Hats off to Robert Burns! and to beavers

"Hey brave Johnie lad, cock up your beaver!" Robert Burns
As we move into another month of woolly hat weather (and political gloom and doom) here is a little frivolity.  Admittedly Robert Burns' cheerful song has a political context, as it is thought to have come from an English song ridiculing those Scots who came to London, following James VI when he became King James I of England, or perhaps from a later Scots ballad of Jacobite claims or cross-border rivalry.  Robert Burns' 1792 version of this old song refers to:
"W'e'll over the Border and give them a brush, There's somebody there we'll teach better behaviour, Hey, brave Johnie lad, cock up your beaver!"

In Shakespeare's Hamlet*, the dead king's ghost appeared with his 'beaver' up (Act I, sc.2) but this was the face-guard of his helmet, which could be raised and lowered, (? from the Old French beve).
However, from the sixteenth century onwards, anyone who was wealthy enough wore some sort of beaver fur hat  with brims wide or narrow, worn pinned up (i.e. cocked), or otherwise, according to the dictates of fashion.   Here are some posh Tudor versions, possibly of wool felt or silk, though I think Anthony 2nd Viscount  Montague (centre) and his brothers liked to be ultra fashionable in beaver fur :

The Three Brothers Browne,   miniature by Isaac Oliver 1598   © Burghley House Preservation Trust

This oil painting  shows the changes in headgear across five generations of Sir Thomas More's family.  He, the Lord Chancellor, and his father left, wear the earlier flat cap, while his grandson, Thomas More II, who commissioned this historic family "assemblage", on the right with wife and sons, is wearing the later steeple crowned hat.

The More Family,  Rowland Lockey after Holbein,  c. 1593  © National Portrait Gallery

The Tudor man in the street wore a knitted wool or felted flat cap, compulsory wear on Sundays and holy days from 1571-79, to protect the English wool trades.
Real beaver fur made the very best felt, as its hairs, especially the soft under-hairs, were barbed and bound together well in its manufacture.  It was lightweight, pliable and rainproof.  European nobility depleted the supply of beaver in the late medieval period and had to import pelts from Scandinavia and then Russia.  The very best skins for manufacture were old ones, worn and greasy, the linings from the robes of Russians and then American Indians, for by the 1600s large numbers were imported from Canada;  demand spread and brims grew wider too.

The broad brimmed style was everywhere in the seventeenth century.  Here are two familiar images from Holland.

The Laughing Cavalier   Frans Hals,   1624  © Wallace Collection London

Detail from The Night Watch  Rembrandt van Rijn 1642   © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

A few years later, the Quaker William Penn, on good terms with his monarch, Charles II, according to Quaker precepts, kept his hat on before the King. But then Charles removed his own hat, saying to his friend: "It is the custom in this place that only one man should remain covered at a time."

Contemporary chalk drawing of William Penn,  Francis Place c. 1698  (see Historical Society of Pennsylvania)

Part of the Quaker faith was that all men were equal, and so they would not remove their hats before officials and those of higher social standing, (i.e. hat-honour); they only removed their hats when praying, as before God.  A leading Quaker in Rotterdam, friend and supporter of men like Penn and John Locke, one Benjamin Furly, fell out with his brethren over the hat-wearing rule, and was
ostracised.   He argued strongly, having followed Quaker practice for 30 years, that there were occasions when it might seem right to an individual to doff his hat, and this must be a matter of personal conscience.  "I have to this day forborne to practice the utmost liberty I have in mind, as to the Capital in ceremonious Ceremony". (7 Nov. 1692 to John Locke)

In the early 20th century, the famous Quaker Oats advertising shows a hatted Quaker, supposed to be copied from William Penn's portrait, although it is probably a generic image.

18th century engraving of William Penn, with hat  © National Portrait Gallery London

By the eighteenth century, Englishmen's hats were influenced by French and military styles from the numerous wars on the Continent.  Brims varied in size and could be fastened up in a variety of ways, front, back, sideways or including the tricorne.  Women also wore large brimmed masculine styles whether for hunting ( as in Tudor times) or following fashion's changes.  Gainsborough's portraits  show a wonderful display.

  Peter Muilman, Chas. Crokatt & Wm. Kneale  c. 1750  Thomas Gainsborough © Tate Gallery

In fashionable London,  these young men would have looked for the beaver signboard for where to buy their hats.
Manufacturing with its fumes and pollution took place elsewhere in suburbs like Battersea and Wandsworth:  The beaver fur was stewed in a toxic mix of copper acetate and mercury-laced gum arabic, before it could be processed into felt and moulded into hats.  This is sometimes thought to be the basis of the phrase, "Mad as a Hatter" (think Alice in Wonderland) which came from the USA in the mid nineteenth century.

 Another  American phrase, "Talking through one's Hat" spread in the 1900s, and Lilly Dache, the famous New York milliner to the stars,  used it as the title for her autobiography in  1946.

Dorothy Lamour in a Lilly Dache hat

The cousin who took her in when she arrived from France was a Quaker, and Lilly's short, fringed Parisienne dress did not go down well with Quaker ladies, until Lilly settled in and learnt more about the Society of Friends.  
"Believe me, I have made many hats.  And with each hat is a story… I have seen a hat change the whole course of a life."  And so, from Europe to North America, have beavers.

*Hamlet. A play for our times: a small nation on the edge of Europe -- beset by backstabbing, treachery, conniving, ineptness, wars and madness.