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Title: Notes historical, aesthetical, ethnological, physiological, anecdotal and tonsorial, on the hair & beard
Author: Trichocosmos (pseud)
Language: English
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AESTHETICAL, ETHNOLOGICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, ANECDOTAL AND TONSORIAL, ON
THE HAIR & BEARD ***
TRICHOCOSMOS.
NOTES
HISTORICAL, ÆSTHETICAL, ETHNOLOGICAL,
PHYSIOLOGICAL, ANECDOTAL,
AND
TONSORIAL,
ON
THE HAIR & BEARD.
“Fair tresses man’s imperial race ensnare,
And beauty draws us with a single hair.”
LONDON:
READ & Co., 10, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET ST.
_Entered at Stationers’ Hall._
(THE RIGHT OF TRANSLATION IS RESERVED.)
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE.
I. The Beauty of the Hair 3
II. The Fashion of Antiquity 7
III. Freaks of Fashion 17
IV. Wigs 42
V. Barbers 83
VI. Structure, Growth, and Colour of the Hair 112
BEAUTY OF THE HAIR.
CHAPTER I.
Although much time and attention are usually bestowed in dressing and
ornamenting the hair, in compliance with the dictates of fashion, but
little regard is paid to the natural beauty of the hair itself, as
contributing to the expression and comeliness of the features. The
absurdities and caprices of fashion have been constant themes for
ridicule and declamation with the wits of all ages. The sharp epigrams
of Martial, the satires of Juvenal, the anathemas of the Romish
ecclesiastics, the invectives of sour Puritans, the coarse raillery of
Swift, and the good humour of Addison, have all in turn been levelled
against some prevailing folly of the day. It is not our intention,
however, to act the part of censor, but, as humble chroniclers, to note
the change from one fashion to another.
Before entering on the task we will say a few words about the hair,
in relation to art, a subject of some interest, and which we believe
has not been sufficiently insisted on. The hair is, undoubtedly, the
chief ornament of the head; we naturally associate the idea of vigour,
fertility, and gracefulness, with its growth. Its flowing outline
gives grace and freedom to the symmetry of the features, and by a
little license of the artist’s hand, its form may be made to correct
whatever harshness of character the countenance may chance to have
acquired. In the colour, too, and texture of the hair, what facilities
are afforded for heightening the charm of the most delicate complexion,
or the dignity of the manly brow. The poets have universally recognised
the truth of these principles, and in their descriptions of ideal
beauty we invariably find some allusion to the hair.
Milton delights to adorn the human countenance with long hair, flowing
in rich profusion. Of Eve he sings:
“She, as a veil, down to the slender waist
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved
As the vine curls her tendrils,----”
and to Adam he gives
“Hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung.”
Even his angels are conspicuous for their beautiful hair--for instance
“Of charming sunny rays a golden tiar
Circled his head, nor less his locks behind
Illustrious on his shoulders, fledge with wings,
Lay waving round”----
The vivid descriptions of Homer, full of local colouring, afford
many instances of the picturesque effect produced by duly noting so
apparently a trivial matter, as the colour or crispness of the hair.
Shakspere makes frequent allusions to its beauty: at the touch of his
master hand a gleam of light seems to play about the silken tresses:
“Here in her hairs
The painter plays the spider, and hath woven
A golden mesh to entrap the hearts of men!”
The Italian poets also show the same love of the beautiful, and
fondness for
“Le crespe chiome d’or puro lucente.”
How much the form and variety of the hair help to distinguish the style
and character of a composition was well understood by the ancient
sculptors and painters. “The hair of the Phidian Jove, in the Vatican,
rises in spouts, as it were, from the forehead, and then falls in
waving curls, like the mane of the lion, most majestic and imperial in
appearance. The crisp curls of Hercules again remind us of the short
locks between the horns of the indomitable bull; whilst the hair of
Neptune falls down wet and dank, like his own sea-weed. The beautiful
flowing locks of Apollo, full and free, represent perpetual youth; and
the gentle, vagrant, bewitching tresses of Venus, denote most clearly
her peculiar characters and claims as a divinity of Olympus.” We remark
the same peculiarity in the portraits by Sir Peter Lely of the court
beauties of the time of Charles II.
“Loves walks the pleasant mazes of the hair.”
Hair is to the human aspect what foliage is to the landscape; and,
whenever pen or pencil is guided by poetic feeling or good taste,
it lingers with admiration and delight amid the shadows and glossy
silken sheen--the ever-varying tints, and waving, wanton loveliness of
sunny, luxuriant hair. Indeed, so beautiful is the hair itself, when
arranged with taste, and kept in good order, (that is in a growing,
healthful state,) that the addition of any further ornament, by way of
head-dress, is all but superfluous. Not that all ornament should be
dispensed with, but that great judgment is necessary in selecting such
as correct taste may approve. Addison, with his usual good sense, thus
counsels his fair readers: “I would desire the fair sex to consider
how impossible it is for them to add anything that can be ornamental
to what is already the masterpiece of nature. The head has the most
beautiful appearance, as well as the highest station, in the human
figure. Nature has laid out all her art in beautifying the face; she
has touched it with vermilion, planted in it a double row of ivory,
made it the seat of smiles and blushes, lightened it up and enlivened
it with the eyes, hung it on each side with curious organs of sense,
given it airs and graces which cannot be described, and surrounded it
with such a flowing shade of hair as sets its beauties in the most
agreeable light. In short, she seems to have designed the head as a
cupola to the most glorious of her works; and when we load it with such
a pile of supernumerary ornaments, we destroy the symmetry of the human
figure, and foolishly contrive to call off the eye from great and real
beauties to childish gew-gaws, ribbons, and bone lace.”
And beautiful exceedingly are those beloved memorials--the silken locks
of childhood, the treasured tresses of riper years, or the silver gray
of reverend old age--which, in the eyes of sorrowing friends, are the
dearest relics of the loved ones whose angel spirits beyond the tomb
have passed through death into eternity.
“There seems a love in hair, though it be dead:
It is the gentlest, yet the strongest thread
Of our frail plant--a blossom from the tree
Surviving the proud trunk; as if it said,
Patience and Gentleness in Power. In me
Behold affectionate eternity.”
_Leigh Hunt._
THE FASHION OF ANTIQUITY.
CHAPTER II.
The fashion of ornamenting the hair is an universal vanity, probably as
old as the creation; for the earliest records and antiquities introduce
us to the mysteries of wigs and beard cases, and such evident and
lavish displays of tonsorial art, as remind one more of the skilful
artist than the first rude essays of the craft. It has been suggested
by a writer in the _Quarterly Review_ that we are indebted to Eve
herself for the first principles of the art, and that probably by the
reflection in some tranquil stream she made her earliest studies.
In the sculptures from Nineveh we have an exact representation of the
fashion of the hair among the Assyrians--thousands of years before
Britain had a place in history. The office of _coiffeur_ in those
days must evidently have been one of no little importance. From the
king on the throne--the mighty hunter, lion slayer, and destroyer
of men--his counsellors, and great captains, to the poor slave, the
mere hewer of wood and drawer of water, all seem to have passed under
the discipline of the curling-irons. The curling and plaiting of the
beard and hair, as shown in the sculptures, is doubtless intended
as a distinguishing mark of a superior and conquering race. Their
colossal-winged bulls and monstrous deities are adorned with the same
venerable badge of power and authority. Since nearly all that is known
on this subject is directly derived from the researches of Mr. Layard,
we cannot do better than refer to the volumes of one to whom not only
this nation, but the civilised world, are indebted for his arduous and
most successful explorations.
“The Assyrians paid particular attention to the adorning of their
persons. Besides wearing numerous ornaments, they most carefully and
elaborately platted their hair and beards. The hair was parted over the
forehead, and fell from behind the ears on the shoulders in a large
bunch of ringlets. The beard was allowed to grow to its full length,
and, descending low on the breast, was divided into two or three rows
of curls. The moustache was also carefully trimmed and curled at the
ends. The hair, as well as the beard, appears to have been dyed, as is
still the custom in Persia; but it has been doubted whether the hair,
represented in the sculptures, was natural or artificial.
“According to Herodotus (Lib. 1, c. 195) the Babylonians wore their
hair long. The great regularity of the curls in the sculptures would
certainly lead to the impression that part of the hair, at least,
was false; but we can scarcely suppose that the warriors, as well as
the king and the principal officers of state, wore false beards, for
all the sculptured beards are equally elaborate and studied in the
arrangement. The mode of representing hair in the bas-reliefs is most
probably conventional. Most Eastern people have been celebrated for
the length and beauty of their hair, and if the Assyrians were as well
provided with it as the inhabitants of Persia were in the days of
Darius, or as they now are, they would have had little occasion for a
wig.”
The hair of females, in the sculptures, is usually represented in long
ringlets, sometimes plaited and braided, and at other times confined
in a net. The modern fashion of wearing the hair in a net is therefore
a revival of a very ancient one. Isaiah alludes to “the caps of
net-work,” (chap. III., v. 8).
It is to ancient Egypt we must look for the earliest instance of a
people investing themselves with that symbol of wisdom and gravity--the
wig. It was reserved for the courtiers of Louis XIII. to re-introduce
and remodel the ancient perruque, but its origin certainly dates from
a very remote antiquity. The Egyptians as a nation were “all shaven
and shorn:” they shaved even the heads of young children, leaving only
certain locks as an emblem of youth. All classes among the people, the
slaves imported from foreign countries not excepted, were compelled
to submit to the tonsure. The universal custom of shaving the head
led to the use of wigs. “It may appear singular,” says Wilkinson,
“that so warm a covering to the head should have been adopted in the
climate of Egypt; but we must recollect the reticulated texture of the
ground-work, on which the hair was fastened, allowed the heat of the
head to escape, while the hair effectually protected it from the sun:
it is evident that no better covering could have been devised, and that
it far surpassed, in comfort and coolness, the modern turban.” Wigs
were worn both within the house and out of doors, like the turban of
the present day. A wig in the British Museum, from the temple of Isis,
and one in the Berlin Museum, still attest the skill of the Egyptian
artist. For the use of those who could not afford the more expensive
wigs of real hair, an imitation appears to have been made of wool and
other stuffs. A most singular custom of the Egyptians was that of
tying a false beard upon the chin, which was made of plaited hair, and
of a peculiar form, according to the rank of the person by whom it
was worn. Private individuals had a small beard, scarcely two inches
long; that of a king was of considerable length, square at the bottom;
and the figure of gods were distinguished by its turning up at the
ends. The women always wore their hair long and plaited. The back part
was made to consist of a number of strings of hair, reaching to the
shoulder-blades, and on each side other strings of the same descended
over the breast. The hair was plaited in the triple plait, the ends
being left loose, or, more usually, two or three plaits were fastened
together at the extremity by woollen strings of corresponding colour.
Many of the mummies of women have been found with the hair perfectly
preserved, plaited in the manner described, the only alteration in its
appearance being the change of its black hue, which became reddened by
exposure to great heat, during the process of embalming.
The Hebrews wore their hair generally short, and checked its growth by
the application of scissors only. They seem at an early period to have
availed themselves of the assistance of art, not only for beautifying
the hair, but increasing its thickness; while the heads of the priests
were anointed with an unguent of a peculiar kind. The custom of
anointing the head became a general mark of gentility, and an essential
part of the daily toilet. The Lawgiver of the Jews did not think it
beneath the dignity of his code to introduce into it an especial
ordinance concerning the fashion of the beard--“Thou shalt not mar the
corners of the beard”--(Leviticus XIX., v. 27). By the “corners” the
commentators understand the extremities; and this precept, no doubt,
like others in the same chapter, arose from the leading policy of the
theocracy, which sought to create a people in everything distinct from,
and unmixed with, the idolators by whom they were surrounded.
It was the noble destiny of the Greeks to add beauty and refinement
to the creations and speculations of a previous age. The love of the
beautiful was a passion with the Greeks; it was stamped, so to speak,
on the meanest objects of every-day life, and found its loftiest
expression in their poetry and the magnificent works of art, which
every civilized people regard as models for imitation. Even in the
mere matter of a head-dress, we are struck with the beauty of the
classic forms in Greek sculpture, which show a rare perception of the
beautiful, in wonderful contrast to the barbarism of earlier, and, we
may add, succeeding ages. In Homer the Greeks are repeatedly spoken
of as the “long-haired Greeks,” and to almost every character in the
Iliad and Odyssey some epithet is applied in allusion to the beauty of
the hair. It is enough to allude to the fair-haired Helen, the nymph
Calypso, Circe, and Ariadne; the flowing locks of Achilles, the curls
of Paris, and the auburn hair of Ulysses. It will be remembered that
Achilles made sacrifice of his yellow hair at the funeral pyre of
Patroclus, in honour of the friend he loved.
The ancient practice of wearing the hair long was adhered to for many
centuries by the Spartans. The Spartan boys always had their hair cut
quite short; but, as soon as they reached the age of puberty, they let
it grow long. They prided themselves upon their hair, and called it
the cheapest of ornaments. Before engaging in battle, they combed and
dressed their hair with much care, as did Leonidas and his followers at
Thermopylae.
The custom of the Athenians was different. They wore their hair long
in childhood; but the youths cut off their flowing locks at a certain
age, and, as a religious ceremony, consecrated them to some god:
on attaining the age of manhood, they again let the hair grow. In
ancient times at Athens the hair was rolled up in a kind of knot on
the crown of the head, and fastened with golden clasps in the shape of
grasshoppers. The Athenian females, also, wore the hair much in the
same fashion. It was usually confined in a net-work of silk or gold
thread, or a cap or turban of close material, and, at times, by broad
bands of cloth of different colours wound round the head.
The Greek philosophers were distinguished by their majestic beards,
and Socrates, it would seem, pre-eminently so. Homer’s description of
the venerable beards of Nestor and Priam is doubtless familiar to most
readers. The Greeks wore their beards till the time of Alexander; and
Plutarch mentions that the beards of the Macedonian soldiers were cut
off to prevent the enemy from seizing hold of them in battle.
Pliny says that the Romans wore their hair long till the year 454
A.U.C., when P. Ticinius Mena first introduced a number of barbers from
Sicily. Those bearded ancestors of the Romans, with their long hair,
came, in after times, to be regarded with no little reverence, as the
true type of manly virtue and integrity, “the fine old _Roman_
gentleman.” At the time of the invasion of the Gauls, Livy tells us, as
the soldiers entered Rome, they were struck with awe and astonishment
at the noble beards and venerable aspect of the old magnates seated at
their thresholds; and, that a soldier venturing, out of mere curiosity,
but to touch the beard of one of them, the affront was resented by
a blow with his ivory sceptre, which was the signal for a general
slaughter.
The hair was usually worn short and crisp till the time of Commodus,
who was particularly luxurious in the dressing and ornamenting of his
hair, which was powdered with gold. Having, however, a somewhat uneasy
conscience, he resorted to the singular practice of burning off the
beard, “timore tonsoris,” says Lampridius.
