ALL KINDS OF HATS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23269, 11 February 1939, Page 14 (Supplement)

ALL KINDS OF HATS

I ft a recent address to the British Association, Lord Raglan in his paper, " Survivals in Diess, said it was wrong to suppose that the hat'was invented for the protection of the head. Most of the peoples whom we might suspect needed protection of this kind did not wear hats. Whatever the difference betwefen the iiisides of men s and women's heads, the outsides were much the same, and a similarity of headgear would naturally follow, if hats were mfcd-nt solely to safeguard the cranium. We are grateful to Lord Ragian for this piece of information, ior, while men's hats fail of perfection, some styles" ifi woififcn'S Hats have to be seen to be believed.- Man is a great believer and it is comforting to this spirit, in him to heat that something in which he wants tti beiievt» is really true.; ]|iit, to believe in hats, calls for the faith of an ancient prophet of the wilderness. It just can't be done. We do not generally like a person who points'out our shortcomings and possibly we cannot believe in hats because they /have a habit of revealing oitr weaknesses, male or female, whether it be a matter of drawing a number out of oiie of them, or of merely taking one round on the special occasion. Somebody contributed a famous expression to the language when he swore to eat his hat, and Chesterton pictured such a mail wearing a cabbage on his head, having repented a too rash vow. Eating or chasing it, however, the result is every bit as demoralising. The first may threaten a serious bout of indigestion, the latter may mean a breathless sprint in the face of silent amusement, with the added vexation of seeing a good hat mauled by a tramcar or blown out to sea. .

If women' like a new hat, men hate to part with an old one. There is a sentimental interest about anything old; and man is the sentimental sex, so much so, that his weakness has become a byWord where it' might reason- * ably have been expected to be a password. Just as he learns to love a dog o# a horseionly to lose it,' so a hat comforts and consoles him through all weathers, aud sins onily in growing old. and out-of-date. Regardless of his whims, it has its blessing and encases his head in a bandeau of memories like

Psychology and Philosophy

By NORMAN feoYEiS—lllustrated by Minhinnick

the famous shacko in the song, nono the less plcasiig in its effect for being unobtrusive arid foi* sitting Easily and lightly like a good man's conscience. But your new hat is a troublesome thing. On a woman, it inav please a weakness by exacting envy in her kind, more critical of her then any two men. When a man tries on his new headgear, however, he looks hard at himself, striving to appear natural and outwardly unconscious of an inward awkwardness. Is it as good as his old hat? Will it suit him as well? So attached is he to the old love that the new one musi resemble it as nearly as possible. Yet, alas, how frail is human nature! Into the gftiish light of the new day he walks, feeling like a king nowlvanointed, with the sun gleaming on the lustrous 'hup as it once did on the helmet of Acliilles, a nap which liis fingers may iiot soil, nor his hair oil desecrate, " neither may the rain despoil nor the dust dishonour it. Watch him after a sudden shower. How tenderly he wipes away each drop, and prays that the band may recover something of its pristine glory. The ritual over, the hat is donned again with mixed feelings, among which joy has a considerable part. No longer can he be accused oi! Wearing a new thing. With reasonable claims to truth, he can

now reply to innuendos: "New hat! Why, I've had it a long time!" and henceforth masquerade in the doubtful duplicity of the half-and-half. Eventually, most of lis become adapted to this wrong-headed state of affairs, because it is comfortable and satisfying. The old error is preferred to tho new-fledged truth and wo step out in the same mental bowlers years after they have outlived their usefulness. There is, of course, a hegemony ol -hats which can bo suitably described in rhvme. It begins with: "Top-hats lor bureaucrats," and ends on tho homely note of And caps for chaps." In between are ntaiiy gradations too numerous to mention here, from the bowler ito the boater. Tha former is very respectable and appears over night like a mushroom, somewhere in the vicinity of £4OO a year; the boater, like the white butterfly, descends upon the countryside with the first days of summer, cuts a devastating course with, all that is young and tender, and disappears. with the first blast of winter. A page in our history is written in cricket and football cans, which nearly lose their lure with the gilt of their tassels, while the memory of days in tlie sun seems to grow more vivid with their passing. At the time, it was the cap that mattered, now wo know what wo wanted was tho zest in living, the Splendid freedom of tho field, the

fellowship of sporting mdn, and. the consciousness of carrying on a trndition. But in those days there were mortarboards, soon to bo fohsnken for tie übiquitous and later, for tbe tin lint.

There is, of course, a hatless brigade, which Would appear rather difficult to place in oiir scheme. A. A. Grace, who wrote the illimitable " Hone Tiki Dialogues/' represents a much-puzzled Hone summing up the subjfcct in the following fashion: " Sly brutter tell me t'e pakehri pfeller no wear t'e potai pecanse he too hard up. Mitta Keritena say te pakeha pfeller no wear t'e potai pecauso ,he likOe t'o wool to grow. Mitta Kerelii, you tell me t'e young pfeller lio wear t'o potai pecause te —te pfashion. All gammon! My brutter, Mitta Keritena, you, all talkee t e humbug. T'e pakeha pfellef no wear t'e potai pecause he got t'e crafck iri t'o head, allasame t'e porangi, dllasame t'o cranky |)follor. J ' ». ; . Hoho Tiki sadly and significantly tapped Jus head. ... " T-that it," ho said, " He aliasaihe t'e runatic."

If hats are entirely useless appendages, I wonder what observations Lord Raglan would make in tbe light of Hone's indictment. 11l the same sketch Hone visualises the possibility of the pakeha becoming like the Maori, because it is the fasliiott to discard most of his clothing and burn himself to a cinder 611 the beaches. " Allasame t e green hat." He says. " One pfeller get t'e green hat—all t'o pfeller hkee t'e green hat." Altogether, it reads as if it were written yesterday. Hone may hover have worn one, biit he did know something about hats and their p>s|fchology. ■ Perhaps he could have told us why a hat at two guineas is twice as good as 0110 at half the price, because we never could. Yet Lord Raglan's warning is a seasonable one. Too frequently we are inclined to take the outward semblance of things for the things themselves. We forget that a top-hat canndt make a statesman, anymore than a sombrero can make a cowboy, or a tin hat inake a soldier. Perhaps these are the points that the originator of 1 the expression, " as in ad as a hatter," wished to make, because the first hatter certainly set w a problem, not only in headgear itself# but in the ritual of hat-raising and uncovering the head, which applies as readily to the great occasion, as to the small,* and has its faithful observance at funerals as well as in lifts.