Read Ebook: The Wigmaker in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg An Account of His Barbering Hair-dressing & Peruke-Making Services & Some Remarks on Wigs of Various Styles. by Bullock Thomas K Tonkin Maurice B Townsend Raymond R Contributor Ford Thomas K Editor

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Ebook has 64 lines and 13047 words, and 2 pages

Contributor: Raymond R. Townsend

Editor: Thomas K. Ford

An Account of his Barbering, Hair-Dressing, & Peruke-Making Services, & some Remarks on Wigs of Various Styles.

Richard Gamble, barber and perukemaker of Williamsburg in the middle years of the eighteenth century, appears to have remained a bachelor all his life. Other than this he seems to have been no more improvident than the average craftsman of his time. That is to say, he came--or was brought--into court with startling frequency in an endless round of suits to collect unpaid debts.

He was in good company. Going to the law was part of the colonial way of life in Virginia, and everyone from a town's least citizen to the colony's greatest planter engaged in it. In fact, suing and being sued had some of the aspects of a game: the plaintiff in one case might shortly be defendant in another and witness in a third--and keep right on doing business with the other parties in all three cases!

Alexander Finnie, co-defendant with Gamble in at least one large suit for debt--perhaps the one that led to Gamble's "Arrest"--was himself a wigmaker who had abandoned the craft for the arduous pleasures of innkeeping. He was proprietor at the time of the Raleigh Tavern, Williamsburg's largest and most famous hostelry.

When Gamble died, Edward Charlton, late from London, succeeded to the business and became in time Williamsburg's leading barber and wigmaker. His livelihood--as perhaps he foresaw--was already doomed when he retired from business shortly before the Revolution: the wig fashion was on the way out in England and would soon be dropped in America. And in any case his former clientele would vanish from the streets of Williamsburg when the capital of Virginia was moved to Richmond in 1780.

Charlton, Gamble, and Finnie were only three of some thirty men concerned with barbering and wigmaking in eighteenth-century Williamsburg. Once or twice between 1700 and 1780 the town apparently had to struggle along for short periods with but a single active practitioner of the craft. Usually there were at least two or three, and for a time in 1769 as many as eight plied their trade in the little capital city.

All of these Williamsburg barbers and perukemakers performed at least one, but not always all three, of the craft's basic services: making, selling, and dressing wigs and false hair pieces for men and women; cutting and dressing men's, women's, and children's natural hair; and shaving men. Before we go into more detail on these aspects of the craft in colonial days, however, it may be well to peer briefly still further back into history.

The trouble with hair is that it persists in growing, and every once in a while something must be done about it. Over the millenia since time began--or at least since people began--that "something" has been manifold in variety: dyeing, bleaching, oiling, powdering, pomading, trimming, curling, straightening, shaving off completely, or augmenting with hair from horses, cows, goats, and from other human heads.

Roman barbers followed the example of their Greek colleagues when the beard passed out of favor during the Republic. The classic reply of the Roman general Archelaus rings true even today: asked by a talkative barber how he would like to be trimmed, Archelaus answered, according to Plutarch, "In silence."

From the onslaught of the barbarians until about the thirteenth century, the craft of barbering probably reverted in most of Europe to its elementary procedures of trimming and dressing the hair and beard. In the latter century the first guilds of barbers were formed in both France and England, and by the seventeenth century the golden age of the barber had begun.

For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe an inordinate emphasis on appearance led to excesses of fashion in both costume and hairdress. Men followed the vagaries of high fashion as faithfully as women, and vied with each other in wearing long curls of their own or somebody else's hair.

The shop that Richard Gamble entrusted to his new partner in 1752 stood next door to the Raleigh Tavern, in what was sometimes called "the most public part of the city." Certainly no better location in Williamsburg could have been found for a barber shop than on the Duke of Gloucester Street in the block nearest the Capitol.

