They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [60]
It had come about in the following way. Isti had been extremely active in helping the government candidate at a by-election at Szilagy towards the end of the Coalition. The man had been elected, and when they were all back in Budapest Isti had been singled out for praise by the then Minister for Internal Affairs. Isti, seeing his advantage, had at once stammered out, ‘I h-h-have a r-r-request!’ and, when encouraged by Andrassy to blurt it out, said that he would shortly be going to London and would be most grateful for an introduction to the Austro-Hungarian ambassador. Of course he had got his letter and had presented it to the ambassador, Count Mensdorf, as soon as he arrived. Mensdorf asked Isti how he could be of service and it turned out that Isti had only one request and that was somehow to be invited to join the St James’s Club.
The request had verged on the absurd for, in the view of most foreigners and especially of the diplomatic corps, the St James’s was then thought to be the most exclusive club in England to which very few Englishmen aspired even if they possessed the most exalted social background. To be admitted one had to fulfil the most stringent, even if unwritten, conditions; and these applied as much to foreign diplomatists as they did to native Englishmen. A few diplomats had been accepted, but so few that it had been taken as a special mark of distinction. Mensdorf did his best to explain all this to Isti, adding that, according to English etiquette, new members must not speak to any existing member until the other had first introduced himself. This meant that even if Isti did get in it might still be several years before he managed to make any friends and so, the ambassador suggested, it would really be more sensible if Count Kamuthy dropped the idea altogether. He proposed a wealth of other, most tempting, ideas – invitations to spend the weekend at the houses of wellknown peers, shooting parties in Scotland, a car-trip through some of England’s most beautiful countryside, house-parties for the famed Cowes Regatta. Isti was unimpressed. He wanted only one thing, to be elected to the St James’s, and this was his only request. Nothing else. Absolutely nothing else!
It happened that Mensdorf was closely related to King Edward and so he had considerable influence in social affairs. He bestirred himself and the miracle happened: Kamuthy was accepted.
So, for the two weeks that Isti was in England he was to be seen, day after day, from morning till evening, sitting at one of the first floor windows of the St James’s Club gazing proudly out into Piccadilly. No one spoke to him and even the club servants hardly tried to conceal their contempt. Isti did not care. He could sit there in the window, surrounded by huge mirrors, happy in the knowledge that the thousands of people who passed along the street in front of him could look up and envy him and that, among all the more than seven million inhabitants of London there was barely one who was so privileged as to have the right to sit there behind the glass and drink his tea in the sight of all. It was a heavenly feeling.
After his two weeks Isti had come home. Though he had studied his Baedeker until he almost knew it by heart, all he had seen of England were the rooms of his club. It