Champagne for the Hair: 1911

Champagne bucket hand-bag, Paris, 1950s https://www.augusta-auction.com/list-of-upcoming-sales?view=lot&id=16358&auction_file_id=38

CHAMPAGNE FOR THE HAIR

A hair specialist has told one of his lady customers (says our London correspondent) that she must not brush her hair at all, but must comb it with a rather coarse comb if it gets untidy, and rub the scalp with a velvet pad or a piece of chamois leather. The brush now has the reputation of spoiling the hair and thinning it, pulling it out by the roots. About half an hour should be spent nightly using the velvet pad or the pad of chamois. Then champagne is the latest announced liquid in which the hair should be washed. The first process consists in ridding the hair of grease by rubbing in the white of eggs for blonde hair, and by using the yolks for dark tresses. This should be rinsed off, and then the champagne bath has to follow, while red wine—preferably Burgundy of good body is recommended for tinting dark hair or rich auburn, and lemon juice is considered to be good for washing white hair, or hair that is on the way to getting white, as the lemon juice will by degrees impart a silvery hue. Soaking the head in champagne is said to impart a soft golden tint, and drying in the sun is recommended if there happens to be any sun available. If not, it should be fanned dry in a warm room.

New Zealand Herald 12 April 1911: p. 10

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  Mrs Daffodil has always felt that those historic personages who bathed in expensive liquids were being ostentatiously wasteful; certainly the Hall butler, Mr Sterling-Kidd, would tender his resignation if Her Ladyship were to demand the Bollinger Vielles Vignes ’04 merely to rinse her hair.

A more economical, if prosaic, solution is found here:

Colored Hair Powders.

Almost every woman has a tendency to wash her hair too often in order to keep it soft and fluffy and glossy. It’s a great mistake, for in the end, it tells upon the hair’s good health.
But, you will say, after one or two weeks, my hair becomes so oily and flat, it packs so it can not be dressed nicely—I know, there are dozens of objections. I get them in nearly every mail.

The solution is to use powder between shampoos, to dry up this extra oil, to keep the hair thick and fluffy, and to cleanse it. You’ll say to this—powder can cleanse only the hair not the scalp. That’s true, but the scalp is so well protected it doesn’t need too frequent a cleansing. You’ll say more seriously—powder leaves the hair dusty, it’s almost impossible to get it out, it takes off all the gloss.

Not colored hair powders, which smart beauty shops sell at the most exorbitant rates—and only a few shops at that. You probably won’t be able to buy colored powder, but you can make it yourself by following these simple directions.

If you’ve dark hair, make an exceedingly strong pint of coffee and strain and let it get cold. Add lumps of laundry starch, let them dissolve, pour off the liquid, let it drain and dry. Crush up the colored starch, until soft and free of lumps, add sachet powder to do away with any odor, and keep ready for use. If you’ve light hair, try strong tea.

Then dust the hair liberally with powder, rub through, shake and brush out. I’ve had all sorts of trouble with oily hair, and this I find the best remedy.

Fort Worth [TX] Star-Telegram 29 December 1922: p. 10

And, if money is no object or if one is Empress Eugenie, golden hair powder is a charming way to lighten the hair.

GOLDEN HAIR POWDER

 Powder d’or was first worn by the Empress Eugenie, at the Festival of Boeuf Gras, 1860. Since then this pretty conceit, as the wave of fashion always does, has extended from its centre to the circle of all who pretend to move within its sphere.

The best quality consists of crushed gold leaf, the common kind, or “speckles,” is nothing more than a coarse bronze powder.

The Art of Perfumery and the Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants, George William Septimus Piesse, 1878: p. 331

For the extreme fad of bleaching one’s hair, see this post.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

The White-Hair Fad: 1904

Portrait of a young lady, Gustave Jacquet, [1846-1909]

It was supposed at first that London society’s sudden fondness for white hair was only a revolt against colored wigs and dyes, and that it would result in giving Nature a chance at last, ushering in an era of less paint, powder and enamel and maybe a little less artificiality and deception generally. But what really has happened is a manifestation of feminine human nature queer enough to be worthy of the attention of future historians. No sooner was it known among the elect that white hair had become fashionable than young women whose hair scarcely had begun to turn gray got on the track of a Paris chemist who had discovered the trick of making the hair white artificially, and now that chemist is in a fair way of becoming a millionaire.