Scipio Africanus first set the example of shaving. Persons of quality
had their children shaved for the first time by a person of the same or
greater quality, who, by this means, became godfather or adopted father
of the children. The day was observed as one of rejoicing, and the hair
of the beard made an offering to some god. The beard of Nero, we are
told, was put into a golden box adorned with pearls, and consecrated
in this way to Jupiter Capitolinus. Hadrian was the first emperor
who wore a beard; Plutarch says he wore it to hide the scars in his
face. Constantine was distinguished by the title of “Pogoniatos;” and
we should do injustice to Julian’s beard to omit mention of it here.
Gibbon says, “the Emperor had been insulted by satires and libels; and,
in his turn, composed, under the title of the ‘Enemy of the Beard,’
an ironical confession of his own faults, and a severe satire on the
licentious and effeminate manners of Antioch.” He descants with seeming
complacency on his own “shaggy and _populous beard_”--a phrase
which we may interpret literally or not, as we please. The historian
adds, “This imperial reply was publicly exposed before the gates of
the palace, and the MISOPOGON remains a singular monument of the
resentment, the wit, the humanity, and the indiscretion of Julian.”
Probably no nation ever patronized the tonsor with more assiduity than
Rome in the decadence of the Empire. The young patrician exquisites
of those days devoted hours daily to the barber and the bath; and no
lady’s train of slaves was complete without the _ornatrix_, whose
duty it was to attend the toilet of her mistress, for the special
purpose of dressing her hair.
An elegant simplicity at one time characterized the head-dress of the
Roman ladies, who generally adopted the fashion of the Greeks, which
usually, however, soon degenerated into extravagance and coarseness.
They piled upon their heads imitations of castles and crowns, cumbrous
wreaths, and other absurdities, and knotted the hair with tiresome
minuteness.
“With curls on curls they build their head before,
And mount it with a formidable tower:
A giantess she seems, but look behind;
And then she dwindles to the pigmy kind.”
The _calamistrum_ or curling irons, had a busy time of it, for the
craving after novelty was intense, and any artificial arrangement of
the hair welcomed as a change.
“More leaves the forest yields not from the trees,
Than there be fashions of attire in view,
For each succeeding day brings something new.”
Poppea, Nero’s wife, was so conspicuous for the beauty of her hair,
that he composed a poem in honour of it.
It was the custom of the Romans to let their beard and hair grow during
the period of mourning; as we are informed by Suetonius, Augustus did
his, after the terrible Varian catastrophe. The slaves had the hair
cut close as a mark of servitude. Wigs and false hair were worn by the
Romans, more especially by the females; thus Martial----
“The golden hair which Galla wears
Is her’s--who would have thought it?
She swears ’tis hers; and true she swears,
For I know where she bought it!”
Juvenal describes Messalina putting on a wig of flaxen hair to conceal
her own black locks when she left the palace in disguise:
“Et nigrum flavo crinem abscondente galero.”
Among the Gauls (Gallia comata) long and flowing hair was greatly
esteemed. Cæsar says that he always ordered the long hair of the
conquered races to be shaved off, in submission to the Roman arms; and,
during the decline of the empire, whenever a province revolted, the
patriot leaders urged the adoption of the opposite fashion of wearing
long hair, as a mark of freedom and independence. Thus the fashion of
the hair, as in later times, had a political significance, and took
part in revolutions and the great struggles for social freedom.
FREAKS OF FASHION.
CHAPTER III.
We will now conduct the reader, who has condescended to accompany
us thus far, through the succeeding centuries and complete our
illustrations of the fashion of bygone times.
Cæsar describes the Britons as having long flowing hair, and a beard on
the upper lip only. A bust in the British Museum, one of the Townley
marbles, supposed by some to represent Caractacus, may be taken as a
good example of the fashion of hair worn by the British chieftains.
The hair is parted along the crown of the head, and disposed on each
side of the face and down in the neck in thick bold masses. Immense
tangled moustaches, reaching sometimes to the breast, completed the
hirsute ornaments of the tattooed Briton. Strabo says, in his time the
inhabitants of the Scilly Islands had long beards, like goats. Dion
Cassius alludes to the long yellow hair of Boadicea flowing over her
shoulders, which sufficiently indicates the _coiffure_ of that
undaunted heroine.
The Anglo Saxons considered fine hair as the most becoming of personal
ornaments, and took every pains to dress it to the greatest advantage.
Aneurin, the Welch bard, says, the warriors wore a profusion of hair,
and were as proud of it as the women, decking it with beads and
ornaments. It was worn long, and parted on the forehead, falling
naturally on the shoulders; the beard of ample growth, and forked. To
have the hair cut entirely off was considered a great disgrace--a mode
of punishment inflicted upon criminals. Adhelm, bishop of Sherbone,
who wrote in the eighth century, describes a maiden as having her
locks delicately curled by the iron of those adorning her. The clergy
were obliged to shave the crowns of their heads, and to keep their
hair short to distinguish them from the laity. Again and again the
denunciations of the clergy were directed against the practice of
wearing long hair, but with partial results; the old Teutonic love of
flowing locks was too strong to be extinguished by the threatenings of
the Church.
When the Gauls were ruled by native sovereigns, none but nobles and
priests were allowed to wear long beards. A close shaven chin was a
mark of servitude. In the days of Charlemagne, kings rivalled each
other in the length and majesty of their beards. Eginhard, secretary to
Charlemagne, describes the old race of kings as coming to the Field of
Mars in a carriage drawn by oxen, and sitting on the throne with their
flowing beards and dishevelled locks. So sacred a thing was a king’s
beard, that three of the hairs enclosed in the seal of a letter or
charter were considered the most solemn pledge a king could offer.
The Danes, like the Anglo Saxons, took great pride in their hair; and
the English women, we are told, were not a little captivated with some
Danish officers, who especially delighted in combing and tending their
hair: and we read of one Harold with the fair locks, whose thick
ringlets reached to his girdle.
The Normans, at the time of the Conquest, not only shaved the upper lip
and the entire face, but also cropped close or shaved the back of the
head. Harold’s spies, unacquainted with so singular a custom, on the
approach of the Conqueror’s forces, reported that his army was composed
of priests, and not soldiers. Holinshed states that after the Conquest
the English were ordered to shave their beards and round their hair,
after the Norman fashion. When William returned to Normandy, he took
with him some young Englishmen, as hostages: the French greatly admired
their long beautiful curls. The Normans and Flemings, who accompanied
the Conqueror, were too solicitous about their good looks to be long
restricted to the stunted growth prescribed by military rule. All
classes soon indulged in the forbidden luxury, and, as is usually the
case, the reaction was extreme; so much so, that William of Malmesbury
who makes complaint of the cropping of his countrymen in the previous
reign, reprobates the immoderate length of the hair in the time of
Rufus.
The prevailing sin of unshorn locks and curled moustaches had long been
a grievous scandal in the eyes of the clergy. Councils were held at
Limoges, in 1031; by Gregory VII. in 1073, and again at Rouen in 1095;
on this much discussed grievance. Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury
refused his benediction to those who would not cut their hair. And
Serlo, bishop of Seez, when Henry was in Normandy, seems to have taken
the matter literally into his own hands. Observing that the king and
courtiers were moved by his zeal and eloquence, when preaching against
this extravagant profusion of hair, he pulled out a pair of scissors,
and docked the whole congregation, king and all, on the spot. A royal
edict to the like effect was immediately issued. St. Wulstan, bishop of
Worcester, took a somewhat singular method of enforcing his commands.
When anyone knelt to receive his blessing, he would snip off a lock of
their hair, throwing it in their face, and bidding them to cut off the
rest, or perish in perdition.
The effigies of Henry and his Queen Matilda, at Rochester Cathedral,
show the style of hair worn in those days. The king is represented with
the beard trimmed round, and hair flowing in carefully-twisted ringlets
upon his shoulders and down his back. The queen’s hair descends in two
long plaits to the hips, and terminates in small curls. These plaits
were sometimes encased in silk, and bound round with ribbon.
Whatever changes were effected by the zeal of the clergy, it is certain
that the fops in Stephen’s reign had not conformed to their teachings.
Historians describe their effeminate ringlets: and when these were not
sufficiently ample, recourse was had to false hair.
In France, the denunciations of the clergy were as little heeded as
in England. Louis VII., however, sacrificed his hair to save his
conscience; he shaved himself as close as a monk, and disgusted his
pleasure-loving queen, Eleanor of Guienne, by his denuded aspect and
asceticism. Eleanor bestowed her favors upon another, was divorced, and
subsequently gave her hand and dower--the fair provinces of Guienne and
Poitou--to Henry, duke of Normandy, afterwards king of England--the
first of the Plantaganets. In Henry’s reign the old Norman custom, of
shaving the beard closely, was revived.
During the absence of Richard Cœur de Lion, closely trimmed hair and
shaven faces were the fashion; but, towards the close of this reign,
short beards and moustaches reappeared.
In king John’s reign curled hair was so much the fashion, that the
beaux seldom appeared with any covering on their head, that their
flowing locks might be everywhere admired. The king himself, and the
nobles of his party, wore beard and moustaches, out of contempt, it is
said, for the discontented barons. His effigy in Worcester Cathedral
has the beard closely trimmed, and moustaches.
Curls and a shaven face, denote the gentlemen in the days of Henry
III.; the ladies wear the hair turned up and confined in a caul.
Crispness of the hair and beard (which was curled with the nicest
care) was the favourite fashion at the court of Edward Longshanks. His
successor, as we may judge from the effigy at Gloucester, wore the
beard carefully curled, and the hair cut square on the forehead, which
hung in wavy ringlets below the ears. Can it be true that the beard of
this wretched king suffered the indignity we read of in history? Did
Maltravers order the king to be shaven with cold water from a dirty
puddle, while on a journey near Carnarvon; and the poor king,
“Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,”
bursting into tears exclaim, “Here at least is warm water on my cheeks,
whether you will or not.” Beards at that time were seldom worn but by
aged persons, officers of state, and knights templars.
Edward III. on his tomb at Westminster, is figured with a noble beard,
which would not have disgraced the chin of some old Greek in the heroic
ages.
In Richard the Second’s reign, we notice the hair of the ladies caught
up prettily in a gold fret or caul, the hair usually surmounted by some
ornament in jewelry, in the form of a chaplet, as described by Chaucer:
“And everich on her head
A rich fret of golde, which withouden drede
Was full of stately net stones set,
And every lady had a chapelet.”
The king, as appears from his effigy, wore flowing curls, confined
by a narrow fillet round the temple; his beard and moustache short,
from which two small tufts depended on each side of the chin. The
“Canterbury Tales” furnish admirable sketches by a master-hand
in illustration of our subject. The squire, “a lover and a lusty
bachelor,” is pictured “with lockés curl’d as they were laid in press;”
the franklin had a beard
“White was his beard as is the dayesy;”
the merchant--
“A merchant was there with a forked beard;”
and the sumpnour,
“With sealled browes, black and pilled beard.’
The _Pardoner_ had hair as yellow as wax,
But smooth it hung, as doth a strike of flax;
By ounces hung his lockés that he had,
And therewith he his shoulders overspread,
Full thin it lay by culpons, on and on.
* * * * *
No beard had he, no ever none should have,
As smooth it was as it were newe shave.”
The “shipman,” we know not if he had “the long gray beard, and
glittering eye,” of The Ancient Mariner, but
“With many a tempest had his beard been shaken;”
the miller’s beard,
“As any sow or fox, was red,
And thereto broad, as though it were a spade;”
and the Reve--
“The Revé was a choleric man,
His head was shav’d as nigh as ever he can;
His hair was by his earés round yshorn;
His top was decked like a priest beforn.”
But here we must part company with the pilgrims, and proceed on our way.
During the reign of Henry IV., there occurred a marked change of
fashion; the hair was now closely cropped round the head. The king
retained the beard and moustaches; but, his successor, Henry V.,
discarded them, and, in his reign, even military men seldom wore
moustaches, and none but old men had beards. A kind of horned
head-dress was in favour with females, which Lydgate, the monk of Bury,
ridicules:
“Horns were given to beasts for defence;
A thing contrary to feminity--
but “feminity” heeded not.
Men’s faces were all closely shaven in the time of Henry VII.; and
certain turban-like and heart-shaped head-dresses, worn by females,
were now of such unusual width, that we are told the doors of the
palace at Vincennes had to be altered to admit the Queen of Charles
VII., Isabella of Bavaria, when in full dress. At Paris, the horned
head-dresses were doomed to perish in the flames. In 1429, a famous
cordelier, one Thomas Conecte, preached in the church of St. Genevieve,
for nine days in succession, to some thousands of auditors, against the
pomps and vanities of this wicked world; and, in a fit of enthusiasm,
fires were lighted, the men flung their dice and cards into the
flames, and the women their monstrous head-dresses, tails, and other
articles of finery. A somewhat similar head-dress, however, survives to
this day among the peasantry about Rouen, Caen, &c.; and the steeple
head-dress of the fifteenth century is exactly represented by the
_Cauchoise_, still worn in Normandy.
Again in the reign of Edward IV., another change occurs, and the hair
is suffered to hang in profusion over the ears in large thick masses,
called “side locks,” covering the forehead, and drooping over the eyes
in a very awkward manner--a fashion which scarcely varied during the
remaining years of the Plantaganets.
Leland, in his description of the pageants at the marriage of Elizabeth
to Henry VII., relates how the Queen was royally apparelled, “her
fair yellow hair hanging down plain behind her back, with a caul (or
net-work) of pipes over it, and a circlet of gold, richly garnished
with precious stones, upon her head.” To wear the hair at full length
on the shoulders was the approved fashion for a bride--Anne Boleyn
was so attired at her nuptials--and the fashion was very generally
followed by unmarried females. The men vied with the fair sex in the
length of their flowing curls, and the dandies, especially, loaded
their shoulders with a rich profusion. Louis XII. of France had a very
magnificent _chevelure_, till disease compelled him to take refuge
in a wig.
It is almost as needless to say ought of “bluff king Hal,” as to
describe the current coin of the realm. He is a sort of Blue Beard,
and the tragical story of his wives is known to everybody. He it was,
who, in his royal will and pleasure, issued a peremptory order that the
heads of his attendants and courtiers should be polled. We may be sure
that short crops were soon in fashion. The Venetian ambassador at the
English court writes, that when Henry heard that the king of France
wore a beard, he allowed his, also, to grow, which, being somewhat red,
had the appearance of golden hair. Henry was then about twenty-nine
years of age.
Francis the First, who was wounded in a tournament, had to submit to
the loss of his locks; so the pliant courtiers parted with theirs,
which set the fashion of cropping the hair very close.
We have seen how bishops, in olden time, laid violent hands on their
flocks, and imposed penalties on the laity, for too successfully
cultivating their curls. But the sight of a bishop in danger of being
shaved by his colleagues is a curiosity. We give the story as we find
it in Southey’s “Omniana:” “Guillaume Duprat, bishop of Clermont,
who assisted at the council of Trent, and built the college of the
Jesuits at Paris, had the finest beard that ever was seen. It was too
fine a beard for a bishop; and the canons of his cathedral, in full
chapter assembled, came to the barbarous resolution of shaving him.
