t
requires less genius, but more courage. The first, intoxicated by the
novelty, may ignore the danger; the second sees the abyss, and rushes
into it. Lord David flung himself into the abyss of no longer wearing a
wig. Later on these lords found imitators. Following these two
revolutionists, men found sufficient audacity to wear their own hair,
and powder was introduced as an extenuating circumstance.

In order to establish, before we pass on, an important period of
history, we should remark that the first blow in the war of wigs was
really struck by a Queen, Christina of Sweden, who wore man's clothes,
and had appeared in 1680, in her hair of golden brown, powdered, and
brushed up from her head. She had, besides, says Misson, a slight beard.
The Pope, on his part, by a bull of March 1694, had somewhat let down
the wig, by taking it from the heads of bishops and priests, and in
ordering churchmen to let their hair grow.

Lord David, then, did not wear a wig, and did wear cowhide boots. Such
great things made him a mark for public admiration. There was not a club
of which he was not the leader, not a boxing match in which he was not
desired as referee. The referee is the arbitrator.

He had drawn up the rules of several clubs in high life. He founded
several resorts of fashionable society, of which one, the Lady Guinea,
was still in existence in Pall Mall in 1772. The Lady Guinea was a club
in which all the youth of the peerage congregated. They gamed there. The
lowest stake allowed was a rouleau of fifty guineas, and there was never
less than 20,000 guineas on the table. By the side of each player was a
little stand on which to place his cup of tea, and a gilt bowl in which
to put the rouleaux of guineas. The players, like servants when cleaning
knives, wore leather sleeves to save their lace, breastplates of leather
to protect their ruffles, shades on their brows to shelter their eyes
from the great glare of the lamps, and, to keep their curls in order,
broad-brimmed hats covered with flowers. They were masked to conceal
their excitement, especially when playing the game of _quinze_. All,
moreover, had their coats turned the wrong way, for luck. Lord David was
a member of the Beefsteak Club, the Surly Club, and of the Splitfarthing
Club, of the Cross Club, the Scratchpenny Club, of the Sealed Knot, a
Royalist Club, and of the Martinus Scribblerus, founded by Swift, to
take the place of the Rota, founded by Milton.