1936 On the Continent

springs, and its waters contain aperient and glauber salts which are a good cure for women’s diseases. By the bath there is an open-air salt bath, which is excellent for liver and bilious complaints. You could also do air-bathing or sun-bathing there.
“Hunyadi Janos”
    The aperient water springs of Budapest are world famous. The Hunyadi János springs, for example, supply 100,000 litres a day. Budapest is a good place for drink cures. You have a large choice among these important waters.
    Firstly, there are waters containing sulphur and lime; secondly, those containing radio-active properties; and finally, the aperient waters. At the hotel anyone can tell you where to find them.
    A few minutes from the town, and about 1,300 feet high, is the Svábhegyi Sanatorium, one of the most beautiful and most up-to-date sanatoria and hotels in Europe. It is an excellent place for cures for Basedow’s disease, asthma, anaemia, heart disease, and nervous exhaustion. It has a strand in its park. From its terrace you can see such a magnificent view as only the Bello Sguardo in Florence, or the Golden Horn in Constantinople, can give you. Near the hotel is the largest golf course in Budapest.
    Well, tell me another town in Europe which could possibly offer so many medical baths and waters, strands, and flowers, and so much air, sunshine, and music asBudapest. And don’t forget that you can enjoy all that for £15 for three full weeks. And more! I wouldn’t risk saying that Budapest makes the best motor-cars or the best cloth, but it is certain that here you find the best medical specialists of the whole world against all diseases the flesh is heir to.
    Will you please let me know if you should need any other information? I shall then write at once to one of my friends abroad and obtain the necessary information.
    There came no answer to my letter.
    After some three weeks I began to fret that my powers towards encouraging foreign tourist traffic must have been at fault. I must confess that it hurt my vanity quite a good deal. Should Miss Glinton arrive in Budapest I would perhaps have hidden myself, but since she did not come, and did not even answer my letter, it began to excite my curiosity. Now I felt I had a quest to entice Betty to Budapest and I made up my mind to approach the business from another side. I remembered that during dinner she showed a great interest in pictures. So I wrote yet another letter.
My Third Letter to Miss Glinton
    I am so glad you did not answer my letter. From this fact I gather that your mother no longer suffers from rheumatism and is in no need of visiting the baths of Budapest. It has just occurred to me that last time you asked me if there were any Goya pictures in Budapest, because you love Goya. I could not give you a definite answer there and then, but now I have looked it up and in order to show what a reliable person I am, I send you a detailed account of all museums in Budapest.
    Our Museum of Fine Arts is among the first in Europe. In its rooms you can find some of the best pictures of the Italian Renaissance, and of the Spanish and the Dutch schools, together with the loveliest Hungarian pictures. The statuary and the graphical section is also quite good. By this I don’t wish to say that it is a grander place than the Uffizi, but should you wish to take refuge among the beauties of art for a few hours, you could also do that in Budapest. In the same museum you can find the “Girl Carrying Water” and the portrait of “Señora Cean Bermudez,” by Goya. There is “Magdalen” by ElGreco, a lovely portrait by Giorgione, and a few famous Rembrandts. In the Hungarian section you could see the large and magnificent canvasses of Mihály Munkácsy, the greatest of Hungarian painters. The nucleus of the collection was formed by the Bishop Arnold Ipolyi, one of the Esterházy Princes, and by Count János Pálfy.
    In another building opposite, you can see the pictures of living Hungarian artists. In the same building the Hungarian Society for Fine Arts has its permanent exhibitions. You must see that, for it gives a good opportunity for foreign visitors to buy the best of modern Hungarian pictures and also good products of industrial art and folk arts.
    You must visit the Eastern Asiatic Museum, which is also in the Andrássy Avenue. Its founder, the late Ferencz Hopp, made it a real treasure house of wonderful Chinese, Japanese and Indian statues, carvings, miniatures, ceramics, silks