Accordingly, when next he came to the choir, the dean, the _prevot_,
and the _chantre_ approached with scissors and razors, soap, basin,
and warm water. He took to his heels at the sight, and escaped to his
castle of Beauregard, about two leagues from Clermont, where he fell
sick, from vexation, and died.”
Hastening onward, we come to the days of good Queen Bess--and foremost
is the figure of the queen herself--
“The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.”
This was an age ever memorable for the choicest wits, and, we need
not scruple to add, BEARDS. These were of every variety of cut, size,
and colour; and certain professions were distinguished by particular
beards. The cathedral beard, long and square-trimmed, which fell upon
the breast, was worn by divines of the English church; the broad
spade-beards and steeletto beards by soldiers: the former in favour
with the Earl of Essex, the latter with Lord Southampton. There were,
likewise, hammer-shaped beards, like the Roman T, similar to the
formidable beard of the present Emperor of France; the _pique devant_,
forked, needle, and tile-shaped beard; and round, trimmed beards, “like
a glover’s paring-knife.”
Taylor, the Water-Poet, who had a curious cork-screw beard of his own,
in his “Whip for Pride,” thus flagellates the whole race:
Now a few lines to paper I will put,
Of men’s beards strange and variable cut;
In which there’s some do take as vain a pride
As almost in all other things beside.
Some are reaped most substantial as a brush,
Which make a natural wit known by the bush.
Some seem as they were starched stiff and fine,
Like to the bristles of some hungry swine;
And some (to set their love’s desire on edge)
Are cut and pruned like a quick-set hedge.
Some like a spade, some like a fork, some square,
Some round, some mowed like stubble, some stark bare;
Some sharp stiletto-fashion, dagger-like,
That may, with whispering, a man’s eye out pike;
Some with the hammer cut, or Roman T,
Their beards extravagant reformed must be;
Some with the quadrate, some triangle fashion,
Some circular, some oval in translation,
Some perpendicular in longitude,
Some like a thicket for their crassitude;
That heights, depths, breadths, triform, square, round,
And rules geometrical, in beards are found;
Besides the upper lip’s strange variation,
Corrected from mutation to mutation;
As ’twere from tithing unto tithing sent,
Pride gives Pride continual punishment.
Some (spite their teeth) like thatch’d eaves downward grows,
And some grow upwards in despite their nose.
Some their mustachios of such length do keep,
That very well they may a manger sweep!
Which in beer, ale, or wine, they drinking plunge,
And suck the liquor up as ’twere a sponge;
But ’tis a sloven’s beastly Pride, I think,
To wash his beard when other men may drink.
And some (because they will not rob the cup)
Their upper chaps like pot-hooks are turned up.
The Barbers, thus, (like Tailors) still must be
Acquainted with each cuts variety.
The word beard, in former times, was understood to comprehend what
we now distinguish as beard, whiskers and moustaches. The colour of
the beard was considered of much importance, and dyed, when needful,
of the desired hue. Bottom, who was to act the part of Pyramus, “a
most gentleman-like man,” says, “I will discharge it in either your
straw-coloured beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain
beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow,” nor
must we omit the most venerable of all, “a sable silvered.” There was,
also, the yellow, or Cain-coloured beard; and the red, or Judas-beard,
formerly supposed to indicate a treacherous nature.
Beards of very noble proportions were worn at the era of the
Reformation. We may instance Calvin, Beza, Peter Martyr, Fox, Cranmer,
and John Knox, whose beard reached to his girdle. Possibly this length
of beard was encouraged as much out of opposition to the Romish church,
as from any real reverence for so patriarchal a fashion. Sully’s
or Lord Burleigh’s beard may be taken as the finest growth to which
statesmen have attained. The poets Spencer, Shakspere, and Beaumont,
present fine patterns for their tuneful brethren; and scholars, if
they despair of acquiring the erudition of a Scaliger, a Buchanan,
or a Buxtorf, may resemble these old worthies in their plenitude of
beard. Every painter is familiar with glorious old Titian’s beard, with
Reuben’s and Vandyke’s.
And looking back through the vistas of past ages, the monarchs of
the intellectual world are, for the most part, distinguishable by
their handsome beards. Henry the Fourth, of France, could boast of a
splendid beard; but his successor, Louis XIII., was without, and the
pliant courtiers, in deference to the smooth face of royalty, gave up
wearing beards. Sully, however, retained his, much to the amusement
of some jesting spirits about the court. The old man, indignant at
such treatment, observed to the king, “Sire, your father, of glorious
memory, when he wished to consult me on state affairs, bade the fools
and jesters leave his presence.”
Sir Thomas More’s beard but narrowly escaped the stroke of the axe
which ended the career of that illustrious man. The story is told thus:
Sir Thomas More at his execution, having laid his head upon the block,
and perceiving that his beard was extended in such a manner that it
would be cut through by the stroke of the executioner, asked him to
adjust it properly upon the block; and when the executioner told him he
need not trouble himself about his beard, when his head was about to
be cut off, “It is of little consequence to me,” said Sir Thomas, “but
it is a matter of some importance to you that you should understand
your profession, and not cut through my beard, when you had orders only
to cut off my head.”
Ulmus of Padua wrote a folio volume on the Beard, as he well might, if
the length of his discourse were proportioned to the noble beards it
was his privilege to illustrate, and the dignity and gravity of the
subject he had to discuss. Hotoman wrote a “Treatise,” and Pierius
Valerianus an “Eulogium” on beards. Those of Italy and Spain alone
are worthy of a separate treatise. Many an Arab would rather lose his
head than part with his beard--it is part of his religion to honour
it; he swears by his beard: and Mahommed, we are told, never cut his.
In Spain, in old times, it was held in like reverence: an insult to
the beard could only be wiped out with blood. The seated corpse of the
Cid--so runs the story--knocked down a Jew who dared to offend against
its majesty by touching but a hair of the beard. It was reserved for
the pencil of Velasquez to give immortality to the martial beards of
Spain, which flourished proudly, and grew fiercely, amid the strife
and smoke of battles. The decline and fall of the Spanish beard is
attributed to Philip V. and his courtiers, in whose reign it was
abolished. Many a brave Spaniard felt the privation keenly; and it
became a common saying, “Since we have lost our beards, we seem to have
lost our souls.”
The Longobardi, or Lombards, have made themselves a place in history;
and stubborn enough they proved at times, as Frederic I., the renowned
old Barbarossa, found to his cost. And was there not the terrible
Blue Beard--that incarnation of villainy and bloodthirstiness of
our childhood. Who has forgotten the beards of the Persian kings,
interwoven with gold; or the long white beard of the old Laconian
mentioned by Plutarch, who being asked why he let it grow so long,
replied, “It is that seeing continually my white beard, I may do
nothing unworthy of its whiteness?” Fuller, however, says, “Beard was
never the true standard of brains;” nor of valour either, if we may
trust Bassanio:
“How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false
As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins
The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars;
Who inward search’d, have livers white as milk;
And these assume but valour’s excrement,
To render them redoubted.”
There seems, at all times to have been a sinister protest, in some
quarter or other, against the presumed arrogance of the beard--a
lurking spirit of revolt, engendered possibly of envy, against the
supremacy of its reign. Even the would-be-philosopher of old did not
go unchallenged, as we may guess from the sharp rebuke administered
in the memorable words, “Video barbam et palliam; philosophum nondum
video.” And, indeed, if the truth must be spoken, there are faces to
which it lends no dignity. A mean and contemptible nature, hid behind a
potent beard, is a miserable disguise. The affectations of a gentleman
are but trifles. Raleigh wore stays, and was a great dandy; but he
was something more--an elegant poet, an accomplished gentleman, and a
gallant soldier. But the abuse of a good thing is no argument for its
disuse. We grieve to think of the degradation of this manly ornament,
and put no faith in
“those ambiguous things that ape
Goats in their visage, women in their shape;”
and would fain hope that a return to the “flat faces,”
“such as would disgrace a screen,”
is next to impossible.
“Now, a beard is a thing which commands in a king,
Be his sceptre ne’er so fair;
When the beard wears the sway, the people obey,
And are subject to a hair.
“’Tis a princely sight and a grave delight
That adorns both young and old;
A well thatch’d face is a comely grace,
And a shelter from the cold.”
Even our playing cards look the better for the beards; how richly are
the kings furnished--what a winning aspect it gives them.
“Behold four kings, in majesty revered,
With hoary whiskers and a forked beard.”
When the lively Beatrice exclaims, “I could not endure a husband with
a beard on his face,” and is reminded she may light on one without,
the alternative seems by no means pleasing; for she replies, “What
shall I do with him? dress him with my apparel, and make him my
waiting gentleman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he
that hath none is less than a man.” And we take it, though the lady
tells us she was born to speak “all mirth, no matter” she has given
expression to the opinion of her own sex very naively. It was one of
those consistent contradictions so in character with the delightful
absurdities of lovers, for some sighing swains to part with “the old
ornament of their cheeks;” some say, to give a more youthful appearance
to those who stood in need of it; and adopted by others from the
merciful consideration which swayed the heart of Bottom, when he
resolved “to roar like a sucking dove,” not to “fright the ladies.”
When the repentant Benedick turned lover, his beard was fated to stuff
tennis-balls. To pluck a hair from the beard of the great Cham, at the
bidding of some fair inamorata, was obviously an easy and agreeable
duty to the knights of old romance. But what shall we say to those
giants’ coats
“Made from the beards of kings.”
Once upon a time, by the exigencies of war, John de Castro was
compelled to leave one of his whiskers in pledge with the inhabitants
of Goa, as security for a thousand pistoles, which he needed to
carry on the siege. A general’s whiskers valued at 2,000 pistoles!
Everything, in short, has its use,
A barbe de fol apprend-on à raire.
In Elizabeth’s reign periwigs made their appearance, and were worn very
generally by ladies of rank. Paul Hentzner, writing of the queen, then
in her sixty-seventh year, says she wore false hair, and that red, with
a small crown on her head. False hair of different colours was worn on
different occasions by the same person: sometimes the queen appeared in
black hair.
Mary Queen of Scots had black hair; but in some of her portraits she is
represented with light hair, and, in accordance with the fashion of her
day, she frequently wore borrowed locks of different colours. Knollys,
in a letter to Cecil, makes mention of one “Mistress Mary Seaton,
greatly praised by the queen, and one of the finest _buskers_
to be seen in any country. Among other pretty devices, she did set a
curled hair upon the queen that was said to be a _perewyke_, that
showed very delicately; and every other day she hath a new device of
head-dressing without any cost, and yet setteth forth a woman gayly
well.” Hair-powder first came into fashion in 1590.
Puttenham, in his “Art of Poesie,” says, “Now again at this time the
young gentlemen of the court _have taken up_ the long haire
trayling on their shoulders, and think this more decent, for what
respect I should be glad to know.” Curling the points of their beards
and moustaches was a favourite style with the young men of fashion. The
ladies wore the hair curled, frizzled, and crisped, and underpropped
with pins and wires, and so tortured into the most fantastic shapes: we
read, also, of cauls of hair set with seed-pearls and gold buttons.
In the days of our British Solomon there were first-rate coxcombs and
exquisites; and some so solicitous about the beauty of the outward
man, that, when they walked abroad, they carried a looking-glass “in a
tobacco box or dial set.” Towards the close of this reign, the hair
of females was combed back in a roll over the forehead, and on this a
small hood.
In France, when Louis XIII. came to the throne, he was too young to
have a beard. For a time the beard was unfashionable; but whiskers were
much in favour with gallants, and thought to be greatly admired by
their lady-loves.
The peaked beard of Charles I., so well known from the portraits by
Vandyke, introduces us to the troubled times of the Cavaliers and
Roundheads. The aversion of the latter to the flowing curls of the
Royalists was extreme, and led to the adoption of the Puritanical crop,
which, as a mere negation and opposed to every principle of beauty,
was doomed in turn to be discarded with ineffable contempt. One would
wish to speak with all respect of the stout ironsides who fought at
Marston Moor and Naseby; but the silly crusade, encouraged by some
of the meaner sort against the beautiful creations of art, has done
more to estrange men’s minds from the noble principles they upheld
with their swords, than the united acclaim of their preachers could
effect in their behalf. The “_love-locks_” of the court gallants
were especially hateful to the Puritans. Sometimes a single lock of
hair, tied at the end with silk ribbon in bows, was allowed to fall
on the chest; others wore two such love-locks, one on each side of
the head, which, at times, reached to the waist. Prynne wrote a book
expressly against them, on “The Unloveliness of Love-locks;” and in
1643 appeared Dr. Hall’s tract “On the Loathsomeness of Long Hair,”
wherein he complained that “some have long lockes at their eares, as if
they had four eares, or were prick-eared; some have a little long locke
onely before, hanging down to their noses, like the taile of a weasall;
every man being made a foole at the barber’s pleasure, or making a
foole of the barber for having to make him such a foole.” And in Lyly’s
play of Midas, it is asked, “Will you have a low curl on your head,
like a ball, or dangling locks, like a spaniel? Your moustachioes sharp
at the ends, like a shoemaker’s awl, or hanging down to your mouth,
like goats’ flakes? Your love-locks wreathed with a silken twist, or
shaggy to fall on your shoulders?”
The reader cannot have failed to remark how these love-locks and
periwigs facilitated the disguise of one sex for the other, so often
assumed by characters in old plays, and on which the chief interest
or plot of a piece frequently turned. Thus, when Julia, in “The Two
Gentlemen of Verona,” desires her maid, Lucetta, to provide her with
“such weeds as may beseem some well-reputed page.” Lucetta answers,
“Why, then, your ladyship must cut your hair.”
JULIA.--No, girl; I’ll knit it up in silken strings,
With twenty odd conceited true-love knots:
To be fantastic, may become a youth
Of greater time than I shall show to be.
A periwig favored the escape of the Duke of York, afterwards James
II., from St. James’s Palace in 1648, who luckily “shifted into
gentlewoman’s clothes,” got on board a Dutch vessel below Gravesend,
and landed safely in Holland. The hostess at Middleburgh, where the
prince slept by the way, wondered much that “the young gentlewoman
would not let the maids help her to bed.”
As a companion picture to the love locks of the gentlemen, the ladies
adorned themselves with artificial ringlets, cunningly inserted amid
the true; and _heart-breakers_ (accroche-cœur), arranged with
studied and most killing aim. The female coiffure of the Stuart period
has always been much admired, with its soft clustering curls and
semi-transparence, the effect of a peculiar friz. Some of the portraits
of that era, the hair arranged with true feminine taste, gracefully
shadowing a complexion of the utmost delicacy, are studies of female
loveliness, which, once seen, are not easily forgotten.
