The dowdiness all burst upon my astonished eyes at once: the up-and-down collar worn with a top hat and a morning coat; permanently turned trousers worn with Oxford shoes, so as to display an inch or so of sock; tie usually to match the socks and often "self-coloured" and patternless. There are three items of sheer deliberate dowdiness for you. Another dowdy item was even a little earlier, I believe: the one-buttoned glove, showing a bit of bare wrist between it and the shirt-cuff. But the soft-fronted dress-shirt, also a piece of dowdy dandyism, came in much at the same time as the three specimens cited above.
I should guess the year to be either 1907 or 1908, but I am not quite sure. You, with your wonderful memory, may be able to place it, for 1907-8 marks the period when you burst upon the London firmament.
I—who con remember witnessing a departure for Cremorne—I, I need hardly tell you, remember much older and almost as strange things. I remember peg-top trowsers, skin-tight trowsers, bell-shaped trowsers, though I can't fix the epoch of any of these phenomena; and I can remember when we deliberately wore our trowsers so long that we trod upon them with our heels and frayed them; and that was in 1880-1.