It was the genuine attractiveness of the “gray-hair” fashion—the fashion led by the smartest American women in London society—that brought about this “white-hair” fad. With their gray hair artistically dressed the beauty of handsome society women well on in the 40’s was much enhanced. Under the influence of softly powdered hair suggestions of wrinkles or little lines about the eyes faded away, leaving the face smooth and round and soft. Mrs. George Cornwallis West (Lady Randolph Churchill), Mrs Jack Leslie and Mrs Moreton Frewen, well known as the three Jerome sisters, and now greater favorites even than when their mother first brought them over from New York, are all in the swim of the latest fashion. Their hair is beautifully and naturally white. Lady Coleridge, widow of the lord chief justice, is another of the white-haired sisterhood. Though not more than 30, Mrs. Hall Walker also wears her hair white ad looks like one of the beautiful marquises painted by Jacquet. So many others in the ultra-smart set followed the fashion that when it began to be known that hair could be whitened artificially there was a rush for the treatment.

The Infernal Machine for blanching the hair.

Not in London, but in Paris, is the fashionable blanching done, and at the cost of $50 a time. Arriving in the French capital, the woman of fashion must go to the salon of the coiffeur-chemist and there spend the greater part of a day. First her tresses are unfastened, well brushed, cut and singed. Then they are washed with egg julep so that no other chemical preparation shall clash with the fumes which come later. The hair is slowly dried by fanning and the client then passes into a small boudoir, dons a long wrap which covers up her gown and takes a seat in a large arm chair. The coiffeur-chemist places on her head a large bag made of india-rubber, which fits closely around the nape of the neck, up over the ears and across the forehead. This bag is fitted with a thermometer, which the coiffeur watches carefully, as it registers the heat of the fumes which enter the bag by means of a long india-rubber pipe from a wonderful apparatus that contains the chemicals. For exactly one hour and a half is the fair client under this treatment, the chemist busy all the time regulating the fumes and testing results. When the bag is at last taken off the hair that was dark and rich with coloring is found to be as white as snow.

But the patient is not yet free. In another room she reclines upon a couch with her hair spread out like a huge fan upon a table at the head of the couch. In this position she is required to drink milk and to rest for two hours, with her maid in constant attendance At the end of that time her hair is dressed and her maid is instructed how to put on the white paste at the roots when coloring again begins to make its appearance in the growing hair. Warnings are given as to the disastrous effect of using heated curling tongs or wavers on the newly blanched hair, and the superiority of soft white tissue curl papers is impressed on her before the client leaves the salon. What the ultimate effect of this hair-blanching may be time alone will prove. For the present it is considered dainty, chic, extremely smart and becoming, and that to the fashionable woman is more than sufficient.

The Plain Dealer [Cleveland, OH] 13 March 1904: p. 36

An Elegant Lady in a Black Hat, Gustave Jacquet. Her hair is probably powdered

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  Mrs Daffodil believes that we may lay the blame for this extraordinary fad squarely at the feet of the late French Queen, Marie Antoinette. The Gilded Age was enamoured of gilded Louis Quatorze furniture, panellings and paintings looted from French chateaus and installed in Newport villas, as well as rather loose versions of “18th century fashions,” a la Dresden Shepherdess fancy dress. Bals poudre were a popular entertainment where participants powdered their hair to aristocratic whiteness and it seems probable that this influence suggested the white-hair fad.

Truly there is nothing new under the fashionable sun, Mrs Daffodil noted articles last year proclaiming that grey hair is “hot” and discussing a fad among the young for dyeing the hair grey or white. For example, there is an entertainer, “Lady Ga Ga,” (who, Mrs Daffodil can confidently assert, does not appear in Debrett’s) who bleached her dark hair to a “sparkly white blond” and posted step-by-step instructions to her followers who wished to imitate her. 

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

Dressing the Hair of the Dead: 1888

DRESSING THE HAIR OF THE DEAD.

A Professional Talks About Her Uncanny Occupation.

‘I was only 12 years old,’ said a prominent lady hair-dresser of this city, ‘when I was called on by the friends of an old lady who had died to come and dress her hair.’

‘And did you go?’

‘No; I ran and hid myself under a bed and stayed there a whole afternoon. Although I loved her and had often dressed her hair when she was alive, I could not bear the idea of doing it after death. But I have done many heads since for dead persons, and, while I do not like it, I have a professional pride in making them look well for the last time.’

‘It must be very distasteful to you.’ ‘

‘Not always. It comes in the way of my business, and naturally my employees shrink from going. Sometimes we have a call through the telephone to come to such a number and dress a lady’s hair. One of the young ladies will be sent with curling irons, pomades, hair-pins and other things, only to find that the lady is a corpse. The girl will not nor cannot undertake it, and I go myself. There is only the front hair to crimp and arrange becomingly. One day last week I dressed Mrs __’s hair for the last time. She was young and very pretty, and looked as if asleep. The hair does not die, so that it is easily arranged. When it is a wig or crimped I have it sent to the store, and when it is dressed, take it to the house and put it on. Let me tell you something that happened lately. A lady died in this city who wore a grey wig. I dressed it and put it on. You can just think how surprised I was when, a couple of weeks later, a member of the family came in here and tried to sell it to me. She said they had taken it off just before the casket was closed for the last time.’

