The result of the activities of these angelic visitants is that all the other hospital porters have had instructions from their eager and hopeful secretaries to be careful to be polite to any and every person, even though he or she should be in rags, who expresses the faintest desire to enter on business; more than polite—­solicitous, welcoming, cordial; while all the secretaries are at this moment polishing up their smiles and practising an easy manner with ladies in last century costumes who put sudden and unexpected requests.

The Times, in limiting the effect of these curious occurrences entirely to hospital servants, seems to me to lose a great opportunity.  Surely the consequences will be more wide-reaching than that?  To my mind we may even go so far as to hail the dawn of the golden age for old clothes; for in the fear that shabbiness may be merely a whimsical disguise or the mark of a millionaire’s eccentricity the whole world (which is very imitative and very hard up) will begin to fawn upon it, and then at last many of us will enter the earthly paradise.

But the gentleman who puts ease before elegance and the lady who prefers comfort to convention have got to work a little harder yet.  They must not fold their hands at the moment under the impression that their labours are done.  The support of hospitals is humane and only too necessary, and all honour to them for their generosity; but other spheres of action await exploration.

I had hoped that the War was going to reform ideas on dress and make things more simple for those whose trouser-knees go baggy so soon and remain thus for so long; but, like too many of the expectations which we used to foster, this also has failed.  It is therefore the benign couple who must carry on the good work.  Let them, if they really love their fellow-creatures, go to a wedding or two (having previously given a present of sufficient value to ensure respect) and display their careless garb among the guests, and then in a little while old garments would at these exacting functions become as fashionable as new and we should all be happier.

I was asked to a wedding last week, and should have accepted but for the great Smart Clothes tradition.  If The Times’ hero and heroine were to become imaginatively busy as I suggest, I could go to all the weddings in the world. (Heaven forbid!) Receptions, formal lunches, the laying of stones, the unveiling of monuments, private views—­these ceremonies, now so full of terrors for any but the dressy, could be made endurable if only the gentleman in the black coat green with age and the lady with the elastic sides would show themselves prominently and receive conspicuous attentions.

And then, if any more statues were needed for the police to keep their waterproofs on, one of them should be that of an unknown philanthropical gentleman who wears venerable top-boots, and another that of a philanthropical lady who would rather be without any boots at all, and the inscription on the pedestals would state that their glorious achievement was this:  They made old clothes the thing.