WIGS AND THEIR WEARERS.
“Wigs were to protect obstinate old heads from the rays of truth.”—Anonymous Author.
When it is said that Hadrian was the first Roman Emperor who wore a wig, nothing more is meant than that he was the first who avowedly wore one. They were common enough before his time. Caligula and Messalina put them on, for purposes of disguise, when they were abroad at night; and Otho condescended to conceal his baldness with what he fain hoped his subjects would accept as a natural head of hair belonging to one who bore the name of Cæsar.
As for the origin of wigs, the honour of the invention is attributed to the luxurious Iapygians, in Southern Italy. The Louvain theologians, who published a French version of the Bible, affected however to discover the first mention of perukes in a passage in the fourth chapter of Isaiah. The Vulgate has these words:—“Decalvabit Dominus verticem filiarum Sion, et Dominus crinem earum nudabit.” This the Louvain gentlemen translated into French as follows:—“Le Seigneur déchevelera les têtes des filles de Sion; et le Seigneur découvrira leurs perruques.” The which, done into English, implies that “The Lord will pluck the hair from the heads of the daughters of Sion, and will expose their periwigs.” My fair friend, you would perhaps fling your own in my face were I to presume to tell you what the true reading is.
In the above free-and-easy translation, the theologians in question followed no less an authority than St. Paulinus of Nola, and thus had respectable warrant for their singular mistake.
Allusions to wigs are frequently made both by the historians and poets of ancient times. We know that they were worn by fashionable gentlemen in Palmyra and Baalbec, and that the Lycians took to them out of necessity. When their conqueror, Mausoleus, had ruthlessly ordered all their heads to be shaven, the poor Lycians felt themselves so supremely ridiculous, that they induced the king’s general Condalus, by means of an irresistible bribe, to permit them to import wigs from Greece; and the symbol of their degradation became the very pink of Lycian fashion.
Hannibal was a stout soldier, but on the article of perukes he was as finical as Jessamy in ‘Lionel and Clarissa,’ and as particular as Dr. Hoadley’s Ranger,—as nice about their fashion as the former, and as philosophical as the latter on their look. Hannibal wore them sometimes to improve, sometimes to disguise, his person; and if he wore one long enough to spoil its beauty, he was as glad as the airy gentleman in ‘The Suspicious Husband,’ to fling it aside when it wore a battered aspect.
Ovid and Martial celebrate the gold-coloured wigs of Germany. The latter writer is very severe on the dandies and coquettes of his day, who thought to win attraction under a wig. Propertius, who could describe so tenderly and appreciate so well what was lovely in girlhood, whips his butterflies into dragons at the bare idea of a nymph in a toupet. Venus Anadyomene herself would have had no charms for that gentle sigher of sweet and enervating sounds, had she wooed him in borrowed hair. If he was not particular touching morals, he was very strict concerning curls.
If the classical poets winged their satirical shafts against wigs, these were as little spared by the mimic thunderbolts of the Fathers, Councils, and Canons of the early Church. Even poets and Christian elders could no more digest human hair than can the crocodile,—of whom, dead, it is said, you may know how many individuals he devoured living by the number of hair-balls in the stomach, which can neither digest nor eject them. The indignation of Tertullian respecting these said wigs is something perfectly terrific. Not less is that of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, who especially vouches for the virtue of his simple sister Gorgonia, for the reason that she neither cared to curl her own hair, nor to repair its lack of beauty by the aid of a wig. The thunder of St. Jerome against these adornments was quite as loud as that of any of the Fathers. They were preached against as unbecoming to Christianity. Council after Council, from the first at Constantinople to the last Provincial Council at Tours, denounced wigs even when worn in joke. “There is no joke in the matter!” exclaimed the exceedingly irate St. Bernard; “the woman who wears a wig commits a mortal sin!” St. John Chrysostom cites St. Paul against the fashion, arguing that they who prayed or preached in wigs could not be said to worship or to teach the Word of God “with head uncovered.” “Look!” says Cyprian to the wearers of false hair; “look at the Pagans! they pray in veils. What better are you than Pagans if you come to prayers in perukes?” Many local Synods would authorize no fashion of wearing the hair but straight and short. This form was especially enjoined on the clergy generally. St. Ambrose as strictly enjoined the fashion upon the ladies of his diocese: “Do not talk to me of curls,” said this hard-working prelate; “they are the lenocinia formæ, non præcepta virtutis.” The ladies smiled. It was to some such obdurate and beautiful rebels that Cyprian once gravely preached, saying: “Give heed to me, O ye women! Adultery is a grievous sin; but she who wears false hair is guilty of a greater.”