The Hat Testimony

Part of the testimony to “plainness of apparel” was the testimony ag ainst what was called “hat honor.” Quakers believed that since taking off the hat was an outward sign of reverence toward God, it was not right or appropriate to give that same gesture to human beings.

Barclay said, “He that uncovereth his head to the crea ture, what hath he reserved for the Creator?”

Because removing the hat was considered a mark of special respect to certain people or certain places, Friends — who believed that all people were equally worthy of respect as children of one Father, and that all places were equally holy because God’s presence was everywhere— expressed this belief by refusing to take off their hats for anyone or in any place, except when comfort required it. Not even when entering a place of worship could the rule be relaxed, because taking off the hat would imply that God was more present inside that building than outside in the open air. This idea was completely opposed to fundamental Quaker beliefs.

Prof. William James, in his valuable book The Varieties of Religious Experience, discussing early Quakers and their peculiarities, writes: “Many of these peculiarities arose from their determination to have nothing to do with shams or pretenses, but to be true and sincere in all their dealings with God and with their fellow- men.”

George Fox believed the Lord showed him that many conventional social customs were false and hypocritical. He wrote: “When the Lord sent me into the world, He forbade me to put off my hat to any, high or low; and I was required to ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ all men and women, without any respect to rich or poor, great or small. And as I traveled up and down, I was not to bid people ‘Good morning’ or ‘Good evening’; neither might I bow or scrape with my leg to anyone... Oh, the scorn, heat, and fury that arose! Oh, the blows, punchings, beatings, and imprisonments that we underwent for not putting off our hats to men! But blessed be the Lord, many came to see the vanity of that custom of putting off hats to men, and felt the weight of Truth’s testimony against it.”

All the followers of George Fox accepted these revelations as guidance for themselves as well as for him. They abandoned the worldly customs he condemned, viewing this as a sacrifice to Truth and as a way to make their actions better reflect the spirit they professed. This renunciation continued up to my own time, although I suspect many who practiced it no longer fully understood the reasons behind these peculiarities.

Some Friends in my youth went so far as to treat wearing the hat at all possible times — even during meals — as a kind of religious duty. On one occasion, a young man I knew was walking with an Elder along the streets of Wilmington, Delaware. The Elder was advising him about the importance of supporting Friends’ testimonies in every situation, and sa id: “I have noticed, my dear young friend, with great satisfaction, that thou art careful not to take off thy hat when meeting thy acquaintances in the street, nor to remove it upon entering the meetinghouse until thou hast taken thy seat. But I see room for even greater faithfulness in this matter, and I feel free to tell thee that I believe it is right for me to wear my hat at all times except when I am in bed. I put it on the moment I rise in the morning, and I do not feel at liberty to remove it until I have put on my night clothes, just before getting into bed at night.”

This practice of keeping the hat on was often a source of conflict and testing for Quakers who, because of social obligations or business, were required to appear before people who expected this gesture of respect. In the old Friends’ Journals , there are many accounts of the suffering caused by this “hat testimony.” In the Journal of Thomas Ellwood, the friend of Milton, who became convinced of Friends’ views, he describes his father’s v iolent hatred of this testimony.

He writes: “The sight of my hat upon my head when entering his presence made him so angry that, rushing at me with both hands, he violently snatched off my hat and threw it away; and then, giving me some blows on the head, he said, ‘Sirrah, get you up to your chamber.’”

On another day, he tells how he went to the dinner table wearing his hat: “As soon as I came in, I could see by my father’s expression that my hat was still an offence to him. But when I was seated, and before I had eaten anything, he made this even clearer by saying to me, ‘If you cannot content yourself to come to dinner without your Hise upon your head (so he called my hat), pray rise and go take your dinner somewhere else.’ After hearing this, I got up from the table and went into the kitchen, where I stayed until the servants sat down to dinner, and then I sat contentedly with them.”

Many years after Ellwood’s experience, a wealthy English Friend, Joseph John Gurney, described his own trial in 1810: “I was engaged long beforehand to a dinner party. For three weeks before, I was in agitation knowing that I must enter the drawing-room with my hat on. From this sacrifice, strange and unaccountable as it may seem, I could not escape. Wearing the attire of a Friend, and with my hat on, I entered the drawing-room at the dreaded moment, shook hands with the mistress of the house, then returned to the hall, deposited my hat, and came back. I went home with some degree of peace. Afterward, I had to do the same thing at the bishop’s. The result was that I found myself a decided Quaker, fully understood to have taken that position, and to dinner parties — except within the family circle —I was asked no more.”

Later still, our own dear father had a similar challenge. On one occasion, he hoped to be appointed captain of an important ship, and while preparing to apply to the owners, he struggled greatly because he believed it was his duty to enter their presence with his hat on. He feared this would prejudice them against him, but he remained steadfast in what he believed to be his religious duty and trusted that the Lord would prosper him. In his diary, he writes: “Some of my friends thought my plain dress and language would stand in my way, but I told them to wait and see whether I would not secure the position by the blessing of God, to whom I refer all my success in life. The ship New Jersey was launched on the first of Twelfth Month, 1824, and on the third, Whitton Evans, the owner, conferred on me the command.”