Some years ago, the body of Charles the first was discovered at
Windsor, and it is said the late Sir Henry Halford and George IV. were
the only persons to whom it was shown. Sir Henry cut off a lock of the
king’s hair, and made Sir Walter Scott a present of a part, which he
had set in virgin gold, the word “Remember” surrounding it in highly
relieved letters.
Whiskers were still in fashion at the French court. The king, Turenne,
Corneille, Moliere, and the chief men of note were proud to wear them.
“It was then,” says a grave encyclopedist, “no uncommon thing for a
favourite lover to have his whiskers turned up, combed, and dressed
by his mistress; and hence a man of fashion took care always to be
provided with every little requisite, especially whisker-wax. It was
highly flattering to a lady to have it in her power to praise the
beauty of the lover’s whiskers, which, far from being disgusting,
gave his person an air of vivacity, and several even thought them an
incitement to love.” What would our gallant Drake have thought of
this effeminacy, who, after he had burned Philip’s fleet at Cadiz, in
sailor’s phrase called it “singeing the king of Spain’s whiskers.”
The Roundheads were mercilessly ridiculed in ballads, and pelted
with poetry in every style of doggerel, till finally gibetted for
the amusement of posterity by the author of Hudibras. The nick-name
of Roundheads, we are told, arose from their putting a round bowl or
wooden dish upon their heads, and cutting their hair by the edges or
brim of the bowl. The bowl may, or may not, have been in use for this
purpose, but nothing could exceed the ugliness of the Puritan crop.
“What creature’s this, with his short hairs,
His little band, and huge long ears,
That a new faith has founded?”
Even such brave and noble-minded adherents as Colonel Hutchinson could
not escape the censure of their own party for not conforming in all
respects to the vulgar notions of orthodoxy. His long and beautiful
hair was looked upon with suspicion as betraying a certain lukewarmness
in their cause. The Puritans even forbade the women to wear braided
hair. And some of them, more zealous than the rest, made a vow not to
trim their beards till the parliament had subdued the king, as did Sir
Hudibras.
’Twas to stand fast
As long as monarchy should last;
But when the state should hap to reel
’Twas to submit to fatal steel.
These vow-beards were also worn by some staunch old Jacobites, to mark
their love for the house of Stuart, who hoped to see the king recalled
to the throne. The beard of Sir Hudibras has acquired a sort of
historical importance, and, to do it justice, must be pictured at full
length:
“His tawny beard was th’ equal grace
Both of his wisdom and his face;
In cut and die so like a tile,
A sudden view it would beguile;
The upper part whereof was whey,
The nether orange mix’d with grey.
This hairy meteor did denounce
The fall of sceptres and of crowns;
With grisly type did represent
Declining age of government,
And tell, with hieroglyphic spade,
Its own grave and the state’s were made.
Like Samson’s heart-breakers it grew,
In time to make a nation rue;
Though it contributed its own fall
To wait upon the public downfall.”
What befel this tawny beard we learn from the same faithful narrative
of the knight’s adventures:
“At that an egg let fly,
Hit him directly o’er the eye,
And, running down his cheek, besmear’d
With orange tawny slime his beard;
But beard and slime being of one hue,
The wound the less appear’d to view.”
In this terrible plight he is visited by the widow, one of Job’s
comforters, who begins her discourse with a commentary on beards, which
must be our apology for inserting it here:
“If he that is in battle conquer’d
Have any title to his own beard,
Though yours be sorely lugg’d and torn,
It does your visage more adorn
Than if ’twere prun’d, and starch’d, and lander’d,
And cut square by the Russian standard.”
Butler has left us a portrait of Philip Nye’s Thanksgiving Beard, which
must not be passed by unnoticed:
“This rev’rend brother, like a goat,
Did wear a tail upon his throat,
The fringe and tassel of a face,
That gives it a becoming grace;
But set in such a curious frame,
As if ’twere wrought in filograin,
And cut so e’en, as if’t had been
Drawn with a pen upon his chin:
No topiary hedge of quickset,
Was e’er so neatly cut, or thick-set.”
It has been seriously asserted that paste-board cases were invented to
put over these beards at night, lest their owners should turn upon and
rumple them in their sleep. The Puritans carried their hatred of long
hair with them to their new homes across the Atlantic. In a code of
laws which they published, among other curious regulations it is set
forth, “that it is a shameful practice for any man who has the least
care for his soul to wear long hair. As this abomination excites the
indignation of all pious persons, we, the magistrates, in our zeal
for the purity of the faith, do expressly and authentically declare,
that we condemn the impious custom of letting the hair grow--a custom
which we look upon to be very indecent and dishonest, which terribly
disguises men, and is offensive to modest and sober persons, inasmuch
as it corrupts good manners,” with much more to the like effect, in a
strain of dreary verbiage and exhortation. Long hair, according to a
Puritan poet, was nothing else than the banner of Satan displayed in
triumph from a man’s head.
Milton’s beautiful hair, falling upon his shoulders in broad masses of
clustering curls, and setting off features of rare beauty, is deserving
of special honour. It is a question whether those sacred hairs were
sacrilegiously handled by certain ruffianly overseers in 1790, during
some repairs to the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate. If the body then
exhumed, and presumed to be Milton’s, were in reality the earthly
remains of our great poet, these “sapient, trouble-tombs,” after a
carouse, (how wonderfully a parish feast smooths the way to some dirty
job, so easily reconciled to the parochial mind), “cutting open the
leaden coffin, found a body in its shroud, and, believing it to be that
of the poet, they extracted the teeth, cut off the hair, which was six
inches long, and combed and tied together, and then left the scattered
remains to the grave diggers, who were permitted to exhibit them for
money to the public. Mr. Philip Neve, of Furnival’s Inn, who published
an account of the transaction, was strongly convinced that the body was
that of Milton, although the hair and other circumstances favoured the
opinion that it was the body of a woman.” Was anything more disgusting
ever perpetrated in the days
“When Bradshaw bullied in a broad-brimmed hat,”
or since?
The Restoration of Charles II. ushered in THE AGE OF GREAT WIGS--a
subject of too much importance to be summarily disposed of, and which
we purposely reserve for the next chapter.
WIGS.
CHAPTER IV
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.
CHAPTER V.
Barbers, by common consent, enjoy a most enviable reputation. Both in
fact and fiction they are the representatives of shrewdness and good
nature; and in some of the choicest literature extant, the sayings and
doings of the brethren of the craft are among the best of their kind.
It would be a dull world without Figaro.
The barber’s shop was for centuries the emporium of gossip, the
idler’s club; and when the young Roman wished to meet with a rake as
pleasure-loving as himself, he sought him at the barber’s, possibly to
contrive how to steal away some old man’s daughter or his money-bags.
And thither came the old miser to get his finger-nails clipped,
taking care, however, to take the parings away with him. All classes
frequented the barber’s shop; and we may suppose the lively satirists
of old visited the spot, as Molière did the barber of Pezenas, to find
material for some of their best sketches of character.
The Roman barbers, it must be confessed, were somewhat garrulous, and
their tongues went as nimbly as their shears. Like the moderns, they
put a rough cloth round the patient, as we are half inclined to call
the customer who submitted to the operation, for we fear their razors
were none of the best, for some preferred to have their beards plucked
out by means of plasters applied to the face, and then those terrible
tweezers completed the work, pulling out the stray hairs the razors
or plasters had left behind. Some wealthy men had the duties of the
barber performed by their own slaves, but the shops were thronged
with customers, and the tonsor was at all times the most obedient and
obliging servant of the public. One of the peculiarities of their art
was the clicking of the shears, to which Juvenal makes allusion:
“He whose officious scizzors went snip, snip,
As he my troublesome young beard did clip.”
Several of these worthies attained to great distinction, and rose from
the shop to the senate.
The furniture of a barber’s shop, to those who are curious in matters
of antiquity, might serve to explain the customs of a very remote
period. The basin is mentioned in Ezekiel: it is the _cantherus_
of the middle ages, which was of bright copper. From a peculiar soap,
_lascivium_, used by the fraternity, we derive the word lather.
Washing-balls were used for washing and softening the beard before
shaving, and the pomatum in use was known as _capillare_. Various
modes of frizzing and plaiting the hair, distinguished by appropriate
terms, are alluded to by archæologists; but we turn a deaf ear to such
traditions--our lode-star glistens near the barber’s pole, Mambrino’s
helmet, bright with sunny memories of golden romance and the adventures
of the knight of La Mancha. There has been some diversity of opinion as
to the origin of the well-known barber’s pole. The prevalent opinion
is probably the true one, that it represents the staff held in the
hand by the patient phlebotomized by the barber-surgeon; and that the
red ribbon coiled round it represents the tape by which the arm was
compressed during the operation. And here, at the threshold, we observe
the mystical union between Barbery and Surgery; and hence the dignity
and professional honours to which the barbers justly lay claim. Lord
Thurlow, in the House of Peers (1797) decorated the barber’s pole with
somewhat different colours when he stated “that, by a statute then in
force, the Barbers and Surgeons were each to use a pole. The barbers
were to have theirs blue and white, striped, with no other appendage;
but the surgeons’, which was the same in other respects, was likewise
to have a galley-pot and a red rag, to denote the particular nature
of their vocation.” Our business is not with the galley-pot, although
we love the golden beard of Æsculapius well. We incline to the belief
that there were no jealousies between the happy couple at an early
period of their union. The fees of both professions were, doubtless,
small, and seldom any but minor operations attempted; while, probably,
the ignorance of both parties was so nearly balanced as to produce the
desired equality so necessary to the concord of the married state. For
many long years we know they jogged on together without complaint of
any kind; that subsequently, if not very loving, they tolerated each
other with due decorum; and that, when at last they got to wrangling
and high words, they luckily obtained a divorce.
The barber’s basin certainly ranks next in importance to the pole. The
basin of the proper form had the usual semi-circle cut out of the brim,
that it might fit into the neck; and, in another part, a hollow place,
like a little dish, to hold the soap: its office was two-fold, and was
in requisition both for bleeding and shaving. To the disturbed vision
of Don Quixote the brass basin glittered like burnished gold. His
adventure with the village barber, mounted on his dappled grey ass, the
renowned helmet, and the part it played in the astounding feats of that
flower of chivalry, are known the world over, and are among the most
pleasant associations connected with the barber’s trade. At a public
festival in Holland, in honour of the Earl of Leicester, Holinshed
says a barber set up some three score of bright copper basins on a
wall, with a wax candle burning in each, and a painting of a rose and
crown, and an inscription in Latin, “this made a faire shew, and was
a pretie deuise.” If the fellow were an honest patriot, he deserved a
pyramid of brass basins for a monument.
Punning inscriptions and quaint devices outside of the shop were
frequently adopted as alluring bait for the lovers of odd whims and
fancies, who thought none the worse of the man for having some spice of
humour in his composition. Over a barber’s shop Hogarth has set up this
inscription, “Shaving, bleeding, and teeth drawn with a touch, ECCE
SIGNUM.” Bat Pigeon, of whom honourable mention is made by both
Steele and Addison, had a curious device of a bat and a pigeon, which,
in its day, attracted much attention. The wig-maker’s sign of Absalom
hanging from the oak by his hair, and the darts of Joab fixed in his
side, is probably of French origin. The story is told of a barber at
Troyes, and the inscription runs thus:
“Passans, contemplez la douleur
D’Absalon pendu par la nuque:
Il eût évité ce malheur
S’il avait porté la _perruque_.”
The English version is more concise:
“O Absalom, unhappy sprig,
Thou shouldst have worn a perriwig.”
The barber’s chair may be regarded as the centre of the system. The
proverb “As common as a barber’s chair” is well known, and Shakspere’s
clown adds “it fits all buttocks”--the word is not ours--the seat
of honour, if you please, reader, furnished with twin cushions to
protect the sacred Luz, out of which the Rabbins say the renewed
mammal is to sprout forth at the resurrection, as you are probably
aware. In old prints, the chattels of a barber’s shop are usually
few and mean enough; but the chair--the descendant of the _sella
tonsoria_--bears some rude flourishes of art, is broad and massive
and well-cushioned, as became the throne of so many grave potentates.
One is as much astonished at the size of the combs, scissors, and
razors of the ancient barbers as at the giant arms and armour worn
by the knights of old. What ponderous blades these artists wielded
it is fearful to contemplate. There is an old joke that some barber
advertised shaving by the acre, and cutting blocks with a razor one
would think not impossible with such weapons. Actius’ razor, which
was of the keenest, must have been after this fashion. As razors are
of very old date, it may interest some one to know that, long before
Sheffield or Sheffield blades were thought of, Palermo did business in
their commodity. The presiding deity was not unfrequently the greatest
curiosity about the place. A certain knack of snapping the fingers
was a common practice among them; tradition says, it recalled to mind
the clicking of the shears used by their great ancestors. Morose, in
Ben Jonson’s “Silent Woman,” so detested this sound, as indeed he did
noises of all kind, that meeting with a barber who was without this
trick of his profession, he thought it so eminent a virtue, that he
made him chief of his counsel, which reminds one of Adrian’s rebuke to
his gossip of a barber, who, in reply to the man’s query how he should
like to be shaved, said--silently! But barber’s were better employed
than in curing the ill-humours of the Morose family. In Stubbes’
Anatomie of Abuses (1583) is a dialogue about old barbers, which we
will in part transcribe:
“There are no finer fellowes under the sunne, nor experter in
their noble science of barbing than they be; and therefore,
in the fulness of their overflowing knowledge, (oh! ingenious
heads, and worthy to be dignified with the diademe of folly and
vain curiositie!) they have invented such strange fashions and
monstrous manners of cutting, trimmings, shavings, and washings,
that you would wonder to see.... Besides that, when they come
to the cutting of the haire, what snipping and snapping of the
cycers is there, what tricking and trimming, what rubbing,
what scratching, what combing and clawing, what trickling and
toying, and all to tawe out money, you may be sure. And when
they come to washing, oh! how gingerly they behave themselves
therein; for then shall your mouth be bossed with the lather
or fome that riseth of the balles (for they have their sweete
balles wherewithall they use to washe); your eyes closed must
be anointed therewith also. Then snap go the fingers; ful
bravely, God wot. Thus, this tragedy ended, comes me warme
clothes to wipe and dry him withall; next the eares must be
picked and closed togither againe artificially forsooth; the
hair of nostrils cut away, and every thing done in order comely
to behold. The last action in this tragedie is the paiment of
monie. And least these cunning barbers might seem unconscionable
in asking much for their paines, they are of such a shamefast
modestie, as they will aske nothing at all, but, standing to
the curtesie and liberalitie of the giver, they will receive
all that comes, how much soever it be, not giving anie again, I
warrant you; for take a barber with that fault, and strike off
his head. No, no, such fellows are _Raræ in terris, nigrisque
simillimi cygnis_,--“Rare birds upon the earth, and as geason
as black swans.” You shall have also your Orient perfumes for
your nose, your fragrant waters for your face, wherewith you
shall bee all to besprinkled: your musicke againe, and pleasant
harmonie shall sound in your eares, and all to tickle the
same with vaine delight. And in the end your cloke shall be
brushed, and, God be with you, gentleman!...* * * * * * But yet
I must needs say (these nisities set apart) barbers are verie
necesarie, for otherwise men should grow verie ougglisom and
deformed, and their haire would in processe of time overgrowe
their face, rather like monsters, than comlie sober Christians.”
