A Hungarian Rhapsody

The Center of the Night-Life in Europe Moves Eastward as Far as Budapest

DONALD FREEMAN

NOT the least of the upsets occasioned by the greatest of the international altercations has been the emergence of Budapest as the center of the world's gaiety. Despite that vast and amazing army which yearly beats the trail between the sidewalks of New York and the Rue de la Paix, and the other multitudes of American innocents abroad who find contentment in viewing the languid and hardly respectable friezes of old Pompeii, the while listening to the gaudy tinkle of what is euphemistically known as Italian popular music; in drinking schzoarzen in one of those glorified and verdurous beer-gardens which dot the Kurfiirstendamm and make it a fashionable thoroughfare, the trend is eastward.

A few of the more unfettered have had more than enough of side-shows for gullibles. They are frankly tired of schoolmarms, Cook's tourists and Mr. and Mrs. Ginsburg: tired of the banditry of French shopkeepers; of the pale and tawdry wenches who swarm the streets of Paris; of the gilded catchpennies for tourists; of the pink-paper hats and the tin-horns—in short, sick to death of the whole vaudeville which is the Americans' Paris (a name which is singularly without magic for my ears). Again, one cannot drink beer forever Outer den Linden, although Otto is a genial host and has hired the noisiest band of brass horntooters to be found in the New Germany. Then, too, it is hard to gain admission to that overcrowded Berlin cabaret which houses Anita Berber, the most perversely sinister of the sirens, and her undulations. Finally, one recalls the reek of the streets in Naples—and that is enough to send him scooting off to buy a ticket for Vienna.

BUT Vienna has not yet emerged from its post-war lethargy and strangely reembles a palace ball-room—after the ball is iver and the attendant is ambling down the lall with a pail and mop in his hand. The Austrian Republic has wiped away every renaming trace of the glory of Empire down to he last Royal Seal recommending the Haps>urg family tailor. Gone are the Fasching bills, once magic with life and kisses in dark orners. Beauty no longer lurks behind the silver masks of the Viennese Carnival. The anguorous strains of the 155 Strauss waltzes, vhich, in 1914, constituted, exclusively, the nusic of the evening, now sound very sour indeed.

True, a few of the Old Guard have shined ip the medals which old Franz Joseph gave hem and dared to show them right under the loses of the Republicans, and at the Rcdoutcs, lespite the hordes of profiteers and chorus vomen, one can spy an occasional lovely Barones, like Nona Rothenthalcr, sneaked back from Switzerland or St. Wolfgang. But for all of hat, the City of the Rose now droops with a very dreary wilt indeed.

The traveller moves on. He has been inormed bv the comedians in the Vienna Revues although he has perhaps not always undertood) that there are diableries in Budapest; moreover, he has heard weird tales: he has heard for instance of Mr. X's bachelor dinner at the Dunapalota-Ritz Hotel, when Mr. X, observing that his guests were enjoying themselves and fearing the wrath of a management intent on serving an 8:30 breakfast to a contingent of commercial travellers from London, commandeered a moving van, and furbishing that leviathan with appropriate decorations, a bowl of punch, and a gipsy band, caused it to he driven to the various homes of his guests. Thus was the sorrow of parting made sweeter. The journeyer has heard too of Miss Z's summer night's entertainment when that astute hostess on remarking the temperatures of the young ladies and gentlemen present suggested a bathing party on Margitsziget—a Danube Island. Everyone was allowed to take off his clothes except the Tziganes who waded out to the waist in frock coats and provided appropriate music for the festivities. Thus mildly encouraged, the traveller hastens on.

He is not disappointed in Budapest. The Hungarians—although a scoundrel or two may be counted among them—are a genial, hospitable lot, born with an inordinate taste for pleasure, which, while it creates a topsy-turvv budget, remains a taste and never an obsession. Some, indeed, may wonder why Hungary is not known as the Great Insane Asylum. It seems unlikely, certainly, that a group of peopie, the personnel of which varies but slightly, unless congenitally idiotic, can sit, night alter night, in cabarets from eleven until daylight; the same crowd in the same places, year in and vear out. It is not unusual, for instance, to observe a group of merry-makers in eveningdress strolling down the main street at high noon, or to see a Gipsy capeile at 6 a. m. serenading (at the request of a sentimental and slightly inebriated young man) what is supposed to be the casement of the girl he took to dinner but which for all he knows may be her stepmother's.

Up the side alleys, until breakfast-time, it is always possible to hear the monotonous thumpthump of an alcoholically persuaded piano, or the bawdy squeak of a locally manufactured gramaphone. This is no mere indication of post-war excitement; no mere manifestation, erotic or neurotic. What appears to be burning the candle at both ends (and in the middle) is the merest amusement for Hungarians. Everybody participates in these Hungarian Nights Entertainments—and everybody survives. In Budapest it is not the pace that kills —and although often enough a handsome cocotte is choked to death by a returning soldier (or husband) as the case may be, this is a record of everyday life which is part and parcel of a fastidious and cosmopolitan people who do honor to Arpad, founder of the Nation, and from whom they have descended.

"IT is fascinating to observe the Hungarian as he takes his pleasure. The blood of two civilizations is in him. Because he is Oriental, he is lazy and charming and has an otherwise unexplainable taste for pink striped shirts. Lninccnsed by incense, he hankers after the flesh-pots of Egypt. When he looks at a woman he regards her from the feet up instead of from the head down as most of us do in a Western Civilization. It should not be forgotten either that the plav, which we once witnessed by hundreds, in which a bachelor expecting a lady visitor was shown violently pumping Narcisse de Nnit on the sofa-cushions from an atomizer was, of course, the invention of a Hungarian playwright. Because he is Occidental, the Hungarian is well-mannered, sophisticated, witty and a lover of epigram. Moreover, he knows a pretty woman when he secs one.

