ANCIENT LONDON.

Evening Star, Issue 3619, 28 September 1874, Page 3

ANCIENT LONDON.

A lecture was recently delivered at the Working Men’s College, Great Ormond street, by the Rev, Professor J. S. Brewer, M.A., upon the above interesting subject; and among other matters we notice the following concerning wigs:— . It may be that some one or more of the party have ridden over that day to Hyde Park Corner, to where the Marble Arch now stands, to see some Jack Sheppard or Jonathan Wild drawn along in semi-triumph through Oxford street—then a flaunting and irregular suburb—to make his exit at Tyburn, and here they are discussing the events and perils of the day. Was there ever a more useless or ridiculous costume 1 Powdered wigs, knee breeches, silk stockings, long ruffles, and shoes. Here is a gentleman whose whole ingenuity for a month past has been expended in contriving and adjusting the curls of his wig j here is another in plum-colored satin coat and peach-colored small-clothes, talking to his neighbor in colors equally bright and varied. Here a third is grinding the high-backed chair on which he is sitting with the hilt of his diamondstudded sword. One is astonished how the gentlemen of those days could have taken the air at all. Their silk and satin dresses would not keep them warm or fence off the weather : their three-cornered hats—not made for the head, but the hand—afforded no protection from the rain, or from the long gutters and water-spouts which shot their contents from the roofs of the soaking houses into the street below on to the hoads of the unwary passengers. Then those wigs—worn universally by all classes, high or low. No matter how poor the man, or how low his finances, a wig was indispensable. No citizen on a Sunday, no clerk, no skilful mechanic, would think of appearing without this appendage. He would as soon have thought of walking about in his nightcap, or in no clothes at all, as show himself abroad without his wig. These were the days when barbers flourished j when the spruce apprentice brought home his master’s wig carefully suspended on a species of light block, with its last puff of powder and last turn of the curls, ready for church on the Sunday morning. Ah, those [ wigs J what consternation did they they

make among the ladies. How many a rich widow, how many a proud heiress, whom no sighs, no protestations could move, yielded to the charms of a handsome -wig 1 The barbers were the most important men in England. Nay, so universal was the fashion, so indispensable was this ornament, that, as I have heard my father say, it gave rise to a particular occupation, and on the Saturday evening, when men had left their work, and they were thinking of their Sunday dress, and their wives of their Sunday dinners, Jews used to go about the streets with bags full of wigs, crying out “ a dip for a penny.” That is, everyone who paid a penny dipped his hand into the bag, and took jhis chance of the first wig that came up. It would happen that the man fished up a wig too big or too small, or a blackhaired man got a red wig, or the reverse, or a most outrageous fit, in which no decent citizen or artizen could appear. Why, then he gave another penny, and dipped again, and no doubt in this, as in all other lotteries, he found more blanks than prizes. In those days wigs afforded great temptation to thieves. In the ill-lighted streets the gentlemen returning from the theatre or from a carouse—tor men were not very temperate then—was a rich prize ; if he had gambled away his money, his wig was more valuable than his watch. A brawny fellow, sometimes with two or three more, is passing by with a basket at his back—he seems a gardener or porter on his way to Covent Garden Market, the great centre of public amusements. In this basket a little boy is concealed, who suddenly clutches at the wig of the unsuspecting passer-by, and wig and boy disappear in a moment. These things look like fables j they are facts of a past age, not far removed. If we cannot realise them, it is because our own times and manners, though so near, have drifted away from them, and seem so much further from them than they really are.”