Chapter I: Preface

Now that I have set down in black and white these random impressions and recollections of a country in which I spent many of the happiest years of my life, a slight feeling of doubt assails me. Might my Roumanian friends possibly find cause for offence in the freedom which I have allowed myself? Then I remember that they have a sense of humour, and the doubt vanishes.

If I deal frankly with some of the methods and customs of the country, it is because I hope to give English readers an insight into the character of the people, and enable them to find there, as I have found, a very great deal to love.

When, after my long absence from England, I compare our own methods and ways of thought with those which have become so familiar to me in Roumania, the latter do not always suffer in the comparison. Indeed, if I wrote about some of the things which have especially struck me since my return, I might arouse a good deal of resentment.

Some of the best friends I have in the world are Roumanians. The kindness and sympathy they showed me during a time of great sorrow in my life must be an enduring memory. Rather than be suspected of repaying such kindness by holding up my friends to ridicule, I would tear up these pages which I--a tyro in the art of letters--have written with so much labour, but also, I must add, with so much pleasure.

After completing my education in Germany, I spent some time very happily in Vienna with friends who were well acquainted with Roumania.

I became fascinated by their descriptions of life in a country which for me had something of the glamour of the Orient, and so, armed with letters of introduction, I proceeded to Bucarest and soon established myself as a teacher of languages. For the twenty-two following years of my life I lived in Roumania; but for the war I should probably be there now.

My relations with my pupils, members of the best-known families in the country, were always of the pleasantest, and as Roumanians have a natural aptitude for languages, there was no drudgery in the teaching.

Since I left the country Roumania has come through a time of terrible trial.

My heart has often been wrung by the accounts of the sufferings of my friends; but even during the darkest days of the war I was sustained by the knowledge that they never once lost courage. They displayed a spirit as indomitable as our own, and now I rejoice that their fiery trial is over, and that the dawn of a glorious day has arrived.

MAUDE REA PARKINSON.

ARMAGH, 1921.

CONTENTS

PAGES

CHAPTER I 17-23

A real enterprise--The glamour of the _Arabian
Nights_--Off to an unknown country--Light on the
way--A friend at court--I figure as a Nihilist--The
Hungarian “express”--Wild men in sheep-skins--An
intruder routed--Bucarest, a dreadful town--Adventures
by flood and street--A warm reception.

CHAPTER II 24-33

Hazy ideas about Roumania--“Bucarest, Turkey”--A letter
for Sinaia goes to Simla--The physical features of
the country--Its mineral wealth--The chief towns--The
Cernavoda Bridge--The railways and the scenery through
which they pass--The mighty Danube--The Iron Gates.

CHAPTER III 34-42

The Government of Roumania--The Parliament--Lively
elections--The batiusi and their big sticks--Military
picnics at election times--“General Post” after
an election--Party handwriting--Natural selection
circumscribed for postal officials--The army--A
soldier’s life not always a happy one--Military
marketers, nurses, and spring-cleaners--The accession
celebrations--On parade--The opposition goes into
mourning and enjoys a happy day--Threatening
demonstrations which end happily--A gallant army--If
stiff on parade, the Roumanian soldier is “one of the
best.”

CHAPTER IV 43-52

The religion of Roumania--The head of the Church must
be a monk, and therefore a celibate--The priests
are of the peasant class, unlearned and little
respected--A priest’s monthly rounds--Prayers for
a girl’s marriage--St Demetre the patron saint of
Bucarest--His vocation as a rain-maker--He is brought
out when the priests see the rain coming--Roumanian
churches--The legend of Curtea d’Argesh--The well of
Manole’s wife’s tears--Easter customs--The Roumanian
monasteries: dens for lazy people--A wonderful
grotto--The convents--Princess Marie as a nun.

CHAPTER V 53-58

Roumania’s capital--A garden city--Modesty on the
trams--“A town of one street, one church, and one
idea”--The Calea Victorie--Two hundred churches--The
church of Doamna Balash--English customs gaining
headway--The houses of Bucarest--Afternoon calls and
refreshments--The fortifications.

