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_The_
PERFECT GENTLEMAN
BY
RALPH BERGENGREN
[Illustration]
The Atlantic Monthly Press
Boston
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS, INC.
_The author gratefully acknowledges his indebtedness to The Century Co.
for permission to reprint "Oh, Shining Shoes!"_
CONTENTS
The Perfect Gentleman 1
As a Man Dresses 14
In the Chair 28
Oh, Shining Shoes! 43
On Making Calls 55
The Lier in Bed 67
To Bore or Not to Bore 79
Where Toils the Tailor 93
Shaving Thoughts 106
Oh, The Afternoon Tea! 122
THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN
Somewhere in the back of every man's mind there dwells a strange wistful
desire to be thought a Perfect Gentleman. And this is much to his
credit, for the Perfect Gentleman, as thus wistfully contemplated, is a
high ideal of human behavior, although, in the narrower but honest
admiration of many, he is also a Perfect Ass. Thus, indeed, he comes
down the centuries--a sort of Siamese Twins, each miraculously visible
only to its own admirers; a worthy personage proceeding at one end of
the connecting cartilage, and a popinjay prancing at the other. Emerson
was, and described, one twin when he wrote, 'The gentleman is a man of
truth, lord of his own actions, and expressing that lordship in his
behavior; not in any manner dependent or servile, either on persons, or
opinions, or possessions.' Walter Pater, had Leonardo painted a Perfect
Gentleman's portrait instead of a Perfect Lady's, might have described
the other: 'The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the
tea-table is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years women
had come to desire. His is the head upon which "all the ends of the
world have come," and the eyelids are a little weary. He is older than
the tea things among which he sits.' Many have admired, but few have
tried to imitate, the Perfect Gentleman of Emerson's definition; yet few
there are who have not felt the wistful desire for resemblance. But the
other is more objective: his clothes, his manners, and his habits are
easy to imitate.
Of this Perfect Gentleman in the eighteenth century I recently
discovered fossil remains in the _Gentleman's Pocket Library_ (Boston
and Philadelphia, 1794), from which any literary savant may restore the
original. All in one volume, the Library is a compilation for Perfect
Gentlemen in the shell, especially helpful with its chapter on the
'Principles of Politeness'; and many an honest but foolish youth went
about, I dare say, with this treasure distending his pocket, bravely
hoping to become a Perfect Gentleman by sheer diligence of spare-time
study. If by chance this earnest student met an acquaintance who had
recently become engaged, he would remember the 'distinguishing diction
that marks the man of fashion,' and would 'advance with warmth and
cheerfulness, and perhaps squeezing him by the hand' (oh, horror!)
'would say, "Believe me, my dear sir, I have scarce words to express the
joy I feel, upon your happy alliance with such and such a family,
etc."' Of which distinguishing diction, 'believe _me_' is now all that
is left.
If, however, he knew that the approaching victim had been lately
bereaved, he would 'advance slower, and with a peculiar composure of
voice and countenance, begin his compliments of condolence with, "I
hope, sir, you will do me the justice to be persuaded, that I am not
insensible to your unhappiness, that I take part in your distress, and
shall ever be affected when _you_ are so."'
In lighter mood this still imperfect Perfect Gentleman would never allow
himself to laugh, knowing, on the word of his constant pocket-companion,
that laughter is the 'sure sign of a weak mind, and the manner in which
low-bred men express their silly joy, at silly things, and they call it
being merry.' Better _always_, if necessary, the peculiar composure of
polite sensibility to the suffering of properly introduced
acquaintances. When he went out, he would be careful to 'walk well, wear
his hat well, move his head properly, and his arms gracefully'; and I
for one sympathize with the low-breds if they found him a merry
spectacle; when he went in, he would remember pertinently that 'a
well-bred man is known by his manner of sitting.' 'Easy in every
position,' say the Principles of Politeness, 'instead of lolling or
lounging as he sits, he leans with elegance, and by varying his
attitudes, shows that he has been used to good company.' Good company,
one judges, must have inclined to be rather acrobatic.
Now, in the seventeen-nineties there were doubtless purchasers for the
_Gentleman's Pocket Library_: the desire to become a Perfect Gentleman
(like this one) by home study evidently existed. But, although I am
probably the only person who has read that instructive book for a very
long time, it remains to-day the latest complete work which any young
man wishing to become a Perfect Gentleman can find to study. Is it
possible, I ask myself, that none but burglars any longer entertain
this ambition? I can hardly believe it. Yet the fact stands out that,
in an age truly remarkable for its opportunities for self-improvement,
there is nothing later than 1794 to which I can commend a crude but
determined inquirer. To my profound astonishment I find that the
Correspondence-School system offers no course; to my despair I search
the magazines for graphic illustration of an Obvious Society Leader
confiding to an Obvious Scrubwoman: 'Six months ago _my_ husband was no
more a Perfect Gentleman than _yours_, but one day I persuaded him to
_mark that coupon_, and all our social prominence and _eclat_ we owe to
that school.'