While reading a very interesting book recently, The Testament of Ignatius Loyola, I was struck to find that this old saint of the sixteenth century shared many of these early Quaker scruples. He writes that his custom in addressing people was to omit all titles such as “Your Lordship” or “Your Reverence,” believing that simplicity to be the practice of Christ and His Apostles. He also tells how he was tempted, out of fear of consequences, to relax this practice in the case of a certain captain, and that as soon as he recognized this as temptation, he determined: “Since so it is, I will not call him your Lordship, nor show him reverence, nor will I pull off the cap from my head.”

In fact, throughout Christian history, one of the ways devoted believers have expressed their commitment has been through peculiarities of dress or speech, and aside from the particular form it took, the early Friends were not unusual in this. But unlike many other Christian groups, they also held a particular testimony against all bright colors, which, for reasons not entirely clear, were considered worldly. Browns and drabs were considered unworldly, and most of our clothes were some variation of these colors. Occasionally a little green was allowed, and curiously, a dark purple was sometimes permitted, but red, blue, pink, or yellow were entirely forbidden as “too gay.” I even knew some conscientious Friends who did not feel free to grow scarlet geraniums in their gardens or to keep a vase of scarlet flowers in their parlors.

After I became a recognized religious teacher, people in spiritual difficulty often came to me for help. Among them was a young Friend with a very sensitive conscience, who came one day greatly troubled about scarlet geraniums. She lived in one half of a semi-detached house in the suburbs of Philadelphia. In front of both houses was a small shared garden with an oval flowerbed, which she and her neighbor took turns filling each spring. That year, it was her turn, and wishing to please her neighbor, she asked her what flowers they should plant. The neighbor preferred scarlet geraniums, and my friend was about to order them when a sudden scruple seized her against allowing such bright flowers to adorn the garden in front of her house. She struggled and prayed about it, and the more she prayed, the louder the inward voice seemed to tell her that it would not be right to plant scarlet geraniums. But how to explain this to her neighbor — who knew nothing about Friends — she could not imagine, and she came to me in great distress for help.

I have always found that nothing is more difficult to combat than scruples. Although I tried very hard to convince my poor, perplexed friend that there were matters in the Christian life far more important than the color of the flowers in our gardens — and that the Lord might well be more pleased by courtesy and kindness toward her neighbor than by any rigid rule about flower colors, which, after all, He Himself created and could not therefore find displeasing — it was all in vain.

At last, I was forced to give her a piece of advice to which I rather objected: I told her to “ask Josiah.”

Josiah was her husband, and I knew he possessed a good measure of common sense. Although I did not generally approve of letting husbands decide such matters for their wives, in this case, it seemed almost a necessity. My confidence was justified, for Josiah said — very sensibly — that he would take the responsibility for the scarlet geraniums upon his own shoulders, and that he felt sure the Lord would not be displeased to see, in front of their house, flowers which He Himself had made.

Naturally, over time, modifications of these extreme views began to appear, and in my lifetime I have seen gradual changes that, as a child, I would have thought blasphemous even to imagine.

As the young people of my generation — who regarded these old testimonies merely as “traditions of the elders” rather than personal convictions— grew to maturity, they gradually let them go. One Yearly Meeting after another became accustomed to changes that would once have bowed them to the earth with shame and sorrow.

English Friends, as far as I recall, were the first to yield; but the American Yearly Meetings, except our own in Philadelphia, were not far behind. We in Philadelphia held fast to our old customs as long as we possibly could, but even we had to yield in the end.

One of my sisters married and settled within Baltimore Yearly Meeting — a Meeting that embraced these changes far more rapidly than we did, and which we in Philadelphia regarded as lamentably “gay.” My sister, however, carried the Philadelphia spirit with her, and as her large family of daughters grew up, she tried earnestly to keep them to the Philadelphia standard of plainness. But it was all in vain; one innovation after another crept in, and she found herself powerless to prevent it.

Fortunately, she was blessed with a delightful sense of humor, and even in the midst of her struggles for plainness, she could still see the absurdity of the situation. She came to me one day to describe her difficulties and to ask my advice. When she had laid everything before me, she suddenly sprang up with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, lifted one foot into the air, and said: “Now, Hannah, please tell me where it will be safe for me to put my foot down. Once I put it down at the overskirts, but soon had to lift it again. Then I put it down among artificial flowers in the children’s hats, and once m ore had to lift it. Next, I put it down at rings on their fingers, and again it had to be lifted. Now I do not want to put it down again until I can be quite sure I will not have to take it up. Do thee think, Hannah, ”— and here she assumed an amusingly solemn expression —“that I might safely venture to put it down at nose rings?”

This was too much for my gravity. I burst into laughter, and my sister joined me. Somehow, the air was cleared, and she decided she could no longer carry on the fruitless effort to impose Philadelphia ideas upon Baltimore. She would accept the inevitable changes that were bound to come, even among such a conservative body as Friends.

The simple truth, as I have shown, was that the aim of the Quakers had always been to avoid following the “vain fashions of the world.” They only adopted a new style once it had become old and was passing away. Baltimore Friends were simply ready to do this a little sooner than Philadelphia Friends. One of my Baltimore nieces told me she remembered coming once to Philadelphia to attend a party given by her Philadelphia cousins, and feeling horribly worldly and wicked because her dress was made more in the fashion than theirs.

How little all this can be understood by the young Quakers of the present day! But how tremendously real it all was to us.