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

Rita Ratzky: Sándor Petőfi, his tastes and style

white, turned-back shirt collar, a fashion which the poet Attila József later adopted at the beginning of the 20th century. A clue as to the origins of this unusual idea may he provided by Karl Beck, who recalled that Petöfi’s ‘shirt collar was turned down tightly in the same way that German students wore their collars’ (Beck 1879, 457—470). Both Goethe and Schiller, a particular favourite of the young Petőfi, wore shirts with turned'back collars. In fact, Hungarian costume history at the end of the 19th century called this fashion a ‘Schiller collar’, and later a ‘Petőfi collar’ (Nagy, 202). According to Jókai, however, the unbuttoned white collar revealed the influence of Byron and Shelley (1898,

184).

Petöfi’s wife, Júlia Szendrey, does not provide much information on the way her husband dressed. She did, however, tell Károly Sass that at the county ball in Nagykároly, which was where she met Petőfi, he had worn a wonderful outfit: a braided military coat made of flowery satin (Sass K. 1883, 2). Akos Egressy, son of Petöfi’s favourite actor, Gábor Egressy, recalled a similar item of clothing: ‘Later [my father and Petőfi] also endeavoured to express their like-mindedness in the way they dressed. Once, to counter German fashion, my father had a specially-tailored military coat made of silk damask with an oriental pattern, and Petőfi also had a very similar one made.’ (1909, 16) In the spring of 1847 the humorist Gusztáv Lauka saw Petőfi as a ‘Claque-hatted’ gentleman, contradicting Jókai’s previously-mentioned recollections in the journal Koszorú. The paintings by Orlay Petries attest to the fact that, after 1845, Petőfi had his clothes made from exceptionally fine materials like silk and velvet, but these clothes, although striking, were not as unusual as the Vahot outfit.

When working at home, however, Petőfi preferred comfortable, casual clothes. He wore either shirt-sleeves (as in Orlay Petrics’s painting Petőfi in Mezőberény) or a brightly-patterned dressing gown. The journalist Gyula Kéry recalled that in Dömsöd in the spring of 1846 Petőfi wore a ‘so-called vath- mol (i.e. quilted) cloak with green and red squares and narrow yellow and blue stripes’ (1908, 55-56). In the summer of 1848 one of Petöfi’s relatives, who was visiting from the countryside, called on him early in the morning: ‘His slender body was covered by a long morning suit which was basically red with yellow and blue flowers.’ (Nagy Gy., ifj. 1884, 153-156) This orgy of colour was not unusual at the time; the black, white and grey of men’s

fashion of the second half of the century had still to arrive. Petőfi wore a house cap with the dressing gown; this was simply protection against draughts common in houses of the period.

It is hard to say how eccentric Petőfi was in the way he dressed, especially if we consider him alongside his contemporaries. The following description by Jókai is of interest as the people he mentions belonged to the same social group as Petőfi: ‘It is common knowledge that Petőfi liked to be original in the way he dressed. Sometimes he wore his Notary of Peleske costume, sometimes a braided military coat he had had made from black tafota, plain woven with black flowers. The most famous Hungarian tragic actor, and Petöfi’s favourite, Gábor Egressy, wore similar clothes. The only difference between the two was that while Petöfi’s costume was trimmed with braiding and buttons around the ankles of the trousers, Egressy wore long, cordovan leather boots. It was fashionable during conversation to pull the bootleg down with one hand to wrinkle the throat of the boot.

‘This was not considered strange. Everybody dressed as they wanted. Fashion magazines only contained photos of women’s fashion; we never saw pictures of foreign men’s fashion, only Hungarian ceremonial attire and brave warriors with leopard skins thrown over their shoulders, and tailors were still called tailors not confectioners. We called men who wore Paris fashions “dandies” and did our utmost not to look like them.

‘Imre Vahot had his own ideas: a dress frog hanging from under his braided coat, with a red waistcoat underneath.

‘I remember [historian] Pál Vasvári’s distinctly Hungarian coat. It had grass-green braiding, and extremely loose, open calf-mouth sleeves with pink lining; in the heat of a speech he would push them up to his elbows.

‘[The poet] Kálmán Lisznyay’s Victorian-style outfit was preserved for posterity in a lithograph: wheat-flower coloured, hip-length braided coat with red lapels and three rows of lead buttons on the chest. Similar trimmings on the sleeves and the side pockets, and a Tur-style fur cap.

‘Károly Sükei [writer] preferred oriental fashion: on one occasion he wore a red fez, on another he wore a tall, top hat which, at the time, could only be ordered from Bucharest.

‘[Romantic writer] Lajos Kuthy wore velvet. It suited him: he was a handsome lad.

‘In contrast, Gazsi Bernáth, an eternal source of

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