Ármin Vámbéry - The Story of My Struggles: The Memoirs of Arminius Vambéry

THE STORY OF MY STRUGGLES

Professor Vambery at the Age of 70

Professor Vambry at the Age of 70

(Photo by Strelisky.)

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THE MEMOIRS OF
ARMINIUS VAMBRY

PROFESSOR OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGES
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BUDAPEST

VOLUME I

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LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1904

(All rights reserved.)

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Authors of Autobiographies are much exposed to fall into self-glorification. If I nevertheless have undertaken to write the following pages, I have done so because of the unexpectedly favourable criticism which the first two chapters of my bookLife and Adventures of Arminius Vambry, Written by Himselfmet with in England and in America. In this book I tried to lay before the public an account of such travels and wanderings of mine as were not comprised in my first book on Central Asia, and in addition I thought it advisable to give a few outlines of my juvenile adventures and struggles. Strange to say it was the narrative of the latter which elicited the particular interest of my readers, as I noticed from the many letters I received from the most distant parts of Europe and America.

Well, I said to myself, if such short sketches of my curious career have evoked this interest on the part of my readers, what will be the impression if I draw the picture of my whole life and of all the vicissitudes I went through from my childhood to my present old age? This is the main reason of the issue of the present volumes. Keeping in mind the Oriental proverb, "To speak of his own self is the business of the Shaitan," I have reluctantly touched upon many topics connected with my personality, but events are mostly inseparable from actors, and besides I have found encouragement in recalling the appreciation Britons and Americans are habitually ready to accord to the career of self-made men.

There are besides other motives which have served as incentives to these pages. The various stages of my life have been passed in various countries and societies, and a personal record of men and events dating from half a century back may not be without interest to the present generation. Unchecked by conventional modesty and false shame, I have related all I went through in plain and unadorned words, and if I have not concealed facts relating to my very humble origin and to the mistakes I committed, neither have I thought it necessary to leave unmentioned the result of my labours and the honours entailed by them. It is now forty years ago since I had first the honour of coming before the British public, and my desire to be thoroughly known by it may be pardoned.

A. VAMBRY.

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My Antecedents and Infancy

"Cogito ergo sum!" Yes, I am here, but the date of my birth I cannot positively state, as I have no means of ascertaining it. I had the problematic good fortune to be born of Jewish parents, and as at that time the Jews in Hungary were not compelled by law to be regularly registered, and the authorities were satisfied with such scanty information as the parish documents afforded, I have not been able to get any official certificate as to the date of my birth. My mother told me that I was born shortly before my father's death on St. Joseph's Day, and as my father was one of the last victims of the cholera which began to scourge the land in 1830, I cannot be far wrong in giving the year of my birth as 1831 or 1832.

Genealogy not being one of my favourite subjects, I will not trouble the reader with a detailed account of my pedigree. As far as I know, my great-great-grandfather came from the worthy little town of Bamberg, and when the Emperor Joseph II. commanded his Jewish subjects to take a surname, my grandfather, who was born in Hungary, took the name of the town of his ancestors, and was entered as Bamberger. As time went on the "B" was changed into "W," and my father wrote his name as Wamberger, although he made but little use of this registered name, for in those days the Orthodox Jews followed the Oriental custom, according to which the father's name is the one generally used, and the family name is merely of official importance. My father was not only a devout Jew, but also a distinguished Talmudist who often spent whole days and nights in study, without troubling himself much about mundane affairs. Religious zeal and love of learning are the two powerful levers of this especially Jewish erudition, and its disciples who regard intellectual and religious attainments as one and the same thing necessarily live in a visionary world into which none but theologians of Asiatic creeds can penetrate, and which has long since been closed to Christian divines, whose doctrines are so permeated with scepticism. According to my mother's saying, my father must have caught this fever of fanatical enthusiasm in his early youth. In ordinary life he was diffident and awkward, and when he came to woo her in her father's house at Lundenburg, in Moravia, his appearance had caused much secret amusement to the girls of the Malavan family. But my mother, a beautiful girl of eighteen, had soon taken a liking to the bashful young scholar, who had bright eyes and pleasant features to recommend him. She had been brought up by a stepmother, and from her earliest youth had tasted many a time from the bitter cup of life. She hoped to find happiness at the side of an earnest and religious-minded man, and so easily yielded to the persuasions of her Orthodox father, and left her home and her birthplace to follow the Talmudist, of whom as yet she knew but little, into Hungary to the town of St. Georghen, in the Presburger county, where my father, as a native of the place, hoped to get the appointment of under-rabbi.

But, as is only too well known, theologians of all times and religions have always evinced an unconquerable hatred, jealousy, and bitterness towards men of their own profession, and the darts thrown by the religious zealot are known to be far more venomous than those of the hunter after worldly treasures. The Talmudists of St. Georghen, whose number must of necessity have been very limited, were not exempt from this vice, and as my father's quiet, modest nature could not cope with his antagonists, the hope of preferment vanished more and more into the background, and the darkened horizon of the poor man's future was now only illumined by the steady glimmer of his enthusiasm for his studies. While musing and speculating upon the intricacies of the Mishna and Gemara, the good man quite forgot that the modest dowry which my mother had brought with her could not last for ever, and was not inexhaustible like the bottomless discussions and arguments of his favourite study, and that in order to live one had to look beyond the world of books into the busy market-place of everyday life. Soon my mother had to rouse him to the realisation of this cruel necessity. She was fully aware of the gravity of the situation, and all the ways and means by which the clever but young and inexperienced woman had tried to ward off the evil day proved fruitless. At one time she advised her husband to commence a fruit and corn business, then they tried to keep a public-house, but when everything failed the pious Talmudist was forced to become a hawker, and buying the agricultural products from the farmers in the neighbouring villages to try to sell them again at a small profit. What terrible martyrdom this must have been to the inspired Talmudistto leave his study and his books and to go hawking among the raw Slavonic peasants of the neighbourhood! What self-sacrifice, to leave the multi-coloured, visionary fields of "Halacha" and "Hagada," and to descend to the vulgar occupation of bargaining and bartering for a sack of beans or peas, a sheep- or a goat-skin. My mother often recalled it with tears in her eyes, for she was deeply attached to my father. She shared his enthusiasm for study, she sympathised in his mental struggles, but the voice of hunger is peremptory; she encouraged and helped him, and my poor father hardly ever lost his patience. One wet day in autumn, having bought a cowhide, yet damp, from a butcher at Ratzersdorf, he flung it over his shoulder on the top of a heavy load he was carrying. Thus laden he reached home late in the evening, wet through and tired out after wading through the deep mud. My mother awaited him with the frugal evening meal, but he, throwing down his load on the floor, went straight into his little study, where he buried himself in his books; and when my mother, tired of waiting, came to look for him, she found him as deep in his studies as if he had been sitting there the whole day. A man of such habits and tendencies was not likely to succeed in looking after the temporary needs of his family. It is therefore not surprising that my mother, with her practical common sense, at last came to the conclusion that it would be best to leave her husband to his books, and herself to look after the support of the family. And so my mother became a business woman. She went out into the world while my father sat at home in his study and took care of the house. A sad change of places, which pleased my mother only in so far as, being a pious Jewess, she thought she was doing a work well pleasing to God. But the interests of the family suffered greatly, for as she was inexperienced in the struggle for existence, our poverty increased rapidly, and when the destroying angel, the cholera, at that time ravaging Europe, swept over North-West Hungary also, and snatched away my father, my mother, at the age of twenty-two, was left a widow with two children in the greatest distress.