Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845

Hats, properly so called, whether of cloth or fur, were evidently the invention of some out-of-door people; but then they were not the brimless pyramidal canisters of the present fashion, but were either caps with dependent brims, or else broad and flexible Spanish sombreros. The very idea of a hat is that of utility — something to keep off the sun and the rain — any thing will do for warmth that will aid the hair in keeping in the natural caloric of a man's head; and hence we much doubt whether the Irish, that hot-headed nation, ever wore hats in early times. From the want of shade being early felt by civilized nations, more than shelter from rain, and from hat-shapes being found on early southern monuments, we are inclined to think that the hat was more extensively worn in Southern than in Northern Europe; more, as it is, in Southern England than in Northern Scotland. Hence, although we find many iron skull-caps, like hats, used by the military in the fifteenth century; and although we find traces of hats even in the plebeian costumes of the middle ages — yet we look upon the Spanish and Italian hat of the sixteenth century, as the more immediate origin of its degenerate successor, the actual chapeau. We need not trace the variations of its form through the seventeenth century, from the high-crowned things of Henry III. of France, and James I. of England, to the graceful beavers of Louis XIII., Philip III., and Charles I. of England; the change was all in favour of the beaver; and certainly the hat reached its culminating point of excellence during the reign of our martyr king. Who has studied the splendid portraits of Vandyke, or the heads of Rubens, and has not perceived the uncommon grace given to them by the well-proportioned and not excessive hat? Who does not remember the fine portrait of Rubens himself, with his black Spanish hat turned up in front, the very perfection of that style of head-dress? Put a modern hat by the side of this hat of Rubens, and say which bears off the palm; there can hardly be two opinions upon the subject. The great change of this hat took place, as is well known, in Louis XIV.'s court, where first of all feathers were laid all round upon the flat of the brim, and next the brim was edged with lace, and pinched or cocked up, for greater use in military service. It might have been useful for a military man, especially one who had to handle a bayoneted musket; but it was a fatal invasion of the principle of beauty to adopt a permanent cock. There is no doubt that the flat cocked hat, the small three-cornered pinched hat of the days of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., gave much smartness to the soldier, and much neatness to the civilian; the change, too, corresponded with other alterations of dress, from the loose and flowing, to the tight and succinct principle; but picturesque effect was entirely lost; all the sentimentality, all the romance of the hat, evaporated in the formal cock. But this small flat hat of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was perfection and beauty itself, compared with the outrageous and elevated cocked hat which came into fashion sometime before 1750, and which is the immediate prototype of the present military cocked hat. Here the principle of utility was entirely abandoned; it was sacrificed to the display of an unnatural brim. The hat was no longer formed by the pinching up of a circular brim of moderate dimensions; but three enormous flaps were made to rear their unwieldy height in the air, and were strengthened, stiffened, and supported, against the envious winds, to the torment of the wearer, and to the disfigurement of his person. All through the first half of the tasteless reign of good old George III., did this horrible covering disguise the beau's head; and the effect of it may still be judged of by his grandchildren, when they contemplate, not without awe, the rubicund figure of some metropolitan church-beadle with his large-caped coat, silver-headed cane, and monstrous three-cornered hat. Our modern great ladies, strange to say, seem to have an especial affection for this hat, since they take particular care to have a couple of footmen behind their carriage glorying in this capital atrocity, while on the coach-box they encourage the older form of the flat cocked hat of Louis XV.

