Some Revolutionaries and their wigs

Wigs in the Early Revolution

The Revolution from the first involved issues of dress. The controversy which surrounded the opening of the Estates-General on 5th May 1789 highlighted the antiquated costumes of the three Estates.  As one anonymous deputy remarked, the dress code underlined the puerility of Court etiquette and degraded occasion into a "mascarade indécente". (Quoted Ribeira, p.46).  The sombre black uniform of the Third Estate served to underscore its inferior status. Some deputies refused to conform and wore ordinary clothes, even coloured coats.   On 15th October 1789 the Constituent Assembly formally voted to abandon all uniform; a few days later the obligation to wear clerical dress was also lifted.  David chose to depict participants in the Tennis Court Oath in English style suits and greatcoats.  Among the deputies, as on the streets, there was sartorial confusion.  The English visitor Mary Berry, wrote of the Assembly in Paris in 1790 that she had never seen "such a set of shabby, ill-dressed, strange-looking people".
Miss Berry's Journal (1865) p.217-8.

https://archive.org/details/extractsofjourna01berruoft/page/216/mode/2up

Wigs at first remained neutral in meaning.  The powdered wig, like the sword, was a symbol of nobility, but it also formed part of the everyday attire of the lawyers and well-to-do bourgeois of the Third Estate.  Amy Freund (2008)  has studied the series of portraits of deputies engraved by Nicolas-Francois Levachez  from 1789 onwards; many posed in their ordinary street clothes; the famous farmer-deputy Michel Gérard affected rural simplicity with his simple brown coat and bare head.  However, the majority,  still wore wigs or else their own curled and powdered hair.


References

Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion in the French Revolution (Batsford, 1988)

Amy Freund, "The legislative body:  print portraits of the National Assembly, 1789-1791",  Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2008, Vol. 41(3) p.337-358. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30053554?seq=1

More notable wigwearers

Here are a few more anecdotes concerning notable 18th-century wig-wearers. The following is translated / summarised from my latest favourite source of trivia, Sébastien Feuillet de Conches's Causeries d’un curieux.  Feuillet de Conches (1798-1887) was a diplomat, writer and formidable collector of all sorts of "stuff": paintings, books and curiosities of all kinds. 

Voltaire's wig

p.250: Two men, Bachaumont and Voltaire, persisted under Louis XV,  even, in the case of Voltaire, under Louis XVI, in wearing wigs from the bygone era of Louis XIV - the perruque classique à cinq écheveaux or even the cinq lauriers, invented by M.de Nevers (1). Voltaire arrived in Paris to stay with the marquis de Villette on the last day of January 1778 but he only undertook his first full "toilette" at the end of March.
"He had a red coat trimmed with ermine ; a great wig à la Louis XIV, black, without powder, his lean face  so buried in it that one saw only his two eyes sparkling like coals.  His head was surmounted by a red cap in the shape of a crown, which seemed to be merely balanced there." [Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets, 28th March 1778.]

An hour after his arrival two months previously he had gone "jauntily and on foot" , to pay a visit to the comte d'Argental on the quai d'Orsay. He was so oddly dressed -  wrapped in a vast pelisse, his head in a woollen wig surmounted by a red fur-trimmed bonnet - that little children had taken him for a carnival character ("chienlit") and followed him shouting and taunting. [Mémoires secrets, 2nd February 1778].

(1) According to Grimm, the duc de Nevers invented a style of long wig, which was imitated  only by Bachaumont and Voltaire: "of the three wearers, only the last now persists.".
Correspondance litt., Vol. VII, June  1771 

[Voltaire's old-fashioned wigs were much remarked upon by visitors to Ferney:  The Duchess of Northumberland described his "small well-combed dark grizzle tie-wig without powder". Boswell at Christmas 1764 found him in "a slate-blue fine frieze greatcoat nightgown and a three-knotted wig"] 


The wigs of Rousseau and Maupertius

p.250  Rousseau adopted a little perruque à trois marteaux

p.251:  At his reception to the Académie française  Maupertius famously sported a short round wig composed of red hair with powdered yellow curls.  See Collini, Mon séjour aupres de Voltaire (1807) p.36.
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k86428j/f56.image


