Fraternity-Testvériség, 1960 (38. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1960-09-01 / 9. szám

F RAT E RN ITY

OFFICIAL ORGAN OF HUNGARIAN REF. FEDERATION OF AMERICA Editor-in-Chief: George E. K. Borshy. — Managing Editor:

Joseph Kecskemethy. — Associate Editors: Emery Király and László L. Eszenyi. — Chief Contributor: Alexander Daroczy. Published monthly. — Subscription for non-members in the U. S. A. and Canada $2.00, elsewhere $3.00 a year.

Office of Publication: Expert Printing Co., 4627 Irvine St., Pittsburgh 7, Pa. Editorial Office: Kossuth House, 1801 “P” St., N. W., Washington 6, D. C. Telephones: ADams 4-0331 or 4-0332

Volume XXXVIII SEPTEMBER 1960 Number 9

A. J. MOLNÁR and H. F. SMITH:

LOUISE KOSSUTH RUTTKAY —

A NINETEENTH CENTURY NONCONFORMIST

The life of an intellectual woman in the mid-nineteenth century was often lonely, and when two such women met, it was perhaps not unusual for them to carry on an intercontinental correspondence for twenty-five years. Madame Louise Kossuth Ruttkay first met Miss Eliza Elvira Kenyon when Madame Ruttkay traveled with her brother, Louis Kossuth, to America in 1851. Both were forced into exile when he, as Governor of a free Hungary, was defeated by the Habsburgs in 1849. She returned to America several times between 1851 and 1875, three of her sons settling there in time to fight in the Civil War. One of them settled in Plainfield, where Miss Kenyon ran a seminary for young ladies, and, while visiting this son, Mme. Ruttkay began a friendship with Miss Kenyon that was to last until her death in 1903.

Few friendships are so well documented. In the Rutgers University Library are seventy-nine letters from Mme. Ruttkay to Miss Kenyon, presumably all of one side of the correspondence, deposited there by the American Hungarian Studies Foundation who in turn received them from Mr. Van Wyck Brooks, Miss Kenyon’s grandnephew by marriage. The letters date from 1875, when Mme. Ruttkay took up residence in Turin with her brother, to 1897. In Turin, deprived of virtually all society by her brother’s retiring habits and by what she considered the depravity of European morals, Mme. Ruttkay came more and more to depend for intellectual stimulation upon her correspondence with Miss Kenyon.

Her dependence is understandable, since the two ladies had much in common. While neither probably had much formal education, both were well read. Miss Kenyon was part of the New Jersey branch of the American Transcendental Movement (if capitals letters may be used for that ineffable sect), and a constant reader of Emerson, Thoreau and Goethe. Mme. Ruttkay had the advantage of Louis Kossuth’s library of

3,000 volumes and a taste and curiosity for the new, the philosophical,