Wigs and Teachers

One day, a number of years ago, I, a teacher, had the pleasure of becoming honorary member of a college class. The next morning I received an advertisement which has ever since kept my curiosity awake. It was the announcement that I might buy wigs at reduced rates. Now, why, I pondered, was it intimated to me that a wig would be a good investment? Was it a personal or a general suggestion? Should I look more youthful in a wig, or was I expected to take part in theatricals? The matter was never settled to my satisfaction until recently, when I read the personal papers of my great-great-grandfather, who died in 1808. He w as one who ‘most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm by erecting a grammar-school.’ For forty years he was headmaster of this New England grammar-school, preparing scores of boys for college. Please note that he was head-master. Among the papers was a hair-dresser’s bill which ran thus:

1784, Aug. 17. — To shave & dress wigs 14 times @ 4d per time = £ 0—4—8;

and so on, from 1784 to 1791, in w hich year grandfather’s ‘White Bush Wig’ was dressed 48 times — £2— 12— 0.

Never before had I thought of wigs in relation to teachers — as an adjunct to authority, as a source of dignity, as a sign -capital of power. In fact, as regards the schoolroom, only one form of headcovering (not the teacher’s) has been pointedly distinguished. I began to speculate about the wig as mental furniture in the annals of the intellectual life. Lawyers, in England, still maintain their prestige by wearing the wig. In Edinburgh, tourists flock to the advocates’ library, where they can see the young advocates strolling up and down, crowned, not by laurels, but by false, gray hair. Why did teachers abandon wigs to the legal profession? Probably the lawyer’s habit of splitting hairs makes it essential for him to have access to an unlimited supply.

Royalty, too, once wore wigs; Roman emperors and Egyptian potentates found them serviceable; Louis XIV revived the fashion, preparing the way for wigs—bag, bob, tie, bush, scratch; curled, dyed, powdered, beribboned.

In the great epoch of Wigs and Whigs, even the author of Robinson Crusoe wore a wig! The hair-dressers of the day evidently vied with one another for custom. One literary perruquier, who wished to allure both sacred and profane had a sign in his shop-window: —

After all, the fashion of wearing wigs, ridiculous as it seems to us, is only one manifestation of the eternal impulse to cover the head, to conceal it from the eyes of others. Protection from enemies (especially phrenologists), warmth for this poll-ar region of the human body, decoration — all were desired. Anubis (as pictured in the dictionary) wore a head-dress, fur-side outside; the oriental veil, the monastic cowl, the Turkish fez, the anonymous ringlets of modern times, belong with the wig as a sort of surmounting alias.

Woman especially has been instructed to be covered, for her hair is a deadly snare to the observer. The peasant woman in Italy, to-day, wears her blue or saffron-colored shawl over her head; the Breton girl has the most immaculate white muslin cap, according to the style in her village. I have suspected that the short story of Samson’s hair might be interpreted more accurately. Delilah undoubtedly desired a new head-dress. Women are driven to expedients in every age when pocket money is scarce. But to-day the girl of America listens in wrath to a passage which I am fond of reading to my students, yearly, telling —

As a result of my reflections, I think favorably of grandfather’s white bush wig. Was there not secrecy and safety in this intellectual ambush? His pupils could not see through his mental processes. The very thought inclines one to revolt against the open mind. I shall ignore the fashion of my own day; I shall not dye ‘at the top’; I shall add, to my stature, a fair-haired counterfeit.