Alan Ogden - Romania Revisited: On the Trail of English Travellers, 1602-1941

On the Trail of English Travellers,
1602-1941

Alan Ogden

On the Trail of English Travellers,
1602-1941

The Center for Romanian Studies

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Second Printing, 2021

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020951022

Copyright 2001, 2022 by Histria Books

Romania Revisited is a light-hearted account of two journeys I made to Romania in the summer and winter of 1998. In it, I draw on the experiences of previous travellers, up to 1941, to contrast what I found in comparison to them. Inevitably, this has introduced an element of nostalgia for the onward march of the twentieth century in Romania did not discriminate between the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly.

Since the fall of the Ceauescus in 1989, much of the news coming out of Romania has been grim, of Aids-infected children left to rot in appalling conditions in under-funded orphanages, and of abandoned teenagers living in subways under the streets of Bucharest. All of it is true. Yet, this sort of coverage distorts the real picture of the country, its history and culture. In this book, I have tried to give a very general background, enlarging the canvas for the reader through the perspective of history and focusing on the extraordinarily rich and diverse cultural heritage of the country.

I have used as my starting point the accounts of previous travellers from before the Second World War since their accounts make a benchmark on which to calibrate todays Romania. Their style is generally admirable since it is not restricted to this-is-what-I-did, which may or not be of interest; it extends to include those critical dimensions of historical perspective and cultural observation in the broadest sense painting, poetry, architecture, fashion, religion, ethnology and genealogy, to name a few. Since their names often crop up more than once, I have used the device of putting the date of their travels or publication as a footnote to help the reader keep chronological track.

Some of the travellers like Patrick Leigh Fermor, Stephen Runciman and Ivor Porter published their accounts of Romania long after 1941 but their testimony was pre-war and it is essential to my theme. Their dates are shown in the text as the year of their travels. Although I have used English travellers in the title, several were American and Canadian, some were French and German, a few Romanian and poor Ovid, that most reluctant of travellers, was Roman. What they all have in common is that their work has been published in the English language.

In the course of my research, every time I thought I had exhausted the list of travellers, I came across yet another one, often on the way back from Russia or the Caucasus. My final tally thus remains about 90% complete and given that my starting point was Sitwells claim that English literature is nearly silent where that country (Romania) is concerned, some very real progress has been made.

A few travellers like William Wilkinson (1820) are disappointingly judgmental in their views; fortunately the majority follow Charles Boners dictum of 1858: We in England are far too much accustomed to judge other countries and their institutions by an English standard, and to condemn arrangements unlike our own, without considering their origin or fittingness for certain conditions of a land and people. Without such an approach, the history and behaviour of Romanians is more often than not quite baffling. Cultural relativism may be todays contemporary cant and excuse travellers from making any moral judgements, but its validity in recognising others values and experiences is, for me, unquestionable.

Why stop in 1941? Quite simply, after that date, the eclectic style and expressionism which, together, were the driving forces behind Romanias reputation for the exotic were shunted off into a siding of history where they were left to languish. They were replaced by an ideology that in public denied creativity and individuality and in private aped the worst excesses of philistinism and vulgarity. For forty long years, that crazy mlange of cultures, which had fascinated travellers for over three hundred years, was stifled; the Romanian genius for creating its own identity was suffocated. Only in the first days of 1990 did the oxygen of freedom return and begin to restore that priceless pride of being Romanian.

My intention is certainly not to glamorise epochs when the vast majority of people received scant education and lacked most other forms of social support, which are fundamental to a modern society. But I sense there is now a will to recall the esprit and lan that once characterised Romania, that alluring combination of panache and eccentricity which a rather staid world found endearing, if at times rather shocking.

Throughout my travels, the friendship and hospitality of the Romanian people were unstinting and tremendously warm. In spite of the horrors they have endured in the twentieth century the ruthless suppression of a peasants revolt in 1907, the heaviest per capita losses of the First World War, the scourge of fascism in the Second, followed by Stalinist terror and then rule by the invidious security apparatus of a megalomaniac the Romanian people have emerged with their individual values of tolerance and decency intact. Above all, they are warm and fun which is what I have tried to convey in this book.

I would like to thank all those who have given me their time, advice, and support. My wife Jose for her uncomplaining stint as a literary grass widow; Norina Constantinescu for her support and encouragement in Romania; Aida Ionescu for her courage in joining up as an interpreter on both journeys; Lindsey Gulley for acting as unpaid typist and IT wizard in London; Sarah Whitebloom for her constructive criticism and eagle-eyed proof reading skills; erban Cantacuzino for his advice on the history and architecture of Romania; the dedicated staff of the British Library for their courteous and efficient service; and to my publisher, Kurt W Treptow, who, from the beginning, believed in the project far more than I did myself.

Alan Ogden

London, March 1999

Robert Carver: The Accursed Mountains, 1998.

Romanias military losses were 4.8% of her pre-war population, compared to France 3.5%, Germany 3.25% and Great Britain 1.6%

At various points throughout the book, the text is accompanied by hand drawn maps, outlining the route followed by the author in his travels throughout Romania. Below is a key to the map symbols.