Muffs for Men.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXX, Issue XI, 14 March 1903, Page 765

Muffs for Men.

When Mr. Paderewski went along the streets of the American cities with his precious pianist’s hands thrust into a fur muff, the pussers-bv looked at him and smiled. tn the eighteenth century, or earlier, he would have attracted less attention. for, as a writer in the “Detroit Free Press” says, men often wore muffs. In America young women made muffs for their sweethearts, and in one simple society the young men were sometimes embarrassed by the gifts. Franklin writes in one of his early letters: “I have received fioni Jane S. a great muftee of red eamlet cloth, embroidered with yellow flowers. It vexes me to carry it, and I am laughed at on all sides, but take it with me everywhere lest Jane be dis pleased.” References to the muff are to be found in Pepys’ diary and in Goldsmith. That interesting but garrulous snob, Horace Walpole, says in a letter to George Montayne: “I send you a decent smallish muff that you may put in your pocket, and it cost but fourteen shillings.” The muff became a political emblem in the days of Charles James Fox. All Fox’s adherents carried muffs of red foxskin, which they waved when their leader appeared. The muff went out of a man’s dress at the coming of the drab age, together with the bright-coloured coats and oreeches that gentlemen abandoned at the opening of the last century. But on a sharp winter’s day. when the cold strikes through gloves and pockets, many a man looks enviously at the big furry roll in which my lady carries her small hands, safe from the frost.