A pair of chamois gloves

A pair of chamois leather gloves, made by Budd, in the Piccadilly Arcade.   They’re skin-tight and brutally elegant, like something Arsene Lupin might wear to the Opera.  The fingertips get dirty after a single wear, which I suppose is really the point.  

Yellow chamois leather gloves are, supposedly, an appropriate accompaniment to morning dress.  I once wore them to a winter wedding; it was bitterly cold, and I needed gloves to go with my morning coat. But I was the only one wearing a pair, and someone even commented on them.  Thus I was reminded that it is possible to be ‘right’ and to be very wrong; and that there are times when to be right is wrong.  

There’s a line in the Ted Hughes poem Hawk Roosting, “My manners are tearing off heads.” And there’s really no excuse for that, especially at a wedding.  Lesson learned.