Trichocosmos: Notes historical, æsthetical, ethnological, physiological, anecdotal and tonsorial, on the hair & beard

by Anonymous

BARBERS.

CHAPTER V.

Barbers, by common consent, enjoy a most enviable reputation. Both in fact and fiction they are the representatives of shrewdness and good nature; and in some of the choicest literature extant, the sayings and doings of the brethren of the craft are among the best of their kind. It would be a dull world without Figaro.

The barber’s shop was for centuries the emporium of gossip, the idler’s club; and when the young Roman wished to meet with a rake as pleasure-loving as himself, he sought him at the barber’s, possibly to contrive how to steal away some old man’s daughter or his money-bags. And thither came the old miser to get his finger-nails clipped, taking care, however, to take the parings away with him. All classes frequented the barber’s shop; and we may suppose the lively satirists of old visited the spot, as Molière did the barber of Pezenas, to find material for some of their best sketches of character.

The Roman barbers, it must be confessed, were somewhat garrulous, and their tongues went as nimbly as their shears. Like the moderns, they put a rough cloth round the patient, as we are half inclined to call the customer who submitted to the operation, for we fear their razors were none of the best, for some preferred to have their beards plucked out by means of plasters applied to the face, and then those terrible tweezers completed the work, pulling out the stray hairs the razors or plasters had left behind. Some wealthy men had the duties of the barber performed by their own slaves, but the shops were thronged with customers, and the tonsor was at all times the most obedient and obliging servant of the public. One of the peculiarities of their art was the clicking of the shears, to which Juvenal makes allusion:

“He whose officious scizzors went snip, snip,

As he my troublesome young beard did clip.”

Several of these worthies attained to great distinction, and rose from the shop to the senate.

The furniture of a barber’s shop, to those who are curious in matters of antiquity, might serve to explain the customs of a very remote period. The basin is mentioned in Ezekiel: it is the cantherus of the middle ages, which was of bright copper. From a peculiar soap, lascivium, used by the fraternity, we derive the word lather. Washing-balls were used for washing and softening the beard before shaving, and the pomatum in use was known as capillare. Various modes of frizzing and plaiting the hair, distinguished by appropriate terms, are alluded to by archæologists; but we turn a deaf ear to such traditions—our lode-star glistens near the barber’s pole, Mambrino’s helmet, bright with sunny memories of golden romance and the adventures of the knight of La Mancha. There has been some diversity of opinion as to the origin of the well-known barber’s pole. The prevalent opinion is probably the true one, that it represents the staff held in the hand by the patient phlebotomized by the barber-surgeon; and that the red ribbon coiled round it represents the tape by which the arm was compressed during the operation. And here, at the threshold, we observe the mystical union between Barbery and Surgery; and hence the dignity and professional honours to which the barbers justly lay claim. Lord Thurlow, in the House of Peers (1797) decorated the barber’s pole with somewhat different colours when he stated “that, by a statute then 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 galley-pot and a red rag, to denote the particular nature of their vocation.” Our business is not with the galley-pot, although we love the golden beard of Æsculapius well. We incline to the belief that there were no jealousies between the happy couple at an early period of their union. The fees of both professions were, doubtless, small, and seldom any but minor operations attempted; while, probably, the ignorance of both parties was so nearly balanced as to produce the desired equality so necessary to the concord of the married state. For many long years we know they jogged on together without complaint of any kind; that subsequently, if not very loving, they tolerated each other with due decorum; and that, when at last they got to wrangling and high words, they luckily obtained a divorce.

The barber’s basin certainly ranks next in importance to the pole. The basin of the proper form had the usual semi-circle cut out of the brim, that it might fit into the neck; and, in another part, a hollow place, like a little dish, to hold the soap: its office was two-fold, and was in requisition both for bleeding and shaving. To the disturbed vision of Don Quixote the brass basin glittered like burnished gold. His adventure with the village barber, mounted on his dappled grey ass, the renowned helmet, and the part it played in the astounding feats of that flower of chivalry, are known the world over, and are among the most pleasant associations connected with the barber’s trade. At a public festival in Holland, in honour of the Earl of Leicester, Holinshed says a barber set up some three score of bright copper basins on a wall, with a wax candle burning in each, and a painting of a rose and crown, and an inscription in Latin, “this made a faire shew, and was a pretie deuise.” If the fellow were an honest patriot, he deserved a pyramid of brass basins for a monument.

Punning inscriptions and quaint devices outside of the shop were frequently adopted as alluring bait for the lovers of odd whims and fancies, who thought none the worse of the man for having some spice of humour in his composition. Over a barber’s shop Hogarth has set up this inscription, “Shaving, bleeding, and teeth drawn with a touch, Ecce Signum.” Bat Pigeon, of whom honourable mention is made by both Steele and Addison, had a curious device of a bat and a pigeon, which, in its day, attracted much attention. The wig-maker’s sign of Absalom hanging from the oak by his hair, and the darts of Joab fixed in his side, is probably of French origin. The story is told of a barber at Troyes, and the inscription runs thus:

“Passans, contemplez la douleur

D’Absalon pendu par la nuque:

Il eût évité ce malheur

S’il avait porté la perruque.”

The English version is more concise:

“O Absalom, unhappy sprig,

Thou shouldst have worn a perriwig.”

