Barber

“ His air of courtesy keeps a good understanding floating between him and his customers, which, if ruffled by a hasty departure, or dismissal, is revived the next day by the sun-light of his morning smile!
The barber’s hand is unlike that of any other soft hand: it is not flabby, like that of a sensualist; nor arid, and thin, like a student’s; nor dead white, like that of a delicate female; but it is naturally warm, of a glowing, transparent colour, and of a cushiony, elastic softness. ”

“ But now all is ready for your initiation into the mysteries of the razor.”
“Mysteries they may well be called,” continued the barber, with rising spirits at the prospect of a long monologue, as he imprisoned the young Greek in the shroud-like shaving-cloth; “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. ”

“ Come, barber, repeat your verses, and hear what the gemman says of them."
"With all my heart;" and flinging his shoulders back and stretching forth his right arm, the barber repeated, in a loud theatrical tone—
"I, William, Sheldrake, shave for a penny,
Ladies and gentlemen—there can't come too many—
With heads and beards—I meant to say
Those who've got none may keep away."
A hearty burst of laughter from us all greatly disconcerted the barber, who looked as ruefully at us as a stuck pig.
"You hairy monster!" quoth Mrs. Archer, "what do you mean by shaving the ladies? ”

“ The genuine barber is usually (like his razors) well-tempered; a man unvisited by care; combining a somewhat hasty assiduity, with an easy and respectful manner. He exhibits the best part of the character of a Frenchman—an uniform exterior suavity, and politesse. He seems a faded nobleman, or émigré of the old régime. And surely if the souls of men transmigrate, those of the old French noblesse seek the congenial soil of the barber’s bosom! Is it a degradation of worthy and untroubled spirits, to imagine, that they animate the bodies of the harmless and unsophisticated? ”

“ The barber, a miserable wretch, whom we thought to be a true red-feather man, and who had been more than liberally paid for extracting the poultry-dealer's front teeth, and trimming his hair and beard into the semblance of those of the dead potter, went and blabbed of his work. ”

“ Nothing but a crying need of services obtained there can drive one who knows them well into one of them. When you enter a barber shop, a long row of barber's chairs, like a line of guns down the deck of a man-o'-war, stretching away in perspective, confronts you. Three barbers, say, are engaged with patrons; and they go calmly on. They are unaware of your existence. The rest have been enjoying newspapers and leisure. You interrupt them; and they spring, as one man, each to the head of his chair, and stand at attention. ”

“ Then, having once more stood by at the barber's while he was shaved and his moustaches firmly waxed anew, I saw that he was fit at last for his art studies. The barber this day suggested curling the moustaches with a heated iron, but at this my charge fell into so unseemly a rage that I deemed it wise not to insist. He, indeed, bluntly threatened a nameless violence to the barber if he were so much as touched with the iron, and revealed an altogether shocking gift for profanity, saying loudly: "I'll be—dashed—if you will!" ”

“ In the evenings his door stands wide open, and inside, the barber is to be seen lying back in an old armchair, with his bare feet on the basin, playing an old fiddle in absolute peace and contentment, while he watches his reflection in a big looking-glass. ”

“ With fair speeches cajol’d, as you’d tickle a trout,
'Gainst the barber the fish-wife no more could hold out;
He applied the right bait,and with flattery he caught her;
Without flattery a female’s a fish out of water.
XIX.
The state of her heart when the barber once guess’d,
Love’s siege with redoubled exertion be press’d;
And as briskly bestirr’d him, the charmer embracing,
As the wash-ball that dances and froths in his bason. ”

“ At this period, indeed, the barber-surgeon was a man of considerable importance. His shop was the gathering-place of idle gallants, who came to have their sword-wounds dressed after street frays. The gittern, or guitar, lay on the counter, and this was played by a customer to pass away the time until his turn came to have his hair trimmed, his beard starched, his mustachios curled, and his love-locks tied up. We give a picture of a barber's shop at this period; the place appears more like a museum than an establishment for conducting business. ”

“ There is no barber like the American barber, and no such comfort anywhere in barbers as we enjoy at home. Tourists have complained of the straight chairs, the dull razors, and all that sort of thing, and with some reason, though it is not as bad as represented. I have never known of any one being absolutely killed by an European barber, either at sight or sixty days.
It is true that you do not have the luxurious reclining chair, nor the soothing manipulations of a deft artist, nor the delightful hair dressing, and all that. ”

“ The barber, who saw that apparition bearing down upon him, without thought or apprehension of any such thing, had no other way to save himself from the thrust of the lance than to let himself fall off his ass, and no sooner had he touched the ground when he rose more nimbly than a deer, and began to race across the plain faster than the wind. ”

“ On the little table, as greasy and unwashed as Makar Kuzmitch himself, there is everything: combs, scissors, razors, a ha'porth of wax for the moustache, a ha'porth of powder, a ha'porth of much watered eau de Cologne, and indeed the whole barber's shop is not worth more than fifteen kopecks. ”

“ MORNING. It is not yet seven o'clock, but Makar Kuzmitch Blyostken's shop is already open. The barber himself, an unwashed, greasy, but foppishly dressed youth of three and twenty, is busy clearing up; there is really nothing to be cleared away, but he is perspiring with his exertions. In one place he polishes with a rag, in another he scrapes with his finger or catches a bug and brushes it off the wall.
The barber's shop is small, narrow, and unclean. ”