All cocked hats, be it observed, are glorious rain-traps; the only improvement they are capable of is one not yet patented, namely, the appending of neat flexible spouts, say of Macintosh cloth, from each corner, so as to convey the water in pleasant meanderings over the back and coat-tails. In dry weather these spouts might be tied up, and would form graceful curves either before, behind, or on one side of the cocked flaps, while in a shower they would add dignity to utility, as they hung all adown the back of the wearer. One kind of utility, however, the old cocked hat certainly had; it served in some degree, maugre the looping up of the brim, to shelter the face from the sun; not indeed when worn full front, as it was in Dr Johnson's time, and as we remember the household troops used to wear it — but when, by a daring innovation of revolutionary times, it came to be turned round on its human pivot, and lay gently athwart the line of vision. Thus it is that our generals wear it in this nineteenth century; thus it was that the Great Duke got all through Spain with it; though Napoleon, who greatly reduced its dimensions, always kept to the orthodox full-front; and in all positions, except the latter, it certainly does shade some portion of the face from the sun. But while, for example, the projection of one peak shades the nose, the ears and cheeks are left to fish for themselves; or else, if the hat wheels round again to the front, the ears come under its benignant shade, but the tip of the proboscis suffers awfully. The cocked hat has always been a two-horned dilemma ever since the third peak moved up in the world from its original position of horizontal equality, and aspired to be a near neighbour of the cockade or towering plume.

It was that wicked revolution of France, or rather that dissolute time preceding it, which produced the most mischief in the hat line. Look at any of the pictures of that day — look at the portraits of the Conventionalists — look at the old prints of country gentlemen hunting or riding races at Newmarket — remember the Sir Joshuas in many a noble gallery; and you will not fail to remark that the choice spirits of the day, the go-ahead lads of that time, had let down the flaps of their cocked hats into slouching, and we must say, most slovenly circular brims. There was a sort of free-and-easy look affected in that day about the head, totally at enmity with the prim rigidity of the cocked beaver; you might have taken off your chapeau rond, as it then came to be called, and you might have sat on it — it would have been never the worse; but not so with its stiff old father — no liberties were to be taken with him; once sit upon him, and you would have crushed him forever. This very difference of hats marked a difference of politics — at least in France. There the old chapeau à trois cornes was the badge of the aristocracy: the chapeau rond and the bonnet rouge were sworn brothers in the cause of democracy. The times were getting unhinged; all fashions were relaxing; so were public morals; so were private morals; so were men's hats: hats and heads seemed to have a sympathy, and to have gone wrong together.

And what has been the history of the hat since that day? — the civilian's hat we mean. Who remembers the overlapping crowns which came into fashion soon after the great peace, at a time when Frenchmen wore their brims extravagantly pinched up at the sides, and deeply pulled down fore and aft? Sometimes the hat rose up in pyramidal majesty; sometimes it was shut in like a telescope wanting to be pulled out. And then every kind of fancy man had a fancy hat: there was the Neck-or-nothing hat, the Bang-up, the Corinthian, the Jerry, and the Logic; or else distinguished leaders of ton lent their names to it, and we had the Petershams, the Barringtons, &c. Through every degree of absurdity has the chapeau rond passed, until it seems to have settled down into that quiescent state of mediocrity which marks the decline of empires and of hats. The brim is no longer only half an inch broad as it was once, nor four inches broad as we also remember it: it seems to vary between the limits of one inch and two — a breadth just sufficient to let the line of shade, when the head is erect, come upon the eye-lids, and just sufficient to clear the ears. But if the head be moved ever so little, or if the rain come down ever so slantingly, the services of the hat are at an end: it is well enough to intercept any thing coming down perpendicularly, but "slantendicularly," as friend Slick says — no. Its present height is just enough to prevent your wearing it in a carriage, and such, too, as to give a moderate wind a good purchase upon it: the substance is such that the least exposure to wet ruins it, whether of beaver or silk; a moderate blow will crack or break its form; and for the first week, if you have any thing like a sensitive head, or any bosses of unknown qualities protruding from your cranium, you are doomed to incessant headache from hat-pinchings. It has no properties of usefulness to recommend it, and none of ornament, saving this — if it can be called such — the being an invaluable appendage for a little man to make himself appear tall. What a wide interval from the simplicity of its Phrygian original!

Having, therefore, criticized our present head-gear, and condemned our hats, without pulling them to pieces, let us enquire what a proper covering for the head should be: first of all in point of usefulness, and next in point of comely appearance. But let no man vainly imagine that we expect to suit the fancies of all the creatures privileged to wear hats, or even to cover their heads; we do not pretend to invent, or decide upon, any one given type or form of head-dress. So many are the wants of a man in covering his head, so widely differing from each other are the exigencies of different people, that uniformity in hats is to be given up as a bad job: to attempt it would foil the strength of a Hercules: the utmost we can hope to effect is to lay down certain limits for the variations of this apex of human pride.

