bout de papier, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1998) — Spring 1998 // Printemps 1998, p. 41
In the early 1950s, when I was a third secretary in Berne on my first post, formal dealings with the Swiss were infrequent at my junior level. But, every New Year’s Day, I had to accompany the head of post – in those ancient days only a Minister — when he paid his respects to the President of the Swiss Confederation. The ceremony took place in the Federal Palace, the building that housed the cabinet and the legislature.
On the first day of every year, the Swiss changed their president by rotation among the six members of the federal council, and the new president gave an audience of about ten minutes to each foreign head of mission. The calls began at nine in the morning. The bleary-eyed diplomats of Berne entered at fifteen minute intervals, the schedule determined by the place of each ambassador or minister in the diplomatic pecking order based on when they had presented their credentials. The right dress for the occasion was national diplomatic uniform; those from countries like Canada which had no official uniform had to appear in formal evening dress of white tie and tails — and arrive at the Palace wearing a top hat.
Had my wife not discovered the Brockenhaus soon after our arrival in Berne, the need for a top hat would have placed another severe strain on our budget. Situated in the old town and run by a charitable organization, the Brockenhaus was a respectable second-hand store crammed with treasures of generations long gone. Hats of every description, civil and military, lay in a jumble on one shelf and the price of the best top hat was right: fifty centimes – one Canadian dime. My presidential levee dress problem was solved.
The hat was below stovepipe height, representing the style of a few decades after Abraham Lincoln. The label of a London maker gave it status and the beaver slickness was there, beneath the dust and ruffled inattention, to be restored by the gentle stroking of kid gloves. Before the first of January that followed, the hat had been pampered into an appearance that belied it three score years.
I held the hat carefully as I went with my Minister to the Federal Palace. When we left his car, I attempted to place the hat on my head but desisted when I realized that its height would be increased because its head size was too small for me. We entered the building where an usher waited to take our headgear into safekeeping while we made our call on the president. Less than fifteen minutes later we were back at the cloakroom to give the customary gratuity of five francs each as we retrieved our hats from the usher. Nothing in his demeanour, as he handed my hat back to me, hinted that he knew that it was worth only one-tenth of the tip.
A year later, the hat repeated its appearance at the Federal Palace. It also played a new role when it was worn by an American friend at a fancy dress ball which he attended as the Mad Hatter. Thus it was that, among my junior and equally impecunious diplomatic colleagues, it became known that I possessed a top hat. The setting was laid for its last New Year’s Day in Berne when it scored a hat trick.
On that day, the respective seniority of three heads of mission — my chief, the Irish and the Australian — made possible three wearings to the Federal Palace and three deposits in the cloakroom. After I had carried the hat to and from the ceremony, I met the Irish Second Secretary by arrangement at a nearby corner and transferred the hat to him. When he had used it, he passed it on to the Australian. My friends failed to detect any sign of recognition of the hat by the usher when he received his second and third five-franc gratuities for its keeping that morning.
After Switzerland, the top hat lead a domestic existence in Ottawa, contributing now and then to the amusement of our daughters and their playmates. More battered as time went by, it continued to be a family fixture when we were posted to South Africa. In 1960, the hat came close to extinction when a burglar, ransacking our house by candlelight, used it as a stand for the candles.
Grease now matted the beaver pelt. The hat’s glory days were over.
One cold evening in Ottawa in the early 1960s, I gave the top hat a decent cremation in the fire place. A few years later, when I had to dress up to present credentials in my own first post as ambassador, a new top hat was needed. En route to the post, I bought one in London. It cost six hundred times its antique and illustrious predecessor.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1998) — Spring 1998 // Printemps 1998, p. 41. Read the rest of this issue →