The barber’s chair may be regarded as the centre of the system. The proverb “As common as a barber’s chair” is well known, and Shakspere’s clown adds “it fits all buttocks”—the word is not ours—the seat of honour, if you please, reader, furnished with twin cushions to protect the sacred Luz, out of which the Rabbins say the renewed mammal is to sprout forth at the resurrection, as you are probably aware. In old prints, the chattels of a barber’s shop are usually few and mean enough; but the chair—the descendant of the sella tonsoria—bears some rude flourishes of art, is broad and massive and well-cushioned, as became the throne of so many grave potentates. One is as much astonished at the size of the combs, scissors, and razors of the ancient barbers as at the giant arms and armour worn by the knights of old. What ponderous blades these artists wielded it is fearful to contemplate. There is an old joke that some barber advertised shaving by the acre, and cutting blocks with a razor one would think not impossible with such weapons. Actius’ razor, which was of the keenest, must have been after this fashion. As razors are of very old date, it may interest some one to know that, long before Sheffield or Sheffield blades were thought of, Palermo did business in their commodity. The presiding deity was not unfrequently the greatest curiosity about the place. A certain knack of snapping the fingers was a common practice among them; tradition says, it recalled to mind the clicking of the shears used by their great ancestors. Morose, in Ben Jonson’s “Silent Woman,” so detested this sound, as indeed he did noises of all kind, that meeting with a barber who was without this trick of his profession, he thought it so eminent a virtue, that he made him chief of his counsel, which reminds one of Adrian’s rebuke to his gossip of a barber, who, in reply to the man’s query how he should like to be shaved, said—silently! But barber’s were better employed than in curing the ill-humours of the Morose family. In Stubbes’ Anatomie of Abuses (1583) is a dialogue about old barbers, which we will in part transcribe:

“There are no finer fellowes under the sunne, nor experter in their noble science of barbing than they be; and therefore, in the fulness of their overflowing knowledge, (oh! ingenious heads, and worthy to be dignified with the diademe of folly and vain curiositie!) they have invented such strange fashions and monstrous manners of cutting, trimmings, shavings, and washings, that you would wonder to see.... Besides that, when they come to the cutting of the haire, what snipping and snapping of the cycers is there, what tricking and trimming, what rubbing, what scratching, what combing and clawing, what trickling and toying, and all to tawe out money, you may be sure. And when they come to washing, oh! how gingerly they behave themselves therein; for then shall your mouth be bossed with the lather or fome that riseth of the balles (for they have their sweete balles wherewithall they use to washe); your eyes closed must be anointed therewith also. Then snap go the fingers; ful bravely, God wot. Thus, this tragedy ended, comes me warme clothes to wipe and dry him withall; next the eares must be picked and closed togither againe artificially forsooth; the hair of nostrils cut away, and every thing done in order comely to behold. The last action in this tragedie is the paiment of monie. And least these cunning barbers might seem unconscionable in asking much for their paines, they are of such a shamefast modestie, as they will aske nothing at all, but, standing to the curtesie and liberalitie of the giver, they will receive all that comes, how much soever it be, not giving anie again, I warrant you; for take a barber with that fault, and strike off his head. No, no, such fellows are Raræ in terris, nigrisque simillimi cygnis,—“Rare birds upon the earth, and as geason as black swans.” You shall have also your Orient perfumes for your nose, your fragrant waters for your face, wherewith you shall bee all to besprinkled: your musicke againe, and pleasant harmonie shall sound in your eares, and all to tickle the same with vaine delight. And in the end your cloke shall be brushed, and, God be with you, gentleman!...* * * * * * But yet I must needs say (these nisities set apart) barbers are verie necesarie, for otherwise men should grow verie ougglisom and deformed, and their haire would in processe of time overgrowe their face, rather like monsters, than comlie sober Christians.”

Stubbes, himself, was an inveterate trifler—one of an army of pigmies warring against cranes; but we acquit him of all malice; he belonged to that numerous class who originate nothing, but find fault with everything—

“The long-neck’d geese of the world for ever hissing dispraise

Because their natures are little,”

as Tennyson calls them. An apt turn for flattery was very requisite in an accomplished barber—one of the most difficult things, by the way, for humanity to attain to; for if satire should wound, like a keen razor, “with a touch that’s scarcely felt or seen,” flattery, like rouge, should be applied with a very delicate hand, indeed. Suckling’s verses allude to this hazardous feat:

“When I’m at work, I’m bound to find discourse

To no great purpose, of great Sweden’s force,

Of Witel, and the Burse, and what ’twill cost

To get that back which was this summer lost.

So fall to praising of his lordship’s hair,

Ne’er so deformed, I swear ’tis sans compare:

I tell him that the King’s does sit no fuller,

And yet his is not half so good a colour:

Then reach a pleasing glass, that’s made to lye

Like to its master most notoriously:

And if he must his mistress see that day,

I with a powder send him strait away.”

But other duties such as bleeding, cupping, and drawing teeth had to be attended to in turn. Those who have seen the

“Black rotten teeth in order strung,

Rang’d cups, that in the window stood,

Lin’d with red rags to look like blood,”

will acknowledge that this was once a very important branch of industry. We have ourselves seen the tooth of some unknown animal in a collection of the kind, which, for size, would have astonished Professor Owen; the sight of it, we were told, had frightened away many a toothache. The reader has probably met with the anecdote of Queen Elizabeth, who hesitated about having a tooth drawn; when Bishop Aylmer sat down in the chair, and said to the operator, “Come, though I am an old man, and have but few teeth to spare, draw me this!” which was done; and the queen, seeing him make so slight a matter of it, sat down and had hers drawn, also.

When it was part of the popular belief that the human subject required to be bled at regular intervals to ensure good health and make the ladies fair, and when every barber-surgeon was ready “to breathe a vein,” we may be sure the lancet was in constant request. Cupping was recommended to remove a catarrh or cold in the head; and one who made trial of its virtues says, he was startled by being asked by the operator if he wished to be sacrificed; but declined being scarified on that occasion. We take it for granted there must have been uncommon stamina in the British constitution, or it would long since have broken down hopelessly under the rough handling it has undergone.

Benjamin Suddlechop, in Scott’s “Fortunes of Nigel,” has become the model barber of our popular literature; the sketch is confessedly a slight one, and, indeed, after Cervantes, Fielding, Smollett, and Le Sage—not to mention others—have given their delineations of the character, the barbers stand in need of no further help to fame. Even Suddlechop had some music in his soul; his shop in Fleet-street resounded with the tinklings of the guitar, where the lover, if so inclined, might warble “a woeful ballad to his mistress’ eyebrows,” or flay some spell-bound Marsyas with sounds by no means

“As sweet and musical

As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair.”

