I scoured the entire home library in search of something – anything – written by that trivial (because that is how I remembered him) Fredro. I found the century-old Kalosze [Wellies], which I must describe here as a one-time read book, a bit like messages sent online and disappearing after a while.
Kalosze, which I do not know by what miracle, are in my possession, were published in 1916 in Skład Książek Teatralnych, Powieściowych, Religijnych i t. p. [Storehouse of Theatrical, Fictional, Religious Books, etc.] owned by W. H. Sajewski and located at 1017 Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago. Kalosze fell apart in my hands on the first reading, but not in the way that editions in Communist times used to do. These, bound together with hard glue, although quickly turning into a collection of loose pages, could somehow be read even a second and third time. They simply needed to be glued or clipped together. The pages of the American edition were breaking and crumbling. Published on acidic paper, the 'comedy in one act' turned into a pile of rubbish after the first reading. Is there anything to regret? Well, not really.
This comedy is as silly as I could expect from Fredro, who wrote for acclaim. His work is a germ of slapstick comedy, its actors being 'Laurel' and 'Hardy'. Props for the laughs include a banana peel, falling oversized trousers and untied shoelaces that one can 'kill oneself over' just to make it 'funnier'.
Fredro composed his comedies no differently. In the discussed Kalosze, Miss Emilia is curtsying out of the window to a stranger who, she thinks, bows first. Emilia’s father wants to marry her off. He has just returned from the club where he goes to play the whist. He came back unhappy and sneezing because someone made a mistake and took his wellies, leaving his own. The result was that he caught a cold. When asked by his sister why he did not put on those wellies that had been left and come back in them, Inicki replies: 'How could I possibly take my feet in someone else’s hat or put someone else’s wellies on my head?' He goes on to explain that their owner may have suffered from a set of plagues: uncleanness, whooping cough, scarlet fever, and smallpox. How, then, could he put on wellies belonging to someone like that? Nothing doing. He sneezes.