The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1876-02-01
Concerning Hair.

Ihe most sensible freak-for doubtless it is
only freak, and not settled purpose-in
which Our Lady of Fashion has INDUCED for
a long time is the latitude she gives her vota-
ries in regard to the wearing of their hair.
The only condition she has made is that the
hair shall be worn so as to reveal and not
conceal the natural shape of the head. If
this rule only be adhered to each woman has
the privilege of arranging her locks in the
manner best suited to the contour of her
face. They may be worn in coil or braid,
massed low down in the neck or worn as
high as possible, twisted in ''door-knob" or
other bunch, or plated and then loosened
out into the ripples to which the previous
confinement gives birth. Each woman may
have fashion of her own, and arrange her
tresses in the way most becoming to her.
OF course the styles greatly favor those who
are SO fortunate as to have well-shaped heads,
but they are honestly entitled to the advan-
tage which nature has given them. The
fashions have certainly been neat and grace
full, and so comfortable that women tell US in
an expressive bit of slang that they are
'letting their hair take a rest"
The sensible and pretty styles now in vogue
ought to last; but there come vague hints
that the rats and mice and such small deer
which have infested the feminine head for so
many years are about to come back again,
and that all women, even those with locks as
luXuriant as Godiva's and heads as we'll
shaped as any that Phidias or Praxitiles
chiseled, are to be required to wear hot, un.
healthy and uncleanly masses of false hair.
There is some excuse for those who "thatch
their poor thin roofs with burthens of the
Dead" but none for those who have luxuri.
ant hair of their own, unless they hope by
chance to fId in the huge masses they
buy the three hairs from the beast
Amoronthologosp which Reynard
told Miss Magpie would assure to their
possessor youth and beauty forever, But
women should bear in mind that these
false contrivances take from hair all its ro-
nance. Genuine hair is glorious thing, a
thing to be ''petted and jewelled and ca
| ressed." We have it ON apostolic authority
that long hair is the glory of woman, and
through the woof of all literature, and art,
and history, runs golden thread of hair.
The tresses of Berenice were thought worthy
to be put among the stars, and became con-
stellation there. Though the capillary at
traction may not be as strong as set forth in
the oft-quoted lines from Pope, yet it is suf-
ficiently strong to bewitch the senses of
men-but the hair must be genuine. Very
| likely in the far-away times women played
strange tricks with their hair, and those who
lacked long tresses called in the aid of art to
supply the deficiency; but there is no reason
for believing that Greek and Roman women
| piled great braids and coils upon the tops of
their heads just in the place where so much
hair ought not to be.
One feminine caprice, it is true, has come
to us from the Romans-the fashion of blonde
hair. The Roman ladies, despite the objur-
| cations of Ovid, bought the hair of German
| and Gallo women, and made of it blonde
wigs which they wore. From these sources
| ever since have come the tresses which
'seem like fine gold," and the peasant girls
of Brittany have sold their hair for two thou.
sand years. But even the sophisticated Ro-
man ladies did not bleach their dark locks
| with ammonia and so efface their beauty
| possibly because they did not know how. 1t
was left for the Nineteenth Century, which
has been called the century of blondes, to do
| that. The caprice originated, if tradition
may be trusted, a score of years ago with a
| French actress who wearied of her dark
beauty, and so had the fancy of making her.
self blonde for change.
1t must be confessed that in romance and
art the blonde has had the preference, the
poets and painters having generally given her
! their support-perhaps because gold is so
| good descriptive epithet and SO admirable a
color to light up the canvas. But these
judges have been divided. and the battle
royal between blonde and brunette has been
carried on through the centuries, sometimes
with the advantage to the one, sometimes to
the other. If the painters of Italy and Flan-
ders have usually pictured the one, the au.
thority of Murillo, Vandyck and Antonio Mo-
70 has been thrown for the other. The poets
are more evenly divided. Sadi, tie Persian,
apostrophizes his mistress thus: ''Deck thy.
| self in thy hair, will love thee like the night
and in thy presence 1 will forget the day."
The Arabs admiringly sing of black hairs that
1utter like the ravens wing; and of the
Egyptian maid with tress of whose hall
borne to his feet by the waves of the Nile The
Pharaoh fell in love we are told that the
blackness of her locks was as the darkness o
night. The Greek poets were divided il
their allegiance, one singing of hair "blacF
and living like the cicala," another of "hon
ey-colored'' hair. But their high goddesse
were, with one exception, blonde. Athen'
was notably the blue-eyed maid. Yet Aphro
dite, whom they picture as black-eyed, may
well be an Offset to all the others. Still there
is doubt il the sea born goddess rose from
the waves enwrapped in dusky mantle o.
hair, fo- one speaks of her as the golden We
nus, and another paints her as all dishevellet
with light Proserpine, the "fair flower
whom Dis plucked, may, in spite of the con
ventional epithet, be supposed to have beel
dark or else in strange discord with her MARTA
surroundings, though her mother, Ceres, hat
hair like ripe corn. In their lesser immortal
the Greeks wavered. Leda is pictured as
dark beauty, but Helen and Daphne wer'
fair. The Circe of Homer was ga dreat
goddess, geaming-haired," but Cassandr
was dark, as was the Inflated daughter o
Agamemnon. Pindar was partial to dark
haired women, but the other poets favored
the fair ones.
Rome patterned after Greece. Virgil
Camilla was fair woman, and Horace sing
only of blondes: but Ovid gives mead of prais
to brown women. The brunettes will no
care to hear that Messalina was brown, bu
they will be reconcled at thought of Cleopa
ira with her "strong toll of grace" 1t
not improbable that the golden hair of tn
Latin poets was the flaming gold of tn
rousse, for we are told that the Roman wo
men sometimes gave their hair a fiery ting
the better to express the order of their senti
ments. Something different was the warn
| Venetian tone of the Italian painters, tin