1936 On the Continent

them
cigány
, which is usually spelt
tzigane
in your country. The proper English name “gipsy” indicates the fact that they were taken for “Egyptians,” as they had actually rambled through Syria and Egypt before they arrived in Europe. The Dutch, on the other hand, call them
ungern
, as the gipsies of Holland were of Hungarian origin. Once visiting Amsterdam a very pretty Dutch woman with red hair and a milky-white complexion asked whether I had brought my violin with me. She thought the Hungarians were gipsies. That, of course, was the same sort of mistake you made when you thought I was an Austrian.
    The gispsies are the last legatees of the ancient habits of nomadic existence. Dressed in picturesque rags, some of them still live in tents or move about in a covered wagon. This, of course, is by no means irrelevant to the fact that a gipsy boy born somewhere in a Hungarian forest could not appear at the age of twenty playing in a very smart hotel in a well-cut and well-worn dinner jacket. The violin seems to be part of their body.
    The Hungarians were, of course, very glad to find this nomadic people, blessed with such a wonderful musical talent, when they first arrived from the east. You already know so much about the facts of the Hungarian conquest of the ninth century that you could easily answer an examination paper on it. I only wish to add that when our ancestors had first arrived they found a country which was quite bare as far as music was concerned. They had brought their own musical instruments: they had their whistles and pipes, guitars and
cimbalom
; moreover, they had a primitive form of violin, and they played their own native tunes. They had been long converted to Christianity when the pious psalms of the Church were still being drowned by these old pagan tunes. The rhythm always contained something unusual, something touchingly melancholic for the people of the west. And this touching eastern sadness, or its exact opposite a blazing and indomitable gaiety and a vital
joie de vivre
, is still characteristic of Hungarian music. When the gipsies had first arrived in Hungary, towards the end of the fourteenth century, they had already found an important musical culture. It would not be true to say that it was the gipsies who had brought us their music, or that our motifs were the products of their souls. On the other hand, it would be true to say that the gipsy had learnt the existing Hungarian tunes surprisingly quickly; had added something to it from his own imagination, and in the course of the centuries there was produced the Hungarian gipsy music which millions of listeners in all countries find the most original, colourful, and moving music of, perhaps, the whole world. It is this music which gives firstly and foremostly a genuine character to Budapest night life.
Night Life
    It would be extremely difficult to tell you what our night life exactly means.
    If you come to Budapest from London or Berlin, from Paris or Vienna, you would feel it at once without any explanation. You will inevitably notice that there is “something in the air.” Even the very smallest restaurant in Buda has a gipsy band, and their music gives a perfect indication of the town’s atmosphere. We have smartestablishments which are almost perfect replicas of the average European or American night-club, with the same jazz band, the same service, the same light effects, and the same variety turns; but even these “international” places have an atmosphere of their own in Budapest.
    Visiting places abroad, their night life always impresses me as if it was carried on as a strictly commercial activity, whereas the night life of Budapest has a spontaneity as if it were practised for its own sake. I had a friend who invested all his fortune in a night café. The place was flourishing, except that when his patrons had left the café at six in the morning the owner had thought the time fit to have his own little fun and ordered the gipsies to play “at him” till noon the next day. And since he was in the habit of paying his own guests’ bills himself, I think you can guess the financial result of the first year. A few years ago a famous Hungarian actor, retiring from the stage, also invested his savings in a restaurant. The noted artist being an adherent to the principle of credit all through his life could not change the custom of years even when he came into the position of a creditor himself. I should think his was