Sketcher.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1260, 27 January 1883, Page 2 (Supplement)

Sketcher.

HATS OFF. It has been formally set down in the records of the House of Commons, that the Queen’s Message respecting the marriage of the Duke of Albany was “brought up and read, all members being uncovered.” But everyone knows that it was not so, that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and the members for Leicester, Ipswich, and Falkirk failed to respect the custom of the Commons on such occasions. We have the Speaker’s word for it that this violation of etiquette, “must have been due to inadvertence,” although neither of the gentlemen concerned in the “ hat incident” said as much on his own behalf. Some of their friends sought to palliate their infraction of Parliamentary rules by asserting that certain ex-ministers had offended in the same way a few nights before ; but Sir Richard Cross proved that himself and his colleagues were better acquainted with the usages of the House* than their accusers; and by putting the Speaker to the question elicited the information that the rule requiring Messages from the Crown to be received by members with heads uncovered, did not apply to answers or addresses brought down by the Controller, but only to messages under the sign-manual, read by the Speaker from the Chair. This is not the only instance during the present reign of the serenity of the House being disturbed by the hat question; a like hubbub was raised forty-five years ago, upon the very first occasion of the House of Commons receiving a message from Her Majesty Queen Victoria. When Lord John Russell appeared at the bar on the 21st of June, 1837, to deliver a Message from the Crown, in spite of the cries of “Hats off!” and the Speaker’s intimation that members must uncover, Sir James Graham did not bare his head until Lord John had got well on with his reading. Next day he explained that he meant no disrespect either to the Crown or the House, but had acted in strict accordance with old usage, which decreed that members should remain covered until they heard the word Rex or Regina pronounced, and for that he had w’aited. The Speaker admitted that the member for East Cumberland was in the right as to the practice of the House, and excused his own apparent deviation from the rules, on the score of desiring to save time and preserve order. ♦ Cromwell flung his hat on his head when he pronounced sentence of extinction on the Long Parliament; Major Harrison took off his hat very ceremoniously as he approached the Speaker, bowed low, and kissing his hand took possession of it, and handed him out of the House, “ as a gentleman does a lady, the whole House following.” Chancellor Seafield made no such pretence of politeness in dismissing the last national Parliament held in Scotland. He put on his hat, saying, “ There is an end of an auld sang !” An Elizabethan versifier sang.; Before the Prince none covered are. But those that to themselves go bare. A couplet Charles the Second might have repeated for the behoof of Quaker Fox, who, being admitted to the royal presence, did not remove his broad-brim; whereupon the Merry Monarch doffed his own head-gear, impelling Fox to say, “Put on thy hat, Friend Charles,”

and his majesty to retort. “ Not so, Friend George, it is usual for only one man to be covered here.” Penn was as obstinate on the hat question as Fox himself. On returning to his father’s house, after serving a term of imprisonment, the old vice-admiral, anxious, if possible, to be friendly with his son, offered to ensure that he should not be molested for his practices or opinions, provided he would promise to uncover to the king, the Duke of York, and himself. After considering the matter for some days William informed his father that he could not agree to any species of hat-worship, and the irate admiral forthwith ordered him out of his house. Not always have the “ Friends” proved so staunch. Recounting his experience as one of a deputation of Presbyterian, Baptist, and Independent ministers, going to congratulate George the Fourth on his accession to the throne, Dr. Leifchild says : “ While waiting there we saw a small deputation of Quakers advancing with an address, which one of their number held before him on a frame. One of the pages coming towards them to remove their hats, Dr. Waugh, who loved a joke, said to the foremost Quaker in an audible whisper, ‘ Persecution, brother !’ to which the brother significantly replied, while pointing upwards, ‘Not so bad to take off the hat as the head !’ ’ A grandee of Spain is privileged to wear his hat in his sovereign’s presence for a certain time, carefully graduated according to his rank. John de Courcy, the conqueror of Ulster, won the some boon from King John by frightening the knights sent by Phillip of France to call John to account for the murder of Arthur, out of the field ; and then giving a taste of his quality by placing his helmet on a post, and cleaving it through with his sword, the weapon defying anyone but its owner to draw it out of the post again. This stalwart champion’s descendants were wont to assert their privilege by keeping their heads covered for a moment or so in the royal presence ; but at one of George the Third’s Drawing-Rooms, the then Lord of Kinsale chose to wear his head-gear so long that the old king’s attention was drawn to his unmannerly bravado. “ The gentleman,” said he, “ has a right to be covered before me, but even King John could give him no right to be covered before ladies.” At the trial of Mrs. Turner as an accessory to the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, Sir Edward Coke ordered the prisoner to remove her hat, saying : “ A woman may be covered in church, but not when arraigned in a court of justice.” The accused tartly commenting on the singularity that she might wear her hat in the presence of God, but not in the presence of man, Coke replied; “ For the reason that man with weak intellects cannot discover the secrets which are known to God; and therefore, in investigating truth, where human life is in peril, and one is charged with taking life from another, the court should see all obstacles removed. Besides, the countenance is often an index to the mind, and accordingly it is fitting that the hat should be removed, and therewith the shadow which it casts upon your face.” Mrs. Turner’s hat was taken off, but she was allowed, for modesty’s sake, to cover her hair with a kerchief. Chief Justice Glynn did not find the Quakers so amenable to the order of the court, when at Launceston Assizes, in 1656, they made their first public protest against uncovering the head. Upon Fox and his companions in misfortune being brought into court, the judge bade them put off their hats. Instead of obeying, Fox asked for a scriptural instance of a magistrate commanding prisoners to put off their hats. The Chief Justice enquired in return if hats were mentioned at all in the Bible ? “ Yes,” answered Fox, “in the third of Daniel, where thou mayest read that the three children were cast into the fiery furnace by Nebuchadnezzar’s command, with their coats, their hose, and their hats on. Here was a proof that even a heathen king allowed men to wear hats in his presence.” Not condescending to argue the matter further, Glynn cried, “ Take them away, gaoler,” and they were taken away, and thrust among thieves “ a great while.” When Penn and other Quakers appeared at the Old Bailey to answer their delinquencies, they entered the court covered, somebody removing their hats for them. Upon fairly getting inside, the court directed them to put their hats on, and no sooner had they done so than the Recorder demanded if they did not know they were in a king’s court ? Penn replied that he knew it was a court, and supposed it to be the king’s, but he did not think putting off a hat showed any respect; whereupon he was fined forty marks, and remarked that he and his friends had come into court uncovered, and in putting on their hats again they had only obeyed orders, therefore, if anyone was to be fined, it ought to be the Bench. We suppose the Mine Court of the Forest of Dean was not a king’s court, since witnesses before it were permitted to keep their caps on while giving their evidence, that is, if they claim to be “ free miners.”

