András Cieger
'We are now the first people
in Hungary'
Count Andrássy's Family and Friends through the Eyes of an English Governess
"... for there is scarcely a European country in which the Anglomania rages more
fiercely than in that slighted land. [...] there is scarcely an event of English life, a
folly of London fashion, or an invention of British industry, which does not find
admirers and commentators and imitators, among the Hungarians of respectable
degree," declared Catherine Grace Frances Gore, an English writer in one of the
stories set in Hungary that she published in 1829, at the very beginning of what
that country calls its Reform Age.
[...]
This was the prevailing atmosphere when Mary Elizabeth Stevens (1844–1924),
travelling via Vienna, entered Hungary after her baggage and the publications she
had with her had been thoroughly scrutinised. This twenty-year-old Englishwoman
had been engaged as companion to Etelka Szapáry, the widow of Count
Károly Andrássy, at her estate at Letenye, County Zala, in the far south-west of the
country.
[...]
The opportunity for Mary to make the acquaintance of the rebel aristocrat was
not long in coming, for after half a year had elapsed she was “borrowed” from her
mother-in-law by Andrássy's wife (née Katinka Kendeffy) to act as English
governess to her three children.
[...]
A major turning point for the Andrássys, and hence for Mary too, came when the
selfsame Emperor Franz Joseph who a decade and a half before had Gyula
Andrássy condemned to death, appointed him Prime Minister.
[...]
Mary Elizabeth Stevens's letters add little to our understanding of Hungarian
politics in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Their value as a documentary
source lies in the more precise light they are able to cast on the life, way of
thinking and tacit social relations (at times even the gossip) of Hungary's
aristocracy, during the 1860s in particular. They allow the reader to see, through
the eyes of an English governess, the everyday life of the family of Hungary's first
prime minister as country and capital entered the boom years of development that
followed the Compromise of 1867. This is rounded out by the sort of acute
observations that could only come from a woman: about the role that aristocratic
ladies played in public life (from charitable work to making public appearances,
not least their own attitude to politics); the social norms to which they complied
(e.g. the aristocracy's own pecking order); their educational principles; their
customs in clothing and eating (e.g. hairdressing tips or views on the fashion for
taking slimming cures); the kinds of leisure pursuits that were open to them. On
reading the letters, one can imagine oneself among the crowds in the streets of
Budapest as they celebrated Franz Joseph's coronation as King of Hungary (see
excerpt on pp. 136–7); enter ballrooms; take part in tea-parties put on for the
children of the aristocracy; take a seat in the theatre; accompany the Andrássys on
trips to their country houses or to the celebrated spa at Carlsbad (Karlovy Vary);
even take a peek into the private rooms of a family of the high aristocracy. Mary
also devotes quite a lot of space to society beyond highly privileged circles, taking
transparent delight in the information she is able to impart about the mores,
dress, diet and festivities of peasants, or personally taking part in typically rural
events like beating the bounds of a village, the celebration to mark bringing in the
grape harvest, or a wedding feast, and she even has a go at learning the steps of
Hungary's national dance, the csárdás.
There is no question that Mary was in an unusual position for, despite being a
foreigner and employee, in some ways she was nevertheless able to come into
closer contact with the Andrássy family than anyone else. Rather like a modernday
anthropologist, she was able to study her subjects as an outside observer but
at the same time was privy as an insider to many intimate aspects of their life.
Language was a barrier to her understanding of much of what was said in
Hungarian, but she was all the sharper in noticing and recording their demeanour
and their rituals.
[...]
András Cieger
specialises in 19th-century political and social history.
He edited the Hungarian edition of Mary Elizabeth Stevens' correspondence.
