The introduction of the ample perriwig has always been regarded as
the most ambitious effort of tonsorial art. And as it rarely happens
that any one mind is capable of perfecting a discovery by a single
effort; so the honour of conceiving the beau ideal of a fully-developed
wig can scarcely, with justice, be claimed by any particular artist.
Like the Absolutism, of which it may be regarded as the symbol, it
was the growth of time, and expanded to its fullest dimensions under
the favouring rule of the Grand Monarque. During that long reign,
extending over the greater part of a century, the Wig sat supreme upon
the brows of one of the great Princes of the Earth, at whose nod the
nations trembled; whose wrath was fire and desolation, as the ruined
towns of the Palatinate may still bear witness (Rex dixit, et factum
est); whose ambition was fed with war and conquest; but whose heart
was all as false as the smooth curls which counterfeited the graces of
perpetual youth.
The true morphological development of the wig appears to have been
after this fashion. First of all a small portion of artificial hair
was cunningly inserted among the natural curls, to eke out the economy
of Nature; this suggested the idea of two supplementary bunches;
then a third was added; these in turn were connected by a coif, and
the result was the _perruque à calotte_. It is recorded of the
Cardinal de Richelieu that he was the first to introduce this form of
peruke at court. It formed part of the attire of the Duke of Bedford,
so whimsically described by De Grammont to Charles II. “Sir,” said he,
“I had the honour to see him embark in his coach, with his asthma, and
country equipage, his _perruque à calotte_ neatly tied with a
yellow riband, and his old-fashioned hat covered with oil-skin, which
became him uncommonly well.” The first appearance of Louis Quatorze in
his grand peruke is not duly set forth with historic accuracy; but the
important part it played in the daily routine of court etiquette is
well known. The chief valet slept in the king’s apartment and called
him at the appointed hour. Then it was announced in the ante-chamber
that the king was awake. In came the members of the royal family
to wish him “good morning;” after them, the first gentleman of the
chamber, the grand master of the wardrobe and other officers bringing
the king’s dresses. From a silver gilt vessel the valet pours spirits
of wine on the royal hands, and a duke presents the holy water. After
a very short religious service, the king’s perruques are laid before
him, and choice is made of one most pleasing to his majesty, which
is subsequently elevated to the head by the king’s own hand. Other
ceremonies disposed of, the king must be shaved: one holds the basin,
another adjusts the shaving-cloth and applies the razor; a soft sponge
dipped in spirit of wine is passed over the royal face, and afterwards
pure water in the same manner, which completes the operation, the chief
valet all the time holding the looking-glass. At all the mysteries of
_la première entrée_, the _grand entrée_, and the dressing
of the king by the courtiers, the ceremony of the breakfast, and the
state receptions, the peruke is present. But before proceeding to the
council, the chief valet furnishes another wig for the king’s pate: it
goes to mass with him, attends him at dinner, accompanies him to the
abode of Madame de Maintenon and elsewhere; comes home in good time,
and is present at the supper _au grand couvert_: then bows to the
ladies and courtiers in the grand saloon, and returns with the king for
a while to his own apartments to witness the felicities of a king in
private life. About midnight again all is bustle and preparation; the
chief barber arranges the dressing table in the king’s chamber; a cold
collation is put by the bedside, ready to the king’s lips, should he
wake with an appetite in the night; the courtiers are assembled, and
the king enters. He hands his hat and gloves to some favoured nobleman
who is present to receive them, the sword by knightly hands is carried
to the dressing-table, the almoner holds the wax lights and repeats
the prayer, the watch and reliquary are given in charge to a valet de
chambre, blue ribbon, cravat and waistcoat are dispensed with, two
lacqueys remove the garters, two more are required to draw off the
stockings, two pages present slippers, and the Dauphin the _chemise
de nuit_; the king bows, the courtiers retire, and the _grand
coucher_ is finished. Now the hair has to be combed and arranged;
one valet holds the looking-glass and the other a light; the bed is
aired, and the Wig goes to bed with the king; the chief valet draws
the curtains, and, within the secret recesses of that impenetrable
shade, the perriwig is exchanged for a nightcap, and the royal hand of
Louis presenting it outside the curtains, it is consigned to the care
of its trusty guardian, the chief valet, who then locks the doors, and
lays down on a bed prepared for him in the same chamber. Good night,
Monsieur Bontemps.--What if some of these wonderful wigs could publish
their “Secret Memoirs,” what a treasury of scandal it would disclose
for the gratification of the pickers-up of “unconsidered trifles!”
Binette was the great perruquier of that Augustan age. Without his aid
neither king nor courtiers could go forth in becoming fashion. His
carriage and running footmen were constantly to be seen passing to
and fro the streets of Paris, in attendance on the nobility. In 1656,
Louis le Grand appointed forty wig-makers to wait upon the Court, and
in 1673 a corporation of _Barbiers-perruquiers_, consisting of
200 members, was established to supply the commonalty of Paris. At
one time the minister Colbert, judging from the large sum of money
remitted from France to foreign countries for hair, that the balance
of trade was against his own country, was desirous of introducing some
kind of cap to take the place of the wig, and spoke to the king on the
subject; but the wig-makers took the alarm, memorialized the king, and
showed from statistics that the profit on wigs exported from Paris more
than equalled the sum paid to foreigners for the material; so that
Colbert’s project was laid aside, and wigs and wig-makers flourished
more than ever. The number of licenses was now increased to 850, and
the members known under the title of _barbiers-perruquiers_,
_baigneurs-etuvistes_. The corporation had its provost, wardens,
and syndics, which were appointed by letters patent, and the offices
were hereditary. The king bestowed on this corporation the sole right
of dealing in hair, either by wholesale or retail; of making and
selling powder or pomatum; preparations to remove the hair; drops
for the cure of toothache, &c. The use of powder was not at first
sanctioned by the monarch, but at last he yielded to the wishes of his
courtiers, and permitted a trifling quantity to be sprinkled on his
own perukes. Not only was the wig a thing of magnitude, it possessed
also considerable weight; a stylish wig weighed rather more than a
couple of pounds, and was worth, according to the best authorities, a
thousand crowns. Light hair was most esteemed, and fetched at times
as much as eighty francs the ounce. To prevent imposition, it was
ordered that no second-hand wigs should be sold, except by certain
dealers on the _Quai de l’Horloge_. When these costly wigs were
first introduced the wearers appeared in the streets, in all sorts of
weather, with their hats in their hands, so anxious were they not to
disarrange their well-ordered curls. Menage has preserved a poem of
that period which ridicules the custom, and concludes thus:
“Critics, how narrow are your views,
Who thus the prudent youth abuse!
By a just value he is led
Both of his wig and of his head;
The one he knows was dearly bought,
The other would not fetch a groat.”
