'Satan, from his horrid hair, shakes pestilence and war.' Prejudice, too
PAUL JOHNSON
The TV moguls plan to give us a surfeit of sex and violence in the shape of Queen Boudicca this Jubilee year. What interests me about the lady is her red hair, for which there is no contemporary evidence; but it is firmly lodged in tradition. Storybooks show the shade as Venetian or auburn, but I suspect that it was more the bright Celtic red that mine used to be. Having red hair never did a woman any harm, as is proved by the political careers of Elizabeth I and Barbara Castle, for both of whom it was their best visible asset (though Elizabeth also had superbly elegant hands).
It is a different matter for me. Red-haired men, as I know to my cost, are presumed to be rash, impetuous, aggressive and quarrelsome — or even worse. Judas was, by tradition, a redhead. So are some of the most repellent villains in fiction, such as Uriah Heep in David Copperfield and Tro'lope's odious Revd Mr Slope in Barchester Towers. In mediaeval times it was believed that grease from the boileddown body of a redhead made an efficacious poison — witness Chapman's line that flattery is 'worse than the poison of a red-haired man'. Red hair was an additional burden that a male ruler had to carry; hence the bad clerical press of William Rufus in England and the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in Germany. An old portrait of Protector Somerset at Syon House shows him with a red beard (unlike his master Henry VIII whose facial hair was golden), one reason why he ended up without his head — executioners took particular satisfaction from decapitating 'carrot-tops'.
I note, for instance, that all three red-headed premiers of the last two centuries had trouble with their parties. Sir Robert Peel was an outstanding redhead who tried to refute the supposed characteristics of the breed by adopting an ultra-cold manner — hence Wellington's criticism, 'Peel has no manners.' Churchill may not have been a true redhead, though I have seen a portrait of him in youth (now in the vaults of the National Portrait Gallery) which leaves no doubt. His locks when he was a Liberal Cabinet minister were described as 'the colour of a bronze putter'. Stanley Baldwin's hair, on the other hand, must have had a bright lustre, at least to Mrs Baldwin, who saw it as orange and called him 'Tiger'. She would sometimes exhort him, while listening to one of his speeches she thought too eirenic, 'Let 'em have it, Tiger!' Indeed, her treatment of her husband, not least when he was prime minister, tended to be inflammatory. A visitor to No. 10 in the mid Twenties was surprised to find the door opened by Mrs Baldwin dressed as Madame Butterfly. She said, 'This is a surprise for Stan when he returns. I often do this. Last week I was a Turkish soldier.'
Folklore has it that the most dangerous man of all was a red-bearded one with black hair on his head. Such hirsute differences are by no means rare. A careful examination of the evidence leads Rufus's best biographer, Professor Barlow, to conclude that, while the king's beard was red, his hair was yellow. Another interesting case was Bram Stoker, the horror writer. He was a perfectly ordinary local government official with dull brown hair, known for his successful manual The Duties of a Petty-Sessions Clerk in Ireland. But when he grew a beard it came out bright red. He unwisely consumed a 'supper of dressed crab', had a fearful nightmare, and then conceived the idea of Dracula. It became one of the most successful books ever published, and film and television studios all over the world have made some 500 versions of it. Meanwhile poor Stoker died of syphilis.
Hair is a curious dissembler, even without human chemistry. In the days of Byron, when it was the daring custom of fast upper-class girls to send their aspirant lovers a lock or twist of pubic hair, the delighted recipient was sometimes pu7J1ed to find its colour did not exactly correspond to the curls or tresses he knew. Intrigued, he was tempted to pursue the matter further, which was perhaps the intention of the donor. If this salacious tease is ever revived, young men are in for shocks. It is not merely that bold blondes turn into meretricious mice; raven hair and stygian curls are also transformed into less palpitating hues of dark brown at lower levels. A girls with truly black pubic hair is the rarest of creatures. in Africa and Asia as well as everywhere else. I have yet to come across one.
In my experience, hair colour is far less likely than skin colour to indicate behaviour. But try telling that to the harsh, uncomprehending world. Once, after listening to that tortured writer James Baldwin complaining at length about his sufferings and slights, I told him. 'Listen, if you're born in England, as I was, redhaired, left-handed and a Roman Catholic, there's nothing you don't know about discrimination.' It is true. My religion once nearly cost me the job I prized most. Being left-handed is usually no more than an irritation. But in the Officer Training Corps at school and in the smart rifle regiment where I did my basic train ing more than half a century ago, using boltaction Lee Enfields — the best rifles ever made but designed for only the right-handed — it was a crime to be a 'horrible little southpaw'. When I was a boy, I was sometimes stopped in the street by benevolent Pickwickian gentlemen and handed a penny as a reward for having beautiful curly red-gold hair, I was made to hand back the penny. Such a thing would never happen now — more's the pity; it taught me that prizes did not always depend on merit, as Melbourne said about the Garter.
However, I soon learnt that male contemporaries took a different view. So did male authority. To them, red-haired boys were trouble. I arrived at boarding school, aged 12, with a disadvantage. My mother, rightly I now see, would not allow me to leave home aged seven or eight to go to prep school, as other boys did. So when I arrived at the big school I was a stranger. Moreover, I knew little Latin and less Greek. On the other hand, I had learnt to box. At a certain point on my first day, I found myself surrounded by a cordon of by no means friendly boys. Their spokesman said, 'Johnson, you are a new squit and a nasty-looking ginger fellow, and we don't like your manners. Can you give me one good reason why you should not be beaten up?' I said, 'Yes, I can. But I will have to whisper it.' Suspicious but also intrigued, he leant over. So I dealt him what I had been taught to call an uppercut. There followed a general fracas, and at that moment, as if on cue, a Jesuit master made his appearance. He took in the scene with a single horrified glance, his keen sacerdotal eyes focusing on my red, embattled hair. 'Dear, dear, Johnson,' he said, 'fighting already, I see.' Then I knew that I lived in an unjust world. Thus, I imagine, did Governor Suetonius Paulinus, noting Boudicca's appearance, hope to forestall trouble by his command, 'Flog her.'
Curiously enough, since I passed 70, my red hair has turned not grey or white but the colour of champagne. My hairdresser Deanne says that this is the most difficult and expensive colour to produce artificially. In my case it is the product of a mysterious body chemistry which I find is benevolent. After a lifetime of being accused of anger, rebellion and aggression, I find myself increasingly treated as an ecumenical figure, and even congratulated on my good temper, patience and cool self-control; nonsense, in both cases, of course. Anyway, below stairs, as Mrs Rodd used to put it, all is as red as ever.
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