The?handkerchief, at least in modern Britain, is a bit of a joke. But in other countries, hankies are serious business. Pocket corners?handkerchiefs folded into a suit?s front pocket?have a language all their own. In Sri Lanka, carrying a handkerchief is considered a sign of a well-educated person. In America, handkerchiefs are largely regarded as unhygienic.
But some people will put up with anything to advance the cause of knowledge. A student at Boston University recently wrote a PhD thesis on the cultural history of the pocket and pocketed possessions in 19th-century America. It included a long section on the handkerchief. You can?t get more serious than that.
Except perhaps in Victorian times. In the 18th and 19th centuries, handkerchiefs were used mostly by men. [Many such hankies] feature common male interests, such as grand industrial projects; sport; railways; mapping; and the Napoleonic encounters. But many also show how political and subversive handkerchiefs became in Georgian and Victorian times.
[One] technique is the handkerchief joke that folds to produce a punchline. One illustrates the ?Eastern Question? (the conflict with Russia over the Ottoman empire), which in 1878 became the biggest foreign-policy debate in Britain since the French Revolution (pictured). It shows portraits of four of the chief rivals: a Russian hero of the Crimean war, Prince Gorschakoff; Germany?s chancellor Otto von Bismarck; and the Turkish foreign minister, Safvet Pacha. If folded across the diagonals, the portraits morph into a single head?that of Benjamin Disraeli, the British PM who lorded over them all.
Another [museum item] marks the first Reform Bill of 1832, commemorated on a silken handkerchief by a grey horse named Reform being cheered on by John Bull and the people.
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