The wigs of M. de Sartine

Sartine by  Joseph Boz, 1787
Musée Lambinet

p.253-4: It was hairdresser Le Gros (author of L'Art de la coiffure) who had the honour of working for the lieutenant general of police M. de Sartine, Secretary of State for the Navy at the start of the reign of Louis XVI. As far as fashions in hair were concerned, Sartine was the most coquettish man of the day and prided himself on having the best styled head in France.  He had a wig for the morning, a wig for the council chamber, a wig for the evening.  He even had a wig for good luck (a bonne fortune) with five little floating curls. Three wigmaker "valets de chambre" each had their department under the direction of Le Gros, who  alone enjoyed the privilege of dressing the hair of such a difficult and discerning master.  His hair was curled in the morning; his hair was curled in the evening.  If some accident disarranged the economy of his head during the day, the iron was in the fire (possibly literally?).  It was said that, when he was lieutenant of police, and had a criminal to interrogate, he would don a terrible wig with five serpent's tails which made him look like the three judges of Hell.  They nicknamed this instrument of anticipated torture la Sartine  or l'Inexorable.

[See also, the comments in Métra's Anecdotes secrètes: 
M. de Sartine has an incredible weakness of fine, well-curled and powdered wigs.  His collection of wigs - in-folio, in quarto, in-duodecimo, large and small format, some more square than others - amounts to sixty or eighty of the finest examples and the best makers. (Anecdotes secrètes, 30 October 1779)
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kg4JAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA51#v=onepage&q&f=false

Notice for the portrait of Sartine:
https://www.versailles.fr/fileadmin/user_upload/Versailles-fr/Culture/Etablissements_culturels/Mus%C3%A9e_Lambinet/objets_du_mois/portrait-A-de-Sartine_09.2018.pdf ]


Diderot on the President de Brosses

p.254: Diderot could not get over the immense wigs which weighed down the magistrates of the Parlement of Paris and the provincial parlements. His correspondant Charles de Brosses made fun of the Doge of Genoa and his senators hidden under their vast perruques quarrées.  However, when he became president of the Parlement of Dijon, he too found himself obliged to don a heavy wig. Diderot found it impossible to take him seriously in this absurd costume: 

 The President de Brosses, who enjoys my respect in his ordinary clothes, makes me die of laughter in his habit de palais.  How can one look at him, without the corners of one's mouth turning up? His jolly little head, with it ironic and satiric expression, is lost in an immense forest of hair which overwhelms him;  and this forest descends left and right to take possession of three-quarters of the rest of his small figure. (Comment in the Salon of 1765).


Reference

Félix-Sébastien Feuillet de Conches, Causeries d’un curieux vol.2 (1862), p.250-54.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=D4RAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA250#v=onepage&q&f=false

A satire on wigs

 

L'enciclopédie perruquiere . Ouvrage curieux a l'usage de toutes sortes de têtes, enrichi de figures en taille-douce. Par M Beaumont, coëffeur dans les Quinze-Vingts

A Amsterdam. Et se trouve a Paris, chez l'auteur. Et chez Hochereau, libraire à la descente du Pont Neuf au Phenix. M. DCC. LVII



The Encyclopédie perruquière was a jeu d'esprit of 1757 by the lawyer and satirist Jean-Henri Marchand. Intended as a parody of the more pedestrian articles in the Encyclopédie, the work featured  illustrations of no less than forty-five (largely spurious) wigs.

 According to Grimm the piece was forgotten in eight days (Correspondance littéraire, January 1766). However, it was described in the Année littéraire  as one of the best "pieces of buffoonery" to appear for a long time and it was well-enough received for Marchand to publish a second edition in 1766. Certainly the joke would not have been lost on Marchand's readers: there was now a wig for every occasion, every profession, and every type of physiognomy.

Wigs of the Professions

The Church

The wearing of wigs by the clergy was almost universal by the beginning of the 18th century.  Several wigmakers in Paris already specialised in ecclesiastical wigs, notably M de la Roze in the rue Saint-André, who, according to a 1692 almanac, was renowned for his "perruques abbatiales" (Livre commode des adresses de Paris, p.40)

 The perruques d'abbé of the standard catalogue were short, simple affairs which differed from the bonnet laicque of the modest bourgeois  only by the addition of a slightly absurd tonsure. (The author of the Art du perruquier confides that this made them much more challenging to construct.)

Any moral reservations about clerical wigs would have disappeared from public view long ago had it not been for Jean-Baptiste Thiers's Histoire de perruques, published in 1692.  The redoubtable Thiers's irresistable mix of erudition and humour ensured that his work was reprinted and  referred to, even over a century later.  

Wigs from the Art du Perruquier and the Encyclopédie.

