Fond Wife: "What do you think of Bertie's new hat, dear?"

Her Candid Sister: "Well, dear, I think it looks as though somebody had begun excavating to find his brains, and had given it up in despair."

Novelties v. Revivals

There is one grand distinction between men and women in regard to dress. Women (or those who dictate their fashions) are divided between novelties and revivals, and the revivals are generally of the most outrageous absurdities. It is otherwise with the simple male. He deals far less in revivals, and when he hits upon a good novelty he generally sticks to it. In this category I would unhesitatingly include the brown boot, to which Punch devoted the following instructive article, modelled on the style of the Daily Mail, in the year 1903:—

THE CULT OF THE BROWN BOOT

No serious student of dermatology can have avoided noticing the enormous increase in the use of brown boots in the last quarter of a century. In 1879 a clubman would no more have thought of walking down Pall Mall in brown boots than of flying. But now even archdeacons frequent the Athenæum Club in that ubiquitous footwear.

Necessity is probably the mother of invention, as Lord Avebury has pointedly remarked, and the introduction of the brown boot is due, according to a well-known Bond Street maker, to the exigencies of a retired General, who, finding it difficult to get his boots adequately blacked at his chambers, suggested, as a solution of his embarrassment, that it might be possible to devise a form of boot in which blacking could be entirely dispensed with. The example at once provoked imitation, and now it is estimated by Dr. Nicholson Roberts in the Bootman that in London alone 1,250,000 pairs of tawny-coloured footgear are sold in the year.

Boots, it may not be generally known, are made from the hides of various animals, terrestrial and marine. The skin is removed after the animal has been slaughtered, not before, and is then subjected to a variety of preliminary processes of a mollifying character, of which the most important is that of tanning. Tan, or tannin, as it is more correctly called, is a substance of a friable texture and a highly pronounced but hygienic odour. It is principally found in Indian tea, whence it is extracted by machinery especially designed for the purpose, and stored in tanyards. It is also occasionally used to deaden the sound of traffic and provide equestrians with a substratum calculated to minimize the wear and tear of their horses' hoofs. Dogs of certain breeds are also technically described as being "black and tan."

The process of bootmaking, of which the headquarters is at Northampton, will be familiar to all who have attended the performances of Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger. It involves the use of powerful cutting instruments, cobbler's wax, needles, thread, and other implements, and the principal terms in its somewhat extensive terminology are vamp, welt, upper leathers, and nether sole. Bootmakers, like tailors, commonly sit cross-legged at their work, and hold pronounced political views; hence the term freebooter. But it has been noted that the makers of brown boots incline to Liberal Unionism. Their patron saint is Giordano Bruno, and in theology they affect latitudinarianism.

The term "brown boots," it should also be noted, is a misnomer, as it includes shades of yellow, orange, and russet. Army men affect the latter, while stockbrokers and solicitors prefer the former.

In conclusion it may be worth while to record certain established rules, the disregard of which may have untoward consequences. Black laces do not harmonize well with brown boots, nor is it de rigueur to wear them with a frock-coat, or when in evening or court dress.

THE SEX QUESTION
(A study in Bond Street)

The information here imparted must be accepted with certain reserves, and the same remark holds good of Punch's picture of Church Parade in 1906, where hatless "nuts" smoking pipes, wearing Panama hats, knickerbockers and even dressing-gowns, are shown mingling with more correctly attired pedestrians. But, allowing for exaggeration, the picture reflects a real tendency—towards greater comfort and less convention in dress. The "nut" depicted in 1907 wears a coat with a pronounced waist, and highly coloured hose, but in 1910 Punch descants lyrically on the announcement, made by the Daily Express, that "the reign of the passionate sock is over," though a man might "still let himself go in handkerchiefs." The poet ironically bewails the fiat which dooms our socks henceforth to silence:—