A QUESTION OF HATS.
Americans treat women better both at home and abroad than they are treated elsewhere, and they certainly show the sex more deference and respect in public and private than women are accustomed to receive in many older countries.
An American seldom addresses one of the gentler sex with his head covered, unless it is in the open air; and while this is also the custom in some European countries—in France and Switzerland, for instance—it is not nearly so common in Germany or Great Britain.
Englishmen with whom I have talked do not seem to notice such things, but I know from long and careful observation, that men in London sit with their heads covered during the whole of a theatrical performance. They occupy seats in “the pit,” to be sure, but “the pit” in London is compared by some with the back rows of the parquette in American theatres.
Should this meet the eye of a barrister, he might charge me with being too general in my remarks. If he demands, in his “answer” to this “complaint,” a “bill of particulars,” I will mention, among places where I saw men sit covered during the whole evening, the Savoy Theatre, when “The Gondoliers” was played, and the Shaftesbury Theatre, where Willard performed in “Judah” in September, 1890.
At a Covent Garden concert in the same year, I saw four or five hundred persons on the floor (men and women) and not more than six men carried their hats in their hands. I remember remarking at the time that one-third of the number of hats were of silk plush (“top hats”), one-third were derbys of a brownish hue, the other third were mixed—all sorts.
Even in the dress circle at a Covent Garden concert some men wear their hats the whole evening—white hats, derbys, and heavy silk hats—and this in warm weather, too. It no doubt is the custom; at any rate such was the case on a certain “American night” (summer of 1890) when American airs were played, Mrs. Alice Shaw, the beautiful whistler, being the special attraction among the solo performers.
And when men at London theatres do remove their hats, they seem to do it reluctantly. They will enter a theatre and enter a box, remove their overcoat and gloves, take out opera glass, and spread the play bill before them, and then, as a last thought, if they think about it at all, the hat will be slowly removed; they seem to be unwilling to part with it. How different in American theatres, where every man quickly doffs his hat the moment he enters the door of the auditorium. It is all the more noticeable in London theatres because the women are obliged to remove their hats before entering, and excepting at the Lyceum, the Savoy, and possibly one or two other houses, they are obliged to pay for their care.