Kalla Zsuzsa: Beszélő tárgyak. A Petőfi család relikviái (Budapest, 2006)

Rita Ratzky: Sándor Petőfi, his tastes and style

grey, short and unlined. One of these recollections is by a fellow actor: ‘Petőfi settled down next to the coachman, Eresei and I on top of the boxes; all three of us were dressed in very light clothes, or rather winter had caught us out. Although Sándor was seated on a lower level, he looked down on us because he had a cape! — But what a cape! Heavens above! It was so short that it covered not one inch below his waist; and when he put on his then fashionable, dark blue Quaker’s coat with its shiny, yellow buttons underneath, not only both tails but even the waist buttons were visible.’ (Némethy 1882, 1-2) (The coat was probably bought in August 1842 in a second-hand shop in Szén tér Pest.)

The strolling players provided their own costumes (Fekete ref. Románcsik 1969, 131). When times were hard, they wore the same clothes on and off the stage; they simply wore what they had. If an actor was in severe financial difficulties and could not pay for his accommodation (a situation Petőfi was familiar with), he gradually sold his clothes or pawned them. A promissory note existed from 7th April 1843, which Petőfi had left in Kecskemét. On many occasions during his years at school and as a strolling actor, friends and strangers took pity on him and gave him second-hand clothes, and he and his destitute companions also shared what they had. Orlay Petries recalled the wife of one of their teachers, Mr Bocsor, in Pápa, who ‘gave her husband’s old clothes to Petőfi and often invited him to lunch. But because Bocsor was a head taller and much broader than Petőfi the good woman also had to alter them. The boots, however, could not be made smaller, so while his clothes looked nice his footwear looked comical, and he, himself, joked about it.’ (1879, 355) That was probably the best thing he could do.

The summer of 1843 saw a slight improvement in Petőfi’s financial situation when he was working as a translator for the Ignác Nagy Novel Collection, work his friends had secured for him. A friend of his in Pest recalled that he used the money to buy clothes, including ‘two vests, one dyed black, a braided military coat, a set of tails and a pair of black trousers, so that as an actor he would not have to rely on others for everything’ (Kemény M. 1877, 720). Like the clothes he had previously worn both on and off the stage, these new items also served a dual purpose. Soon after he had bought them he sold most of them due to lack of money, with the exception of a white top

hat, which Imre Vahot, chief editor of the fashion publication Pesti Divatlap, saw Petőfi, his assistant editor, wearing in June 1844. Here the subjectivity of recollections becomes apparent: in 1882 Jókai, writing for the journal Koszorú [Wreath], remarked, ‘He despised all fashion. Top hats and tails never touched his body.’ (391) Jókai, however, was contradicting himself - as he was wont to do — since in his book Petőfi mint színész [Petőfi the Actor] he writes, ‘I must record for posterity how those famous violet tails [in which, apparently, Jókai painted him — the painting is no longer extant] with those yellow buttons were made for Petőfi by the upright patriotic Hungarian tailor Béler of Pest and ordered and guaranteed by his friend Károly Acs. They were of such similar build that Petőfi borrowed Acs’s full-length winter coat when he played character parts. It was a bitterly cold December evening when he went to collect it. Acs urged Petőfi to wear the warm coat on his way home, but to no avail. Petőfi said it would be sufficient for him to spoil it on stage, and with that he put it neatly under his cloak and took it home like that. The following morning he arrived punctually with the coat again folded neatly under his arm.’ (1874, 98) Jókai’s description is interesting as it shows that Petőfi had been deeply affected by the incident in Pápa after the end-of-year school ceremony and had learned from the humiliating experience.

In his works Petőfi only refers to the years of abject poverty in general terms (Úti levelek Kerényi Frigyeshez [Letters to Frigyes Kerényi] 1847), with only a few poems containing references to his threadbare clothing in the almost fatal Debrecen winter: ‘I like the spring only because | The days will be warmer, | And then, in my cold, dreary room I I shall not freeze in my threadbare clothes.’ (Tél végén [At the End of Winter] February 1844) ‘When I put on my worn gabardine, | I could say,

I As the gypsy says when he looks out from his shelter: | “Blimey, it ain’t ’arf cold out there!”’ (Egy telem Debrecenben [A Winter in Debrecen] summer 1844) And there is this humorous self-portrait: ‘If my hat had fur | And did not droop all round, | If it was not almost two years | Since my waistcoat was bought, | If I had more than one coat, / If the soles and heels of my boots | Did not ask where the cobbler was.’ (Ha [If] September 1844)

When sketching the biographical background to the 1845 poem Sorshúzás előtt [The Lottery Draw], József Kiss was right when he said it was

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