Plate from the Art du perruquier

The wigs of the mid-century are illuminated by two major technical publications, the Art du perruquier sponsored by the Académie des sciences, published in 1761 and the article "Perruquier" which appeared in Volume 12 of the Encyclopédie in December 1765. As the 19th-century historian of fashion Quicherat observed, the information for the Encyclopédie article was largely "furnished by the Corporation" (p.575-6). 

These quasi-official trade publications placed less emphasis that did Molé on the passing whims of the petits-maîtres. In the Art du perruquier Antoine Quarré observed that there were currently seven or eight basic types of wig available, some of which had gone out of vogue, though "like all fashions in France" they were likely to return to favour (p.6). The two sources both include engravings which showed the various different styles: these illustrations are very similar, even though the  plates for the Encyclopédie did not appear until 1771.The list of wigs is the same, save only that the Encyclopédie adds an extra, the perruque à cadogan. 

Non-literary sources confirm that these wigs do indeed represent the kind of choices available to respectable consumers, both in Paris and the provinces.  The Rouen wigmaker Le Tellier, whose mid-century account book has been studied by Michael Kwass, offered an array of shorter and neater wigs at a range of different prices. The cheapest was the perruque en bonnet - the simple round bob wig of the gentleman farmer, bourgeois, doctor or surgeon - at 12-20 livres. This was the wig that Rousseau adopted when he quit Parisian high society for the simple life of the countryside. The perruque à bourse, or bagwig, was also popular and inexpensive, although there were elegant versions as well.  Le Tellier's most expensive wig was a perruque à noeuds (27-35 livres), which featured knotted hair hanging down the back ( Kwass (2006) p.646-7)

Fashions in Wigs - Early 18th-century

Eighteenth-century men  had a strong sense of the growth of consumer choice and fashion in wigs.  

One of the main literary source for this era is the satirical "history of fashions"  by the Parisian barrister Guillaume François Roger Molé, written in 1773. Molé is concerned with the wigs worn by the trend-setters of the capital, the petits-maîtres, rather than those of ordinary men in the provinces.  He sees changing fashion as important, even in the first years of the century. The driving force was the Parisian wigmakers' corporation, whose power had been consolidated by the renewal of its statutes, and the creation of new licences in 1706 and 1714.  Constant revolutions in hairstyle gave it members new scope, since each demanded a different set of curls (p.123). "The number of curled styles was almost infinite.  Each year, each month, each year, each week produced a  new one.... (p.299): "Thanks to the Perruquiers, the heads of French petits-maîtres became little works of art, beautiful jewels". (p.298-9)  The growth of hairdressing was part of the same development; due to the inconvenience of maintaining one's own hair, it  added to rather than diminished the demand for false hair (p.299-300)


Wigs of the early 18th century

After the mid-1690s, the massive wigs of the Grand Siècle were already on the decline. Wigs ceased to extend over the chest and shoulders and were confined in bouchons, boudins, or in curls. The mass of hair on the back gradually decreased in volume.

Louis XIV's regulations of 1706 laid down set prices for wigs, which give a clue as to the styles current among the population at the time:

10 livres and below: common wigs, brown, short and without additions.  
10-30 livres: brown wigs à l'espagnole and à la cavalière [styles of full-length wig] and ecclesiastical wigs (perruques d'abbé).
30 livres and above:  wigs à l'espagnole and à la cavalière in other colours and generally perruques quarrées of all colour and length.
  [The perruque quarrée - "square wig" -represented a new style, still full length but flat on top. Also of note is the premium commanded by wigs "other than brown"]

To  observers like Molé, the collective sense of relief at the end of Louis XIV's long reign, was expressed by a general sloughing off of heavy periwigs:

Men of the court, Merchants, and Financiers judged that it was time to abdicate great heads of hair.  Louis XIV, who loved them so much, no longer existed: a young prince ascended the throne and in-folio wigs were disgraced.  New editions were made, which were more convenient, more portable....
(Molé: p.297-8).

The Regent, lover of pleasure, sumptuous celebrations and luxury in dress, soon banished the sad, lugubrious costumes of the old Court.  He was the first to rid himself of the old embarrassing and ridiculous perruque;  the style he substituted, whitened by powder and impregnated with beautiful odours, soon opened a new career of activity, interest and profit for the 850 wigmakers of Paris.  Some adopted point de Milan lace, some invented even more convenient fabrics;  all dedicated themselves to bringing elegance to a form of headwear that, until then had scarcely been more than a shapeless mass of horsehair.
("Perruque" in Dictionaire des sciences médicales  ed. Panckoucke,1820)


In fact full wigs persisted for formal attire until at least the mid-century although the trend was towards shorter variants. As the German writer Fredrich Nicolai later pointed out, the Regent himself is usually depicted in the relatively full perruque à l'espagnole, as were  members of his Court.(Nicolai, p.141) Senior soldiers and magistrates (those who "wanted to be taken seriously") also favoured long wigs. These more formal styles  were often associated with particular professions and had splendid names (perruque à la cavalière, à la financière, quarrée(carrée), nouée, à la naturelle).

