasm that followed the first race meeting, 82 benefactors donated a total of 4,702 silver florins (1,045 gold ducats) to the Society, from which it was possible to fund seven prizes in 1828. Placed in the Casino that Széchenyi established in Pest (a gentleman's club purportedly on the English model), a "5-florin book" that was aimed at recording offers to cover the expenses of meets attracted 62 signatories.
During the early years, racing at Pest seemed to strike root. As donations allowed prizes to be put up for one thing after another, the number of race days and races grew. The Ladies' Cup, endowed in 1828 by "30 most honourable Hungarian noblewomen", was a special prize for a race run over a mile and a half. The National Prize, raced for from 1830 over a distance just short of two miles (3 km), was underwritten by a mix of aristocrats, lesser nobility and ordinary citizens alike. The winner over the longest distance of all- 4.7 miles or 7.6 km- would win the Széchenyi Whip, while there were races over 4 miles for the Széchenyi Sword and the Transylvania Prize; the four furlongs over which horses competed for the Meskó Whip and the Festetics-Nákó Prize were true sprints. The largest purse was that offered to the winner of the Károlyi Stakes: the round sum of 1,000 silver florins (222 gold ducats). Apart from prize races, there were also many challenge matches run for private wagers and display runs to show off stock for sales purposes. However, even by the early 1830s, there were a growing number of "walkovers" in which just one contestant was entered, and so could complete the course at a walk. That brought somewhat of a slackening of interest; the total prize money on offer, which up till that point had been steadily rising, began to fluctuate- all sure signs of a flagging of the initial impetus.
Although the total prize money doubled over the latter half of the decade, reaching a peak of 12,948 silver florins (2,877 gold ducats) in 1838, it again showed a steep decline by the early 1840s, and again started to vacillate. In tandem with this, there was a marked fall in the number of race days and races: at the low point of 1845, just 11 races were run at three meetings.
Despite these difficulties, the Pest races became a fashionable social event and a distinctive stage for parading urban finery. Inscriptions from the pens of notable poets of the Reform Age were engraved on cups and ceremonial swords. In the autumn of 1829, Széchenyi and Gábor Döbrentei, the co-editors of the Turf Book, issued the following invitation:

The undersigned, on behalf of the Stewards of the Pest Horse Races, hereby appeal to every Hungarian poet to submit several pithy sayings in hexameter or iambic pentameter, or at most a rhymed couplet of verse, for the purpose of being able to select the most pleasing for [engraving on] a goblet.
Among the most prolific of the entrants were the then fashionable poet Károly Kisfaludy and the authors of Hungary's two national anthems: Ferenc Kölcsey (Himnusz, or Hymn) and Mihály Vörösmarty (Szózat, Appeal)- a rustic aperçu by Vörösmarty came to be engraved on a silver cup worth 25 gold ducats that Széchenyi put up for the winner of the next year's peasant race: "Síkra ne vígy tehenet, ló kell oda 's férfi-ügyesség" (Don't take a milk-cow on the flat; a horse you need and manly skill).
Noblemen and the citizenry of Pest and Buda took a keen interest in these races, which, for all their crudeness, were spectacular and offered a peculiarly gentlemanly form of entertainment. At the end of May or in early June- a time of year when the racecourse looked its best- the inhabitants of the twin towns would make the trek to the meeting in their thousands. Over the ensuing years the Society continued to lay out big sums of money- regularly- between 1,000 and 2,000 florins annually, sometimes even more- on maintenance and improvements to the course and stands, and in 1835, even sought to purchase the land, but the city council of Pest refused to authorise that. Despite the developments, Captain Heinrich, capital steward of the course though he had proved to be, did not manage to get stabling built on the course itself, so that horses had to be taken to races from the stables at nearby inns, The Two Blue Rams and The Two Crowns. John Nevin, an English trainer who had made a name for himself throughout the Austro-Hungarian empire, set up at the Dessewffy House, on what is now Üllői Avenue in Pest, a "public training institute", to which owners unable to afford a racing stable of their own could entrust their horses.
Nevin's presence was also a sign that, although Hungary may have seen the birth of horse racing as a permanent fixture, the umbilical cord had not yet been cut. Most of the professionals, jockeys and trainers alike were English; the breeding programmes and horse racing practices still sought to emulate the English example, and consignments of thoroughbreds were still steadily arriving from the island kingdom. The first issue of the Országos Méneskönyv (National Stud Book), published yearly from 1832 onwards, listed 66 stallions and 52 mares, of which 57 and 38 respectively, originated from England.38 Although the first Hungarian jockeys made an appearance in 1830, they had a tough job winning much in the way of laurels against their English rivals, and so it went on for a long time to come. The domination of Hungarian racing by English and, later, American riders was not broken until the early twentieth century and the advent of what Ferenc Bonta and Géza Janek dubbed the first generation of great Hungarian jockeys. Up to that point, the "clean-shaven, diminutive English riders" were favourites- and above all "the caricaturists' delight".
However great an attraction the Pest races may have been for a wider public, racing in reality remained an almost exclusively aristocratic preserve. Owners were virtually always persons of high rank, even though by 1847 the Turf Book was listing a total of 61 racing stables. For all the changes of name of the body that organised the races- the Horse Racing Society became the Animal Breeding Society in 1830, which mutated to the Economic Association in 1836, then a separate Pest Riding Club split off from that in 1842- aristocrats predominated in its management throughout. They even made up the great majority of the stewards, judges and starters who were directly in charge of the racing (though it goes without saying that none were to be found among the men who carried out the weighing). It is fully in keeping, then, that aristocrats should have had a virtual monopoly on the premier races; indeed, right up until the Second World War their horses won something like 80 per cent of the big prizes. István Széchenyi's racing silks- "white ground, red sleeves and cap"- came out the winner at the Pest racecourse on 11 occasions between 1827 and 1847, the last horse to win honours being Nelson, which took the United National Prize and the Esterházy Prize on successive days in 1847. Fortune even smiled on Széchenyi as a gentleman-rider: 30 May 1832, for instance, he won at two miles on Emir, coming home just ahead of Count Trautmannsdorf on Masaniello.
Széchenyi's work Lovakrul (On Horses), which is a detailed exposition of his ideas about horse breeding and racing, was written essentially at one go in a six-week period during the autumn of 1827. He dedicated the book "To the shade of the late Count Jósef Hunyadi", and declared an intellectual crusade against the "old heads", the "old eyes" and the "stewards of old views". In his view, quality horse breeding would have beneficial effects on national defence, agriculture, commerce (haulage) and travel, besides which the horse also served "our other day-to-day needs and pleasures". With reference to the English example, he saw the success of the substantial financial benefits to be gained from horse breeding in regular racing, thereby explaining, albeit in hindsight, the importance of introducing it to Hungary.40 He proposed that rankings of quality based on regulated arrangements for breeding, training, racing and prize-winning should set the standards for stud fees and the market prices of horses.
On Horses, like horse racing itself, came in for heavy criticism, so in the latter half of 1837, alive to the downturn apparent in the races at Pest, Széchenyi set to gathering his thoughts again in a second book. Distilling ten years of experience, Néhány szó a lóverseny körül (A Few Words About Horse Racing) was passed for publication by the censor in March 1838. He admitted that he had not succeeded in making horse breeding a dynamic branch of Hungarian agriculture in respect to the nation as a whole, but he continued to insist on breeding along the English model as the line to follow. (This, incidentally, he had already restated in his earlier, more comprehensive book, Világ (Light). Having reminded his readers of the programme set out by On Horses in 1828, he suggested that there had been no change in the main goal since then:

Before all else, firm and resolute continuation of the plan that has been laid out; or in other words, diligent watering and tending of the seedlings that were planted in order to revitalise the subject. 

In today's parlance, stick to executing the original plan with further, more strenuous effort, more patience and much greater financial investment than before.
For Széchenyi, ever ready as he was to turn his attention to the new, the sense of achievement that he had derived from the "horse business" eventually began to wane. During the first 22 years of the Pest races, between 1827 and 1848, a total of 442 races were run on 88 race days, and a total of around 165,000 silver florins (37,000 gold ducats) in prize money was handed over on sweepstakes. Due to prohibition by the Austrian authorities, terrified of public events with large attendances since the revolutions of 1848, the races were suspended between 1849 and 1851; even after that the 2- 3 days a year on which racing was staged were little more than symbolic. A slow recovery only began to be manifested during the 1860s, to the point that 17 days of racing were put on in 1868.
The reorganisation of the Pest Riding Club in 1869, and the introduction of a form of tote betting in 1871, gave a new boost to horse racing as a commercial business.44 It was also not entirely immaterial that for a decade, from 1866 onwards, Francis Joseph himself raced horses at Pest as an owner. Although the emperorking naturally had to do so incognito, everyone was perfectly well aware who was behind the black-and-gold colours of the "Kladrub Stud".
With its facilities behind the times, and situated at an inconvenient distance from the city's rapidly expanding population, the racecourse was closed in 1879. The following year, an elegant and sprucely maintained, but unostentatious, new course was opened on Aréna Avenue, not far from the City Park in Pest.

[...]

Miklós Zeidler
teaches at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest and has published widely on the history of inter-war Hungary. His books include Sporting Spaces (1999, also in other languages), a guide on historic sports grounds in Budapest.