cahn | 18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 37

More diaries of our favorite 18th-century Prussian diary-keeper have been unearthed and have been synopsized!

January 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born!

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

Okay, first, two caveats. One, almost everything I know is from unreliable secondary sources, many of which I can't even remember any more what they are. Two, like

selenak, I know more about the Continent than about Britain.

So, first, as Selena said, wigs got shorter from the 17th to the 18th century. But there's a twist here. Two twists actually. One, the wig started out as a way of covering up hair loss. If you could achieve the same results with your own hair, you did. So a lot of what you think is a wig in a portrait might actually be the person's real hair, powdered and frizz, especially if they're younger. A lot of men started out with their own hair and then switched to wigs when hair loss set in.

18th century soldiers in the Prussian and British armies had to spend hours powdering and frizzing their/each other's hair, and as far as I know, that was their own hair. I'm guessing officers were more likely to be able to afford a wig.

Second twist: powdering and frizzing your hair was time-consuming and annoying, and wigs could be more convenient, if you could afford them. (Also, if you can keep the lice concentrated in the wig instead of your own hair, that helps too.)

So sometimes men who *could* have achieved this look with their own hair opted for a wig instead.

Third twist: as wigs got shorter but hairstyles remained long, it wasn't uncommon to have a wig on the top of your head but wear your own hair in the back long (in a hairbag, a pigtail, a ponytail tied together by a ribbon and bow, or what-have-you). If you couldn't grow your hair that long in the back, you could use a hairpiece. In the Prussian army, an artificial pigtail would be supplied to you if you couldn't achieve it yourself (but the preference was for you to achieve it yourself).

I have *read* that many men who were adopting this style cut their hair short on top for the wig but left it long in back. Was this the norm? I don't know. Could you have long frontal hair under a wig? Maybe?

Some specific data points:

Katte, 26 years old, was wearing a wig at his execution. (Oh. Wait, I wondered why Roes described him as losing his hair early. Maybe this is why?)

FW gave young Fritz a hard time for frizzing his hair "like a fool" and not cutting it. Since FW was, as far as I remember, a big proponent of the Prussian soldierly pigtail, does this mean Fritz was supposed to cut his hair in front under his wig? Or that pigtails were so long and no longer? Not sure!

By the time Fritz was 74, he was wearing a wig (at Rheinsberg, I believe he wore his own hair), and yet after his death, his locks were combed out over his shoulders. Given how male pattern baldness works, you probably couldn't have stroked any hair back from his forehead, but it does show he was wearing it longish in back while wearing a wig on top.

A few quotes from Duffy's Military Experience in the Age of Reason:

Cadets in most countries were familiar with the routine of the kind established in the Prussian cadet corps, where the first waking hour of every day was spent in fastening back and plastering down the hair with wax and talc; the next half hour was devoted to buttoning up the gaiters with a special hook, after which attention turned back to the hair, which was dusted heavily with powder.

The 18th century in general:

The wig or hair was curled into locks at the side, but drawn out at the back into a long military pigtail.

Prussians again:

It was a fiddling affair to do up the gaiters, which were fastened by rows of little buttons. The crowning achievement, and the most difficult of all to master, was to arrange the hair into a sculptural form, with a pigtail, a swept-back crown, and the regulation number of locks on either side. Pins, curlers, powder and ribbon were all brought into service to this end, and the men spent hours helping one another out. When troops were due to go on guard the next morning, they might spend the entire night with their hair done up in papers.

18th century Europe in general:

Enlightened commentators sought to do good by advocating browned musket barrels, realistic evolutions at drill, or a natural way of wearing the hair. They missed the point that the turnout and evolutions were totemic objects, and that a well-meaning amelioration in one detail would just have led to some other activity or object becoming a symbol of subordination in its place, like shining boots in modern armies. Meanwhile all the work kept the troops out of trouble, for ‘soldiers, and especially French soldiers, want to be kept busy; if they are not employed doing something useful, they will get up to something bad’ (d’Authville, 1756, 238).

In conclusion, first consider the age and income of your characters and whether you're *sure* they were wearing wigs. They might have just been powdering their own hair!

If they are wearing a wig, either because of hair loss or because it's fashionable and convenient, you might want to have that person tenderly stroke a lock of hair back over the man's shoulder. That way you can hedge your bets!

Edited Date: 2022-09-25 11:41 am (UTC)

From:

luzula

Thanks! I had assumed that the wigs, powder, and frizz was just for the upper classes, and that the working classes did not have the time or money for that sort of thing. I had classed soldiers with the working class, and assumed that they didn't do it either. So that's very interesting, thanks! Ha ha, I love the bit about a pigtail being supplied for you if you couldn't grow one.

(My character is a 30-year-old British Army captain in 1745, and he canonically wears a wig. He has a fever, that’s why someone is stroking his forehead—it’s to check his temperature. Well, maybe hair doesn’t have to be very long in order to be stroked away for that purpose, if the other character wants their whole palm on his forehead…)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

While researching something else, I ran across this blog, and I decided to search for "wig". I got these passages from different posts:

Most common, it seems, at least for wealthier men, was to visit a barber either once or twice a week to be shaved. Given the preference for the clean-shaven face from the late seventeenth century, this likely meant having the stubble scythed off, but might also include the head, to accommodate a fashionable wig.

The wig added an extra layer of complexity, in requiring the removal of the wearer’s own hair, and substituting it for the ‘dead’ hair of someone else.

An individual removed their own ‘natural’ hair and replaced it with something fashioned from the frowzy hair of the poor...Head hair was removed but the head re-covered by the wig.

My character is a 30-year-old British Army captain in 1745, and he canonically wears a wig

Ah, canon! Well, that is definitely a constraint. Unfortunately, the author above (who seems to be a legit scholar) presents short hair under the wig as at least a British norm (not sure if the Brits were also leaving it long in back or on the sides, as the continentals sometimes did).

From:

luzula

Thanks, that was an interesting (and very beard-focused) blog! Well, my character has been out on campaign for a while in the Highlands, so maybe he hasn't gotten his hair cut for a while...but I definitely won't make his hair be actually long under the wig.