: Amusing Prose Chap Books by Cunningham Robert Hays Editor - Chapbooks

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MY POLITICAL CAREER AND POSITION IN ENGLAND 283

THE TRIUMPH OF MY LABOURS 317

AT THE ENGLISH COURT 329

MY INTERCOURSE WITH SULTAN ABDUL HAMID 343

MY INTERCOURSE WITH NASREDDIN SHAH AND HIS SUCCESSOR 391

THE STRUGGLE'S END, AND YET NO END 411

APPENDICES 459

From London to Budapest

FROM LONDON TO BUDAPEST

I have often been asked how it was that, after the bitter disappointment I had experienced in my native land on my return from Asia, and after the brilliant reception accorded to me in England, I yet preferred to settle down permanently in Hungary.

People have been surprised that I should choose a quiet literary career, whereas my many years of intimate intercourse with various Eastern nations might have been turned to so much better account, and a practical, active career would have been so much more in keeping with my character. All these questions were asked of me at the time in London, but filled as I then became with a sense of oppression and a great longing for home I could not give a satisfactory answer to these queries. Now that the cloud has lifted, and my vision is clear, now that sober reflection has taken the place of former rapture and exultation, the causes which influenced my decision are perfectly clear. I see now that I could not have acted differently; that the step I took was partly the result of my personal inclination and views of life, and partly influenced by the circumstances of my birth and bringing up, and the notions then generally prevailing in Hungary; nor have I cause or ground to regret my decision.

In the first place I have to confess that in England, notwithstanding the noisy, brilliant receptions I had, and all the attention paid to me, no one ever made me any actual proposal with a view to my future benefit, and no one seemed at all disposed to turn to account my practical experiences in the service of the State or of private enterprise. The Memorandum about the condition of things in Central Asia, written at the time in Teheran at the request of the British Ambassador there, had duly found its way to Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister. The gray statesman received me most kindly; I was often a guest at his private house, or dined with him at Mr. Tomlin's, of Carlton House Terrace, or at Sir Roderick Murchison's, of 16, Belgrave Square. At his initiative I was invited to other distinguished houses, for the merry old gentleman was much entertained by my lively conversation and my anecdotes from Asia, which I used to relate after dinner when the ladies had retired. My stories about the white ass of the English Embassy at Teheran, of diplomatic repute, and similar amusing details of court life in Persia and the Khanates of Central Asia, tickled the fancy of the most serious, sober-minded of these high lords, and went the round in the fashionable West End circles. But for all that they saw in me merely the "lively foreigner," the versatile traveller, and if here and there some interest was shown in my future, it amounted to asking what were my latest travelling plans, and when I thought of setting out in search of fresh discoveries. As if I had not been on the go for two-and-twenty years, ever since I was ten years old! as if I had not battled and struggled and suffered enough! And now that for the first time in my life I had lighted on a green bough and hoped to have accomplished something, was I again straightway to plunge into the vague ocean of destiny? "No, no," I reflected; "I am now thirty-two years old, without for one moment having enjoyed the pleasures of a quiet, peaceful life, and without possessing enough to permit myself the luxury of resting on my own bed, or of working comfortably at my own table." This uncertain, unsatisfactory state of things must come to an end sometime; and so the desire for rest and peace necessarily overruled any inclination for great and ambitious plans, and nipped in the bud all projects which possibly might have made my career more brilliant, but certainly not happier than it afterwards turned out.

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