great deal of intimate information can be exchanged thus with the aid of hand and kerchief. At St Sophia's, as at most fashionable churches, the sacred nature of the service is not taken overseriously: clothes and gossip provide the greatest interest in the gallery, and a buzz of political or religious argument from the nave invariably drowns the reading of the Scriptures. However, the singing of the eunuch choirmen is usually listened to with some respect, and nearly everyone joins in the chanting of the General Confession and other prayers; and if the sermon is being preached by an energetic preacher it is often greeted with appreciative clapping and laughter or with earnest hissing. The Eucharist is dispensed at the conclusion, and then the blessing spoken, and out we go again.' Against such civilized and sociable Christian functions it would be foolish to bear any grudge,' my mistress used to say — 'they are merely a quiet variety of the Theatre performances.'
The preacher on that day was a bishop whom we had not heard before, but who was known to be greatly admired as a theologian by Justinian. He held some Italian sec or other, and was good-looking in rather a foppish way. He took for his text the verses in the first epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, which lay down that men should wear their hair short and not pray with their heads covered; but that women should wear their hair long and not pray with their heads uncovered. He dwelt most gravely on the verse:' For if a woman be not covered, let her also be shorn'; which was to say that if a woman attended service in a church without a head-covering she should be punished by having her hair clipped close to her head. The audience settled down to an entertaining homily, though not without nervous looks on many faces, male and female. For there was many a woman there whose head-covering consisted of no more than a spray of jewels, and many a man whose hair was cut in the Hunnish mode then fashionable — clipping the front part off as far back as the temples and leaving the back hair to grow down the shoulders. What if the Emperor or Empress should be persuaded by this bishop to take severe steps against the law-breakers? Nevertheless, it was not these people whom the Bishop intended to denounce: for the sermon, most illogically, was directed against women who wore wigs. As though a wig were not a head-covering of the most complicated and effective sort!
He started gently in a musical voice with general thoughts on the subject of women's hair, appreciatively quoting the pagan poets of both languages — to make it quite clear to us that he was a man of polite education, not an ignorant, narrow-minded, monastery-bred preacher. He cited Ovid as having said this, and Meleager that, in praise of a fine head of hair. Nor were these praises anti-scriptural, he pointed out: for the Apostle Paul himself, in the very passage from which the text was derived, had written: 'If a woman have long hair it is a glory to her.' And in praising length the Apostle no doubt meant to praise strength and glossiness, for no hair that is not strong or glossy can grow to commendable length. 'But,' he said, putting tremendous emphasis on the word, 'But, during any religious ceremony and on any but the most intimate private occasions, this long, strong, glossy, beautiful hair must be decently covered, out of respect for the angels.'
For the Christian angels — he proceeded to explain, as if he had had a long and troublesome acquaintance with them — are all eunuchs; they look down from Heaven on human worshippers, and from that vertical angle sec little but heads and shoulders. 'Any honest person who has had any experience of eunuchs,' he went on — with a sly glance at the choir and at the long aisle reserved for eunuchs of the Civil Service and for personal eunuchs attached to prominent courtiers, such as myself- 'Any such honest person will support me when I assert that the lack of the customary male organs of generation does not, as might be supposed, free the heart from carnal affections. Not by any means! I have indeed seldom known a eunuch who could confess truly to having no tender feelings for women's hands and eyes and feet and hair — oh, but especially for their hair! I know many a rich and learned eunuch who spends his leisure time, wantonly and shamefully, in the slow combing of the hair of some frivolous woman of his household! You may laugh, my sisters, but you know it is so, and it is a great sin that you are committing if you pander thus to the ineffectual lusts of the castrated. Angels are no less subject to temptation than eunuchs: the Arch-Fiend himself was an angel who fell from Grace — was it perhaps partly from delight in the hair of some daughter of Earth? Out of respect therefore for these blessed but beauty-loving angels, who must not be distracted from their religious duty of perpetual hosannas and hallelujahs, it is the first duty of all Christian women with fine hair to keep it securely covered. It is sturdy evil enough to wean human worshippers from their devotions by an ill-timed display of the crowning glory of women, without seeking to drag angels down to earth and thus add to the race of demons — already numerous enough, God knows!'
