Bonnets held their own but in dwindling dimensions, their minuteness being specially noticed in 1867. This is attributed by _Punch_ to the fashion of the chignon, on which he bestows ironic praise in 1869 as needing very small and therefore cheap bonnets. In 1871 "Dolly Varden" hats, flower-trimmed and with one side bent down, named after the character in _Barnaby Rudge_, engage _Punch's_ pencil; a year later Mr. Austin Dobson wrote in _St. Paul's Magazine_: "Blue eyes look doubly blue beneath a Dolly Varden." [Illustration: STUPENDOUS TRIUMPH OF THE HAIRDRESSER'S ART! The very last thing in chignons.] Turning from headgear to hairdressing, we find _Punch_ a vigilant critic of _coiffure_. In 1858 he attacks the vagaries of mode as shown in hairdressing _à la Chinoise_ "pulled up by the roots," and the fashion of wearing coins. To judge from Leech's pictures he greatly preferred the simpler style of braids and hair nets. The great event of the mid-'sixties, however, was the advent of the chignon, which proved only second to the crinoline as an incentive to caricature and criticism. In the ironical verses addressed to a "Young Lady of Fashion," the chignon stands first in the list of the artificial enhancements of beauty resorted to half a century back:-- I love thee for thy chignon, for the boss of purchased hair, Which thou hast on thine occiput the charming taste to wear. Oh, what a grace that ornament unto thy poll doth lend, Wound on what seems a curtain-rod with knobs at either end! I love thee for the roses, purchased too, thy cheeks that deck, The lilies likewise that adorn thy pearly-powdered neck, And all that sweet "illusion" that, o'er thy features spread, Improves the poor reality of Nature's white and red. I love thee for the muslin and the gauze about thee bound, Like endive that in salad doth a lobster's tail surround. And oh! I love thee for the boots thine ankles that protect, So proper to the manly style young ladies now affect. The chignon was no new invention, but a revival of a fashion mentioned by the _Lady's Magazine_ for 1783, and described twenty-five years later by Maria Edgeworth as a combination of hair natural and false "plastered together to a preposterous bulk and turned up in a sort of great bag or club." But the fashion attained its apogee in the middle and late 'sixties, and afforded endless opportunities to the pencils of Du Maurier and Sambourne. One of the most ludicrous of the many caricatures to which the habit gave rise is that in which Du Maurier represented a lady riding on a pony with its mane and tail fluffed out to harmonize with her stupendous chignon. Later developments of the chignon are ridiculed by Sambourne in 1871. [Sidenote: _Madame Rachel_]