‘And did you buy it?’

‘Buy it? Certainly not. It is not very long since a man came in and offered me a number of switches of different shades and colour. I would not buy them, and sent for a policeman, as I thought he had probably stolen them. But as it turned out, they came from an undertaker’s and were the unclaimed property of strangers who had been given pauper burial.’

‘Is it customary to dress the hair of the dead?’

‘It is. I have some customers who have exacted a solemn promise from me that I will dress their hair when they die and make it look natural and becoming. I have even been sent for by those who had only a few hours to live and taken my instructions from their dying lips.’

‘Is the process the same as with the living?’

‘Just the same, except that I do not arrange the back hair in all cases. But sometimes the hair is dressed entirely, just as it would be for an evening party. And I frequently furnish new switches, crimps, or bangs, at the request of relatives who want no pains spared.’

‘And are you not afraid?’

Madame shrugged her handsome shoulders.

‘It is a lonesome task,’ she said, ‘and it certainly does make me nervous. Once the corpse opened her eyes and looked at me as a lady who was holding a lamp went out of the room in a moment, leaving me with a lock of hair in the crimping-pins. A gust of wind blew the door after her, and I was in the dark alone with the dead women. I think if she had not opened the door just at the moment she did I should have fallen insensible,’—

Detroit [MI] Free Press 1 January 1888: p. 4

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil does not have a high opinion of either the intelligence or the moral scruples of the repellent relatives who offered to sell the dead lady’s wig to the hairdresser. They might at least have dyed it so that it was less recognizable, or, more sensibly, taken it to a different coiffeuse, if they needed to offset funeral expenses.

Wigs and chignons for the living were, however, often made of what was termed “dead hair,” or hair cut from corpses. These corpses might be unfortunates from the Workhouse or paupers destined for Potter’s Field; working girls of the streets, murderers or their victims.  If not a black market, it was certainly sub-fusc.  Medical men issued stern warnings about the diseases and insects that might be found in “dead hair,” and argued for prohibiting any hair except that from the living in hair-pieces. These warnings were widely ignored. In 1911, for example, hair from Chinese who died in the Manchurian plague, was being imported by Germany and England without so much as a murmur from the trade authorities.

For more mortuary professions for ladies, please see this link, and this, about a lady undertaker. You will find more information on the popular and material culture of Victorian mourning in The Victorian Book of the Dead, by Chris Woodyard and under the “Mourning” tab on this blog.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

Saturday Snippets: 10 August 2013: A chimney-sweep panic, mourning playing cards, a Woman in Black spectre, canine furniture, telephone girl hair fashions

Lately, while two men were employed in the interior of a family vault, a strange figure, black from head to foot, glided into the sepulchral mansion; the man whose eye first caught the spectre became instantly petrified with horror, his speech forsook him, and it was only by a vigorous effort that he could job the elbow of his fellow, and point to the object of alarm. Like the shock from the electric spark, the terror was communicated by the touch, but the symptoms were not so strong in the second as the first subject; taking courage, he addressed the ghost in a faltering accent, and said, “in the name of God, what is your errand to this world?”

“I have no errand: I was going past, and thought I would just look in.”

These grateful sounds instantly dispelled the illusion, and the workmen recognized in him the well-known voice of a neighboring chimney sweeper. Steubenville [OH] Herald 18 July 1817: p. 4 

The newest thing in mourning is that girls whom death bereaves of their accepted lovers may wear mourning. It consists, however, of no more than a black ribbon, where it loosely fastens her pretty gown in front, or it may appear in any part of the toilet. Another dainty fancy of these almost-not-quite widows it to dye their hair black. At all events, it was done in one case—that of a comment-courting actress. She had for several years bleached her hair to a light yellow, but on the death of her affianced husband she turned her hair to jet by means of dye, and in the same way blackened her eyebrows. Ah, well, if women were not peculiar, their mere beauty might become insipid to their adorers. Whimsicality makes them piquant. I saw two girls seated together and they wore such pretty dresses! One had an open album, and was gazing in sentimental grief at a photograph of her lately-deceased cousin.“Oh, I loved Jim very dearly,” she said, “and I mourn him as for a brother.” “Why don’t you put on mourning for him?” the other asked.“Because,” and she turned her tear-dimmed eyes on her friend, “my eyes are a light gray, and black would surely spoil their effect. Jim had exquisite taste in colors, and he would not, I’m sure wish me to wear anything unbecoming to my eyes.” St. Paul [MN] Daily Globe 22 January 1888: p. 12

FACED THE “SPECTRE” WITH A HAT PIN

Lock Haven Bug-a-Boo Met Its Match in a Plucky Girl

Special to The Inquirer.