But what shall we say to Suddlechop’s little back shop, from which he supplied his customers with strong waters. We consider this a sad blot upon his fame. Many of the barbers sold cordials and compounded English aqua-vitæ, and to them we are indebted for some of the earliest recipes for British brandy—an abominable mixture, which, like the filthy poison known as gin, has destroyed more victims than ever groaned under the lancet of the barber-surgeon. Could these worthies have foreseen what scandalous things would come of this gin drinking, how

“The vitriol madness flashes up in the ruffian’s head,

Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife,”

what disease, and want, and wretchedness, and crime, are engendered of this poison to men’s souls—all to build up the fortunes of a few wealthy capitalists—we are sure even the strong nerves of the dashing barber would have failed him, and he would have turned with loathing from the hateful traffic. Rabelais makes Pope Calixtus a woman’s barber in the other world, which might be a very salutary discipline for a proud pontiff; and we put it to the prince of jovial drinkers himself to suggest any more fitting purgatorial chastisement for the gin-fire aristocracy, than that of compelling them to drink their own vile compounds: Prometheus, bound to the rock, with the vulture preying on his liver, would be but a faint type of their misery.

Before we dismiss Suddlechop, we have to remark that though dame Ursula, his wife, carried on the sale of cosmetics and perfumes, and dealt in other mysteries in her own room at hand, the business of a perfumer, as the term is now understood, had nothing to do with the ancient craft of barbery; such matters concerned St. Veronica and the milliners—the barbers and their patron saint, St. Louis, were engaged on higher mysteries. To preserve order, or, more probably, to promote merriment, a list of forfeits was hung up in the shop; those who chose to pay them did, and those who did not might laugh at them—

“like the forfeits in a barbers shop,

As much in mock as mark.”

Some old-fashioned “rules for seemly behaviour” have been handed to certain learned antiquaries as genuine regulations of the craft; but old birds are not to be caught with chaff, and the archæologist knows better. The forfeits are said to have been incurred by meddling with the razors, talking about cutting throats, swearing, pricking another with the spurs, taking another’s turn, interrupting the barber, and such like venial offences. It was formerly the custom to apply the soap with the hand when lathering the beard; the practice of using a brush was a French innovation, not known in England till the year 1756. Nor must we omit to mention that contrivance of the dark ages, the barber’s candlestick, which consisted of an upright wooden stem, pointed at the lower end, which was fixed in the apron string, and a projecting branch moveable round the stem to hold the candle.

Down even to the time of Queen Anne the barber’s shop was frequented by the better sort of people, and the hand that trimmed the tradesman curled the courtier. In Green’s “Quip for an Upstart Courtier,” (1592), we read, “With quaint terms you greet Master Velvet-breeches withal, and at every word a snap with your scissors, and a cringe with your knee; whereas, when you come to poor Cloth-breeches, you either cut his beard at your own pleasure, or else in disdain ask him if he will be trimmed with Christ’s cut, round like the half of a Holland cheese?”

Some of the old histories afford curious glimpses of the varied fortunes of the trade. In the time of Henry VI., the king’s palace was surrounded by little barbers’ shops, under the direction of the barber of the household. There being then no carriages, and the streets being dirty, it is probable that those who went to court were first shaved and dressed in these shops. A considerable fee was given to this barber for shaving every Knight of the Bath, on his creation; forty shillings from every baron; one hundred shillings from every earl; and ten pounds from every duke. The barbers of London were first incorporated by King Edward IV., in 1461, and at that time were the only persons who practised surgery. In France the Company of Barbers dates from 1096. An association called the Company of Surgeons was then formed prior to the act of Henry VIII., regulating the trade of barbers and surgeons. This act incorporated the company of surgeons with the barbers, under the name of the Barbers and Surgeons of London, and defined the duties of both professions: the barbers were not to practice surgery further than drawing of teeth, and the surgeons were strictly prohibited from exercising the craft of shaving. It is needless to add, that to a much later period, any act of parliament to the contrary notwithstanding, the barber did as much of the surgeon’s work as he could get. In certain articles devised by Henry VIII. for the establishment of good order in his household and chambers, there is an order by which the king’s barber is “expressly enjoined to be cleanly, and by no means to frequent the company of idle persons and misguided women, for fear of danger to the king’s most royal person.”

Montaigne complains (1581) that throughout Italy he had not been able to get hold of a single barber that could either shave him, or cut, or arrange his hair properly. The barber of King Charles II. seems to have acquired somewhat of the levity of his master, (evil communications corrupt good manners); for one day, while shaving him, with his usual familiarity he hazarded the remark, that none of his majesty’s officers had a greater trust than himself. “How so, friend?” quoth the king. “Why,” said the barber, “I could cut your majesty’s throat whenever I liked.” Charles started up at the idea, and, using his favourite oath, exclaimed, “Odds fish, the very thought is treason!” Nor could King Charles have forgotten the occasion when William Penderel first performed the office of barber, and shaved and trimmed him in a very sorry fashion, that he might elude his enemies. Royalty must at all times have been a very awkward customer for the barber to meddle with. Midas’ barber who appears to have had the cacoethes loquendi which is said to be endemic with the craft, suffered dreadfully in consequence. Fortunately for a few crowned heads, the tonsor, taught discretion by the story of Midas, has become the most prudent of men, and not a whisper is uttered on earth of any peculiar developement about the ears which the Phrygian cap effectually conceals from the vulgar.