Wig powder
Powdered white wigs were not completely unknown in the 17th century but it was in the Regency period that they became widespread.  According to Molé, although women had used hair powder, men had mostly contented themselves with washing and perfuming.   The petits-maîtres now began to appear with both their natural hair and wigs powered.  Moreover,  it became the practice not merely to mix powder into the hair but  to spread it profusely all over the head.  Soon this became the general fashion: "Men, women, infants, old people; all began to use powder; every head became white". Apart from a short phase in the 1750s, when blond and grey wigs briefly gained favour, heavily powdered white hair  remained the norm throughout the century.

Fashionable styles of the era:  

Knotted wigs - Perruques nouées
At the beginning of the century, writes Molé, the petits maîtres began to notice the inconvenience of large heavy wigs, even though wigmakers put much effort into making them light and comfortable.  The first departure was to divide the hair at the back and knot the two parts together in summer.  Gradually the knots became part of the wig and les perruques nouée were born.(Molé  p.296-7):

 Saint-Simon reports that, on the death of the prince de Condé in 1709, reluctant mourners showed their lack of respect by turning  up in "perruques nouées, poudrées de blanc".  Knotted wigs at this stage were clearly considered indecently informal.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=fW5OAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA132


Watteau's Enseigne de Gersaint, painted in 1720-21, captures a splendid fashion moment: the man on his knees to the right of the scene wears a gleaming white knotted wig,  complete with the central corkscrew or boudin, straight out of the plates of the Encyclopédie:

New styles demanded technical innovation in design. According to the Art du perruquier (1761),  flat wigs -  perruques quarrées and perruques nouées - required a  "toupet", an single expanse of flat hair which extended from the middle to the back of the head, usually made or stiffened with horsehair. (p.44).   Toupets were again at first considered informal but gained rapidly in respectability; the full  perruque quarrée was the preferred wig of judges throughout the 18th century.

Bagwigs - Perruques en bourse 
The greatest  innovation of the early 18th century was the adoption by the fashionable of military-style wigs tied into pigtails or "quenes",  above all "bagwigs" in which the hair was confined in a taffeta bag or bourse (sometimes also called a crapaud ie. a "toad".) These  perruques en bourse became so much a symbol of the age that they were commonly known as perruques à la régence.

Everyone (even the German wig historian Nicolai) concurred that the bagwig was a quintessentially French invention.  Frederick William of Prussia imposed the queue on his troops (and wore it himself); in France the Regent imposed the bourse on his cavalry.  This, thought Nicolai, was the first step towards diminishing the size of wigs (Nicolai, p. 141).  The consensus was that "bags" had originally been used for horse's tails half a century earlier.  By the 1710s they become common for the wigs of young officers, and soon entered general civilian attire (Quicherat, p.563).  According to Molé, such wigs were at first reserved for travel or for undress, or for wear during inclement weather, but soon became eminently respectable (Molé, p.119-20)  Walther's Manuel de toilette of 1776 confirms that  they were appreciated because of their convenient and rapidly adopted as part of fashionable dress (quoted Kwass, p.15) .  Nicolai remarks on the irony that a style invented for the army was universally adopted by the Courts of Europe (p.141).

 Bourses were typically of black gummed taffeta, with a rosette or bow of the same colour for decoration. Earlier example were square, medium sized and appeared to be full of hair - they were often stuffed with horsehair to achieve this effect.  Later bourses became narrower at the top and flatter (Quicherat, p. 563). A smart perruque à la régence classically featured ribbons which ended in a second bow tied under the chin.  Here is a young gent in just such a wig.....

Engraving after Nicolas Cochin showing dress of about 1725

The new short wigs were characteristically divided into three sections; two side pieces (sometimes known as "cadenettes") and a central portion, the queue proper, sweep back from the forehead to be tied at the nape of the neck.  The variants were endless;  the queue could be worn as a pony tail or plaited into a long thin "bout-de-rat". At one point in the 1720s men of fashion wore false hair intermingled with their own to produce long, thick queues. The sides could be curled or trimmed and shaped into flaps commonly known as "ears" (Quicherat, p.562-3).

