Twenty years in Roumania

Introduction:

Now that I have set down in black and white these random impressions and recollections of a country in which I spent many of the happiest years of my life, a slight feeling of doubt assails me. Might my Roumanian friends possibly find cause for offence in the freedom which I have allowed myself?

Then I remember that they have a sense of humour, and the doubt vanishes. If I deal frankly with some of the methods and customs of the country, it is because I hope to give English readers an insight into the character of the people, and enable them to find there, as I have found, a very great deal to love. When, after my long absence from England, I compare our own methods and ways of thought with those which have become so familiar to me in Roumania, the latter do not always suffer in the comparison. Indeed, if I wrote about some of the things which have especially struck me since my return,

I might arouse a good deal of resentment. Some of the best friends I have in the world are Roumanians. The kindness and sympathy they showed me during a time of great sorrow in my life must be an enduring memory. Rather than be suspected of repaying such kindness by holding up my friends to ridicule, I would tear up these pages which I a tyro in the art of letters have written with so much labour, but also, I must add, with so much pleasure.

After completing my education in Germany, I spent some time very happily in Vienna with friends who were well acquainted with Roumania. I became fascinated by their descriptions of life in a country which for me had something of the glamour of the Orient, and so, armed with letters of introduction, I proceeded to Bucarest and soon established myself as a teacher of languages. For the twenty-two following years of my life, I lived in Roumania, but for the war, I should probably be there now. My relations with my pupils, members of the best-known families in the country, were always of the pleasantest, and as Roumanians have a natural aptitude for languages, there was no drudgery in the teaching.

Since I left the country Roumania has come through a time of terrible trial. My heart has often been wrung by the accounts of the sufferings of my friends, but even during the darkest days of the war, I was sustained by the knowledge that they never once lost courage.

They displayed a spirit as indomitable as our own, and now I rejoice that their fiery trial is over and that the dawn of a glorious day has arrived.

Author: Maude Rea Parkinson
Publication Date: 1921

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