Bernini, the sculptor, once ventured to arrange the monarch’s curls in
accordance with his own notions of classic dignity. He had been sent
for, from Rome, at great expense, to superintend some additions to the
Louvre, and was engaged on a bust of Louis, when perceiving that the
king’s forehead was too much over-shadowed with curls, he thrust them
back, saying to the king, “Your Majesty’s face should be seen by every
one.” This originated the _frisure à la Bernin_.
Combing these elaborate curls was the envied occupation of the
beaux. In that inimitable dramatic sketch by Molière, “Les Précieuses
Ridicules,” which resembles a clever etching by a master-hand, it will
be remembered that Mascarille, the pretended marquis, combs his curls
in the presence of the ladies with the usual blandishments. The scented
powder with which these wigs were besprinkled was selected with the
nicest judgment and at great cost. In this respect also, Mascarille,
who had made free with his master’s clothes, the better to make love in
the court fashion to the fair _precieuse_, was as well furnished
as any of the court gallants.
_Mascarille._
Et celle-la? (Il donne à sentir les cheveux poudrés de sa
perruque.)
_Madelon._
Elle est tout à fait de qualité; le sublime en est touché
délicieusement.
Well might Gorgibus, in choleric mood exclaim:
Ces pendardes-là, avec leur pommade, ont, je pense, envie de me
ruiner. Je ne vois partout que blancs d’œufs, lait virginal, et
mille autres brimborions que je ne connais point. Elles ont usé,
depuis que nous sommes ici, le lard d’une douzaine de couchons,
pour le moins; et quatre valets vivraient tous les jours des
pieds de moutons qu’elles emploient.
We are not well enough informed in such manners to know if these family
recipes be worthy to be compared with the “capons greaz” which good
Queen Bess carried with her, as we learn from Nichol’s “Progresses,”
to make the hair to shine like a mallard’s wing. We own to a natural
dread of such domestic manufactures, and always greatly admired that
fine piece of strategy on the part of Dr. Primrose, when observing his
daughters busily concocting some compound over the fire--and informed
by little Dick of its true nature--he grases the poker and capsizes the
ingredients.
The nomenclature of wigs is very ample, a complete system of
classification might be adopted, and genus and species discriminated
with the greatest nicety; there were Wigs Military, Legal,
Ecclesiastical, and Infantile; we can only find room for a few
varieties:
Perruque à bonnet.
---- à nœuds.
---- ronde.
---- pointue.
---- naissante.
---- à deux queues.
---- à tonsure.
---- à la brigadière.
---- de l’Abbé.
---- à boudin.
---- à papillons.
---- à deux marteaux.
---- à trois marteaux.
---- à bourse.
We shall only be following the usual course of Fashion if we pass from
the French Court to Whitehall. In England the ladies are said to have
been beforehand with the gentlemen in the great Wig movement. Pepys
writes (1662), “By and bye came La Belle Pierce to see my wife, and
to bring her a pair of perruques of hair as the fashion now is for
ladies to wear, which are pretty, and one of my wife’s own hair, or
else I should not endure them.” The year following Pepys made a similar
investment on his own account--“November 3, Home, and by and bye comes
Chapman, the perriwig maker, and upon my liking it (the wig), without
more ado, I went up, and then he cut off my haire, which went a little
to my heart at present to part with it; but it being over, and my
perriwig on, I paid him £3, and away went he with my own haire to make
up another of; and I by and bye went abroad, after I had caused all my
maids to look upon it, and they concluded it do become me, though Jane
was mightily troubled for my parting with my own hair, and so was Besse.
“November 8, Lord’s Day.--To church, where I found that my coming in
a perriwig did not prove so strange as I was afraid it would, for I
thought that all the church would presently have cast their eyes on me,
but I found no such things.”
The same minute chronicler informs us that the Duke of York put on a
perriwig in February, 1663, and that he saw the king in one for the
first time the following April.
By command of Charles II., members of the University of Cambridge were
forbidden to wear perriwigs; and, on another occasion, when a chaplain
was preaching before him in a wig, he bid the Duke of Monmouth, then
chancellor of the university, to cause the statutes concerning decency
of apparel to be more strictly enforced. To be deprived of their
wigs was a clerical grievance. In France, a turbulent priest at the
cathedral of Beauvais insisted on his right to wear one at mass, but
was hindered from doing so, when he solemnly placed the objectionable
wig in the hands of a notary at the church doors, and protested against
the indignity which had been put upon him.
The year of the Great Plague was one of the most terrible in our
annals--Death smote his victims by thousands--the voice of lamentation
and mourning stilled for a time the gaieties of a dissolute court. The
men of fashion became alarmed lest the poison of the plague might lurk
insidiously in the curls of their wigs. Pepys entertained the same
fear:--“September 3, (1664).--Up, and put on my coloured silk suit,
very fine, and my new perriwig, bought a good while since, but durst
not wear, because the plague was in Westminster when I bought it; and
it is a wonder what will be the fashion after the plague is done as to
perriwigs, for nobody will buy any hair for fear of infection, that it
had been cut off the heads of people dead of the plague.”
Wigs were first worn by barristers about 1670. The judges were at
first somewhat opposed to the innovation, as suited only to fops,
and unbecoming so learned a profession; and some of the more zealous
leaders of the fashion were not suffered to plead in their new attire.
Time has long since reconciled us to the forensic head-dress; and if
the public be at all sceptical as to the merits of horse-hair, the
rare talents it has fostered would alone command respect. Custom and
precedent have now securely enthroned the wig in the Halls of Justice,
and authority looks with suspicion on any attempt to interfere with
its prerogative. Lord Campbell tells us that when he argued the great
Privilege Case, and had to speak for sixteen hours, “he obtained leave
to speak without a wig; but under the condition that it was not to be
drawn into a precedent.”
As early as 1654, Evelyn had been shocked at the discovery that
ladies of fashion painted their cheeks; and Pepys records that in the
galleries at Whitehall he beheld the ladies of honour “just for all
the world like men with doublets buttoned up to the breast, and with
perriwigs and hats.” How closely French fashions were imitated at
Whitehall we may judge from an entry in Evelyn’s diary:--“Following
his majesty this morning through the gallery, I went with the few who
attended him into the Duchess of Portsmouth’s dressing-room, where she
was in her morning loose garment, her maids combing her, newly out of
her bed, his majesty and the gallants standing about her.” Although
modesty, which ever accompanies good taste, had fled the court of
Charles, some fine examples might be selected from the Court Beauties,
as illustrating the special beauty of a natural and becoming coiffure.
De Grammont has not failed to notice the hair of La Belle Hamilton,
which was well set, and fell with ease into that natural order which is
so difficult to imitate. Miss Jenning’s hair was of a most beauteous
flaxen, adorning the brightest complexion that ever was seen. And the
portraits of Nell Gwynn show that sprightly damsel with short ringlets
about the temples, massed like bunches of grapes, in most tempting
clusters.
