“Her friends call her hair auburn, but her enemies call it red.” – Sylvia’s Book of the Toilet, 1881.
Auburn hair has long been admired for its beauty. In the sixteenth century, Titian famously painted beautiful women with hair of a reddish hue. While in his epic Regency era poem Don Juan, Lord Byron waxed rhapsodic about dancing girls, each having:
Down her white neck long floating auburn curls—
(The least of which would set ten poets raving)
By the Victorian era, the passion for auburn hair had reached a fever pitch. Inspired by the auburn-haired beauties depicted in the works of Venetian masters, as well as by pre-Raphaelite painters such as John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rosetti, ladies sought to supplement their locks with false hair in the desired reddish-brown color. According to a report in the 1865 edition of the Enniskillen Chronicle and Erne Packet:
So great is the rage both in Paris and London for the golden hair which the painters of Venice loved to depict that as much as £5 per ounce is given for human hair of the desired tint!
Alice by Henry Tanworth Wells, 1877.
Unfortunately, when it came to false hair, the demand for shades of auburn far exceeded the supply. As a result, many ladies resorted to dying their tresses auburn by means of natural plant-based or herbal dyes. In his 1879 book The Hair: Its Growth, Care, Diseases and Treatments, Dr. Charles Henri Leonard states that:
A strong infusion of saffron, to which has been added some carbonate of soda, if followed by an application of lemon juice or vinegar, will give a reddish yellow hue to dark-colored hair.
For a more professional application of hair color, some hairdressers in Paris are reported as having produced a cosmetic preparation which was able to convert “any hair not positively very black” into “the coveted hue.” Of course, such a miracle product did not come cheaply, but as the Enniskillen Chronicle states:
Money is not to be weighed against fashion, and gold freely sacrificed to the shrine of female vanity.
The Picture of Health by John Everett Millais (1829-1896). (Photo: Martin Beek, Creative Commons licensed)
Young ladies with auburn hair were not only admired for their physical beauty. Auburn hair was also believed to be a great signifier of certain moral qualities and desirable characteristics of temperament. In his 1859 New Illustrated Self-Instructor in Phrenology and Physiology, Orson Squire Fowler asserts that:
Auburn hair, with a florid countenance, indicates the highest order of sentiment and intensity of feeling, along with corresponding purity of character, combined with the highest capacities for enjoyment and suffering.
While Leonard proclaims that “in matters of disposition” ladies with blonde or auburn hair “are usually representatives of delicacy and refinement.” They were also believed to be tender-hearted—a fact which made them likely to be imposed upon by those in “poverty or physical distress.” By contrast, ladies with brown hair were thought to have “combined in themselves” the strong characteristics of those with black hair and the “exquisite sensibilities” of those with fair hair. As Leonard explains:
From this class come our philanthropists (but not our generals, as a rule), our painters, musicians and authors; those that unite the tender feeling and sympathy with the stronger will-force of the man.
Exquisite sensibilities notwithstanding, ladies with an abundance of auburn hair were often prized for their outward beauty above all else. Victorian court cases and newspaper stories abound in which a woman of particular beauty is described as having “magnificent auburn hair.” And, as the Enniskillen Chronicle states:
I need scarcely say that young ladies of whom Nature has already endowed with hair of the genuine color are objects of intense admiration by the sterner sex, and of unbounded jealousy by their less fortunate sisters.
Yes by John Everett Millais, 1877
The male predilection for auburn hair was manifested not only in artwork of the period, but also in poetry and comic verse. For example, in his 1886 poem “To a Lock of Hair,” John Ackroyd writes of a lock of hair given to him as a memento by an auburn-haired beauty. It reads in part:
I look on thee, dear lock of hair,
And when I look, I think of her,
And breathe to heaven a tender prayer,
For her, the maid with auburn hair.
A less serious verse from “Away! Ye Gay Damsels” by William Seath, published in Rhymes and Lyrics (1897), reads:
Away! Ye gay damsels! w’ a’ your fine beauties,—
Your ribbons and brooches and jewels sae rare;
Your dresses are mock’ry, your beauties are naething,
Compared wi’ the lass wi’ the auburn hair!
Over the course of history every shade of hair color seems to have had its time in the proverbial sun, whether that shade be auburn, platinum blonde, or Rita Hayworth red. Today, I would venture to say that auburn hair is no more prized than black, blonde, red, or brown. Like everything else relating to appearance, hair color is very much a matter of personal preference. For example, in my new Victorian romance novel The Lost Letter, the heroine’s hair is chestnut brown — a shade with glints of red and gold. It’s not quite as striking as a true auburn, but when she gives a lock of it to the hero to take away with him to war, he treasures it as much as if it had been the finest thing on earth.
Top image: The Bower Meadow by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1872. (Manchester Art Gallery)
This post originally appeared on MimiMatthews.com and is reprinted with permission.
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