One may say, indeed, that here is something which cannot conceivably be
described as a job; but all the more does it seem, logically, that the
correspondence schools must be daily creating candidates for what
naturally would be a post-graduate course. One would imagine that a mere
announcement would be sufficient, and that from all the financial and
industrial centres of the country students would come flocking back to
college in the next mail.
BE A PERFECT GENTLEMAN
In the Bank--at the Board of Directors--putting
through that New Railroad in Alaska--wherever you
are and whatever you are doing to drag down the
Big Money--wouldn't you feel more at ease if you
_knew_ you were behaving like a Perfect Gentleman?
We will teach YOU how.
Some fifty odd years ago Mr. George H. Calvert (whom I am pained to find
recorded in the _Dictionary of American Authors_ as one who 'published a
great number of volumes of verse that was never mistaken for poetry by
any reader') wrote a small book about gentlemen, fortunately in prose
and not meant for beginners, in which he cited Bayard, Sir Philip
Sidney, Charles Lamb, Brutus, St. Paul, and Socrates as notable
examples. Perfect Gentlemen all, as Emerson would agree, I question if
any of them ever gave a moment's thought to his manner of sitting; yet
any two, sitting together, would have recognized each other as Perfect
Gentlemen at once and thought no more about it.
These are the standard, true to Emerson's definition; and yet such
shining examples need not discourage the rest of us. The qualities that
made them gentlemen are not necessarily the qualities that made them
famous. One need not be as polished as Sidney, but one must not scratch.
One need not have a mind like Socrates: a gentleman may be reasonably
perfect,--and surely this is not asking too much,--with mind enough to
follow this essay. Brutus gained nothing as a gentleman by assisting at
the assassination of Caesar (who was no more a gentleman, by the way, in
Mr. Calvert's opinion, than was Mr. Calvert a poet in that of the
_Dictionary of Authors_).
As for Fame, it is quite sufficient--and this only out of gentlemanly
consideration for the convenience of others--for a Perfect Gentleman to
have his name printed in the Telephone Directory. And in this higher
definition I go so far as to think that the man is rare who is not
sometimes a Perfect Gentleman, and equally uncommon who never is
anything else. Adam I hail a Perfect Gentleman when, seeing what his
wife had done, he bit back the bitter words he might have said, and
then--he too--took a bite of the apple: but oh! how far he fell
immediately afterward, when he stammered his pitiable explanation that
the woman tempted him and he did eat! Bayard, Sir Philip Sidney, Charles
Lamb, St. Paul, or Socrates would have insisted, and stuck to it, that
_he bit it first_.
I have so far left out of consideration--as for that matter did the
author and editor of the _Pocket Library_ (not wishing to discourage
students)--a qualification essential to the Perfect Gentleman in the
eighteenth century. He must have had--what no book could give him--an
ancestor who knew how to sit. Men there were whose social status was
visibly signified by the abbreviation 'Gent.' appended to their
surnames. But already this was becoming a vermiform appendix, and the
nineteenth century did away with it. This handsome abbreviation created
an invidious distinction between citizens which democracy refused longer
to countenance; and, much as a Lenin would destroy the value of money in
Russia by printing countless rouble notes without financial backing, so
democracy destroyed the distinctive value of the word 'gentleman' by
applying it indiscriminately to the entire male population of the United
States.
The gentleman continues in various degrees of perfection. There is no
other name for him, but one hears it rarely; yet the shining virtue of
democratization is that it has produced a kind of tacit agreement with
Chaucer's Parson that 'to have pride in the gentrie of the bodie is
right gret folie; for oft-time the gentrie of the bodie benimeth the
gentrie of the soul; and also we be all of one fader and one moder.' And
although there are few men nowadays who would insist that they _are_
gentlemen, there is probably no man living in the United States who
would admit that he isn't.
And so I now see that my bright dream of a Correspondence-School
post-graduate course cannot be realized. No bank president, no
corporation director, electrical engineer, advertising expert,
architect, or other distinguished alumnus would confess himself no
gentleman by _marking that coupon_. The suggestion would be an insult,
were it affectionately made by the good old president of his Alma Mater
in a personal letter. A few decorative cards, to be hung up in the
office, might perhaps be printed and mailed at graduation.
A bath _every_ day
Is the Gentleman's way.
Don't break the Ten Commandments--
Moses meant YOU!
Dress Well--Behave Better.
A Perfect Gentleman has a Good Heart,
a Good Head, a Good Wardrobe,
and a Good Conscience.
AS A MAN DRESSES
At some time or other, I dare say, it is common experience for a man to
feel indignant at the necessity of dressing himself. He wakes in the
morning. Refreshed with sleep, ready and eager for his daily tasks and
pleasures, he is just about to leap out of bed when the thought
confronts him that he must put on his clothes. His leap is postponed
indefinitely, and he gets up with customary reluctance. One after
another, twelve articles--eleven, if two are joined in union one and
inseparable--must be buttoned, tied, laced, and possibly safety-pinned
to his person: a routine business, dull, wearisome with repetition. His
face and hands must be washed, his hair and teeth brushed: many, indeed,
will perform all over what Keats, thinking of the ocean eternally
washing the land, has called a 'priestlike task of pure ablution'; but
others, faithful to tradition and Saturday night, will dodge this as
wasteful. Downstairs in summer is his hat; in winter, his hat, his
overcoat, his muffler, and, if the weather compels, his galoshes and
perhaps his ear-muffs or ear-bobs. Last thing of all, the Perfect
Gentleman will put on his walking-stick; somewhere in this routine he
will have shaved and powdered, buckled his wrist-watch, and adjusted his
spats.
