STRAW HATS AND DIGNITY. T HE Daily Telegraph, we suppose on
good authority, declares that the County Court Judges of England have come to a momentous decision. According to a para- graph in Saturday's issue, "it is announced that the County Court Judges have passed a new rule enabling them, without loss of dignity, to wear straw hats during the hot weather." Many people will no doubt read this paragraph with amuse- ment. County Court Judges, like Bishops, policemen, and rural Deans, are for some unexplained reason always sur- rounded with a faint nebulous envelope of humour. Why there should be what the Latin grammar calls "a tending" to laugh if not at, at any rate in connection with, these useful and important classes, is a very puzzling question; but we can- not expect that the form of the Daily Telegraph's announce- ment will check the merriment, "be the same a little more or less," which naturally centres in their Honours. One need not be very waggish to wonder how the new arrangement will prevent a loss of dignity, or to speculate by what cunning device of drafting the enabling rule is made to operate as a bar to a waste of dignity only in the hot weather. A plain man might imagine that the way the hat was worn would have more to do with the loss of or gain, of dignity than any rule ever drawn. For example, a straw hat worn at the back of the head, or set well on the side, as Mr. Toole sets his in Walker, London, or pulled down over the left eye, seems at first sight so terrible a non - conductor of dignity that nothing could neutralise it. Apparently, however, the rule acts as a kind of talisman, and "daring the hot weather" , is a final and complete estoppel to any accu- sation of want of dignity. We confess we would give a great deal to see the actual words of the rule. Does it, we wonder, define a straw hat? It surely ought to do so, for nothing is more of the essence of the question than the kind of straw. Much as we believe in the innate dignity of the average County Court Judge, both in hot and cold weather, and ready as we are to admit the efficacy of a well-drawn rule in determining matters of convention, we hold, and are pre- pared to stick to our opinion, in spite of all opposition, that there are forms of the straw hat which it is a mere infamy to put on one's head,—hats which even the senior County Court Judge could not wear, with the thermometer at 102, without an entire loss of dignity, nay, of the right to human con- sideration. We shall not describe these particular hats too minutely, lest some depraved and misguided man, drawn by the dreadful attraction of bottomless evil, should be led to wear them. Suffice it to say that they are made of a kind of scaly straw only fit for a fish-basket, and that they are sur- rounded at the top by a hideous clere-story—probably to introduce the air to the top of the head. It is this clere- story—this abomination of ventilation—which constitutes their peculiar vileness, and makes it harmful merely to see them. No County Court Judge could touch such a hat and not be defiled, and we sincerely trust that they have been scheduled as in no case within the rule. Another form of straw hat which we hold to be very doubtful wear for County Court Judges is the large-brimmed Panama. It is a very comfortable type of hat no doubt, but no one who reflects for a moment can doubt that it is distinctly unsuited to a Judge. It has far too melodramatic an air about it. Judge Lynch might wear it as he rode his fiery mustang to string up a dozen or so of negroes, but not a man on his way to administer indifferent justice in a small-debts Court. A man with such a hat on feels fit for serenades, poker across an empty rum-barrel, a :ten-mile ride in the moonlight, and any and every sort of wild and reckless deed. For his Honour Judge — to wear it down to Court would be to invite trouble and confusion. Who, after putting on such a bead-gear, could sit down soberly to consider whether some- body's action had not been "negligence amounting to fraud,"— we believe the phrase is legally a little pass& but let it stand. Why, the very essence of Panama straw is negligence and abandonment of all the more prosaic duties. A man who acted up to the spirit of his hat, and every man is liable to do that at times, might do an act of daring self-sacrifice and heroic devotion, might swim a flooded creek, or leap a "canyon" to save an old lady's favourite cat, but he could not help scorning to pay his just debts, and would distinctly refuse to pay damages for acts of wilful neglect. How then could a County Court Judge, with his head hot from contact with a Panama straw, hope to be able to perform his duties in a satisfactory manner P It would be absurd to expect it of him. Equally unsuitable would be that sort of cheap, loose straw hat sold in English village shops. The hats are innocent enough, in spite of their picturesqueness, but they are not in character, and would be very likely, if not to deflect the mind of the Judge, to make substantial tradesmen and other persons of local importance in the Circuit think less well of him. They are hats which belong of right to the sentimental village artisan. They would be appropriate, too, for a male pupil-teacher in very hot weather, or for a photographer, except when taking a group at a diocesan synod or other clerical gathering. For County Court Judges they are distinctly too unsub- stantial, and could not be worn with any propriety. The