Sacheverell Sitwell - Roumanian Journey

By
SACHEVERELL SITWELL

The instigation, as, also, the encouragement for this book upon Roumania, is due to Princess Anne-Marie Callimacki, to whom it is dedicated. It would be impossible sufficiently to thank her for her unceasing hospitality, or to pay enough tribute to her comprehensive knwledge and love of her country. Her husband, Prince Jean Callimacki, was no less amiable and kind, with his learning that ranges from archological and heraldic subjects to the works of Brillat-Savarin and Soyer. But, as well, I must thank, most warmly, Mr. D. Dem Dimancesco for two charming days spent at Rucar, that most typical of Roumanian mountain villages, and for his many suggestions, his items of information, and his assistance in the correct spelling of Roumanian names. Another friend, Prince Matila Ghyka, the distinguished writer upon sthetics, has assisted me with his corrections, has given several emendations of which I have made use, and has drawn my attention to one or two points of which I was ignorant before. I must acknowledge my indebtedness to the Guide Bleu, in which the section upon Art in Roumania was written by M. Paul Henry, long resident in the country. Use has been made, also, of some statements by Mr. D. Talbot Rice in his book, Byzantine Painting in Trebizond, London, 1936; and of a curious book, Pcheurs de Rves by Odette Arnaud (Paris, 1936), one of the few writers to deal with the Lippovans, though the wilful picturesqueness of her statements tells one but little of their history. In fact, about the Lippovans, not the least interesting of the inhabitants of Roumania, little or nothing has been written. Mr. C. J. Popp Serboianu, in his book, Les Tsiganes, Payot, Paris, 1930, is a mine of information upon his subject, and I have drawn largely upon his authority. There is probably no better book about the Tsiganes.

SACHEVERELL SITWELL.

WESTON, 5TH January 1938.

At the first mention of going to Roumania, a great many persons, as did myself, would take down their atlas and open the map. No one would bother to do this over more familiar countries. For Roumania, there can be no question, is among the lesser-known lands of Europe. Everyone has heard of Bucarest and Sinaia; we all realize that there are oil wells in Roumania; and then, of course, there are the beautiful costumes worn by the peasants. And that, for the vast majority of persons, is all that they know of Roumania.

It is far away. If you embarked on the train, determined, for some obscure reason, to continue in it upon the longest journey possible in Europe, the probability is that you would step out, four days later, upon the platform of Constan. on the Black Sea, finding yourself, though you might not know it, at Ovids Tomi. That is, of course, unless you include Russia and Siberia as being in Europe. It is a matter of principle. Most persons are satisfied that Europe ends at the Dniester and the Black Sea. So that Roumania is at the far end of Europe.

When the journey to Roumania was suggested, I was more than delighted at the prospect. And this was largely because I had no knowledge whatever of what lay in store for me. Knowing France and Germany, Italy and Spain, Greece and Portugal, the Scandinavian countries, and having seen, I believe I may say with truth, nearly all their buildings and their works of art, there was a delightful uncertainty where Roumania was concerned. I made up my mind not to read any book about Roumania before going there, in order to let it come as a surprise; and having read, since my return, all the available books upon the subject, I realize that English literature is nearly silent where that country is concerned. There is more than one good history of Roumania, in English, but hardly any book that describes the country and deals with its character and with its works of art. Hurez, perhaps the most beautiful and typical of Roumanian convents, I can frankly confess I had never heard of until the day before we visited it. This is a sensation that is hardly to be obtained in any other country in Europe. How many people, again, have been told of the Danube Delta and its extraordinary landscapes? There is a refreshing absence of insistence upon these things. They allow themselves, still, to be discovered.

During four weeks that we spent in Roumania, it rained one Sunday morning. My mosquito net, convoyed with extreme trouble across Europe, was not once requisitioned; not even in what would have seemed, to my suspicious mind, the malaria ridden swamps of the Delta. Roumania, then, is very different from Venice in September. It is wise, though, to preserve ordinary precautions about the drinking water. The only difficulty about Roumania, from the point of view of the English traveller, is the length of the journey and the expense of getting there. On the other hand, living costs less, once you have arrived, than in any other country of Europe. And it is no longer necessary to go by train. The last short stretch of road is nearing completion, or may be finished by the time these lines appear in print, and then there will be uninterrupted road communication between Roumania and Western Europe. I suppose it is seven, or eight days easy motoring from London to Bucarest.

The travellers first impression is of the potential richness of the country. Anything and everything will grow, somewhere in Roumania. And there is not only oil; there are, as well, rich deposits of coal and iron. But this book is not concerned with those things. Its business is with the living people, and with their past, as expressed in buildings and in works of art. From the human point of view it may be said, at once, that the potential riches are there, too. There can be but few lands with so excellent a peasant stock as Roumania. This is the true wealth of the country, for it is its future. The peasants have come, down, unspoilt and uncontaminated by the Industrial Age, of which, indeed, there is hardly a trace to be seen. Greater Roumania has a steadily growing patriotic sense in which the minority populations, with hardly an exception, are prepared to play their part. There will, before long, be twenty millions inhabiting this country and, slowly and gradually, their general personality is beginning to emerge. They are, ethnographically, a Latin race, and this makes them different from their neighbours. It may be worth pointing out, here, that the acceptance, after the heroic age of Stephen the Great and Michael the Brave, of Turkish suzerainty by the Princes of Moldavia and Wallachia, has had to its credit the result that the political, ethnical, and religious entities of the two principalities survived through three centuries of wars between the three great neighbouring empires, Russia, Austria, Turkey; and that the two principalities, Moldavia and Wallachia, were never annexed by Turkey, as were, for centuries, Serbia and Bulgaria, and, even, for more than one hundred and fifty years between the two battles of Mohacz, as was the greater part of Hungary. The independent, national style of Roumania appears in such buildings as the convent of Hurez and, of course, in the painted churches of the Bucovina. These are still more interesting; in fact, they are the chief contribution of Roumania to sthetics, and take a high place, as I have sought to prove, in the world of Byzantine art to which, in principle, they belong.

Bucarest, as a town, has a most distinct personality of its own. Count Keyserling, that great discerner of realities, has noticed that the special wit and suppleness of mind of the higher classes of the population, in Bucarest, is a Byzantine legacy. I believe this to be true. A character, such as that of Bucarest, is not created in less than many centuries, however few may be the traces of antiquity in the town itself. Of one thing, at least, there can be no doubt. The cohesion, the welding together of Roumania, during the last seventy years has been due, in large part, to the reigning family. Much valuable work had been accomplished, in the years before this, by Prince Alexander Couza, who united the two principalities. But internal politics made the election of a disinterested personality an absolute necessity. Prince Charles of Hohenzollern, of the elder branch of that family, was invited to Roumania in 1866 and, under his gis, the country became a kingdom in 1881. His Queen, who is better known as Carmen Sylva, was a person of rare poetical talent and one who, it is evident, fully appreciated the latent possibilities of the country over which she was called to rule. King Ferdinand I, the nephew of Charles, or Carol I, succeeded his uncle in 1914, at a time of utmost difficulty. The greater Roumania that emerged from the War is his handiwork. Queen Marie, also, is immutably associated with this.