When we think of the shortness of life, and how, even so, we might
improve our minds by study between getting up and breakfast, dressing,
as educators are beginning to say of the long summer vacation, seems a
sheer 'wastage of education'; yet the plain truth is that we wouldn't
get up. Better, if we can, to _think_ while we dress, pausing to jot
down our worth-while thoughts on a handy tablet. Once, I remember,--and
perhaps the pleasant custom continues,--a lady might modestly express
her kindly feeling for a gentleman (and her shy, half-humorous
recognition of the difference between them) by giving him shaving-paper;
why not a somewhat similar tablet, to record his dressing-thoughts?
'Clothes,' so wrote Master Thomas Fuller,--and likely enough the idea
occurred to him some morning while getting into his hose and
doublet,--'ought to be our remembrancers of our lost innocency.' And so
they are; for Adam must have bounded from bed to breakfast with an
innocency that nowadays we can only envy.
Yet, in sober earnest, the first useful thing that ever this naked
fellow set his hand to was the making of his own apron. The world, as
we know and love it, began--your pardon, Mr. Kipling, but I cannot help
it--when
Cross-legged our Father Adam sat and fastened them one by one,
Till, leaf by leaf, with loving care he got his apron done;
The first new suit the world had seen, and mightily pleased with it,
Till the Devil chuckled behind the Tree, 'It's pretty, but will it fit?'
From that historic moment everything a man does has been preceded by
dressing, and almost immediately the process lost its convenient
simplicity. Not since Adam's apron has any complete garment, or
practical suit of clothes, been devised--except for sea-bathing--that a
busy man could slip on in the morning and off again at night. All our
indignation to the contrary, we prefer the complicated and difficult: we
enjoy our buttons; we are withheld only by our queer sex-pride from
wearing garments that button up in the back--indeed, on what we frankly
call our 'best clothes,' we _have the buttons_ though we _dare not
button_ with them. The one costume that a man could slip on at night and
off again in the morning has never, if he could help it, been worn in
general society, and is now outmoded by a pretty little coat and
pantaloons of soft material and becoming color. We come undressed; but
behold! thousands of years before we were born, it was decided that we
must be dressed as soon as possible afterward, and clothes were made for
us while it was yet in doubt whether we would be a little gentleman or a
little lady. And so a man's first clothes are cunningly fashioned to do
for either; worse still,--a crying indignity that, oh, thank Heaven, he
cannot remember in maturity,--he is forcibly valeted by a woman, very
likely young and attractive, to whom he has never been formally
introduced.
But with this nameless, speechless, and almost invertebrate thing that
he once was--this little kicking Maeterlinck (if I may so call it)
between the known and the unknown worlds--the mature self-dresser will
hardly concern himself. Rather, it may be, will he contemplate the
amazing revolution which, in hardly more than a quarter-century, has
reversed public opinion, and created a free nation which, no longer
regarding a best-dresser with fine democratic contempt, now seeks, with
fine democratic unanimity, to be a best-dresser itself. Or perhaps,
smiling, he will recall Dr. Jaeger, that brave and lonely spirit who
sought to persuade us that no other garment is so comfortable, so
hygienic, so convenient, and so becoming to all figures, as the union
suit--and that it should be worn externally, with certain modifications
to avoid arrest. His photograph, thus attired, is stamped on memory: a
sensible, bearded gentleman, inclining to stoutness, comfortably dressed
in eye-glasses and a modified union suit. And then, almost at the same
moment, the Clothing Industry, perhaps inspired by the doctor's courage
and informed by his failure, started the revolution, since crowned by
critical opinion, in a Sunday newspaper, that 'The American man,
considering him in all the classes that constitute American society, is
to-day the best-dressed, best-kept man in the world.'
Forty or fifty years ago no newspaper could plausibly have made that
statement, and, if it had, its office would probably have been wrecked
by a mob of insulted citizens; but the Clothing Industry knew us better
than Dr. Jaeger, better even than we knew ourselves. Its ideal picture
of a handsome, snappy young fellow, madly enjoying himself in
exquisitely fitting, ready-to-wear clothes, stirred imaginations that
had been cold and unresponsive to the doctor's photograph. We admired
the doctor for his courage, but we admired the handsome, snappy young
fellow for his looks; nay, more, we jumped in multitudes to the
conclusion, which has since been partly borne out, that ready-to-wear
clothes would make us all look like him. And so, in all the classes that
constitute American society (which I take to include everybody who wears
a collar), the art of dressing, formerly restricted to the few, became
popular with the many. Other important and necessary industries--the
hatters, the shoemakers, the shirtmakers, the cravatters, the hosiers,
even the makers of underwear--hurried out of hiding; and soon, whoever
had eyes to look could study that handsome, snappy young fellow in every
stage of costume,--for the soap-makers also saw their opportunity,--from
the bath up.
