How wonderful is this--a young woman meets a slightly older man. She is a pretty American but has no money. He is a Baron in what was then known as Ruthenia but has no money either. Neither family is pleased with the potential romance. "What persuaded them all in the end was the castle." While the geography and the politics was a little complicated and confusing, the "pluck and charm" of Eleanor Pérenyi's lovely memoir won me over. What Was Lost: a Memoir, the February NYRB that came as part of my subscription, was indeed a charming read, but not in the usual way. I think it has to do with the setting being a part of the world that I have a curiosity about but not much knowledge of. It's the sort of "story" that is going to be fraught with difficulties and a really happy ending might be unobtainable, but the experience Eleanor had was in its way really magical.
Eleanor Stone was the nineteen-year-old daughter of a naval officer and a mother who was a writer. In 1937 she had been traveling with them and one night at a dinner party given by the American ambassador in Budapest she met Baron Zsigmond (Zsiga) Pérenyi. He was thirty-seven and spoke flawless English (as well as several other languages) having been educated at Oxford. He was instantly smitten and began courting her the next day.
"I nearly decided not to go to the dinner. We had been up the night before, drinking sweet Hungarian champagne, and I was tired. But it was May, and outside the horse chestnuts were in bloom. From the window we could see the muddy Danube separating us from Buda, the high hill with the dark palace, and behind it, a blazing sunset. I was nineteen, and I had not decided what to do with my life. I had no thoughts of working for my living. I was an idle young lady, being taken around Europe by my mother, and at any moment something might happen; I might meet someone who would set my course for me."
Their meeting sounds quite romantic, doesn't it. If she was looking for a new course with which to set her future, she certainly found it with Zsiga. The time she spent with him was filled with an adventure that doesn't come along every day. The world was a different place then and unknown to both, it would change irrevocably in only a few more years.
More Was Lost was originally published in 1946 about her years in Ruthenia as a young bride and eventually a mother (though the latter event was perhaps a story for another book). It was a simple little book of vignettes about this lost world, and by the mid-40s was indeed a lost world changed by the destruction of WWII. Think of it as akin to one of those books now written by young couples who buy dilapidated French farmhouses and fix them up and mingle with the charming natives. Eleanor Pérenyi did it first, but she married into a castle-owning family.
I always think I have a pretty good sense of geography, but I confess that Ruthenia took a little thought to wrap my head around. Zsiga's estate was in Ruthenia, which sat at the beginning of the Carpathians. It was a Hungarian-speaking area which at various times was controlled by Hungarians, the Czechs, Russians and later became part of the "Soviet Carpatho-Ukraine". At the time Eleanor was living in Ruthenia, much of Hungary was or would be carved up and ruled by other countries and I admit I am still a little perplexed by all the nuances of attitudes towards Zsiga and his fellow countrymen. When Zsiga and Eleanor traveled to his home after their honeymoon, the Czechs (who were much like colonial administrators) passed her through customs after a cursory look at her American passport but Zsiga's bags and passport were thoroughly scrutinized. Whether it was remarked upon or not it was always noted if someone spoke Hungarian or had Hungarian-leaning politics.
But it was the house/castle that was particularly special for Eleanor, and Zsiga's family's pride.
"It was no Eastern European Versailles. It was small, and infinitely lovable. It ha a sort of touching elegance. And there were little Barbaric bits here and there that were particularly pleasing in a building meant to be so classic. For instance, the water spouts, which were fierce little mermaids wearing crowns."
The estate, which was vast, had forests, vineyards, a mountain and a river as well as manicured gardens and acres and acres of farmland. It was all self-sufficient, rather the family had to depend on it for their food, or on the village for supplies and manpower to run everything. The author refers to its set-up as being feudal and I suppose it had been for so very long but it was all so intermingled. And not surprisingly for the time and place there was a very regimented social order and particular way things were done. In some ways it was all quite formal, but in others something out of a book almost, the kissing of hands and cheeks and the mild flirtations that were entirely acceptable as long as all they were.
The book is very much a look at this intriguing place through a series of related vignettes of relatives and friends and the Pérenyi estate and the surrounding village. It reminds me of a B&W movie down to the dash to get away before the Germans invade and the war is finally what will wrench Eleanor and Zsiga apart. It is almost an thriller-like ending as Eleanor travels back and forth to Paris to her family and back and ultimately she must make the decision to leave, expecting her first child, in order to be in a safe place. I think Eleanor must surely have come into her own by those European experiences, helping run the estate and sometimes entirely on her own when Zsiga was called up for the war. She is a very young bride but she manages quite well and learns much along the way.
I do wonder what the rest of the story reads like--after the war. She went on to write more, including a famous gardening book--Green Thoughts: a Writer in the Garden (which I know I own--I found a copy at secondhand shop years ago--and which I looked for but cannot, frustratingly, seem to locate just now). She wrote for various magazines and was managing editor for Mademoiselle. She moved in very literary circles which might have included the likes of Elizabeth Bowen, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal. But, of course, this moment of her life that she wrote about in More Was Lost can be read and thoroughly enjoyed all on its own. This book, and Eleanor Pérenyi, is definitely one of my good finds this year. I know I can rely on NYRB Classics to widen my horizons and introduce me to most worthy reads! I am now in the middle of my first book by Patrick Modiano (wonderful), and it (as it so often happens with these literary discoveries) won't be my last!