Stubbes, himself, was an inveterate trifler--one of an army of pigmies
warring against cranes; but we acquit him of all malice; he belonged
to that numerous class who originate nothing, but find fault with
everything--
“The long-neck’d geese of the world for ever hissing dispraise
Because their natures are little,”
as Tennyson calls them. An apt turn for flattery was very requisite in
an accomplished barber--one of the most difficult things, by the way,
for humanity to attain to; for if satire should wound, like a keen
razor, “with a touch that’s scarcely felt or seen,” flattery, like
rouge, should be applied with a very delicate hand, indeed. Suckling’s
verses allude to this hazardous feat:
“When I’m at work, I’m bound to find discourse
To no great purpose, of great Sweden’s force,
Of Witel, and the Burse, and what ’twill cost
To get that back which was this summer lost.
So fall to praising of his lordship’s hair,
Ne’er so deformed, I swear ’tis _sans_ compare:
I tell him that the King’s does sit no fuller,
And yet his is not half so good a colour:
Then reach a pleasing glass, that’s made to lye
Like to its master most notoriously:
And if he must his mistress see that day,
I with a powder send him strait away.”
But other duties such as bleeding, cupping, and drawing teeth had to be
attended to in turn. Those who have seen the
“Black rotten teeth in order strung,
Rang’d cups, that in the window stood,
Lin’d with red rags to look like blood,”
will acknowledge that this was once a very important branch of
industry. We have ourselves seen the tooth of some unknown animal
in a collection of the kind, which, for size, would have astonished
Professor Owen; the sight of it, we were told, had frightened away many
a toothache. The reader has probably met with the anecdote of Queen
Elizabeth, who hesitated about having a tooth drawn; when Bishop Aylmer
sat down in the chair, and said to the operator, “Come, though I am
an old man, and have but few teeth to spare, draw me this!” which was
done; and the queen, seeing him make so slight a matter of it, sat down
and had hers drawn, also.
When it was part of the popular belief that the human subject required
to be bled at regular intervals to ensure good health and make the
ladies fair, and when every barber-surgeon was ready “to breathe a
vein,” we may be sure the lancet was in constant request. Cupping
was recommended to remove a catarrh or cold in the head; and one who
made trial of its virtues says, he was startled by being asked by the
operator if he wished to be _sacrificed_; but declined being
scarified on that occasion. We take it for granted there must have
been uncommon stamina in the British constitution, or it would long
since have broken down hopelessly under the rough handling it has
undergone.
Benjamin Suddlechop, in Scott’s “Fortunes of Nigel,” has become the
model barber of our popular literature; the sketch is confessedly a
slight one, and, indeed, after Cervantes, Fielding, Smollett, and Le
Sage--not to mention others--have given their delineations of the
character, the barbers stand in need of no further help to fame.
Even Suddlechop had some music in his soul; his shop in Fleet-street
resounded with the tinklings of the guitar, where the lover, if so
inclined, might warble “a woeful ballad to his mistress’ eyebrows,” or
flay some spell-bound Marsyas with sounds by no means
“As sweet and musical
As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair.”
But what shall we say to Suddlechop’s little back shop, from which
he supplied his customers with strong waters. We consider this a sad
blot upon his fame. Many of the barbers sold cordials and compounded
English _aqua-vitæ_, and to them we are indebted for some of the
earliest recipes for British brandy--an abominable mixture, which, like
the filthy poison known as gin, has destroyed more victims than ever
groaned under the lancet of the barber-surgeon. Could these worthies
have foreseen what scandalous things would come of this gin drinking,
how
“The vitriol madness flashes up in the ruffian’s head,
Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife,”
what disease, and want, and wretchedness, and crime, are engendered
of this poison to men’s souls--all to build up the fortunes of a few
wealthy capitalists--we are sure even the strong nerves of the dashing
barber would have failed him, and he would have turned with loathing
from the hateful traffic. Rabelais makes Pope Calixtus a woman’s barber
in the other world, which might be a very salutary discipline for a
proud pontiff; and we put it to the prince of jovial drinkers himself
to suggest any more fitting purgatorial chastisement for the gin-fire
aristocracy, than that of compelling them to drink their own vile
compounds: Prometheus, bound to the rock, with the vulture preying on
his liver, would be but a faint type of their misery.
Before we dismiss Suddlechop, we have to remark that though dame
Ursula, his wife, carried on the sale of cosmetics and perfumes, and
dealt in other mysteries in her own room at hand, the business of a
perfumer, as the term is now understood, had nothing to do with the
ancient craft of barbery; such matters concerned St. Veronica and the
milliners--the barbers and their patron saint, St. Louis, were engaged
on higher mysteries. To preserve order, or, more probably, to promote
merriment, a list of forfeits was hung up in the shop; those who chose
to pay them did, and those who did not might laugh at them--
“like the forfeits in a barbers shop,
As much in mock as mark.”
Some old-fashioned “rules for seemly behaviour” have been handed to
certain learned antiquaries as genuine regulations of the craft; but
old birds are not to be caught with chaff, and the archæologist knows
better. The forfeits are said to have been incurred by meddling with
the razors, talking about cutting throats, swearing, pricking another
with the spurs, taking another’s turn, interrupting the barber, and
such like venial offences. It was formerly the custom to apply the soap
with the hand when lathering the beard; the practice of using a brush
was a French innovation, not known in England till the year 1756. Nor
must we omit to mention that contrivance of the dark ages, the barber’s
candlestick, which consisted of an upright wooden stem, pointed at the
lower end, which was fixed in the apron string, and a projecting branch
moveable round the stem to hold the candle.
Down even to the time of Queen Anne the barber’s shop was frequented
by the better sort of people, and the hand that trimmed the tradesman
curled the courtier. In Green’s “Quip for an Upstart Courtier,” (1592),
we read, “With quaint terms you greet Master Velvet-breeches withal,
and at every word a snap with your scissors, and a cringe with your
knee; whereas, when you come to poor Cloth-breeches, you either cut his
beard at your own pleasure, or else in disdain ask him if he will be
trimmed with Christ’s cut, round like the half of a Holland cheese?”
Some of the old histories afford curious glimpses of the varied
fortunes of the trade. In the time of Henry VI., the king’s palace was
surrounded by little barbers’ shops, under the direction of the barber
of the household. There being then no carriages, and the streets being
dirty, it is probable that those who went to court were first shaved
and dressed in these shops. A considerable fee was given to this barber
for shaving every Knight of the Bath, on his creation; forty shillings
from every baron; one hundred shillings from every earl; and ten pounds
from every duke. The barbers of London were first incorporated by
King Edward IV., in 1461, and at that time were the only persons who
practised surgery. In France the Company of Barbers dates from 1096.
An association called the Company of Surgeons was then formed prior to
the act of Henry VIII., regulating the trade of barbers and surgeons.
This act incorporated the company of surgeons with the barbers, under
the name of the Barbers and Surgeons of London, and defined the duties
of both professions: the barbers were not to practice surgery further
than drawing of teeth, and the surgeons were strictly prohibited from
exercising the craft of shaving. It is needless to add, that to a much
later period, any act of parliament to the contrary notwithstanding,
the barber did as much of the surgeon’s work as he could get. In
certain articles devised by Henry VIII. for the establishment of good
order in his household and chambers, there is an order by which the
king’s barber is “expressly enjoined to be cleanly, and by no means to
frequent the company of idle persons and misguided women, for fear of
danger to the king’s most royal person.”
Montaigne complains (1581) that throughout Italy he had not been able
to get hold of a single barber that could either shave him, or cut, or
arrange his hair properly. The barber of King Charles II. seems to have
acquired somewhat of the levity of his master, (evil communications
corrupt good manners); for one day, while shaving him, with his usual
familiarity he hazarded the remark, that none of his majesty’s officers
had a greater trust than himself. “How so, friend?” quoth the king.
“Why,” said the barber, “I could cut your majesty’s throat whenever
I liked.” Charles started up at the idea, and, using his favourite
oath, exclaimed, “Odds fish, the very thought is treason!” Nor could
King Charles have forgotten the occasion when William Penderel first
performed the office of barber, and shaved and trimmed him in a very
sorry fashion, that he might elude his enemies. Royalty must at all
times have been a very awkward customer for the barber to meddle with.
Midas’ barber who appears to have had the _cacoethes loquendi_
which is said to be endemic with the craft, suffered dreadfully in
consequence. Fortunately for a few crowned heads, the tonsor, taught
discretion by the story of Midas, has become the most prudent of men,
and not a whisper is uttered on earth of any peculiar developement
about the ears which the Phrygian cap effectually conceals from the
vulgar.
Female barbers were not unknown to our forefathers, and, till within a
few years, were to be met with in the provinces: possibly some “weird
sisters” still survive in odd localities. We remember a sturdy little
Welsh woman who wielded the razor very successfully in her native town,
and was patronized extensively by the sailors and quarrymen. The five
barberesses of Drury Lane, who dreadfully maltreated a woman in the
reign of Charles II., are remembered for their infamy. Local histories
tell of a noted barberess in Seven Dials, and of a black woman who
did duty at Butcher Row, near the Temple. The delicate manipulation
of female artists is proverbial; but one shudders at the thought of
encountering the armed hand of the female barber; for who has forgotten
the trick which the barber-damsel put upon Don Quixote, when she raised
a lather a span high, covering up his face and beard with a white
foam, and then left him for awhile with his neck outstretched, and his
eyes half shut, “the strangest and most ridiculous figure imaginable;”
and how poor Sancho was threatened with still worse consequences, and
protested loudly against the beard-scouring by the scullions, adding,
with his usual shrewdness, that there was no such difference between
him and his master, that one should be washed with angel water and
the other with devil’s-ley. Southey informs us that female shavers
were not uncommon in Spain in his day. The more feminine occupation of
hair-dressing was long carried on by the other sex, in a becoming and
artistic manner: witness the announcement of one of them, copied by
Strutt from the original in the British Museum:--
A [Illustration] R
_Next Door to the Golden Bell, St. Bride’s Lane, Fleet Street_,
LYVETH LYDIA BEERCRAFT,
Who cutteth and curleth ladies, gentlemen, and children’s
hair.--She sells a fine pomatum, which is mix’d with ingredients
of her own makeing, that if the hair be never so thin, it makes
it grow thick; and if short, it makes it grow long. If any
gentleman’s or children’s hair be never so lank, she makes it
curle in a little time, and to look like a perriwig.
It will be observed in Queen Anne’s reign no other style but that of
the perriwig was thought worthy of imitation. In former times, the
university barber was a person of some consequence. The vice-chancellor
and proctors invited the fraternity to an annual supper, and no barber
or hair-dresser could exercise his vocation in the university unless
he matriculated,--took the usual oath, and had his name entered on
the books of the university. It was usual for the college barber to
wait upon the “freshmen,” and dress and powder them in the prevailing
fashion--a custom which Southey was among the first to resist--an
innovation he would scarcely have ventured on in after life.
The home of the first Company of Barber-Surgeons in London was probably
where the hall of their successors, the barbers, is at this day, in
Monkwell Street. The present building was erected by subscription
some years after the Fire of London, which all but consumed its
predecessor: a portion of the hall, of a semicircular shape, is
actually within one of the bastions, still entirely perfect, of the old
Roman wall--the ancient boundary of the metropolis. The court-room,
designed by Inigo Jones, though small, is of fine proportions, and
contains what must now be considered the chief riches of the company--a
noble painting by Holbein, “Henry VIII. granting the charter to the
Barber-Surgeons”--one of the finest pictures by Holbein in this
country. There is also a portrait of Inigo Jones, by Vandyke; a picture
by Sir Peter Lely, and other valuable paintings. The Company possesses
a silver-gilt cup, presented by Henry VIII.; another the gift of
Charles II.; and a large bowl given by Queen Anne. Such are some of
the relics the barbers may still feel proud of, which we trust are
not fated to decay; but, as this is eminently an age of revival and
restoration, it is to be hoped the old hall may yet see better days;
that, whatever was garnered up of old by the wisdom and prudence of our
forefathers, may be wisely and liberally enjoyed by this generation,
and the good work carried on and extended for a later age. The arms of
the barbers are:--
Quarterly first and fourth, _sa_, a chevron between three fleams
_ar_, second and third, per pale _ar_, and vert, a spatula in
pale _ar_, surmounted of a rose, _gu_, charged with another of
the first; the first rose regally crowned _proper_. Between
the four quarters a cross of St. George, _gu_, charged with a
lion passant gardant, _or_. _Crest_--An opinicus, with wings
indorsed, _or_. _Supporters_--Two lynxes _proper_, spotted
of various colours, both ducally collared and chained, _or_.
_Motto_--“De præscientia Dei.”
If we were privileged to direct our thoughts to other lands, and to
record the pleasant life of that admirable humourist, the barber of
Southern Europe, we might hope to add a little sunshine to these pages.
Who enjoys life better than Figaro--who is as well entertained--who is
half as entertaining?
Ah che bel vivere!
Che bel piacere per un barbiere di qualita,
Ah bravo Figaro, bravo bravissimo fortunatissimo.
What a lively, sensuous, _al fresco_ life he has of it at Naples;
content, without the semblance of property of any kind; in action, free
as the breeze; and in spirit, buoyant as a wave.
Ah che bel vivere!
But the shrine of Figaro must be sought in Seville. In the charming
fictions of Cervantes and Le Sage, we seem to live on most familiar
terms with the Spanish barber, as much so, as with Smollett’s Hugh
Strap, or Partridge in Fielding’s “Tom Jones.” So truthfully is the
invisible world peopled for us by the power of genius. Romance seems in
some way associated with the character of a barber--
“In Venice, Tasso’s echoes are no more,
And songless rows the silent gondolier;”
but the barber still contrives an occasional serenade, accompanying
his amorous tinklings with vocal strains which would rouse the Seven
Sleepers. What a contrast to his European brethren is the grave barber
of the East, who is usually physician, astrologer, and barber, and
better known to most of us by the amusing story in the Arabian Nights
than from any other source. Much might be said of Yankee wit and humour
in the person of the American barber; something too, of the crude state
of the art in Africa, where, to complete her modest coiffure, the sable
beauty is seated in the sun with a lump of fat on her head, which
trickles down in resplendent unctuous streams with a profusion enough
to make a railway engine jealous. Nor can we stop to notice the Chinese
“one piccie Barber-man,” whose speculations on heads and tails must be
highly amusing; for the Fates are inexorable, and our canvass too small
to complete the picture.