The broad main street of Williamsburg, muddy or dusty as the season decreed, stretched westward from the Capitol nearly a mile to the College of William and Mary. During most of the year it saw only the normal activity of a small colonial town. But several times each year--when the courts and perhaps the Assembly met--the town's population doubled or tripled. These "Publick Times" were almost field days of litigation, commercial negotiation, and merrymaking. Then it was that innkeepers and craftsmen lucky enough to have located in that first block knew how fortunate they were.

One small shop also near the Raleigh had been a barbering and wigmaking establishment at least since John Peter Wagnon bought it in 1734. It remained so through the long ownership of Wagnon's one-time apprentice, Andrew Anderson, and the short occupancy of two successor barbers and wigmakers, William Peake of Yorktown and James Currie. Across the street from the Raleigh had stood the shop of Jean Pasteur, one of Williamsburg's first known wigmakers. Somewhere nearby Alexander Finnie made wigs before moving to the Raleigh itself, and Anthony Geohegan did so later--perhaps in the same shop.

A little farther uptown William Peake had briefly set up business as a barber in Mr. Dunn's Crown Tavern, opposite the printing office. James Nichols first opened his shop in "the corner room of the brick house where Mrs. Singleton lives"--now better known as the Brick House Tavern. And somewhere along the same crowded street Richard Charlton kept his well-patronized tavern.

Other craftsmen also located in the same neighborhood. Not far beyond the Raleigh hung the sign of James Craig's jewelry, watch, and silversmith shop, the Golden Ball. And next to it was the millinery store of the sisters Margaret and Jane Hunter--the latter of whom married her neighbor Edward Charlton.

The size of Edward Charlton's barber and wig shop is now unknown. For some time it was probably no larger than a front room of the house he owned opposite the Raleigh. Andrew Anderson's shop was in a building sixteen feet square. The barber shop next to the King's Arms Tavern is shown on later insurance papers to have been sixteen by twenty feet--and these are the approximate dimensions of the restored barber and perukemaker's shop.

In such a small shop it seems unlikely that even a leading wigmaker could have had very many helpers. But Edward Charlton at one time had four apprentices and journeymen, and one of his contemporaries, Robert Lyon, in the space of two years had five known bond servants, at least three identified as barber-wigmakers.

Apprenticeship to a master barber and perukemaker was the normal--in fact the only--way for a boy to learn the trade. The Williamsburg wigmakers presumably all entered the craft in this manner, though Andrew Anderson is the only one about whom the record is clear. Presumably, too, most of them had apprentices in turn; but here the surviving information is quite skimpy.

Andrew Anderson.

Whether Anderson lured anyone into his employ by this ad does not appear. But Finnie a year later announced that he had just imported from London a shipment of wigmaking materials and also "some exceeding good Workmen." With what has the ring of smug satisfaction he concluded: "As I have a great many good Workmen, Gentlemen and others may depend on being speedily and faithfully served, in the best Manner."

If colonial wigmakers were aware of this dictum--which seems unlikely--they paid it no attention, buying hair from abroad with never a query as to the personal habits of the original wearers, and showing similar indifference in purchasing local locks:

George Long.

A few of the Williamsburg barbers and perukemakers advertised their readiness to dress ladies' hair, and Charlton regularly made "curls" for his customers' wives. But most seem to have confined themselves wholly--or almost so--to barbering and bewigging male clients.

These clients were either town dwellers or members of the plantation gentry, who were the colony's economic, political, and social elite. Of every hundred Virginians, eighty or more were small farmers or farm workers and did not own wigs. Devereaux Jarratt, the son of a poor but industrious farmer near Williamsburg, recalled later in life in his memoirs:

'Tis an odd Sight, that except some of the very elevated Sort, few Persons wear Perukes, so that you would imagine they were all sick, or going to bed: Common People wear Woollen and Yarn Caps; but the better ones wear white Holland or Cotton: Thus they travel fifty Miles from Home. It may be cooler, for ought I know; but, methinks, 'tis very ridiculous.

