Townsend’s Wig.
Tune—“Nancy Dawson.”
Of all the wigs in Brighton town,
The black, the grey, the red, the brown,
So firmly glued upon the crown,
There’s none like Johnny Townsend’s:
It’s silken hair and flaxen hue,
(It is a scratch, and not a quene,)
Whene’er it pops upon the view,
Is known for Johnny Townsend’s!
Wigs were worn by the Romans when bald; those of the Roman ladies were fastened upon a caul of goat-skin. Perriwigs commenced with their emperors; they were awkwardly made of hair, painted and glued together.
False hair was always in use, though more from defect than fashion; but the year 1529 is deemed the epoch of the introduction of long perriwigs into France; yet it is certain that ladies tetes were in use here a century before. Mr. Fosbroke, from whose “Encyclopædia of Antiquities” these particulars are derived, says, “that strange deformity, the judge’s wig, first appears as a general genteel fashion in the seventeenth century.” Towards the close of that century, men of fashion combed their wigs at public places, as an act of gallantry, with very large ivory or tortoiseshell combs, which they carried in their pockets as constantly as their snuffboxes. At court, in the mall of St. James’s-park, and in the boxes of the theatre, gentlemen conversed and combed their perukes.
Hair.
Horace Walpole relates that when the countess of Suffolk married Mr. Howard, they were both so poor, that they took a resolution of going to Hanover before the death of queen Anne, in order to pay their court to the future royal family. Having some friends to dinner, and being disappointed of a full remittance, she was forced to sell her hair to furnish the entertainment. Long wigs were then in fashion, and the countess’s hair being fine, long, and fair, produced her twenty pounds.
A fashion of wearing the hair gave rise to a college term at Cambridge, which is thus mentioned and explained in a dictionary of common parlance at that university:—