Among the smaller works of art which the perruquier produced for the
fair sex, we may mention a description of false hair set on wires, so
as to stand out like wings from each side of the head; and the merkin,
so called, which was arranged in a group of curls at each side of the
face, small over the forehead and thence increasing like the lower part
of a pyramid.
During the brief reign of James II. wigs grew larger still, and false
hair put the natural ornament of a man’s head completely in the shade.
Holme, writing in 1688, assures his readers that the custom of wearing
wigs, then so much used by the generality of men, “was quite contrary
to the custom of their forefathers, who got estates, loved their wives,
and wore their own hair,” and adds pathetically, “in these days there
be no such things.” The love-lock was soon engrafted on the wig, to
which allusion is made in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Cupid’s Revenge:”
“He lay in gloves all night, and this morning I
Brought him a new perriwig with a lock at it.”
There was, also, a long perriwig in vogue with a pole-lock or
_suffloplin_, as the perruquiers termed it, the prototype of the
giant pig-tails, once so dear to the army and navy, who never turn tail
on the enemy. We read, likewise, of the travelling or campaign-wig,
with long knots or twisted tails tied with ribbon, depending from the
bottom of the wig laterally--technically styled “knots or bobs, or a
dildo on each side with a curled forehead.”
In the next reign wigs still went on increasing in size. Combing the
curls in public, or when flirting with the ladies, was esteemed _haut
ton_. Ivory or tortoiseshell combs of large size were carried in
the gentlemen’s pockets, with which they imitated Mascarille, we make
no doubt, very abominably. They certainly manage these things much
better in France: in fashion we are content to be servile imitators of
the French, and the copy is usually very inferior to the original.
Madame Sevigné, in one of her charming letters, gossiping about the
Duchess de Bourbon, writes:--“Rien n’est plus plaisant que d’assister
à sa toilette, et de la voir se coiffer; j’y fus l’autre jour: elle
s’éveilla à midi et demi, prit sa robe de chambre, vint se coiffer,
et manger un pain au pot; elle se frise et se poudre elle-même, elle
mange en même tems; les mêmes doigts tiennent alternativement la houppe
et le pain au pot; elle mange sa poudre et graisse ses cheveux; le
tout ensemble fait un fort bon déjeuné et une charmante coiffure.”
To this age belongs the extraordinary head-dress usually called a
commode: the hair was combed upwards from off the forehead, and upon
this was built a huge pile of ribbons and lace, arranged in tiers,
and over all a scarf or veil drooping on the neck and shoulders. It
rivalled the fabled turrets which crown the head of Cybele, and was
worn by Queen Mary herself as part of the court costume. In England
these were Halcyon days for wig-makers. In later years wigs were more
generally worn by all classes; but, for the most part, they were wigs
for the million, more moderate in their pretensions, till at last they
dwindled down to a mere apology for a wig. The quantity of hair alone
in a wig for a nobleman or gentleman in those high and palmy days of
wig-making was more than ten natural crops could furnish. The material
was most costly. In 1700, a young country girl received £60 for her
head of hair; and the grey locks of an old woman, after death, sold
for fifty pounds: the ordinary price of a wig was about forty pounds.
Full-bottomed wigs, invented by one Duviller, to conceal, it is said, a
want of symmetry in the shoulders of the Dauphin, were appropriated by
the learned professions and those who studied to look uncommonly grave
and sagacious.
“Physic of old her entry made
Beneath the immense full-bottom’s shade,
While the gilt cane, with solemn pride,
To each sagacious nose applied,
Seemed but a necessary prop
To bear the weight of wig at top.”
Children, too, wore wigs; and, if unprovided with so necessary an
article of dress, the hair was combed and curled, so as to look as much
like a wig as possible.
Archbishop Tillotson was the first of our prelates who wore a wig. In
one of his sermons he writes: “I can remember when ministers generally,
whatever their text was, did either find or make occasion to reprove
the sin of long hair; and if they saw any one in the congregation
guilty in that kind, they would point him out particularly, and let fly
at him with great zeal.”
The reign of Queen Anne saw the magnitude of the wig somewhat
diminished, but the variety of wigs in fashion was increased. Steele’s
wig at one time formed a heavy item in his expenditure. His large black
perriwig cost him (we are supposing it was paid for) as much as forty
guineas. Swift had a fine state wig for grand occasions waiting his
coming to St. James’s, as did poor Vanessa. Colley Cibber’s wig, in
which he played a favourite character, was of such noble proportions,
that it was brought upon the stage in a sedan by two chairmen. How it
was that Colonel Brett desired to possess this formidable wig, at any
price, must be told in Cibber’s own words: “Possibly, the charms of our
theatrical nymphs might have had some share in drawing him thither;
yet, in my observation, the most visible cause of his first coming
was a more sincere passion he had conceived for a fair full-bottom’d
perriwig, which I then wore in my first play of the _Fool in
Fashion_.
* * * * *
Now, whatever contempt philosophers may have for a fine perriwig, my
friend, who was not to despise the world, but to live in it, knew very
well that so material an article of dress upon the head of a man of
sense, if it became him, could never fail of drawing to him a more
partial regard and benevolence than could possibly be hoped for in an
ill-made one,“--terms were offered--and it ended in an agreement to
finish our bargain that night over a bottle.” “That single bottle was
the sire of many a jolly dozen,” at their subsequent meetings, as he
explains further on.
The tie-wig, an abridgment of the long curled perriwig, was worn by
many, but was not considered court dress. Lord Bolingbroke, having to
wait upon the queen in haste, once went to court in a tie-wig, which so
offended Queen Anne, that she said to those about her, “I suppose his
lordship will come to court the next time in a nightcap.” Swift writes,
(1712): “As prince Eugene was going with Mr. Secretary to court, Mr.
Hoffman, the Emperor’s resident, said to his highness that it was not
proper to go to court without a long wig, and his was a tied up one.
“Now,” says the prince, “I know not what to do, for I never had a long
perriwig in my life; and I have sent to all my valets and footmen, to
see whether any of them had one, that I might borrow it; but none of
them had any.” But the secretary said “ was a thing of no consequence,
and only observed by gentlemen ushers.” After the battle of Ramillies,
the name of the Ramillie-wig was given to a wig with a long tapering
tail, plaited and tied, with a great bow at the top, and a smaller one
at the bottom.”
The little incident of Lord Petre depriving Mrs. Fermor of a ringlet
gave rise to Pope’s poem “The Rape of the Lock.” Belinda’s head-dress
is thus described:
“This nymph, to the destruction of mankind,
Nourished two locks, which graceful hung behind
In equal curls, and well conspired to deck
With shining ringlets the smooth ivory neck.
Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains,
And mighty hearts are held in slender chains.”
The poet explains how these “mazy ringlets,” owed much of their beauty
to a rigorous discipline:
“Was it for this you took such constant care
The bodkin, comb, and essence to prepare?