Female barbers were not unknown to our forefathers, and, till within a few years, were to be met with in the provinces: possibly some “weird sisters” still survive in odd localities. We remember a sturdy little Welsh woman who wielded the razor very successfully in her native town, and was patronized extensively by the sailors and quarrymen. The five barberesses of Drury Lane, who dreadfully maltreated a woman in the reign of Charles II., are remembered for their infamy. Local histories tell of a noted barberess in Seven Dials, and of a black woman who did duty at Butcher Row, near the Temple. The delicate manipulation of female artists is proverbial; but one shudders at the thought of encountering the armed hand of the female barber; for who has forgotten the trick which the barber-damsel put upon Don Quixote, when she raised a lather a span high, covering up his face and beard with a white foam, and then left him for awhile with his neck outstretched, and his eyes half shut, “the strangest and most ridiculous figure imaginable;” and how poor Sancho was threatened with still worse consequences, and protested loudly against the beard-scouring by the scullions, adding, with his usual shrewdness, that there was no such difference between him and his master, that one should be washed with angel water and the other with devil’s-ley. Southey informs us that female shavers were not uncommon in Spain in his day. The more feminine occupation of hair-dressing was long carried on by the other sex, in a becoming and artistic manner: witness the announcement of one of them, copied by Strutt from the original in the British Museum:—

A

R

Next Door to the Golden Bell, St. Bride’s Lane, Fleet Street,

LYVETH LYDIA BEERCRAFT,

Who cutteth and curleth ladies, gentlemen, and children’s hair.—She sells a fine pomatum, which is mix’d with ingredients of her own makeing, that if the hair be never so thin, it makes it grow thick; and if short, it makes it grow long. If any gentleman’s or children’s hair be never so lank, she makes it curle in a little time, and to look like a perriwig.

It will be observed in Queen Anne’s reign no other style but that of the perriwig was thought worthy of imitation. In former times, the university barber was a person of some consequence. The vice-chancellor and proctors invited the fraternity to an annual supper, and no barber or hair-dresser could exercise his vocation in the university unless he matriculated,—took the usual oath, and had his name entered on the books of the university. It was usual for the college barber to wait upon the “freshmen,” and dress and powder them in the prevailing fashion—a custom which Southey was among the first to resist—an innovation he would scarcely have ventured on in after life.

The home of the first Company of Barber-Surgeons in London was probably where the hall of their successors, the barbers, is at this day, in Monkwell Street. The present building was erected by subscription some years after the Fire of London, which all but consumed its predecessor: a portion of the hall, of a semicircular shape, is actually within one of the bastions, still entirely perfect, of the old Roman wall—the ancient boundary of the metropolis. The court-room, designed by Inigo Jones, though small, is of fine proportions, and contains what must now be considered the chief riches of the company—a noble painting by Holbein, “Henry VIII. granting the charter to the Barber-Surgeons”—one of the finest pictures by Holbein in this country. There is also a portrait of Inigo Jones, by Vandyke; a picture by Sir Peter Lely, and other valuable paintings. The Company possesses a silver-gilt cup, presented by Henry VIII.; another the gift of Charles II.; and a large bowl given by Queen Anne. Such are some of the relics the barbers may still feel proud of, which we trust are not fated to decay; but, as this is eminently an age of revival and restoration, it is to be hoped the old hall may yet see better days; that, whatever was garnered up of old by the wisdom and prudence of our forefathers, may be wisely and liberally enjoyed by this generation, and the good work carried on and extended for a later age. The arms of the barbers are:—

Quarterly first and fourth, sa, a chevron between three fleams ar, second and third, per pale ar, and vert, a spatula in pale ar, surmounted of a rose, gu, charged with another of the first; the first rose regally crowned proper. Between the four quarters a cross of St. George, gu, charged with a lion passant gardant, or. Crest—An opinicus, with wings indorsed, or. Supporters—Two lynxes proper, spotted of various colours, both ducally collared and chained, or. Motto—“De præscientia Dei.”

If we were privileged to direct our thoughts to other lands, and to record the pleasant life of that admirable humourist, the barber of Southern Europe, we might hope to add a little sunshine to these pages. Who enjoys life better than Figaro—who is as well entertained—who is half as entertaining?

Ah che bel vivere!

Che bel piacere per un barbiere di qualita,

Ah bravo Figaro, bravo bravissimo fortunatissimo.

What a lively, sensuous, al fresco life he has of it at Naples; content, without the semblance of property of any kind; in action, free as the breeze; and in spirit, buoyant as a wave.

Ah che bel vivere!

But the shrine of Figaro must be sought in Seville. In the charming fictions of Cervantes and Le Sage, we seem to live on most familiar terms with the Spanish barber, as much so, as with Smollett’s Hugh Strap, or Partridge in Fielding’s “Tom Jones.” So truthfully is the invisible world peopled for us by the power of genius. Romance seems in some way associated with the character of a barber—

“In Venice, Tasso’s echoes are no more,

And songless rows the silent gondolier;”

but the barber still contrives an occasional serenade, accompanying his amorous tinklings with vocal strains which would rouse the Seven Sleepers. What a contrast to his European brethren is the grave barber of the East, who is usually physician, astrologer, and barber, and better known to most of us by the amusing story in the Arabian Nights than from any other source. Much might be said of Yankee wit and humour in the person of the American barber; something too, of the crude state of the art in Africa, where, to complete her modest coiffure, the sable beauty is seated in the sun with a lump of fat on her head, which trickles down in resplendent unctuous streams with a profusion enough to make a railway engine jealous. Nor can we stop to notice the Chinese “one piccie Barber-man,” whose speculations on heads and tails must be highly amusing; for the Fates are inexorable, and our canvass too small to complete the picture.

We must not, however, omit all mention of the trade in human hair, on which the wig-maker is dependent for his supplies. Ovid alludes to this traffic—light and auburn hair was most sought for by the Roman ladies which was brought from Germany and the North of Europe—

“Hair is good merchandise, and grown a trade,

Markets and public traffic thereof made;

Nor do they blush to cheapen it among

The thickest number, and the rudest throng.”

In the reign of Elizabeth, the wearing of false hair was something of a novelty; Italian ladies of no reputation are said to have first revived the fashion. Stubbes took up the cudgels in earnest; he says:—

“They are not simply content with their own hair, but buy other hair, either of horses, mares, or any other strange beasts, dyeing of what colour they list themselves. And if there be any poor woman (as now and then we see—God doth bless them with beauty as well as the rich) that have fair hair, these nice dames will not rest till they have bought it. Or if any children have fair hair, then will entice them into a secret place, and for a penny or two they will cut off their hair; as I heard that one did in the city of Londinium of late who, meeting a little child with very fair hair, inveigled her into a house, promised her a penny and so cut off her hair.”

