WOMEN AND WIGS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIV, Issue 14006, 10 March 1920, Page 2

WOMEN AND WIGS.

. v . (By A. if. Drysdale.) Lord .Halsburv,-w-as inaccurate, by. the by, when, : adrriit'ting that a woman -had sat on the "Woolsack and heard causes, he informed the House of" Lords that she had ben obliged :to adjourn the proceedings and go away to. become the mother of Edward the First. It was Eleanor's daughter Catherine, not her son Edward, who was thus born' upon the "Woolsack, if one may _speak'in the sense in which Disraeli claimed to have been born in a library.

But our only woman Lord .Chancellor, the perverse and unjust Eleanor'of Provence, whom Londoners abhor red as a witch, T have drugged in by the hair of the head, as it were, merely'as an introduction to a few remarks on the vexed discussion of wigs and whether they will be worn by the coming women bar-' risters, the coming »;omen judges, and the coming women occupants of the "Woolsack and of the Speaker's chair. What Eleanor wore when she presided in the. Aula Regia J. cannot say, though it should be easy enough to .ascertain, but that the costume did not wig I am quite'surei, and I am going to suggest that the next woman Chancellor and the whole woman Bar should follow so eminent a precedent in this respect. It will be no less than poetic justice' if women should be • instrumental in abolishing the wig. "It cam wi a hiss and it will gang wi' a lass," as the dying father of Mifry Queen of Scots said, speaking of another headgear—-the-Crown of the Stuarts —when they told him she bad been born! For it.was probably a bald-headed Egyptian lass, now in her mjimmy some- thousands oi via is. who brought lit wigs. But sven if in these times are any baldheaded lasses, Queen Elizabeth, who had eighty changes -of tresses- —all her own. if wo are to-believe the contemporary poets-r-showed them a, better \vay| Indeed, Queen Elizabeth knew the wig as little as Queen Eleanor, for, though it is -ancient elsewhere, it is an upstart in England, and was unknown before the Restoration, and the lawyers were among the last of our countrymen to take to it. The ~ Kfeautiful locks of Louis XIV. set the fashion; : for the Paris dandies who had net Mich locks of their own were iflad to get them by way of wigs, and the English Cavaliers who had lost their long hair by age or by Cromyivell. took to the substitute as to second nature. Soon everybody of any pretensions was bewigged. Only a. few eminent lawyer* lifted their own heads coif-covered or skuli-capped—above the whitening flood. Chief Justice Hale is shown in his portrait in the library of Lincoln's Inn wearing ii cap, and he ,had. indeed, no patience with counsel who affected the new adornment, regarding them not as crave lawyers but as coxcombs. Sir Thomas Street, another common-law iudge, died 12.years after the admirable Hale, and he. too, held out against wigs to the end. wearing always on the bench the ancient, the more English, and the more significant coif can. Even in the reign of Queen Anne, the wig's golden age. when there was an appropriate wig for every rank and every profession—who forgets the wig of John Gilpin, the draper?— Lord Five per Cow per? the grand-uncle of John Gilpin's creator, and .surely the only holder of the "Great Seal ever tried for murder, (pushed aside the wig in favor of bis own cherished locks. But the Queen would have none of it. "The world would say that I have given the seals to a boy." she insisted; for Cowper. little over 40. before he disguised himself in the venerable wig looked even younger.

George 111., a great stickler, when thi' ivst of the world had given up wigs, would not hear of the indecency 6'f his judges or bishops going into general society, or, indeed, anywhere, without Their heads so hidden; The pictures of Queen's Victoria's Coronation show the Archbishop of Canterbury in a wig—probably for the very last time. I Inly lawyers (including judges), the Speaker, and the Clerks of Parliament now wear wigs, a"nd they only in the course of business. Most of them would be glad to i be delivered from such a fardel, under which they do, in very truth, as Hamlet says, "grunt and sweat." I have myself seen the late Justice Grantham try many oases without liis wig, and in the dog days counsel are often permitted to plead wigless. Wigs, then, are not indispensable to justice. Before wigs came in coifs or caps were worn by the judges, and hats by the Lord Chancellor and.the Speaker. Even then, there was occasional controversy about the head cover. At the trial of Charles J. .in "Westminster Hall,

"Whore England's Monarch once uncovered sat, And Bradshaw bullied in a broadbrimmed hat," the President, as a judge, should have worn a coif. He chose to wear a hat, and history lorry .reverberated with high debate on the meaning of so striking a departure from use and wont, lint whether it be to go back to hats or coil-caps, J hope the women with their new broom will sweep away the wigs. One farther piece of head knowlodge I would communicate to them before I have done—all the Inns of Court have stringent statutes against the wearing of long hair by the students.