The tailor survived, thanks probably to the inevitable presence of
Doubting Thomas in any new movement; but he, too, has at last seen the
light. I read quite recently his announcement that in 1919 men's clothes
would be 'sprightly without conspicuousness; dashing without verging on
extremes; youthful in temperament and inspirational.' Some of us, it
appears, remain self-conscious and a little afraid to snap; and there
the tailor catches us with his cunningly conceived 'sprightly without
conspicuousness.' Unlike the _vers-libre_ poetess who would fain 'go
naked in the street and walk unclothed into people's parlors,'--leaving,
one imagines, an idle but deeply interested gathering on the
sidewalk,--we are timid about extremes. We wish to dash--but within
reasonable limits. Nor, without forcing the note, would we willingly
miss an opportunity to inspire others, or commit the affectation of
concealing a still youthful temperament.
A thought for the tablet: _As a man dresses, so he is._
Thirty or forty years ago there were born, and lived in a popular
magazine, two gentlemen-heroes whose perfect friendship was unmarred by
rivalry because, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, they were of such
different but equally engaging types of manly beauty. I forget whether
they married sisters, but they live on in the memory as ornamental
symbols of a vanished past--a day when fiction-writers impressed it, on
their readers with every means at their command, that a hero was
well-dressed, well-washed, and well-groomed. Such details have become
unnecessary, and grumpy stand-patters no longer contemptuously mutter,
'Soap! Soap!' when a hero comes down to breakfast. Some of our older
politicians, to be sure, still wear a standard costume of Prince Albert
coat, pants (for so one must call them) that bag at the knee, and an
impersonal kind of black necktie, sleeping, I dare say, in what used
jocularly to be called a 'nightie'; but our younger leaders go
appropriately clad, to the eye, in exquisitely fitting, ready-to-wear
clothes. So, too, does the Correspondence-School graduate, rising like
an escaped balloon from his once precarious place among the untrained
workers to the comfortable security of general manager. Here and there,
an echo of the past, persists the pretence that men are superior to any
but practical considerations in respect to clothing; but if this were
so, I need hardly point out that more would dress like Dr. Jaeger, and
few waste precious moments fussing over the selection of prettily
colored ribbons to wear round their necks.
Fortunately we need no valets, and a democracy of best-dressers is
neither more nor less democratic than one of shirt-sleeves: the
important thing in both cases is that the great majority of citizens all
look alike. The alarm-clock awakens us, less politely than a James or
Joseph, but we need never suspect it of uncomplimentary mental
reservations, and neither its appetite nor its morals cause us
uneasiness. Fellow-citizens of Greek extraction maintain parlors where
we may sit, like so many statues on the Parthenon, while they polish our
shoes. In all large cities are quiet retreats where it is quite
conventional, and even _degage_, for the most Perfect Gentleman to wait
in what still remains to him, while an obliging fellow creature swiftly
presses his trousers; or, lacking this convenient retreat, there are
shrewd inventions that crease while we sleep. Hangers, simulating our
own breadth of shoulders, wear our coats and preserve their shape.
Wooden feet, simulating our own honest trotters, wear our shoes and keep
them from wrinkling. No valet could do more. And as for laying out our
clothes, has not the kind Clothing Industry provided handy manuals of
instruction? With their assistance any man can lay out the garments
proper to any function, be it a morning dig in the garden, a noon
wedding at the White House, or (if you can conceive it) a midnight
supper with Mrs. Carrie Nation.
And yet--sometimes, that indignation we feel at having to dress
ourselves in the morning, we feel again at having to undress ourselves
at night. Then indeed are our clothes a remembrancer of our lost
innocency. We think only of Adam going to bed. We forget that, properly
speaking, poor innocent Adam had no bed to go to. And we forget also
that in all the joys of Eden was none more innocent than ours when we
have just put on a new suit.
IN THE CHAIR
About once in so often a man must go to the barber for what, with
contemptuous brevity, is called a haircut. He must sit in a big chair, a
voluminous bib (prettily decorated with polka dots) tucked in round his
neck, and let another human being cut his hair for him. His head, with
all its internal mystery and wealth of thought, becomes for the time
being a mere poll, worth two dollars a year to the tax-assessor: an
irregularly shaped object, between a summer squash and a cantaloupe,
with too much hair on it, as very likely several friends have advised
him. His identity vanishes.
As a rule, the less he now says or thinks about his head, the better: he
has given it to the barber, and the barber will do as he pleases with
it. It is only when the man is little and is brought in by his mother,
that the job will be done according to instructions; and this is because
the man's mother is in a position to see the back of his head. Also
because the weakest woman under such circumstances has strong
convictions. When the man is older the barber will sometimes allow him
to see the haircut cleverly reflected in two mirrors; but not one man in
a thousand--nay, in ten thousand--would dare express himself as
dissatisfied. After all, what does he know of haircuts, he who is no
barber? Women feel differently; and I know of one man who, returning
home with a new haircut, was compelled to turn round again and take what
his wife called his 'poor' head to another barber by whom the haircut
was more happily finished. But that was exceptional. And it happened to
that man but once.
