Whatever Happened to Handkerchiefs?

A small square of cloth for the ordinary business of being human.

Whatever happened to handkerchiefs?

Men carried them. In their back pockets as they worked, as they went about their day. Folded into a jacket or pushed into a pair of trousers. Quite often initialled, lest there be any confusion about whose nose belonged to which cloth. Part of a man’s inventory, his wardrobe, his utility kit. Keys, wallet, handkerchief. Ready for the day.

For wiping sweat from his forehead. Blowing his nose. Cleaning something from his hands before shaking another’s. Tending to a tool. And sometimes, to dry a tear from a partner or a child’s eye.

Quite a range of responsibilities for a small square of cotton.

There was a skill in using one. The unfolding and refolding. Finding a clean corner. Knowing what it could still be asked to do, and when it was spent. There were limits. The handkerchief that had helped with the engine probably shouldn’t be called upon to attend to a wedding.

There was also the necessary rotation through a drawer full of handkerchiefs. Used ones into the wash. Clean ones into the drawer. Someone washed them. Someone hung them out and folded them. Perhaps the man himself. Perhaps someone whose care he carried in his pocket without giving it much thought.

A small domestic cycle, keeping a man supplied for the ordinary demands of being alive.

When did he first acquire one? I wonder about that. When did it dawn on him that he required one? Was there a morning when his father handed him a handkerchief, or his mother tucked one into his pocket? Was it part of getting ready for school, for work, for a funeral? Did he receive a box of them at Christmas, his initials stitched into the corner?

When did he pass that quiet initiation? When did someone stop reminding him, and he began to remember for himself?

I don’t recall a corresponding ceremony at which we all agreed to stop.

Disposable tissues had something to do with it. By 1930, Kleenex was advertising “the handkerchief you can throw away”. No washing. No folding. No suspicious object emerging from a trouser pocket on laundry day. You can understand the appeal. Gradually, the cloth handkerchief lost ground to something more convenient.

But I wonder whether a few gestures went with it.

The hand going to the pocket. The cloth being shaken open. A man pausing to wipe his forehead before returning to whatever he was doing. The small acknowledgement that he had a body, and the body required a moment.

We have entire regimes for attending to our bodies now. We measure our steps, our sleep, our heart rates. We know how much protein we should be eating. But when do we tend to ourselves in these little moments within the day? Or tend to another? Or tend to something we are working with?

The handkerchief was available for all of it. Even the pipe smoker could put one to work, holding a hot meerschaum bowl through the cloth. A little provision for the practical difficulties of his chosen pleasure.

And if somebody proposed a race, there was a use for it there too. Before starting pistols became established, running races could begin with the dropping of a white handkerchief. Early motorists also found a handkerchief sufficient to send them on their way. Hold it up. Make sure everyone is watching. Give the signal.

It could begin a duel as well. Under some arrangements, the dropping of a handkerchief was the signal for two men to raise their pistols and fire. An alarming responsibility for something that might have spent the morning attending to a runny nose.

A surprisingly eventful life, the handkerchief’s.

We speak a great deal about men and feeling. Their difficulty expressing it. Their difficulty meeting it in another. I wonder about the man who might not have known what to say, but knew to take a handkerchief from his pocket. Who could offer it, or reach towards a wet cheek with something soft.

I don’t know that he felt more than we do. I wonder whether some of his feeling had somewhere familiar to go. A gesture he had learned. Something his hands knew how to do.

And sometimes that gesture reached beyond the person beside him.

I think of Father Edward Daly in Derry on Bloody Sunday. The white handkerchief held up as men carried the mortally wounded Jackie Duddy. An appeal to stop firing, to let them through. A small cloth raised between a wounded body and the guns.

The handkerchief had served as a signal to begin shooting. Here it was asking for the shooting to stop.

He could scarcely have imagined that use for it when he put it in his pocket that morning.

We carry little black boxes now. Full of information. We can summon help, speak across oceans, photograph the face of someone we love. Extraordinary things. But still useless at blowing your nose or wiping a tear from a child’s eye.

For that, we have to put them down.

I know grandfathers now in their sixties and seventies with muscles and health regimes. Pension plans and health plans and foreign holidays. Old men with grandchildren and no handkerchief. Muscled and active and no handkerchief. Apps and gadgets and no handkerchief.

I feel we may have overlooked something in all this preparation.

And somewhere, there are drawers containing the handkerchiefs of men who are no longer here. Folded and unemployed. A few initials in a corner. Perhaps kept because someone remembers the hands that held them. Perhaps waiting for someone to decide what to do with them.

There is a little grief in that. There is also a perfectly serviceable handkerchief.

Perhaps it could come out of retirement.

I find myself wanting a drawer full. A clean one for the morning. Something useful to carry into the day, with its small demands and unpredictable tendernesses. I might even have my initials put on them. At my age, I think I qualify.

I have no immediate plans for a duel. But I do have a runny nose.

Whatever happened to handkerchiefs?

And would anyone mind terribly if we brought them back?

Sources: Kimberly-Clark’s tissue history; Paykoc Pipes: meerschaum care; World Athletics history; Getty archival motor-racing footage listing; duelling-pistol history; Ulster Museum: Bloody Sunday.