Introduction

 

The history of the English gentleman's wig (short for 'periwig', and also known as a 'peruke') spans more than a century, having been introduced to the English court in the early 1660s, in imitation of the fashion then current in France. Initially, the wigs worn by English gentlemen were long, flowing and of natural colour, the distinctive white and grey headpieces which we tend to associate with the 18th-century making their first appearances around the year 1705 (McClaren 243). This shift in fashion would be accompanied, around the middle of the century, by a progressive shortening in the length of wigs -- a tendency which is illustrated in the portraits, below, of Swift, Sterne and Boswell. Wigs would, however, fall decisively out-of-favour amongst English gentlemen by the end of the century, particularly in reaction to the French Revolution. For sections of British society, wigs -- in their evocation of ornate and formal ceremony -- would come to symbolize the rigidity of inequitable class relations and a decrepit aristocracy. What would sound the final death knell of the fashion, however, would not be political sentiment, but rather a tax which, ironically enough, would be imposed as part of a misjudged attempt to raise funds for Britain's war against revolutionary France during the 1790s. In 1795, the government of William Pitt the Younger resolved to impose 'a guinea tax... on every citizen who wore hair powder' -- the substance used mainly to style, mould and otherwise reinvigorate a wig of a morning -- thus hastening the already swift decline of the wig amongst British gentlemen (McClaren 244).

 

 

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) --                                      Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) --                              James Boswell (1740-1795) --

portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds,                                  portrait by Charles Jervas,                                     portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds,

oil on canvas, c. 1718.                                                oil on canvas, 1760.                                               oil on canvas, 1785.

 

During its ascendency, the wig was an ubiquitous status symbol indispensable to the English gentleman, much in the same way as gloves were to eighteenth-century ladies. The price which a good quality wig individually tailored to its wearer by a professional 'peruke-maker' would command was somewhere in the region of what a brand-new, top-quality car would cost today. The sporting of a wig was, like the driving of such of car, a signal of wealth and social rank, and was thus integral to the costume of the self-respecting gentleman. The preface to Memoirs of an Old Wig testifies to the extraordinary sums of money which were paid out in return for the human hair required to manufacture a wig: 'in 1700, a young country girl got sixty pounds for her head of hair, and the grey locks of an old woman, after death, sold for fifty pounds' (xii-xiii). These figures equate, according the National Archives' online currency converter, to £4,500 and £4,000 respectively in today's money. 

 

 

Wig-curlers -- along with powder, a useful implement in the shaping of a wig to one's desires. These curlers would be heated prior to application. As the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford notes, sometimes fairly extraordinary steps would be taken by the wearer to lend his headpiece a permanent curl. 'It was not unknown', for instance, to take the wig to the bakery, where 'it was wrapped in brown paper inside a protective pastry crust and placed in the oven' in order to achieve this. 

Photograph source: Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. 

 

 

 

The wig as signal of gentility and prop in performance

 

The denotation of enhanced social status by the gentleman's wig is instanced by the following, extravagant custom encountered by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu during the course of her travels. Prior to reaching Turkey, Montagu is keen to record her rather sardonic fascination regarding the devotional customs of the Catholic portions of Germany. In one of her early letters home, Montagu relates how she was 'particularly diverted in a little Roman Catholic Church' by the sight of a statue of Christ 'dressed up... in a fair full-bottomed wig, very well powdered.' (9-10) However bizarre this spectacle of the bewigged saviour appears to both Montagu and the contemporary reader of her Turkish Embassy Letters, it is indicative of the genteel 'aura' which a wig bestows upon its wearer. Christ is distinguished as a superior instance of humanity by virtue of his elaborate and immaculate headgear, demonstrating the manner in which the donning of a wig signals the elite status of its owner. 

 

It follows from this that, for the merely mortal gentleman of the 18th-century, to be divested of one's wig is to be debased in the eyes of the world. In contemporary records and narratives of criminality, the theft of a wig is typically emphasized before the loss of any other article on the part of a genteel male victim. In An Account of the most notorious Murderers and Robbers (published in the 1720s), the rampages of a 6-man gang include the muggings of several gentlemen; in one particular instance, 'seeing a little Man in a great Cloak pass before them... they tied his Hands behind him, and took away his Perriwig, Hat, Cloak, and a small quantity of Silver' (31-2). That our attention is drawn above all to the loss of the gentleman's wig is signal, not only of its immense pecuniary value, but also of the horror which attends the loss of this signifier of gentility. By being stripped of his wig, the gentleman is stripped of the prime marker of his wealth, breeding and class. In this sense, the author of the Account communicates something of a collective angst regarding (what was at least perceived to be) an increasingly fluid social continuum. 

