For the committee
have hit on a most ingenious notion. The peasants of Hungary marry, and
they marry picturesquely. Why should this picturesqueness be wasted, or
only be reproduced artificially in comic operas? When a marriage is to be
celebrated in any village, let the scene be shifted to the capital: let
the wedding-party come up to the Exhibition. Free transit is provided on
the railway for the happy couple, the wedding-guests, and all the
stage-properties. And so they come up to Budapest,--from Toroczko,
Szabolcs, Krasso-Szoereny, and who knows what outlandish places, glad of
the opportunity of seeing the great capital,--and they gather in the
Exhibition grounds, the lads with flower-wreathed hats and streamers of
many-coloured ribbons, the lasses with gay skirts and tall black combs,
the old women with lace head-shawls, carrying bundles of house-linen and
stockings for the bride; and the sheepish pair are made one, and the
peasants dance and then go in procession to the strains of the Rakoczi
March, and are photographed with odd spectators (like myself) tacked on,
and they sit down to the wedding-dinner under the trees, and the viands
are heaped high on the white table-cloths, sun-dappled with the shadows
of the moving leaves.
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