In more modern times the demand has created a distinct branch of trade, and various agencies are at work to procure the needful supply. Black hair comes principally from Brittany and the South of France, where it is collected by dealers who visit the principal fairs, and barter ribbons, kerchiefs, and such matters, for the tresses of the Breton lasses. From a superstitious feeling, most of them are averse to take money for their hair, and consider it unlucky to do so. As it is an invariable custom for the females to wear a close cap from childhood, the loss of their magnificent chignons is thereby concealed. Germany supplies the market, as of old, with light and flaxen hair, and this branch of trade is chiefly carried on by a Dutch company. The London hair-dressers alone, purchase some five tons annually. The annual consumption in Great Britain of foreign human hair is assumed to be about six tons. Hair which curls naturally, and is of good colour and very fine, commands the highest price; and certain shades, which are comparatively rare, are much sought for. Such choice lots are packed up in skins, to exclude the air, and exported to the best markets. Fashion, however, has much to do in regulating the price. Bryant, the American poet, whose Pegasus seems to have taken fright at the gaudeous dresses of the beauties in the Broadway, thus discourses of hair with a poet’s license:

“And thick about those lovely temples lie

Locks that the lucky Vignardonne has curled.

Thrice happy man! whose trade it is to buy,

And bake, and braid those love-knots of the world;

Who curls of every glossy colour keepest,

And sellest, it is said, the blackest cheapest.

And well thou mayst—for Italy’s brown maids

Send the dark locks with which their brows are dressed,

And Gascon lasses, from their jetty braids,

Crop half, to buy a riband for the rest;

And the fresh Norman girls their tresses spare,

And the Dutch damsel keeps her flaxen hair.

Then, henceforth, let no maid nor matron grieve,

To see her locks of an unlovely hue,

Grizzled or thin, for liberal art shall give

Such piles of curls as nature never knew.

Eve, with her veil of tresses, at the sight

Had blushed, outdone, and owned herself a fright.”

When long-curled perriwigs were in fashion, some fine heads of hair fetched extraordinary prices; and as it was impossible to find human hair in sufficient quantity for the purposes of trade, recourse was had to horse-hair. One of the companies projected just before the bursting of the South Sea bubble, was a company for dealing in human hair which promised unheard of profits. In “A Description of Trades,” published 1747, we are told, “that the business of hair-curlers and sellers is properly a part of perriwig making, but of late years they have prevailed so much as to become quite a separate trade, and really not an inconsiderable one neither, some of them being even styled merchants, who have the makers-up of hair in all shapes for their customers. There are also abundance of hawkers and pedlars who go up and down the country to buy up this commodity, who generally dispose of it to these hair-sellers.” The material for a perriwig being somewhat costly, and trickery not uncommon, the character of the barber was the best guarantee for the quality of the wig. The reader has probably heard how Tom Brown, meeting a parson at Nando’s Coffee-house, recommended him to the honestest perriwig-maker in Christendom—the barber at Chelmsford, with his nineteen daughters, all bred up to his own trade, and being kept unmarried, their hair grew so prodigiously fast that it gave them full employment throughout the year; the barber cropped them every four years, and never lacked a plentiful harvest—so that Chelmsford was as famous for its wigs, as Romford for calves. The girls were all virtuous, which made the hair the stronger, and there was not finer hair to be had in the kingdom. On this, the parson who was in want of a new wig, and had been cheated in his last purchase, set out for Chelmsford, and returned thoroughly satisfied—that he had been sent on a fool’s errand.

The value of long fair hair, when wigs were in fashion, is amusingly shown in Walpole’s anecdote of the Countess of Suffolk, married to Mr. Howard. “Such was their poverty, that having invited some friends to dinner, and being disappointed of a small remittance, she was forced to sell her hair to furnish the entertainment, and for which she obtained twenty pounds.” Middle Row, Holborn, was chiefly inhabited by perriwig-makers, and the French barbers congregated in Soho.

One of the mysteries of the craft was the art of dyeing hair, and every barber was supposed to be fully initiated in this occult science. Greeks and Romans performed similar feats in their day, but blonde hair being most esteemed, the compositions they used were of a very different nature to those employed by the moderns; strictly speaking they could hardly be called dyes, they partook more of the nature of caustic pomades and pigments: such were the pilæ Mattiacæ, the caustica spuma, spuma Battava, &c., of their authors, imported for the most part from Germany. Making old folks young again, at least in appearance, was not beyond the power of Roman art, for the locks of age, white as the plumage of the swan, could be suddenly changed to that of a crow. Sir Thomas Brown suggests that Medea might have possessed some famous dye:—“That Medea, the famous sorceress, could renew youth, and make old men young again, was nothing else but that, from the knowledge of simples, she had a receipt to make white hair black, and reduce old heads into the tincture of youth again.” Mohammed forbade the dyeing of the hair; and a story is told of Herod, that in order to conceal his advanced age, he used secretly to dye his grey locks with a dark pigment In the greater number of Anglo-Saxon M.S.S. the hair and beard are painted blue, and sometimes green and orange. Strutt concluded from this, that the Saxons dyed or tinged their hair in some way; but the point is doubtful. In the fourteenth century, yellow was the favourite colour, and saffron was used as a dye. Again, in Elizabeth’s reign, fair hair became fashionable, and the ladies used various compositions to obtain the desired shade. Stubbes is indignant at the practice, and exclaims with his usual warmth:—“If any have hair of their own natural growing which is not fair enough, then will they dye it in divers colours, almost changing the substance into accidents by their devilish, and worse than these, cursed devices.” Foreign charlatans, quack doctors, and astrologers, were formidable rivals of the barber, and succeeded in disposing of their dyes and cosmetics in the most unblushing manner; some affected to be so occupied in the sublime study of contriving cures for all the ills which flesh is heir to, as to have no leisure for cosmetic practice, and coolly announced that their wives attended to such matters. A high German doctor and astrologer informed the public that he was blessed with a wife “who could make red hair as white as a lily, shape the eyebrows to a miracle, make low foreheads as high as you please, and had a rich water which would make the hair curl.” The practice of shaping the eyebrows, though now in disuse, was at one time considered a very delicate and important operation. Every one has remarked the extreme fineness of the eyebrows in the pictures of the great Italian masters. The St. Catherine of Rafaelle, and the Saints of Francia, in the National Gallery, are instances of this; such was the fashion of the Italian ladies of the fifteenth century, and was esteemed a great beauty. The eyebrows were carefully reduced in substance to a mere line, till scarcely visible. A lady, whose lover had an unconquerable aversion to red hair, once made application to a noted quack, who, politely answered:—“This is no business of mine, but my wife’s, who’ll soon redress your grievances, and furnish you with a leaden comb and my Anti-Erythrœan Unguent, which after two or three applications will make you as fair or as brown as you desire.” We hope, for the ladies sake, it turned out to be the true Elisir d’amore. A Mr. Michon, a goldsmith, in 1710, advertised a clear fluid, which would change red or grey hair to brown or black, under the name of “The Tricosian Fluid.” The remarkable success which attended the use of the Cyananthropopoion, patronized by Titmouse Tittlebat, is known to all readers of “Ten Thousand a Year.” It would, however, say but little for the progress of chemistry in our day, if we were unprovided with some efficient means of dyeing the hair; in competent hands, no doubt, the thing is easy enough. The old-fashioned dyes are now perfectly useless, and may safely be consigned to the same limbo with Peter Pindar’s razors:

