The Lost Hat Of Peter Mull
It's been a year since I sent this out to subscribers of my Patreon, and now it is time to let people know all about the lost hat of Peter Mull.
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The Lost Hat Of Peter Mull
Peter Mull made his best hat – some suggest the greatest hat in history – on November 7th 1804. Afterwards he made more hats, all of fine quality, nothing but of the best left his workshop. Yet none quite reached the same heights and he himself seemed to lose some spark. It was ten more years before he gave up – half-blinded and half-dazed by quicksilver – and in that time none of his hats were notable, as though having reached that height he knew he would never equal it.
It was bought, according to his shop records, by Edward Symes, gentleman, for 5 Guineas, an expensive hat though not extraordinarily so. Mr Symes own papers do not appear to have survived so to follow it we have to rely on references on other people’s documents.
Alice Amour notes in a letter to her sister that Symes seems even more handsome in his smart new hat that was the talk of the hour. Joshua Remand wonders in his journal how he managed to purchase it considering that he owed him two hundred pounds in gambling debts. Pierre Sant-Blanc has a very clear description of it, the best we have, that he wrote in his Guide To London For The Émigré Royalist, though unfortunately it is in French and we await a good translation.
What happened to the hat is a mystery. There are indications that it may have been lost at the Epsom Derby, or stolen from the cloakroom during a ball to celebrate the victory at Trafalgar, or perhaps it was sat on at the opera by an exiled German prince. Symes was inconsistent in his story, or perhaps those who wrote it down were careless. In any case he complained afterwards that no hat, not even others bought from Mull, was its equal.
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