The castle of Körmend lies in a great plain. On one side of it is a park planted in radiating alleys, according to the taste of Le Nôtre. On the opposite side its precincts abut on the market place of a small town, and from the south and north it is approached by two poplar avenues which together traverse the Batthyany territory for something like thirty miles in an absolutely straight line. The dwelling house is a large, square block, with a courtyard in the middle and a tower at each angle. One of its frontages forms the side of a forecourt flanked by grandiose outbuildings--estate offices, stables, and a great frescoed ballroom. Elsewhere round the house was a very untidy flower garden, which half the old women of the little town spent, so it seemed to me, most of their days in weeding--herein reviving my recollections of Dartington Hall and Denbury. Indeed, throughout my whole stay at Körmend country life in Hungary was constantly reminding me of what country life was during my own early days in Devonshire. These likenesses gave piquancy to the points of difference. Körmend, though containing a good deal of English furniture, and a certain amount of valuable, if not very valuable, tapestry, was not well furnished according to English standards. The stonework of the great staircase leading to the principal floor was unpolished and rude, and the walls were rudely whitewashed. My own bedroom, which in many ways was delightful, was reached by a vaulted passage so cold and draughty that the Princess advised me always to wear my hat when I traversed it. There was not a bell in the house, and, if I had not had my own servant with me, who was placed in a room near mine, I should have been helpless. And yet the doors of this dwelling were guarded by a porter in crimson robes, who wielded a staff of office topped by a prince's coronet. Most of the dishes at dinner might have come from some rough farmhouse, but the pastry could hardly have been equaled by the finest _chef_ in Paris, while the walls of the circular dining room were daubed with theatrical pillars, so that it looked like a ruined temple on the stage of some company of strolling players in a barn.
Other contrasts and other notable things I discovered as the days went by. The whole of the lower portion of one side of the house was a museum of family archives, many of them going back to the beginning of the fourteenth century, and most of the attic floor--a kind of museum likewise--was crowded with precious spoils taken by the Batthyanys from the Turks--jeweled swords and muskets, horsecloths sewn with emeralds, and pavilions, still splendid, which once had sheltered Pashas in the field. Another curiosity was a theater still displaying the scenery which had been painted for some private performance before the end of the eighteenth century.