A campaign wig from Holme’s drawing is shown [here].
There are constant references in old letters and in early literature in America which alter much the dates assigned by English authorities on costume: thus, knowing not of Randle Holme’s drawing, Sydney writes that the name “campaign” was applied to a wig, the name and fashion of which came to England from France in 1702. In the Letter-book of William Byrd of Westover, Virginia, in a letter written in June, 1690, to Perry and Lane, his English factors in London, he says, “I have by Tonner sent my long Periwig which I desire you to get made into a Campagne and send mee.” This was twelve years earlier than Sydney’s date. Fitz-John Winthrop wrote to England in 1695 for “two wiggs one a campane the other short.” The portrait of Fitz-John Winthrop shows a prodigious imposing wig, but it has no “knots or bobs a-dildo on each side,” though the forehead is curled; it is a fine example of a peruke.
I cannot attempt even to name all the wigs, much less can I describe them; Hawthorne gave “the tie,” the “Brigadier,” the “Major,” the “Ramillies,” the grave “Full-bottom,” the giddy “Feather-top.” To these and others already named in this chapter I can add the “Neck-lock,” the “Allonge,” the “Lavant,” the “Vallancy,” the “Grecian fly wig,” the “Beau-peruke,” the “Long-tail,” the “Fox-tail,” the “Cut-wig,” the “Scratch,” the “Twist-wig.”
Others named in 1753 in the London Magazine were the “Royal bird,” the “Rhinoceros,” the “Corded Wolf’s-paw,” “Count Saxe’s mode,” the “She-dragon,” the “Jansenist,” the “Wild-boar’s-back,” the “Snail-back,” the “Spinach-seed.” These titles were literal translations of French wig-names.
Another wig-name was the “Gregorian.” We read in The Honest Ghost, 1658, “Pulling a little down his Gregorian, which was displac’t a little by his hastie taking off his beaver.” This wig was named from the inventor, one Gregory, “the famous peruke-maker who is buryed at St. Clements Danes Church.” In Cotgrave’s Dictionary perukes are called Gregorians.
John Rutledge.
In the prologue to Haut Ton, written by George Colman, these wigs are named:—
“The Tyburn scratch, thick Club and Temple tyes,
The Parson’s Feather-top, frizzed, broad and high.
The coachman’s Cauliflower, built tier on tier.”