Perhaps on the frontier men allowed their beards to go unshorn. In the settled areas and towns, however, only a clean-shaven face was acceptable to the fashion that simultaneously demanded false hair on the head. Most men probably shaved themselves, and some, like Councillor Robert Carter and Dr. John Sequeira, had slaves trained to do their barbering. Of the rest a goodly number visited Charlton's shop almost daily and paid him an annual fee for "shaving and dressing." We do not know if this meant shaving the face or the head or both; "dressing," of course, normally referred to care of the wig.

Some among Charlton's regular customers for shaving and dressing, however, never bought a wig from him. Either they imported their own directly from a maker like Thomas Clendinning of Glasgow, or else they wore no wig. To defy fashion in this second manner must have taken some courage, for the wig was an important badge of social rank, particularly among the upper and would-be upper classes.

But it was not an infallible one. Negro slaves may sometimes have been decked out in white wigs: those who were the liveried house slaves, coachmen, and the like, of the ostentatiously rich planters. On the other hand, such a well-to-do and fashion-conscious man as George Washington seems from portraits and other records to have worn no wig at all, though he kept his own hair well powdered and curled. In the lesser ranks craftsmen, indentured servants, and apprentices sometimes did and sometimes did not wear wigs.

Washington, who often lodged when in Williamsburg at the tavern of Richard Charlton, was not among Edward Charlton's customers for any barbering service. Peyton Randolph, however, the speaker of the House of Burgesses, was an excellent patron. He bought two brown dress bob wigs every year, and each December paid for a year's shaving and dressing. John Randolph, the attorney general, was another regular customer, who paid nothing for several years, then settled his large bill partly in "cash," partly by "the pardon of a Negro," and partly with some horses.

The cash receipts that Charlton entered in his accounts may in rare instances have included clinking money. But the colonies were forbidden to mint their own, and coin of the realm was exceedingly scarce. So Charlton's income was largely paper currency of one kind or another: perhaps Virginia currency printed by William Hunter at the printing office on Duke of Gloucester Street years before; perhaps bills of exchange on a London merchant; most likely warehouse receipts for varying amounts of stored tobacco--these being a form of legal tender universally acceptable in the tobacco colonies.

Robert Carter Nicholas, treasurer of the colony, Thomas Everard, mayor of Williamsburg, George Mason of Gunston Hall, author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, George Wythe, professor of law at the College, and Wythe's former student, the youthful Thomas Jefferson, all visited Charlton's shop more or less faithfully. Jefferson, experimenting as usual, first bought a brown dress queue wig and then a brown tie wig before he settled on the brown dress bob that was the prevailing style.

Another of Charlton's famous patrons, "Mr Patrick Hanrey Esq^re," bought only one peruke of him in the half-dozen years of the account book. He brought it back once for alteration, but never for dressing. Perhaps this was the brown wig that one contemporary remembered "exhibited no indication of great care in the dressing." Another acquaintance recalled, however, that "at the bar of the General Court, always appeared in full suit of black cloth or velvet, and a tye wig, which was dressed and powdered in the highest style."

Among the shop's other patrons were innkeepers, blacksmiths, a saddler, a silversmith, printers, clergymen, physicians--indeed, from wealthy planters like Robert Carter, Ralph Wormeley, and John Page to such unglamorous persons as Humphrey Harwood, plasterer and brick mason, Charlton made wigs for them all.

to ecclesiastical perukes he gives a certain demure, sanctified air; he confers on the tye-wigs of the law an appearance of great sagacity and deep penetration; on those of the faculty of physick he casts a solemnity and gravity that seems equal to the profoundest knowledge. His military smarts ... the wearer a most war-like fierceness.

As for color, any style might be made up in any of the several colors favored for wigs: black, white, grizzle , brown, and flaxen are mentioned most often in surviving accounts. Less popular shades included milk white, light natural, yellowish, pale, chestnut, auburn, piss-burnt, and gray. Red was deemed a "disagreeable colour" for hair and was rarely if ever used in wigs.

