The German imperial barber has been called up. He must have been
called up quite early in the war. I have seen photographs in papers
that leave no doubt of that. Who he is I do not know: I once read his
name in an article but have forgotten it; few even know if he still
lives. And yet what harm he has done! What vast evils he has
unwittingly originated! Many years ago he invented a frivolity, a jeu
d’esprit easily forgivable to an artist in the heyday of his youth, to
whom his art was new and even perhaps wonderful. A craft, of course,
rather than an art, and a humble craft at that; but then, the man was
young, and what will not seem wonderful to youth?
He must have taken the craft very seriously, but as youth takes things
seriously, fantastically and with laughter. He must have determined to
outshine rivals: he must have gone away and thought, burning candles
late perhaps, when all the palace was still. But how can youth think
seriously? And there had come to him this absurd, this fantastical
conceit. What else would have come? The more seriously he took the
tonsorial art, the more he studied its tricks and phrases and heard
old barbers lecture, the more sure were the imps of youth to prompt
him to laughter and urge him to something outrageous and ridiculous.
The background of the dull pomp of Potsdam must have made all this
more certain. It was bound to come.
And so one day, or, as I have suggested, suddenly late one night,
there came to the young artist bending over tonsorial books that
quaint, mad, odd, preposterous inspiration. Ah, what pleasure there is
in the madness of youth; it is not like the madness of age, clinging
to outworn formulæ; it is the madness of breaking away, of galloping
among precipices, of dallying with the impossible, of courting the
absurd. And this inspiration, it was in none of the books; the
lecturer barbers had not lectured on it, could not dream of it and did
not dare to; there was no tradition for it, no precedent; it was mad;
and to introduce it into the pomp of Potsdam, that was the daring of
madness. And this preposterous inspiration of the absurd young
barber-madman was nothing less than a moustache that without any curve
at all, or any suggestion of sanity, should go suddenly up at the ends
very nearly as high as the eyes!
He must have told his young fellow craftsmen first, for youth goes
first to youth with its hallucinations. And they, what could they have
said? You cannot say of madness that it is mad, you cannot call
absurdity absurd. To have criticized would have revealed jealousy; and
as for praise you could not praise a thing like that. They probably
shrugged, made gestures; and perhaps one friend warned him. But you
cannot warn a man against a madness; if the madness is in possession
it will not be warned away: why should it? And then perhaps he went to
the old barbers of the Court. You can picture their anger. Age does
not learn from youth in any case. But there was the insult to their
ancient craft, bad enough if only imagined, but here openly spoken of.
And what would come of it? They must have feared, on the one hand,
dishonour to their craft if this young barber were treated as his
levity deserved; and, on the other hand, could they have feared his
success? I think they could not have guessed it.
And then the young idiot with his preposterous inspiration must have
looked about to see where he could practise his new absurdity. It
should have been enough to have talked about it among his fellow
barbers; they would have gone with new zest to their work next day for
this delirious interlude, and no harm would have been done. “Fritz,”
(or Hans) they would have said, “was a bit on last night, a bit full
up,” or whatever phrase they use to touch on drunkenness; and the
thing would have been forgotten. We all have our fancies. But this
young fool wanted to get his fancy mixed up with practice: that’s
where he was mad. And in Potsdam, of all places.
He probably tried his friends first, young barbers at the Court and
others of his own standing. None of them were fools enough to be seen
going about like that. They had jobs to lose. A Court barber is one
thing, a man who cuts ordinary hair is quite another. Why should they
become outcasts because their friend chose to be mad?
He probably tried his inferiors then, but they would have been timid
folk; they must have seen the thing was absurd, and of course daren’t
risk it. Again, why should they?
Did he try to get some noble then to patronize his invention? Probably
the first refusals he had soon inflamed his madness more, and he threw
caution insanely to the winds, and went straight to the Emperor.
It was probably about the time that the Emperor dismissed Bismarck;
certainly the drawings of that time show him still with a sane
moustache.
The young barber probably chanced on him in this period, finding him
bereft of an adviser, and ready to be swayed by whatever whim should
come. Perhaps he was attracted by the barber’s hardihood, perhaps the
absurdity of his inspiration had some fascination for him, perhaps he
merely saw that the thing was new and, feeling jaded, let the barber
have his way. And so the frivolity became a fact, the absurdity became
visible, and honour and riches came the way of the barber.
A small thing, you might say, however fantastical. And yet I believe
the absurdity of that barber to be among the great evils that have
brought death nearer to man; whimsical and farcical as it was, yet a
thing deadlier than Helen’s beauty or Tamerlane’s love of skulls. For
just as character is outwardly shown so outward things react upon the
character; and who, with that daring barber’s ludicrous fancy visible
always on his face, could quite go the sober way of beneficent
monarchs? The fantasy must be mitigated here, set off there; had you
such a figure to dress, say for amateur theatricals, you would realize
the difficulty. The heavy silver eagle to balance it; the glittering
cuirass lower down, preventing the eye from dwelling too long on the
barber’s absurdity. And then the pose to go with the cuirass and to
carry off the wild conceit of that mad, mad barber. He has much to
answer for, that eccentric man whose name so few remember. For pose
led to actions; and just when Europe most needed a man of wise
counsels, restraining the passions of great empires, just then she had
ruling over Germany and, unhappily, dominating Austria, a man who
every year grew more akin to the folly of that silly barber’s youthful
inspiration.
Let us forgive the barber. For long I have known from pictures that I
have seen of the Kaiser that he has gone to the trenches. Probably he
is dead. Let us forgive the barber. But let us bear in mind that the
futile fancies of youth may be deadly things, and that one of them
falling on a fickle mind may so stir its shallows as to urge it to
disturb and set in motion the avalanches of illimitable grief.