We must not, however, omit all mention of the trade in human hair, on
which the wig-maker is dependent for his supplies. Ovid alludes to this
traffic--light and auburn hair was most sought for by the Roman ladies
which was brought from Germany and the North of Europe--
“Hair is good merchandise, and grown a trade,
Markets and public traffic thereof made;
Nor do they blush to cheapen it among
The thickest number, and the rudest throng.”
In the reign of Elizabeth, the wearing of false hair was something of a
novelty; Italian ladies of no reputation are said to have first revived
the fashion. Stubbes took up the cudgels in earnest; he says:--
“They are not simply content with their own hair, but buy other
hair, either of horses, mares, or any other strange beasts,
dyeing of what colour they list themselves. And if there be any
poor woman (as now and then we see--God doth bless them with
beauty as well as the rich) that have fair hair, these nice
dames will not rest till they have bought it. Or if any children
have fair hair, then will entice them into a secret place, and
for a penny or two they will cut off their hair; as I heard that
one did in the city of Londinium of late who, meeting a little
child with very fair hair, inveigled her into a house, promised
her a penny and so cut off her hair.”
In more modern times the demand has created a distinct branch of trade,
and various agencies are at work to procure the needful supply. Black
hair comes principally from Brittany and the South of France, where
it is collected by dealers who visit the principal fairs, and barter
ribbons, kerchiefs, and such matters, for the tresses of the Breton
lasses. From a superstitious feeling, most of them are averse to take
money for their hair, and consider it unlucky to do so. As it is an
invariable custom for the females to wear a close cap from childhood,
the loss of their magnificent _chignons_ is thereby concealed.
Germany supplies the market, as of old, with light and flaxen hair,
and this branch of trade is chiefly carried on by a Dutch company.
The London hair-dressers alone, purchase some five tons annually. The
annual consumption in Great Britain of foreign human hair is assumed
to be about six tons. Hair which curls naturally, and is of good
colour and very fine, commands the highest price; and certain shades,
which are comparatively rare, are much sought for. Such choice lots
are packed up in skins, to exclude the air, and exported to the best
markets. Fashion, however, has much to do in regulating the price.
Bryant, the American poet, whose Pegasus seems to have taken fright at
the gaudeous dresses of the beauties in the Broadway, thus discourses
of hair with a poet’s license:
“And thick about those lovely temples lie
Locks that the lucky Vignardonne has curled.
Thrice happy man! whose trade it is to buy,
And bake, and braid those love-knots of the world;
Who curls of every glossy colour keepest,
And sellest, it is said, the blackest cheapest.
And well thou mayst--for Italy’s brown maids
Send the dark locks with which their brows are dressed,
And Gascon lasses, from their jetty braids,
Crop half, to buy a riband for the rest;
And the fresh Norman girls their tresses spare,
And the Dutch damsel keeps her flaxen hair.
Then, henceforth, let no maid nor matron grieve,
To see her locks of an unlovely hue,
Grizzled or thin, for liberal art shall give
Such piles of curls as nature never knew.
Eve, with her veil of tresses, at the sight
Had blushed, outdone, and owned herself a fright.”
When long-curled perriwigs were in fashion, some fine heads of hair
fetched extraordinary prices; and as it was impossible to find human
hair in sufficient quantity for the purposes of trade, recourse was
had to horse-hair. One of the companies projected just before the
bursting of the South Sea bubble, was a company for dealing in human
hair which promised unheard of profits. In “A Description of Trades,”
published 1747, we are told, “that the business of hair-curlers and
sellers is properly a part of perriwig making, but of late years they
have prevailed so much as to become quite a separate trade, and really
not an inconsiderable one neither, some of them being even styled
_merchants_, who have the makers-up of hair in all shapes for
their customers. There are also abundance of hawkers and pedlars who
go up and down the country to buy up this commodity, who generally
dispose of it to these hair-sellers.” The material for a perriwig being
somewhat costly, and trickery not uncommon, the character of the barber
was the best guarantee for the quality of the wig. The reader has
probably heard how Tom Brown, meeting a parson at Nando’s Coffee-house,
recommended him to the honestest perriwig-maker in Christendom--the
barber at Chelmsford, with his nineteen daughters, all bred up to his
own trade, and being kept unmarried, their hair grew so prodigiously
fast that it gave them full employment throughout the year; the barber
cropped them every four years, and never lacked a plentiful harvest--so
that Chelmsford was as famous for its wigs, as Romford for calves. The
girls were all virtuous, which made the hair the stronger, and there
was not finer hair to be had in the kingdom. On this, the parson who
was in want of a new wig, and had been cheated in his last purchase,
set out for Chelmsford, and returned thoroughly satisfied--that he had
been sent on a fool’s errand.
The value of long fair hair, when wigs were in fashion, is amusingly
shown in Walpole’s anecdote of the Countess of Suffolk, married to Mr.
Howard. “Such was their poverty, that having invited some friends to
dinner, and being disappointed of a small remittance, she was forced
to sell her hair to furnish the entertainment, and for which she
obtained twenty pounds.” Middle Row, Holborn, was chiefly inhabited by
perriwig-makers, and the French barbers congregated in Soho.
One of the mysteries of the craft was the art of dyeing hair, and every
barber was supposed to be fully initiated in this occult science.
Greeks and Romans performed similar feats in their day, but blonde
hair being most esteemed, the compositions they used were of a very
different nature to those employed by the moderns; strictly speaking
they could hardly be called dyes, they partook more of the nature of
caustic pomades and pigments: such were the _pilæ Mattiacæ_, the
_caustica spuma_, _spuma Battava_, &c., of their authors,
imported for the most part from Germany. Making old folks young again,
at least in appearance, was not beyond the power of Roman art, for
the locks of age, white as the plumage of the swan, could be suddenly
changed to that of a crow. Sir Thomas Brown suggests that Medea might
have possessed some famous dye:--“That Medea, the famous sorceress,
could renew youth, and make old men young again, was nothing else but
that, from the knowledge of simples, she had a receipt to make white
hair black, and reduce old heads into the tincture of youth again.”
Mohammed forbade the dyeing of the hair; and a story is told of Herod,
that in order to conceal his advanced age, he used secretly to dye his
grey locks with a dark pigment In the greater number of Anglo-Saxon
M.S.S. the hair and beard are painted blue, and sometimes green and
orange. Strutt concluded from this, that the Saxons dyed or tinged
their hair in some way; but the point is doubtful. In the fourteenth
century, yellow was the favourite colour, and saffron was used as a
dye. Again, in Elizabeth’s reign, fair hair became fashionable, and the
ladies used various compositions to obtain the desired shade. Stubbes
is indignant at the practice, and exclaims with his usual warmth:--“If
any have hair of their own natural growing which is not fair enough,
then will they dye it in divers colours, almost changing the substance
into accidents by their devilish, and worse than these, cursed
devices.” Foreign charlatans, quack doctors, and astrologers, were
formidable rivals of the barber, and succeeded in disposing of their
dyes and cosmetics in the most unblushing manner; some affected to be
so occupied in the sublime study of contriving cures for all the ills
which flesh is heir to, as to have no leisure for cosmetic practice,
and coolly announced that their wives attended to such matters. A high
German doctor and astrologer informed the public that he was blessed
with a wife “who could make red hair as white as a lily, shape the
eyebrows to a miracle, make low foreheads as high as you please, and
had a rich water which would make the hair curl.” The practice of
shaping the eyebrows, though now in disuse, was at one time considered
a very delicate and important operation. Every one has remarked the
extreme fineness of the eyebrows in the pictures of the great Italian
masters. The St. Catherine of Rafaelle, and the Saints of Francia, in
the National Gallery, are instances of this; such was the fashion of
the Italian ladies of the fifteenth century, and was esteemed a great
beauty. The eyebrows were carefully reduced in substance to a mere
line, till scarcely visible. A lady, whose lover had an unconquerable
aversion to red hair, once made application to a noted quack, who,
politely answered:--“This is no business of mine, but my wife’s, who’ll
soon redress your grievances, and furnish you with a leaden comb and my
_Anti-Erythrœan Unguent_, which after two or three applications
will make you as fair or as brown as you desire.” We hope, for the
ladies sake, it turned out to be the true _Elisir d’amore_. A Mr.
Michon, a goldsmith, in 1710, advertised a clear fluid, which would
change red or grey hair to brown or black, under the name of “The
Tricosian Fluid.” The remarkable success which attended the use of the
_Cyananthropopoion_, patronized by Titmouse Tittlebat, is known to
all readers of “Ten Thousand a Year.” It would, however, say but little
for the progress of chemistry in our day, if we were unprovided with
some efficient means of dyeing the hair; in competent hands, no doubt,
the thing is easy enough. The old-fashioned dyes are now perfectly
useless, and may safely be consigned to the same limbo with Peter
Pindar’s razors:
“Sir,” quoth the razor man, “I’m not a knave;
As for the razors you have bought,--
Upon my soul, I never thought
That they _would_ shave.”
“Not shave” cries Hodge, with wondering, staring eyes,
And voice not much unlike an Indian yell--
“What were they made for, then, you knave?” he cries.
“Made,” quoth the fellow, with a smile, “_to sell_.”
The names of no inconsiderable number of barbers are inscribed on
the roll of Fame. In the very foremost rank we may place that of the
poor barber, Arkwright, who lived to accomplish such great things
for the trade of this country. His was an instance of that material
success which the dullest can comprehend, and the vulgarest worshipper
of Mammon will stand agape at. To be knighted by the Sovereign, and
to realize half a million of money, would be fame enough for most
ambitious minds--but this is but dust in the balance, compared with
the value of the vast enterprise to which the barber’s talents gave
the first impulse. Wealth, beyond the dreams of avarice, has accrued
from that giant industry; and yet rival manufacturers would have
crushed him if they could, so blind is grasping selfishness to its
own true interests. Till the age of twenty-eight, Arkwright worked at
the barber’s trade, then turned dealer in hair, which he travelled
about to collect and dispose of to the trade. A hair-dye he happened
to get hold of was a source of considerable profit to him. But his
good genius was at hand to rescue him from obscurity, and although his
subsequent career appeals but little to the imagination, his fame will
long endure to attest the energy and the capability of the British
workman. Belzoni was another earnest spirit working out its freedom
in a different way. His adventurous career is well known; had it not
been for the promptings of an active mind, he might have lived and died
shaving beards at Padua. Burchiello, the Florentine, gave up the razor,
and courted the Muse, as he says in one of his sonnets;
“La Poesia combatti col rasio.”
Jasmin, the French poet of Agen, rose from extreme poverty to comfort
and independence as a barber, and acquired a well-earned reputation
by his pleasant verses “Les Papillotes,” and the Poem “L’Aveugle de
Castel Cuillé.” Allan Ramsey must be numbered with the barber poets;
and literature is indebted to Winstanley, a barber of the time of
Charles II., for his “Lives of the English Poets.” These, however, have
earned other titles than those conferred by their original calling;
there are others, whose sole claim to notice is their professional
reputation. Among the most noted barbers of their day we may mention
“the gentleman barber” to the Earl of Pembroke, who built a large
house with tennis-courts and bowling-green, nick-named Shaver’s
Hall, the resort of the gayest of the nobility, where many a fortune
was lost and won; and Farr who opened the well-known coffee-house,
“The Rainbow,” in Fleet Street, hard by Temple Bar. Lillie who had a
shop at the corner of Beaufort Buildings, in the Strand, whose fame
is preserved in the pages of the Tatler and Spectator. Honest Bat
Pigeon, of whom Steele and Addison make honourable mention. Gregory,
the famous peruke-maker, from whom the wig called a “Gregorian” took
its name, and who lies buried in the church of St. Clement Danes, with
an epitaph in rhyme, writ, says Aubrey, by a Baron of the Exchequer.
Shammeree, the fashionable wig-maker of the reign of William III.; and
Stewart, the author of the “The Noble Art of Hair-dressing.” Amid minor
celebrities, Don Saltero occupies a conspicuous place--he opened his
museum-coffee-house, in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, in 1695. Sir Hans Sloane
supplied him with many curiosities for his museum. His own name was
James Salters. He claimed to have some skill on the fiddle, could draw
a tooth, made most excellent punch, and was esteemed a virtuoso and a
wit. He includes himself among the oddities at the Chelsea Knackatory,
with much complacency, in the following verses:
Through various employs I’ve past--
A scraper, virtuos’ projector,
Tooth-drawer, trimmer, and at last
I’m now a gim-crack-whim collector;
Monsters of all sorts here are seen,
Strange things in nature as they grew so:
Some relics of the Sheba Queen,
And fragments of the fam’d Bob Crusoe;
Knick-knacks, too, dangle round the wall,
Some in glass cases, some on shelf;
But, what’s the rarest sight of all,
Your humble servant shows himself--
On this my chiefest hope depends.
Now, if you will my cause espouse,
In Journals pray direct your friends
To my Museum-Coffee-house;
And in requital for the timely favour,
I’ll gratis bleed, draw teeth, and be your shaver.
Steele, alluding to Don Saltero, asks, “why must a barber be for ever a
politician, a musician, an anatomist, a poet, and a physician?” He was
evidently puzzled to account for the varied talents of the brotherhood.
The sons of barbers have, likewise, achieved great distinction: we
may instance Jeremy Taylor, secretary Craggs, the friend of Addison;
Tonson, the publisher; Turner, the painter; and Lord Tenterden. We are
told by one whose testimony we cannot doubt, that when Lord Tenterden
visited Canterbury in company with his son, he took him to the very
spot where his own father had carried on his humble trade, and said,
“Charles, you see this little shop; I have brought you here on purpose
to show it you. In that shop your grandfather used to shave for a
penny! That is the proudest reflection of my life! While you live
never forget that, my dear Charles.” Lord St. Leonards, we believe,
rose from a sphere equally humble, and his father followed the same
trade. Lord Campbell has rescued the name of “Dick Danby” from oblivion
by a kindly notice in one of his volumes, “One of the most intimate
friends I have ever had:” says his lordship, “was Dick Danby, who kept
a hair-dresser’s shop under the Cloisters in the Inner Temple. He could
tell who were getting on and who were without a brief, who succeeded
by their talents and who hugged the attorneys, who were desirous
of becoming puisne judges, and who meant to try their fortune in
parliament, which of the chiefs was in a failing state of health, and
who was next to be promoted to the collar of S.S. Poor fellow! he died
suddenly, and his death threw a universal gloom over Westminster Hall,
unrelieved by the thought that the survivors who mourned him might
pick up some of his business--a consolation which wonderfully softens
the grief felt for the loss of a favourite Nisi Prius leader.” We may
conclude by quoting the words of the same learned author:--“Although
there be something exciting to ridicule in the manipulations of
barbers, according both to works of fiction and the experience of life,
there is no trade which furnishes such striking examples of ready wit,
of entertaining information, and of agreeable manners.”
STRUCTURE, GROWTH,
AND
COLOUR OF THE HAIR.
CHAPTER VI.
