[Illustration: _A long Perriwig, with a Pole-lock._]
This he puts forth as being “by artists called a long-curled-wig, with a
_suffloplin_, or with a _dildo_, or pole-lock;” and he affirms, that
“this is the sign or cognizance of the perawick-maker.”
That the peruke was anciently a barber’s sign, is verified by a very
rare, and perhaps an unique engraving of St. Paul’s cathedral when
building, with the scaffolding poles and boards up. This print, in the
possession of the editor of the _Every-Day Book_, represents a barber’s
shop on the north-side of St. Paul’s churchyard, with the barber’s pole
out at the door, and a swinging sign projecting from each side of the
house, a peruke being painted on each.
[Illustration: _A Travelling Wig._]
This peruque, with a “curled foretop and bobs,” was “a kind of
_travelling wig_, having the side or bottom locks turned up into bobs or
knots tied up with ribbons.” Holme further calls it “a _campaign-wig_,”
and says, “it hath knots or bobs, or a dildo, on each side, with a
curled forehead.”
_A Grafted Wig_
is described by Holme as “a perawick with a turn on the top of the head,
in imitation of a man’s hairy crown.”
[Illustration: _A Border of Hair._]
This is so called by Holme; he also calls it “a _peruque_, with the
crown or top cut off; some term it the _border_ of a peruque:” he adds,
that “women usually wear such borders, which they call curls or locks
when they hang over their ears.” He further says, they were called
“_taures_ when set in curls on the forehead,” and “_merkins_” when the
curls were worn lower, or at the sides of the face.
[Illustration: _A Bull-head._]
“Some,” says Holme, “term this curled forehead a _bull-head_, from the
French word _taure_, because _taure_ is a bull; it was the fashion of
women to wear _bull-heads_, or bull-like foreheads, anno 1674, and about
that time: this is the coat (of arms) of _Taurell_, a French monsieur,
or seigneur.”
[Illustration: _Curls on Wires._]
According to our chief authority, Holme, a female thus “quoiffed,” with
“a pair of locks and curls,” was in “great fashion, about the year
1670.” He adds, that “they are _false locks_, set on wyres, to make them
stand at a distance from the head; as the _fardingales_ made their
clothes stand out (from the hips downwards) in queen Elizabeth’s reign.”
[Illustration: _Female Head Dress in 1688._]
There is a little difficulty in naming this head dress; for Holme is so
diffuse and indignant that he gives it no term though he describes the
engraving. The figure is remarkable because it is in many respects
similar to the manner wherein the ladies of 1825 adjust the head. It
will be remembered that Holme was a herald, and though his descriptions
have not hitherto been here related in his armorial language, he always
sets them out so, in his “storehouse of armory and blazon.” It may be
amusing to conclude these extracts from him with his description of this
figure in his own words: thus then the old “deputy for the kings of
arms” describes it:--
“He beareth _argent_ a woman’s face; her forehead adorned with a knot of
_diverse coloured_ ribbons; the head with a ruffle quoif, set in
corners, and the like ribbons behind the head. This,” says Holme, “is a
_fashion-monger’s_ head, tricked and trimed up, according to the mode of
these times, wherein I am writing of it; and, in my judgment, were a fit
_coat_ for such seamsters as are skilled in inventions. _But_” (he
angrily breaks forth,) “_what_ do I talk of _arms_ to _such_, by reason
they will be shortly old, and therefore not to be endured by them, whose
brains are always upon new devises and inventions! But _all_ are brought
again from the _old_; for there is no _new_ thing under the sun; for
what _is_ now, _hath been_ formerly!”
* * * * *
In the great dining-room at Lambeth-palace, there are portraits of all
the archbishops, from Laud to the present time. In these we may observe
the gradual change of the clerical dress, in the article of wigs.
Archbishop Tillotson was the first prelate who wore a wig, which then
was not unlike the natural hair, and worn without powder.[304]
* * * * *
It is related of a barber in Paris, that, to establish the utility of
his bag-wigs, he caused the history of Absalom to be painted over his
door; and that one of the profession, at a town in Northamptonshire,
used this inscription, “Absalom, hadst thou worn a perriwig, thou hadst
not been hanged.”[305] It is somewhere told of another that he
ingeniously versified his brother peruke-maker’s inscription, under a
sign which represented the death of Absalom and David weeping; he wrote
up thus:--
“Oh, Absalom! Oh, Absalom!
Oh, Absalom! my son,
If thou hadst worn a perriwig,
Thou hadst not been undone!”