All of which seems a rambling prelude to saying that in mixed company, the Hungarian is a desirable guest, and when one or two of them are gathered together in the name of some young lady whose birthday it is (and who may or may not be absent from the proceedings) frivolous pastimes are imminent.

The night-life in Budapest is in some respects a closed society, all but barred to theprowlings of the tourists. The history of Budapest is a catalogue of the city's charming hostesses. Every night, in private houses, there are elaborate dinners and it is principally to two cabarets that the guests at these functions wend their respective ways when the gustatory ritual is ended. These are the Parisienne and the Papagdly. It was at the latter locale that I (in the guise of a resident who duly paid taxes to the Hungarian authorities) made my investigations—still alive after the maddest New Year's Eve in history. But excluding such panicky occasions, it soon became possible to identify the wayfarers who nightly tramped through the green door of this rambunctious Paradise. Always there was a becoming quota of actors, artists and journalists (who, strangely enough, are permitted to associate with civilized people in Budapest), retiring and tiring business men, brokers, textile kings from Lipdtvaros, soap merchants, jewelers and other individuals with "butter and egg" propensities. Then, with more particularity, the Regimental Officers of the Hussars, the Chief of Police fas paying guest! !), Count Csekonics (red-faced, giddy and. I suspect, apoplectic) who used to make the rounds with his son Andras; Count Cziraky; Count Palffy; Count Wenkheim with his Cuirassier moustache; Baron Eugene Piret de Bihain, the local Beau Brummel; Baron Andras Hatvany. On the distaff side as the phrase goes—ladies of fashion factresses and those who take five o'clock tea at Gerbeaud's) and demi-mondaines (those who sleep until 11 p.m.) These are the instigators of the nocturnal revels.

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Sentimentality aside, there is something irresistible about these gipsy melodies—in the emotion of the folksongs and the plaint of the love-songs. It seduces the males who begin to smash glasses and mirrors in conformity with an immortal and picturesque custom, a procedure which always affords the manager high pleasure. A Hungarian will break a glass on any pretext whatsoever: in honor of himself, the gipsy primas, the Ten Commandments, his lady friends or the washroom attendant. Mirrors are apparently only smashed in honor of National Heroes, Maurice Jokai and the wives of the men who are at the moment taking a cure at Manicnkad. Some tune like "Ritka, Buza, Ritka, Arpa" (a senseless and untranslatable title) causes your good Hungarian to stagger to his feet for a csdrdds or lift, quite literally, his voice, and almost the roof, in song. The deep-throbbing, inchoate, aphrodisiac chords of the minor strings and cimbalom, somersault on the spinal chord. Follow such an interlude with jazz—played by an American quintet with the alto saxaphone dominant—and the conduct shown us in such plays as The Harem may be treated more tenderly in print.

But I, myself, have a taste for the duellists—who have even at -times mixed me up in their intrigues. With great regularity of an evening, the sudden boom of a resounding smack in the face may be expected to cut through the laughter and the gaiety as if the air were suddenly cleared for it. The sudden lull in the merry-making, the tenseness as the combatants withdraw as pompously as a pair of Lowell Shermans, the scurrying of seconds, the exciting whisperings as to the cause thereof—all this is drama and there is plenty of it. In most of these cases duels are never fought except verbally in the men's wash-room —the causus belli is invariably an incident as trivial as bumping into a pair of dancers on the waxed floor—and the ensuing arguments center on whether or not this may be construed as a felonious assault. And since, despite reports to the contrary, the women of Hungary, or rather that portion of them which inhabits the night-places, arc the loveliest in the world, 4a.m. at Papagdly is one of the great European panoramas. The faint suggestion of feminine decadence saturates the night. Immersion in such ambient glamour may not be productive of great politicians, but it ought to make poets and artists.

If Budapest's Night-Life lacks anything today, it lacks a queen of the revels. To be sure, there is the beauteous Juci Labass. But, however much she is complimented by the discriminating Emmerich Kalman (the composer) as the best prima donna who ever essayed a role in an operetta of his, despite her great skill and her abundant fascination, she is— briefly said—too much of a studio picture fittingly to preside over the gaieties. Five years ago there was Becker Baby, the greatest top-hat kicker of them all. A morganatic Duchess, a cultivated and luxurious woman, plays and novels have been written about Becker Baby's somewhat scandalous goings-on. She was an elemental madcap, and, paradoxically, one of the most magnificent demimondaines of the European school. No one nowadays in Budapest who pauses to reflect on "the good old days" (and there is no one there today who does not, for empty pockets are multiple) fails to mention the grandeur of Becker Baby and the glory of her Court, and does not, at the same time, make some sort of fitting gesture in tribute—even as a good German will take off his hat—though in the rain— at the mere mention of Beethoven oi Goethe.

She is gone, alas; but there is stil some loud and lusty shouting abou her for she has became a Legend. I saw her only twice, and must need: be a wobbly witness. Once, slunk in a seat in the rear of a Budapest theatre a shabby and strangely discomfitec figure as she watched the performance of a play by Melchior Lengyel callec Antonia in which Becker Baby i libellously depicted as a brazen and bad-mannered hussy. Then, almost a year later, on her return to a strictei orthodoxy and a more fitting elegano —in a private Gesellschaft in the Hotel Sacher in Vienna just after hci marriage to a Hungarian nobleman— a little tairied by her access of respectability she seemed not at all like tin girl of the 1002 nights who dancet on the glass tops of tables and ono broke the neck of a champagne bottl on the cranium of a Grand Duke—ai unusual but I dare say effective buffer