Roumania Past and Present, James Samuelson [best novels to read to improve english .txt] 📗

or secretly to secure a predominance which she could not permanently maintain even if her present efforts were successful.

[Footnote 25: Chiefly Greek and Turkish.]

[Footnote 26: The correspondence, which extends from June 23 to September 5, 1880, and is chiefly telegraphic, was published in the supplement to the Indépendance Roumaine , Bucarest, December 6 [18], 1881.]

[Footnote 27: After this despatch follows one from M. Bratiano, the Roumanian Secretary of State, finding fault with M. Calargi for his unfriendly tone towards Austria, and here is his edifying reply on that point. 'Let me satisfy you ( vous rassurer ) as to the consequences that might arise from the handing in of this document. Written on paper without any mark, deprived of every official or individual character, bearing no signature, this historical résumé of the phases through which the question has passed cannot compromise anyone.' This is one of the men who make history, and to whom the lives and interests of the million are confided!]


CHAPTER IV.

TOPOGRAPHICAL, ETC.

The chief cities of Roumania--The capital, Bucarest--Ignorance
concerning it--Conflicting accounts--Its true character--The 'sweet
waters of the Dambovitza'--Dimensions of Bucarest--External
aspect--The Chaussée, the ladies' mile of Bucarest--Streets, shops,
and houses--The Academy--Its collections--Coins--Dacian, Roman, and
other antiquities--Excellent physical laboratory--Professor
Bacologlu--The Coltza laboratory--Dr. Bernath--The Cismegiu
Garden--Shabby courts of justice--Other
buildings--Churches--Railway stations--Fine hospitals--Dr.
Davila--The Colentina Hospital--The 'police des moeurs' and the
morality of Bucarest--The 'Philanthropic' Hospital--The
'Coltza'--Its museums--Life in Bucarest--Hotels--The upper
classes--Places of amusement--Cost of land and houses for different
classes--Wages of artisans; of gipsies--Habits of the
working-classes--Cost of living, food, clothing, &c.--Native
costumes made by the peasantry--Their beauty and variety--The
poorest class--Mamaliga--The gipsies--Their origin and
history--Their slavery--Wilkinson's account of them in his
day--Their emancipation and present condition--Laoutari or
musicians--Their other occupations--Their religion--Fusion with the
native Roumanians--Striking contrast between gipsies and
natives--Lipovans--Roumanian love of bright colours--Pictorial
advertisements--Amusing signboards--Absence of intellectual
entertainments and occupations--Want of exchange and market
buildings--Great advances since 1857--Edgar Quinet's account of
Roumania in his day--'The Roumanian Company for erecting Public
Edifices'--Funerals--Octroi duties--Their onerous character--A few
words on the Jews--Bitter journalistic attacks upon them--Curtea
d'Ardges--Its beautiful cathedral--The exterior--Fine tracery and
ornaments--The interior--Legendary history--Negru Voda and
Manole--Poem of Manole--Entombs his wife alive in the
foundation--His fate--True history--Neagu Bassarab, its
founder--John Radul--Quaint and interesting tablets concerning its
history down to 1804--Subsequent history and present
condition--(Note: Brief history of Christianity in
Roumania--Atheism and indifference to religion).


I.

The chief cities or towns in Roumania are Bucarest, the capital, in the district of Ilfovu; Jassy or Iasi, the old capital of Moldavia, in that of the same name; Galatz or Galati, in Covurluiu; Curtea d'Ardges, in the district of that name; Braila or Ibrail, Craiova, Botosani, Ploiesti, and Pitesti. We have not named them exactly in the order of their size, as it is our intention to give some details of the first four only.

[Illustration: PLAN OF BUCAREST, WITH THE MAIN STREETS AND BUILDINGS.

( Reduced from Plan by Professor Zamphirolu. )

1. Filaret Railway Station.

2. Tirgovistea Railway Station.

3. Metropolitan Cathedral.

4. Palace.

5. National Theatre.

6. Council of Ministers.

7. Academy.

8. British Embassy.

9. Post and Telegraph Offices.

10. Church, Radu Voda.

11. Ministry of Finance.

12. Summer Palace (Cotroceni).

13. Asyle Hélène.

14. Coltza Hospital.

15. Colentina Hospital.

16. Bank of Roumania.]

Of the capital, Bucarest, the reader will here find a general plan, in case he should at any time visit the city. To give any lengthened account of it, however, would be a mistake; for such a description would certainly be inaccurate a few years hence, as the city is undergoing great change and improvement from day to day. Still it is the heart of Roumania, the centre from which all progress emanates; and whilst we shall refer to some of its more valuable institutions when we come to deal with national and social questions of general importance, we propose to dwell upon it for a brief space.

Some of the questions that are asked concerning Bucarest, even by persons who believe themselves well-informed, are highly amusing. One friend, who is really a well-read man, asked us shortly after our visit whether it was not a great continuous 'Mabille,' and he looked very incredulous when we told him that, although we had walked through and through it, and had carefully looked at all the posters announcing amusements in various places, we had no recollection of seeing a dancing-garden amongst them, and that we believed none existed. Another friend, a highly educated professional man, was not quite sure whether Bucarest was north or south of the Danube; but it was a place, he knew, where the chief occupation was gambling. There may be some little truth in the latter statement, but gaming-tables are forbidden, and he need not go so far from home as that to see the law evaded.

