The Phoenix Land

by Miklos Banffy

  I had no idea what to do.

  Our ambassador in Copenhagen had left for home, leaving Stanislaus Deym as chargé d’affaires at the embassy. I spent several afternoons in his company learning something of what was happening in Hungary from those emigrants who had just got out. Later I was to learn much more at The Hague.

  In the elegant rooms of the Copenhagen embassy we would drink tea in the company of Deym’s Spanish wife, the lovely Countess Claruchitta. The tea was excellent, and the furniture – lit by beautiful, well-placed silk-shaded lamps – was superb. Loveliest of all, however, was the hostess herself who, having broken a leg a few weeks before, used to recline on a sofa, dressed, in a lacy negligee, amidst a pile of brocade cushions and shawls and was, I fancy, bored to death. Not many people called to see them, and these were limited to a few neutral diplomats and junior members of their own embassy. That was all. The Danes had always been friendly to the Allies, both because of traditional friendship and also from fear of the Germans. I saw none of them there.

  In that scented drawing-room and in the presence of that beautiful lady, we all tried to appear light-hearted and merry, but the sense of the whole world turning topsy-turvy lay heavily upon us. The disastrous news arriving from central Europe grew daily more depressing and left us feeling lost and homeless like men in a lifeboat tossed about at the mercy of a great ocean.

  Deym, whom I had known superficially since our days in Vienna, had at first received me coldly, but later, when I had convinced him that I was not travelling as Károlyi’s envoy, his stiffness disappeared. Of Károlyi he had many hard things to say, and this was not only because of Deym’s fierce sense of loyalty to the king but also because they had formerly been close friends. He had twice been asked to shoot at Karolyi’s country place at Parád and had also been Károlyi’s companion in that crazy adventure in the hot-air balloon of which I have already written.

  There was no reason for me to stay on in Copenhagen, and in any case I found the atmosphere of that city intolerable. The streets were filled with all those French soldiers who had started on their journey home from Warnemünde at the same time as we did. The Danes gave them a tremendous welcome, and naturally their mutual celebrations largely took the form of drinking together; and the night was filled with sound of yodelling as, arm in arm, they staggered about the streets.

  Mrs Andorján at first thought she might be able to go to France by ship, but this plan had to be changed, although she did not seem to mind, because the North Sea was still littered with mines, and almost every day we would read of boats and ships that had been sunk. So she then decided to try to get home by way of Holland. Andorján decided to go with her, and I joined them in the hope that somehow I could reach England from there.

  For a long time we discussed which would be the best route. On paper the most direct way would have been through Berlin, but this was ruled out since we had been stuck in the German capital once already due to the Spartacist rising. Instead we chose a longer route by way of Hamburg, Bremen and Osnabrück, hoping that by so doing we could avoid any further adventures.

  Off we set. Once again to Warnemünde, and from there due west.

  The express was very crowded and very slow, but we were accustomed to both.

  When we were already close to Hamburg the train suddenly stopped. We were in a small station, a very small station, and there we had to wait – and wait and wait without the train showing any signs of movement. The train attendants were busy discussing something with the stationmaster.

  We asked ourselves what could have happened. What was going on?

  Finally a train attendant walked the length of train. Everyone out! The train was going no further.

  No further, at least not that day. No further? Because that very day the Spartacist rising had broken out there too, and the old Hanseatic city was already in their hands.

  There was something fatalistic, and also comical, in the fact that we had all over again run straight into precisely what we had tried to avoid. It was just like Berlin. If we had gone by way of Hanover we would have had no trouble – and here we were!

  I went to talk to ‘Herr Stationschef’, who told me that Altona was still controlled by the central government, and that we could wait there to see what happened next.

  ‘How far away are we?’ I asked.

  ‘About twenty kilometres, but you might have to go rather more as you’ll have to keep away from the Hanseatic city limits.’

  It was two or three hours before I could find some means of transportation. Finally I was able, with the help of the village innkeeper – with whom I adopted my best Norddeutsch accent to avoid arousing suspicion since foreigners were not much liked there – to get an ancient four-wheeler drawn by two sad-looking nags delivered to the station.