In olden time, the hair was said to be produced by “a vapour or
excrement of the brain.” In the more exact language of science it is
described as a horny appendage of the skin. The skin is shown to be
composed of two layers--the outer termed the cuticle, the inner the
cutis. The cuticle is an insensible transparent membrane covering the
whole surface of the body; the portion exposed to the air consists
of flattened cells or scales which are continually being renewed;
while on the inner surface, in contact with the cutis, is a soft
mucous substance, in which are situate the pigment cells giving the
characteristic colour peculiar to race and climate. The cutis is
composed of the layer of minute papillæ, the principal seat of the
sense of touch, covering an intricate arrangement of fibrous tissue,
which receives the delicate ramifications of the nerves and arteries.
The sheath from which the hair protrudes above the skin is formed by
a tubular depression of the cuticle which reaches below the cutis to
the subjacent fat and cellular tissue; the lower end of the sheath
is shaped like a pouch, and contains the pulp from which the bulb
and shaft of the hair are formed in successive portions--the most
recent pushing forward that previously formed. The bulbs are larger
in young than in old hairs, and are implanted obliquely in respect to
the cuticle. The shaft of the hair being formed by an aggregation of
parts, has been likened to a pile of thimbles one resting within the
other; this overlapping of the outer coating of scales gives rise to
that roughness which we feel on passing the fingers along a hair from
the point to the bulb, though apparently perfectly smooth when held
in the opposite direction. The colouring matter of the hair is seen in
the pulp, and is distributed between the cells composing the shaft. In
form the hair may be described as a flattened cylinder, not, however,
hollow or filled with a kind of pith as is usually supposed; but solid
throughout and formed of a homogeneous mass of a cellular texture. From
the extreme minuteness of its structure, and the mystery which shrouds
all vital processes, it is still a question as to whether the shaft
of the hair is permeable by fluids derived from the blood. The old
notion of a circulation within the hair like the sap in vegetables is
disregarded; but it is contended that absorption does take place, and
that fluids are transmitted to the extreme point of the hair. In proof
of this we are referred to the sudden change of colour which the hair
undergoes in extraordinary cases of mental emotion, as instanced in the
sufferings of Marie Antoinette, whose hair was found to have turned
grey with grief. It is assumed that the altered condition of the blood
acting chemically upon the fluids of the hair destroys the colour. If
this be granted, we must look for minor changes in the colour of the
hair with every ordinary change in the normal condition of the blood.
And we are told this does actually take place; that in health the hair
is glossy, brilliant, and rich in hue; in ill health dry, faded, blank,
and withered. But if this be so, and the connection between the blood
and fluids of the hair be thus intimate, how comes it that partial
changes of colour--this paleness of hue, and loss of brilliancy; and
on the other hand, increased depth of colour consequent on renewed
health--are not common phenomena and familiar to every one? Doubtless,
we have still much to learn of the secrets of Nature, and there is yet
something wanting to complete the revelations of the microscope, and
the teachings of physiologists respecting the hair.
The palms of the hands and the soles of the feet are the only portions
of the skin unfurnished with hairs. Their length and thickness varies
considerably, from the softest down which is scarcely visible, to the
long hair of the scalp and beard. The estimated thickness of a hair
of the head is one-tenth of a line. Observations seem to show that
flaxen is the finest, and black the coarsest hair. In females the hair
of the head ordinarily measures from twenty to thirty inches, but in
some instances it attains a much greater length; and mention is made
of ladies whose hair has been two yards long and reached to the ground
when they stood erect. The beard has been known to grow to the enormous
length of nine feet: the portrait of a carpenter with a beard of this
length, is preserved at Eidam; when at work he was obliged to pack it
up in a bag. We are told the Burgomeister Hans Steiningen was thrown
down and killed by treading on his long beard on the staircase leading
to the council-chamber of Brunn. The long beard of John Mayo, a painter
in Germany, is matter of history; he used to untie it in the presence
of Charles V., who laughed heartily on seeing it blown about in the
faces of the courtiers. Busbequius saw at Constantinople a janissary
with such a quantity of hair on his head that a musket-ball would not
penetrate it: we suspect there was some legerdemain in this case, and
that the celebrated wizard was anticipated in his gun trick by some two
hundred years or more. Some commentators have endeavoured to determine
the weight of Absalom’s long and beautiful hair, but they differ widely
in their computation; we are told that when its inconvenient length
compelled him at times to cut it off it was found to weigh 200 shekels,
which Geddes estimates at 112 ounces, and Clarke at 7-1/2 ounces--a
conclusion in which nothing is concluded. Seven to eight ounces is held
to be about the average weight of a lady’s tresses. With those who
shave the beard its growth is said to be at the rate of six and a half
inches per annum, so that in forty years a man must have cut off rather
more than twenty feet of beard.
In the natural course, when the hair has attained a certain growth,
it is thrown off, and its place supplied by a new growth formed from
the pulp within the hair follicle. This process is continually going
on, and is analogous to the shedding of the coat in quadrupeds, or the
moulting of birds at certain seasons. The German physiologists, whose
arduous and persevering labours in scientific research have never been
excelled, have investigated with rare industry the minutest details
respecting the growth of the hair; and one of them has accomplished
the task of counting the number of hairs in heads of four different
colours. In a blond one he found 140,000 hairs; in a brown, 109,440; in
a black, 102,962; and in a red one, 88,740. Erasmus Wilson states that
the superficial surface of the scalp may be taken at 120 inches, he
averages the number of hairs per inch at 1000, which gives 120,000 for
the entire head. It will be seen from the greater fineness of the blond
hairs that the number is greater than those of red or black hair, and
that red is the coarsest. The silken fineness of some shades of light
hair is very remarkable, even the poets are evidently put to their
wits end adequately to express its extreme fineness and beauty,--it
is likened to the golden beams of day--and who has not seen the light
playing upon it, and streaming rays and sparkles of lustrous beauty
given out, as it were, from a diffused wave of sunshine--
“And on her hair a glory, like a saint.”
It is not clearly shown to what we must attribute the disposition to
curl, which some hair naturally possesses. Some have thought that it
was owing in a great measure to the presence of a considerable amount
of oily matter in the shaft of the hair, which hinders the animal
matter from attracting moisture which would have a tendency, it is
said, to straighten the hair. But the more probable and more general
opinion is that it mainly arises from the flatness of the hair. Now
this flattening is sometimes very considerable, and the diameter of the
hair two-thirds broader in one direction than in the other. The hair
of the beard and whiskers exhibits the peculiarity most distinctly.
In proportion to its size, the strength of a hair is very remarkable;
one from a boy supported a weight of 7,812 grains; another from a man,
14,285 grains. The elasticity of the hair is very apparent, a hair
10 inches long has been stretched to 13 inches; and a hair stretched
one-fifth of its entire length returns, with but trifling excess, to
its first dimensions.
The chemical analysis of human hair, as given by Liebig, shows that
its constituents are carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulphur.
Fair hair contains most sulphur and oxygen, and the least carbon and
hydrogen; black hair the most carbon and hydrogen, and the least
sulphur and oxygen. The hair of the beard contains more carbon and less
sulphur than the hair of the head. The presence of sulphur occasions
the peculiar odour of burnt hair, but we question the fact, as stated
by some authors, that red hair is perceptibly redolent of brimstone. By
experiments, Vauquelin obtained from black hair a whitish and a greyish
oil; the whitish oil was also present in red hair, but the place of
the greyish green oil was supplied by an oil; the colour of blood.
Hair is one of the most indestructible of animal substances, even less
perishable than the bones; this arises from the small quantity of water
it contains, its chief bulk being made up of various salts of lime,
iron, and manganese. In mummies more than two thousand years old the
hair has been found unaltered, as may be seen in our own and other
public museums. In the Abbey Church of Romsey, the hair of a female
apparently of the time of the Normans was found perfectly entire on
opening a coffin in 1839. It is in plaits 18-inches long, and preserved
in a glass case, lying upon the same block of oak which has been its
pillow for centuries. And somewhat recently, when the tombs of Gustavus
Vasa and his Queen Gunilla, in the Cathedral at Upsal, were explored to
gratify the longings of some worthy antiquaries; the hair of the Queen,
which according to the popular annals was of extraordinary beauty,
still remained--when ought else of earthly beauty had perished in the
grave.
Hair is a non-conductor of electricity, and every one is familiar with
the experiment illustrating electrical repulsion, which causes
“The knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.”
Some persons possess the power of giving considerable motion to the
scalp, and in moments of excitement do so involuntarily with some
curious results--as was witnessed by Haydon at one of the readings
given by Mrs. Siddons. The artist sat behind an old gentleman with
his hair tied in a queue, which suddenly rose like a knocker, and
continued the most lively movements during an interval of intense and
breathless attention on the part of the audience. A good ghost-story
will sometimes electrify a youngster, and convert the curled darling
into a regular Brutus. In the “May of life,” e’er he had “supped full
with horrors,” Macbeth himself had felt such innocent fears:
“The time has been, my senses would have cool’d
To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir
As life were in’t.”
But does the hair grow after death? Most persons who have not reflected
a little on the question, answer readily in the affirmative. The
contraction of the cuticle after death, which causes an apparent
lengthening of the beard, has by many been mistaken for a new growth of
hair. But there are strange instances on record, where, on entering the
charnel house, a coffin has been found to be completely covered with an
extraordinary growth of hair-like filaments issuing from chinks in the
wood or metal, and trailing in every direction to a distance of some
feet. Such a phenomenon is truly wonderful, account for it what way
you will. The common solution of the difficulty supposes the hair to
have grown to this enormous length, and to have been nourished in some
way by organic elements resulting from decomposition. We need not stop
to refute this. The opinion which inclines to its being of vegetable
growth is likely enough to find favour with those who have seen the
remarkable and beautiful parasites which clothe with their fantastic
draperies the recesses of mines and caverns. But this we will leave to
learned professors to settle among themselves.
The colouring principle in the hair and skin is held to be of a like
nature. Light hair usually accompanies a fair complexion, and black
hair a dark one; and every gradation from fair to dark is generally
marked by a corresponding alteration in the tint of the hair. The
colour of the skin and hair being one of the physical characters which
serve to distinguish the several races of mankind, we may divide them
into two great groups: the fair-haired and the dark-haired races. The
dark-haired race occupies by far the greater portion of the globe; the
light-haired race being restricted comparatively to a few settlements,
chiefly in Europe, and more especially its northern region. These
fair-haired races of the North, in their bold descents upon the
British coasts and subsequent immigrations, drove the dark-haired
Celts and Cymri from the plains back upon their mountain strongholds,
and completely dispossessed the indigenous tribes of their territory.
From the intermixture of race we derive that obvious variety in the
different shades of hair which characterizes the mixed population
of this country--a diversity which contributes not a little to the
remarkable beauty of the women of Great Britain--while the intermixture
of race has doubtless stamped that daring and energy upon the people
which have made these isles the Palladium of Liberty and the envy of
the world. We notice some marked peculiarities among certain tribes
in respect to the colour and character of the hair. The Mongols and
Northern Asiatics, for instance, are scantily furnished with hair and
beard; the Kurilians, on the contrary, are said to be the most hairy
race of people in the world. Their beards hang upon their breasts, and
arms, neck and back are covered with hair. Some of the Esquimaux have
so much beard upon the face that it is difficult to make out their
features. The Incas of South America, with long thick hair, very soft
and straight, have only a few scanty hairs for a beard. The North
American Indians have straight lank hair. The African Negroes, woolly
hair, which, it is needless to say, is very different from wool, being
merely hair in a peculiar state of crispness. The colouring matter
in the hair of the Negro is in much greater quantity than in the
European. Sometimes this woolly hair is met with of great length; a
tribe of Negroes on the Gold Coast have woolly hair fully half a yard
long, which is usually black, but red hair is not uncommon. The Papuas
of New Guinea have long black frizzled hair growing in tufts in the
most strange but admired disorder, which makes their heads appear of
enormous size. The Cafusos in the Brazils, known to have sprung from
the native Americans and the Negroes from Africa, have their hair
excessively long, half woolly and curly at the ends, rising eighteen
inches or more perpendicularly from the scalp, forming a very ugly and
ridiculous kind of wig: the wearers are obliged to stoop as they go in
and out of their huts, and the mass of hair is so entangled that it is
impossible to comb it. The Chinese have very little beard, although
extremely anxious to make the most of it. Some tribes are at great
pains to eradicate the beard, and a tribe of Indians on the Coppermine
River not only pluck out the beard, but pull out the hairs from the
head, thus realizing the condition of the Myconians, who, says Pliny,
have naturally no hair at all. Generally speaking, the coloured races
are most wanting in beard, and the white races most liberally furnished
therewith. In the Albino, the hair is of the palest flaxen or a dull
whitish hue, and the colouring matter altogether wanting; the skin
partakes of the same deadly paleness, and the pupils of the eyes are
of a pink colour. Albinoes cannot endure a strong light; when exposed
to the light, the eyelids are half closed and continually blinking. In
disposition, the Albinoes are gentle and not deficient in intellect.
This peculiar variety was first noticed among the blacks, and obtained
the name of _white negroes_. But Albinoes, it is known, are not
confined to any particular race or country. In some Africans, patches
of white hair are seen covering portions of the head, and in those
parts the skin is invariably white.
That the colour of the hair in certain races has undergone a
considerable change in the course of time is apparent from what
is known to have taken place in Britain. The ancient Germans were
universally characterized by red hair and blue eyes, and what is termed
a strongly marked zanthous constitution; but, Niebuhr says, the Germans
are now far from being a light-haired race; and Chevalier Bunsen
remarks that he has often looked in vain for the golden or auburn locks
and light cærulean eyes of the old Germans among their descendants,
but in Scandinavia he found the colour of the hair and eyes precisely
those described by Tacitus. From this it is inferred that the altered
conditions of life, brought about by civilization, have produced a
change in the physical character of the people. Such change, however,
is confined within very narrow limits; in the hair it is but a mere
shade of colour or variation in its crispness. Under the microscope,
the definite form of the human hair is most exact and uniform; so
much so, that Mr. Queckett was enabled by this test to confirm the
conjectures of the Archæological Society, in a very scientific manner,
respecting some portions of skin taken from church doors in Essex, and
from Worcester Cathedral. Tradition said, pirates and persons guilty
of sacrilege in old time were flayed, and their skins nailed to the
church door. Mr. Queckett was to determine if the relics confided to
his charge, and which looked exactly like scraps of old parchment, were
really portions of the human body. A few hairs were discovered adhering
to the skin and this decided the point--it was unmistakeably human hair
and human skin--and the Archæologists were made happy by the discovery.
Would that we could send the smallest fragment of one of those skins
with but a solitary hair upon it--which Hanno hung up in the Temple
of Juno--to Mr. Q., with the publishers’ compliments, that he might
ascertain the true character of the hairy people the old Carthaginian
fell in with on his route.
The colour of the hair is also an indication of temperament: black
hair is usually accompanied by a bilious temperament; fair and auburn,
with the sanguine and sanguine-nervous; and very light hair, with a
temperament mild and lymphatic.
