HATS.
“Your bonnet to its right use.”—Shakspeare.
Newton observed this Shakspearian injunction by always taking off his hat when he pronounced the name of God. This was a right use. The grandmother of Guy Faux devoted one to a strange use when she bequeathed her best velvet hat to a nephew. I have often wondered if he went to church in it! The grandees of Spain treat their sacred sovereign with less respect than Newton showed for a sacred name. It is the privilege of the grandees of Spain that they may stand with their hats on in the presence of their sovereign. There is but one noble in England so privileged,—the head, so to speak, of the De Courcys, Earls of Kinsale.
It is just six centuries and a half since Philip of France sent over a knight to summon King John to answer for the murder of Prince Arthur, or abide by trial by combat. John had no relish to do either, but he looked round for a substitute willing to meet one of the alternatives. There was a gallant soldier in prison of the name of De Courcy. He had conquered Ulster for his master, Lackland, and had been rewarded with captivity because he had not done more. His fetters were struck off, and he was asked if he were willing to be champion for John in this bloody arbitrement. “No, not for him!” cried De Courcy, “but for my country, ay!” The adversaries met, yet did not come to an encounter; for the French knight, not liking the look of his gigantic foe, declined the combat, and so lost his honour. John and Philip, who were together present, directed De Courcy to give them a taste of his quality. Whereupon the champion placed his helmet upon a post, and cleaving through the first into the second, his sword stuck so fast in the wood that none but himself could draw it out. “Never unveil thy bonnet, man, again, before king or subject,” was the cheap privilege accorded him by the economical John; “but tell us why thou lookedst so fiercely round ere thou didst deal thy dainty stroke.” “Because, had I failed, I intended to slay all who had dared to mock me.” “By the mass,” said John, “thou art a pleasant companion, and therewith Heaven keep thee in good beavers!”
It was long the custom for the De Courcys to wear their hat, but for a moment, in presence of their respective kings, just for the purpose of asserting their privilege, and then to doff it, like other men. The head of the family, at one of George the Third’s Drawing-rooms, thinking this not sufficient assertion of his right, continued wearing his court head-piece throughout the time he was in the “presence.” The good old King at length extinguished this poor bit of pride, by bluntly remarking, “The gentleman has a right to be covered before me; but even King John could give him no right to be covered before ladies.” The rebuke was most effectual; and De Courcy saw, to his horror, that the entire court, ladies, princesses, courtiers, and attendants, were wreathing a broad girdle of grins “all round his hat.”
It is said that when Fox the Quaker had an interview with Charles the Second, the King observing that his “friend” kept on his beaver, immediately took off his own. “Put on thy hat, friend Charles,” said the plain gentleman. “Not so, friend George,” replied the King; “it is usual for only one man to be covered here.” It was a neat retort, and may serve as a pendant to the remark of the peasant boy, whom Henri IV. had taken up behind him, and who pretended that he would take the lad where he might see the monarch. “How shall I know the King when he is among so many nobles?” said the rustic, as he rode en croupe behind the sovereign, of whose identity he was ignorant. “You will know him,” said Henri, “by his being the only person who will keep his hat on.” At length the two arrived where the King’s officers awaited him, and they all uncovered as he trotted up to them. “Now, good lad,” said he, “which is the King?” “Well,” exclaimed the boy, “it must be either you or I, for we have both got our hats on!”—An old-world story, I fear, but not mal trovato.
Hats have been of divers service in battle. The plumed hat of Henri IV. was the rallying point of his followers. In later times, the head-covering was put to good purpose by a ’cute Highlander. In the Peninsular war, one of the 93rd and a French infantry-man came upon one another in a wood. As their pieces were unloaded, they both rushed to the cover of a tree, in order to put their muskets in deadly order; but this done, neither was inclined to look out, lest the other should be beforehand with him, and let fly. At length the Highlander quietly put his feathered hat on the end of his piece, and held it a little beyond the tree, as though a head was in it, looking out. At the same moment the impatient Frenchman reconnoitered, saw his supposed advantage, and, from his rifle, sent a ball through his adversary’s bonnet; thereupon the bonny Scot calmly advanced with his loaded piece, and took his enemy prisoner without difficulty.
