Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/585

 10 s. x. DEC. 19, 1908.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

483

himself in a nightcap Wig " ; and in The Spectator of 6 March, 1711, in a letter of Dorinda's, "As I was walking in the Park, he appeared to me in one of those Wiggs, that I think you call a nightcap."

In Swift's ' Miscellanies,' probably written in 1713, these lines occur :

How did the humbled swain detest His prickly beard and hairy breast ! His nightcap border 1 d round with lace Could give no softness to his face.

Pope in * Imitations of Horace,' Second Epistle of the Second Book, 11. 116-20, writes in 1734 :

The man who, stretch'd in Isis' calm retreat, To books and study gives seven years complete, !See ! strew'd with learned dust, his nightcap on, He walks an object new beneath the sun !

In 1760 Sterne in ' Tristram Shandy,' vol. i. p. 414, in the chapter on ' Whiskers,' says : " Have not beds and bolsters and nightcaps stood upon the brink of destruc- tion ? " In ' The Sentimental Journey,' vol. ii. p. 344 (issued in 1768), La Fleur searched for a letter in every pocket, " then emptied them upon the floor, pulled out a cravat, handkerchief, a comb, a night- cap " ; and at p. 355 of the same volume he writes of Paris, and how seldom the husband comes into his shop, " but in some dark and dismal room behind he sits, commerceless in his thrum nightcap."

In the poem ' The Double Transforma- tion,' by Oliver Goldsmith, which appeared in 1765, Jack Bookworm finds, after twelve months' married life, that

Half the charms that deck'd her face Arose from powder, shreds, or lace ; And when at home, at board, or bed, Five greasy nightcaps wrapp'd her head.

In the ' Description of an Author's Bed- chamber ' Goldsmith writes :

A nightcap decked his brows instead of bay A cap by night, a stocking all the day.

Boswell in his ' Life of Dr. Johnson,' 29 Sept., 1773, notes :

" I asked him if he had ever been accustomed to wear a nightcap. He said, ' No.' I asked him if it was best not to wear one. He said, ' Sir, I had this custom by chance, and perhaps 110 man shall ever know whether it is best to sleep with or without a nightcap.' The truth is, that if he had always worn a nightcap, as is the common practice, and found the Highlanders did not wear one, he would have wondered at their barbarity."

On 9 Oct., 1773, Boswell again refers to the subject :

" He [Johnson] has particularities which it is impossible to explain : he never wears a nightcap, as I have already mentioned, but he puts a handker- chief on his head in the night."

The following lines occur in Cowper's ' Conversation ' (1780) :

And now alas for unforeseen mishaps ! They put on a damp nightcap and relapse.

In the fifth chapter of 'The Legend of Montrose ' (1819) Scott writes :

" ' A long story, my Lord,' said Capt. Dalgetty, 'is next to a good evening draught, and a warm nightcap the best shoeing horn for drawing on a sound sleep.'"

Washington Irving in ' Tales of a Tra- veller ' (1824) tells the story of how his " uncle lay with his nightcap drawn almost down to his nose," and sees a figure of commanding air, and dressed in ancient fashion, glide into the room, and walk to the fireplace " without regarding my uncle, who raised his nightcap and stared earnestly at her " ; and when the figure, stretching its arms towards heaven, glides out of the door,

" my uncle lay meditating on the vision, but, being a great traveller and accustomed to strange adven- tures, drew his nightcap over his eyes and fell asleep."

Dickens in chap. xxii. of ' Pickwick ' (1836) describes the romantic adventure with a middle-aged lady in yellow curl- papers :

" Having carefully drawn the curtains of his bed on the outside, Mr. Pickwick sat down 011 the rush- bottomed chair and leisurely divested himself of his shoes and gaiters ; he then took off and folded up his coat, waistcoat, and neckcloth ; and slowly drawing on his tasselled nightcap, secured it firmly to his head by tying beneath his chin the strings which he always had attached to that article of dress."

The habit of wearing nightcaps, which seems from the references quoted above to have been in general use through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, has gradually decreased during the last fifty years, and now is almost entirely discontinued^ It would be interesting to know when it commenced, and what writers before Shake- speare in 1601 refer to it.

JAMES WATSON.

Folkestone.

[Nightcaps were in use long before the time of Shakespeare. The earliest quotation in the 'N.E.D.' is from Chaucer's 'Merchant's Tale,' 1. 609* (c. 1386) :-

She him saugh up sittinge in his sherte,

In his night-cappe, and with his nekke lene.

Quotations are also given from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. There is no illustration from Shakespeare, but the first seventeenth-century example is from the Second Part of ' The Return from Parnassus,' I. y. (1602): "Ther's a fellow with a night cap on his head."]