English wigs with ridiculous "ears", from Bernard Lens, The Exact Dress of the Head (1725-6)
https://www.rct.uk/collection/924246/bernard-lens-head-dresses

The Art du perruquier explains that different types of mounts had to be employed,  depending on whether the wearer's ears were to be left showing: these were called montures pleines, montures à oreille and montures à demi-oreille. The monture à oreille was invented for the bag wig. Since it sat less firmly on the head, extra straps were required to keep the wig in place. (Art du perruquier (1761), p.22)



From the Mercure of 1730, we learn that, at this date, long wigs were no longer much worn by the fashionable.  It was already important for wigs to imitate nature: hair would be allowed to grow at the front and be combed into the wig to disguise the seam.  At this time dandies affected exaggerated "ears" called "oreilles de chien barbet" after the lop-eared barbet dogs.

Long "Perruques quarrées" are hardly in fashion at all, even among Magistrates, who now wear their wigs much shorter.  Crimped wigs no longer exist.  Wigmakers have lately become much more skilled in the art of imitating natural hair...indeed it is impossible not to be fooled, even close up...especially if one is prepared to wear one's own hair at the front combed up and mixed with the hair of the wig.  The so-called "mustard-seed" powder, which is used to excess, serves to hide the artifice still further.

Natural wigs, "en bourse" or "en queue", are generally in fashion, principally among the young.  They imitate nature well and cost very little;  but it has to be said that the type that let your ears show, known "ears of the Barbet Dog", are really ridiculous.

The Perruques à l'Espagnole [a sort of heavy periwig] are again not much in fashion;  such wigs are worn less long and are called Bonnets.  In Summer everyone wears them, some longer, others shorter.

Knotted wigs "à la cavalière" hold their own among serious people with no pretensions to youth.  There are also hunting wigs called "bichons";  these are a little longer than the "perruques d'abbé", tied behind with a ribbon and ending in a curl.

Then there are broken Wigs ("perruques brizées) or "three-piece wigs", that people who have their own hair wear when it is really cold.  These are most usually worn indoors to hide paper curlers.

Bourses for wigs are now being worn very wide and high, almost at the roots of the hair, so that some of the neck is uncovered.  Over the bourse is a large knot of gummed ribbon; a ribbon goes round the neck and ends under the chin....
Mercure, October 1730, p.2319-20.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=H4tQAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA2319#v=onepage&q&f=false

When the perruque en bourse became accepted formal wear,  new  casual styles were popularised.  In the 1740s the queue, with a ribbon  twisted and pulled tight around it, was  worn as long as possible. (Thus "ruban de queue" entered the French language to mean a distance that never seemed to end.  See Quicherat p.563) By about 1755 the horizontal curls at the side had been reduced to two layers and the ears could just be seen. 


Novelty wigs

Certain materials were prohibited by the statutes of the Corporation:  artificially bleached hair, hair of prohibited animals (most wigs included some horsehair), wool and cotton.  or fil-de-fer wigs. Most confrontations over banned products took place in the 1750s.  Perversely there was a fashion for wool wigs in Paris in the early 1750s.  At the same time fil-de-fer wigs made from silver or brass thread began to appear. According to Molé: 
Upon their appearance, alarm spread among the wigmakers. One must admit these hairstyles, actually hairpieces, took on a frightful exterior: they gained the imposing name of economical wigs and promised to cause neither pain nor embarrassment to those who adopted them. Rain, wind, hail, &c, they were able to defy them all: a single fil-de-fer wig sufficed for the most robust of men & would accompany him all the way to the grave.  (p.304-5)

In December 1750, in a landmark ruling,  the Lieutenant General ruled in favour of the guild officers' confiscation of a fil-de-fer wig.

Wigs made of glass and foliage were "pure  curiosities" (p.303)
One might suppose they didn't exist, but the Rochefort historian Pauline Bord, has found one for sale in a Paris antique shop.
Pauline Bord, "La coiffure masculine", Rochefort en histoire [blog] post of 10.06.2015.
https://rochefortenhistoire.wordpress.com/2015/06/10/la-coiffure-masculine/



References

Guillaume François Roger Molé, Histoire des modes françaises (1773),  p.251-310: "Histoire des perruques",
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EFJyyKoIgp8C
Entry for Molé in the Dictionnaire des journalistes:
http://dictionnaire-journalistes.gazettes18e.fr/journaliste/582-guillaume-mole