“ I used to attend the king’s levee once or twice a week, and had often seen him under the barber’s hand, which indeed was at first very terrible to behold; for the razor was almost twice as long as an ordinary scythe. His majesty, according to the custom of the country, was only shaved twice a week. I once prevailed on the barber to give me some of the suds or lather, out of which I picked forty or fifty of the strongest stumps of hair. ”

“ On the morning after his investment, he was under the hands of his barber, a shrewd intelligent Greek, Mustapha by name. Barbers are privileged persons for many reasons: running from one employer to another to obtain their livelihood, they also obtain matter for conversation, which, impertinent as it may sometimes be, serves to beguile the tedium of an operation which precludes the use of any organ except the ear. ”

“ The barber, an all-important functionary, must not be overlooked: razor in hand, girded with his silk scarf, his towel over one shoulder, and a species of leather strap over the other, he commences operations, prolonged during an indefinite period, much enlivened by his gossip and bon mots, and turned to his advantage by the presents he receives from the assembled company, who, one by one, suspend their gifts on a cord, stretched by him for the purpose across the room. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He smoked and chewed strong, rank tobacco. He flourished [375] a red-bordered cotton handkerchief. He had been carefully trimmed and shaved by his barber for the occasion, but alas, the barber’s embellishments can last but from day to day, and the rougher guise of his life was betrayed in certain small habitudes, conspicuous among which were an obliviousness of many uses of a fork and an astonishing temerity in the thrusting of his knife down his throat at the dinner-table. ”

“ The hair of the nostrils cut away, and everything done in order, comely to behold. The last action in the tragedy is the payment of money; and lest these cunning barbers might seem unconscionable in asking much for their pains, they are of such a shameful modesty as they will ask nothing at all, but, standing to the courtesy and liberality of the giver, they will receive all that comes, how much soever it be, not giving any again, I warrant you; for take a barber with that fault, and strike off his head. ”

“ I could have crossed staves with the barber that had his dwelling over against mine, or almost stolen his pewter shaving dish from the sill where it lay. Of these conceits of mine, however, the barber was necessarily ignorant, being then busily engaged upon the exercise of his craft, which he carried on perforce above stairs, the shop below and the other rooms being used by a haberdasher and alderman, that had his goods stored there. I noted the barber particularly as well for his extraordinary grace and courtesy, as for the activity he manifested in his occupation. ”

“ Nor does the character of the barber vary in other countries. He seems to flourish in unobtrusive prosperity all the world over. In the east, the clime most congenial to his avocations, the voluminous beard makes up for the deficiency of the ever-turbaned, close-shorn skull, and he exhibits the triumph of his skill in its most special department. Transport an English barber to Samarcand, or Ispahan, and, saving the language, he would feel quite at home. Here he reads the newspaper, and, unless any part is contradicted by his customers, he believes it all: it is his oracle. ”

“ Once in a burst of confidence a barber told me one of the trade secrets of his profession—he said that among barbers every face fell into one of three classes, it being either a square, a round or a squirrel. ”

“ Of course there are a great many barbers, and, with all the millions of people in China, they have a large business.
[135]
Besides the shops, many barbers have little movable stands containing all their tools, and they may often be seen plying their art by the wayside, or at the houses of their customers. The barber has a basin of hot water, a towel, and an awkward kind of razor; and when he has shaven and washed the head, and braided the hair of a man, he ends up all by patting him, with both hands, upon the back and shoulders, in a way which, to him, is truly delightful. ”

“ The barber’s shop was a favourite resort of idle persons; and in addition to its attraction as a focus of news, a lute, viol, or some such musical instrument, was always kept for the entertainment of waiting customers. The barber’s sign consisted of a striped pole, from which was suspended a basin, symbols the use of which is still preserved. ”

“ I would reply.
"Well, Joe, my boy," he would say, "if you would be a true barber, and uphold the honour of the family, recollect that no excellence is achieved without constant practice. The primary rules of barber-craft are simple. Keep your razors sharp and free from rust, your water boiling; spare not the lather, and rub it well in before you begin to shave; dip the razor in the boiling water, and work with a steady hand." ”

“ The particularity of this man put me into a deep thought, whence it should proceed that, of all the lower order, barbers should go further in hitting the ridiculous than any other set of men: watermen brawl, cobblers sing; but why must a barber be for ever a politician, a musician, an anatomist, a poet, and a physician. The learned Vossius says, his barber used to comb his hair in iambics; and indeed in all ages, one of this useful profession, this order of cosmetic philosophers, has been celebrated by the most eminent hands. ”

“ Nor is the coppersmiths’ the only trade that loves publicity, for here as elsewhere the barbers’ shops are very amusing, quite open in front, with perhaps a yellow curtain hanging down half way, affecting only to conceal the inviting interior, which however is always sufficiently visible, occupied in the centre by a chair, on which sits the customer gravely holding a soapdish to his chin whilst the barber operates; and this going on all day makes one think that shaving is, after all, one of the great works of an Italian’s time! ”

“ The barber of an English king boasted, says a story, that he must be the most loyal man in the realm, as he had every day the regal throat at his mercy. The king was startled at the observation, and concluded that the barbarous idea could never have entered an honest head, and for the future he resolved to grow a beard as a precautionary measure against summary execution.
With a barber's shop in Lichfield is associated an amusing story, in which the chief figure was Farquhar, a dramatist, who attained a measure of success in the eighteenth century. ”

“ The fat mulatto barber nearest the window was still massaging the face of the recumbent customer and continuing his narrative; the other barbers were placidly grooming the occupants of their chairs, while two or three waiting patrons, lounging on a bench, read periodicals of a worn and flaccid appearance. ”