For us, then, who live in a climate rainy, windy, hot, and cold, all within any twenty-four hours of the year, just as the case may be, it is plain that we want for general use something that will be proof against the atmospherical accidents that may befall any man who goes abroad to take the air. And here let it be observed, that in reasoning about hats, all thoughts about that effeminate invention, the umbrella, are to be laid aside. This utensil is truly a disgrace to the manhood of the times; and its existence, by allowing people to dispense with warm cloaks and other anti-rain appliances, has caused more disease, in letting them catch cold, than any thing else we know of. Our stalwart ancestors did admirably well without umbrellas; they wore good cloaks or coats, and broad beavers to keep the rain out of their necks, faring not a jot the worse for it. Umbrellas are only fit for men-milliners, Cockney travellers, and women. The nature of a hat, we flatter ourselves, is something independent of cotton and whalebone; and instead of the umbrella claiming precedence over the hat, the hat, we take it, should be above the umbrella. An Englishman's hat, then, should be something that will keep the rain off his face and neck when the weather is bad, and shield his eyes from the glare of the sun on the few days when sunlight is oppressive — and these two requirements settle at once, on all principles of common sense, that a man, if he has only one kind of covering for the head, should have a hat with a broad brim. This is the very foundation of the definition of an useful hat, providing that a hat is really to be the thing worn for protecting a man's upper story. Usefulness will also decide against height in the crown. Cui bono this same high crown of ours, that looks more like a watering-pot deprived of its spout and handle than a reasonable article of human apparel? Down with the crowns, say we! If you will wear a hat, down with your crown. You may put down your half-sovereign or sovereign, or whatever you please, for your new hat first of all, but down with your crown too. Here, gentle reader, you will exclaim against our taste, and will protest that we would sacrifice every thing to that horrid utilitarian principle, which opposes all ideas of beauty and poetry. We are free to confess that, in our opinion, there is not much poetry to be made about such a subject — unless some obsolete verses, "All round my hat," may be alleged to the contrary; but as for the beauty of the head-piece, we protest that we admit its existence, and think that it should be consulted by whomsoever would pay proper attention to his own outward appearance. The merely useful may possibly make the shape approximate to that of a Quaker's or a jarvey's, but the beautiful has to elevate and modify it into the mystical proportions fit for a man of taste. One other quality, however, which is intimately connected with the useful, has to be noticed. The substance should not be hard and unyielding. Witness, ye reminiscences — ye painful images of bygone headachs, even yet flitting through our brain like Titanic thunderbolts! — accursed be the memory of that fellow Tightfit in Old Bond Street, who used to screw his hats on our cranium when we were young, and ere London had awakened us! As you value your comfort, dear reader, never purchase a hard hat. A hard heart may be borne with, but a hard hat — never! And last of all, a hat should be light — yes, the lighter the better — light as a gossamer web, though 'tis a simile that will not bear stretching. You may have the misfortune to be a heavy-headed man, but do not add to it that of being heavy-hatted. Avoid the extremity of suffering; and observe the climax of ill from which we would shield your head — a narrow-brimmed, hard, heavy, high-crowned hat —

"τοδε γαρ βροτοίς μεγιστον ηλθετ’ εκ θεων κακον."