The very word 'haircut' is objectionable. It snips like the scissors.
Yet it describes the operation more honestly than the substitute 'trim,'
a euphemism that indicates a jaunty habit of dropping in frequently at
the barber's and so keeping the hair perpetually at just the length that
is most becoming. For most men, although the knowledge must be gathered
by keen, patient observation and never by honest confession, there is a
period, lasting about a week, when the length of their hair is
admirable. But it comes between haircuts. The haircut itself is never
satisfactory. If his hair was too long before (and on this point he has
the evidence of unprejudiced witnesses), it is too short now. It must
grow steadily--count on it for that!--until for a brief period it is
'just right,' aesthetically suited to the contour of his face and the cut
of his features, and beginning already imperceptibly to grow too long
again.
Soon this growth becomes visible, and the man begins to worry. 'I must
go to the barber,' he says in a harassed way. 'I must get a haircut.'
But the days pass. It is always to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow.
When he goes, he goes suddenly.
There is something within us, probably our immortal soul, that postpones
a haircut; and yet in the end our immortal souls have little to do with
the actual process. It is impossible to conceive of one immortal soul
cutting another immortal soul's hair. My own soul, I am sure, has never
entered a barber's shop. It stops and waits for me at the portal.
Probably it converses, on subjects remote from our bodily
consciousness, with the immortal souls of barbers, patiently waiting
until the barbers finish their morning's work and come out to lunch.
Even during the haircut our hair is still growing, never stopping, never
at rest, never in a hurry: it grows while we sleep, as was proved by Rip
Van Winkle. And yet perhaps sometimes it is in a hurry; perhaps that is
why it falls out. In rare cases the contagion of speed spreads; the last
hair hurries after all the others; the man is emancipated from
dependence on barbers. I know a barber who is in this independent
condition himself (for the barber can no more cut his own hair than the
rest of us) and yet sells his customers a preparation warranted to keep
them from attaining it: a seeming anomaly which can be explained only on
the ground that business is business. To escape the haircut one must be
quite without hair that one cannot see and reach; and herein possibly is
the reason for a fashion which has often perplexed students of the
Norman Conquest. The Norman soldiery wore no hair on the backs of their
heads; and each brave fellow could sit down in front of his polished
shield and cut his own hair without much trouble. But the scheme had a
weakness; the back of the head had to be shaved; and the fashion
doubtless went out because, after all, nothing was gained by it. One
simply turned over on one's face in the barber's chair instead of
sitting up straight.
Fortunately we begin having a haircut when we are too young to think,
and when also the process is sugar-coated by the knowledge that we are
losing our curls. Then habit accustoms us to it. Yet it is significant
that men of refinement seek the barber in secluded places, basements of
hotels for choice, where they can be seen only by barbers and by other
refined men having or about to have haircuts; and that men of less
refinement submit to the operation where every passer-by can stare in
and see them, bibs round their necks and their shorn locks lying in
pathetic little heaps on the floor. There is a barber's shop of this
kind in Boston where one of the barbers, having no head to play with,
plays on a cornet, doubtless to the further distress of his immortal
soul peeping in through the window. But this is unusual even in the city
that is known far and wide as the home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
I remember a barber--he was the only one available in a small town--who
cut my left ear. The deed distressed him, and he told me a story. It was
a pretty little cut, he said,--filling it with alum,--and reminded him
of another gentleman whose left ear he had nipped in identically the
same place. He had done his best with alum and apology, as he was now
doing. Two months later the gentleman came in again. 'And by golly!'
said the barber, with a kind of wonder at his own cleverness, 'if I
didn't nip him again in just the same place!'
A man can shave himself. The Armless Wonder does it in the Dime Museum.
Byron did it, and composed poetry during the operation; although, as I
have recently seen scientifically explained, the facility of composition
was not due to the act of shaving but to the normal activity of the
human mind at that time in the morning. Here, therefore, a man can
refuse the offices of the barber. If he wishes to make one of a
half-dozen apparently inanimate figures, their faces covered with soap,
and their noses used as convenient handles to turn first one cheek and
then the other--that is his own lookout. But human ingenuity has yet to
invent a 'safety barber's shears.' It has tried. A near genius once
invented an apparatus--a kind of helmet with multitudinous little
scissors inside it--which he hopefully believed would solve the problem;
but what became of him and his invention I have not heard. Perhaps he
tried it himself and slunk, defeated, into a deeper obscurity. Perhaps
he committed suicide; for one can easily imagine that a man who thought
he had found a way to cut his own hair and then found that he hadn't,
would be thrown into a suicidal depression. There is the possibility
that he succeeded in cutting his own hair, and was immediately 'put
away,' by his sensitive family where nobody could see him but the
hardened attendants. The important fact is that the invention never got
on the market. Until some other investigator succeeds to more practical
purpose, the rest of us must go periodically to the barber. We must put
on the bib--
Here, however, there is at least an opportunity of selection. There are
bibs with arms, and bibs without arms. And there is a certain amount of
satisfaction in being able to see our own hands, carefully holding the
newspaper or periodical wherewith we pretend that we are still
intelligent human beings. And here again are distinctions. The patrons
of my own favored barber's shop have arms to their bibs and pretend to
be deeply interested in the _Illustrated London News_. The patrons of
the barber's shop where I lost part of my ear--I cannot see the place,
but those whom I take into my confidence tell me that it has long since
grown again--had no sleeves to their bibs, but nevertheless managed
awkwardly to hold the _Police Gazette_. And this opportunity to hold the
_Police Gazette_ without attracting attention becomes a pleasant feature
of this type of barber's shop: I, for example, found it easier--until my
ear was cut--to forget my position in the examination of this journal
than in the examination of the _Illustrated London News_. The pictures,
strictly speaking, are not so good, either artistically or morally, but
there is a tang about them, an I-do-not-know-what. And it is always
wisest to focus attention on some such extraneous interest. Otherwise
you may get to looking in the mirror.
