With regard to the younger generation,
the Transylvanians are like well-bred people all the world over. The
ladies have something of the frankness of superior Americans--the sort
of Americans that Lord Lytton describes in 'The Parisians'--and in
consequence conversation has more vivacity than with us.
In the elder generation you may detect far more of national peculiarity;
in some cases they retain the national dress, and with it the Magyar
pride and ostentation, so strongly dashed with Orientalism. Then again,
in the houses of the old nobility, one is struck by many curious
incongruities. For example, Count T---- has a large retinue of
servants--five cooks are hardly able at times to supply his hospitable
board, so numerous are the guests--yet the walls of his rooms are simply
whitewashed, and the furniture is a mixture of costly articles from
Vienna and the handiwork of the village carpenter. A whole array of
servants, who are in gorgeous liveries at dinner, may be seen barefooted
in the morning.
In talking with some of the elderly members of the family, I heard many
curious anecdotes of old Hungarian customs; but "the old order changeth"
here as elsewhere, and a monotonous uniformity threatens the social
world. Even as it is, everybody who entertains his friends at dinner is
much the same as everybody else, be he in Monmouth or Macedon.
Distinctive characteristics of race are found more easily in the common
people, who are less amenable to the change of fashion than their
superiors.
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