I do not know if it ever occurred to any one that hats had something to do with the dissolution of the Long Parliament; but such is the fact. As soon as Cromwell had declared that assembly non-existent, he flung on his hat, and paced up and down the Parliament Chamber. The members, however, were piqued by such truly cavalier swagger, and would not budge an inch. Cromwell called in Major Harrison and the guard. The Major saw how matters stood, and he felt at once that he could get the ex-deputies out much sooner by courtesy than carbines. Accordingly he approached the Speaker, and taking off his own hat with much ceremony, he bowed low, kissed the fallen official’s hand, detaining it at the same time with such gentle violence that the deposed dignitary was constrained to follow whither the very polite but unwelcome republican chose to conduct him. The Major led him out of the Hall, we are told, “as a gentleman does a lady, the whole Parliament following.” Thus a hat in hand helped to do what a hat on head failed to accomplish; and the Long Parliament resisting rudeness, yielded to gallantry, and was demolished for ever.
The close of the last national Parliament held in Scotland has something in connection with the hat. On the 22nd April, 1707, that illustrious but sometimes turbulent assembly adjourned never to meet again. There must have been some aching hearts under the old-fashioned dresses of many of the members; but there was no sorrow to be read on the brow of Seafield the Chancellor. He put on his hat as he pronounced, with brutal levity, the annihilation of the parliamentary body. Had he done it to hide confusion or to mark contempt, there might have been some excuse for him, but it was a mere formality; and he unfeelingly added thereto, words which were the cruel knell of the dying victim. “There,” said he, “there is the end of an auld sang!” It was a song that, in its day, had been sung to some tune, despite some harshness and occasional discord; but, as the Chancellor remarked when he put on his hat, there was an end of it.
When Sir Edward Coke, in 1645, was trying Mrs. Turner, the physician’s widow, as an accessory before the fact in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury (the poor woman had a penchant for poisoning people,—but we have all our little foibles), he observed that she wore a hat, and he bade her take it off. “A woman,” said he, “may be covered in a church, but not when arraigned in a court of justice.” The lady tartly commented on the singularity that she might wear her hat in presence of God, and not in that of man. “For the reason,” said the judge, “that man with weak intellects cannot discover the secrets which are known to God; and therefore, in investigating truth, where human life is in peril, and one is charged with taking life from another, the court should see all obstacles removed. Besides,” he added, “the countenance is often an index to the mind, and accordingly it is fitting that the hat be removed, and therewith the shadow which it casts upon your face.” The hat was taken off; but the lady, although a murderess, was modest, and she covered her hair with a kerchief.
Had good Mrs. Turner been like the ladies and gentlemen of Natal, she might have puzzled the chief justice. The Natal “fashionables” wear hats of from half a foot to a foot in height, made of the fat of oxen. They first gradually anoint the head with a purer grease; and this, mixing with the hair, fastens these bonnets on during the lives of the wearers! Or the fashion of the Myantses would have done. These people carry on their heads a slight board, a foot long, and half of that broad; with this they cover their hair, and seal it with wax. They cannot lie down or lean without keeping the neck straight; and the country being very woody, it is not uncommon to find them with their head-dress entangled in the trees. Whenever they require to comb their hair, once or twice a year, they have to pass a preliminary hour in melting the wax, before they can get their hats off.
Better keep them on than take them off to such poor purpose, as was once observed in the case of one of the celebrities of the Place Royale, Beautru, whose name was a mine of tinsel to the little punsters of Paris, in the reign of Louis XIII. Beautru was bold, haughty, and an inveterate gambler. He was a libertine both as to morals and religion, and the slanderer par excellence of his age. Richelieu had a strong liking for him,—proof enough that he was not worth the affection of an honest man. His repartees were more spiced with wickedness than wit. One day, on passing in front of a crucifix in the public streets, he, with an air of humble reverence, raised his hat. “Ah!” exclaimed one who saw the unwonted action, “that is what I call setting a good example.” “Very good!” cried the scoffer, pushing his hat firm upon his brows, “but you will be pleased to observe that though we bow, we are not on speaking terms.”
