Some small children, playing in the street, called to one another and formed a procession behind us.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, June 28, 1947

“Incidentally,” inquired Jimmie Frise, “are you color blind?”

“Certainly not,” I informed him.

“The reason I ask,” went on Jim, “is the way you dress.”

“What’s the matter,” I demanded, “with the way I dress? I’d rather dress with a little individuality than the way most men dress. In drab grays, blues, browns. Like inmates of an institution.”

“I’d rather look,” replied Jim, “like an inmate of an institution than like an escaped inmate of an institution.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked hotly.

“Weeeeelll, after all,” soothed Jimmie, “it pays to conform. After all, there are certain standards in this world. It’s a lot more comfortable to conform.”

“I’m comfortable enough,” I assured him.

“Just look at you!” scoffed Jim. “A rowdy tweed coat. A green shirt. Navy blue pants. And brown shoes.”

“Look:” I interrupted. “What difference does it make to anybody in the world how I dress? Actually, does it matter in the very slightest degree to a single living soul in this whole earth whether I dress this way or some other way?”

“There’s me,” suggested Jim. “The sight of you makes me uneasy.”

“How could it?” I protested.

“It’s this way,” explained Jim. “Society is an institution. An artificial institution. Society doesn’t come natural to man. Cattle and sheep live in herds. That’s society. But men are more like wolves or other predators. They live best in small packs. In the beginning, men did live in small packs. And the packs were continually fighting one another for trespassing on each other’s hunting preserves. So, after a long struggle, a system was worked out, called human society, in which an effort was made to persuade men to abandon their natural wolf pack way of life and adopt the social system of the herds of cattle and sheep.”

“Now, just a minute…!” I tried.

“What I’m getting at,” persisted Jimmie, “is that it is the duty of everybody in human society to try and conform to the herd. All sheep look alike. All cattle in a herd look alike. You can’t really tell one from another; unless, of course, you’re the owner of a small herd, and you know them Individually as Bessie, and Brownie and Bunty. I’m referring to great herds, like the human herd.”

“Now, hold on there!” I argued.

“To make human society work,” went on Jim, calmly, it is the duty of every one of us to fight back those individualistic impulses that throw back to the wolf in us. That is why clothes and fashions are so important. The highest type of social man is the man who looks most like all other men.”

“Some of the greatest men we’ve ever had,” I challenged, “like Winston Churchill, were famous for their funny-looking hats and conspicuous clothes!”

“Ah, the leaders, yes,” agreed Jim easily. “The herd bull is often a mighty and individualistic-looking creature. The ram that leads the flock is distinguished by huge and spectacular horns. I imagine the leaders of human society are entitled to the same distinctions. But I’m talking about the vast mass, the rank and file of human society. Its function – its DUTY – is to conform, to be uniform, to be standardized.”

“Are you talking socialism,” I demanded, “or Nazism?”

“The army,” concluded Jim, “is the highest expression of human society. There, the rank and file are dressed as like as pins, and trained, as far as possible, to act and think exactly alike. The generals, of course, are gaudy.”

“Jim,” I pleaded, “you don’t really believe all this, do you?”

“If it weren’t true,” retorted Jim, “then why do you see, in a big city like this, all the men breaking their necks to look all alike, to wear the same suits, coats, hats? Why do the great majority look askance at any man who dresses against the fashion? Like you?”

“Do people look askance at me?” I snorted.

“I’m looking at you askance,” confessed Jim, gently. “Ow! That shirt! Those pants! Those yellow boots!”

I looked down at myself and saw little to complain of. The coat is a favorite. It has great big bellows side pockets in which you can carry pipe, tobacco, all the letters you’ve got in the last few days, a notebook, a couple of small books like a bird guide or a fishing book, a small camera, a bottle of vitamin pills and any of the other things a man likes to have handy.

The navy blue pants, I admit, were not what I had intended to put on. But I picked them off the hook in the dark closet and had them on before I noticed they weren’t the gray flannels. But is a man to go around looking at his own pants all the time?

The green shirt? Well, it was the top shirt in the drawer.

