FOOLS IN A MORRIS DANCE.
Bodleian MS. (free rendering).
VIII
HATS, CAPS, AND BONNETS
Mad as a hatter? How comes an honest craft to be thus maligned? Hatters were never mad—that is, not more so than the rest of us—until they adopted the pot of the chimney as a model.[21]
Nature has provided in the hair a natural covering for the head. Hats are not really a necessity.
Dr. Jaeger ("Health Culture") discusses the probable reasons for the greater prevalence of baldness among men than among women. While rejecting the theory that the competition of the beard is precarious to the hair of the head, abstracting from the latter its due nourishment, and pointing out that the long beards and luxuriant heads of hair of our ancestors refute this theory that the more strenuous head-work which falls to the share of the male sex is responsible for the loss of hair; that the unnatural custom of cutting men's hair, first adopted when nature was abandoned in favour of the fashions of civilisation, is to blame for it; that drink, dissolute habits, or heredity is the cause—he finds that a far more probable cause is the difference between the male and female head-covering, "which latter is, as a rule, lighter, more airy, and more porous than the usually almost waterproof and exceedingly absurd male head-coverings, such as the stiff felt hats, and high hats, with the strip of leather which encircles the forehead and effectually retains the perspiration."
"The best head-covering would certainly be—none at all. But usage, and in many cases weather conditions, render this impracticable."... "Not only are the hard hats, now in such general use, injurious on account of the pores of the material being closed, impeding the passage of the exhalation from the head; but the shellac used in stiffening them has an injurious effect, from which the cherry gum used in the case of the soft hats is comparatively free." He adds: "Of course, soft hats cannot be worn in all cases—on ceremonial occasions the hard hat may be chosen; but ordinarily the hygienically superior soft hat should be worn." Why, however, on occasions of ceremony? Was ceremonial non-existent before the advent of the nineteenth century? It would rather appear that if the nineteenth century is conspicuous for anything it is for its absence of ceremonial. There is absolutely no reason why a hat of a particular density, or even of a particular shape, should be necessary to occasions of high ceremonial. Moreover, in this connection it may be very pertinently asked, Is artistic invention so utterly dead that it cannot devise a head-gear which shall fit in with its surroundings on such occasions as call for more dignity and impressiveness in the matter of costume? It is, however, an incontrovertible fact, as a well-known present-day writer has pointed out, that "revolutions are practicable in everything—in manners, morals, government, even religion—sooner than in clothes; and that sumptuary laws are the only laws that have always failed of being obeyed." It is universally admitted that modern dress is intolerably ugly; that it fails, not only upon its artistic side, but also upon the score of utility; yet every suggestion for its improvement is always met by a flat non possumus.
MRS. ANNE WARREN.
After Romney.