 

In a society obsessed with surfaces, wealth and good breeding were intimated by costume. The outfit of a gentleman was thus a necessary prop in the performance of gentility. Interestingly, one of the gang depicted in this Account attempts to perform his superior social status as a ploy to lessen the severity of the sentence to be passed down at his trial. This man, Burnworth, 'born of very worthy Parents at Abergavenny' (1), 'absolutely refus[es] to plead, till his Hat and Perriwig, and a Gold Watch, that the Constables had taken away when they tried to apprehend him, were return'd again' (58). Again, the exchange of props denotes an anxiety of the upending of sedimented class relations -- the gentleman dispenses with his wig to become a criminal; the criminal assumes his wig to become a gentleman -- a phobia which ultimately wins through at the trial in the face of Burnworth's scheme: along with the other members of the band, he is sentenced to death. For another account of an eighteenth-century trial involving the theft of a valuable object, see smelling salts. 

 

Burnworth's ploy is an attempt to place himself on the same social level as the other gentlemen -- particularly the judge and jury -- attending the trial.

William Hogarth, The Bench (second state), engraving (incomplete), 1764. 

 

 

That the gentleman is, finally, an artificial social construct is further suggested in the Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke (1755). Gentility is, in an opening reminiscence, conflated to a certain degree with gender; the author recalls an episode in her early childhood when she donned an 'enormous bushy Tie-wig' in imitation of her father. '[B]y Dint of a Wig and a Waistcoast', she suggests, 'I should be the perfect representative of my Sire' (18). The wig is a prop which can be assumed and discarded at will along with the socially prescribed roles and identities it denotes. Charke was a well-known actress on the eighteenth-century stage, being particularly noted for her transvestite roles and would, later in life, also enter business under a masculine pseudonym, 'Mr Charles Brown'. Evidently, the scene of childhood transvestism recorded towards the start of her autobiography is conceived as a prelude to her discussion of these later, and more notorious, exploits. 

 

 

Wigs as signals of office and wigs out of fashion

 

 

William Hogarth, The Five Orders of Perriwigs as they were Worn at the Late Coronation Measured Architectonically, engraving, 1761.

Hogarth presents a cornucopia of wigs in all their many different styles. In particular, he is keen to differentiate between wigs of various functionaries. The top row of the engraving depicts 'episcopal' wigs (i.e., those designed for the clergy); the second 'aldermanic' (for councillors and other public dignitaries); and the the third 'lexonic' (for lawyers). 

 

 

In the 18th century, wigs (along with other aspects of a man's costume) were assumed to denote one's profession. By the end of the century, wig-wearing had become almost completely confined to members of a select number of professions (as in the case of judges and barristers, a practice which continues in the UK to this day), having gone decidedly out of fashion amongst gentlemen in society at large. In Francis Coventry's History of Pompey the Little (1751), a satire narrated from the point of view of a small dog, we are told that a physician might be discerned from his adopting 'a gilt-headed cane, a black suit of clothes, a wise mysterious face, a full-bottomed flowing peruke, and all other externals of his possession: so that, if according to Swift, the various members of the common-wealth are only so many suits of clothes, this gentleman was amply discharged for his office' (263).

 

Earlier on in this narrative, moreover, we are alerted to the fact that sloppy or passé attire is signal of professional (as well as social) incapacity. The character of 'counsellor Tarturian' tries and fails to become a barrister and is decidedly maladroit in his dealings with the regulars of his favourite coffee-house. Significantly, his 'peruke' is long out of fashion, having 'once adorned a judge in the reign of Queen Anne' (114) (the narrative takes place during the 1730s, making his wig at least 20 years old). Whilst Tarturian dons the costume of the profession he wishes to pursue, his inability to clothe himself in accordance with contemporary fashion is token of his inability ever to achieve his goals. 

 

This impression is further reinforced by the practical joke which Hardcastle recounts in the first act of Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. Tony Lumpkin is said, 'but yesterday', to have 'fastened' his stepfather's wig: 'to the back of my chair, and when I went to make a bow, I popped my bald head in Mrs. Frizzle's face!' (2) To be of sufficient length for this joke to be unwittingly carried out, Hardcastle's wig must be very long indeed (a fact which may well be obvious to the audience, if Hardcastle is wearing the said wig as he speaks his lines). Given the fact that the play was first performed in 1773, Hardcastle's 'great flaxen wig', as his wife derides it later in the play (23), is even more decidedly out-of-fashion than Coventry's Tarturian. In this sense, the joke played on Hardcastle works to accentuate our sense of his immense backwardness: he is, after all, a man whose cultural outlook is intensely old-fashioned and parochial, preferring 'everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine' (1). Hardcastle's decidedly outmoded wig is thus a cue for ridicule and suggestive of his being little more than a rustic stock-type. In this sense, the characterisation (and costume) of Hardcastle contributes to any reading of the play which envisages its rural setting as the habitat of clowns and grotesques -- quite in contrast to the idealised locale of his Deserted Village -- who appear onstage as cartoonish projections from a cosmopolitan imaginary. 

