You must keep your hat on!

[sollers]

I forget which writer it was who commented on the tendency of wild, unconventional young men of artistic leanings in the 19th century to wear very broad-brimmed hats to show their wildness and unconventinality - and drew attention to the fact that they were never wild and unconventional enough not to wear a hat at all.

It's hard in the 21st century for some people to realise how universal it was to cover one's head until well into the 20th century. Men, who couldn't use hatpins to anchor their hats, had particular problems, and the accidental loss of one's hat was a source of humour. There's a Punch cartoon concerning a bishop who has lost his hat overboard while crossing the Channel and is trying to find a replacement for his very distinctive headgear; communication with the French shopkeeper doesn't really happen, and he ends up with something like a Pierrot's conical construction on his head. There's a Dornford Yates story that centres on a hat being blown off in the wind and landing on top of a vehicle; the protagonist has to start by buying a replacement, right away.; going around bareheaded was only marginally better than going around without his trousers.

What headgear a man wore could send all sorts of messages, including the situation he was in and his social class; "cloth cap" was synonymous with "working class" (a man of higher status might wear a soft cap in some circumstances but it was often tweed, which didn't count as "cloth). Bowlers, being so hard, were often associated with situations where one might get hit on the head; and were also the symbol of the foreman. Top hats marked status, but posed an obvious problem in theatres, hence the invention of the collapsible "opera hat". For cycling, and for travelling generally, in the late 19th/early 20th century the favoured headgear was the "travelling cap" with earflaps; worn, when cycling, with a Norfolk suit and when travelling often with an Inverness cape - this is what Sherlock Holmes is shown wearing in one Sidney Paget illustration; it was only later that the travelling cap was referred to as a "deerstalker", which is why ACD fans can't find any textual references. These costumes were so normal that they weren't worth mentioning.

The universality of a man covering his head is relevant to a passage I came across the other day (and which prompted these musings) in "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" where T.E. Lawrence expounds on the wearing of Arab clothes:

"..I failed to make a good impression. I was travel-stained and had no baggage with me. Worst of all I wore a native head-cloth, put on as a compliment to the Arabs. Boyle disapproved...

"...The skirts were a nuisance in running up stairs, but the head-cloth was even convenient in such a climate. So I had accepted it when I rode inland and must now cling to it under fire of naval disapproval, till some shop should sell me a cap."

In other words, even strongly disapproved-of headwear was better than none.

The situation was just as strict for women. I remember that even in the 1950s my mother would not go out of the house, even to the corner shop next door but one, without a hat or a headscarf. At the time I dreaded growing up and having to wear a hat as I was under the impression that hatpins worked by nailing the hat to the head (this was based on my experience of hairgrips which felt as if they were attaching my hair to the scalp). How one tied the headscarf sent out signals. Tied under the chin was fairly posh. Working class women used a form that had been widespread during WWII to keep dirt out of the hair and hair out of machinery: fold the scarf diagonally, place the corner over the forehead, bring the ends round and over the corner, tie ends and tuck the corner over them.

Fortunately by the 1960s the rules were changing and the whole thing became optional. I wear hats now, as I did then, for special occasions, to keep my head (and particularly my ears) warm in winter and to keep the sun out of my eyes in the summer. "Special occasions" include Morris dancing: a straw hat with white artificial flowers for North West Clog, and a glorious confection based on a topper bought from a wedding hire firm with a tall mini-garden of artificial flowers, so high that I often have to duck when going through doorways, for Border. When it comes to Morris, exactly the same applies to men, though some sides are more liable to decorate their hats with real flowers. A tall man with really tall decorations (especially if they include pheasant tail feathers) may need to approach the bar in some pubs in a bent-kneed crouch.

But if anybody is writing about any period up to that time, they really need to bear in mind what their characters have on their heads.

Comments

[legionseagle]

You are, of course, overlooking the most important example of literary hatlessness; where the absence of headgear is the factor which leads a young man to be fingered for murder, since nothing short of having done in one's sweetheart could possibly justify wandering hatless across Ilkey Moor.

[legionseagle]

I'm also amused to recall that in my detective story the chauffeur returns the lost hat to the little girl whose pony has bolted with her before anyone enquires as to whether she's been injured.

[sollers]

Very true.