  It was a dear old hackney cab, not unlike those old fiacres I remembered from my childhood, which used to ply the streets of Buda when they still bore white number-plates. It was oddly constructed: half open carriage, half glazed-in coach. In the 1850s they were nicknamed batár alahátt, which was probably derived from bâtard à la hâte – a mongrel in a hurry. The rear part had a fixed roof with a perpendicular back to it, while the front seats only had glass windows at the sides and back. God knows how many hands this old rattletrap had passed through before landing up in a tiny village in North Germany.

  Anyhow we piled in all our luggage – bags, baskets, strappedup rugs and all that had now become so familiar – and then squeezed ourselves in: all three of us or rather four because Lolotte was still the Most Important Person among us.

  Dusk was falling as we set off once again.

  Where we went, through what villages we passed, I have no idea. Late that evening we arrived in Altona, where we found that order still reigned. There, too, was a hotel and, just as important, dinner as well.

  The next day I managed somehow to telephone to Karl Mönkenberg, who lived in Hamburg and whom I had known from our days in the Süd-Armée – the army of the south. He was as astonished as I was that I had got through. At first his manner was coldly laconic, but this did not upset me, as I knew that since the Károlyi takeover in Budapest everyone had been ultra-careful about what they said on the telephone. I asked him if he could think of any solution to our problems. For example, were there any trains that could take us through to Holland? Could I see him somewhere? No, he knew of nothing; and as to meeting, no, not at present. However, as to trains he did not know for certain but believed that negotiations between representatives of the two cities were just then being held.

  This, at least, seemed to hold some ray of hope. Then, around noon, came the news that the Spartacists would allow a single train to pass through Hamburg on the Bremen-Holland line provided that no one left the train while it was in transit – and that we had no intention of doing!

  In less than fifteen minutes we were seated in our carriage. There were not many passengers, but not a few anxious faces since no one was sure that the Spartacists would keep their word and let us pass through all those many stations in the ancient city-state. No one knew, in that time of temporary and local changes of government, what strange decisions might still be taken.

  Our train moved on slowly, with much clanking as it thundered over points, sometimes proceeding smoothly, sometimes in fits and starts, as we puffed and whistled our way through the many large covered stations and innumerable smaller stops in the Hamburg territory. Everyone sat close to the windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of what was going on; but no one liked to look straight out in case he was thought to be spying and got himself arrested. The picture was the same at every station we passed through: heavily-armed workers were standing at attention five paces apart beside the rails, all looking at the passing bourgeoisie with an expression of surly belligerence on their faces. There was something infinitely menacing about those lines of motionless men silently watching as our locked train passed slowly between them.

  It took a long time for our train to
get around the city and its great harbour. We could see nothing through the thick winter fog and so could not even guess where we were. Suddenly there was a tremendous clatter – we were on the bridge over the Elbe, the bridge that led to freedom. At once the train picked up speed, and the hazy vision of Hamburg faded in the distance.

  Now the weather started to become clearer so that we could see how interesting was the countryside around us. We were crossing the northern end of Lüneberg Heath. It was wet and swampy, completely flat with seemingly endless meadowland and here and there groups of black pine-trees. Much of the ground was covered with some dark, faintly lilac-coloured scrub. It was a fascinating unusual landscape and made a strange picture – a lilac-coloured sea dotted with mournful groups of dark trees. It looked as if this land was almost uninhabited, for only occasionally did we catch a glimpse of one or two black-visaged men whose job was to dig for turf on the sides of the dyke along which ran the railway line. It was hard to believe that this deserted countryside lay between Germany’s two greatest ports.

  At Sägedorn, before Bremen, we stopped again … and just stood there waiting. There seemed to be some more discussion going on. What was the matter? Of course it was the Spartacists again! That very day they had seized power in Bremen … that very day!

  We burst into peals of laughter; it was the only reaction possible. However, this time it did not matter since, after the urgent sending and receiving of numerous messages by Morse telegraph, our train turned south and so we were able to reach the frontier without any further mishap.

