Leaving Transylvania after a two years’ residence, I felt somewhat like Robinson Crusoe unexpectedly restored to the world from his desert island. Despite the evidence of my own senses, and in flat contradiction to the atlas, I cannot wholly divest myself of the idea that it is in truth an island I have left behind me—an island peopled with strange and incongruous companions, from whom I part with a mixture of regret and relief difficult to explain even to myself.
Just as Robinson Crusoe, getting attached to his parrots and his palm-trees, his gourds and his goats, continued to yearn for them after his return to Europe, so I found myself gradually succumbing to the indolent charm and the drowsy poetry of this secluded land. A very few years more of unbroken residence here would no doubt suffice to efface all memory of the world we had left behind and the century in which we live.
I remember reading in some fairy tale, long ago, of a youthful princess who, stolen by the gnomes and carried off into gnomeland, was restored to her parents after a lapse of years. Their joy was great at recovering their child, but it turned to grief when they discovered that she had grown estranged from them, and had lost all interest in the actual world. The sun was too bright, she said, it hurt her eyes, and the voices of men were too loud, they scorched her ears; and she could never feel at home again amid the restless glitter of her surroundings.
I do not recollect how the story concludes—whether the young lady became in time reconciled to her father’s brilliant court, or{2} whether she ran away and married a gnome; but this tale somehow reminded me of my own experiences, and I caught myself wondering whether a few years hence, perhaps, the summons to return to the world might not have come too late.
Parrots and palm-trees are all very well, no doubt, to fill up the life of a stranded mariner, but it is questionable whether it be wise to let such things absorb the mind to the extent of destroying all taste for wider interests. Life in an island is apt to consist too entirely of foreground—the breadth of a panorama and the comprehensiveness of a bird’s-eye view, only gained by constant friction with the bustling, pushing outer world, being mostly here wanting.
Luckily, or unluckily, as one may choose to view it, the spirit of the nineteenth century is a ghost very difficult to be laid. A steady course of narcotics may lull it to rest for a time; but the spirit is but stupefied, not dead; its vitality is great, and it will start up again to life at the first trumpet-blast which reaches from without, eager to exchange a peaceful dream for the movement of the arena and the renewed clank of arms.
Some such feelings were mine as I beheld the signal waving from the ship which was to carry me back to a world I had almost forgotten; and though I heaved a sigh of regret, and possibly may have dropped a tear or two in secret for the peaceful and familiar scenes I was leaving, yet I would not have steered round the vessel to return to my island.
Not the mere distance which separates Transylvania from Western Europe gives to it this feeling of strange isolation. Other countries as far or farther off are infinitely more familiar even to those who have never visited them. We know all about Turkey, and Greece is no more strange to us than Italy or Switzerland. But no one ever comes to Transylvania in cold blood, unless it be some very rabid sportsman eager for the embrace of a shaggy bear; and as for those rushing travellers, bound for the Black Sea, who sometimes traverse the country in hot-headed haste, they mostly resemble the superficial swallow which skims the surface of a placid lake, without guessing the secrets of the blue depths below.
Situated by nature within a formidable rampart of snow-tipped mountains, and shielded by heavy curtains of shrouding forests against the noise and turmoil of the outer world, the very name of Transylvania{3} tells us that it was formerly regarded as something apart, something out of reach, whose existence even for a time was enveloped in mystery. In olden times these gloomy forest gorges were tenanted only by the solitary bear or packs of famished wolves, while the mistrustful lynx looked down from the giddy heights, and the chamois leaped unchecked from rock to rock. The people who lived westward of this mountain rampart, knowing but little or nothing of the country on the other side, designated it as Transylvania, or the land beyond the forest, just as we sometimes talk of the “land beyond the clouds.”
Nothing, however, can remain undiscovered on the face of our globe. That enterprising creature man, who is even now attempting, with some show of success, to probe the country beyond the clouds, has likewise discovered the way to this secluded nook. The dense forests, once forming such impenetrable barriers against the outer world, have in great part disappeared; another voice is heard besides that of the wild beasts of the wood; another breath comes mingled along with the mountain vapors—it is the breath of that nineteenth-century monster, the steam-engine.