 

If the wig -- in the form of the costume donned by professionals -- comes to denote, by the end of the century, a particularly privileged position in society, the wig which forms part of a male servant's uniform conversely signals the social inferiority of its wearer. In the case of Tarturian in Pompey the Little, the ill-fitting wig marked an unconscious subversion of office deriving from innate incapacity. In Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent (pub. 1800; set in Ireland prior to the 1780s), the uneasiness with which wigs sit on the heads of male servants is a marker of social inferiority and servile status. An aristocratic or genteel master would presumably have his wig fitted by a professional 'peruke-maker'; no such lengths and expense are incurred in the fitting out of servants, at least in a declining estate like Castle Rackrent. This is reflected in the admission that servants' wigs are 'usually too small' for their wearers and that their yellow hue clashes with the black hair deemed to be typical of an Irishman. The widespread practice of using wigs 'instead of brooms in Ireland' perhaps stems from this lack of concern for the adequate clothing of servants (68). Indeed, the habitual substitution by servants of a wig for a cleaning implement can be read as a conscious subversion of office on their part. The particular instance of this practice in Castle Rackrent -- in which Thady Quirke, the novel's narrator, divests himself of his wig to 'wipe down the window seat' (68) -- is perhaps signal of the unsettling of class relations in the Ireland of the period, which forms the novel's central theme. Quirke's disregard for his servant's uniform -- which confirms his inferior social standing and the concomitant pre-eminence of his Anglo-Irish overlords -- thus anticipates the unsettling of traditional class-relations which forms the climax of the novel, with ownership of Castle Rackrent being transferred from Sir Condy (a member of the Protestant Ascendency) to Thady's son (representative of the nascent Catholic middle-class).

 

 

 

Memoirs of an Old Wig, celebrity and homoerotic encounter

 

 

John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722) --

engraving by Pieter Stevens van Gunst, after Adriaen van der Werff,

early 18th century.

One of the wig's most illustrious owners.

 

 

 

Title-page to Memoirs of an Old Wig, with a rendering of the narrator.

 

 

As Aileen Douglas argues, the eighteenth-century ‘it-narrative’ reflects the increased instability of previously rigid social hierarchies in a Britain which had come under the sway of a consolidated capitalist economy. ‘Corkscrews and lap-dogs’, she comments, ‘could move among classes and ranks in a way no human subject could.’ (66) One of the more particular functions of many ‘it-narratives’ was thus to ‘create… the illusion that readers shared the lives of wealthy, powerful, and distinguished individuals’ (69). In this sense, the eponymous narrator of Memoirs of an Old Wig is a proxy for the reader in his many interactions with the rich and famous of eighteenth-century British society. The proximity of the wig to the body of the celebrity – including a cast of leading political and artistic lights as diverse as the Duke of Marlborough and Swift – thus functions to appease a desire for increased social mobility on the part of the reader of the ‘it-narrative’. This is perhaps reflected in the primary occupation of Memoirs of an Old Wig, which could aptly be described as a form of celebrity ‘tittle-tattle’. The wig’s bodily intimacy with his celebrity owners grants him a privileged perspective from which to clandestinely observe and relate the lurid details of his wearers’ lives. For instance, the wig is able to blithely resolve the question (which continues to perplex scholars to this day) as to whether Swift married the ‘Stella’ of his poems, having been ‘worn on the memorable day when that sacred and indissoluble knot which united him and Stella was tied by Dr. Ashe.’ (61)  

 

As one contemporary reader of Memoirs of an Old Wig put it, 'very good indeed!!!'

 

The intense proximity of the wig to the bodies of his owners excites the reader’s fancy in more ways than this, however. As an item of clothing with direct access to the flesh, the wig is able to compare and contrast the physical attributes of his wearers. (The modern-day equivalent might be a narrative told from the perspective of a microphone savouring its exchange between the sweaty palms of the various members of a boyband.) The register is not only one of 'gossip', but also of titillation. In the case of Swift, the wig employs his understanding of 'the new science of Craniology' to analyse the periodic swellings of the 'little teats' which cover the surface of the poet's scalp. The two most prominent of these are christened the 'Stella and Vanessa paps' by the wig, after two of the poet's long-standing female companions, muses and (only potentially in the case of 'Stella') lovers. During encounters with 'Stella', the growth of the relevant protrusion is clearly a metaphor for an erection: ‘In the way to, and in company with, Stella, I have known her pap so inflated… that it was difficult for me to keep my seat’ (64). In this scene, the wig becomes the receptive object of a (thinly disguised) penetrative sex-act. As a gentleman's head-piece, and thus an implicitly masculine subject, the wig is configured as a participant in a distinctly homoerotic sexual exchange. This is also implied, I would suggest, by the promiscuous trading of the wig between his various gentleman owners; as an object passed around between a panoply of men, the wig becomes a proxy for homoerotic encounter, his exchange a socially sanctioned means of contact between men's bodies. See beds (the section on Fanny Hill) for more homoerotic intrigue. 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

