The following is a excerpt from a letter to the printer of the Morning Chronicle that was published on the 29th of August 1781. It was part of an ongoing discourse on the effeminacy of white hats. This letter was responding directly to a letter published on the 27th by A Foe to Puppyism and Effeminacy who complained about the "effeminacy or affections from which this fashion takes rise". In this letter H argues that wearing white hats it not a matter of effeminacy but of science.
That this person's illiberality may not be more conspicuous than his ignorance, I will shew his insufficiency, by a philosophical demonstration of the utility of white hats. It is a theorem generally known, that the sun's rays not only pass through an opaque substance, but that it retains the heat longer than any light-coloured body; on the contrary, white substances repel every ray, and retain but a small portion of the heat communicated. Have not white hats then every claim to the head for their friendly disposition? Green, of all the colours of the prism, is the most congenial to the eye; consequently, having the [inside] of the hat of that colour, gives it additional recommendation.
I would ask this person if white hats be worn in the East or West-Indies for utility or puppyism?
Our progenitors were contented with wearing woollen cloth waistcoats, and, no doubt, the introduction of linen ones, was considered as a mark of effeminacy and puppyism; yet I would venture to swear, this old Censor takes the benefit of the change, and endeavours, by a linen waistcoat, to prevent the loss of what little humidity he has left.
"It is (writes this correspondent) just as ridiculous to wear a white hat in a country where black is the established custom, as it would be to put on a Spanish cloak, or a Roman gown, under pretense of their being more pleasant and commodious than the common garb of the English nation."
And was it not, Mr. Printer, very ridiculous in Copernicus to think the earth was a globe, when all the world believed it to be a level surface?— O. very ridiculous, indeed!
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