* * * * *
The well-known, light, flaxen wig of Townsend, the well-known
police-officer, is celebrated in a song beginning thus:--
_Townsend’s Wig._
_Tune_--“Nancy Dawson.”
Of all the wigs in Brighton town,
The black, the grey, the red, the brown,
So firmly glued upon the crown,
There’s none like Johnny Townsend’s:
It’s silken hair and flaxen hue,
(It is a scratch, and not a quene,)
Whene’er it pops upon the view,
Is known for Johnny Townsend’s!
* * * * *
Wigs were worn by the Romans when bald; those of the Roman ladies were
fastened upon a caul of goat-skin. Perriwigs commenced with their
emperors; they were awkwardly made of hair, painted and glued together.
False hair was always in use, though more from defect than fashion; but
the year 1529 is deemed the epoch of the introduction of long perriwigs
into France; yet it is certain that ladies _tetes_ were in use here a
century before. Mr. Fosbroke, from whose “Encyclopædia of Antiquities”
these particulars are derived, says, “that strange deformity, the
judge’s wig, first appears as a _general_ genteel fashion in the
seventeenth century.” Towards the close of that century, men of fashion
combed their wigs at public places, as an act of gallantry, with very
large ivory or tortoiseshell combs, which they carried in their pockets
as constantly as their snuffboxes. At court, in the mall of St.
James’s-park, and in the boxes of the theatre, gentlemen conversed and
combed their perukes.
~Hair.~
Horace Walpole relates that when the countess of Suffolk married Mr.
Howard, they were both so poor, that they took a resolution of going to
Hanover before the death of queen Anne, in order to pay their court to
the future royal family. Having some friends to dinner, and being
disappointed of a full remittance, she was forced to sell her hair to
furnish the entertainment. Long wigs were then in fashion, and the
countess’s hair being fine, long, and fair, produced her twenty pounds.
* * * * *
A fashion of wearing the hair gave rise to a college term at Cambridge,
which is thus mentioned and explained in a dictionary of common parlance
at that university:--
“APOLLO. One whose hair is loose and flowing;
Unfrizzled, _unanointed_, and untied;
No powder seen.----
“His royal highness prince William of Gloucester was an _Apollo_ during
the whole of his residence at the university of Cambridge! The strange
fluctuation of fashions has often afforded a theme for amusing
disquisition. ‘I can remember,’ says the pious archbishop Tillotson, in
one of his sermons, discoursing on this _head_, viz. _of hair!_ ‘since
the wearing the hair _below_ the ears was looked upon as a _sin_ of the
first magnitude; and when ministers generally, whatever their text was,
did either find, or make occasion to reprove the great _sin_ of long
hair; and if they saw any one in the congregation guilty in that kind,
they would point him out particularly, and _let fly at him_ with great
zeal.’ And we can remember since, the wearing the hair _cropt_, i. e.
above the ears, was looked upon, though not as a ‘sin,’ yet as a very
vulgar and _raffish_ sort of a thing; and when the _doers_ of newspapers
exhausted all their wit in endeavouring to rally the new-raised corps of
_crops_, regardless of the noble duke who _headed_ them; and, when the
rude, rank-scented rabble, if they saw any one in the streets, whether
time, or the tonsor, had thinned his flowing hair, would point him out
particularly, and ‘let fly at him,’ as the archbishop says, till not a
shaft of ridicule remained! The tax upon hair powder has now, however,
produced all over the country very plentiful _crops_. Among the _Curiosa
Cantabrigiensia_, it may be recorded, that our ‘most _religious_ and
gracious king,’ as he was called in the liturgy, Charles the Second,
who, as his worthy friend, the earl of Rochester, remarked,
‘never said a foolish thing,
Nor ever _did_ a wise one,’--
sent a letter to the university of Cambridge, forbidding the members to
wear _perriwigs_, smoke tobacco, and read their sermons! It is needless
to remark, that tobacco has not yet made its _exit in fumo_, and that
_perriwigs_ still continue to adorn ‘the _heads of houses_!’--Till the
present all prevailing, all accommodating fashion of crops became
general at the university, no young man presumed to dine in hall till he
had previously received a handsome trimming from the hair-dresser. An
inimitable imitation of ‘The Bard’ of Gray, is ascribed to the pen of
the honourable Thomas (the late lord) Erskine, when a student at
Cambridge. Mr. E. having been disappointed of the attendance of his
college barber, was compelled to forego his _commons_ in hall! An odd
thought came into his head. In revenge, he determined to give his
hair-dresser a good _dressing_; so he sat down, and began as follows:--
“‘Ruin seize thee, scoundrel Coe,
Confusion on thy frizzing wait;
Hadst thou the only comb below,
Thou never more shouldst touch my pate.
