The Savannah morning news., 1901-09-22
CHATS OF THE MIGHTY
History and Anecdotes About the
neutrality-suspicious. Curious
Headgear.

Headgear.
From the London Hatter's Gazette.
Ever since a certain John Hethering-
ton on Jan. Is, 1897, appeared in the
Strand wearing, to quote a newspaper
report of the period, upon his head
what he called silk hat, a tall
structure having a shiny lustre and
calculated to frighten timid people"
the top hat which, to quote the
''Thunderer" of the same date, was
destined to work a revolution in head
gear has been the headgear of the
mighty; and in the case of Joseph
Hume, says the Globe. in one of it's
chatty Turnovers, who, when~member
of Parliament for Middlesex, proposed
in 1884 a fixed duty on imported corn,
apparently had the largest head of any
man famous in English history, judging
from some interesting statistics re-
specting the headpieces Of celebrities
which were forwarded, together with
travelling cap, by an admirer to Mr.
Gladstone in 1897. His, size in hats, i'm
deed, was SIS, or half a size larger than
that of DR.. Thomson, who Succeeded
Archbishop Longley at York, and of
Daniel O'Connell, whose head covering,
which was on view a few years ago at
a meeting of the County Kildare Arch
geological Society at Mas, measured
81 inches in width and 10 inches in it's
longest diameter, and was of sufficient
dimensions completely to extinguish
the chairman of the meeting as far as
the chin when he elected to try it on.
Following Daniel O'Connell in the size
of headgear comes Dr. Thomas Chal-
mers, the eminent theologian and one
of the few Britons who. have been
elected members of the French sInsti-
tute, and following him w. NJ. Thack-
cray, who was a short head, in sporting
parlance, in front of Mr.. Gladstone,
Charles Dickens, and Robert Burns,
whose head was never graced by a. tall
silk hat, for the poet died exactly six
months before the happening Of the
stirring event that marked the odca-
sion of the birth of the tall hat
The painstaking correspondent of the
Grand Old Man did not conclude his
statistical record of headpieces with
Burns, but extended it so far as to re-
cord the fact that our King Edward
VII requires a number seven head COW
ering, his nephew of Germany a hat
bearing the mystic figures 6B, the late
Dean Stanley a So tile and the Duke
of Cornwall and York a, ,.topper" of
the proportions represented by the size
64s-information that the original re-
cipient found, as he mentioned when
acknowledging the gift. fall of inter-
est" Large as some of these mighty
head coverings appear they would, if
placed side by side with a couple of
straw hats made in 1899 and last year
at Luton, appear almost Insignificant
In the one case the crown. of the straw
erection measured about twelve inches
high, and across the brinl the meas
urement was six and a half feet; the
hat, which required the services of
three experienced men to block=and
iron it, contained no fewer than 200
yards of jumbo plat one inch wide,
and the hat box in which 1t Travelled
to Newcastle (Australia) measured
seven feet square, and was two feet
deep. The second Straw was even
larger, for it measured over seven feet
across the brim, twenty-one feet round
the brim, and three feet round the
crown; moreover, it, contained $50
yards of dark blue and white jumbo
plat, and no fewer than four men of
vast experience were occupied in Its
manufacture. Wearing this, the larg-
est hat in the world, even Lablache,
the great singer, who, overcome with
emotion, once entered the royal pres
ence wearing a hat on his head and
carrying one in his hand, could not
have become oblivious to its presence.
1t will be recalled by some old play
goers that when Queen Victoria, de-
sirous, perhaps, of putting the great
basso of the century and her old tu-
tor at his ease, laughingly remarked.
Monsieur Lablache, you have got one
hat too many" the signer wittily and
promptly replied, Pardon your Maj
esty, there are two hats too many for
a many who has lost his head"
In the early days of the last century
| e I'D ..Nxv n
a castor" a title that gave rise to
| the retort uttered by the first
Baron Chelmsford when coming
! away from a reception with Lord
| Cockburn and Sir Frederick Pollock.
| Said Cockburn, Chief Justice: 81 can't
| find my castor" "Then try Pollock's,'
rejoined the Lord Chancellor When
the century closed NJ. Carolus Duran
styled the unpopular but only head
covering worn by polite made society
| in town 1.-THE, last word of the horri-
ble," but, Notwithstanding the vituper-
ations of the artistic and the slang of
the period, the top hat continues on its
career, undeterred by the hard things
said about it. The reason of this lies
| in the startling fact that the topper, -
though most easily damaged, is one OF
tie most indestructible of things-a fact
| that ought to prove consoling to those
members of Parliabent who like Sir
f. Powell in 1897. after delivering a
crushing speech, likewise crush their
top hats by sitting on them, or have
them crushed by others. This was the
fortune of some unfortunate wight a
few sessions ago, the culprit being Lord
Stanley, who, inadvertently passing
between the Speaker and the member
addressing him, was assailed with such
shouts of "Order!" "Order!" that he
hastily sat down, alas! on an immacu-
late silk hat gracing the bench in his
immediate vicinity.
Granting the indestructibility Of tall
silk hats II placed in the hands of ex-
perienced renovators and duly steamed
and reshellacked. it may be asked what
becomes of all those hats that are moi
transported to Australia or Africa, to
be proudly donned by the artless saw
age. The natives have been seen, OF
the west coast of the latter continent
| swimming out to incoming steamers
each man wearing renovated SILK
hat still wrapped in all the glory OF
the white tissue paper in which 1t left
it's native Bethnal Green, Whitechapel
or Barmondsey, the homes OF the reno
vators. The answer to this question
could be supplied, perhaps, In batec
breath by many-they are collected. il
seems. perhaps incredible that any
man should care to turn his house into
a museum OF shocking bad hats" but
n Is done none the less. as is evidenced
bv the startling prices that some fam
o1s hats attain, such. for instance, al
| - .,,,, cam In gold paid for the Mex.