Christoph Friedrich Nicolai , Recherches historiques sur l'emploi des faux cheveux et des perruques dans les temps ancien et modernes (1801, French translation 1809).
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=DUdSgnyqwIMC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Jules Étienne Joseph Quicherat, Histoire du costume en France (1877)
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UUXaAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA658

The policeman and his wig

Portrait of Jean-Charles-Pierre Lenoir, Conseiller d'Etat and lieutenant général de police.
Engraving by N. Courteille, "en sanguine", 1778, Musée Carnavalet
http://parismuseescollections.paris.fr/fr/musee-carnavalet/oeuvres/jcp-lenoir-conseiller-d-etat-lieutenant-general-de-police-iff-p333

To judge from this splendid engraving from the Musée Carnavalet, the lieutenant de police, Jean-Charles-Pierre Lenoir was very particular about his wigs. The journal Correspondance littéraire  (by Louis-François Metra; various re-editions) has the following macabre little anecdote:

[17 March 1777] In default of political news, we like to publish stories to make you laugh: here is one which will amuse you.  The lieutenant general of police had a new wig made for his daughter's wedding; the wig was brought in a box by the  wigmaker's boy. Once work was finished, he asked for the box from his valet-de-chambre; but imagine his surprise when, in place of a senatorial wig, he found a dead infant!  M. Le Noir went immediately to find the Master Wigmaker.  The latter, realising what had happened, was full of apologies;  he recounted that his wife had given birth the evening before, the infant had died shortly afterwards;  apparently the two boxes had  been become confused, and the one containing the wig had been buried.  This case of mistaken identity - quiproquo - made the magistrate and his guests laugh hugely, and we are assured that the wig was exhumed and the dead infant buried in its place.

Stories like this remind us, the 18th-century world was a little different from our own!



Reference

Anecdotes secrètes du dix-huitième siècle,  rédigées avec soin d'après la correspondance secrète, politique et littéraire, vol. 1, p.281
https://books.google.fr/books?id=7flDAAAAcAAJ&hl=fr&pg=PA281#v=onepage&q&f=false

Understandably, 19th century writers often preferred to attach this anecdote to Lenoir's predecessor Sartine, the well-known aficionado of wigs:  see, for example, Gustave Desnoiresterres,"La perruque de M. de Sartine", in  Les Talons rouges (1854)
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=etgMAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA330#v=onepage&q&f=false



For details of the Lenoir wedding, see Sylvie Nicolas, Les derniers maîtres des requêtes de l'Ancien Régime (1771-1789), 1998, p.117
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ewsjsWPBdP0C&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117
 Lenoir's daughter Anne Pauline married Augustin Marie François Boula d'Orville, Conseiller au parlement de Paris, then Maître des requêtes, on 26th February 1777 at the church of Saint-Roch.

The wedding party was possibly in extra need of light relief as the duc de La Vrillière dramatically collapsed on arrival at the festivities and subsequently died.

In praise of Wigs (1799)

Here is an extract from a comic "Eulogy of Wigs" published in 1799.  

The author was Jean-Marie de Guerle (1766-1824), a native of Issoudun, who, having  been forced by the Revolution to abandon his career as a procureur,  made his living as a teacher of grammar and literature.  (In 1809 he was to become Professor of Eloquence in the newly-founded Faculté des lettres in Paris).  He was well known for his Latin translations and also penned several amusing or erotic pieces of this sort.  We learn that he created a "museum of wigs" which the writer Félix-Sébastien Feuillet de Conches visited in 1827 [Causeries d’un curieux vol.2 (1862), p.204]
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=D4RAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA204#v=onepage&q&f=false

As Friedrich Nicolai observed, the work includes a whole list of "Éloges dans le genre gracieux et badins" (p.198) and  is intended to be taken in the same vein.  Nonetheless, Nicolai conceded, it was not altogether worthless:
"[The author] has included anything amusing which came to his mind, without worrying too much about his facts.  What he takes from Ancient and Medieval writers should be taken with caution. But what he says about his subject in the history of France, is often useful, and what he says about the "Regeneration of Wigs in Paris" is really quite comical." [Recherches historiques, p.25]

The Regeneration of the Wig

 Louis-le-Grand had gone to his grave;  as widow of the crowned head, the royal wig followed him into the tomb. But, if queens are mortal, a people never dies.  After a long period of mourning, wigs were finally consoled and trusted themselves to the promises of faithful heads; placing themselves adroitly in the here-and-now, they reappeared in the world with new éclat, adorned with the propitious name of perruques à la Régence.

