Native sentiment nearer home was much less regarded. Thus, when the Bulgarians complained to Pope Nicholas, that their priests would not permit them to wear, during church-time, those head-wrappers, or turbans, which it was their habit never to throw off, the Pontiff returned an answer which almost took the brief and popular form of “Serve you right!” and the Bulgarians, on the other hand, took nothing by their motion.
Our Anselm of Canterbury was as little conceding to the young and long-haired nobles of his day as was Pope Nicholas to the Bulgarians. Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury, relates that on one occasion (Ash Wednesday) the Primate soundly rebuked the hirsute aristocracy, put them in penance, and refused them absolution, until they had submitted to be close shorn. The prelate in question would allow none to enter his cathedral who wore either long or false hair.
Against both the objection remained for a lengthened period insuperable. When Henry I. of England was in France, Sirron, Bishop of Séez, told him that Heaven was disgusted at the aspect of Christians in long hair, or who wore on manly heads locks that perhaps originally came from female brows. They were, he said, sons of Belial for so offending:—“Pervicaces filii Belial, capita sua cornis mulierum ornata.”
The King looked grave: the prelate insinuatingly invited the father of his people, who wore long if not false hair, to set a worthy example. “We’ll think of it,” said the sovereign. “No time like the present,” replied the prelate, who produced a pair of scissors from his episcopal sleeve, and advanced towards Henry, prepared to sweep off those honours which the monarch would fain have preserved. But what was the sceptre of the prince to the forceps of the priest? The former meekly sat down at the entrance of his tent, while Bishop Sirron clipped him with the skilful alacrity of Figaro. Noble after noble submitted to the same operation; and, while these were being docked by the more dignified clergy, a host of inferior ecclesiastics passed through the ranks of the grinning soldiers, and cut off hair enough to have made the fortunes of all the periwig builders who rolled in gilded chariots during the palmy days of the Grand Monarque.
In what then but in profligate days could wigs have triumphed in England? Periwigs established themselves victoriously (dividing even the Church) under Louis XIV. When a boy, that king had such long and beautiful hair, that a fashion ensued for all classes to wear at least an imitation thereof. When Louis began to lose his own, he also took to false adornment; and full-bottomed wigs bade defiance to the canons of the Church.
Charles II. did not bring the fashion with him to Whitehall. On the contrary, he withstood it. He forbade the members of the University to wear periwigs, smoke tobacco, or read their sermons. The members did all three, and Charles soon found himself doing the first two. “On the 2nd November, 1663,” says Pepys, “I heard the Duke say, that he was going to wear a periwig; and they say the King also will. I never till this day,” he adds, “observed that the King was so mighty grey.” This perhaps was the reason why Charles stooped to assume what he had before denounced. Pepys himself had adventured on the step in the previous May; and what a business it was for the little man! Hear him. “8th. At Mr. Jervas’s, my old barber. I did try two or three borders and periwigs, meaning to wear one; and yet I have no stomach for it; but that the pains of keeping my hair clean is so great. He trimmed me, and at last I parted; but my mind was almost altered from my first purpose, from the trouble which I foresee will be in wearing them also.” He took some time to make up his mind; and only in October of the same year does he take poor Mrs. Pepys “to my periwig maker’s, and there showed my wife the periwig made for me, and she likes it very well.”
In April, 1665, the wig was in the hands of Jervas, under repair. In the meantime, our old friend took to his natural hair; but early in May we find him recording, “that this day, after I had suffered my own hayre to grow long, in order to wearing it, I find the convenience of periwigs is so great, that I have cut off all short again, and will keep to periwigs.” In the autumn, on Sunday the 3rd of September, the wicked little gallant moralizes thus on periwigs and their prospects. “Up, and put on my coloured silk suit, very fine, and my new periwig, 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 periwigs, for nobody will dare to buy any hayre for fear of the infection, that it had been cut off the heads of people dead of the plague.” The plague and fear thereof were clean forgotten before many months had passed; and in June, 1666, Pepys says:—“Walking in the galleries at Whitehall, I find the ladies of honour dressed in their riding-garbs, with coats and doublets with deep skirts, just for all the world like mine; and buttoned their doublets up their breasts, with periwigs and with hats. So that only for a long petticoat dragging under their men’s coats, nobody could take them for women in any point whatever; which was an odd sight, and a sight that did not please me.” The moralist at Whitehall, however, could forget his mission when at “Mercer’s.” There, on the 14th of August, 1666, the thanksgiving day for the recent naval victory, after “hearing a piece of the Dean of Westminster’s sermon,” dining merrily, enjoying the sport at the Bear Garden, and letting off fireworks, the periwig philosopher, with his wife, Lady Penn, Pegg and Nan Wright, kept it up at Mrs. Mercer’s after midnight; “and there, mighty merry, smutting one another with candle-grease and soot, until most of us were like devils. And that being done, then we broke up, and to my house, and there I made them drink; and up stairs we went and then fell into dancing, W. Battelier dancing well; and dressing him and I, and one Mr. Banister, who, with my wife, came over also with us, like women; and Mercer put on a suit of Tom’s, like a boy. And Mr. Wright, and my wife, and Pegg Penn put on periwigs, and thus we spent till three or four in the morning, mighty merry;”—and little troubled with the thought whether the skull which had afforded the hair for such periwig were lying in the pest-fields or not.
By the following year, our rising gentleman grows extravagant in his outlay for such adornments; and he who had been content to wear a wig at 23s. buys now a pair for £4. 10s.,—“mighty fine; indeed too fine, I thought, for me.” And yet, amazingly proud was the macaroni of his purchase, recording two days afterwards, that he had been “to church, and, with my mourning, very handsome; and new periwig made a great show.”
Doubtless, under James II., his periwigged pate made a still greater show; for then had wigs become stupendous in their architecture. The beaux who stood beneath them, as I have stated in another page, carried exquisite combs in their ample pockets, with which, whether in the Mall, at the rout, in the private box, or engaged in the laborious work of “making love,” they ever and anon combed their periwigs, and rendered themselves irresistible.
Even at that period, Wisdom was thought to be beneath the Wig. “A full wig,” says Farquhar in his ‘Love and a Bottle’ (1698), “is as infallible a token of wit as the laurel;” an assertion which I should never think of disputing.