The famous anecdote about the Chain Bridge
Among the people who crossed the Chain Bridge in the period immediately following its inauguration on November 20, 1849, was an apprentice shoemaker named Jakab Frick.
When in 1852 the bridge, designed at the initiative of István Széchenyi by William Tierney Clark and built under the direction of Adam Clark, was adorned with the striking lion sculptures created by János Marschalkó, young Frick, known for being somewhat of a troublemaker, immediately found a way to spoil the party. “But these lions have no tongue!” he exclaimed, triggering absolute mayhem.
Sculptor János Marschalkó in trouble over his lions
The news spread like wildfire and the sculptor became the target of mockery of all sorts. At one point, rumors began circulating that the poor artist had even committed suicide out of shame by throwing himself into the Danube. Fortunately, this wasn’t true—Marschalkó would die of old age in 1877—but the jokes about the lions’ tongues followed him until the end of his days.
Real lions to win the bet
However, he didn’t give up and made a bet to prove that even real lions’ tongues, when they assume the same position as his stone lions, cannot be seen because they’re hidden in the lower part of the mouth. He put up five hundred florins as stakes and, together with a group of friends, went to visit a menagerie to settle the matter. The flesh-and-blood lion proved the sculptor right: indeed, when it held its head in the same position as the Chain Bridge lions, its tongue was invisible.
The joke about the stone lions’ tongue
But in reality, Marschalkó wouldn’t have needed to go all the way to the menagerie to be proven right—a good ladder would have sufficed: his lions do indeed have tongues, it’s just that they can’t be seen from street level. It’s said that on some occasions the sculptor retorted to those who mocked him about the tongueless lions: “If your wife had a tongue like my lions’, you’d have a hard life!”
