The Freiburg Fedora
The Toronto Star Weekly
January 19, 1924
There is one thing Toronto demands in clothes. That thing is conformation.
This does not mean conformation in the same sense as it is applied to a horse at the Royal Winter Fair.
No. Far from it. It means conformation; to conform.
Take my soft felt hat, for example. There is nothing wrong with the hat. It is a good hat. It sheds the rain and keeps the sun out of my eyes. But the first time I wore it in Toronto was the last time. Nothing could induce me to wear it again.
In the first place, I hadn’t meant to wear it. But we live out in the country and I had been on a walk in the country and then decided to go downtown.
As I got on the car the conductor looked at me suspiciously. He seemed relieved when I produced a ticket.
The car was full and I had to stand up. Two girls started to giggle.
“What do you think he is?” asked one.
“I don’t know,” said her friend. “Maybe it’s Red Ryan [a bank robber].”
At this mirth became general.
“No,” said the first girl. “I think he’s Harold Lloyd.”
This remark was good for laughs halfway down the car.
“Where do you suppose he got a hat like that?” asked the second young lady.
“Maybe that’s what they’re wearing now in the States,” the first young lady warned. “I saw [Rudolph] Valentino wear a hat something like that in a film once.”
I removed the hat and bowed low.
“Observe the color of my hair, ladies,” I said. “I am not Red Ryan.”
The girls seemed somewhat taken aback.
“One glance at this Roman nose,” I continued, “will prove to you that I am not Harold Lloyd. Will you favor me with a glance at the nose?”
But the girls did not look up.
“As for this hat,” I said, “they are not, as far as I know, wearing them in the States at present. I am not absolutely sure on this point, not having been in the States for some time. This hat was given to me by the late Emperor Charles of Austria. I always wear it on his birthday.”
I replaced the hat on my head.
“Say,” said a gentleman in a cap who had been observing me truculently for some blocks, “what do you mean getting fresh with a couple of girls?”
But the car by now had reached the corner of Queen and Bay streets.
“I am very sorry, sir, but I cannot detain you longer.” I bowed. “But I must leave the streetcar here. I have an appointment with the new mayor.”
“For two bits I’d give you a sock on the jaw,” observed the gentleman in the cap.
“I couldn’t think of it for a moment,” I said. “My dear fellow, it would be quite impossible. I could not think of accepting a gift of hosiery from a chance acquaintance, no matter how pleasant.”
I bowed again and descended from the car. The gentleman in the cap was comforting the two young ladies.
“I’d have poked him in a minute,” said the gentleman.
“He had no right to talk to a decent working girl like that,” sobbed one of the girls.
“I’d have poked him,” comforted the gentleman in the cap.
On the sidewalk, I removed the hat and looked at it. There was no doubt but that it differed from the other hats that passed and re-passed me in front of the city hall. It was old and green and it flopped down on one side like the hats that Robin Hood and his merry men wore. It had changed greatly since I bought it two years before in Freiburg im Breisgau for a hundred marks.
Then, for fifteen marks extra, I had bought a clip with a leather tab on it that buttoned over a suspender button and held the hat in the jaws of the clip when one wished to hike bareheaded.
Since then the old hat seemed to have lost a little something in every country it had shed rain and wind and sun in. The hot sun of the Thracian desert had burned most of the green out of it, it had been chafed by heavy snow glasses strapped to it, and it had gained nothing by being sailed down into the sunbaked sand of the bullring.
It was obviously a disreputable and, no doubt, a funny-looking hat. So I folded it up and stuck it in my hip pocket and walked to the nearest hat store bareheaded.
“What kind of a hat do you want, sir?” asked the clerk, ignoring gracefully the fact that I was bareheaded.
“Oh,” I said, “give me one of the kind that everyone is wearing.”
I have one of that kind now. But I know very well that if I ever try and wear it in Europe, somebody will want to take a poke at me.