Adversity, they say, is the crucible of wisdom.  Wigs had learned  from experience the dangers of arrogance, and this time preserved more modesty in their forms.  The Sartine, proud to have graced the head of a magistrate, knew how to respect the humble perruque de laine sported by the sailor.  A miser could hide his skinny pate for little expense under a perruque de fils de fer; with this sort of helmet, he could safely brave rain, wind and hail; and he could feel happy that in death he would leave the hereditary hairpiece intact to his son. Chapelain, had he lived later, would have adopted this wig, as it is the perruque économique par excellence.
[The reference is to a satire against the poet Jean Chapelain: Le Chapelain décoiffé (1665)]

Never had the family of wigs produced so many varieties.  Sometimes, arranged with grace and freedom, the hair would fall full length to a point, in a pear-shape, with the pigtail lost in the wearer's belt;  this was the perruque naissante.  At other times, having been arranged in rolls round the temples and forehead, the hair would form an upside down cone at the back of the head, which was plunged into a perfumed  sack;  this was the perruque à bourse.  Then again the hair could be divided into two pigtails which were folded back on each other without any ties, so as to present the appearance of two natural rosettes;  this was the perruque à  noeuds. Layers of tight curls were arranged on top of each other in a double parallelogram, to form two moving sidepieces by each ear,separated by a flat roll; this was the perruque carrée, the familiar companion of the law court. Then again still, the hair escaped from the middle of a horseshoe, and divided on each shoulder into two parallel fat rolls, which are imprisoned side-by-side with a ribbon.
      Each twin is held in her place
     Offering a sister to her sister at a remove

Who does not recognise from this description the perruque à deux queues, which is not much rated by French ladies, but enjoys the favour of German baronesses.

Finally, who would believe it? One sees glass, tamed and spun by nimble fingers, curled into elegant heads of hair;  a new comet in orbit around a pretty head, displaying its flamboyant tail.  But this sort of wig:
      Just as it has the sparkle of glass
     Has also its fragility
Often, having shone on the horizon with all the fire of the sun, this star, which is reduced to powder at the slightest shock, falls at its apogee into eternal eclipse..

The facility with which wigs appealed to all tastes, increased before one's eyes their partisans, and assured them faithful friends.  Fashion, daughter of the desire to please and mother of important little nothings, has created vogues for many things:
Ample redingotes from London
Jackets in Eastern style escaped from Warsaw
Gothic flounces resuscitated from the 15th century
The inconstant palatine translated from a Germanic bosom
The elegant caraco camisole descended from Caracalla by the female line.......

But these abortive ephemera, the whims of a frivolous century, shone on the world stage for but a moment.  Their credit was no more;  but, standing on the debris of their glory, the wig reinvented itself, ceaselessly more resplendent, in different forms.....The imperishable wig, always changing but always the same, seemed impervious to the torrent of the ages....

From Louis XV up to Year One of French Republic the wig showed a marked preference for masculine heads.  But the regeneration of a great people brings with it the regeneration of wigs. The cradle of liberty became a tomb for the thatch of the Ancien Regime; recalled to its primitive institution, artificial hair today prefers the attractions of the fair sex.

Eloge des Perruques, enrichi de Notes plus Amples que le Texte, par le Docteur Akerlio
De l'Imprimerie de Crapelet, A Paris, Chez Maradan. 1799, p.17-22.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=fxhZ-QCpEhAC&pg=PA17#v=onepage&q&f=false
Biographical note on de Guerle: 
https://www.persee.fr/doc/inrp_0298-5632_1985_ant_2_1_2630

How to buy a English periwig...

Barber's Shop, English School, 18th-century [Oil painting sold by Christies in 2001]
https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/english-school-18th-century-the-barbers-shop-3815224-details.aspx?intObjectID=3815224

A Frenchman never knows when he might need to purchase a wig whilst abroad!  

The following dialogue is from the popular English primer by Abel Boyer, a Huguenot emigré originally from Castres. The book was first published in 1694. Note that, even at this early date, there was great concern with fashion and quite a choice of wigs available.

The compleat French master for ladies and gentlemen: being a new method, to learn with ease and delight the French tongue

Dialogue XVII, pour acheter une perruque – to buy a periwig.

From the 1720 edition on Google Books, p.270-272
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2b0_AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA270&lpg=PA270#v=onepage&q&f=false

The bewigged of Toulouse

Here is some more evidence for the social profile of wig-wearers, this time from the local archives in Toulouse. The information all comes from records of criminal hearings and complaints - a surprisingly rich resource apparently, since charges of assault commonly involved damage to clothing and headgear.