For this your locks in paper durance bound,
For this with torturing irons wreathed around?
For this with fillets strained your tender head,
And bravely bore the double loads of lead?”
Belinda’s lock, in imitation of the lost tresses of Berenice, is
translated to the heavenly regions:
“A sudden star, it shot through liquid air,
And drew behind a radiant trail of hair.”
A compliment to Belinda appropriately concludes the poem:
“When these fair suns shall set, as set they must,
And all those tresses shall be laid in dust,
This lock the Muse shall consecrate to fame,
And ’midst the stars inscribe Belinda’s name.”
In Swift’s verses called “Death and Daphne,” we have a metaphorical
description of a beau’s wig:
“From her own head Megara takes
A perriwig of twisted snakes,
Which in the nicest fashion curl’d,
(Like toupées of this upper world),
With flour of sulphur powder’d well,
That graceful on his shoulders fell.
An adder of the sable kind
In line direct hung down behind.”
Both old and young fops carried the follies of the wig mania to a
most ridiculous extent. The author of the “London Spy” introduces us
to a smart young fellow “with a wheelbarrow full of perriwig on;” and
that impudent fellow, Tom Brown, in his “Letters from the Dead to the
Living,” writing of a certain beau, styled Beau Whittaker, says, “His
perriwig was large enough to have loaded a camel, and he had bestowed
upon it at least a bushel of powder;” and speaking elsewhere of
another fop, with a perriwig of the same dimensions, he observes, “If
Nature had indulged our primitive parents with such an extraordinary
production, they would have had little reason to have blushed at,
or been ashamed of their nakedness.” To speak seriously, if the wig
did not quite clothe the body like a tunic, it more than concealed
the head. The malicious spy we have quoted above comes across another
fopling in a fine wig, and moralizes after this manner: “His head is a
fool’s egg hid in a nest of hair.” If we accompany him to Man’s Coffee
House, we shall see, “a gaudy crowd of _Tom Essences_ walking
backwards and forwards with their hats in their hands, not daring to
convert them to their intended use, lest it should put the foretops of
their wigs into some disorder; their whole exercise being to charge and
discharge their nostrils, and keep their perriwigs in proper order.”
The fortune of a life not unfrequently turned upon the imposing--we
should have said the captivating appearance of a wig: unluckily
in every lottery there are many blanks; and Addison tells of one
inveterate fortune-hunter, who “had combed and powdered at the ladies
for thirty years.”
There were some inconveniences attending the use of wigs. There was no
such thing as walking forth to enjoy fresh air and exercise except in
the finest weather, if attired as became a gentleman; to be carried
about by chairmen, and jolted in a sort of trunk or band-box was a most
unenviable distinction. If a dark cloud hung over the Park or the Mall,
away hurried the magnificent perriwigs--away flew the pretty women
in their hoods and ribbons. Gay, in his “Trivia,” sounds the note of
warning:
“When suffocating mists obscure the morn,
Let the worst wig, long used to storms be worn;
This knows the powdered footman, and with care
Beneath his flapping hat secures his hair.
* * * in vain you scow’r
Thy wig alas! uncurl’d, admits the show’r.
So fierce Alecto’s snaky tresses fell,
When Orpheus charm’d the vig’rous powers of hell
Or thus hung Glaucus beard, with briny dew
Clotted and straight, when first his am’rous view
Surprised the bathing fair.”
Swift, in the “City Shower,” laughs at the distressed wigs:
“Here various kinds, by various fortunes led
Commence acquaintance underneath a shed.
Triumphant Tories and desponding Whigs
Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.”
To be caught in the rain was a terrible ordeal for the curls; but
accidents by fire were still more calamitous. At a display of
fireworks, an old writer says, the spectators screwed themselves up
in the balconies to avoid the fireworks, “which instantly assaulted
the perukes of the gallants and the merkins of the madams.” Wigs, too,
being of considerable value, were frequently stolen from the head. Gay
gives an instance of a very artful dodge:
“Where the mob gathers swiftly shoot along,
Nor idly mingle in the noisy throng.
* * * * *
Nor is thy flaxen wig with safety worn.
High on the shoulder, in the basket borne,
Lurks the sly boy, whose hand to rapine bred,
Plucks off the curling honours of the head.”
To be brought into actual contact with a powdered beau, was reckoned
one of the misadventures which a prudent man would wish to avoid.
“You’ll sometimes meet a fop of nicest tread,
Whose mantling peruke veils his empty head,
At every step he dreads the wall to lose,
And risks, to save a coach, his red-heeled shoes;
Him, like the miller, pass with caution by,
Lest from his shoulders clouds of powder fly.”
While the coarser sex revelled in all the luxury of full perriwigs, we
may be sure the fair sex bestowed as great attention on their hair.
If enterprises of great moment were undertaken by the wigs, there was
fearful slaughter of human hearts from the masked batteries of the
ladies’ smiles. In “Love’s Bill of Mortality,” given at length in the
_Spectator_, we read of one, “Jack Freelove, murdered by Melissa
in her hair.”
“The toilet,” says Addison, “is their great scene of business, and the
right adjustment of their hair the principal employment of their lives.”
“At her toilet she puts on every toy
That ladies use when eager to destroy;
Three hours by the clock, (and some say four),
She sat in polishing her form all o’er,
And culling arrows from her fatal store.”
The resources of a lady’s toilet were too numerous to be brought within
the compass of Cowley’s verse. He declines
“To relate
The strength and riches of their state--
The powder, patches, and the pins,
The ribbons, jewels, and the rings,
The lace, the paint, and warlike things,
That make up all their magazines.”
And, fortunately, what he despaired of accomplishing lies beyond the
limits of our present subject. But the time spent at the toilet was
not all dedicated to dress and the tire-woman. Addison’s skilful pen
will supply an apt illustration; “Sempronia is at present the most
professed admirer of the French nation; but is so modest as to admit
her visitants no farther than her toilet. It is a very odd sight
that beautiful creature makes when she is talking politics, with her
tresses flowing about her shoulders, and examining that face in the
glass, which does such execution upon the standers-by. How prettily
does she divide her discourse between her woman and her visitants!
What sprightly transitions does she make from an opera or a sermon to
an ivory comb or a pin-cushion! How have I been pleased to see her
interrupted in an account of her travels by a message to her footman,
and holding her tongue in the midst of a moral reflection by applying
the tip of it to a patch!”
“Vanessa held Montaigne and read,
Whilst Mrs. Susan combed her head,”
The Duchess of Sunderland, daughter of the celebrated Duchess of
Marlborough, and like her mother, says Horace Walpole, conspicuous for
her long and beautiful hair; was a great politician, and used, when
combing it, to receive the visits of those whose vote and interest
she sought to influence. While Queen Anne dressed, prayers used to be
read in an outer room, and once ordering the door to be shut while she
shifted, the chaplain stopped. The queen sent to ask why he did not
proceed. He replied, “He would not whistle the word of God through the
key-hole.” The author of the “Reminiscences” adds, that Queen Caroline
was wont to dispatch her toilet and hear prayers in the same fashion.
