A Veszprém Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei 21. (Veszprém, 2000)

Tóth G. Péter: Otthon és külvilág. Magánélet és nyilvánosság egy veszprémi polgár szemével (Dokumentumok a Laczkó Dezső Múzeum Adattárábó)

clothing deteriorated, eating habits became meagre, and the pleasant things of life had to be given up - pipe smoking, tobacco, and later cigarettes and wine - which Francsics also did. But besides the larger scale influences, other factors may be significant from the point of view of the individual. For example, a „man from outside" cannot put down roots in a new community. He would like to make his home „in the wrong place." He tries to live in an „upmarket area" in terms of society in a way for which he does not have sufficient material means. In this respect, Francsics was „superfluous" in the place where he lived. Although neither his contemporaries nor today's social historians can define Francsics as „bourgeois," it would be unethical to deny the self appraisal of a journal keeper, who declares himself bourgeois. It is also clear from the lower viewpoint, that it is not only due to the deterioration of his financial situation that a man may have bad dreams. The bad feeling determined by society may be explained by the restriction of the circle of private life, or put another way, by the extension of loneliness. The networks of relationships built up by Francsics attained their maximum extent in the 1860s. Sickness, getting older, lessening prestige in society, loss of contemporaries of his own generation, family tragedies gradually „wore Francsics out" of public life. The declining, „bending backwards" period of his life had begun. The lower viewpoint used in the study even makes the football-pitch sized field of politics into the size of a button-football table, if for example, we try to open up the dimensions hidden from the public from the point of view of the individual. It then turns out that front lines have been drawn here too. The Austrian government, reckoned as a common enemy, had organised the active participants and observers into a solidary unit. After 1867, however, this political field broke up. In the open struggle for power, the previous „common environment provided for all" became a political battlefield for parties, industrialists and intellectuals, private individuals, friends, fathers and sons, husbands and wives. All these influences may have led to the fact that, in the triumphant environment of the 1867 change of system, Francsics experienced the mass demonstration of the government and opposition, or right and left parties, as a disgusted man. 150