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As for the top-hats at which I laughed, he defended them stoutly, saying they were as much de rigueur at The Hague as in London, and he could see nothing comic in wearing them at the seaside.
Zulu hats shaded their eyes from the sun. Bangles shimmered upon their wrists. And the gentlemen wore light frock-coats and light top-hats with black bands. And the aesthetes were in velveteen, carrying lilies. Not that Art and Fashion shunned the theatre. They began in 1880 to affect it as never before. The one invaded Irving's premieres at the Lyceum.
Most of the men wore frock-coats and top-hats the things that we in India put on at a wedding-breakfast, if we possess them but they all spat. They spat on principle. The spittoons were on the staircases, in each bedroom yea, and in chambers even more sacred than these.
Each of them paid twelve roubles a month for their dinner and supper, and Samoylenko made them promise to turn up at two o'clock punctually. Von Koren was usually the first to appear. He sat down in the drawing-room in silence, and taking an album from the table, began attentively scrutinising the faded photographs of unknown men in full trousers and top-hats, and ladies in crinolines and caps.
They stood, two big men in top-hats, plainly to be seen behind a Don in cap and gown, upon a little hill to the right of the bonfire. The flames lit their figures. Metcher, the Don, was reading something from a paper, and, round the hill, derisively dancing, were many undergraduates. Apparently the Proctor found the situation too difficult for him and presently he disappeared.
Old Smallways would sit over the fire mumbling of the greatness of other days, of old Sir Peter, who drove his coach to Brighton and back in eight-and-twenty hours, of old Sir Peter's white top-hats, of Lady Bone, who never set foot to ground except to walk in the garden, of the great, prize-fights at Crawley.
At a recent date, in an age of reason, in a country already calling itself dull and business-like, with top-hats and factory chimneys already beginning to rise like towers of funereal efficiency, this country clergyman's son moved to the last in a luminous cloud, and acted a fairy tale. He shall remain as a lesson to those who do not understand England, and a mystery to those who think they do.
Out they came, tumbling, pushing, jostling; greeting scowls and smiles with grins of insolent good-humor. In their hands were decorated walking-sticks and flags, ragged and tattered as if from long use in a heavy gale. Dignified old gentlemen dived among them in pursuit of top-hats; hysterical matrons hustled daughters into carriages and slammed the doors. "Wuxtry! Wuxtry!" shrilled the newsboys.
"We hoped for great things when you came out more attention to polite conversation, and a passion for top-hats, and " At which point further eloquence was checked by a cushion placed gently, but firmly, by a brotherly hand on her face, and so she subsided, with a gurgle of laughter, into the cool depths of the buffalo grass where they were all lying. "Oh, by Jove!" said Bob suddenly.
We must not be surprised if this incredible hat returns in triumph with peace. It has survived the blasts of many centuries and infinite changes of fashion. It is, I suppose, the most ancient survival in the dress that men wear. And there seated in the boats are men clad in armour. They have put their helmets aside and are wearing top-hats!
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