The styles here shown were all popular at some time during the eighteenth century, though perhaps some of them were worn more often in England and France than in the colonies. On the other hand, a popular colonial style, the "Albemarle" wig, is not in our catalogue because nothing has been found to tell what it looked like.

This "brigadier wig" shows what a few of Charlton's patrons ordered from him. It was known also as a major wig and a military wig. The "tye wig" mentioned in Charlton's accounts must have looked very much like this except that it had more than two curls tied at the nape of the neck.

What Charlton called a "queue wig" might have been any wig with a tail--or even with two, like this double pigtail. The tails were usually bound tightly with black ribbon, though sailors used leather. A single queue, braided but not bound, with a large bow at the top and a small bow at the bottom, was known as a "Ramillies wig" after the battle at that place . The wearer of a Ramillies often doubled the end of the queue back up to the wig and held it with a comb or ribbon.

In the "bag wig" the long hair at the back was simply tied inside a black taffeta bag, usually with a rosette of black ribbon for decoration. In England and France this style, like so many others, was carried to such an extreme that the bag eventually covered the wearer's entire shoulders. The exaggeration at least had the virtue of protecting his clothing from the pomade and powder of the wig. It was going out of fashion in Virginia by Charlton's time. Note the small strap and buckle on the wig.

This, incredibly, was called a "natural wig," and was supposed to resemble the wearer's own hair. It fell down behind in long, straight locks, ending either with a single roll, or tapering away into a series of ringlets.

The resemblance between this "knotted wig" and its distant predecessor, the full-bottomed wig, may not be apparent at first glance. The flowing locks of the full-bottomed and campaign wigs were inconvenient to travelers, sportsmen, and soldiers. So they adopted the habit of knotting up the curls on both sides and tying together those in back; eventually this expedient became a style in its own right, but with a single corkscrew curl in back.

The "cadogan" or "club wig," its name attributed to the first Earl of Cadogan, became popular in England in the 1770s, especially with the foppish young men who called themselves "Macaronis" and went to absurd extremes in style, wearing cadogans several times the size of this modest example. The queue of straight hair was looped back on itself and tied with string or ribbon to form a vertical bow of hair.

This is the kind of clerical wig, with built-in tonsure, that Roman Catholic clergy in France wore. Anglican clerics in Virginia, as Charlton's accounts testify, wore brown dress bobs just like those of so many of their parishioners.

The eighteenth-century wig was built up of rows of hair woven at the root ends to cross-threads, each row being then sewn to a net-and-ribbon skullcap or "caul." The steps in making a queue wig would differ, of course, in some detail from those in making a wig without a queue. But the basic procedures in the eighteenth-century manner of perukemaking are the same for any style, and can be set forth briefly under the following seven headings:

If brown dress bob wigs at 43 shillings each were by far the most popular of Edward Charlton's products--he sold sixty in one year--they were by no means the only style he made. Perukes not only came in almost endless variety; their prices differed likewise. Even wigs of the same style from the same maker could vary widely in price as the accompanying advertisement shows.

Clendinning's prices were in the same range as those charged by Williamsburg wigmakers through most of the eighteenth century. It is worth remark that Charlton's price for a brown dress bob wig was the same in 1770 as Andrew Anderson had charged in 1752 and as Jean Pasteur had received in 1726, though the earlier models were probably more elaborate than Charlton made.

From prices charged for various articles of clothing at the same period, it appears that a man could outfit himself with hat, coat, shirt, breeches, hose, and shoes for about what his wig would cost him. Put another way, a suitably cheap wig might easily cost a journeyman his wages for two to three weeks, while a wealthy planter might pay nearly as much for one "Grisell Tye Wig" as a servant's board cost for a year.

"He will charge nothing for the Boxes nor Freight: And, if the Wigs do not please at Sight, the Gentlemen are not bound to take them.

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