Female Head Dress in 1688.
There is a little difficulty in naming [this] head dress; for Holme is so diffuse and indignant that he gives it no term though he describes the engraving. The figure is remarkable because it is in many respects similar to the manner wherein the ladies of 1825 adjust the head. It will be remembered that Holme was a herald, and though his descriptions have not hitherto been here related in his armorial language, he always sets them out so, in his “storehouse of armory and blazon.” It may be amusing to conclude these extracts from him with his description of this figure in his own words: thus then the old “deputy for the kings of arms” describes it:—
“He beareth argent a woman’s face; her forehead adorned with a knot of diverse coloured ribbons; the head with a ruffle quoif, set in corners, and the like ribbons behind the head. This,” says Holme, “is a fashion-monger’s head, tricked and trimed up, according to the mode of these times, wherein I am writing of it; and, in my judgment, were a fit coat for such seamsters as are skilled in inventions. But” (he angrily breaks forth,) “what do I talk of arms to such, by reason they will be shortly old, and therefore not to be endured by them, whose brains are always upon new devises and inventions! But all are brought again from the old; for there is no new thing under the sun; for what is now, hath been formerly!”
In the great dining-room at Lambeth-palace, there are portraits of all the archbishops, from Laud to the present time. In these we may observe the gradual change of the clerical dress, in the article of wigs. Archbishop Tillotson was the first prelate who wore a wig, which then was not unlike the natural hair, and worn without powder.[304]
It is related of a barber in Paris, that, to establish the utility of his bag-wigs, he caused the history of Absalom to be painted over his door; and that one of the profession, at a town in Northamptonshire, used this inscription, “Absalom, hadst thou worn a perriwig, thou hadst not been hanged.”[305] It is somewhere told of another that he ingeniously versified his brother peruke-maker’s inscription, under a sign which represented the death of Absalom and David weeping; he wrote up thus:—
“Oh, Absalom! Oh, Absalom!
Oh, Absalom! my son,
If thou hadst worn a perriwig,
Thou hadst not been undone!”
The well-known, light, flaxen wig of Townsend, the well-known police-officer, is celebrated in a song beginning thus:—