Beaver hat

“ The formerly well-known beaver hat was made from this fur, but in recent years silk has taken its place. The importance of the American beaver is illustrated by the fact that some 7,000,000 skins have been sold in London by the Hudson's Bay Company since the year 1752. Not only is the fur of the beaver in demand, but its flesh, and especially the muscles of the tail, are prized for food by hunters and others who live the free, open-air life of the frontier, although it is seldom exposed for sale in the markets of cities. ”

“ To illustrate the power and dignity of the beaver hat even here, where reverence and respect for any thing that smells of civilization is not to be thought of, I may mention that a month or two after the event described above, another beaver hat put in an appearance at The Forks. ”

“ The beaver hat is a missionary among cannibals in the California mines. And the saddest part of it all is, that there is no hope of reform. Tracts on this subject would be useless. Fancy a beaver hat in a dripping tunnel, or by the splashing flume or dumping derrick! ”

“ The nether extremities are encased in capacious and shiny highlows, sometimes silver-buckled. A goodly beaver hat with extensive brim shades the entire man from the rays which tend to liquefy the oleaginous part of him. This is the only badge of poverty that he bears about him; its form is suggestive of an emblem of manual labour—the Shovel. ”

“ Beaver hats were the vogue during the period of the Western Fur Trade, roughly 1800-40. Until this headpiece was supplanted by the silk hat, the trappers followed the fur, their trails crossing and recrossing virtually every area where beaver were to be taken. Some were independent trappers, some were attached to various fur companies. To the organizers of the trade, the “business men” behind the enterprises, fell the financial rewards. The trappers, except in rare instances, barely made a living at their profession. ”

“ On his head is a cotton night-cap, as thin as a cobweb, and over that an enormous beaver hat, that protects his meagre visage from the sun, which is already the colour of mahogany, while his whole carcase seldom weighs above eight or ten stone, being generally exhausted by the climate and dissipation. To give a more complete idea of this fine gentleman, I in the annexed plate present him to the reader with a pipe in his mouth, which almost every where accompanies him, and receiving a glass of Madeira wine and water, from a female quaderoon slave, to refresh him during his walk. ”

“ To show the absurd notions some entertain on this matter, I state as a fact, that I do not know a manufacturer or seller in the trade but what has been applied to, by some one or other, to have a Beaver Hat made from a hare's skin. Nay, I remember once offending a very good customer, and a man not wanting for sense either, by an involuntary burst of laughter, on his presenting the skin of a French lap-dog for the very same purpose. ”

“ Their usual head-dress is either a white straw hat, or a black round beaver hat, with black ostrich feathers. I prefer the straw hat; it is more tasteful than the round hat which always seems to me too masculine for a woman. ”

“ Frequently, too, he wears a beaver hat, with a nap on it as luxuriant as the bristles of a boot-brush; and he is made to smoke “churchwarden” clay pipes about a yard long. Real rustics do not do these things nowadays. ”

“ In this assembly, a beaver hat, unless napless and brimless, would be very rare; no one ever remembers to have seen a coat there, and should any one dare to present himself in a great coat, unless a family man, he would be sure to depart skirtless, or only in his waistcoat. ”

“ The flat, folding, crescent-shaped beaver, called a cocked or an opera hat, was still to be seen as late as 1818; and a party of gentlemen returning on foot from Almack’s on a summer’s morning, with pantaloons tight as the Venetian standard-bearer’s, and hats cocked according to the mode, presented a rather martial look. Since that time, the round hat has gained headway; even coachmen only wear the old cocked covering on state occasions; and the ugliest article that ever could be devised for the purpose seems to be planted upon our unwilling brows for ever. ”

“ A broad beaver, or, as it was then called, a Flanders hat, shaded a grave and thoughtful countenance, wherein shrewdness and good-humour struggled for the mastery and the latter prevailed, and his full brown beard was forked—a happy omen, as it was always held, of prosperous life. ”