The Place Royale was in the olden times the sanctum sanctorum both of fashion and wit; and never had either a more celebrated high-priest than Voiture. This famous Euphuist was only the son of the keeper of a wine-shop, but he used to say that he had been born again in the society of Madame and Mademoiselle de Rambouillet. He was a renowned humourist, was given to love-making and to card-playing, but rather to the latter than the former. He was remarkable for the fashion of his hats, which he wore in the very extreme of the mode, like Don Basilio in the ‘Barber of Seville;’ and he never uncovered even to the greatest noble, until the latter had first lowered his bonnet to him in testimony of salute to the wit of the son of the wine-dealer. He once brought two bears from the street into the boudoir of Mademoiselle Rambouillet; and the lords and ladies both laughed and screamed at seeing Voiture cover their heads with the hats of two of the company, and give the animals fine Greek names, as was the custom of the Euphuists of the day. It was he who uttered the neat expression applied to Bossuet, when the latter, at the premature age of fourteen, delivered a sermon before the gay sinners of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, at midnight. Voiture sat with his hat on to listen to the discourse, but when it was concluded, he uncovered, and making a low bow to the young orator,—“Sir,” said he, “I never heard a man preach at once so early and so late!” and the gallants putting on their plumed hats, declared with round oaths that Voiture’s wit had capped young Bossuet’s sermon!
It was in truth a strange locality, that same old Place Royale. The Arnault family, with their grave manners and fashions, were perhaps the worthiest of the residents of any age; but it is not among them that we must look for striking anecdotes respecting passing modes. These are more plentifully furnished by the household chronicles of the more worldly people. The Marchioness de Sablé and the Countess de Maure were among these latter. They were next-door neighbours, and they daily sent each other little billets, remarkable for the aristocratic contempt which they showed for orthography; and little patterns of head-dresses, quite as remarkable for their grace and “killingness.” It happened one day that the Countess was sick, and thereupon the Marchioness resolved to pay her a visit of condolence, in state. She was poor and proud, and her pride and poverty were displayed in the circumstance of ceremony, so to speak, with which she waited on her much-afflicted friend. She could not, like an honest woman, put on her bonnet and carry a posset under the folds of her farthingale to the noble patient. That would have been derogatory to both noble houses. Accordingly, she descended her grand and not over-clean staircase, beneath a canopy which consisted of nothing more than the top and vallance of her cook’s bedstead, upheld on crossed staves by two grooms, who bore their burden with uncovered heads, as though royalty were walking beneath the striped-linen canopy of the old cook’s couch. But it was a canopy, and so there was dignity therein, though it was rather of a dusty sort.
While people were laughing at this illustration of pride in Paris, London was being sadly scandalized at a royal illustration of obstinacy. When William III. went to church, it was impossible to induce him to take off his hat. He might indeed doff it during the liturgy, but the preacher was no sooner in the pulpit than on went the ponderous beaver, and up fired the indignation of the beholders. William cared not a jot for their indignation. The Dutch wore their hats during Divine worship, and he had not ceased to be a Hollander simply for having become a King of England. Besides, that ancient and scriptural people the Jews sat in their synagogues with their heads covered, and was not he their most religious and gracious king?—and did it not become him to follow the practices of a Biblical race, when the doing so tended to the increase of his comfort, and jumped with the inclination of his caprices? And so the broad hat was worn, and censure disregarded.
In the middle of the last century, when actors at their benefits expected great houses, the pit was not only incorporated with the boxes, but a graduated building was erected on the stage for the superflux of audience. The consequences were sometimes ridiculous enough; exempli gratiâ:—
When Holland, the Chiswick baker, played Hamlet, at his first benefit at Drury Lane (1762), the little tillage poured out all its inhabitants to do him both honour and profit; and I do not know if the predecessor of the present estimable rector, the Rev. Mr. Bowerbank, was not at the head of them. However this may be, there was assuredly amongst them a young Chiswick maiden, who contrived to seat herself at a corner of the lowest seat of the amphitheatre, with her feet resting on the stage.
When the Ghost appeared, Hamlet’s hat fell off; and this so excited the commiseration of the damsel from Chiswick that she gently stepped forward, picked up the hat, and with her own hands placed it upon Holland’s head, with the broad corner foremost, as it might have been worn had Hamlet been exceedingly drunk. Holland gravely finished the scene, but his appearance was too much for the gravity of the house; and although the audience, becomingly but with difficulty, restrained their risibility till the young prince with the queer hat and his respected sire’s ghost had diversely departed, they burst out into so uproarious a laugh then, that the whole house rang again; and Holland too when he was led to a glass, and contemplated his own counterfeit and highly ridiculous presentment.
