These locks belonged to Marie Antoinette and her children. There was, also, an exhibit of a roughly made head of Louis XVI with long gray hair attached to the back. I assume it was really, supposedly, his hair, shorn before his execution, but since the explanation was in French, I am not sure. I took a picture but, as much as I like Louis XVI, I won't subject you to that image. Hair was important in the 18th Century. Before the Revolution, fashionable women wore their hair piled high, powdered, with extensions and hairpieces, with ornaments in it and, eventually, with outrageous decorations of various themes, sometimes several feet high. Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, Marie Antoinette's mother, wrote her a fairly scathing criticism of that frivolous French trend. Locks of hair were worn in lockets, braided into bracelets, and given as tokens of affection. For instance, Marie Antoinette sent a lock of her hair to Count Fersen's sister, Countess Sophie Piper, whom she'd never met, as a expression of friendship. His letter to Sophie reads, "Here is the hair you asked me for. If there be not enough, I will send you some more. It is she herself who gives it to you, and your desire in the matter touched her deeply. She is so kind, so perfect; and I seem to love her more since she loves you. She asks me to tell you how she feels your grief and how she shares it. I should never die content without your having seen her. Farewell." The grief referenced was caused by the illness of Sophie Piper's daughter. One senses the importance of hair in the many written accounts of the hacking off of hair, during the Revolution, in preparation for execution. Micah took a picture of one of several baskets of ponytails, of the human variety, that we saw at the flea market. I'll spare you that picture, too. I assume they came from the local hair salon, not the executioner, but as macabre as I might seem, that would have been too weird even for me to be interested in buying. Unless it were on sale, maybe.
These locks belonged to Marie Antoinette and her children. There was, also, an exhibit of a roughly made head of Louis XVI with long gray hair attached to the back. I assume it was really, supposedly, his hair, shorn before his execution, but since the explanation was in French, I am not sure. I took a picture but, as much as I like Louis XVI, I won't subject you to that image. Hair was important in the 18th Century. Before the Revolution, fashionable women wore their hair piled high, powdered, with extensions and hairpieces, with ornaments in it and, eventually, with outrageous decorations of various themes, sometimes several feet high. Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, Marie Antoinette's mother, wrote her a fairly scathing criticism of that frivolous French trend. Locks of hair were worn in lockets, braided into bracelets, and given as tokens of affection. For instance, Marie Antoinette sent a lock of her hair to Count Fersen's sister, Countess Sophie Piper, whom she'd never met, as a expression of friendship. His letter to Sophie reads, "Here is the hair you asked me for. If there be not enough, I will send you some more. It is she herself who gives it to you, and your desire in the matter touched her deeply. She is so kind, so perfect; and I seem to love her more since she loves you. She asks me to tell you how she feels your grief and how she shares it. I should never die content without your having seen her. Farewell." The grief referenced was caused by the illness of Sophie Piper's daughter. One senses the importance of hair in the many written accounts of the hacking off of hair, during the Revolution, in preparation for execution. Micah took a picture of one of several baskets of ponytails, of the human variety, that we saw at the flea market. I'll spare you that picture, too. I assume they came from the local hair salon, not the executioner, but as macabre as I might seem, that would have been too weird even for me to be interested in buying. Unless it were on sale, maybe. 
Comments