To hanky or not to hanky? There is no question

The humble handkerchief is grievously underrated. Its uses are bound only by the imagination of its owner. I say owner, but I might just as easily say “wearer” or “user”, or even “conjurer”, because an industrious person can do almost anything with a handkerchief and a positive attitude.

There are the obvious uses: wiping your hands or face, blowing your nose, conjuring a rabbit from a hat, as skilled magicians do, often with a rhetorical flourish of their handkerchief. “Thank you for mentioning hats,” you’ve already said to yourself, aloud in your wood-panelled reading room, because you know that a handkerchief can be fashioned into a headpiece to keep sweat from your eyes in hot weather. More portable than its big sister the tea towel, a handkerchief is also a handy appurtenance for cleaning up spillages.

Left: A sensible man wearing a sensible hat, fashioned from his handkerchief. And right: Two idiots.Credit: Reuters

It can be purely decorative when used as a pocket square, or super useful when strategically deployed. Tom Sawyer tied his handkerchief to a stick and used it as a bag. I don’t remember what happened in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, nor do I care, but Tom did a lot of stuff up and down the banks of the Mississippi River with nothing but a vibrant spirit and his trusty handkerchief bag.

Shakespeare used a handkerchief as a plot device in one of his films. Again, I’m not across the details, but I think Desdemona left her handkerchief in a Venetian nightclub, triggering her ruin. The handkerchief was a present from her beloved Othello. That’s another thing you can do with a handkerchief: give one to your partner as a gift.

Proving its effectiveness as an object of both high and low culture, the handkerchief is an important item in folk dancing, especially in the Balkans and the Middle East. Apparently the English use handkerchiefs for Morris dancing, which sounds fun, although when I lived in England they were used to make Molotov cocktails for rioting. Helpfully, a handkerchief can also be applied as a tourniquet to stop bleeding.

Handkerchiefs are everywhere in sports. Golfers use handkerchiefs to clean their clubs. Cyclists use them to polish their bicycles. NFL quarterbacks even stuff a handkerchief down the back of their pants and use it to wipe their hands between plays. Speaking of sports, the Herald’s occasional sports editor, Ben Coady, refuses to carry a handkerchief, preferring to use tissues to wipe away his tears when the Buffalo Bills lose yet another game to the Kansas City Handkerchiefs.

Desdemona, Shakespearean partygirl, lamenting the loss of her handkerchief in da club.Credit: The Australian Opera

That’s the thing about handkerchiefs. People have tried to replace them with other items: tissues, towels, your wife’s Kenzo T-shirt when she’s not home. But none of these items are as good as the original handkerchief. A handkerchief is not a single-use item. Every handkerchief has a unique history. Plus they don’t destroy the environment by creating waste.

Handkerchiefs are cool. Audrey Hepburn drove across Italy in a convertible with one around her neck. People who go on boats, like Gwyneth Paltrow in The Talented Mr Ripley, accessorise their outfits with colourful handkerchiefs. Truman Capote wiped condensation from his cocktails with a handkerchief while getting blasted in the Hamptons sunshine. Philip Larkin wrote Aubade while sobbing into one.

Morris dancing, a traditional English handkerchief dance, was responsible for the decline of the British Empire.

When The Beatles came to Australia in 1964 people waved handkerchiefs at them. Keith Richards dabs his nose with a handkerchief, and not only when he’s got the flu. Even Jay-Z likes handkerchiefs. His hit song Can’t Knock the Sniffle, from the breakthrough 1996 album Reasonable Doubt, is all about handkerchief use. Beyonce likes them too – that’s why she likes Jay-Z. The Carters are a handkerchief family.

I see a hand raised at the back. “What role does the handkerchief have in political life?” you ask. A shrewd question, but sadly the handkerchief has no role in politics. The philosophy of the handkerchief – described in an obscure pamphlet by an anonymous 13th-century theologian as “The Pathe of the Kerchief” – is entirely alien to the politician.

There’s nothing up there, Elon.Credit: Getty

This is because handkerchief use is considerate: using a handkerchief shows you care about your fellow human. To follow The Pathe of the Kerchief one has to know humility, generosity, and be capable of working in the interests of those around you. Politicians don’t know about that stuff.

Business? Get out of here. Elon Musk would take one look at a handkerchief in all its simple perfection and try to turn it into a spaceship. Listen, Elon. Nobody wants to go to space, OK? Space is bullshit. There’s nothing out there but floaty rocks and weird time holes you can’t see with your eyes. Get over it, Elon. This is a bloke who invented the Tesla. The Tesla is a car. And we already had cars. So Elon didn’t invent anything, and look how full of himself he is. Can you imagine how much he’d carry on if he invented the handkerchief?

Ultimately, the handkerchief is a way of life. It speaks to the character of its owner, saying to the world: “Be warned, cruel and random world, that I, with the help of this trusty handkerchief, see you for what you are – an indiscriminate dispenser of mess. But I am ready for you. For I have my handkerchief.”

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