  I have to admit that it was with great joy that we finally arrived at The Hague, and especially for me to see again that sweet, old-world perfect little capital with its apparently modest yet very fine buildings. All the houses appear to have been constructed of the finest bricks, their contours outlined with newly applied whitewash, and the windows, framed in yellow stone the colour of butter, shining and clean. The amazing cleanliness of the houses comes from regular washing. This is not just an imagined deduction; the Dutch really do wash the street façades of their houses – and the inside courtyards too. People who do not clean down the outside of their houses at least twice a year are considered dirty and neglectful. On that day, as we drove in from the station, we saw an example of just that sort of beauty treatment in progress. A man and a woman were at work in front of their house. The woman was spraying the walls with a hose while the man stood on a ladder wiping off the dirt with a special long-handled broom shaped like a rake.

  We stayed at the Oude Doelen Hotel. The name means ‘the Old Shooting Gallery’, and I could imagine those hard tough burghers of old exercising their skill there. What people they were, those level-headed brave citizens, craftsmen, shopkeepers and grocers who defended their little strip of land, most of which had been recuperated from the sea, with the diligence of ants, their religion and their freedom, never yielding to anyone, neither to the fearsome Duke of Alba nor to the Sun King’s myriad armies! They even stood up to Napoleon. And they had been able to keep their colonies, not by force but by good example and understanding and, in the last great conflict, were capable of accepting hordes of Belgian refugees without ever becoming infected by the hatreds that war provoked. Only a few million souls, but what a nation!

  Now, as the writing of these memoirs has brought me to that place where I was to spend so many months during which my home country was soaked by the blood-stained waves of political change, my memories of you, dear Holland, still touch my heart. You were then like a peaceful sunny harbour that gave shelter from those all-consuming hurricanes. You were like one of those happy Pacific islands that were never touched since no typhoon could breech its ring of rosy coral reefs.

  Chapter Eight

  It was at our charming old-fashioned hotel, the Oude Doelen, that I was to meet János Pelényi and his charming mother, who had come to The Hague on business concerning the Protestant Church. We soon became fast friends.

  Not one of my old Dutch friends – and there had never been many – were living in The Hague.

  On arriving my first action had been to visit the former Austro-Hungarian Embassy. I say ‘former’ because I found that big building now divided in two: to the left were the Hungarians, while the Austrians were to the right. The big central hall was a sort of no-man’s-land where the carpet in the middle of the room served as a national frontier. I took it that the edge of the carpet was the real boundary, but I have no doubt that the carpet itself was considered to belong to Austria, since her citizens had usually been wily enough to secure the best part of communal property for themselves. ‘Kleine Fische, gute Fische!’38

  A few weeks before my old friend, Lajos Széchenyi, who had been our ambassador, had died, so I found there only the chargé d’affaires, Count Calice, and Elek Nagy. They were both kindness itself; and Nagy, who had useful connections through his wife, proved helpful in many ways.

  I find it hard now to recall exactly what I did in those first few weeks. I can still call to mind all sorts of faces, figures, situations and impressions but without any logical sequence so I cannot now put them in chronological order. Accordingly, I will recount them at random, just as one glances at odd snapshots as one lights upon them in an album of some long past journey.

  ***

  My memories are of many different kinds, both good and bad. In The Hague at that time were gathered together many people who, like me, had been tossed this way and that by the storms of war until they found themselves on this narrow strip of land: just as floodwaters carry all kinds of flotsam along, only these are left, cast up on an alien shore.

  So here are a few portraits. Let us start with Prince Blücher. Gebhardt Lebrecht, Fürst Blücher von Wahlstadt, was the grandson of the Blücher of Waterloo, that famous ‘Marschall Vorwärts’ – ‘Field Marshal Onwards’. He had a magnificent head and was the image of his great forebear, of whom I had seen several portraits in Berlin. On the day of those three battles at Quatre-Bras, Aliance and Waterloo, when already a 73-year old veteran, he had four horses shot from under him, had spent eighteen hours in the saddle until he was hurled into a ditch by the French attack and still, in spite of his great age, seemed the youngest of all those present on the battlefield.

