THE TALL HAT SURVIVES THE WAR

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 64, 10 December 1918, Page 5

THE TALL HAT SURVIVES THE WAR

*'or somo fifty years the tall hat lias lioeu an object of ridicule with our humorists, says a writer in the "Jfauche.stor Guardian." Tin.' war, it was thought, would cause its disappearance, but it has resisted all attacks. .A. recent photograph showing « group of. Allied states, wen iu conversation—Mr. Lloyd George, 11. Clemenceau, and Baron Sonnino—depicted thoni all wearing this "emblem of Western civilisation." Are wo ever to die delivered from the tyranny of this ceremonial headgear!' Obviously pot yet, at any rate. ' The other day a certain French aristocrat nf plebinn sympathies determined to free himself from its domination. Purchasing a cap, he presented himself at a frond's house, to -which he was always welcome. Kcceived at the door by a footman, he was not allowed to enter. It was held that ho was not properly dressed—pas en tenue convennblo! Furious, ho wrote in the visitors' book, "Alphnnso K de Paris. Wearing a cap." But the following day he returned, wearing an irreproachable nice tall hat! Thore is considerable difference) of opinion on the origin cf the tall hat. Thrt "Encyclopaedia Britanniea" unhesitatingly declares that the tall hat is "coextensive with civilisation," and asserts that, it was invented in Klorenco about 1700. On the otlmr hand. "The Times" of January 1(1. 1707, reports that John ITotbcringloii, haberdasher, of the Strand. iva« clinical with .•ansing _ a riot through wenri'iT a hot "shaped like a slnve-i>ipo." Whon brought before the magistrate* lie decbirod (hat all llritish citizens had the rich): of (.housing the tyne of lint which Miey believed most suitable. Earlier lliin tins, however, in 1730. Franklin visited Paris in -a lull hat, and immediately the Parisian liatmakera flooded the shops with similar hats, which, hisfop; (ells us, "were adopted by the revolutionaries because they came from the land of liberty." Tlioro is something startling in tho fact, that tall hats were worn by the victims nf tho I autos-da-fe of the Holy Tn.nuisitiom