The last paragraph is from the pen of Allen Le Blanc. We must pull him down from his high horse, and remount our ambling hobby. As we observed, it is not our intention to provoke any competition or comparison with Mr. J. Smith in the science of hair-dressing. We shall treat of a branch of the profession totally distinct from that which is exercised by the worthy tortor, or distortor of curls. We propose to discuss hair-dressing as a test of character, and to show how you may guess at the contents of the inside of the head by an inspection of the cultivation of the outside of it.
The difficulty we experience in reading the hearts of men is a trite subject of declamation. We find some men celebrated for their discrimination of character, while others are in the same proportion blamed for their want of it.[Pg 81] The country maiden has no means of looking into the intentions of her adorer until she has been unfeelingly deserted; and the town pigeon has no means of scrutinizing the honour of his Greek until he has been bit for a thousand. These are lamentable, and, alas! frequent cases. The prescriptions of the regular philosophers have had but little effect in the prevention of them. The idea of Horace, torquere mero quem perspexisse laborant, has but little influence, since the illiterate, who are most frequently in want of assistance, have seldom the cash requisite to procure the necessary merum. Allow us then to recommend our nostrum.
Think of the trouble we shall save if our proposal is adopted! We doubt not but it might be carried into execution to so great an extent that one might find a sharp genius in a sharp comb, and trace the intricacies of a distorted imagination through the intricacies of a distorted curl. Perfumes and manners might be studied together, and a Cavendish and a character might be scrutinized by one and the same glance.
Do not be alarmed at the importance we attach to a head of hair; Homer would never have attributed to one of his warriors the perpetual epithet of Yellow-haired, if he had not seen in the expression something more than a mere external ornament; nor would Pope have
Weighed the men’s wits against the ladies’ hair,
if he had not discerned on the heads of his belles something worthy of so exalted a comparison. The attention which is paid by certain of our companions to this part of the outward man, will with them be a sufficient excuse for the weight which we attach to the subject.
We might go back to the ages of antiquity, and traverse distant countries, in order to prove how constantly the manners of nations are designated by their hair-dressing. We will omit, however, this superfluous voyage, concluding that our schoolfellows need not to be informed of the varieties of the ornaments for the poll, in which the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman character evinced itself. We shall find sufficient illustration of our position in the annals of English manners. In the days of our ancestors the[Pg 82] flowered wig was the decoration of the gentlemen; and the hair, raised by cushions, stiffened with powder, and fastened with wires, formed the most becoming insignia of the lady. The behaviour of both sexes was the counterpart of their occipital distinctions; among the gentlemen the formal gallantry of those days was denoted by a no less formal peruke, and among the ladies the lover was prepared to expect a stiffness of decorum by the warning he received from so rigid a stiffness of tête. In our days the case is altered—altered, we think, for the better; unshackled politeness and innocent gaiety have by degrees succeeded to haughty repulsiveness and affected condescension; and, in the same proportion, the wig of one sex, and the tower of the other, have been gradually superseded by fashions less appalling and more becoming. The harmless freedom, which is the prevailing characteristic of the manners of the present age, is shown in no particular more strikingly than in the cultivation of the head; and the various shades by which the habits and dispositions of men are diversified, are not more distinct from each other than the various modes and tastes in which their heads are made up.
This, we believe, is the substance of a series of observations which we heard from a stranger the last time we were at Covent Garden Theatre. We were seated in the pit (in the fifth row from the orchestra—a situation which we recommend to our readers); our companion was a middle-aged man, of a tolerable person, but marked by no peculiarity except that ease of deportment, and that ready conversational power, which are invariably the characteristics of a man of the world. We were imperceptibly engaged in a conversation with him, which finally turned upon the subject of this paper. We are aware we have not done justice to his ideas. He expressed them with all the ease and perspicuity, mingled with playful humour, which denote a powerful mind employing its energies upon trivial pursuits. Then, pointing as he spoke with a curiously knotted cane which he held in his hand, he proceeded in the following manner to exemplify his doctrines:—
“Cast your eye for a moment upon the pair of figures who are leaning towards each other in the stage-box. The gentleman wears his hair cut somewhat of the shortest,[Pg 83] thrown up negligently in front, so as to discover a full high forehead; I fancy he must be a naval officer—open, bold, thoughtless. The character of the lady is equally legible. Her long auburn hair, erected by the most assiduous attention into an artificial cone, has a bold and imposing appearance, and denotes that the lady is a beauty, and—knows it.
“There are three old gentlemen in the next box, who are worth a moment’s notice. I mean the three in the second row, who are discussing some question with no little vehemence of action and attitude. The first of them, who has his hair so sprucely trimmed, and fitted to the sides of his head with such scrupulous exactness, appears to be a sinecure holder, who receives yearly a large salary, and finds his only occupation in his brush; the second, whose hair seems to have been too much neglected by the scissors, although it is powdered for the occasion, and tied behind en queue, is, I should conceive, a disappointed and disaffected military officer; the third, whose locks seem to have a natural tendency to what was the newest fashion ten years ago, must be a country gentleman come up to town to benefit his constituents and ruin his heirs. By the earnest manner in which they are speaking, their topic is probably some political change; and the fat old gentleman, in the close wig, who is listening to them in the third row, is reflecting upon the influence which such an event would have on the five per cents.