Do not do that.
For one thing, there is the impulse to cry out, 'Stop! Stop! Don't cut
it all off!
'Oh, barber, spare that hair!
Leave some upon my brow!
For months it's sheltered me!
And I'll protect it now!
'Oh, please! P-l-e-a-s-e!--'
These exclamations annoy a barber, rouse a demon of fury in him. He
reaches for a machine called 'clippers.' Tell him how to cut hair, will
you! A little more and he'll shave your head--and not only half-way
either, like the Norman soldiery at the time of the Conquest! Even if
you are able to restrain this impulse, clenching your bib in your hands
and perhaps dropping or tearing the _Illustrated London News_, the
mirror gives you strange, morbid reflections. You recognize your face,
but your head seems somehow separate, balanced on a kind of polka-dotted
mountain with two hands holding the _Illustrated London News_. You are
afraid momentarily that the barber will lift it off and go away with it.
Then is the time to read furiously the weekly contribution of G. K.
Chesterton. But your mind reverts to a story you have been reading about
how the Tulululu islanders, a savage but ingenious people, preserve the
heads of their enemies so that the faces are much smaller but otherwise
quite recognizable. You find yourself looking keenly at the barber to
discover any possible trace of Tulululu ancestry.
And what is he going to get now? A _kris_? No, a paint-brush. Is he
going to paint you? And if so--what color? The question of color
becomes strangely important, as if it made any real difference. Green?
Red? Purple? Blue? No, he uses the brush dry, tickling your forehead,
tickling your ears, tickling your nose, tickling you under the chin and
down the back of your neck. After the serious business of the haircut, a
barber must have some relaxation.
There is one point on which you are independent: you will not have the
bay rum; you are a teetotaller. You say so in a weak voice which
nevertheless has some adamantine quality that impresses him. He humors
you; or perhaps your preference appeals to his sense of business
economy.
He takes off your bib.
From a row of chairs a man leaps to his feet, anxious to give _his_ head
to the barber. A boy hastily sweeps up the hair that was yours--already
as remote from you as if it had belonged to the man who is always
waiting, and whose name is Next. Oh, it is horrible--horrible--horrible!
OH, SHINING SHOES!
In a democracy it is fitting that a man should sit on a throne to have
his shoes polished, or, to use a brighter, gayer word, shined. We are
all kings, and this happy conceit of popular government is nicely
symbolized by being, for these shining moments, so many kings together,
each on his similar throne and with a slave at his feet. The democratic
idea suffers a little from the difficulty of realizing that the slave is
also a king, yet gains a little from the fair custom of the livelier
monarchs of turning from left foot to right and from right to left, so
that, within human limits, neither shoe shall be undemocratically shined
first.
Nor is it uncommon for the kings on the thrones to be symbolically and
inexpensively served by yet other sovereign servants. Newspapers in
hand, they receive the reports of their lord high chancellors, digest
the social gossip of their realm, review its crimes, politics,
discoveries, and inventions, and are entertained by their jesters, who,
I have it on the authority of a current advertisement, all
democratically smoke the same kind of tobacco. 'You know 'em all, the
great fun-makers of the daily press, agile-brained and nimble-witted,
creators of world-famed characters who put laughter into life. Such
live, virile humans as they _must_ have a live, virile pipe-smoke.'
There are, to be sure, some who find in this agile-brained and
nimble-witted mirth an element of profound melancholy; it seems often a
debased coin of humor, which rings false on the counter of intelligence;
yet even at its worst it is far better than many of the waggeries that
once stirred laughter in mediaeval monarchs. The thought renders them
bearable, these live, virile humans, who only a few centuries ago would
have been too handicapped by their refinement to compete successfully
with contemporary humorists.
But there are a good many of us, possessors of patience, self-control,
and a sponge in a bottle, who rarely enjoy this royal prerogative. We
shine our own shoes. Alone, and, if one may argue from the particular to
the general, simply dressed in the intermediate costume, more or less
becoming, that is between getting up and going out, we wear a shoe on
our left hand, and with the other manipulate the helpful sponge.