And the yellow boots? Ah, now we’re on fighting ground. Boots are a man’s foundation. Comfortable, sturdy boots are the basis of a man. Rich or poor, look at a man’s boots, and you can tell his character at glance. I had my yellow boots on because they are the most comfortable.

Jim slowly surveyed me from head to foot, and shuddered.

“Ordinary consideration,” he said, “for your fellow-citizen should prevent you from a get-up like that.

Jim, never since the days of George IV.” I informed him, “has there been such color and freedom in men’s clothes as there is today. Sport coats, sport shirts, hand-painted neckties, pastel hats…”

“But they don’t clash!” cried Jim. “They blend, they co-ordinate.”

“Did you notice,” I asked bitterly, “in the papers a few weeks back all the excitement about Bobby Locke’s plus fours?”

“The golf champion?” said Jim.

“Yes, the South African,” I declared, “who came over here and grabbed off a lot of the big cash prizes in the golf tournaments. Now, what do you suppose was the biggest news about Locke? What do you imagine all the newspapers and the wire services featured about Bobby Locke? It was his plus fours. His big baggy pants. Why, even Time had a feature on them.”

Now, what do you suppose was the biggest news about Locke?… It was his plus fours.

“Well, they’re a little old fashioned,” pointed out Jim. “Back 20 years ago, plus fours were the standard golf costume. No gentleman felt himself properly dressed for a golf game unless he had on plus fours.”

“Plus fours,” I stated, “have nothing to do with golf, then or now. Plus fours were sanctified by the grouse shooters, deer stalkers and salmon fishers of Scotland ages before the golfers took them up. Plus fours are the finest sporting garments ever designed. There is more freedom in them than anything save the kilt. They’re roomy where room is needed, and leave your lower legs and ankles free of the flapping nuisance of trouser cuffs. And I have a pair.”

“Of plus fours?” exclaimed Jim. “I never saw you in them.”

“I wear them on special occasions,” I explained, cautiously.

“Such as going to the opera, I suppose,” scoffed Jim, “or to weddings!”

“They’re heavy Harris tweed,” I explained stiffly. “I got them in Scotland about 20 years ago.”

“Funny I never saw you in them,” muttered Jim.

“Well, there are too many burrs in this part of Canada,” I mentioned. “First time I wore them out rabbit hunting in the fall, I got into a burr patch and it kind of gummed me up. Took my entire family and me the whole evening to pick them free.”

“Still, there have been several funerals,” persisted Jim,” where I would have expected to see you in them…”

“Okay, Jim,” I submitted sadly. “You dress like a chartered accountant if you like. You go socialist if you like, and dress like a numb little robot. An I can say is, Bobby Locke wore plus fours and almost swept the golf world. I’m willing to bet he owed a lot to the plus fours on two accounts: first, because they gave his legs the fullest freedom possible; and second, the psychological effect of them on his opponents. They were a mental hazard. You see a man waddling around in plus fours, and you get an entirely erroneous idea of what he’s got underneath them.”

“Let’s see you in your plus fours, some time,” laughed Jimmie.

When I went home for supper, I went to the attic and opened up all the pillow cases full of old hunting clothes until I came to the plus fours, forgotten all these years. There were still some burrs in them.

I took them down and changed into them, and selected a windbreaker and a nice quiet sport shirt of one of the gloomier Scottish clans. I found the coarse woolen knee hose that go with the plus fours balled up in the pockets of the garment. My yellow shoes completed the ensemble.

And after dinner, I walked around the corner to Jim’s, finding him weeding the petunias. He sat back on his haunches and surveyed me.

“By George,” he breathed, “you look like something dug up out of the twenties! You look like a Scotch countryman out on the misty hills looking for a shilling a friend said he had lost. Did you come round the front way, or through the back lanes?”

“Does anything clash?” I inquired sharply. “Isn’t this shirt and windbreaker in conformity with the plus fours? The hose are a proper blend with the tweed…?”

“It’s not the blend I refer to this time,” said Jim, rising. “Let’s go indoors, eh?”

“Are you afraid of the neighbors?” I sneered.

“Well, after all,” said Jimmie, “it’s not the season for masquerade parties.”

I stood my ground.