Such was a hat on the English stage; here is one on that of America. Mr. Charles Kean, when once playing Richard, at New Orleans, observed, as he was seated on the throne, and the curtain was rising, that his noble peers wore their hats or caps in his presence. With his truncheon to his lips he contrived a stage whisper, which said, “Take off your hats; you are in the presence of the king.” “And what of that?” roared high-reaching Buckingham, looking round at the audience, and smacking his own cap tighter on his circumspect head; “what of that? I guess we know nothing of kings in this country.” The New Orleaners were in raptures, and the king sat corrected.
In old days there was not only a fashion in the hat, but also in the cock of it. The famous battle of Ramilies introduced the Ramilies cock of the hat. In No. 526 of the ‘Spectator,’ “John Sly, a haberdasher of hats, and tobacconist,” is directed to take down the names of such country gentlemen as have left the hunting for the military cock, before the approach of peace. In a subsequent number is told how the same John Sly is preparing hats for the several kinds of heads that make figures in the realm of Great Britain, with cocks significant of their powers and faculties. His hats for men of the faculties of law and physic do but just turn up to give a little life to their sagacity. His military hats glare full in the face; and he has prepared a familiar easy cock for all good companions between the above-mentioned extremes.
Admiring mothers would sooner have followed their sons to the grave than see them walk about with hats uncocked,—whether the form took that of a spout or the point of a mince-pie. The German Kevenhüller came on about the accession of George III. They were as tasteless as those French chapeaux à cornes, of whom Mr. Bob Fudge says that he
“would back Mrs. Draper
To cut better weather-boards out of brown paper.”
At this time, we are told, there was the military cock and the mercantile cock; and while the beaux of St. James’s wore their hats under their arms, the beaux of Moorfields Mall wore them diagonally over their left or right eye. Some wore their hats with the corners which should come over their foreheads, in a direct line, pointed into the air. These were the Gawkies. Others did not above half cover their heads, which was indeed owing to the shallowness of their crowns. A hat with gold binding bespoke a man given to the pleasures of the turf. The tiny Nivernois hat came into fashion early in the reign of the third George; and it is said that gold-laced cocked hats used to be worn in the year ’78, because they had a military look with them, and would therefore protect the wearer against the press-gangs that were then more than usually active.
When round hats came in, at first merely for morning or undress wear, but finally became a fait accompli, like that other little matter, the French Revolution, all the young wearers of them (and there were, at first, no others) were denounced as “blackguards” and “highwaymen.” The youthful votaries of fashion retorted by nicknaming the three-cornered hats, as “Egham, Staines, and Windsor,” in allusion to the three-fingered road-post pointing in that tripartite direction. The flat, folding, crescent-shaped beaver, called a cocked or an opera hat, was still to be seen as late as 1818; and a party of gentlemen returning on foot from Almack’s on a summer’s morning, with pantaloons tight as the Venetian standard-bearer’s, and hats cocked according to the mode, presented a rather martial look. Since that time, the round hat has gained headway; even coachmen only wear the old cocked covering on state occasions; and the ugliest article that ever could be devised for the purpose seems to be planted upon our unwilling brows for ever.
In New, as formerly in Old, England, Quakers objected to take off their hats. A judge in the former locality once remarked thereon, that if he thought there was any religion in a hat, he would have the largest he could purchase for money. Poor Essex, at his mock trial before his enemies in Elizabeth’s palace, was compelled to stand uncovered. He was so embarrassed with his hat and the papers in it, that he forgot something of what he had to say; and perhaps too much care for his hat helped him to lose his head.
Finally, do my readers know why “beaver” was the originally favourite material for a hat? Dr. Marius was told by a Jew physician of Ulm, that it was because by wearing a cap of beaver’s fur, anointing the head once a month with oil of castor, and taking two or three ounces of it in a year, a man’s memory may be so strengthened that he will remember everything he reads. I would eschew French velvet, and would stick to beaver, if I thought that.
And now as hats were put upon heads, the next fashion that will naturally come under our notice is the fashion of Wigs and their Wearers. Previous to turning to which, I may mention, by way of being useful, that “beaver” is not beaver in our days; and that perhaps is why we are all so forgetful of our duties. English beaver is a mixture of lamb’s wool and rabbit’s fur. Silk, satin, and velvet hats are made of plush, woven for the most part in the north of England. Paris hats are made in London from French plush, of which we import annually about 150,000 lbs. We export few hats except to our own colonies. They are chiefly made, like our wigs, for native wear.