Sometimes, too anxious, it polka-dots our white garments, sometimes the
floor; it is safe only in the bottle, and the wisest shiner will perhaps
approach the job as an Adamite, bestriding, like a colossus, a
wide-spread newspaper, and taking a bath afterward. Or it may be that
instead of the bottle we have a little tin box, wedded to its
cover,--how often have we not exclaimed between clenched teeth, 'What
man hath joined together man can pull asunder!'--and containing a kind
of black mud, which we apply with an unfortunate rag or with a brush
appropriately called the 'dauber.' Having daubed, we polish, breathing
our precious breath on the luminous surface for even greater luminosity.
The time is passing when we performed this task of pure lustration, as
Keats might have called it, in the cellar or the back hall, more fully,
but not completely, dressed, coatless, our waistcoats rakishly
unbuttoned or vulgarly upstairs, our innocent trousers hanging on their
gallowses, our shoes on our feet, and our physical activity not
altogether unlike that demanded by a home-exerciser to reduce the
abdomen. Men of girth have been advised to saw wood; I wonder that they
never have been advised to shine their own shoes--twenty-five times in
the morning and twenty-five times just before going to bed.
My own observation, although not continuous enough to have scientific
value, leads me to think that stout men are the more inveterate patrons
of the shoe-blacking parlor,--Caesar should have run one,--and that the
present popularity of the sponge in a bottle may derive from superfluous
girth. Invented as a dainty toilet accessory for women, and at first
regarded by men as effeminate, it is easy to see how insidiously the
sponge in a bottle would have attracted a stout husband accustomed to
shine his own shoes in the earlier contortionist manner. By degrees,
first one stout husband and then another, men took to the bottle; the
curse of effeminacy was lifted; the habit grew on men of all sizes. It
was not a perfect method,--it blacked too many other things besides
shoes, and provided an undesirable plaything for baby,--but it was a
step forward. There was a refinement, a _je ne sais quoi_, an 'easier
way,' about this sponge in a bottle; and, perhaps more than all, a
delusive promise that the stuff would dry shiny without friction, which
appealed to the imagination.
Then began to disappear a household familiar--that upholstered,
deceptive, utilitarian hassock kind of thing which, when opened,
revealed an iron foot-rest, a box of blacking,--I will not _say_ how
some moistened that blacking, but you and I, gentle reader, brought
water in a crystal glass from the kitchen,--and an ingenious tool which
combined the offices of dauber and shiner, so that one never knew how to
put it away right side up. This tool still exists, an honest, good-sized
brush carrying a round baby brush pickaback; and I dare say an
occasional old-fashioned gentleman shines his shoes with it; but in the
broader sense of that pernicious and descriptive phrase it is no longer
used 'by the best people.' Of late, I am told by shopkeepers, the tin
box with the pervicacious cover is becoming popular; but I remain true
to my sponge in a bottle: for, unlike the leopard, I am able to change
my spots.
Looking along the ages from the vantage of a throne in the shoe-blacking
parlor, it is a matter of pleased wonder to observe what the mind has
found to do with the feet; nor is the late invention of shoe-polish
(hardly earlier than the Declaration of Independence) the least
surprising item. For the greater part of his journey man has gone about
his businesses in unshined footwear, beginning, it would appear, with a
pair of foot-bags, or foot-purses, each containing a valuable foot, and
tied round the ankle. Thus we see him, far down the vista of time, a
tiny figure stopping on his way to tie up his shoe-strings. Captivated
with form and color, he exhausted his invention in shapes and materials
before ever he thought of polish: he cut his toes square; he cut his
toes so long and pointed that he must needs tie them to his knee to keep
from falling over them; he wore soles without uppers,--alas! poor devil,
how often in all ages has he approximated wearing uppers without
soles!--and he went in for top-boots splendidly belegged and
coquettishly beautified with what, had he been a lady, he might have
described as an insertion of lace. At last came the boot-blacking
parlor, late nineteenth century, commercial, practical, convenient, and
an important factor in civic aesthetics. Not that the parlor is
beautiful in itself. It is a cave without architectural pretensions, but
it accomplishes unwittingly an important mission: it removes from public
view the man who is having his shoes shined.
You know him, as the advertisement says of the live, virile humans who
_must_ have the live, virile pipe-smoke; but happily you know him
nowadays chiefly by effort of memory. Yet only a little while ago
kindly, well-intentioned men thought nothing of having their shoes
shined in the full glare of the sun. The man having his shoes shined was
a common spectacle. He sat or stood where anybody might see him, almost
as immobile as a cigar-store Indian and much less decorative, with a
peripatetic shoeblack busy at his feet. His standing attitude was a
little like Washington crossing the Delaware; and when he sat down, he
was not wholly unlike the picture of Jupiter in Mr. Bulfinch's
well-known _Age of Fable_. He had his shoes shined on the sidewalk,
congesting traffic; he had them shined in the park, with the birds
singing; wherever he had them shined, he was as lacking in
self-consciousness as a baby sucking its thumb. Peripatetic shoeblacks
pursued pedestrians, and no sensitive gentleman was safe from them
merely because he had carefully and well shined his own shoes before he
came out. But how rarely nowadays do we see this peripatetic shoeblack!