“Jim,” I enunciated, “I’m going around to the corners to get some tobacco. Want to come?”

“Think of your wife and children,” suggested Jim.

“They don’t mind me,” I said.

“Wait till after dark,” urged Jim. “Come on in.”

“You’ve got a psychosis,” I charged. “You’ve gone socialist without knowing it. You may be a Tory in your surface mind but underneath, you’re licked, Jim. You are frightened. You conform. You want to hide in the herd – that herd of sheep you were talking about this afternoon.”

“You’ve got a good point there,” agreed Jim, “come on in and sit down and we’ll talk it over.”

“I’m going to walk around and get some tobacco,” I stated, starting for the front walk.

“If you were taller,” suggested Jim, “if you weren’t so wide … sort of … or if the plus fours weren’t QUITE so bloomy …”

“Even personal insults, eh?” I gritted.

“Oh, well…” sighed Jim, throwing down the trowel and dusting off his hands.

So we walked out to the pavement and turned south to go the three blocks to the shops.

It is easy to be nonchalant in plus fours. They afford great freedom to the nether limbs and also to the mind. They are airy, roomy, and from them arises a spirit of liberty that affects the whole being.

On the verandahs of the neighbors, as we passed, there were outbreaks of sudden short coughs; and also sudden silences. Whenever we met people walking, Jim stepped smartly ahead of me, as if to shield me from view. Normally, Jim is very respectful to the sensitiveness of a short man, who always hates to be stood in front of. But tonight, he was obviously in distress. A car full of young people honked their horn loudly as they passed, and cheers wafted from them. Another car, farther on, slammed on its brakes with a screech of tires, as it passed us.

Some small children, playing in the street, called to one another and formed a procession behind us, chanting some unintelligible nonsense, until Jimmie drove them away.

At the corners, where there were groups of people waiting for the bus and lingering in the store fronts, there were again those sudden silences as we passed along into the cigar store,

“See, Jim?” I explained. “Those abrupt silences are marks of respect. Everybody respects a person of obvious individuality.”

We got our tobacco and emerged into the evening.

“Let’s go round the other way,” suggested Jim. “Right around the block.”

“Okay.” I said.

Again, the silences on the verandahs. Again a couple of salutes from car horns and several cars slowed down for the view.

“What’s the hurry, Jim?” I remarked, for he was walking far faster than his usual gait.

A bunch of kids were playing soft ball on the pavement ahead. One of them got his eye on me at a little distance and yelled. They were all ganged up on the sidewalk for our passage. Their cries and exclamations grew louder,

“Hey, mister,” yelled one, “what have you got in there? Samples? Hey, give us some samples!”

Another made a snatch at my plus fours, as I passed. I thrust him firmly aside. They formed into a parade and followed, yelling variously.

“He’s got SOMETHING in there!” one screamed. “Biggest pockets I ever saw ….”

“Go away! Go away!” Jimmie and I both commanded.

But they followed; the procession grew; and a small wirehaired terrier, seeing the excitement, joined in, yapping perilously at my heels. People came forward on their verandahs, and out their side drives. A cocker spaniel, of gloomy mien, joined in and, with the terrier, started yapping very close to the lower extremities of the plus fours. I walked faster.

On a lawn ahead stood a large sheepdog. From behind the screen of hair over its eyes, it viewed the gathering procession with lifted head and the tension of alertness.

I walked faster.

“Not too fast!” hissed Jim, beside me. “It makes them waggle.”

The sheepdog bounded forward. It took up the head of the parade behind me. The smaller dogs went frantic. The sheep dog took a small, speculative nip at the Harris tweed.

I lengthened stride.

I started to run.

The sheepdog took a good wide grab.

And in a great confusion of small boys, dogs, parents and the owner of the sheepdog, I was wrested free by Jimmie, who escorted me rapidly the rest of the block to my own house.

In the long hall mirror, I examined myself over my shoulder.

“I’m TERRIBLY sorry it was a sheepdog,” consoled Jimmie.


Editor’s Note: As they mentioned, Bobby Locke was a South African golf champion, whose early career was interrupted by World War Two. He was invited to the USA by the golfer Sam Sneed in 1947.