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.