“‘Club, nor queue, nor twisted tail,
Nor e’en thy chatt’ring, barber, shall avail
To save thy horse-whipped back from daily fears
From Cantab’s curse, from Cantab’s tears.’”
The editor of the “Gradus ad Cantabrigiam” regrets that he has not room
for the whole of the ode.
[Illustration: ~An Ancient Barber.~]
There is a curious print from Heemskerck, of a barber of old times
labouring in his vocation: it shows his room or shop. An old woman is
making square pancakes at the fire-place, before which an overfed man
sits on a chair sleeping: there is a fat toping friar seated by the
chimney corner, with his fingers on the crossed hands of a demure
looking nun by his side, and he holds up a liquor-measure to denote its
emptiness: a nun-like female behind, blows a pair of bellows over her
shoulder, and seems dancing to a tune played on the guitar or cittern,
by a humorous looking fellow who is standing up: another nun-like female
sounds a gridiron with a pair of tongs, while another friar blows an
instrument through a window. These persons are perhaps sojourning there
as pilgrims, for there is a print hung against the wall representing an
owl in a pilgrim’s habit on his journey. In this room the barber’s
bleeding basin is hung up, and his razor is on the mantel ledge: the
barber himself is washing the chin of an aged fool, whom, from the hair
lying on the ground, it appears he has just polled. A dog on his hind
legs is in a fool’s habit, probably to intimate that the fool is under
the hands of the barber preparatory to his fraternizing with the friars
and their dames. The print is altogether exceedingly humorous, and
illustrative of manners: so much of it as immediately concerns the
barber is given in the present engraving from it.
* * * * *
Mr. Leigh Hunt, in “The Indicator,” opposes female indifference to the
hair. He says, “Ladies, always delightful, and not the least so in their
undress, are apt to deprive themselves of some of their best morning
beams by appearing with their hair in papers. We give notice, that
essayists, and of course all people of taste, prefer a cap, if there
must be any thing; but hair, a million times over. To see grapes in
paper-bags is bad enough; but the rich locks of a lady in papers, the
roots of the hair twisted up like a drummer’s, and the forehead staring
bald instead of being gracefully tendrilled and shadowed!--it is a
capital offence,--a defiance to the love and admiration of the other
sex,--a provocative to a paper war: and we here accordingly declare the
said war on paper, not having any ladies at hand to carry it at once
into their headquarters. We must allow at the same time, that they are
very shy of being seen in this condition, knowing well enough, how much
of their strength, like Sampson’s, lies in that gifted ornament. We have
known a whole parlour of them fluttered off, like a dove-cote, at the
sight of a friend coming up the garden.”
* * * * *
Of the barber’s art, as it was practised formerly, Mr. Archdeacon Nares
gives a curious sample from Lyly, an old dramatist, one of whose
characters being a barber, says, “thou knowest I have taught thee the
_knacking of the hands_, the tickling on a man’s haires, like the tuning
of a citterne. I instructed thee in the phrases of our eloquent
occupation, as, how, sir, will you be trimmed? will you have your beard
like a spade or a bodkin? a pent-hous on your upper lip, or an ally on
your chin? a low curle on your head like a bull, or dangling locke like
a spaniel? your mustachoes sharpe at the ends, like shomakers’ aules, or
hanging downe to your mouth like goates flakes? your love-lockes
wreathed with a silken twist, or shaggie to fall on your shoulders?”
Barbers’ shops were anciently places of great resort, and the practices
observed there were consequently very often the subject of allusions.