The covering of the head, then, must have its usefulness made ornamental, if not beautiful; and the due ornamentation of it will depend principally upon its form, but also upon its colour and material. Now, form is the principal thing; every one that has half an eye for art will tell you this — 'tis an admitted axiom. Either, then, the shape of the covering should conform to that of the head, or it should not, and we take our ground in support of the latter position. The natural form of the head is determined by the rotundity of the cranium, beautifully modified by the waving curls of the hair — we speak of the abstract well-formed head; and nothing that approaches to the same shape will ever do more than give a bad substitute for the outline of the head as nature framed it. Any covering conceals the hair; and if you remove from sight this intrinsically beautiful integument, it is a principle of bad taste to put in its place only a poor copy of the same contour. If you cover the head, cover it with something that forms lines not curving like the skull, nor yet so angular as to create too striking an opposition of ideas in the mind of the beholder. A close-fitting untasseled skull-cap does not improve the form of the head, for it is not half so graceful as the hair; but a square hat or pyramidal cap is truly detestable. This is the reason why the common nightcap is ugly; it fits the head too closely, and its upper end conveys the ludicrous idea of something made to be pulled at. On the other hand, the double nightcap, pulled out and allowed to hang down on one shoulder, Spanish fashion, is less ugly — though far removed from our own ideas of beauty — because it introduces a new system of curves, and acts as a kind of dependent drapery to compensate for the concealment of the hair. Here is also the reason why the common hat is so frightful; it gives us straight or nearly straight lines, going upwards like tangents from the oval of the face, and cut off above by another straight line (the section of the crown) at right angles: all such lines and angles are foreign to the face and head. The common nightcap is too familiar, the common hat too stiff. Observe the lines of the face and head; the projection of the nose, the rounded angularity of the chin; the vertical section of the head affording curves with decided yet harmonious irregularities; the horizontal section producing a nearly regular contour. Well, it is upon principles of this kind that the covering of the head should be beautified. Now, we profess ourselves unable to make any better reconciliation of the useful with the beautiful for this purpose, than in the small, flexible, light, and broad-brimmed hat, which is still to be found in some Spanish and Italian pictures; a hat not quite so large as that worn in the reign of Charles I., yet with all its freedom and capability of assuming a variety of graceful forms; not so stiff as the beaux of the Spanish court, and the rakes of our own merry monarch's palace made it; not so formal as we know James I. and Lord Bacon used to wear; but something between all these three types. The prevalence of straight lines in it should be avoided without its appearing slovenly, and its dimensions should be such as to consult convenience without relapsing into a homely vulgarity. Such a kind of hat admits of any further ornament which the fancy of the wearer may induce him to add; a feather, a band, a buckle, or even a plain button for occasionally looping up the brim on one side or other, (not two sides, for it would return to the old cocked hat,) — any of these extraneous additions would harmonize, and would be in due character with its shape. Such a hat would certainly be useful; and that it would be ornamental we have only to decide by consulting our eyes, and by looking at our ancestors' portraits of the seventeenth century.

But there is another kind of covering for the head, which, for its peculiar purposes, seems to us more useful and more ornamental even than this hat; we allude to the common round travelling cap, the officers' undress cap in the British army. Are you going a journey? have you any rough work to do? have you got a headach and want something light? would you put on something that will not spoil by being pulled about, sat on, slept on, and stood on? something handy, useful, comfortable, and withal good-looking? — What do you do? you get a foraging cap. Every man looks well in a foraging cap; it harmonizes with every body's face: it makes the old look young, and the young look smart: it is, without pretence, plain in detail, and yet elegant in outline: it has no straight lines in it, and yet its curves are in contrast with those of the head; they run in opposite directions: and the shade of the cap, if it has one, emulates the decisiveness of the nose, and gives character to the profile of the head, just as the nose gives point and force to the face. Nothing so easily admits of suitable ornament: a plain band — a golden one — or even a coloured one — makes it suitable to the various ranks and occupations of men: while its material, admitting of infinite variety, according to the taste of the wearer, never injures the source of its beauty its form. The cap fails in only one thing; it is unfit for rainy weather; it will only do for dry days. Do not attempt to put a flap behind it, and tie it under your chin — you at once convert it into an ugly nightcap; its curves then imitate those of the head, and the ridiculous takes the place of the becoming. For three hundred days, however, out of the three hundred and sixty-five, such a cap may be worn with the greatest comfort and advantage: while, for simplicity and elegance, it has no rival. We exclude most vigorously all other kinds of caps; we admit nothing but the common round foraging cap, with a small shade over the eyes; we especially set our faces against the little quirked Highland cap, now revived, and becoming popular among the southrons. This cap has part of its curves — those behind the head approximating too closely to the curve of the skull: in fact, at the hinder part it is a skull-cap; whereas, the other part of the curves in front are too much in opposition to the outline of the face: they bend over and form an unpleasant contrast with the nose and chin: they are deficient in the shade or visor, and there is not one man in a thousand whose face they suit. All fancy-caps with whalebone, falling tops, angular projections, &c., are utterly abominate; we pin our faith to the quiet, unsophisticated, gentlemanlike cap worn by our officers: it beats almost any other head-dress in the world.

