[lbo-talk] Hats (was Message from Louis Proyect)

[Tom Walker]

I am an inveterate wearer of hats. Usually a cap in the winter and a 
panama in the summer. There's a picture of me at around five years old 
wearing a captain's hat. I loved that hat. When I was in my twenties I 
started wearing a cowboy hat that I found at a friends house. One day I 
wore it out in the rain all day and it turned into a shapeless mass. 
I've had a fedora, a leather Greek fisherman's hat (it eventually looked 
like roadkill), a beret or two and a military officer's cap with a shiny 
brim. My deepest craving for the past few years has been for a top hat. 
But I also want a frock coat and waistcoat to go with it and that's 
maybe a bit too much money for costuming. My brother recently sent me 
some old photographs including one of my great grandfather standing 
outside a Victorian house wearing a frock coat, top hat, waistcoat and 
bow tie. If I could only look like that my life would be complete.

Speaking of hats, there is the marvelous passage in Carlyle's Past and 
Present about the seven-foot hat that the hat-maker in the Strand sent 
around town to advertise his wares instead of trying to make better 
hats. See: http://www.victorianweb.org/genre/sagewrt2.html

A hat, by the way, is an indispensible part of a sandwichman's wardrobe.

The Sandwichman