The Duchess of Marlborough on one occasion was somewhat prodigal of
her fine fair hair, of which she had the greatest abundance; for being
engaged at her toilet, in a fit of anger towards the Duke, she cut off
those commanding tresses and flung them in his face.
The beauties of those days made politics, the card table, and the
toilet, their chief study, and
“Thought the life of ev’ry lady
Should be one continued play-day--
Balls, and masquerades, and shows,
Visits, plays, and powdered beaus.”
The wits and poets of that brilliant era, have hit off the manners
of the times, and all the paraphernalia of patches, fans, hoops, and
head-dresses, by a few touches of the pen, with such airy grace and
lightness in the true spirit of comic revelry, and with keenest irony,
that more modern efforts in the same style appear, by comparison,
coarse and clumsy. In our own day one would think the artists all
copied from the same model,
“Small waist, wide flounces, and a face divine,
Wretchedly foolish, and extremely fine.”
The ladies’ head-dresses, which, in the time of William III., had shot
up to a height which would have astonished even De Grammont’s Princess
of Babylon, had now fallen many degrees. Addison remarks, “some ten
years ago, the female part of our species were much taller than the
men. The women were of such an enormous stature, “that we appeared as
grasshoppers before them.” At present the whole sex is in a manner
dwarfed and shrunk into a race of beauties that seems almost another
species. I remember several ladies who were very near seven feet high
that at present want some inches of five. How they came to be thus
curtailed I could never learn:”
Instead of home-spun coifs were seen
Good pinners edged with Colberteen.
Old ladies continued for some time longer to adhere to the huge
head-dresses, which supplied Lady Wortley Montague with a bit of
raillery for her “Town Eclogues:”
At chapel shall I wear the morn away?
Who there appears at these unmodish hours
But ancient matrons with their frizzled towers.
Queen Anne in the latter years of her reign wore her hair in a simple,
graceful style, well suited to her quiet nature, with clusters of curls
at the back of the neck; nor was any hair-powder permitted to sully
the brightness of her chesnut ringlets. Her sweet voice seems still
to plead for her with posterity, and to be remembered with something
like affection, when the splendid victories of the great Marlborough
are losing somewhat of their lustre on the page of history. The fruits
of industry and the blessings of peace are too precious to be weighed
against the glories of war. But, who can look at the portraits of
Marlborough, with the long curls of the wig resting on the cuirass,
without feeling there was truth in the saying of a foreigner, “That his
looks were full as conquering as his sword.”
How to wear a wig was part of the education of a man of the world, not
to be learned from books. Those who know what witchcraft there is in
the handling of a fan, what dexterity in the “nice conduct of a clouded
cane,” will imagine the wits and gentlemen of old did not suffer the
wig to overshadow their temples with perpetual gloom, like the wreath
of smoke which overhangs our Modern Babylon. And many a country squire
must have tried in vain to catch the right toss of the head; to sport a
playful humour in those crisp curls; or to acquire the lofty carriage
of the foretop, or the significant trifling with some obtrusive lock;
and felt as awkward in his new wig as a tailor on horseback, or a
fat alderman with a dress sword dangling between his legs. There
must have been something truly ridiculous in the prostrations of the
perriwig-pated fop, who
Returns the diving bow he did adore,
Which with a shag casts all the hair before,
Till he with full decorum brings it back,
And rises with a water-spaniel shake.
For many years wigs were worn of the natural colour of the hair, but
about 1714 it became customary to have them bleached; this, however,
was not found to answer, as they soon turned of a disagreeable shade,
so that recourse was had to hair-powder, the use of which soon became
general. At the accession of George 1st, it is mentioned that only two
ladies wore hair-powder. White perukes were characteristic of the early
Georgian era. About the same period we notice that one side only of
the wig was frequently tied together into a sort of club which hung
down upon the chest in a very lop-sided fashion. A few years later
bag-wigs were in vogue; when first introduced in France they were only
worn _en déshabille_; in a short time, however, they came to be
regarded as the most essential part of the full-dress costume of a
beau. The French bag-wig, as it was styled, when it first made its
appearance among us, was called in ridicule a fan-tail, and said to
resemble the winged cap of Mercury; the women likened the bag-wigs to
asses’ ears, and the men retorted by allusion to the horns which were
visible in a lady’s head-gear. The _tu quoque_ has ever been the
ready argument with both sexes.
Follies they have so numberless the store,
That only we who love them can have more.
In some satirical verses, published 1753, the contour of the wig, set
off from the face, is clearly shown:
“Let a well-frizzled wig be set off from his face;
With a bag quite in taste, from Paris just come,
That was made and tied up by Monsieur Frisson;
With powder quite grey--then his head is complete;--”
The tie-wig, which Lord Bolingbroke helped to bring into fashion,
was a very stiff and solid affair, as compared with the long curled
perriwigs which preceded them. The curls appear as if hardened into
rollers; and the pendant lumps of hair, looped and tied at the ends,
as if modelled after the fashion of the proud horse-tails, turned up
and bound with straw, at a fair. It would be as difficult to determine
why such cumbrous wigs were tolerated without any beauty to recommend
them, as to say why George I. chose such ugly German mistresses. Was
it because, like certain kinds of old china, deformity was pleasing?
The king’s favourites might possibly resemble the china, but the wigs
were certainly not as frail. Horace Walpole has left us a lively
description of Lord Sandwich’s tie-wig, in a letter to Sir H. Mann,
1745: “I would speak to our new ally, and your old acquaintance, Lord
Sandwich, to assist in it; but I could have no hope of getting at his
ear, for he has put on such a first-rate tie-wig, on his admission to
the admiralty-board, that nothing without the lungs of a boatswain can
ever think to penetrate the thickness of the curls. I think, however,
it does honour to the dignity of ministers: when he was but a patriot,
his wig was not of half its present gravity.” We have yet to notice the
wig with the long _queue_, “small by degrees and beautifully less”--the
drollest and most awkward of all additions to the human form since
the long tails in Kent were inflicted on the men by a miracle, as a
punishment for sticking fish tails to some monks’ garments.
“As I live!
The hair of one is tied behind,
And plaited like a womankind,
While t’other carries on his back,
In silken bag, a monstrous pack:
But pray, what’s that much like a whip,
Which with the air does waving skip
From side to side, and hip to hip?
It is a modish pig-tail wig.”
When the Czar Peter was in Holland he made free with a burgomaster’s
wig in a very characteristic manner. He was at church: the service
was somewhat dull, and his head getting cold, when, observing a good
warm wig on the head of a fat functionary near him, he clapped it
on his own pate, and did not restore it until the service was over.