The capitouls of Toulouse in their wigs

The wigs of the urban elite

As one would expect, the references confirm that men of high social standing invariably wore wigs, indeed that the powdered wig was a accepted symbol of noble status.

• 1706: A violent brawl left the young baron d'Esquieule dead on the pavement in his black jacket, scarlet belt and "short wig",  his plumed hat under his arm.  The inventory of his possessions also yielded a wig "à la cavalière".

• 1717:  An avocat of the Parlement of Toulouse reported the theft of various items, including "a blond wig which was hardly worn"

• 1732: A former capitoul was insulted by a woman in public;  she said that he did not deserve his nobility and that she wanted to "cut off his wig and take away his sword"

• 1762: A conseiller of the Parlement incurred the wrath of a purveyor of sedan chairs; she threatened to drag him from his chair, "even though you are well-powdered".

• 1775:  The son of another parlementaire, a tonsured clerk, absconded to Carcassonne where he was spotted sporting "a false pigtail of blond hair"

The wigs of the merchants and shopkeepers

Wigs also seem to have been ubiquitous among the bourgeois and commercial classes:

• 1703:  A shopkeeper's clerk complained that a passerby had seized his wig and thrown it to the ground.

• 1725: A cloth merchant was "seized by the wig" and attacked in the course of a dispute.  Another shopkeeper in the same year complained that a woman had knocked off his wig and hat and trampled them under foot.

If the shopkeeper and his clerk wore wigs about their business, they also retained them at leisure, among the cabarets and drinking establishments of the town.

• 1705: In a tavern brawl between a merchant's clerk and a messenger ("facteur")
• ,  one of the participants had his wig and his hat knocked off.

• 1733: A merchant draper took his family to see a "comédie des singes"; he was deliberately jostled in the crowd and candle grease fell on his coat and wig.

The wigs of employees and petty officials

It is the same story for this group:

• 1705: A clerk collecting tax arrears was attacked and had his wig knocked off.

• 1716: an employee in a tobacconist shop quarrelled with the owner of a cabaret, who knocked his wig and hat to the ground.

How far down the social scale did wig-wearing go?

Some of the judicial records reveal really quite humble wig-wearers

• 1725: A garçon cordonnier - a servant or apprentice shoemaker - complained of being "seized by the wig"
• 
  
• 1732:  A goldsmith called Louis Savanac accused his apprentice of throwing his wig in the mud and dirt.  A neighbour confirmed that Savanac had requested the loan of a comb because his wig "was all spoiled by mud".

1733: A rôtisseur - a seller of cooked meats - was involved in an assault in the street; he too lost his wig.

1735: A wool carder and tavernkeeper called François Saragnet  was set upon, beaten up and robbed.  He left the tavern in a pitiful state - without his shoes, his hat or even...his wig.

1756: An affineur (a cheesemaker?) and locksmith was attacked by a woman who seized him by the wig.

1756: A gardener called Benoist was pushed to the ground during a quarrel and lost his hat and wig.

  1767 : A mason was interrupted at supper by an adversary, who snatched his wig and threw it into the mud. The man went away threatening to "sweep the street" with the wig.  Apparently there are quite a few examples involving masons - hard to imagine wearing a powdered wig on a construction site, but it would seem that this was the practice.

In 22 February 1760 an corpse was fished out of the Garonne; it was noted that the body "had no hair, which showed that he wore a wig". However, this did not lead to identification - suggesting that wig-wearing must have been commonplace.


Wigs as symbols

When a gentleman lost his wig in a public place, it would seem he had no choice but to hide, cover his head or go swiftly to the perruquier in quest of a replacement.


So who didn't wear a wig?

Many men mentioned in the criminal records probably did not wear wigs but there is little evidence to establish who they were or the reasons for their choice. There are a few odd mentions;  in 1775, for instance, a  tavern keeper called Jacques Montels  came to depose in evidence a substantial lock of his own hair which had been pulled out during an assault.


Summarised from: 
"...et tombent les perruques"
Archives municipales de Toulouse - Dans le bas-fonds: June 2016, no.6
https://www.archives.toulouse.fr/documents/10184/311548/FRAC31555_Bas-Fonds-2016-06.pdf/7558a36a-efe-4533-a016-d52f2cb4837e
See also: the notice for the dossier on Criminocorpus: 
https://criminocorpus.hypotheses.org/19288