 

Primary sources

 

Anon. An account of the lives of the most notorious murderers and robbers, Edward Burnworth alias Frazier, William Blewet, Emanuel Dickenson, Thomas Berry alias Teague, John Higgs, and John Legee. Containing, A full Relation of their several Births, Parentage and Education, and their most remarkable Burglaries and Street Robberies, viz. The Lord Chief Justice Eyre's and Counsellor Fazakerly's Houses in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields; Mrs Spinkes's in Southampton-Row; the Assault and Riot at the George Ale-House in Stocks-Market; the Attempt to rob the Earl of Harborough in his Chair; the robbing of Mr. Charlwood an Apothecary in Covent-Garden. Of Burnworth's Letter to the Attorney-General, and Legee's Wedding the Day after Ball's Murder. With many other of their notable Pranks and Exploits, not published in any other Pamphlet, or Dying-Speech Paper whatever. To which is added, their Tryal and Conviction at Kingston Assizes, for the barbarous Murder of Thomas Ball; with their Behaviour both before and after Sentence, and at the Place of Execution, &c.. 2nd ed. London: 1726. ECCO. Web. 1 Mar 2014. 

 

     An expansive account of the various misdeeds of a criminal gang operating in the early eighteenth-century, including much that is relevant to a discussion of wigs in the century as a whole: the continual emphasis which is placed on the stealing of a gentleman's wig, together with the illustrative trial-scene during which the genteel plaintiff demands the return of his wig before co-operating with the trial. 

 

Anon. Memoirs of an Old Wig. London: 1815. Google Books. Web. 1 Mar 2014.

 

     A copious 'it-narrative' which follows the eponymous headpiece on an odyssey through eighteenth-century Britain. Particularly intriguing are the wig's musings on his many 'celebrity' owners, whose private lives become the object of lurid speculation.  

 

Charke, Charlotte. A narrative of the life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke. 2nd ed. London: 1755. ECCO. Web. 1 Mar 2014. 

 

     A broad-ranging piece of autobiographical writing which indulges in its narrator's life-long propensity towards disguise. Particularly relevant to our discussion is her very earliest reminiscence of imitating her father through the donning of his wig. 

 

Coventry, Francis. The history of Pompey the little, or the life and adventures of a lap-dog. 5th ed. London: 1773. ECCO. Web. 1 Mar 2014. 

 

     A fairly well-known satire narrated from the point of view of the eponymous 'lap-dog'. This includes the caricature of 'Counsellor Tanturian', the maladroit lawyer whose taste in wigs is decidedly outmoded.

 

Edgeworth, Maria. Castle Rackrent. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. Print. 

 

     A seminal Irish novella, published in 1800 and set prior to the 1780s, on a declining estate. The diverting wig-scene, wherein the narrator uses his headpiece to wipe down a window-seat, can be seen to encode the increasingly destabilized relations between the classes (and religious communities) in late eighteenth-century Ireland. 

 

Goldsmith, Oliver. She Stoops to Conquer. New York: Dover, 1991. Print. 

 

     Another famous text by an Irish writer, debuting on the London stage in 1773. The passé attire of Hardcastle, the patron of a minor estate in the English countryside, becomes a point of ridicule, lending the depiction of England's country inhabitants a certain sense of stereotype and caricature. 

 

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Turkish Embassy Letters. London: Virago, 1994. Print. 

 

     The travel narrative of an English lady in Europe and Turkey, written during the 1710s but published posthumously in 1763. Relevant to our discussion is her sardonic recollection of one particular devotional custom of Catholic Germany. 

 

 

Secondary sources

 

Douglas, Aileen. "Britannia's Rule and the It-Narrator." Eighteenth-Century Fiction 6.1 (1993): 70-89.  

 

     An excellent discussion of the 'it-narrative' phenomenon, arguing for the genre's staging of a collective fantasy amongst its readership for increased social mobility.

 

McClaren, James. "A brief history of wigs in the legal profession." International Journal of the Legal Profession 6.2 (1999): 241-250.

 

     A comprehensive discussion of wigs in the legal profession, including a good and more general history of the fashion. 

 

 

Links to relevant websites

 

The National Archives currency converter. 

Pitt Rivers Museum, wig-curlers.