Like everybody else that one knows, Kidger is an ex-service man. During the
last year of that war on the Continent some time ago he had the acting rank
of captain, as second in command of a six-mangle army laundry.
When I knew him in pre-war days he was an amiable character, with only two
serious weaknesses. One of these was an exaggerated fastidiousness about
clothes, and the other an undue deference to the dicta of the Press. A
leader in _The Tailor and Cutter_ would make him thoughtful for days. This
fatal concern about clothing amounted to a mania where neckwear was
concerned.
In pre-war days he wore the ordinary single, perpendicular variety of
collar, with sharp turn-over points, starched and white to match his
shirts.
Before leaving England to join his laundry, Kidger, with a magnificent
gesture, abandoned his fine collection of collars to his aunt, bidding her
convert them to some patriotic end. The fond lady, however, fearing lest
anything should befall her nephew if a hot sector of the line moved up to
the laundry, preserved them carefully, and Kidger was very glad to reclaim
them on his demobilisation.
One unfortunate day Kidger's morning paper contained one of those Fashions
for Men columns, where he learned that the best people were wearing only
soft collars, as they couldn't stand being cooped up in starch after the
freedom of uniform. Kidger felt that as an ex-army man it was up to him to
maintain any military tradition, and he immediately bought several dozen,
soft white collars with long sharp points. The fellow in the shop said they
were correct.
A week later another expert mentioned in print that no man who had any
self-respect wore collars with sharp corners.
Kidger is not a manual worker. He reduced his cigarette allowance and
bought some round-cornered ones, white as before. And then his aunt
directed the poor fellow's attention to a paragraph by an authority signing
himself "The Colonel," which stated that none but the profiteer was wearing
white collars, and that you might know the man who had done his bit by the
fact that he wore a blue one with slightly rounded corners, accompanied by
a self-coloured tie of a darker shade, tied in a neat butterfly bow.
This was a blow to Kidger, but he resigned from his golf club and laid in
some haberdashery in accordance with "The Colonel's" orders.
Recommendations would be too mild a word. I saw the paragraph--most
peremptory.
But in a rival paper "Brigadier" mentioned only three days later that none
but the most noxious bounder and tout would be found dead in a blue collar
with a white shirt. Kidger saw the truth of this at once; he had
receptivity if not intuition. After a trying interview with his banker he
bought several blue shirts.
Then the General who contributes "Sartorial Tips" to several leading
journals remarked that, since all kinds of people were wearing coloured
shirts and collars, the man who desired to retain or achieve that touch of
distinction which means so much must at any cost wear white ones; and that,
further, Society was frowning on the slovenly unstarched neck-wear of the
relapsed temporary gentleman.
Kidger began to show signs of neurasthenia. His stock of pre-war collars
was exhausted, or rather eroded. His faithful aunt, however, remembered a
neglected birthday and gave him a dozen new ones, of the up-and-down model,
to save Kidger's delicate neck. These, with his nice butterfly-bow ties,
looked really well, and Kidger recovered his old form.
I warned him to keep to the police and Parliamentary news in the papers,
but his eyes would wander. The result was that he learned from "Brigade
Major" that the wearing of a butterfly bow with a double event collar was a
solecism past forgiveness or repentance, and that its smart appearance was
the deadly bait which caught the miserable bumpkin who ignorantly fancied
that a man could dress by the light of nature.
Kidger collapsed. His aunt volunteered to sell her annuity and help him,
but the innate nobility of the man forbade him to accept this useless
sacrifice.
His medical attendant tells me that he is now allowed to read only poetry,
wearing a sweater meanwhile, and that arrangements are being made for him
to join a sheep-farming cousin in Patagonia, where collars are despised and
newspapers invariably out of date.