Index
A
Abderahman Khan
Absinthe
Academy of Beaux Arts (Paris)
Action Française
Adam, George
Adrianople, Turkey
Advertising
and fashion graveyards
and French newspapers
and the great apéritif scandal
and trout fishing
Aegean Sea
Afga, Turkey
Afghanistan
Agresti, Oliva Rossetti
Aigle, Switzerland
Albany, New York
Albert I, King of the Belgians
Alcohol
in Turkey
See also Prohibition; specific names of liquors
Algabeno (matador)
Alexander I, King of Yugoslavia
Alfonso XIII, King of Spain
Alpini
Alsace-Lorraine
“Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont” (de Rougemont)
American Embassy (Constantinople)
Americans
Canadians’ views of
Ammonium nitrate
Anarchists
Ancona, Brigata
Anderson, Sherwood
André
Angora National Assembly
Anis Delloso
Anthraxolite
Anti-Alcohol League (France)
Anti-Semitism
Apéritifs
Apponyi, Count Albert
Arago (French politician)
Ardennes forest (Belgium)
Arditi Del Popolo
Arena Gardens (Toronto)
Aristocracy
French
Russian
Armenian consulate (Constantinople)
Armenians, in Constantinople
Armudli, Turkey
Arrens (Russian official)
Art
circulating
miniatures
Associated Press
“Athletic clubs,”
Avalanches, in Switzerland
Avanti
Austria
in World War I
Automobiles
B
Baby-carriage trick
Baden, Kingdom of
Baden, Germany
Baillie (bookmaker)
Bait fishing
Baker, Carlos
Baker, Newton D.
Balfour, Earl of
Balkans
Balkan wars
Balliol
Bal Musette
Bamboo sprouts
Banco San Giorgio
Banderillos
Bank robberies
Barber college (Toronto)
Barbusse, Henri
Bar le Duc, France
Barges
canal
coal
Barthou, Louis
and Tchitcherin
Bastille Day
Bathrooms, Italian
Batouala (Maran)
Battisti, Cesare
Battlefields, World War I
Baudelaire, Charles
Beachville, Ontario
Bear meat
Beaverskill River
Beaver tail
Beckett, Joe
Beikos, Turkey
Belcos, Turkey
Belgian lady
Belgium
shooting in
Bellaria, Switzerland
Benavente y Martínez, Jacinto
Benedict IV, Pope
Beněs, Edvard
Beringer, Professor
Berlin
nightlife in
Berlin, Irving
Berliner Tageblatt
Bernese Oberland railway
“Bersagliere” corps
Berthon, André
Biltmore Hotel (New York)
Bird, Sally
Bird, William
Birkenhead, Lord, F. E. Smith
Birmingham, England
Bismarck, Otto von
Black cock
Black Forest
trout fishing in
Black Sea
Blackshirts (Italy)
See also Fascisti
Blake, William
Bliss, George
Boar, wild
Boats, flat
Bobsledding
Boer War
Boeuf sur le Toit (Paris)
Bologna, Italy
Bookmaking
Bootlegging
Borden, Robert Laird
Boris III, King of Bulgaria
Bosporus, the
Bottomley, Horatio
Boulanger, Marcel
Bourg St. Pierre, Switzerland
Boxing
Carpentier vs. Dempsey
in Paris
and the Sporting Mayor
women and
Boyd, John
Briand, Aristide
British Colonial Coal Mines, Limited
British Embassy (Constantinople)
Brook trout
goiter in
Browse bed
Buffalo, New York
Bugler, Herr
Bulgaria
Bullfighting
amateur
in Madrid
in Pamplona
Tancredo
By-Line: Ernest Hemingway (White)
Byron, Lord
C
Cachin, Marcel
Café Rotonde
Cafés
at Christmas
and Italian Reds
in Madrid
in Montparnasse
and Paris nightlife
political talk in
and rug vendors
and Russian aristocracy
Cafeterias, in Toronto
Caillaux, Joseph
Camelots du Roi
Camping
Canada
Hemingway’s beliefs about
Lloyd George on
as “Our Lady of the Snows,”
and recognition of Russia
See also Toronto
Canada Steamship Lines
Canadian Bank of Commerce
Canadian Expeditionary Force (C.E.F.)
Canadian National Railways
Canadian Pacific Railroad (C.P.R.)
Canadians
Americans’ views of
Canadian silver fox
Candy bag trick
Cannes Conference
Carl, Prince
Carleville, Saskatchewan
Carman, Bliss
Carnegie, Andrew
Carol, Prince of Rumania
Carpentier, Georges
Casa della Stampa (Genoa)
Castle, Irene
Caucasian, the
Caviar
Celebrities, trading
Censorship
in Constantinople
papal
Center Island (Toronto harbor)
Central Purchasing Staff (proposed)
Century Magazine
Chambers, Robert W.
