The Automatic Hat-Raiser

A CANDLE that flickered and went out during the past year was the effort of a citizen of Cincinnati to inaugurate a world-movement that should sweep away forever what he mercilessly designated as the ‘hat-tipping evil.’ ‘The sudden exposure of one’s valuable head to extreme weather conditions is dangerous’ — therefore let it be abolished: let us, in fact, substitute a ‘graceful raising of one’s hand to his hat, with a nod.’ Naturally the reformer got into the newspapers, and throughout the country grateful paragraphers, anxiously looking for material, figuratively took off their hats to him.

As a needed reform, however, the suggestion was not taken seriously.

The prophet was without honor even outside his own city. The lack of response indicates clearly that the average man raises his hat as a matter of confirmed habit, and thinks no more about it. Granted a certain amount of preliminary good breeding, in this case fortunately pretty widely diffused, and the approach of a feminine acquaintance simply touches a subconscious button, the hand and arm do the rest, and the man goes on his way hardly conscious that he has made any movement whatever. Even if he had been convinced by arguments and statistics that raising his hat would give him a cold in the head, the action would have accomplished itself automatically before the cautious mind could have prevented it.

The lifting of the hat has become spontaneous in proportion as it has lost the degree of significance that once attached to it; and now that it is associated with a single sense-impression, the approach of petticoats, its spontaneity is beyond the control of any individual reformer.

The situation might have been different in the days when men raised their hats to each other, symbolizing degrees of social position by the completeness with which they uncovered. Thought must necessarily have preceded salutation. A lampooning versifier could write of an unpopular group of fellow citizens: —

But this vile poet, rhyming ‘rate’ and ‘ hat,’ must needs have had a model, and Puritans certainly had no monopoly of the not altogether uncommon human characteristic of snobbery. This very versifier numbered either a patron or a publisher among his acquaintances. Class distinctions, in proportion as they were thus concretely recognized, must necessarily have affected the degrees of hat-raising, and the present status of the salutation as a purely sex compliment, indicates the world-conquest of democratic principles. A ceremonial salutation dating back at least to the early Middle Age — for writers on the important subject of the hat find it difficult to pursue their quarry much further — is thus reduced to an instinctive motion that nothing short of the general adoption of male costume by women can be expected to eradicate.

It is the skirt, one may fairly argue, rather than the woman, that touches the subconscious button, and if a man saw a pair of trousers approaching he would not automatically uncover his head. The one hopeful line of action for the Cincinnati reformer, therefore, would be to work patiently and courageously for universal suffrage — with trousers. Universal suffrage without universal trousers would probably make no difference. The automatic action of the hat-raising instinct is superior to any personal opinion on the part of the hat-raiser.

The fixity of this instinct is, moreover, soundly evident in the similarity of the present salutation to that of more than a hundred years ago. Fortunately we have an exact means of comparison. The Polite Academy, or School of Behaviour, published in London in 1780, devotes a chapter to ’Of walking and saluting, passing by.’ The directions are explicit.

‘If you bow to any one passing by, do it in this manner: raise the right hand to your hat gracefully.

‘Put your fore-finger as far as the crown, and your thumb under the brim, and then raise it from your head gracefully and easily.

‘Look at the person you bow to, and hold your body gently forward.

‘Hold your left arm straight down at your side, neither drawing it forward or backward.

‘Move the right leg, if the person goes by on the right side, and keep the other firm.

‘If the person goes by on the left side, move the left leg, and keep the right firm.

‘ Let your body be bowed moderately, not too much.’

These are excellent directions, as good now as they ever were, although not at present followed with the exactness that the School of Behaviour desired of its pupils. Everything, including the leg, moves more rapidly than it used to, and it is difficult to suit the right leg or the left quite so judiciously to the position of the person who is being saluted. It is, in fact, a little difficult to work these relations out with a paper and pencil. The soft hat — an admittedly informal article even in the hat advertisements — does not permit so nice an adjustment of thumb and fore-finger: indeed, young men representing the culture of our greatest universities tend to grasp it recklessly by the top, somewhat as a hurried Indian might grasp an enemy’s scalp-lock, and snatch it from the head in a way that would shock any School of Behaviour beyond polite expression. But the elevation of the Derby and of the Tall Hat (the first comparatively modern, and the other a descendant of the headgear worn by Sir Walter Raleigh, who followed the new fashion set by his friend, the Earl of Essex, when that gentle favorite of the Queen trimmed the brim and raised the crown of his own previously flapping beaver) is still recognizably like the result aimed at by these eighteenth-century directions. And the reckless individuality with which the brim is handled st ill further proves that the whole process has become automatic.

Whether or not this automatism is a desirable condition is another matter. It would perhaps be better, when a man lifts his hat to a woman, if he realized more fully what he is doing. And he would then realize, despite all arguments to the contrary, that the symbolism of the act is well worth the very slight risk of a cold in ‘one’s valuable head.’