The _cittern_, or lute, which hung up for the diversion of the
customers, is the foundation of a proverb.[306] The cittern resembled
the guitar. In Burton’s “Winter Evening Entertainments,” published in
1687, with several wood-cuts, there is a representation of a barber’s
shop, where the person waiting his turn is playing on a lute.[307]
The peculiar mode of _snapping the fingers_, as a high qualification in
a barber, is mentioned by Green, another early writer. “Let not the
barber be forgotten: and look that he be an excellent fellow, and one
that can _snap his fingers with dexterity_.” Morose, one of Ben Jonson’s
characters in his “Silent Woman,” is a detester of noise, and
particularly values a barber who was silent, and did not snap his
fingers. “The fellow trims him silently, and hath not _the knack with
his shears or his fingers_: and that continency in a barber he thinks so
eminent a virtue, as it has made him chief of his counsel.”[308]
This obsolete practice with barbers is noticed in Stubbe’s “Anatomy of
Abuses.” “When they come to washing,” says Stubbe, “oh! how gingerly
they behave themselves therein. For then shall your mouth be bossed with
the lather, or some that rinseth of the balles, (for they have their
sweete balles wherewith all they use to washe,) your eyes closed must be
anointed therewith also. Then _snap go the fingers_, ful bravely, Got
wot. Thus this tragedy ended, comes me warme clothes to wipe and dry him
withall; next, the eares must be picked, and closed together againe
artificially, forsooth,” &c. This citation is given by a correspondent
to the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” who adds to it his own observations:--“I
am old enough,” he says, “to remember when the operation of
shaving, in this kingdom, was almost exclusively performed by the
_barbers_: what I speak of is some three-score years ago, at which time
_gentlemen_-shavers were unknown. Expedition was then a prime quality in
a barber, who smeared the lather over his customers’ faces with his
hand; for the delicate refinement of the brush had not been introduced.
The lathering of the beard being finished, the operator threw off the
lather adhering to his hand, by a peculiar jerk of the arm, which caused
the joints of the fingers to crack, this being a more expeditious mode
of clearing the hand than using a towel for that purpose; and the more
audible the crack, the higher the shaver stood in his own opinion, and
in that of his fraternity. This then, I presume, is the custom alluded
to by Stubbe.”
* * * * *
Mr. J. T. Smith says, “The entertaining and venerable Mr. Thomas
Batrich, barber, of Drury-lane, informs me, that before the year 1756,
it was a general custom to lather with the hand; but that the French
barbers, much about that time, brought in the brush.” He also says, that
“A good lather is half the shave,” is a very old remark among the trade.
* * * * *
In a newspaper report of some proceedings at a police office, in
September, 1825, a person deposing against the prisoner, used the phrase
“as common as a barber’s chair;” this is a very old saying. One of
Shakspeare’s clowns speaks of “a barber’s chair, that fits all,” by way
of metaphor; and Rabelais shows that it might be applied to any thing in
very common use.[309]
* * * * *
The _Barber’s Pole_ is still a sign in country towns, and in many of the
villages near London. It was stated by lord Thurlow in the house of
peers, on the 17th of July, 1797, when he opposed the surgeons’
incorporation bill that, “By a statute still in force, the barbers and
surgeons were each to use a pole. The barbers were to have theirs blue
and white, striped, with no other appendage; but the surgeons, which was
the same in other respects, was likewise to have a gallipot and a red
rag, to denote the particular nature of their vocation.”
The origin of the barber’s pole is to be traced to the period when the
barbers were also surgeons, and practised phlebotomy. To assist this
operation, it being necessary for the patient to grasp a staff, a stick
or a pole was always kept by the barber-surgeon, together with the
fillet or bandaging he used for tying the patient’s arm. When the pole
was not in use the tape was tied to it, that they might be both together
when wanted. On a person coming in to be bled the tape was disengaged
from the pole, and bound round the arm, and the pole was put into the
person’s hand: after it was done with, the tape was again tied on the
pole, and in this state, pole and tape were often hung at the door, for
a sign or notice to passengers that they might there be bled: doubtless
the competition for custom was great, because as our ancestors were
great admirers of bleeding, they demanded the operation frequently. At
length instead of hanging out the identical pole used in the operation,
a pole was painted with stripes round it, in imitation of the real pole
and its bandagings, and thus came the sign.
That the use of the pole in bleeding was very ancient, appears from an
illumination in a missal of the time of Edward I., wherein the usage is
represented. Also in “Comenii Orbis pictus,” there is an engraving of
the like practice. “Such a staff,” says Brand, who mentions these
graphic illustrations, “is to this very day put into the hand of
patients undergoing phlebotomy by every village practitioner.”
* * * * *
_The News_ Sunday-paper of August 4, 1816, says, that a person in
Alston, who for some years followed the trade of a barber, recently
opened a spirit-shop, when to the no small admiration and amusement of
his acquaintance, he hoisted over his door the following lines:--
Rove not from _pole_ to _pole_, but here turn in,
Where naught exceeds the shaving, but the _gin_.
The south corner shop of Hosier-lane, Smithfield, is noticed by Mr. J.