“ Sc. bevar, 'one who is worn out with age,' according to Jamieson, who merely guesses at the sense, as being perhaps allied to bavard, which he also explains as 'worn out'; although, if from the F. bavard, it rather means talkative, babbling, or idle. I believe that bevar hat simply means 'beaver hat,' formerly used by women as well as by men. Even Dickens alludes to 'farmer's wives in beaver bonnets,' in Martin Chuzzlewit, ch. 5. No doubt a beaver hat was, when new, an expensive luxury, as worn by Chaucer's 'Merchant' (Prol. l. 272) ”

“ T. Hudson Turner (No. 7. p. 100.) asks, “What is the earliest known instance of the use of a beaver hat in England?”
{236} Fairholt (Costume in England) says, the earliest notice of it is in the reign of Elizabeth, and gives the following quotation from Stubbe’s Anatomy of Abuses, 1580:—
“And as the fashions be rare and strange, so is the stuff whereof their hats be made divers also ”

“ A bishop's hat shows the transition from the three-cocked hat to our present chimney-pot; and because sixty years ago beaver-fur was the fashionable material for hats, we must now needs wear a silken imitation, which could deceive no one into thinking it fur, and which is bad to resist the effects of weather. Even in a lady's bonnet the elements of brim, crown, and hat-band, may be traced.
The "busby" of our hussars affords a curious instance of survival. It would now appear to be merely a fancy head-dress, but on inspection it proves not to be so. ”

“ There was a time when beaver skins were bought from the natives, by the Hudson Bay Company, at the regular price of 14 skins for a gun, 7 for a pistol, 2 for a shirt or one pair of stockings, 1 for a comb, or twelve needles, &c. &c., less than the hundredth part of their real value, and all the other fur-bearing skins belonging to that country were rated by that of the beaver.
"The Scientific American" of New York for Dec. 1859 says that, not much more than half a century ago, not a pound of fine wool was raised in the United States, in Great Britain, or in any other country except Spain. ”

“ A very inferior Hat may be made equally light with the most superior, and in both cases the cost of manufacture will be less than if they were made stout.
The length of the beaver too is another point on which the difference of opinion is often experienced; many are for very short naps, declaring all others to be outrageously vulgar; but the majority of wearers seem best pleased with long naps, which always take and retain the best black, while, on the contrary those that are very short never do. ”

“ After the bare body of the hat is stiffened, if a flowing nap of beaver, otter, neutra, or other fine fur is desired, finer than that of which the body is made, half an ounce more or less of the superior uncarroted stuff is weighed out, sufficient to cover the whole outside surface of the hat. ”

“ On the top of the Crumpetty Tree
The Quangle Wangle sat, But his face you could not see,
On account of his Beaver Hat. ”

“ Nor was this the only practical economy in dress in that age. Hats, which were then, as a rule, made of Beaver, were somewhat expensive articles; and, in looking diligently over the newspapers of the times, I found that here, again, a want arose, and was met. These Beaver hats got shabby, and could be repaired; a firm advertising that “after several years’ practice they have brought the Art of Rebeavering Old Hats to greater perfection than it is possible to conceive; indeed, they are the only persons that have brought it to perfection ”

“ The scholiast of Juvenal, who indeed belongs to an unknown but much later period, has also pelles bebrinæ or beverinæ. As the ermine was called the Pontic mouse, the beaver was named the Pontic dog.
I however firmly believe that this castor clothing was no more fur clothing, than our beaver hats are fur hats. At that time the hair was spun and wove; and Claudian, in my opinion, speaks of a worn-out beaver dress, which had nothing more left of that valuable fur but the name. This method of manufacturing beavers’ hair seems not to have been known in the time of Pliny ”

“ It has frequently been asked, why not make a Hat with beaver only, the answer is, there is not sufficient stamina or strength in it to become a sound felted substance. It would be worse than building a brick house without mortar or some sort of cement, to bind the whole together. ”