The prevailing tendency of the age is to avoid distinctions of dress except in the value of the material, and then only between the two great divisions of society — the affluent and the poor. Hence all ornament seems to be a superfluity, except upon occasions of public display or military service; and men will not now listen to any one who advises them to put feathers and gold lace on their hats and caps: they would as soon think of returning to the embroidered coats of their grandfathers. The principle is a good one: in the palmy days of Rome, the differences of dress bore no proportion to the differences of station; distinction in dress was the failing of the middle ages, a consequence of some lurking seeds of northern barbarism, which are only now ceasing to be propagated. We seem, like the great men of the Eternal City eighteen hundred years ago, to be looking more at the inward worth and influence of a man, than at his outward state and dress; and it is a good sign of the times; it is a reasonable inclination of the mind; but it confines the exercise of taste in dress. Men of the present day are determined to be plain about the head as well as about the body; all ornament of head-dress they have left to soldiers and to the fairer half of the creation: —sed hæc hactenus— we reserve our remarks on the coiffures of these two classes for another occasion.

H. L. J.

THE THREE GUARDSMEN

Guardsmen have at all periods been a racketing, rollicking set of fellows. Whether ancients or moderns, infidels or Christians, prætorians or janissaries, the mousquetaires and Scottish archers of the French Louises, or the lifeguards of "bonnie Dundee's" own regiment, they have always claimed, and usually enjoyed, a greater degree of license than is accorded to the more unpretending soldiery of the line. The first in the field, and the last out of it, they have sometimes seemed to think that, by thrashing the king's enemies, they acquired a right to baton his subjects, that captured cities atoned for the wrongs of deluded damsels, and that each extra blow struck in the fight, entitled them to an extra bottle in the barrack-room. On duty, discipline — off duty, dissipation — seems to have been the motto of these gentlemen; and if it be the case, that they occasionally forgot the former part of their device, it, on the other hand, is no where upon record, that they were oblivious of its latter portion. Fighting hard and drinking hard, living hard and dying hard, the bravest men and most desperate debauchees of all countries, have worn the uniform of guardsmen.

Our old friend, M. Alexandre Dumas, who, if we may believe one of his biographers, passes twelve hours a-day in driving a goosequill for the entertainment and particular edification of his countrymen, found himself, one fine morning, desperately at a loss for something to write about. He is, perhaps, not the first writer of fiction who has been in a like predicament; and even if he were, it would be neither wonderful nor unpardonable, seeing that his average rate of production is about three volumes per month. There is a limit to all things, even to the imagination of a French romance writer; and M. Dumas, without exception the most prolific of modern scribblers, was for once hard up for a subject.

L'hôpital n'est pas pour les chiens, says the French proverb. It occurred to M. Dumas, that the league or two of books in the Bibliothèque Royale were not placed there for the mere purpose of astonishing provincials, or causing English tourists to stare and lift up their hands in admiration; but that one of the objects of their preservation might well be, that they should afford suggestions to any distinguished littérateur who happened to be, like himself, in want of an idea. Emerging, therefore, from his comfortable abode in the Chaussée d'Antin, he turned his steps in the direction of the royal library, and was soon up to his ears in dusty tomes and jaundiced parchments. After much research, he discovered a folio manuscript, numbered, as he tells us in his preface, 4772 or 4773, and purporting to be a memoir, by a certain Count de la Fère, of events that occurred in France towards the latter part of the reign of Louis the Thirteenth. Upon perusal, he found this MS. so interesting, that he applied for, and obtained permission to publish it; and the memoir in question saw the light under the title of Les Trois Mousquetaires.