Indeed, we have not left this matter to conjecture and inference merely; for we took occasion to inquire upon this topic, several years ago, of a late celebrated hair-dresser; and, in fact, these notes have been kept on hand for a period considerably longer than the nine years prescribed by Horace for the due refinement and perfection of immortal verse. Our excellent friend, M. Charrier, of Boston, informed us that he had been called upon to manufacture actual wigs of the filament of flax; and he remembered one particular occasion, when an article of special beauty was required for the use of a popular actress, who was to perform in a play which he thought was called “The fair maid with the golden locks.”[98] Thus we trace the article to the stage itself, and there, in all probability, its construction of the material in question is traditional, and is much more likely to have originated at a period earlier than the time of Shakespeare than at a later date. Of course, if M. Charrier had lived to our day, he would have found plenty of business in constructing those mountainous piles of various vegetable material with which ladies now see fit to load their heads—“some browne, some blacke, some Abram.”[99]
In corroboration of these views, explanatory, we hope, of the strange expression, Abraham Cupid, to modern eyes and ears, we have just met with a singularly apt illustration. A very young lady of our family received last Christmas, as a present, a doll with a remarkable head of hair. It was long, fine, profuse, admirably curled, and exactly of that brilliantly fair color, the lightest possible shade of brown, sometimes but rarely seen in its perfection on the heads of young persons, and of the hue which might well be imagined as a peculiar and suitable attribute of the god of love. An examination of this attractive ornament to the seat of whatever intellect a doll might be supposed to possess showed at once, that it was skilfully manufactured, doubtless by accomplished French artisans, of the filament of flax.[100]
From these premises the following propositions seem to be fairly deducible:
1. That, in the time of Shakespeare, the word Abraham was sometimes employed as a cant term expressive of a certain color.
2. That, since the name “Abraham’s balm” was used for a certain shrub or bush, otherwise called the hemp-tree, the color in question was probably that of dressed hemp or flax, which nearly resembled each other in hue; the word tow being still applied to the coarse filament of both.
3. That the color attributed to “flaxen locks,” so celebrated through the whole range of English poetry, is, in fact, that light and fair, that is, blonde, color of the hair assigned to Cupid.
4. That “Young Abraham Cupid,” therefore, means nothing else than flaxen-haired or fair-haired Cupid.
In regard to the term “Abraham’s balm,” as applied to the hemp-tree, we beg leave to suggest that such an appellation may have been bestowed on such a tree, as intimating a natural and appropriate cure for such infirmities as resulted in mistakes about property, to which we may suppose Abraham-men and their associates were only too subject. The figure may be thought similar to that highly metaphorical expression conveyed by the passage:
“Ye shall have a hempen caudle, then.”[101]
As to “Abraham-men,” a rope may, in fact, have been thought, in extreme cases, a “balm for hurt minds.”