But the pagan poets, even — he quoted Martial, Propertius, and Juvenal — had written with the utmost horror of women who wore hair that was not their own. Wigs were thus proved to be an offence not only against the Laws of the Church, but against secular canons of beauty and good taste. 'As for the Orthodox view of the Holy Fathers, it could not be clearer, and may be summarized as follows. Male wigs are in general designed to cover baldness: they are therefore in the nature of a skull-cap and constitute a covering, and are therefore anathema. Women's wigs, however (for a bald woman is a rarity), are designed to add to the hair already in existence on their heads, to heighten and improve its effect: they therefore do not constitute a covering, and are anathema. The righteous thunders of the Church, Council after Council, have always been directed at wigs of both sexes: both the cowardly male wig and the immodest female wig. Tertullian has said — but what has Tertullian not said against these stitched and coiled monstrosities of wigs? He has said, amongst other things, that all personal disguise is adultery before God. All wigs, paint, powder, masks, false bosoms are disguises and inventions of the devil.
'Moreover, my erring sisters,' the Bishop proceeded, suddenly pointing very rudely at Chrysomallo and my mistress, whose wigs, after Theodora's, were the two most elegant monstrosities in all St Sophia's that day, 'Tertullian makes a powerful appeal to your common sense as well as to your religious scruples. He writes: 'If you will not fling away your impious false hair, as hateful to Heaven, cannot I make it hateful to yourselves as women of worldly discernment, by reminding you that those lascivious, bought ringlets of yours may have had a detestable origin? They may well have been cut from the corpse of some woman dead of the plague, and still retain the seeds of plague alive in them; or, worse, they may have adorned the head of a blasphemer irretrievably damned by Heaven and carry in them God's heavy curse, ineluctable.'
'What does wise St Ambrose say of wigs? 'Do not talk to mc of curled wigs: they are the pimps of passion, not the instructors of virtue.' What does downright St Cyprian say? 'Give heed to me, O ye women. Adultery is a grievous sin; but she who wears false hair is guilty of a greater.' What does the famous St Jerome say? He tells an instructive story, on the truth of which he stakes his reputation as a Christian teacher — yes, if this story is a fabrication, the great name of Jerome must be erased from the diptychs as though lie were a heretic or forger! He tells of a respectable matron of his acquaintance, by name Practexta, who had the misfortune to be married to a pagan. Now it is well known that a wife should obey her husband in all things, and indeed this very text in Corinthians makes it plain, when it says 'the head of every man is the Son, but the head of the woman is the man'. But there is a reservation implicit in this first phrase, namely that if the husband be no Christian, the Son, not he, becomes her Head in spiritual matters; as, with widows, the Son becomes their sole Head, unless they marry again in discourtesy to the Son.
'This husband, therefore, whose name was Hymetius, said one day to Praetexta: 'Our orphan niece, Eustochia, whom we have tenderly nurtured in our home, is not an uncomely girl. She might easily find a rich husband, and thus relieve us of the expense of a dowry, but for one fault in her looks — her thin and ragged hair. Do you therefore, my good wife, repair this defect of nature, by going secretly to the hairdresser's and ordering a fine curly toupee for her.' This Practexta did, hoping the expenditure of five gold pieces to save a thousand or more, and forgot entirely both her duty to God and her respect for the angels. That very night, as she lay beside her husband, dwelling with satisfaction upon Eustochia's remarkable transformation, to that sinful bedside descended a tall angel, piping in wrathful falsetto. 'Practexta,' cried this angel, 'you have obeyed your husband, an unbeliever, rather than your crucified Lord. You have decked the hair of a virgin with superfluous ringlets and given her the appearance of a harlot. For this do I now wither up your hands, and command them to recognize the enormity of your crime by the measure of their suffering. Only five months more shall you live, and then Hell shall be your portion; and if you are bold enough to touch the head of Eustochia again, your husband and children shall the even before you do.' O my erring sisters, what a sin that was, and how fully deserved that anguish of corporal punishment!'
It was only natural that my mistress Antonina should giggle a little at this story. It was no great interest of hers that the name of this St Jerome should remain on the diptychs; and he certainly deserved to have it removed, she considered, for so outrageous a story. If Practexta's hands had really been withered, how was there any possibility of her using them again on her niece's head? She remarked on this to the Lady Chrysomallo, who giggled too and, signalling to her husband in the nave below, flapped her hands about dramatically, as if they, too, were withered. Such levity angered the Bishop. He began to rail at my mistress and the Lady Chrysomallo, mentioning them by name, though he was a stranger in the City: which made it clear enough to us that the instigation to