“Sir,” quoth the razor man, “I’m not a knave;

As for the razors you have bought,—

Upon my soul, I never thought

That they would shave.”

“Not shave” cries Hodge, with wondering, staring eyes,

And voice not much unlike an Indian yell—

“What were they made for, then, you knave?” he cries.

“Made,” quoth the fellow, with a smile, “to sell.”

The names of no inconsiderable number of barbers are inscribed on the roll of Fame. In the very foremost rank we may place that of the poor barber, Arkwright, who lived to accomplish such great things for the trade of this country. His was an instance of that material success which the dullest can comprehend, and the vulgarest worshipper of Mammon will stand agape at. To be knighted by the Sovereign, and to realize half a million of money, would be fame enough for most ambitious minds—but this is but dust in the balance, compared with the value of the vast enterprise to which the barber’s talents gave the first impulse. Wealth, beyond the dreams of avarice, has accrued from that giant industry; and yet rival manufacturers would have crushed him if they could, so blind is grasping selfishness to its own true interests. Till the age of twenty-eight, Arkwright worked at the barber’s trade, then turned dealer in hair, which he travelled about to collect and dispose of to the trade. A hair-dye he happened to get hold of was a source of considerable profit to him. But his good genius was at hand to rescue him from obscurity, and although his subsequent career appeals but little to the imagination, his fame will long endure to attest the energy and the capability of the British workman. Belzoni was another earnest spirit working out its freedom in a different way. His adventurous career is well known; had it not been for the promptings of an active mind, he might have lived and died shaving beards at Padua. Burchiello, the Florentine, gave up the razor, and courted the Muse, as he says in one of his sonnets;

“La Poesia combatti col rasio.”

Jasmin, the French poet of Agen, rose from extreme poverty to comfort and independence as a barber, and acquired a well-earned reputation by his pleasant verses “Les Papillotes,” and the Poem “L’Aveugle de Castel Cuillé.” Allan Ramsey must be numbered with the barber poets; and literature is indebted to Winstanley, a barber of the time of Charles II., for his “Lives of the English Poets.” These, however, have earned other titles than those conferred by their original calling; there are others, whose sole claim to notice is their professional reputation. Among the most noted barbers of their day we may mention “the gentleman barber” to the Earl of Pembroke, who built a large house with tennis-courts and bowling-green, nick-named Shaver’s Hall, the resort of the gayest of the nobility, where many a fortune was lost and won; and Farr who opened the well-known coffee-house, “The Rainbow,” in Fleet Street, hard by Temple Bar. Lillie who had a shop at the corner of Beaufort Buildings, in the Strand, whose fame is preserved in the pages of the Tatler and Spectator. Honest Bat Pigeon, of whom Steele and Addison make honourable mention. Gregory, the famous peruke-maker, from whom the wig called a “Gregorian” took its name, and who lies buried in the church of St. Clement Danes, with an epitaph in rhyme, writ, says Aubrey, by a Baron of the Exchequer. Shammeree, the fashionable wig-maker of the reign of William III.; and Stewart, the author of the “The Noble Art of Hair-dressing.” Amid minor celebrities, Don Saltero occupies a conspicuous place—he opened his museum-coffee-house, in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, in 1695. Sir Hans Sloane supplied him with many curiosities for his museum. His own name was James Salters. He claimed to have some skill on the fiddle, could draw a tooth, made most excellent punch, and was esteemed a virtuoso and a wit. He includes himself among the oddities at the Chelsea Knackatory, with much complacency, in the following verses:

Through various employs I’ve past—

A scraper, virtuos’ projector,

Tooth-drawer, trimmer, and at last

I’m now a gim-crack-whim collector;

Monsters of all sorts here are seen,

Strange things in nature as they grew so:

Some relics of the Sheba Queen,

And fragments of the fam’d Bob Crusoe;

Knick-knacks, too, dangle round the wall,

Some in glass cases, some on shelf;

But, what’s the rarest sight of all,

Your humble servant shows himself—

On this my chiefest hope depends.

Now, if you will my cause espouse,

In Journals pray direct your friends

To my Museum-Coffee-house;

And in requital for the timely favour,

I’ll gratis bleed, draw teeth, and be your shaver.

Steele, alluding to Don Saltero, asks, “why must a barber be for ever a politician, a musician, an anatomist, a poet, and a physician?” He was evidently puzzled to account for the varied talents of the brotherhood.