CHAPTER VI 59-66

The land system--The Dominele or squirearchy--The simple
life of the peasants--The beginning of a revolt--A
premature outbreak--The countryside in flames--King
Carol’s new guns first used on his subjects--A
village population exterminated--Terror in the
town--I go to church and am relieved to see Princess
Marie there--The tale of a sufferer--The priests
and schoolmasters the instigators--The peasants’
subterranean dwellings.

CHAPTER VII 67-71

Village scenes--National dances--The picturesque peasant
costumes--Peasant girls who powder and paint--An
idyllic scene--A country wedding--Peasant simplicity.

CHAPTER VIII 72-81

Trade and commerce--The only strictly Roumanian shops
belong to Princes--No English shops, though they would
be welcomed--English catalogues unintelligible--An
English firm and its “standard” colour--A successful
English factory--The labour question, saints’
days and names-days--German factories--Beer
taxed in the interests of wine--Sugar and cheese
factories--Sheep-milking--Petroleum wells in
Roumania--An influx of Americans--Rockefeller’s
agent, Mr Chamberlain, and his family--How a
man of gipsy origin “struck oil” and became a
millionaire--Paper-mills and coal-mines.

CHAPTER IX 82-88

Severe restrictions on Jews--The Jews as traders--Their
vigorous methods--They exploit the peasants of the
countryside as wine-shopkeepers and moneylenders--The
Jews as tenants of estates sublet at rack rents--The
original proprietor cannot see that he has any share
of responsibility for the grinding down of the
peasants--An anti-Jewish riot in the Lipscani--A
family of Paris Jews make a large fortune in a
fashionable shop in a few years--A Jewish wedding
which is a double one.

CHAPTER X 89-96

The educational system--Long hours of study and no
fresh air or exercise--Take Jonescu, as Minister of
Education, introduces the bath-tub to the schools
and provides for walking exercise--School fare is
never good--A water famine--Examinations and show
questions--English poetry translated literally--German
literature taught in _French_, the pupils being
examined in _Roumanian_--Lack of books in the
Roumanian language--The school fêtes--Convents and
proselytising--A girl who despised all the pleasures
of the world and ran away to become a nun.

CHAPTER XI 97-102

Take Jonescu, an enlightened Minister of Education--“La
bouche d’or”--His personality--A true Roumanian in his
almost Oriental love of luxury--His town and country
houses--Madame Jonescu an as authoress--Her menagerie
of pets--The love-story of Take Jonescu--The meeting
of the law student and the English girl--A trip to
England follows--Obstacles are overcome and a happy
marriage follows.

CHAPTER XII 103-111

The National Theatre--The students’ riot on behalf of
the national language--Racing as a fashionable
amusement--English jockeys and trainers--The Battle of
Flowers--The devotees of the card-table--Rafting on
the Bistritza; a glorious sport.

CHAPTER XIII 112-115

The blessing of the waters: a picturesque ceremony--Diving
for the cross--Baptising the Jew--The child
rain-makers; a charming custom--How I watered the
human plants--The peasants celebrate the sowing of the
seed.

CHAPTER XIV 116-120

Festivals--A cruel christening--Marriage-making--The
fiancé a bore--The bride’s moral references--Anonymous
letters--The bridal dress--The marriage ceremony--A
floral departure--Hired jewellery as wedding
presents--Child brides--Tempted to the altar with a
doll!

CHAPTER XV 121-128

Pretty Roumanian women--Adventitious aids to beauty--Paris
toilets--Childish extravagances--Men with London
tailors--A dandy in blue boots--Some quaint
superstitions--Warding off the evil eye--The efficacy
of hot coals and a cup of water--The Marțisoara, or
March token--A wife’s indiscretion punished: story
of poetic justice--The Marțisoara as a temperamental
barometer.

CHAPTER XVI 129-133

English nurses introduce the bath-tub--Matutinal ablutions
in a country house--Abstinence from ablutions a proof
of holiness--The funeral of a Metropolitan; dead
prelate in the procession--Afternoon tea’s equivalent
in a tomb.

