Angol filológiai tanulmányok XVIII. [antikvár]

ANGOL FILOLÓGIAI TANULMÁNYOK XVIII. DEBRECEN HUNGÁRIÁN STUDIES IN ENGLISH 1985 ARTHUR PATTERSON G. F. CUSHING (London) In the long history of Anglo-Hungarian cultural relations certain writers have acquired a lasting reputation. Their works are widely quoted and they have come to be regarded as the main authorities for the periods they describe Julia Pardoe and John Paget are good examples of this; they happened to be in Hungary during the Age of Reform, and witnessed many exciting developments. They were also good observers and could write cogently. Others have been less fortunate: their works have been virtually forgotten and their names occur only rarely in later surveys. Such are Arthur Patterson and in our own century Geoffrey Drage. Both wrote substantial books about Hungary, but both have been overlooked, for reasons that are not altogether clear. Perhaps they were overtaken by events — Patterson's book came out shortly after the Compromise of 1867, when British interest in Hungary was beginning to flag, and Geoffrey Drage's was published not many years before the outbreak of World War I. Patterson receives no mention in István Gál's invaluable Magyarország, Anglia és Amerika,1 and until the appearance of Tibor Frank's thesis, The British Image of Hungary 1865/1870 in 19762, was virtually forgotten. Although his books formed the nucleus of the library of the English Department of the University of Budapest, his papers were destroyed during World War II. The most complete biographical sketch is still that of Szinnyei, published only six years after his death.3 From this account, and from the few personal details Patterson himself mentions, we learn that he was born in London in 1835 and was educated privately in Radnor. He went up to Cambridge in 1855, somewhat later than was customary at that time, and studied there for four years. His prize essay on the caste system was his first published work.4 But as a boy he had been interested in Hungary, and between 1862 and 1867 he spent three comparatively long periods in the country, of five, eleven and twenty-three months respectively. He lived in Pest, Győr, Szeged and Debrecen, and learnt Hungarian: "I spent two of the hottest months of the very hot summer of 1866 in Szeged. I could not recommend many of my countrymen to do likewise. They would vote it "slow", which of course it was. But then I had an object in view; it was one which I had been long pursuing and at last 5