true wear for a County Court Judge, if he must wear a straw hat—a proposition which, we think, has hardly been sufficiently proved—is undoubtedly a plain, thick straw, with a straight, stiff brim, moderately high in the crown. The plait of the straw should not be excessively broad or again excessively narrow, but a good compromise,—something which should in- stinctively suggest, as it were, "Pay 5s. now, and 2s. 6d. a week for the next ten weeks." One would not like to insist that the straw should be mixed black and white in colour, but unquestionably it would be exceedingly appropriate, and it might indeed become a principle that the more the black predominated the more orthodox the hat. But though one may pretty easily arrive at the ideal make of straw hat, one has not by any means accomplished the whole task. One of the great difficulties connected with straw hats—a diffi- culty which we do not doubt was felt by the Committee of County Court Judges who drafted the rule—is the fact that straw hats involve ribbons, and ribbons open a vast and fer- tile field of difficulty and danger. If straw hats stood alone it would, as we have shown, be comparatively plain sailing when once the main principle had been accepted, but the ribbon problem, inseparably connected as it is with the straw- hat problem, is of terrible dimensions. We sincerely trust that the Council added some directions on the ribbon question. It would have been sheer downright cruelty to let the County Court Judges loose on a world of ribbons unrealised and, to a great extent, unrealisable. Without some hard-and-fast rule to guide him in the selection of a ribbon—and a ribbon he must have on his straw hat unless he is to look positively dis- reputable—the County Court Judge is as good as lost. The reason is plain, though it may not seem so at first sight. When a hatter or haberdasher sells you a straw hat he brings out a neat box of ribbons and asks you to choose. You hesitate, and he holds them up one after the other, placing the check of the roll of ribbon affectionately against the side of the hat, and asking you if you do not think that they go very nicely. It seems a simple and innocent transaction enough, and yet there is a snare for the County Court Judge in every one of those rolls. How is that P In this way. Say the Judge chooses a neat blue-and-white check ribbon, and then the temperature having risen to the pre- scribed height—we do not know what the degree is, but of course it is laid down in the rule, no body of lawyers would leave a phrase so vague as "hot weather "undefined—goes down to hold a Court in a distant part of his circuit. It is not too much to say that the new hat and ribbon which he wears so lightly may ruin his influence with the suitors of the Court, and inspire them not with the respect which men should feel towards a Judge, but with exactly the opposite feeling. The reason is this. It may easily happen that this innocent ribbon shows the colours of a local boating, cricket, or cycling club of anything but good repute. Instantly people will ask, Why has the Judge joined the " Pedbury Hornets," or the " Dunsbury Grasshoppers" P as the case may be, and a hundred objection- able answers and reflections will be made. The Nonconformist conscience will begin to build a marvellous fabric on the ribbon. Elders, after chapel, will ask each other, How comes it that one in so high a position should encourage young men in smoking, betting, profane swearing, and record-cutting ? The local preacher will recall how, when he admonished young James Jones, "the son of one of the friends at the other end of the parish, now no more, for belonging to an ungodly society, the unhappy lad replied : Why ain't old Judge Blank a bloomin' " Hornet " hisself ; I see'd him with the club ribbon on myself this werry morning. What's good enough for him is good enough for me : so stow it, old Stiggins ! ' His very words, I assure you, dear Mr. Johnson." Every sort of danger lurks in colours. One Judge will try a plain yellow-and-pink ribbon, and stumble into the racing colours of some noble owner. The result will be that half the dis- trict will take tips from his hat. The chief tipster at the Boar and Blunderbuss' will whisper in the bar that he has got "a moral" this time, and will go on to explain how he came to get hold of it. "Did you notice the old Judge this morning ? You did. Well, then, did you see what he'd got in 'is 'at ? Lord X's colours,' and no mistake Well, and what do that mean ? It means to a certainty that Armadillo "11. win the Great Peddlington Handicap 1 Mark my word, the old boy has got a pot on, and wants to show he ain't ashamed of it !" Such talk is certain to follow an in- cautious use of the ribbon. Depend upon it, the County Court Judges have a most difficult task before them. In our opinion, safety lies only in one direction. They must appoint a committee and design a County Court Judges' ribbon, and let its tints and pattern be known to the world. Then a Judge will be known by his ribbon, the hat will become official, and there need be no scandal. A plain straw hat and an official ribbon,—that is the only possible outcome of a rule which we suspect has been somewhat hastily entered upon. Such things as hats and ribbons seem, no doubt, mere things of form, but unless the County Court Judges take care, they will find them, as Bacon said, "things of substance."
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