CHAPTER XVII 134-143

The servant question not so acute as in
England--Establishments of thirty servants--Five or
six for professional people--Terms and duties of
service--An unwilling bather--A highly recommended
maid who waited at table barefooted--The reference
books of servants--The servants’ quarters--A strange
privilege; female servants may have their husbands
or putative husbands and their families to live with
them--Costly marriage fees are prohibitive--“Madam”
and “Madame”--Linguistic pitfalls; a “master” or a
“cake”?--When a bald-headed cook is wanted--Leaving
cards on names-days--An omnibus round.

CHAPTER XVIII 144-150

Convict life in the salt mines--A Roumanian Jack
Sheppard--The trick that laid him low--Procedure in
murder cases--The reconstruction of the crime--Scant
justice for servants; no Habeas Corpus Act in
Roumania--A man whose face was the only evidence
against him--Gipsies and the building trade; the
men act as masons and bricklayers, the women as
their labourers--Exhibition of new clothes when a
roof is put on--Fiddling ragamuffins--Gipsies as
musicians--Guarding against gipsies in the Carpathians.

CHAPTER XIX 151-158

King Carol as a diplomat--Lichnowsky as a Secretary of
Legation--The scandal about his chief’s (Prince
von Bülow) wife--I see something at Bad Hall--A
great ladies’ man; he goes too far at length and is
“promoted” to another sphere--Kiderlein-Wächter,
genial and popular--An unfortunate dinner-party over
which his housekeeper presided--Prince Gulochowski
and his wife--Some British ambassadors: Sir Frank
Lascelles and Sir Charles (now Lord) Hardinge--How
the latter rendered me a great service--Sir Henry
Drummond Wolff--Sir John Kennedy and Lady Kennedy and
their family--Better times for the British colony--The
British colony--Its religious interests--Bishop
Collins and his visits to Bucarest--His tragic end
deeply regretted--Since the war Bucarest has many more
British visitors--A British Chamber of Commerce, and a
projected club.

CHAPTER XX 159-166

The French colony--An outspoken abbé--The German
colony--Its schools, churches, and hospitals--A split
in the camp of deaconesses--Teaching or nursing?--A
well-conducted hospital--Roumanian hospitals--An
eminent surgeon, Dr Thomas Jonescu--An erratic
American dentist--His exclusive practice--Leaves a
Prince waiting with open mouth whilst he goes on a
trip to Sinaia.

CHAPTER XXI 167-171

The coming of King Carol--Roumanians dislike the
Germans and _hate_ the Hungarians--King Carol a
reticent, self-contained, lonely man--His only
public appearances--A ball for the _hoi polloi_--King
Carol’s father his sole adviser--His desire to
abdicate--Roumania owes much to the late King.

CHAPTER XXII 172-180

Queen Elizabeth (Carmen Sylva)--An early dilemma: no
divorcees, no court--A quaint divorce story--The true
story of the meeting of Carol and Elizabeth--Did
she love the country or its King?--Her dead child’s
tomb--The Queen as a writer--Her passion for
music--Pity the poor professional!--Cold soup for the
King--The Queen’s personal appearance--Her asylum for
the blind, and the German manager who failed--“My
sixtieth birthday,” and how it was spent--The Queen
and the _enfants terribles_--The orphans of the “Asyle
Hélène”--Cotroceni and its unlucky palace.

CHAPTER XXIII 181-184

Ferdinand of Sigmaringen becomes heir to the throne--He is
a good soldier and a favourite with his officers--The
friend of the Allies--His marriage with Princess
Marie--The Princess’s home-coming: a lonely
stranger--A gala performance--The Prince’s mission to
Germany--Roumanian officers meet half a dozen Herr
“Mahlzeits.”

CHAPTER XXIV 185-190

The Princess in a merry mood--How Prince Ferdinand
deluged the tablecloth--A curtain lecture for
Princess Marie?--The royal children--Elizabeth
a beauty--Mignonne (Marie) “a beautiful little
snow-maiden,” yet piquant and merry--Ileana of
the china-blue eyes has a great idea of her own
importance--Prince Carol, a fine fellow, learns
politeness--He and Elizabeth eat raw carrots in the
Minister’s garden--A war game with Pat Kennedy, when
neither would be a Boer--Pretty Prince Nicolas, “a
little terror”--Nicolas as a sailor--His watch on deck
and his sea-strut--An adventure at Piræus--A sailor
valet--Nicolas’s first communion and his struggle with
the bread--The royal governesses--A little story about
the Queen of Holland.