This benefactor of the age, this harbinger of civilization, which is as truly the destroyer of romance, and poetry’s deadly foe, will undoubtedly succeed in robbing this country of the old-world charm which yet lingers about it. Transylvania will in time become as civilized and cultivated, and likewise as stereotyped and conventional, as the best known parts of our first European States—it will even one day cease to be an island; but as yet the advent of the nineteenth-century monster is of too recent a date to have tainted the atmosphere by its breath, and the old-world charm still lingers around and about many things. It is floating everywhere and anywhere—in the forests and on the mountains, in medi?val churches and ruined watch-towers, in mysterious caverns and in ancient gold-mines, in the songs of the people and the legends they tell. Like a subtle perfume evaporating under the rays of a burning sun, it is growing daily fainter and fainter, and all lovers of the past should hasten to collect this fleeting fragrance ere it be gone forever. This is what I have endeavored to do, to some small extent, since fate for a time cast my lines in those parts.
And first and foremost let me here explain that my intentions in compiling this work are nowise of an ambitious or lofty nature.{4} I desire to instruct no one, to influence no one, to enlist no one’s sympathies in favor of any particular social question or political doctrine. Even had such been my intention, I have been therein amply forestalled by others; nor do I delude myself into the belief that it is my proud vocation to correct the errors of all former writers by giving to the world the only correct and trustworthy description of Transylvania which has yet appeared. I have not lived long enough in the country to feel myself justified in taking up the gauntlet against the assertions of older inhabitants of the soil, but have lived there too long to rival that admirable self-possession which induces the average tourist to classify, condemn, ticket, and tie up every fact which comes within his notice, never demeaning himself to grovel or analyze, nor being disturbed by any doubts of the reliability of his own unerring judgment.
Whoever wishes to study the history of Transylvania in its past, present, and future aspects, who wants to understand its geological formation or system of agriculture, who would thoroughly penetrate into the inextricable net-work of conflicting political interests which divide its interior, must seek his information elsewhere.
Do you wish, for instance, to see Transylvania as it was some forty years ago? If so, I can confidently advise you to read the valuable work of Mr. Paget and the spirited descriptions of Monsieur de Gérando.
Do you want to gain insight into the geological resources of the country, or the farming system of the Saxon peasant? Then take up Charles Boner’s comprehensive work on Transylvania. And would you see these Saxons as they love to behold themselves, then turn to Dr. Teutsch’s learned work on “Die Siebenbürger Sachsen;” while if politics be your special hobby, you cannot better indulge it than by selecting Mr. Patterson’s most interesting work on Hungary and Transylvania.
If, moreover, you care to study the country “contrariwise,” and would know what the Roumanians are utterly unlike, read the description of them in the aforementioned book of Mr. Boner; while for generally incorrect information on almost every available subject connected with the country, I am told that the German work of Rudolf Bergner cannot be too highly recommended.
Recognizing, therefore, the superiority of the many learned predecessors who each in their respective lines have so thoroughly worked{5} out the subject in hand, I would merely forewarn the reader that no such completeness of outline can be looked for here. Neither is my book intended to be of the guide-book species—no sort of ornamental Bradshaw or idealized Murray. I fail to see the use of minutely describing several scores of towns and villages which the English reader is never likely to set eyes upon. If you think of travelling this way, good and well, then buy the genuine article for yourself—Murray or Bradshaw—unadulterated by me; or, better still, the excellent German hand-book of Professor Bielz; while if you stay at home, can you really care to know if such and such a town have five churches or fifty? or whether the proportion of carbonate of magnesia exceed that of chloride of potassium in some particular spring of whose waters you will never taste?
All that I have attempted here to do is to seize the general color and atmosphere of the land, and to fix—as much for my own private satisfaction as for any other reason—certain impressions of people and places I should be loath to forget. I have written only of those things which happened to excite my interest, and have described figures and scenery, such as they appeared to me. For some of the details contained in these pages I am indebted to the following writers: Liszt, Slavici, Fronius, Müller, and Schwicker—all competent authorities well acquainted with their subject. Some things have found no place here because I did not consider myself competent to speak of them, others because they did not chance to be congenial; and although not absolutely scorning serious information whenever it has come in my way, I have taken more pleasure in chronicling fancies than facts, and superstitions rather than statistics.
More than one error has doubtless crept unawares into this work; so in order to place myself quite on the safe side with regard to stern critics, I had better hasten to say that I decline to pledge my word for the veracity of anything contained in these pages. I only lay claim to having used my eyes and ears to the best of my ability; and where I have failed to see or hear aright, the fault must be set down to some inherent color-blindness, or radical defect in my tympanum. Nor do I pretend to have seen everything, even in a small country like Transylvania, and every spot I have failed to visit, from lack of time or opportunity, is not only to me a source of poignant regret, but likewise a chapter missing from this book.