But it is no wonder that strangers are puzzled to form a correct conception of Bucarest, and their perplexity is not likely to be relieved if they read the descriptions that have been given of the city and its inhabitants from time to time. Some writers have described it as an assemblage of dilapidated houses standing in unpaved streets. Its upper classes are represented as very polite depraved ladies and gentlemen, including a large proportion of the former who have been divorced three or four times, and are in the habit of entertaining simultaneously all their ci-devant husbands in the presence and with the sanction of the 'man in possession.' The lower classes comprise half-naked gipsies of both sexes, with a considerable sprinkling of priests or 'popes,' eating bread and onions or mamaliga (the maize pudding of the masses), or lounging on the doorsteps of the houses, or sauntering along the unpaved streets in charge of a lean pig. According to such writers the chief occupation of the Bucarester is getting divorced or being buried in state. Then there is the romantic school of authors who represent it as a city of palaces standing in their own grounds, with numerous beautiful Byzantine churches, pleasure-gardens in which plays are performed, or where the Laoutari or minstrels (gipsy bands) play wild and stirring music all day long. There are charming Roumanian belles, with flashing eyes and the sweetest of voices; dark-eyed gipsies, chaste as Diana and as fleet of foot; grave boyards, stately Turks (of whom, by the way, we never saw one whilst we were on Roumanian ground, although there were plenty, very much married indeed, on the Danube steamers); reverend abbots, with long black robes and flowing white beards; and nuns in unique costumes of dark cloth, with caps and hoods resembling a crusader's helmet. The truth, as usual, lies between these two opposite extremes.

[Illustration: MONK AND NUN.]

Bucarest, or Bucuresci, 'the city of joy,' as it is called by the Roumanians, is a large, irregular, straggling city of about 175,000 inhabitants, situated on a dirty little stream called the Dambovitza (as already stated, a tributary of the Ardges), concerning which some very famous verses have been written, proclaiming its waters to be so sweet that any one who drinks of them never desires to leave Bucarest. What its retentive properties may have been in former times we are not able to say, but we can quite imagine any person who ventures to drink of the water being incapable of leaving the city for ever afterwards. However, the prosaic authorities are not greatly impressed by their national poetry in this instance. The river is being 'canalised,' or confined within stone embankments, and there is a plentiful supply of
apa dulçe from another source, which exercises no controlling influence whatever upon the movements of the drinker. The greatest length of the city as the crow flies is about 3-1/10 miles, and its greatest breadth somewhat less, but many of the outlying parts resemble country roads rather than streets. Viewed from a distance, or from the hill upon which the metropolitan church stands, it has a most picturesque appearance, consisting of a vast number of churches, chiefly Byzantine, only a few of which are visible in our photograph, and many good-sized buildings. But what gives a peculiar charm to the city is that all these buildings appear to be placed in one vast garden, for there is hardly a single one without some trees in its immediate vicinity, and many of the larger houses really stand in gardens of considerable extent. This, too, is the cause of the city covering so large a space in proportion to the number of its inhabitants. It is built with perplexing irregularity, as will be seen even from our superficial plan, where only the main streets are given; but the intermediate spaces are filled with narrow, crooked, and ill-paved streets and lanes, their most disagreeable feature being that, in consequence of the soft yielding nature of the subsoil, the pavement gives way, and soon becomes inconveniently undulating. There are, however, several broad well-paved streets,[28] the chief being the Podu Mogosoi, as it is still called, although after the fall of Plevna it received the more dignified appellation of the Strada Victoriei; it runs through the centre of the city from an incipient boulevard--which promises one of these days to metamorphose the whole place--to a park or garden of considerable extent, where it is further continued through an alley of trees known as the Chaussée. This is the favourite drive of the Bucaresters, and at stated hours a rapid succession of vehicles pours out from various parts of the city to see and to be seen. These birjas, as the little open carriages (resembling a small calèche ) are called, contain the moat motley assemblage of sight-seers--ambassadors, state officials, and well-to-do citizens of both sexes in European dress; ladies of more humble rank in the national costume;[29] gipsies and poor workmen and women, who, one might imagine, would be better on foot, half-clad, and very considerably unwashed. In or about the Strada Victoriei are many of the principal buildings--the national theatre, the King's palace (a very modest structure at present undergoing improvements), the Ministry of Finance, and some fine hotels. The shops, which are mostly kept by Germans and French-men, are of a fair kind, though not equal to those of Vienna, Paris, or indeed of many smaller continental capitals.[30] The houses here, and everywhere in Bucarest, are built of brick, plastered white, and often very tastefully decorated externally with figures or foliage in terra cotta; but it is the cracking and falling off of this external coating, which occurs more readily in a place subject to great changes of temperature than in more equable temperate climes, that imparts to Bucarest the dilapidated appearance