Chamby Sur Montreux, Switzerland
Chamois
Champagne
Chanak, Turkey
Chener (bank clerk)
Chicago
descriptions of
goiter in
political wars in
and Prohibition
Chicago Association of Commerce
Chicago Daily News
Chicuelo (Manuel Jiminez)
Chile
Chili con carne
Chinese restaurants
Chinese sea slugs
Chink (E. E. Dorman-Smith)
Chippewa Indians
Chow mein
Christian X, King of Denmark
Christianity, and Islam
Christians, in Turkey
Christmas
and child Communists of Toronto
Christmas Eve
Church, Thomas
Circulating Pictures movement
Citronella, oil of
Classics, condensing the
Clemenceau, Georges
duels of
Clifford, Jack
Clippings, cub reporters’
Clocks, traveling
Coal
in the Ruhr
in Sudbury, Ontario
Cobalt, Ontario
Cocteau’s bar
Coleman, A. P.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Coliseum (Toronto)
Collier’s Weekly
Cologne, Germany
Columbus, Christopher
statue of (Genoa, Italy)
Comedians
Communist party (Bulgaria)
Communist party (France)
Communist Party (Moscow)
Communists
child Communists of Toronto
and Fascisti
in the Ruhr
Como, Brigata
Concorde, Place de la
Connable, Ralph
Conrad, Joseph
Consolidated Press
Constantine, King of Greece
Constantinople, Turkey
described
holidays in
and Kemal
Kemalist forces near
and Kemal’s submarine
nightlife in
orgies in
promised to Russia
Turkish troops in
waiting for an orgy
Cook, Dr. Frederick A.
Cooking
outdoors
trout
Cope, Alfred
Corley (Crown Attorney)
Corriere Mercantile
Cosgrove, William
Côte d’Or
Coutourier, Vaillant
Cracksmen, bank vault
Crane, Stephen
Craps
Crimea, the
Crookes, William
Cuadrillas
Curlew
Currency
See Exchange, rates of; Inflation
Curzon, George Nathaniel
Custance, Mrs. F.
Czechoslovakia
shooting in
D
Daily Herald (London)
Daily Chronicle (London)
Daily Mail (London)
Dalrymple, J. E.
Daly, H. J.
Damonte (bank clerk)
Dance on the hill
D’Andrea, Anthony
D’Annunzio, Gabriele
Dardanelles, the
Daudet, Alphonse
Daudet, Léon
Davey, Mrs.
Davis, Dixie
Davis, Randall Scott
de Bearn, Prince
Deer hunting
Deer liver
Degoutte, Gen.
Deibler (French public executioner)
de Josika-Herezeg, M. A.
Dempsey, Jack
Denikin, Anton
Denison, Col. George Taylor
Denmark
Dental College (Toronto),
Dent de Jaman
Dentists
tooth pulling
Department stores
fashion graveyards
and shoplifting
de Rougemont, Louis
Deschanel, Paul
Detroit, Michigan
bootleggers in
Deusico (Turkish b
everage)
Dever, William E.
Diamond drills
Diaries, Wolfe’s
Dijon, France
Disarmament
of Russian navy
Washington Conference on
Don Hall Young Comrades Club
Don Quixote
Dorman-Smith, E. E. (Chink)
Dossier
Doughnuts, lunch counter
Duck shooting
Due Spadi (Schio, Italy)
E
Earthquake, in Japan
Eastman, Max
Eaton, R. Y.
Eber, Bobby
Ebro River
Echo de Paris
Echo National
Eels
Eggs, hundred-year-old
Eighteenth Amendment.
See Prohibition
Empress of Australia (Steamship)
Englishmen, Americans’ conceptions of
English sparrows
Entremetteuse, L’ (Daudet)
Escargot
Esopus River
Espadas
Esposito, Gaetano
Essen, Germany
Etna, Mount
Europe
game-shooting in
nightlife in
trout fishing in
Evans, Billy
Exchange, rates of
money selling
Swiss exchange pirates
Executions, in France
F
Facta, Luigi
Falk (Conrad)
Falkland Islands
Farmers’ party (Bulgaria)
Farming, fox
Fascisti
French. See Camelots du Roi
Faust (opera)
Federal Reserve Bank (Cleveland)
Federal Reserve Bank (New York)
Feminism
in Russia
Ferdinand I, King of Bulgaria
Ferdinand I, King of Rumania
Fezzes
Fielding, Henry
Figaro (newspaper)
Finnish young Communists
Firpo, Luis Angel
Floorwalkers
Florence’s (Paris)
Fly fishing
See Trout fishing
Flying
Foch, Marshal
Foli, Italy
Ford, Henry
Fordowner
Formosa
Fossalta, Italy
Foxes
Fox farming
France
alcoholism in
Chamber of Deputies
Department of the Nord
domestic political issues
Franco-Turk accord
French troops in Thrace
game in
at Genoa Conference
and Germany
and Kemalists
Legion of Honor
and Little Entente
national defense bonds
newspapers in
occupation of the Ruhr
permanent public executioner of