T. Smith as having been “occupied by a barber whose name was Catch-pole;
at least so it was written over the door: he was a whimsical fellow; and
would, perhaps because he lived in Smithfield, show to his customers a
short bladed instrument, as the dagger with which Walworth killed Wat
Tyler.” To this may be added, a remark not expressed by Mr. Smith, that
Catch-pole had a barber’s pole for many years on the outside of his
door.[310]
* * * * *
Catch-pole’s manœuvre to catch customers, and get his shop talked about,
was very successful. It is observed in the “Spectator,” that--“The art
of managing mankind is only to make them stare a little, to keep up
their astonishment, to let nothing be familiar to them, but ever to have
something in your sleeve, in which they must think you are deeper than
they are.” The writer of the remark exemplifies it by this
story:--“There is an ingenious fellow, a barber of my acquaintance,
who, besides his broken fiddle and a dryed sea-monster, has a
twine-cord, strained with two nails at each end, over his window, and
the words, rainy, dry, wet, and so forth, written to denote the weather
according to the rising or falling of the cord. We very great scholars
are not apt to wonder at this: but I observed a very honest fellow, a
chance customer, who sat in the chair before me to be shaved, fix his
eye upon this miraculous performance during the operation upon his chin
and face. When those, and his head also, were cleared of all
incumbrances and excrescences, he looked at the fish, then at the
fiddle, still grubbing in his pockets, and casting his eye again at the
twine, and the words writ on each side; then altered his mind as to
farthings, and gave my friend a silver six-pence. The business, as I
said, is to keep up the amazement: and if my friend had had only the
skeleton and kitt, he must have been contented with a less payment.”
* * * * *
It was customary with barbers to have their shops lighted by candles in
brass chandeliers of three, four, and six branches. Mr. Smith noticing
their disuse says, “Mr. Batrich has two suspended from his ceiling; he
has also a set of bells fixed against the wall, which he has had for
these forty years. These are called by the common people _Whittington’s
Bells_. In his early days, about eighty years back, when the newspapers
were only a penny a-piece, they were taken in by the barbers for the
customers to read during their waiting time. This custom is handed to us
by the late E. Heemskerck, in an etching by Toms, of a barber’s shop,
composed of monkies, at the foot of which are the following lines:--
“A barber’s shop adorn’d we see,
With monsters, news, and poverty;
Whilst some are shaving, others bled,
And those that wait the papers read;
The master full of wigg, or tory,
Combs out your wig, and tells a story.”
* * * * *
Mr. Smith’s inquiries concerning barbers have been extensive and
curious. He says, “On one occasion, that I might indulge the humour of
being shaved by a woman, I repaired to the Seven Dials, where, in Great
St. Andrew’s-street, a slender female performed the operation, whilst
her husband, a strapping soldier in the Horse-guards, sat smoking his
pipe. There was a famous woman in Swallow-street, who shaved; and I
recollect a black woman in Butcher-row, a street formerly standing by
the side of St. Clement’s church, near Temple-bar, who is said to have
shaved with ease and dexterity.” His friend Mr. Batrich informed him
that he had read of “the five barberesses of Drury-lane, who shamefully
mal-treated a woman in the reign of Charles II.” Mr. Batrich died while
Mr. Smith’s “Ancient Topography of London,” was passing through the
press.
* * * * *
The “Glasgow Chronicle,” about the year 1817, notices the sudden death,
in Calton, of Mr. John Falconer, hair-dresser, in Kirk-street. While in
the act of shaving a man, he staggered, and was falling, when he was
placed on a chair, and expired in five minutes. His shop was the arena
of all local discussion, and was therefore denominated the Calton
coffee-room. His father and he had been in the trade for upwards of half
a century. His father was the first who reduced the price of shaving to
a halfpenny; and when his brethren in the town wished him again to raise
it, he replied, “Charge a penny! Jock and me are just considering about
lowering it to a farthing.” He would never take more than a halfpenny
though it was offered him; and being very skilful at his business, and
of a frank jocular turn, he had a large share of public favour, and was
enabled even at this low rate to gather money and build houses. He died
about sixteen years before his son, who carried on the business. He
often said others wrought for need, but he did it for pleasure or
recreation, and never was so happy as when he was improving the
countenances of the lieges. He was generally allowed to be at the top of
his profession. Some old men whom he and his father had shaved for fifty
years, boasted that they were never touched by another: one very old
customer regularly came for many a year to his shop every Saturday night
from the western extremity of the town. His shop was furnished with two
dozen of antique chairs, as many pictures, and a musical clock, and for
a long time he had a good library of books, but they at length nearly
wholly disappeared, and he took up to his house the few that remained as
his own share. At two different times, when trade was dull, he gave his
tenants a jubilee on the term day, and presented their discharges
without receiving a farthing. He left behind him property worth between
2,000_l._ and 3000_l._
* * * * *