Why shave?, or, Beards v. barbery / by H.M.

  • H. M.
Date:
[between 1880 and 1889?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Why shave?, or, Beards v. barbery / by H.M. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/52 page 8
    “ ‘ Ah, Messer Grec,5 said the barber, ‘ if you want to know the flavour of our scholarship, you must frequent my shop; it is the focus of Florentine intellect and, in that sense, the navel of the earth .... that beard, my fine young man, must be parted with, were it as dear to you as the nymph of your dreams. Here at Florence, we like not to see a man with his nose projecting over a cascade of hair.* But, remember, you will have passed the Bubicon when once you have been shaven; if you repent, and let your beard grow after it has acquired stoutness by a struggle with the razor, your mouth will by and by show no longer what Messer Angelo calls the divine prerogative of lips, but will appear like a dark cavern fringed with horrent brambles.But now all is ready for your initiation into the mysteries of the razor. Mysteries they may well be called, mysteries of Minerva and the Graces. I get the flower of men’s thoughts, because I seize them in the first moment after shaving. (Ah ! you wince a little at the lather; it tickles the outlying limits of the nose, I admit.) And that is what makes the peculiar fitness of a barber’s shop to become a resort of wit and learning.See how by diligent shaving, the nether region of your face may preserve its human outline, instead of presenting no distinction from the physiognomy of a bearded owl or a Barbary ape. I have seen men whose beards have so invaded their cheeks that one might have pitied them as the victims of a sad, brutalizing chastisement befitting our Dante’s Inferno, if they had not seemed to strut with a strange triumph in their extravagant hairiness.” All tliis, of course, is delightful reading, but the words of the mercurial Nello avail not against the plain design of nature—the words die away, and there remains the picture of the handsome young Greek yielding up that which completed his manliness; imprisoned in the shroud-like shaving-cloth, smeared with lather, and wincing beneath the operation. Even so, it might be worth while to be degraded if all barbers talked as Nello talked, but there is no reason to suppose that such is the case. British barbers, at any rate, are more likely to form themselves after Sir Richard Arkwright, who had a keen eye to business. It was about a hundred and thirty years ago that Arkwright hung out his sign—-a blue and white pole with a tin plate dangling at the end—in a small back street at Preston. If men had known that the barber was destined to become a knight and to leave a fortune of about half a million of money, it is probable that they would have dropped in in greater numbers than they did. The water was hot, the soap was ready, the razors were constantly being whetted, but the customers did not appear. This lack of custom induced Arkwright to make anew departure; he boldly reduced the well-established charge of twopence to half the amount: — COME TO THE SUBTERRANEOUS BARBER. HE SHAVES FOR A PENNY! Such was the placard which he proceeded to display, and which roused the bitter indignation of his rivals in the calling. Thence¬ forth they, tco, in self-defence were obliged to become “ penny barbers.” Not that that general lowering of prices ended the matter; for Arkwright immediately made his own charge a half¬ penny, and so remained the cheapest barber in the town. No wonder that he failed to make a fortune by the pursuit of barbery. He afterwards made wigs, and found this employment much more profitable; last of all, he made machinery, and, in the end, his fortune and his name.
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