The sons of barbers have, likewise, achieved great distinction: we may instance Jeremy Taylor, secretary Craggs, the friend of Addison; Tonson, the publisher; Turner, the painter; and Lord Tenterden. We are told by one whose testimony we cannot doubt, that when Lord Tenterden visited Canterbury in company with his son, he took him to the very spot where his own father had carried on his humble trade, and said, “Charles, you see this little shop; I have brought you here on purpose to show it you. In that shop your grandfather used to shave for a penny! That is the proudest reflection of my life! While you live never forget that, my dear Charles.” Lord St. Leonards, we believe, rose from a sphere equally humble, and his father followed the same trade. Lord Campbell has rescued the name of “Dick Danby” from oblivion by a kindly notice in one of his volumes, “One of the most intimate friends I have ever had:” says his lordship, “was Dick Danby, who kept a hair-dresser’s shop under the Cloisters in the Inner Temple. He could tell who were getting on and who were without a brief, who succeeded by their talents and who hugged the attorneys, who were desirous of becoming puisne judges, and who meant to try their fortune in parliament, which of the chiefs was in a failing state of health, and who was next to be promoted to the collar of S.S. Poor fellow! he died suddenly, and his death threw a universal gloom over Westminster Hall, unrelieved by the thought that the survivors who mourned him might pick up some of his business—a consolation which wonderfully softens the grief felt for the loss of a favourite Nisi Prius leader.” We may conclude by quoting the words of the same learned author:—“Although there be something exciting to ridicule in the manipulations of barbers, according both to works of fiction and the experience of life, there is no trade which furnishes such striking examples of ready wit, of entertaining information, and of agreeable manners.”

STRUCTURE, GROWTH,
AND
COLOUR OF THE HAIR.

---

CHAPTER VI.

In olden time, the hair was said to be produced by “a vapour or excrement of the brain.” In the more exact language of science it is described as a horny appendage of the skin. The skin is shown to be composed of two layers—the outer termed the cuticle, the inner the cutis. The cuticle is an insensible transparent membrane covering the whole surface of the body; the portion exposed to the air consists of flattened cells or scales which are continually being renewed; while on the inner surface, in contact with the cutis, is a soft mucous substance, in which are situate the pigment cells giving the characteristic colour peculiar to race and climate. The cutis is composed of the layer of minute papillæ, the principal seat of the sense of touch, covering an intricate arrangement of fibrous tissue, which receives the delicate ramifications of the nerves and arteries. The sheath from which the hair protrudes above the skin is formed by a tubular depression of the cuticle which reaches below the cutis to the subjacent fat and cellular tissue; the lower end of the sheath is shaped like a pouch, and contains the pulp from which the bulb and shaft of the hair are formed in successive portions—the most recent pushing forward that previously formed. The bulbs are larger in young than in old hairs, and are implanted obliquely in respect to the cuticle. The shaft of the hair being formed by an aggregation of parts, has been likened to a pile of thimbles one resting within the other; this overlapping of the outer coating of scales gives rise to that roughness which we feel on passing the fingers along a hair from the point to the bulb, though apparently perfectly smooth when held in the opposite direction. The colouring matter of the hair is seen in the pulp, and is distributed between the cells composing the shaft. In form the hair may be described as a flattened cylinder, not, however, hollow or filled with a kind of pith as is usually supposed; but solid throughout and formed of a homogeneous mass of a cellular texture. From the extreme minuteness of its structure, and the mystery which shrouds all vital processes, it is still a question as to whether the shaft of the hair is permeable by fluids derived from the blood. The old notion of a circulation within the hair like the sap in vegetables is disregarded; but it is contended that absorption does take place, and that fluids are transmitted to the extreme point of the hair. In proof of this we are referred to the sudden change of colour which the hair undergoes in extraordinary cases of mental emotion, as instanced in the sufferings of Marie Antoinette, whose hair was found to have turned grey with grief. It is assumed that the altered condition of the blood acting chemically upon the fluids of the hair destroys the colour. If this be granted, we must look for minor changes in the colour of the hair with every ordinary change in the normal condition of the blood. And we are told this does actually take place; that in health the hair is glossy, brilliant, and rich in hue; in ill health dry, faded, blank, and withered. But if this be so, and the connection between the blood and fluids of the hair be thus intimate, how comes it that partial changes of colour—this paleness of hue, and loss of brilliancy; and on the other hand, increased depth of colour consequent on renewed health—are not common phenomena and familiar to every one? Doubtless, we have still much to learn of the secrets of Nature, and there is yet something wanting to complete the revelations of the microscope, and the teachings of physiologists respecting the hair.

The palms of the hands and the soles of the feet are the only portions of the skin unfurnished with hairs. Their length and thickness varies considerably, from the softest down which is scarcely visible, to the long hair of the scalp and beard. The estimated thickness of a hair of the head is one-tenth of a line. Observations seem to show that flaxen is the finest, and black the coarsest hair. In females the hair of the head ordinarily measures from twenty to thirty inches, but in some instances it attains a much greater length; and mention is made of ladies whose hair has been two yards long and reached to the ground when they stood erect. The beard has been known to grow to the enormous length of nine feet: the portrait of a carpenter with a beard of this length, is preserved at Eidam; when at work he was obliged to pack it up in a bag. We are told the Burgomeister Hans Steiningen was thrown down and killed by treading on his long beard on the staircase leading to the council-chamber of Brunn. The long beard of John Mayo, a painter in Germany, is matter of history; he used to untie it in the presence of Charles V., who laughed heartily on seeing it blown about in the faces of the courtiers. Busbequius saw at Constantinople a janissary with such a quantity of hair on his head that a musket-ball would not penetrate it: we suspect there was some legerdemain in this case, and that the celebrated wizard was anticipated in his gun trick by some two hundred years or more. Some commentators have endeavoured to determine the weight of Absalom’s long and beautiful hair, but they differ widely in their computation; we are told that when its inconvenient length compelled him at times to cut it off it was found to weigh 200 shekels, which Geddes estimates at 112 ounces, and Clarke at 7-1/2 ounces—a conclusion in which nothing is concluded. Seven to eight ounces is held to be about the average weight of a lady’s tresses. With those who shave the beard its growth is said to be at the rate of six and a half inches per annum, so that in forty years a man must have cut off rather more than twenty feet of beard.