“ We know this of our hats, and are always reminded of it when we happen to put them on wrong side foremost. We soon find that the beaver is a hollow cast of the skull, with all its irregular bumps and depressions. ”

“ After the hairs have fallen out, or are worn, and the peltries become old and dirty, and apparently useless, we get the articles back and convert the fur into hats, before which it cannot be well used for this purpose, for unless the beaver has been worn and is greasy and dirty, it will not felt properly therefore those old peltries are most valuable. The coats which the Indians make of beaver skins, and have worn a long time around their bodies, until the same have become foul with sweat and grease those afterwards are used by the hatters and make the best hats. ”

“ The Indians and Canadian voyageurs eat the flesh of the beaver, esteeming it, when roasted with the skin on—the hair having been singed off—the most dainty of dishes. Early in this century, when beaver fur was much in demand for the manufacture of hats, upwards of 120,000 skins were exported from Quebec alone in one year. The warfare long waged against the unfortunate rodents now goes on with somewhat diminished activity. A change of fashion—the substitution of silk for beaver—has probably saved them from utter extermination. ”

“ Such hermits are happy fellows, lucky above the majority of beavers, who have no sunlit playground in winter; but they enjoy themselves circumspectly, knowing the danger of being caught in the open. At the slightest alarm, the faint click of snowshoes or a breath of your scent drifting downwind, every beaver disappears under the ice, giving the danger signal by slapping his broad tail on the water as he goes down; and when you hear them again they will be creeping into the living room of the lodge. Rap the roof sharply, after approaching on silent feet, and you hear plop! plop! plop! ”

“ The powerful incisor teeth of the beaver are admirably suited to the cutting through of small tree stems, of branches and twigs, whilst its flat and scaly tail serves as a rudder to a creature that always makes its home beside or in the midst of water.
The beaver is as much noted for its sagacity, and for what nowadays we call "faculty," as it is prized for its fur. One of the largest of the rodents, its body measures nearly three and a half feet in length, not taking the tail into consideration, which is eleven to twelve inches in length. ”

“ It is strange that the life and happiness of millions of little animals in the backwoods of America and Siberia should depend on the whims of the grand ladies of Paris and London; but so it is. When the beaver fur went out of favor, and the slaughter of the Alaska seals began, the beavers increased wonderfully in all the Western creeks and rivers. But if the Princess of Wales should happen to fancy a garment of beaver fur, woe to the unhappy little beavers of the Rocky Mountains! Thousands of other grand ladies must follow the fashion, and thousands of beavers must furnish the fur. ”

“ The beaver's tail is flattened like a paddle and covered with scales; its hind feet are webbed between the toes; it has sharp claws, which aid it in scratching up mud, and a thick, close fur, with long brown hair above, and a most beautiful and close under-fur, which, when the long hairs have all been removed, forms the beaver-fur of which hats were once made, and trimmings for ladies' jackets and men's fur coats are now manufactured. ”

“ English beaver is a mixture of lamb’s wool and rabbit’s fur. Silk, satin, and velvet hats are made of plush, woven for the most part in the north of England. Paris hats are made in London from French plush, of which we import annually about 150,000 lbs. We export few hats except to our own colonies. They are chiefly made, like our wigs, for native wear. ”

“ The toes of the forefeet are not webbed, as are those of the hind ones, nor do they aid in swimming, being then pressed against the body, but are used more as hands, at least for the purposes of architecture. With them the beaver scoops up the mud, and holding it between them or pressed against his throat, walks upright to his dam like a little mannikin in a brown fur coat. It used to be thought that the broad, naked tail served the beaver as a trowel, for the laying and plastering of the mud. ”

“ The beavers, on the other hand, are not only social by dwelling near each other, but by joining in a work which is intended for the benefit of the community.” As everyone knows, the beaver is an aquatic animal, as is sufficiently indicated by his appearance. He has a dense, woolly coat, which, as in the case of the otter and the still more water-loving seals, is protected by an outer covering of long, smooth hairs, which are of a reddish brown colour. ”