Procesos de orientación del capital humano a la gestión del conocimiento

The need to display healthy looking, long hair to appear fashionable and young was embedded in a society that understood hair to reflect the inner health and regime of its owner. An important part of this was looking neat and clean, a quality wearing a wig could help achieve, as advised in this 1731 instructive poem Servitude:

Tis true, internal Qualities conduce To greater Ends, and are of greater Use

Than those which only serve for outward Show As powder’d Wiggs, clean Shirts, and such like do: Yet these are necessary, and ‘tis fit,

That those, whom Time and Business will permit, Appear before their Masters always clean and neat.460

Though acknowledging that superficial items such as wigs and clean shirts do not change the essential nature of a person, the writer recognises them as vital in their capacity to give the appearance of being neat and dirt-free. As discussed above, powders and pomata were commonly used as part of the cleaning regime, both to protect the hair from damage and to maintain the health of the individual, though ensuring one appeared to be clean was equally, if not more, important. The advice in the poem about also presenting a clean appearance may have been particularly significant for the serving classes, for whom a clean appearance was required by their employers.

460

Robert Dodsley, The Footman’s Friendly Advice To his Brethren of the Livery; and to all Servants in General (London: T. Worrall, 1731), p. 21.

180

Wearing a wig for the purposes of cleanliness did not necessarily address the inconvenience of keeping one’s own hair sufficiently short or shaved. This could be a weekly, or indeed daily, commitment as regrowth was itchy and uncomfortable. This practice of keeping a regularly shaved head may have taken over from the requirement to maintain a neat, trimmed beard of the previous century. The diary of Roger Whitley (1617-97), a Cheshire MP and deputy postmaster general, records visits to the barber for “trimming” every three to fo ur days.461

It is unclear whether this relates to his face, his head, or both, but it represents a considerable investment in time. Similarly, shaving two to three times a week was not unusual according to evidence from a court deposition in 1722:

I was Mr Powell’s barber and went to shave him and cut his corns and wash his feet… I have shaved him sometimes thrice, sometimes twice and at other times but once in a week and at different times of the day and he paid me six pence each time according to an agreement made by him with me.462

Though shaving this often represented a commitment in time, there was an increasingly popular view that warm water could lead to infection and that cleaning with powders or oils was instead more hygienic.463 So the opportunity to shave or crop the hair close to the head in order to wear a wig must have been appealing, and a great deal more comfortable than keeping long unclean or greasy hair. This was

461

Bodleian Library MS Eng Hist C.711, ‘Roger Whitley’s Diary 1684-1697’ (December 1685- July 1686).

462

TNA PROB 24/60 ff.82, 84v: ‘Evidence of Robert Phillips, Barber and Peruke-Maker of St Margaret Westminster’ (1722-24).

463

S. Matthews Grieco, ‘The Body, Appearance and Sexuality’, in Natalie Zemon Davis, and A Farge (eds.), A History of Women in the West. Vol. 3: Renaissance and Enlightenment Paradoxes (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Belknap Press, 1993), p. 48.

181

also noted as the more comfortable option in the summer, as observed by Pepys three years after he first got used to cutting his hair short:

I mighty weary to bed, after having my hair of my head cut shorter, even close to my skull, for coolness, it being mighty hot weather.464

If the hair itself was believed to be the source of a health problem, cutting it off and wearing a wig could serve as a means to improvement and greater well being, as described by William Thomas in his letter of 1693 to John Locke, about his father’s improved health:

…[he] coughs not soe much as he has done, tho of late more than sometime since his return to Salisbury, which he imputes either to Salisbury Air, or to the cutting of his hair, and wearing a Perewig.465

If a person claimed to wear a wig for reasons of protecting their health, or for curative purposes, this was considered more respectable than those who chose to wear one to appear fashionable, which was considered frivolous and vain. The place of hair in the creation of appearances was so fundamental however, that wigs was commonly viewed as a purely fashio nable item and even those purporting to wear one for their health were open to criticism if the choice of wig were considered too extravagant. According to Physician John Bockett:

… some Men, not esteeming a good Head of Hair (that God by his Providence hath bestow’d upon them) fashionable enough, will cut it off,

464

Robert Latham (ed.), The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A Selection (London: Penguin, 2003), p. 611.

465

William Thomas to John Locke, 30 December 1693: Electronic Enlightenments online database, Oxford University Press.

182

under pretence to cure the Head-ache, when sometimes twice as much of

another Colour is worn in the room of it, and at an extravagant length too.466 Even as they advocated the cutting of hair for health purposes, Bockett and some of his contemporaries were contemptuous of the ornamental nature of wigs, which they perceived as a danger to reputation, and a symbol of extravagance and wastefulness. Within medical literature, these concerns stemmed again from humoural theory, which could be presented in a highly moralistic way. Contrast this to the description given of Anglican Cleric and Theologian John Wesley (1703 - 91) by an American loyalist, Samuel Curwen in 1777:

He wears his own gray hair, or a wig so very like that my eye could not distinguish… He wears an Oxford masters gown; his attention seemingly not directed to manner and behaviour, not rude, but negligent, dress cleanly, not neat.467

Onlookers read Wesley’s lack of attention to his own appearance as a sign of modesty, as illustrated through his hair, his dress and his lack of conspicuous or mannered style.