There is a shabby-looking man who (I read it in _The Times_) rings the
bell of London hospitals, asks to see the secretary, presumes (as is
always a safe thing to do) that the establishment is grievously in
need of funds, and without any further parley hands to the startled
but gratified official bank-notes to the tune of five hundred pounds.
He then vanishes without giving name or address. This unknown
benefactor is dressed in top-boots, riding breeches of honourable
antiquity, a black coat green with age and a "Cup Final" cap. At the
same time (this too on _The Times'_ authority) there is an oddly and
obsolescently attired lady going about who also makes London hospitals
her hobby. She begins by asking the secretary if she may take off her
boots, and, receiving permission, takes them off, places her feet on
an adjacent chair and hands him two thousand pounds.
The result of the activities of these angelic visitants is that all
the other hospital porters have had instructions from their eager
and hopeful secretaries to be careful to be polite to any and every
person, even though he or she should be in rags, who expresses the
faintest desire to enter on business; more than polite--solicitous,
welcoming, cordial; while all the secretaries are at this moment
polishing up their smiles and practising an easy manner with ladies in
last century costumes who put sudden and unexpected requests.
_The Times_, in limiting the effect of these curious occurrences
entirely to hospital servants, seems to me to lose a great
opportunity. Surely the consequences will be more wide-reaching than
that? To my mind we may even go so far as to hail the dawn of the
golden age for old clothes; for in the fear that shabbiness may
be merely a whimsical disguise or the mark of a millionaire's
eccentricity the whole world (which is very imitative and very hard
up) will begin to fawn upon it, and then at last many of us will enter
the earthly paradise.
But the gentleman who puts ease before elegance and the lady who
prefers comfort to convention have got to work a little harder yet.
They must not fold their hands at the moment under the impression that
their labours are done. The support of hospitals is humane and only
too necessary, and all honour to them for their generosity; but other
spheres of action await exploration.
I had hoped that the War was going to reform ideas on dress and make
things more simple for those whose trouser-knees go baggy so soon and
remain thus for so long; but, like too many of the expectations which
we used to foster, this also has failed. It is therefore the benign
couple who must carry on the good work. Let them, if they really love
their fellow-creatures, go to a wedding or two (having previously
given a present of sufficient value to ensure respect) and display
their careless garb among the guests, and then in a little while old
garments would at these exacting functions become as fashionable as
new and we should all be happier.
I was asked to a wedding last week, and should have accepted but for
the great Smart Clothes tradition. If _The Times'_ hero and heroine
were to become imaginatively busy as I suggest, I could go to all the
weddings in the world. (Heaven forbid!) Receptions, formal lunches,
the laying of stones, the unveiling of monuments, private views--these
ceremonies, now so full of terrors for any but the dressy, could be
made endurable if only the gentleman in the black coat green with age
and the lady with the elastic sides would show themselves prominently
and receive conspicuous attentions.
And then, if any more statues were needed for the police to keep
their waterproofs on, one of them should be that of an unknown
philanthropical gentleman who wears venerable top-boots, and another
that of a philanthropical lady who would rather be without any boots
at all, and the inscription on the pedestals would state that their
glorious achievement was this: They made old clothes the thing.