It is one of the curious things about really great men that they are unable to resist the bizarre in hats. They don’t turn out in strange trousers, or curiously contrived coats. You don’t see them walking about in sandals, or veldtschoons. They don’t tie up their beards with ribbon; or shave their eyebrows; or put caste-marks on their faces. Right up to their head-coverings they are indistinguishable from you and me. I don’t wish to flatter us, but very often they are less pleasant to look at ... and then their greatness declares itself, or their originality breaks loose, or some other eerie characteristic finds its appropriate expression, in the form of an article of apparel about as distinctive and ugly as Britannia’s helmet.
Not long ago I met a noble Viscount, a man who might easily become Prime Minister—I saw him, I mean; I encountered him in the street. He was wearing a hat that suggested a bowler, but was not a bowler—that might have been a “Daily Mail” hat, only it was black with a dull surface, and, if I may so put it, had soft rounded lines in place of sharp ones—that—that in fact was indescribable. The rest of his garments were those of a normal citizen. There were no unfamiliar excrescences on his coat. His collar and tie were much like my own.
Later in the day I saw in front of me a tall, hurrying figure striding towards the House of Commons. The stooping gait and sombre clothing might easily have been those of a mere scholar or clergyman. But the figure bore upon its head a shapeless contrivance of purple velvet; and by that I knew it was—(well, you know who it was as well as I do).
Look at Mr. Winston Churchill. Look at Admiral Beatty. Whoever saw a service hat quite like Admiral Beatty’s? Though I admit, in his case, the oddity is accentuated by his way of wearing it. Look at the hats of foreign potentates. Look at——
Look at Mr. Lloyd George. I have never actually seen him in one of his “family” hats—but I know his hatted appearance intimately through a picture. It is a photograph representing “the man who won the war,” as a vigorous smiling personage in a grey tweed suit. It seems to be very much the kind of suit that you or I might select for golf. But—here distinction creeps in—the upper part of his body is swathed in something that resembles a horse blanket ... and he is crowned with the headdress of a Tyrolean brigand.
I am going to be a great man. I know it by my hats.
SHAREHOLDERS’ BLOOD
GRAND (TRUNK) FEATURE SERIAL.
CANADIAN FILMS LIMITED.
We are in the Wild West of Canada—a land full of mustangs and moccasins. People with hard faces are riding about in strange clothes. Gently nurtured maidens are scrubbing out the cowshed, or digging up the manure heap. The hired-woman is sitting in the sunlight with a book. It is a typical scene in a British Dominion; we know it is Canada, however, because there’s a flick, and the screen says:
THIS IS THE CITY OF BISON SNOUT,
FED BY THE GRAND TRUNK RAILWAY,
CANADA’S PREMIER RAILROAD.