Churchill, the poet, used to declare that his career at Oxford was cut
short by a large bushy wig, which added such a sage solemnity to the
grave aspect of the examiner’s face, that he could not control his
laughter. Churchill had his jest, and was rejected at the examination.
Garrick himself was once driven from the stage by a fit of laughter,
brought on at the sight of a powdered wig. A Whitechapel butcher in a
church-warden’s wig, accompanied by his dog, occupied seats in front
of the stage. Garrick was playing Lear, and preparing for a triumph at
the end of the fifth act. The butcher, overcome with heat and mental
excitement, was in a melting mood; to relieve which, he took off his
wig, and placed it on the dog’s head, who advanced to the orchestra,
holding himself up by the fore-paws. At the critical moment, when
inspiration seemed to animate every tone and gesture of the great
actor, it chanced that his eye, “in a fine frenzy rolling,” lighted
on his four legged critic, who was as intent as any biped present on
the scene before him, and quite indifferent to his large well-powdered
Sunday peruke. At the moment the effect was irresistible; the dog
outdid Garrick, who fairly ran off the stage amid roars of laughter
from the whole house.
Of old, the doctor who set up in business without a wig in the best
style of art was as little likely to succeed in his profession as a
modern physician without his carriage.
“Each son of Sol, to make him look more big,
Had on a large, grave, decent, three tailed wig.”
Of course, we don’t suppose that Dr. Brocklesby’s barber or the learned
doctor intended it as an advertisement; but it was the constant
practice of his barber to carry the said doctor’s wig in its box
through the crowd at the Exchange, calling out, “Make way for Dr.
Brocklesby’s wig!” Our allusion is to the dignity and importance of
the wig, which were fully recognized by the honourable and illustrious
professors of the healing art, who will please to excuse our indulging
in a pleasant stave of an old song:
“If you would see a noble wig,
And in that wig a man look big,
To Ludgate-hill repair, my joy,
And gaze on Doctor Delmayhoy.”
The parson was as well found in wigs as the doctor. Mandeville says
of a wealthy parson, “His wigs are as fashionable as that form he is
forced to comply with will admit of; but, as he is only stinted in
their shape, so he takes care that for goodness of hair and colour
few noblemen shall be able to match ’em.” It is encouraging to know
that the clergy look so closely to the goodness of the article they
put before us. Warton wrote an “Ode to a Grizzle Wig,” which is not
the worst ingredient in that pleasant miscellany of his, “The Oxford
Sausage:”
“All hail, ye _Curls_, that rang’d in rev’rend row,
With snowy pomp my conscious shoulders hide!
That fall beneath in venerable flow,
And crown my brows above with feathery pride!
High on your summit, wisdom’s mimick’d air
Sits thron’d with pedantry, her solemn sire,
And in her net of awe-diffusing hair,
Entangles fools, and bids the crowd admire.
O’er every lock, that floats in full display,
Sage ignorance her gloom scholastic throws;
And stamps o’er all my visage, once so gay,
Unmeaning gravity’s serene repose.
* * * * *
But thou, farewell, my _Bob_! whose thin wove thatch
Was stor’d with quips and cranks, and wanton wiles,
That love to live within the _one-curled scratch_,
With fun and all the family of smiles.
* * * * *
No more the wherry feels my stroke so true;
At skittles in a _grizzle_, can I play?
Woodstock, farewell! and Wallingford adieu!
Where many a scheme relieved the lingering day.
Such were the joys that once HILARIO crown’d,
Ere grave preferment came my peace to rob;
Such are the less ambitious pleasures found
Beneath the _liceat_ of an humble _Bob_.”
But at Bath the clergy thought of other things beside divinity lectures
and professorships. Anstey tells of a young spark of a clergyman
sporting about in a more fashionable, but less canonical, coiffure than
the grizzle-wig:
“What a cropt head of hair the young parson has on
Emerged from his grizzle, the unfortunate sprig
Seems as if he were hunting all night for his wig.”
Lely and Kneller could best illustrate the heroic age of wigs; but
Hogarth’s ready pencil furnishes abundant details of their social
state. The comic element seems to abound in all his sketches of wigs.
In his print of “The Bench,” they slumber in the softest repose, in
undisturbed gravity, and nod with the profoundest humour. The eminent
lawyers were not all senior wranglers in those days. Look at the print
of “The Country Dance,” and say if ever wigs hung more unbecomingly on
the shoulders of the most awkward frights; but for an enormous pig-tail
wig where could we select a finer specimen than in the print of “Taste
in High Life.” These choice Exotics, as he has labelled them, are
evidently great favourites with this humourous artist. But the print we
are most concerned with is “THE FIVE ORDERS OF PERIWIGS, _as
they were worn at the late Coronation, measured Architectonically_.”
At the foot of the print the following advertisement is added:
In about 17 years will be completed, in 6 vols. folio, price 15
guineas. The exact measurements of the Periwigs of the Ancients,
taken from the Statues, Bustos, and Basso-Relievos of Athens,
Palmyra, Balbec, and Rome, by Modesto, Periwig-maker, from
Lagado.
Five rows of perriwigs, faithful portraits we dare be sworn every one,
illustrate the Five Orders of Perriwigs. First in order we have the
EPISCOPAL, OR PARSONIC WIGS, followed by the OLD PEERIAN OR ALDERMANIC;
the LEXONIC; COMPOSITE, _or Half Natural_; and, last of all, the
QUEERINTHIAN. The reader will understand from the advertisement given
above that the engraving was a notable quiz on Athenian Stuart, as
he was called, whose laborious and accurate work on the Antiquities
of Athens has been of such service to architects. It is said that the
portrait of Stuart, outlined as a wig-block in the original was so
unmistakably like the author of the Antiquities that Hogarth struck
off the nose on purpose to disguise the joke a little. One of the OLD
PEERIAN order of wigs was at once recognized as a hit at the notorious
Bubb Doddington, “the last grave fop of the last age:”
“Who, quite a man of gingerbread,
Savour’d in talk, in dress, and phiz,
More of another world than this.”
Bubb Doddington’s wig is again figured by Hogarth in one of the
prints of “The Election,” where it shares in the perils and triumphs
of the chairing of the member. Cumberland says that when Doddington
was made Lord Melcomb, he actually strutted before the looking-glass,
coronet in hand, to study deportment. Warburton’s wig was another of
the portrait-wigs, of the Parsonic order. From Hogarth’s most popular
works alone one might select a gallery of wigs--tie-wigs, bag-wigs,
pig-tails, and bob-wigs, in every variety--well worthy of earnest
criticism. Matthews used to say he wondered what the beggars did with
their left off clothes till he went to Ireland, when he discovered
some of those old relics curiously clinging to the nakedness of their
brethren of the Emerald Isle. What became of the old wigs we had
ourselves never sufficiently considered till we scanned one of these
said prints, and found, to our delight, what had evidently once been a
wig comically seated on the head of a young vagrant beside a gutter.
