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

[cahn]

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!

Comments

Re: Length of hair under wig

[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…)

Re: Length of hair under wig

[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).

Re: Length of hair under wig

[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.

Re: Length of hair under wig

[mildred_of_midgard]

That sounds like a good solution!

The blogger has recently published a book on the history of beards in England, so the focus is to be expected! :)