Will any one undertake to say what was the precise colour of the golden
hair so vaunted of by the great poets of antiquity? One of our living
poets, the author of “The Bride of Rimini,” has brought the light of
genius and his fine taste and scholarship to the task, and the matter
is yet doubtful. Some have not hesitated to decide that it was red,
fiery red, and nothing short of red; and sneered at the ancients for
affecting to be connoisseurs in these things. Some have contended
that it was auburn, which is a glorious colour, and seems naturally
associated with smiles and the rich imagery of poets. In the well-known
ode of Anacreon, where he speaks of the beauty of his mistress as a fit
subject for the painter’s art, it is difficult to say what colour we
must choose. Some prefer to think dark jetty locks were intended, such,
possibly, as Byron has given to one of his beauties:
“The glossy darkness of that clustering hair,
Which shades, yet shows a forehead more than fair.”
Ben Jonson--no mean authority--blends with the jetty locks threads of
fine gold:
“Gold upon a ground of black.”
If a mere stripling might handle the bow of Ulysses, we would venture
to select the colour which Tennyson has bestowed upon a pretty little
portrait:
“Her eyes a bashful azure, and her hair
In gloss and hue the chesnut, when the shell
Divides threefold to show the fruit within.”
But why be beholden to poets, who, after all, are but the interpreters
of nature? Does not Scotland to this day own many a fair complexion,
and tresses which Venice cannot match for sunny splendour; and are not
the dark, flowing locks of the Lancashire witches working as secret
charms as ever enthralled the courteous knights of old? It is certain
that, in regard to the hair, the ancients had no monopoly of beauty.
Concerning grey hair, we may remark that the term is a misnomer applied
to single hairs; for the greyness merely arises from the commingling
of white and dark hairs. When the secretion of the colouring matter in
the pulp ceases, all succeeding growth from the bulb is colourless.
Every one feels some little anxiety about grey hairs. To the moralist
they are Death’s blossoms--the solemn warning to adjust the mantle e’er
we fall. With some, grey hairs will even intrude upon the pleasures
of youth; with others, they are but as the ripening of the corn--when
wisdom gathers her full harvest against the time of declining strength;
again, in others, they wait upon old age, like a wreath of snow on the
brow of winter; and some enjoy life to its fullest span, and there is
no sign of “the sere and yellow leaf:” so various are the conditions
of life which produce the change of constitution which accompanies
grey hairs. It is amusing to notice the special theory which each one
contrives to account for the presence of these tell-tales. “Ah!” said
Louis XII., as he looked in the mirror, somewhat astonished at the
number of grey hairs, “these are owing to the long speeches I have
listened to, those especially of M. le----, have ruined my hair.” It
was mere folly for the Teian bard to tell the girls how prettily the
white hairs of age contrast with the rich tresses of youth, like roses
and lilies in a chaplet, or milk upon roses; for at his time of life,
the old Sybarite ought to have known better. We remember to have felt
deeply for the unfortunate bridegroom, when we first read the tragical
story, in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, of the gentleman, “who, at
his marriage, when about forty years old, had a dark head of hair;
but, on his return from his wedding trip, had become so completely
snow white, even to his eyebrows, that his friends almost doubted his
identity.” Even the curled Anthony must needs make excuses to the fair
Egyptian for his grey hairs:
“What, girl? though grey
Do something mingle with our younger brown;
Yet ha’ we a brain that nourishes our nerves,
And can get goal for goal of youth.”
How sudden grief and consuming care will blanch the hair is known to
all. Memory recalls the lone prisoner in the castle of Chillon, and the
lofty queen who passed from a throne to a prison and the scaffold,
to teach heroes how to face death. And by these truthful signs, these
silver hairs, may oftentimes be traced the story of a broken heart--of
hope too long deferred--of fallen ambition--of blighted affection,
or of man’s ingratitude. What more sacred than these secret sorrows;
who would seek to pry into them with idle questionings? The leaf is
withered, for the worm is at the heart of the tree:
“This white top writeth mine oldé years;
Mine heart is also mouldered as mine hairs.”
But hope and sunshine gather about the grey hairs ripe for immortality:
“Thy silver locks, once auburn bright,
Are still more lovely in my sight
Than golden beams of orient light,
MY MARY.”
We have hitherto regarded the hair as a thing of beauty and the
crowning ornament of man’s structure. We have now to consider the
diseases to which it is subject; and first we will speak of Baldness.
Where partial baldness arises from debility of the system, the growth
of hair usually follows on restoration to health, and accidental
baldness may generally be removed by the ordinary applications. But
the baldness of a more permanent character, which results from the
obliteration of the hair-follicles, seldom admits of a perfect remedy.
In such cases the skin is smooth and glossy, as is duly noted by
Chaucer, in his portrait of the monk:
“His head was bald, and shone as any glass.”
This is the alopecia of pathologists, so called because it was said
foxes were especially subject to baldness; or, as some think to
express, by way of irony, that cunning and duplicity may be looked for
in bald men. The ridicule and contempt which the ancients heaped upon
these unfortunate individuals is very obvious. Among the Hebrews the
term bald-pate was an insult and a reproach. The origin of this appears
to have been that baldness was held to be the sign of a corrupt youth
and a dissolute life. And when physiologists are asked to certify to
the falsehood of such calumnies, they answer in riddles like the Sphinx.
“Turpe pecus mutilum, turpis sine gramine campus
Et sine fronde frutex, et sine crine caput.”
The ancients were so proud of their curls and flowing locks, the
physical beauty of manhood, and the charms of their female deities,
earthly and celestial, that, for the sake of antithesis it may be,
they hurled their sarcasms and their sneers with a savage vengeance
or ignoble pity upon their bald-pated victims in a style which modern
politeness declines to imitate. It is surprising that Cæsar should
have shown such sensitiveness about his baldness as to have sought
permission of the Senate to wear his laurel crown at pleasure.
The privilege was granted, and the laurels shaded the bald pate.
Fortunately women are so very rarely bald that we may consider them
exempt from this infliction. Apuleius, in his Melesiacs, says, that
Venus herself, if she were bald, though surrounded by the Graces
and the Loves, could not be pleasing even to her husband, Vulcan.
Herodotus remarked that few Egyptians were bald; and eunuchs, who
have much subcutaneous fat about the scalp, are free from baldness.
It may be some consolation to bachelors to know, that according to
Pliny man in a state of single blessedness is never bald. Caligula and
Nero are numbered among the bald, and kings have been honored with
the title. Baldness has even found panegyrists. Synesius, bishop of
Syrene, in the fifteenth century, wrote in praise of it; and Hucbald,
a Benedictine monk, made it the subject of a curious poem, which he
very appropriately dedicated to Charles the Bald. But these perverse
eulogists were ecclesiastics who reckoned the beauty of the hair and
its enticements part of the vanities of this wicked world it would be
well to get rid of. Happily the hair escaped their treacherous shears.
It is possible, however, to have too much of a good thing; and the
excessive growth of hair where least wanted is numbered among the ills
which flesh is heir to. No one in these days would think the King of
Persia’s porter, seen by Tavernier, deserved a double pension because
he could tie his moustaches behind his neck; for something very like
this may be seen any afternoon in Hyde Park; there is a fashion in such
things, and Nature is by no means niggardly in her gifts to man. But
what is meant by an extraneous growth of hair is very different from
this, and by no means ornamental. We allude to cases where the whole
body has been covered by a growth of long hair. Some miserable Fakirs,
in India, have been seen clothed with hair several inches long. About
1650, a hairy child was shown as a sight, and the strange phenomenon is
thus accounted for in an old play:
“’Tis thought the hairy child that’s shewn about,
Came by the mother’s thinking on the picture
Of St. John Baptist in his camel’s coat.”
But the most frightful instances are those of bearded women. “I
like not when a ’oman has a great peard,” says Sir Hugh; and the
old naturalists are at some pains to assure us that woman is not
barbigerous, for which a very sufficient reason has been given:
“Nature, regardful of the babbling race,
Planted no beard upon a woman’s face;
Not MAPPIN’S razors, though the very best,
Could shave a chin which never is at rest.”
One of the best known examples of this repulsive class, (Trifaldi,
the afflicted Duenna not excepted), is that of Barbara Urselin, born
at Augsburg, and shown in Ratcliffe Highway, in 1668; her portrait
may be seen in Granger’s Biography, and Evelyn takes note of her in
his Journal. Her face and hands were all over hairy, the hair on her
forehead and eyebrows combed upwards, she had a long spreading beard,
the hair of which hung loose and flowing like the hair of the head. A
fellow of the name of Van Beck married the frightful creature to carry
about as a show. Charles XII. had in his army a female grenadier, who
had both the beard and the courage of a man. She was taken prisoner at
the battle of Pultowa, and carried to St. Petersburg, where she was
presented to the Czar; her beard measured a yard and a half. In 1852,
a young woman, a native of Switzerland, with beard and whiskers four
inches long, could find no clergyman to marry her to the object of
her affections, until provided with a certificate from Charing Cross
Hospital. Many other authentic cases are on record, but the subject is
not inviting.
In rare instances, the colour of the hair undergoes a strange
metamorphosis from red to black, or it may be from brown to blue or
green, and sometimes it has been seen spotted like the leopard’s skin.
Instances are known in which it became so sensitive that the slightest
touch caused exquisite pain. Sometimes the hair splits at the point,
and becomes forked. There is also, the very rare disease--plica
Polonica--originating, no doubt, in filth and neglect, in which the
hair becomes inextricably tangled and matted together by a glutinous
fluid from the roots, and the hairs when cut are said to bleed. In
the Museum of the College of Surgeons, the hair of a cat may be
seen exhibiting all the peculiarities of this singular disease. The
elf-locks of the old chieftains which Scott describes:--
“His plaited hair in elf locks spread
Around his bare and matted head--”
and the locks which Queen Mab and the Fairies are accused of weaving
“in foul sluttish hairs,” are no doubt symptoms of the same diseased
and monstrous plaiting.
That the hair is any standard of physical strength is one of those
popular notions which rest on no sufficient data. Samson’s strength
was the direct gift of God--
“God when he gave me strength, to show withal
How slight the gift was, hung it in my hair.”
Nisus’ life was held by the singular tenure of one golden or purple
hair, which grew on the top of his head; this was plucked by the hand
of his unnatural daughter and his life fell a sacrifice to her craft:
so runs the tale. We cannot say if hearts are still held in fief by the
gift of a lock of hair, or if lovers in this stern iron-age recognize
the old traditions in their love affairs; but broad lands were conveyed
in other days by as slight a bond. The Earl of Warren, in the reign of
Henry III., confirmed to the church of S. Pancras, at Lewes, certain
land, rent, and tithe, of which he gave seisin _per Capillos capitis
sui et fratis sui Radulfi_; and the hair of the parties was cut off by
the Bishop of Winchester before the high altar.
The hair, from its imperishable nature, constitutes a material link
between the living and the dead; it survives in form and beauty as when
it graced the brows of the living; unchanged in death, it shares in
the lasting homage which we gladly pay to the memory of the brave and
the good. Who can regard with indifference the sacred relics preserved
at Penshurst--the locks of hair of Sir Philip and Algernon Sidney?
Leigh Hunt has other like-treasured memorials, of which an account has
been given to the public by an American author. The locks are those of
Milton, Keats, Shelley, Charles Lamb, Dr. Johnson, Swift; and the poet
may well feel proud to own them.
From what has been said respecting the growth of the hair, it will be
perceived that there are some special points to be attended to, if we
would keep it in perfect order. As the hair rises from the bulb above
the cuticle, it carries with it a thin pellicle, which adheres for a
time to the shaft, and afterwards falls off in minute scales, and forms
a kind of scurf in the hair. Now, this is simply a natural process,
and not to be mistaken for a diseased state of the skin; the scales of
detached film merely require to be removed with the brush and comb.
Very different, however, are the scales on the skin of the head, which,
at times, form a loose dandriff, filling the hair with a most unsightly
scurf. This is a serious evil, and requires patient and careful
treatment to get rid of thoroughly; and nothing can be less likely to
effect a remedy than the use of very hard brushes, which, by irritating
the scalp, tend to aggravate the symptoms. Anything which unnaturally
irritates the skin of the head will originate dandriff; when the
functions of the excretory pores and sebaceous glands are interrupted,
the skin becomes dry, and the cuticle may be said partially to perish;
the dead particles are then thrown off by cuticular exfoliation. Above
all, extreme cleanliness, constant and habitual attention to the purity
of the skin, are the best curatives, and the only safeguard against the
occurence of this very simple, but troublesome and obstinate disease of
the cuticle. The most disagreeable circumstance to be noted in this
complaint is, that those who should enjoy perfect immunity from the
annoyance,--those
“Who have but fed on the roses, and lain in the lilies of life”--
by the use of stimulant pomatums, improper hair-brushes, and badly made
combs, but chiefly the use of abominable nostrums--not unfrequently
entail upon themselves the very evils which are commonly produced by
the opposite means, neglect and inattention to the state of the hair.
The hair requires but a moderate supply of pommade; but this, to be of
any real benefit, must be compounded _secundem artem_, and adapted to
the purpose. Oils and pomatums which merely collect dust are not to
be tolerated, and are frequently had recourse to merely to disguise
the neglect which suffers the hair to become rough from being in
ill-condition. Whenever proper attention is given to the hair, the most
satisfactory results are usually obtained; and without bestowing such
an amount of care, it is impossible to realize the beautiful softness
and lustre which any lady’s tresses may be made to assume. It cost the
poet little to bring together
“Love-darting eyes, and tresses like the morn;”
but we promise none but very ordinary tresses to such as will not, both
night and morn, with brush and comb, and suitable preparation, detach
every particle of dust from the hair. And to those who can appreciate
the beautiful, and would gratify a more refined feeling than mere
personal vanity, the disposition of the hair affords an admirable
opportunity of setting off, by the graces of art, “the beauty of a
woman’s face”--
“Angels are painted fair, to look like you.”
All the canons of criticism are summed up in the perfections of female
beauty. What greater ornament to perfect beauty that luxuriant hair? We
will conclude our advice to the fair with some old verses of Richard
Lovelace, which express, with the freedom of a poet, a truth that might
take the form of an aphorism, that the beauty of the hair consists in
its flowing outline, its flexibility, and varying tints--the effect of
light reflected from its glossy surface:
“Amarantha, sweet and fair,
Oh, braid no more that shining hair!
Let it fly, as unconfin’d
As its calm ravisher, the wind;
Who hath left his darling, th’ east,
To wanton o’er that spicy nest.
Every tress must be confest,
But neatly tangled, at the best;
Like a clue of golden thread
Most excellently ravelled.
Do not, then, wind up the light
In ribands, and o’ercloud in night,
Like the sun’s in early ray;
But shake your head, and scatter day!”
THE END.
Read & Co., Printers, Johnson’s-court, Fleet-street.
Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been
corrected silently.
2. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words
have been retained as in the original.
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