CHAPTER XXV 191-197

Winter in Roumania--Fêtes on the ice--An “escaped
bear” causes a sensation, till he loses his
head--Prince Carol establishes the bob-sleigh as
a society craze--An unlucky accident to Princess
Elizabeth--An end to bob-sleighing--Sleighs and winter
costumes--Christmas--New Year’s Eve.

CHAPTER XXVI 198-205

Sinaia and its summer Court--Gay life in the
Carpathians--Court ladies in national costume--Sinaia
at various seasons--The monastery and the Queen’s room
there; she decorates it with caricatures of society
ladies--A fête at the monastery--King Edward at
Sinaia--Lord Roberts a guest there--The Crown Prince’s
residence--Princess Marie’s “cuib” or “Crusoe”
amongst the trees--Her sister, the Grand Duchess of
Hesse--Little Princess Ella--A merry party in the
woods--A tragedy recalled.

CHAPTER XXVII 206-212

Franz d’Este and his morganatic wife at Sinaia--My
recollection of him at Vienna--Society girls with cold
feet--The German Crown Prince popular at Bucarest--But
he was only there a fortnight--The King and his
“shadowers”--Predeal--The leap over the frontier--A
little smuggling--A beautiful and historic road.

CHAPTER XXVIII 213-221

A delightful equestrian excursion--We leave Sinaia in
order to witness the sunrise from Omul--Midnight
in the forest, and the ghostly hours before the
dawn--Gathering edelweiss whilst we await the
sunrise--A glorious spectacle--The coveted province
spread out before our eyes--An equestrian quadrille
on the summit of Omul--The guest-house of the
monastery--On the homeward way--We descend the Jeppi
on foot, and meet with unexpected difficulties--Danger
follows upon danger--A dreadful night on a mountain
peak--Excitement at Sinaia--Triumphant return of the
“heroes” and “heroines.”

CHAPTER XXIX 222-227

Cholera in Russia--I hurry back to Roumania--I am
put in quarantine on the frontier, and liberally
disinfected--The soldier guard aims his gun at me--My
Jewish room-mate and her obtrusive husband--She plays
“patience” whilst he prays and expectorates--I get my
release and send a military expedition in search of
a mirror--Miss R. tries to escape from Russia--Her
companion, a German engineer, develops cholera--The
terrified peasants place them together in an empty
cottage--The German dies--She finds when, after a
terrifying experience, she reaches Bucarest her hair
is snow white.

CHAPTER XXX 228-238

The beggars of Bucarest--A plan that failed--Was it
inspired by Count Rumford’s Munich scheme?--Where
the beggars spend their holidays--No lack of
charity--Footless, and yet wanted boots--Influence
of priests and beggars on the currency--A stroll
through the market--Serbians as market gardeners--An
exhibition in Bucarest--Princess Marie and the
water-chute--Excessive gambling--The Moși--English
“stupidity”--Nothing to buy in London--Bucarest to
London _via_ the North Sea and Edinburgh--Jefferson
Bricks in Bucarest.

CHAPTER XXXI 239-245

Roumania’s early history--Michael the Brave--Stephen the
Great--A Spartan mother--Brancovan’s noble efforts
bring about his end--Oppression promotes union--Greek
extortion--Russia and Turkey--The westernising
of Roumania--The Treaty of Paris--The European
Commission--The new State of Roumania--Prince Cuza and
his fall--The siege of Plevna--Roumania’s present aims.

CHAPTER XXXII 246-250

Turkish influence on Roumanian mind and manners--The
origin of the people--Clearly descended from the
Romans of Trajan’s day--Collateral evidence of Latin
origin in the language--Pride of race--Transylvania
and the Hungarian tyrants--A Roumanian National party.

CHAPTER XXXIII 251-255

Roumania’s object in the war--Hungary’s attempt
to Magyarise Transylvania--Sympathy of the
Motherland--“Awake, Roumania!”--The new boundaries
of Roumania--Room for her people--The Little
Entente--Safeguarding the peace of Europe.

TWENTY YEARS IN ROUMANIA