Voltaire’s wig, in the eyes of his contemporaries, was as fatally
charged with the electricity of criticism, as Dr. Johnson’s proved
to be, to the terror of his obsequious followers. This Rhadamanthus
of literature, speaking of Geneva, says, “Je secoue ma perruque, la
republique est bien poudrée.” There was one, André, a perriwig maker,
who wrote a play in 1760, and ventured to solicit Voltaire’s friendly
criticism. His reply is well known; it filled four sides of a sheet of
letter-paper with merely a repetition of “_Monsieur André, faites
des perruques_,” and ending, “_toujours des perruques et jamais
que des perruques_.” Descartes had a great passion for perukes; and
at the taking of Dresden, Frederick the Great found in the wardrobe of
Count Brühl some hundreds of wigs--one authority says fifteen hundred.
Some time before bag-wigs went out of fashion a practical joke was
played off in Pall Mall, with the intention of bringing bags into
contempt, which had like to have ended somewhat seriously. The
particulars are given in the Annual Register of 1761. Some wags dressed
up a porter in a bag-wig and lace ruffles, and made him as Frenchified
as possible, and drove him into the midst of the fashionable throng
in the Mall. His superb dress immediately won the admiration of the
votaries of pleasure, who seemed anxious to make his acquaintance; but
his absurd conduct soon convinced them of the trick which had been
played upon them, and the fellow was thrust out from among them--we
sincerely hope with the addition of a good cudgelling.
The time came when perriwig makers had fallen upon evil days. The
fashion was evidently on the decline--something must be done for the
common good; when, Curtius like, they took a bold leap. Accordingly,
on the 11th February, 1765, they presented a petition to his majesty
George III., the prayer of which was, that a law should be passed
to enforce the wearing of wigs, and that his majesty should help to
keep up the fashion. Alas! for the mutability of human affairs, it
is questionable if the good king had the power to revive, even for
an hour, an expiring fashion: it is certain in this instance, as in
others of graver moment, he obstinately adhered to his own choice,
and clung to his pig-tail in spite of remonstrance. The London mob,
however, proceeded to legislate after their own fashion; and, observing
that the wig makers, who wished to make others wear wigs, wore no
wigs themselves, they seized hold of the petitioners by force, and
cut off all their hair. “Should one wonder,” says Horace Walpole, “if
carpenters were to remonstrate that since the peace there has been
no call for wooden legs.” George III. might well be content with his
modest pig-tail, which queen Charlotte, like a home-loving wife, as she
was, often powdered and bound with ribbon, and curled his majesty’s
hair in the style he preferred, well knowing in such matters none could
please him so well as herself; and thus adorned, we are told, he read
the speech from the throne at the meeting of parliament.
At the marriage of the Princess Royal to the Prince of Orange, in the
reign of George II., the bridegroom wore a long curled perriwig to hide
the terrible hump which disfigured his princely shoulders. As soon as
the awkward ceremony was over, the queen gave vent to her feelings in a
flood of tears.
The Maccaroni Club, 1772, set the fashion of wearing the hair in a
most preposterous style. It was combed upwards into a conical-shaped
toupée of monstrous size; and, behind the head, the hair was plaited
and tied together into a solid bundle, which of itself must have been
an inconvenient load for a gentleman’s shoulders. The ladies wore a
head-dress of similar altitude, piling Peleon upon Ossa, in the shape
of a cushion of horse hair and wool, over which the hair, pomatumed
and powdered, was spread out and carried upwards towards the clouds,
bedecked with lace and ribbon; the sides of this delectable mountain
were ornamented with rows of curls: but words can convey but a very
poor idea of this diverting monstrosity. “An you come to sea in a
high wind,” says Ben to Mrs. Frail, in Congreve’s “Love for Love,”
“you mayn’t carry so much sail o’ you head--top and top-gallant.” And
the Macarronies in their day ran the same risk of being capsized by a
squall. At the opera these head-dresses so completely intercepted all
view of the stage to those in the rear, that, in 1778, a regulation
was put in force which excluded them altogether from the amphitheatre.
The amiable Cowper, shocked at the vulgar assurance of the once coy
shepherdess, beheld
“Her head, adorned with lappets pinned aloft,
And ribands streaming gay, superbly raised,
And magnified beyond all human size,
Indebted to some smart wig-weaver’s hand
For more than half the tresses it sustains.”
Cowper, like Shakspere appears to have entertained a great antipathy
to wigs. The author of the Diverting History of John Gilpin assailed
them in their dotage: Shakspere would have nipped them in the bud.
Cowper, writing to a friend, says, “I give you joy of your own hair. No
doubt you are a considerable gainer by being disperriwigged....* * * I
have little doubt if an arm or a leg could have been taken off with as
little pain as attends the amputation of a curl or a lock of hair, the
natural limb would have been thought less becoming than a wooden one.”
“Look on beauty,
And you shall see ’tis purchased by the weight;
Which therein works a miracle in nature,
Making them lightest that wear most of it.
So are the crispéd, snaky, golden locks,
Which make such wanton gambols with the wind,
Upon supposed fairness, often known
To be the dowry of a second head;
The skull that bred them in the sepulchre.”
MERCHANT OF VENICE.
The Water-poet was more explicit than elegant when he inveighed against
the dames
“Whose borrowed hair (perhaps not long before)
Some wicked trull in other fashion wore;
Or one that at the gallows made her will,
Late chokéd with the hangman’s pickadill;
In which respect a sow, a cat, a mare,
More modest than these foolish females are;
For the brute beasts, (continual night and day,)
Do wear their own still, (and so do not they.)”
Pennant had a strange aversion to wigs, and, when he was half seas
over, used to snatch them off the wearers’ heads. Once, at Chester,
dining with an officer and a personal friend, (who, knowing his
particular weakness, purposely sat next him, to prevent mischief,)
being somewhat elated with wine, he made a sudden dart at the officer’s
wig and threw it into the fire. The officer, enraged at the insult,
drew his sword, and Pennant took to his heels. The son of Mars was
close upon him when Pennant’s better knowledge of the bye-ways of
Chester stood him in good stead, and he contrived to give the enemy
the slip. His friend, who remembered all the particulars of this
hair-breadth escape, used to call it Pennant’s Tour in Chester.
When Fag, in Sheridan’s play of “The Rivals,” meets Sir Anthony’s
coachman at Bath, he tells him he must polish a little, and that “none
of the London whips of any degree of ton wear wigs now.” But the
bucolic mind is eminently conservative, and Thomas makes answer, “Odd’s
life! when I heard how the lawyers and doctors had took to their own
hair, I thought how ’twould go next. Why, bless you, the gentlemen of
the professions ben’t all of a mind; for in our village now, thoff Jack
Gauge, the exciseman, has ta’en to his carrots; there’s little Dick,
the farrier, swears he’ll never forsake his bob, though all the college
should appear with their own heads.”