  From remarks he would drop from time to time I fancy that the grandson must have led an adventurous life. He was the heir to enormous estates in Silesia39, yet he had lived for many years in South Africa on a remote plantation surrounded by blacks. He would speak about America and India as if he had spend a long time in both places and not just for pleasure but for business, and he would also speak with authority about breeding hunters and racehorses in Germany. With him one felt that he had lived through many vicissitudes and weathered many storms. His wife – Evelyn Stapleton-Bretherton – was a beautiful Englishwoman who had been thought by some Germans to be in the English intelligence service. Who knows? If so it might explain why they were then living in The Hague. It is equally possible that it was merely that she was anxious to get back to England and could make contact with her family more easily from Holland. After a while she was able to get home. When I knew her she was working on her memoirs, which were later to be published. I had a feeling that there had been some trouble with Emperor Wilhelm, although one day she showed me a photograph of herself launching a warship, which could hardly have been possible without the emperor’s approval. They seem to have been great friends with Prince Heinrich of Prussia, who had served in the German navy, and always spoke warmly of him. It was, of course, true that the emperor was not on good terms with his younger brother, who had always been more popular in England than he was40.

  Blücher, always broadminded and objective, was blessed with boundless good will and sound judgement. It was out of sheer friendliness that he arranged for me to meet Colonel Oppenheimer, the British military attaché.

  This proved to be quite an adventure, as much secrecy was involved. Blücher lived on the Vyverbergh in that street next to where the noble
s used to have their fishponds. Sometimes I had to go there at night and was accustomed to taking different detours – going one way, returning another – so it was always a good half hour to get to or from my hotel, even though it was barely five minutes’ walk away. The Hague was then thought to be a hive of spies and counter-spies (I never noticed any!). I then had to wait for a sign before I was allowed to ring the bell, and there were many other things I had to look out for before leaving the house.

  Any respectable citizen, seeing me lurking there in the street until a streak of light from some window would send me hurrying to the door, must have thought either that I was bent on some lover’s tryst or that I myself was the jealous Othello waiting for the seducer with a murder weapon concealed about my person.

  Today I would have thought myself ridiculous and would have been inclined to laugh about it had not the root cause of all these precautions been so tragically serious.

  I met Oppenheimer several times and so was able to discuss my information with him, always tailoring what I had to say to his English way of thinking. Finally I gave him a memorandum that differed in form only slightly from that I had presented to Treub, the Dutch minister of commerce. In this I described the real situation in Hungary, how the Bolshevik was rapidly spreading there and how this also exposed a dangerous threat to the rest of Europe.

  Colonel Oppenheimer was a charming and highly intelligent man, and I was truly sorry to hear, some years later, that he had had a fatal accident when climbing Mont Blanc. He was then working for the League of Nations at Geneva.

  ***

  As well as Prince Blücher there were some other Germans at The Hague, a number of whom had their comic sides.

  Among them were several titled ladies, most of whom – with the exception of one princess who was shortly to leave us – were real figures of fun. These were those poor millionaire American girls who, before the war, had been married for their money – not for anything else, I swear. These were the cotton, oil and sausage queens who had brought with them bulky fortunes that, as the war revealed, had been the only reason for such unselfish love-matches. From the outbreak of war not a cent had been received from America, and now they had come to The Hague, where they hoped they would be able to get money from overseas. However, nothing arrived and they suddenly found themselves poor and forced to live miserable lives, which surprised them no end. Of course they were outraged at their new lives, not the least because along with the money the husbands had disappeared too. Few people went to see them, and so, poor lambs, they were forced to make do with each other. And what did the poor abandoned ladies do all day? They played bridge hour-in and hour-out for quarters or tenths of a cent and that mainly on credit. I only went to see them once or twice as their company could only be enjoyed as a spectacle. They were rather like those big fat ducks that spend their days in plaintive quacking at the dried-up end of the pond.