Soon he will be as extinct as the buffalo, and the shoe-blacking parlor
is his Buffalo Bill.
In the shoe-blacking parlor we are all tarred with the same brush, all
daubed with the same dauber; we have nothing, as the rather enigmatical
phrase goes, _on_ one another. Indeed, we hardly look at one another,
and are as remote as strangers sitting side by side in a theatre.
Individually, in a steady, subconscious way, I think we are all
wondering how we are going to get down when the time comes. One will
hop, like a great sparrow; another will turn round and descend backward;
another will come down with an absent-minded little wave of the foot, as
if he were quite used to having his shoes shined and already thinking of
more serious business; another--but this is sheer nervousness and lack
of _savoir-faire_--will step off desperately, as if into an abyss, and
come down with a thump. Sometimes, but rarely, a man will fall off. It
is a throne--and perhaps this is true of all thrones--from which no
altogether self-satisfactory descent is possible; and we all know it,
sitting behind our newspapers, or staring down on decadent Greece
shining at our feet, or examining with curious, furtive glances those
calendars the feminine beauty of which seems peculiar to shoe-blacking
parlors, and has sometimes led us to wonder whether the late Mr.
Comstock ever had his shoes shined.
And now, behold! the slave-king at my feet has found a long, narrow
strip of linen, not, I fear, antiseptic, but otherwise suggestive of a
preparedness course in first aid to the injured. He breathes on my shoes
(O unhygienic shoeblack!), dulling them to make them brighter with his
strip of linen. It is my notice to abdicate; he turns down the bottoms
of my trousers. I do not know how I get down from the throne.
ON MAKING CALLS
I know a boy who dislikes to make calls. Making a call, he says, is
'just sitting on a chair.'
I have had the same feeling, although I had never defined it so nicely.
One 'just sits on a chair'--precariously, yet with an odd sense of
unhappy security, of having grown to and become part of that chair, as
if one dreaded to fall off, yet strongly suspected that any real effort
to get up and go away would bring the chair up and away with him. He is,
so to speak, like a barnacle on a rock in an ocean of conversation. He
may exhibit unbarnacle-like activity, cross and uncross his legs, fold
and unfold his arms, twiddle his useful fingers, incline his tired head
this way and that to relieve the strain on his neck, assume (like an
actor) expressions of interest, amusement, surprise, pleasure, or what
not. He may even speak or laugh. But he remains sitting on his chair. He
is more and more certain that he cannot get up.
He is unlike the bottoms of his own trousers. Calmly, quietly, and by
imperceptible degrees _they_ get up. Higher and higher they ascend
kneeward; they have an ambition to achieve the waist. Every little while
he must unostentatiously, and with an easy, careless, indifferent,
well-bred, and even _blase_ gesture, manage to pull them down.
I am referring, you understand, to the mature, married gentleman.
Between boyhood and maturity there is a period (without which there
would be fewer marriages, and perhaps none at all) when a call is a
personal adventure, and it often happens that the recipient of the
call, rather than the caller himself, fears that somehow or other he and
his chair have grown together. But my boy friend, as I think you will
agree when you consider his situation, does not, strictly speaking,
call: he is taken to call. And just so is it with the average mature,
married gentleman; the chief difference--and even this does not
invariably hold good--is that he dresses himself. He has become part and
parcel (particularly parcel) of a wise and necessary division of life in
which the social end is taken over by a feminine partner. She is the
expert. She knows when and where to call, what to say, and when to go
home. Married, a gentleman has no further responsibilities in this
business--except to come cheerfully and sit on his chair without
wriggling. Sometimes, indeed, he takes a pleasure in it, but that is
only when he has momentarily forgotten that he is making a call. These
are his rewarding moments; and then, the first thing he knows, somebody
is 'making signs' that it is time to go home!
The wise man, noticing these 'signs,' comes home. He stands not upon the
order of his coming, but comes at once.
A call, says Herbert Spencer, in his _Principles of Sociology_, is
'evidently a remote sequence of that system under which a subordinate
ruler had from time to time to show loyalty to a chief ruler by
presenting himself to do homage.' The idea is plausible: was it not for
this very reason that Cleopatra galleyed down the Cydnus to call on
Antony,--a call that would probably have had a different effect on
history if the lady had brought a husband,--and Sheba cameled across the
desert to call on Solomon? The creditor character of the visitation
survives in the common expression 'paying a call.' In both these cases,
however, the calls took on a lighter and brighter aspect, a more
reciprocally admiring and well-affected intimacy, than was strictly
necessary to an act of political homage. One is, after all, human; and
the absence of marital partners, whose presence is always a little
subduing, must be taken into consideration. 'But Solomon,' you say,
'Solomon?' Sir and madam, I rise to your question. In such a situation a
man with seven hundred wives is as good as a bachelor; and I think the
fact that Solomon had seven hundred wives proves it.