Gál Éva: Margaret Island - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2000)

times a week .... Now it is mainly the families of the bourgeoisie which Margaret Island attracts. Nevertheless, the island will not cease to be a distinguished location. Another article suggested that it was no use grumbling against the ascendancy of Hungary’s plutocracy, those “Leopold Town worshippers of Mercury”.

Multitudes of guests from abroad kept arriving, too, attracted, as their present-day descendants are, mainly by the medicinal waters.

In 1893, in an ornamental, multi-volume publication called The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in Words and Pictures, Mór Jókai says of Margaret Island that it is the enchanted garden of Budapest .... What has by now become the favourite entertainment complex of the Budapest public is also a bathing institute. Steamboats arrive every half-hour, carrying visitors intent on having a good time, enjoying a holiday, or being cured of an ailment .... In the very middle of the Danube, the island is faraway from the noisy streets of the city; its air is untainted by dust, its apartments are both well-decorated and comfortable; its shady esplanades are broad and clean; the fresh green of the lush vegetation is a sight for sore eyes....

Many positive things were written in praise of Margaret Island in the newspaper articles of the period— often in a comically inflated style—but discordant voices were also heard and some observers could not help remarking that the majority of Budapest’s population was not allowed to enter this “earthly paradise”. In 1880 the poet János Vajda called his readers’ attention to this in the popular Vasárnapi Újság (Sunday News): The only place nearby where the citizen of Budapest can inhale fresh, wholesome air is Margaret Island. No doubt, there are few metropolitan cities that can boast such a magnificent, one might say, fairy-tale place in the world. Maybe too magnificent, too elegant and expensive, for the lower classes.

In an 1894 issue of Fővárosi Lapok (Municipal Journal) the writer Elek Benedek suggested that the island be bought from Archduke Joseph, because then this popular place could be open to everybody, not just the better-off. This, however, was a long way off at the time.

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