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I have seen in his very old age and decrepitude the old French King Lewis the Fourteenth, the type and model of kinghood who never moved but to measure, who lived and died according to the laws of his Court-marshal, persisting in enacting through life the part of Hero; and, divested of poetry, this was but a little wrinkled old man, pock-marked, and with a great periwig and red heels to make him look tall a hero for a book if you like, or for a brass statue or a painted ceiling, a god in a Roman shape, but what more than a man for Madame Maintenon, or the barber who shaved him, or Monsieur Fagon, his surgeon?
For my part, I was quite shy of them, and kept off at a humble distance. A periwig in those days, was a distinguishing badge of gentle folk. Such ideas of the difference between gentle and simple, were, I believe, universal among all my rank and age." The distinction between gentle and simple was doubtless less absolute than the disillusioned Jarrett represents it to have been.
One cannot think of a Louis Quatorze Apollo except in a full-bottomed periwig, and the tragic style of their poets is always showing the disastrous influence of that portentous comet.
"Why, I should like, master, to drink your health in a bumper of right Burgundy with this good Gentleman here." "He will have Burgundy," whimpered Mr. Pinchin, half to the chair-cushion, and half to his periwig. "He will have Burgundy. The ragged, tall young man will have Burgundy at eight livres ten sols the flask.
It matted itself in his voluminous periwig, and plastered it down to his shoulders; it clotted his lace frills, and ran in filthy rivulets down his smart clothes. In a word, it rendered him in a moment a disgusting and helpless object, unable to see or hear, almost unable to breathe, and quite unable to rid himself of the sticky, loathsome mass in which he had suddenly become encased.
Mr. One of the most fashionable Women I met with in all the Circuit was my Landlady at Stains, where I chanced to be on a Holiday. Her Commode was not half a Foot high, and her Petticoat within some Yards of a modish Circumference. In the same Place I observed a young Fellow with a tolerable Periwig, had it not been covered with a Hat that was shaped in the Ramillie Cock.
Kirby and others sat on a seat behind him. He was dressed as a minister for he had been one, before his pretended reconciliation to the Catholic Church in gown and bands and wore a great periwig; and not his face only which no man could forget who had once set eyes on it but the strange accent with which he spoke, confirmed me that it was the man I had seen.
"See, I have brought you a ribbon from the town. Behold!" and he fluttered a crimson streamer. Audrey caught her breath; then gazed, reassured, at the five yards of water between her and the bank. Had Hugon stood there in his hunting dress, she would have felt them no security; but he was wearing his coat and breeches of fine cloth, his ruffled shirt, and his great black periwig.
But the most painful incident, with regard to the periwig, was, that Poinsinet, whose solitary beauty if beauty it might be called was a head of copious, curling, yellow hair, was compelled to snip off every one of his golden locks, and to rub the bristles with a black dye; "for if your wig were to come off," said the lawyer, "and your fair hair to tumble over your shoulders, every man would know, or at least suspect you."
And the domestics having all seen the picture many times, and catching but a momentary imperfect glimpse of the two strangers on the night of their arrival, never had a reason to doubt the fidelity of the portrait; and next day, when they saw the original of the piece habited exactly as he was represented in the painting, with the same periwig, ribbons, and uniform of the Guard, quite naturally addressed the gentleman as my Lord Castlewood, my Lady Viscountess's son.
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