Lock Haven, Pa., Oct. 3 For two weeks or more hundreds of men and boys, armed with revolvers, guns, dirks, and clubs, have been watching nightly for the human Will-o’-the-Wisp, called the Woman in Black, which has been bobbing up in dark places to frighten women and girls, and the police force has been augmented by several specials with the hope of catching the “spectre.” But it remained for a demure miss of sixteen to put the ogre to flight, and all she used was a hat pin.

When the “Woman in Black” stepped from a dark place last night and confronted a trio of girls, this miss stood her ground, and when she seized her hat pin the “Woman in Black,” who is believed to be a man, fled in the other direction. Philadelphia [PA] Inquirer 4 October 1899: p. 6

 An infantry private in a Delaware regiment has been “devilled” into quitting his company and wants redress, but cannot find a method. An indictment for militia’s mischief might lie. The Mt. Sterling [KY] Advocate 31 March 1891: p. 7 

TELEPHONE GIRLS MUST GIVE UP PUFFS AND RATS

Also They Must Quit Chewing Gum and Enunciate More Distinctly.

Chicago, Dec. 18. Puffs, rats, curls and also transformations—whatever they are—will be shorn from the heads of the thousands of telephone girls under a new rule just promulgated. They are also forbidden to chew gum during business hours.

The branch managers had reported that the operators spent too much time replacing loosened wisps of tresses when their fingers should have been busy with the plugs.

Here is the way the operators were instructed not to talk over the telephone:

“Numberpleeze.” “Phone’s takenout.” No fault is found with their enunciation of “Drop a nickel, please.” Fort Wayne [IN] Journal Gazette 19 December, 1909: p. 49 

Boston Mourning Cards.

The other day a very dainty young woman in black, with mourning veil so draped as to set off her shapely head and neck to advantage, entered a large stationery store on Washington Street, and said sweetly to a clerk behind the counter:

“Do you have all kinds of mourning cards?” “Yes’m; we have the cards, and can get them engraved for you.” “Oh, I don’t want the kind they get engraved—I want playing cards, you know.”

“Mourning playing cards!”

“Why, yes; don’t you think they would be real nice and tasty?”

The clerk was obliged to confess that the trade hadn’t yet reached the point of supplying playing cards with mourning borders for bereaved lovers of whist and poker, and the lady left the store disappointed. Boston Record Fresno [CA] Republican Weekly 11 March, 1887: p. 2

CHARLES LAMB.

It is told of Charles Lamb, that one afternoon, returning from a dinner-party, having taken a seat in a crowded omnibus, a stout gentleman subsequently looked in, and politely asked, “All full inside?”

“I don’t know how it may be with the other passengers,” answered Lamb, “but that last piece of oyster-pie did the business for me.” Cyclopædia of Literary and Scientific Anecdote, edited by William Keddie, 1859 

Footstool May be Used as Dog Kennel

Paris, Jan. 2. The Parisienne’s love of canine pets has led to the invention of a pretty little piece of furniture. This is a small footstool of gilt wood, upholstered in material in keeping with the hangings of the apartment. The stool is hollowed and padded inside and is furnished with a small door in one side, and serves for a comfortable nook for a small dog. Parisian hostesses can thus keep pets with them when receiving friends. St. Louis [MO] Republic 3 January 1904: p. 12 

English Sparrows at A Dollar Apiece

Delaware, N.J. The residents of this section have been investing heavily in French canary birds, and now have as fine a lot of English sparrows on hand as they could wish for.

A couple of men came through here at few days ago and sold the birds at $1 apiece. They promised to return in ten days and refund the money if the birds were not satisfactory.

They left explicit directions not to give the birds a bath under a week, for fear they would take cold. When the bath was given, the coloring matter washed off, and a fine lot of sparrows was the result. New York World. Cleveland [OH] Leader 18 October 1903: p. 24

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: The story of the Woman in Black “bug-a-boo” put to flight by a plucky girl reminds Mrs Daffodil of the “Woman in Black” panics so often found in the American papers and occasionally in those of the better-regulated British press. These panics were the result of sightings or visions of ghastly females in widow’s weeds, gliding around in the dark. They were often described as unnaturally tall (leading to a suspicion that they were really men) and had the ability to disappear inexplicably. There were a great many of them terrifying the populace in Pennsylvania in the 1880s through the 1910s.  Those scientists who study social movements would probably say that the apparitions were some visual manifestation of  financial crashes and coal-mining disasters. If one asked the inhabitants of Pennsylvania who had experienced these panics, they would delicately suggest that such scientists were talking through their hats and that everyone knew that the black-clad  creatures were actually modern banshees.

There is a chapter on the Women in Black in the upcoming book, The Ghost Wore Black: Ghastly Tales from the Past.

You will find the two-part post about a Woman in Black panic in Massillon, Ohio here and here.