[mme_hardy]

"Bowlers, being so hard, were often associated with situations where one might get hit on the head; and were also the symbol of the foreman. "

Oh, I didn't know that! Over here bowlers are thought of as very British and vaguely upper-class.

There were also, for women, complex rules that I never quite internalized about when you wore a hat indoors. Basically, if you were a visitor in somebody else's house, you left your hat on, but there were exceptions depending on how long the visit was. In church and in restaurants and in theatres you always wore your hat. There are chunks of the 18th/19th centuries where, when at home, you wore a special indoor headcovering.

One of my principal screams when watching any historical drama is "Where's your hat, lady?!??!!" There are lighting problems, and the leading lady doesn't want her face obscured, and in most of the medieval period (whatever you mean by that) almost none of the hair was visible at all, and as a result you wind up with stuff like the signature Tudor hood being worn as a sort of hairband holding back the long, luxurious hair. IIRC there are many scenes in Downton Abbey where the older ladies are wearing hats and the younger not.

Paging Mr Betjeman

[mme_hardy]

DEATH OF KING GEORGE V
('New King arrives in his capital by air' Daily Newspaper)

Spirit of well-shot woodcock, partridge, snipe
Flutter and bear him up the Norfolk sky:
In that red house in a red mahogany book-case
The stamp collection waits with mounts long dry.
The big blue eyes are shut which saw wrong clothing
And favourite fields and coverts from a horse;
Old men in country houses hear clocks ticking
Over thick carpets with a deadened force;
Old men who never cheated, never doubted,
Communicated monthly, sit and stare
At the new suburb stretched beyond the runway
Where a young man lands hatless from the air.

Re: Paging Mr Betjeman

[legionseagle]

Interesting question as to whether an aircraft constituted "indoors" for the purposes of hat wearing (the female passengers certainly all wore hats on PanAm, I noticed)

[legionseagle]

In the Petherbridge Lord Peter Wimsey Bunter almost invariably wears a bowler.

[mme_hardy]

Contrariwise, there's the immortal Mr. Steed. (My husband informs me that the French version was called "Melon Hat and Leather Boots".

[legionseagle]

Civil servant.

[mme_hardy]

Aha! Thanks; I'd never made that connection. (What's Bond's excuse? If he's undercover, I am a can of smoked herring.)

[legionseagle]

Bond is quintessentially in the sort of job where he risks a hit to the bonce on a regular and frequent basis, of course.

[mme_hardy]

And yet the most prominent bowler hat in the series is worn by a minion.

[mildred_of_midgard]

My only encounter with mindless obedience to strictures concerning headcoverings was in my (American) high school cafeteria, ten to fifteen years ago. It was an absolute that upon entering the cafeteria, students must remove their hats (which was usually a baseball cap). Pushing, shoving, cutting in line, all were nominally forbidden but the rules against them rarely enforced, as the aides were stationed with their backs to the lines for food so that they could face the doors. Oblivious to the chaos of anarchy behind them, they accosted any incoming students who might have forgotten to take off their hats. I always imagined entire staff meetings devoted to organizing the campaign against the wearing of hats in the cafeteria.

Need I say that it drove me *crazy* that in such an informal environment as a cafeteria, where nobody even cared about basic table manners, the less aggressive couldn't get food in a peaceful and timely manner because the authorities were too busy enforcing a pointless rule about baseball caps.

[sollers]

I shall be posting separately on the medieval (and earlier) situation - I'll look forward to any comments you have.

[rosinarowantree]

My father, in the 50s, never wore a hat at all. I was quite disconcerted to see a picture of him, taken when he was natty (back in the early 30s, I suppose) wearing a rather dashing trilby. His colleague in the solicitor's clerking line wore a bowler: I can remember being most impressed.

It is incredibly difficult to remember hats in writing - say military fiction/RPGing. Not the doffing and saluting stuff, which needs a hat, but the difficulties of coping with say a tall shako when fighting. Does they all fall off as soon as the horses start to gallop? If you have a strap, does it get caught round your neck if you duck under trees? Where do you put it while trying to look inconspicuous?

As for doffing, I was listening to The Quiet Gentleman, and had paused it, then forgotten where I was. The first words were "... with one hand he removed the beaver from his head, and held it out ..." Out of context, it is true Gary Larson.