It was during the first shock of the French Revolution, when the laws,
religion, and social institutions of France were overturned, as by an
earthquake, that wigs were discarded with other insignia of the old
régime. The heroes of pagan Rome, and the fabled deities of Greece,
supplied the French Republicans with models for their newest fashions.
The men with rough cropped hair sported a _Brutus_, and the ladies
in scanty draperies assumed the coiffure _à la Greque_. While the
heroic citizens rejoiced in their newly acquired liberty and freedom
from wigs, the chaste matrons went in search of false hair, to imitate
the classic beauties of antiquity. In England, however sudden the
transformations in high life, the change, agreeably to the genius of
the people, was rather the growth of a new system than the uprooting
of the old. The old wig decayed slowly beside the growth of a new
crop, and lingered long in many a humble circle, became the oracle of
the club, and enjoyed the dignity of the arm-chair and the repose of
the chimney-corner; and some would be laid up in ordinary with family
relics in the old lumber-room, like Uncle Toby’s white Ramillies wig
in the old campaign trunk, which the corporal put into pipes and
furbished up for the grand _coup de main_ with widow Wadman, but
which resisted all Trim’s efforts, and the repeated application of
candle-ends, to bring into better curl.
It chanced that Queen Charlotte’s auburn locks fell off during her
accouchment. At this fatal omen the extravagant head-dresses then
in fashion were suddenly sacrificed. Her majesty and the princesses
in 1793 were pleased to discard hair-powder, which speedily rid the
_beau monde_ of that encumbrance. In 1795 the hair-powder tax of
one guinea per head, imposed by Pitt’s act, came into operation. The
tax at one time realized as much as £20,000 per annum. This lessened
considerably the number of powdered heads; and hair-powder, once so
necessary to the finish of the finest gentleman, fell into disuse,
except with a few gentlemen’s gentlemen--the Fitz-Jeames in livery.
For state and ceremony except among the lawyers and the bench of
bishops, at last nothing worthy the name of a perriwig was left
to admire. George the Third’s bag-wig was as unpretending as the
king himself. His statue beyond Charing Cross will happily remind
posterity of that most respectable monarch--and his wig. Dr. Johnson’s
scratch-wig, of which Boswell has left us a most authentic account, is
familiar to most readers. That famous old scratch, too small for his
head, always uncombed, and the fore part burnt away by contact with the
candle, must be carefully distinguished from the smart wig which Mrs.
Thrale’s butler kept for him at Streatham and placed on his head as he
passed through the hall to dinner.
During the decadence of the wig, the army and navy wore pig-tails,
which were nourished with regulation charges of powder and pomatum. How
gallantly they defended them, the history of many a well-fought battle
can tell--
“Not once or twice in our rough island story,
The path of duty was the way to glory.”
In 1804, the soldier’s allowance of pig-tail was reduced to seven
inches, and in 1808 the order was promulgated to cut them off, but
countermanded the very next day. However, revocation was impossible;
for the barbers, with their usual alacrity, had performed their stern
duties successfully, and not a pig-tail remained to the British army.
Is the reader curious to know something about Sergeants of the coif,
and the mysteries of the bar-wig with its rows of curls and twin tails?
Let him make his studies from nature, and “the stiff-wigged living
figures,” as Elia calls them. The sages of the law were among the last
to forego the use of wigs in private life; and it is said that Mr.
Justice Park acquired the cognomen of _Bushy Park_, from the peculiar
fashion of his wig, which he retained long after his brethren of the
long robe had forsaken theirs. In the Table-talk of Samuel Rogers there
is an anecdote of Lord Ellenborough’s wig. The judge was setting out
for the circuit, and as Lady Ellenborough wished to accompany him, it
was agreed between husband and wife that no band-boxes of any kind
would be tolerated; for, when travelling, his lordship had a great
aversion to band-boxes. On the journey, however, as the judge was
stretching his legs in the carriage, they came in contact with the
thing he so cordially detested--a band-box. In an instant his lordship
seized hold of it, and threw it out of the window. The carriage
stopped, and the footman was about to pick it up, when his lordship
called out, “_Drive on!_” Arrived at the county town, when the judge
was putting on his robes before going into court, enquiry was made for
the wig, which, at the last moment, was nowhere to be found. After
much delay, the footman was interrogated by his lordship, “Where _is_
my wig?” “Why, my lord,” replied the servant, “you threw it out of the
window.” It seems that her ladyship’s maid, envious that a judge’s wig
should travel so comfortably in its proper case, while some pieces of
millinery were in danger of being terribly crushed for want of a larger
box, at their last resting place had made an exchange, and put the
fright of a wig in a band-box, and the millinery in the wig-box. The
most villainous of the wig tribe was certainly the peruke of George the
Fourth’s reign, which, pretending to imitate the natural hair, was, on
that very account, the more detestable, in as much as an ape’s features
are more ridiculous from bearing some resemblance to a man.
Even the bishops have gradually forsaken the episcopal wig. The Irish
bishops do not appear to have worn them. The Honorable Richard
Bagot, bishop of Bath and Wells, was the first of our modern bishops
who dispensed with the wig. Many years previous to his obtaining the
bishopric, the Prince Regent had said to him in a joke, “You are much
too handsome a man to wear a wig; remember, whenever I make you a
bishop you may dispense with wearing one.” However, when the bishop
reminded his sovereign that his promise when Regent exempted him from
wearing a wig, it was only after much hesitation that the favour was
granted. Bishop Bloomfield officiated in an orthodox-peruke at the
coronation of William IV.; and more recently in the House of Lords, at
times, a solitary wig came forth like a decrepid fly in mid-winter,
drowsily contemplating the change and bustle going on around it. For a
brief space it walked the earth like a troubled spirit--the reverend
fathers have exorcised it, and it is no more seen of men.
When George IV. was king, his were the model whiskers (though false
ones) which constituted the standard of perfection. Our continental
neighbours, in derision, frequently likened the English whiskers to
mutton chops or a string of sausages; but John Bull who is always
tolerant of abuse, and goes about matters after his own sturdy fashion,
maintained his whiskers with imperturbable gravity. Moore, in one of
his humorous poems, thus takes off the vanities of royalty, and it says
much for the good sense of the king that he could enjoy the wit of the
poet when directed against himself:
“He looks in the glass--but perfection is there,
Wig, whiskers, and chin-tufts all right to a hair;
Not a single _ex_-curl on his forehead he traces--
For curls are like Ministers, strange as the case is,
The _falser_ they are, the more firm in their places.”
Some brief notes yet remain to complete the present imperfect sketch,
but of too recent date to warrant their insertion here. It is
gratifying to know that, under the present glorious and auspicious
rule, improvement is taking place in all matters of taste, and that
even in the changeful fashions of the day we are much indebted to the
refined judgment of our most gracious Queen, VICTORIA, whom may God
long preserve to reign over a free and enlightened people.
BARBERS.