Jewish congregations worship with their heads covered I so do the Quakers, although St. Paul’s injunctions on the matter are clearly condemnatory of the practice. The Puritans of the Commonwealth would seem to have kept their hats on whether preaching or being preached to, since Pepys notes hearing a simple clergyman exclaiming against men wearing their hats in the church; and a year afterwards (1662) writes: “To the French Church in the Savoy, and there they have the Common Prayer-Book, read in French, and wliich I never saw bafore, the minister do preach with his hat off, I suppose in further conformity with our church.” William the Third rather scandalised his church-going subjects by following Dutch custom, and keeping his head covered in church, and when it did please him to doff his ponderous hat during the service, he invariably donned it as the preacher mounted the pulpit stairs. When Bossuet, at the age of {fourteen, treated the gay sinners of the Hotel de Rambouillet to a midnight sermon, Voltaire sat it out with his hat on, but uncovering when the boy-preacher had finished, bowed low before him, saying : “ Sir, I never heard a man preach at once so early and so late.” As a token of respect, uncovering the head is one of the oldest of courtesies. Says an ancient rhyme : If you any good man or woman meet, Avail thy hood to him or her And bid “God-speed dame or fere.” Shakespeare’s Osric takes no heed of Hamlet’s suggestion that he should put his bonnet to its proper use, “ ’tis for the head ; ” and when urged again to cover, replies: “ Nay, in good faith, for mine ease, in good faith.” Massinger’s Wellborn meeting Marrall in the open country, asks him, “ It’s for your ease you keep your hat off? ” and that worshipper of the rising sun answers : Ease, and it like your worship ! 1 hope Jack Marrall shall not live so long, To prove himself such an unmannerly beast, Though it hail hazel-nuts, as to be covered When your worship’s present. In Charles the First’s time, even the ladies doffed their head-gear in salutation. The writer of Will Bagnall’s Ballet says : Both round and short they wear their hair, Whose length should woman grace; Loose like themselves, their hats they wear, And when they come in place, Where courtship and compliments must be, They do it, like men, with cap and knee. Lamenting the decay of respect to age, Clarendon tell us that in his young days he never kept his hat on his head before his elders, except at dinner. A curious exception, that, to modern notions of politeness, but it was the custom to sit covered at meals down to the beginning of the eighteenth century. Sir John Finnet, deputy master of the ceremonies at the Court of King James the First, was once much puzzled as to whether the Prince of Wales should sit covered or no at dinner in the presence of the sovereign, when a foreign ambassador was one of the guests ; since the latter, as the representative of a king,-was not expected to vail his bonnet. Giving James a hint of his difficulty, his majesty disposed of it when the time came, by uncovering his head for a little while, an example all present were bound to follow ; and then, putting on his hat again, he requested the prince and the ambassador to do likewise.

“ Hats need not be raised here,’ 5 so it is said, runs a notice in one of Nuremberg’s streets. “ Hats must be raised here,” should have been inscribed on the Kremlin gateway, where a government official used to stand to compel passers-by to remove their hats, because, under that gate, the retreating army of Napoleon withdrew from Moscow. Whether the regulation is in force at this day, is more than we know. The stockbrokers of New York have a hatetiquette of their own, forbidding the wearing of a white hat when summer is over. How the rule is enforced may be learned from the following extract from a New York journal : “ Wednesday last was ‘ White Hat Day’ on the Stock Exchange. Formal notice had been given early in the week that at noon yesterday all summer ‘ tiles ’ would be ‘ called in,’ but many of the members either forgot or disregarded the warning, and suffered in consequence. William Jieath was the first victim. About 1 p.m. he entered the Exchange in a brown study, with his thumbs thrust in the arm-holes of his waistcoat. In a moment his tall white hat was whirling in the air, and as it touched the ground twenty brokers jumped upon it. This sort of diversion was kept up the whole afternoon. Whenever a person entered wearing the proscribed headgear, a shout went up, and before the alarmed broker could run the gauntlet, his hat was crushed out of shape.” Before the afternoon was over a third of the brokers “ on the floor” were bare-headed, and dozens of white hats ornamenting the gas brackets. In the evening the neighbouring hatters drove a brisk trade, and had golden reasons for blessing the institution of White Hat Day. All the Year Hound.