In the natural course, when the hair has attained a certain growth, it is thrown off, and its place supplied by a new growth formed from the pulp within the hair follicle. This process is continually going on, and is analogous to the shedding of the coat in quadrupeds, or the moulting of birds at certain seasons. The German physiologists, whose arduous and persevering labours in scientific research have never been excelled, have investigated with rare industry the minutest details respecting the growth of the hair; and one of them has accomplished the task of counting the number of hairs in heads of four different colours. In a blond one he found 140,000 hairs; in a brown, 109,440; in a black, 102,962; and in a red one, 88,740. Erasmus Wilson states that the superficial surface of the scalp may be taken at 120 inches, he averages the number of hairs per inch at 1000, which gives 120,000 for the entire head. It will be seen from the greater fineness of the blond hairs that the number is greater than those of red or black hair, and that red is the coarsest. The silken fineness of some shades of light hair is very remarkable, even the poets are evidently put to their wits end adequately to express its extreme fineness and beauty,—it is likened to the golden beams of day—and who has not seen the light playing upon it, and streaming rays and sparkles of lustrous beauty given out, as it were, from a diffused wave of sunshine—

“And on her hair a glory, like a saint.”

It is not clearly shown to what we must attribute the disposition to curl, which some hair naturally possesses. Some have thought that it was owing in a great measure to the presence of a considerable amount of oily matter in the shaft of the hair, which hinders the animal matter from attracting moisture which would have a tendency, it is said, to straighten the hair. But the more probable and more general opinion is that it mainly arises from the flatness of the hair. Now this flattening is sometimes very considerable, and the diameter of the hair two-thirds broader in one direction than in the other. The hair of the beard and whiskers exhibits the peculiarity most distinctly. In proportion to its size, the strength of a hair is very remarkable; one from a boy supported a weight of 7,812 grains; another from a man, 14,285 grains. The elasticity of the hair is very apparent, a hair 10 inches long has been stretched to 13 inches; and a hair stretched one-fifth of its entire length returns, with but trifling excess, to its first dimensions.

The chemical analysis of human hair, as given by Liebig, shows that its constituents are carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulphur. Fair hair contains most sulphur and oxygen, and the least carbon and hydrogen; black hair the most carbon and hydrogen, and the least sulphur and oxygen. The hair of the beard contains more carbon and less sulphur than the hair of the head. The presence of sulphur occasions the peculiar odour of burnt hair, but we question the fact, as stated by some authors, that red hair is perceptibly redolent of brimstone. By experiments, Vauquelin obtained from black hair a whitish and a greyish oil; the whitish oil was also present in red hair, but the place of the greyish green oil was supplied by an oil; the colour of blood. Hair is one of the most indestructible of animal substances, even less perishable than the bones; this arises from the small quantity of water it contains, its chief bulk being made up of various salts of lime, iron, and manganese. In mummies more than two thousand years old the hair has been found unaltered, as may be seen in our own and other public museums. In the Abbey Church of Romsey, the hair of a female apparently of the time of the Normans was found perfectly entire on opening a coffin in 1839. It is in plaits 18-inches long, and preserved in a glass case, lying upon the same block of oak which has been its pillow for centuries. And somewhat recently, when the tombs of Gustavus Vasa and his Queen Gunilla, in the Cathedral at Upsal, were explored to gratify the longings of some worthy antiquaries; the hair of the Queen, which according to the popular annals was of extraordinary beauty, still remained—when ought else of earthly beauty had perished in the grave.

Hair is a non-conductor of electricity, and every one is familiar with the experiment illustrating electrical repulsion, which causes

“The knotted and combined locks to part,

And each particular hair to stand on end

Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.”

Some persons possess the power of giving considerable motion to the scalp, and in moments of excitement do so involuntarily with some curious results—as was witnessed by Haydon at one of the readings given by Mrs. Siddons. The artist sat behind an old gentleman with his hair tied in a queue, which suddenly rose like a knocker, and continued the most lively movements during an interval of intense and breathless attention on the part of the audience. A good ghost-story will sometimes electrify a youngster, and convert the curled darling into a regular Brutus. In the “May of life,” e’er he had “supped full with horrors,” Macbeth himself had felt such innocent fears:

“The time has been, my senses would have cool’d

To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair

Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir

As life were in’t.”

But does the hair grow after death? Most persons who have not reflected a little on the question, answer readily in the affirmative. The contraction of the cuticle after death, which causes an apparent lengthening of the beard, has by many been mistaken for a new growth of hair. But there are strange instances on record, where, on entering the charnel house, a coffin has been found to be completely covered with an extraordinary growth of hair-like filaments issuing from chinks in the wood or metal, and trailing in every direction to a distance of some feet. Such a phenomenon is truly wonderful, account for it what way you will. The common solution of the difficulty supposes the hair to have grown to this enormous length, and to have been nourished in some way by organic elements resulting from decomposition. We need not stop to refute this. The opinion which inclines to its being of vegetable growth is likely enough to find favour with those who have seen the remarkable and beautiful parasites which clothe with their fantastic draperies the recesses of mines and caverns. But this we will leave to learned professors to settle among themselves.

The colouring principle in the hair and skin is held to be of a like nature. Light hair usually accompanies a fair complexion, and black hair a dark one; and every gradation from fair to dark is generally marked by a corresponding alteration in the tint of the hair. The colour of the skin and hair being one of the physical characters which serve to distinguish the several races of mankind, we may divide them into two great groups: the fair-haired and the dark-haired races. The dark-haired race occupies by far the greater portion of the globe; the light-haired race being restricted comparatively to a few settlements, chiefly in Europe, and more especially its northern region. These fair-haired races of the North, in their bold descents upon the British coasts and subsequent immigrations, drove the dark-haired Celts and Cymri from the plains back upon their mountain strongholds, and completely dispossessed the indigenous tribes of their territory. From the intermixture of race we derive that obvious variety in the different shades of hair which characterizes the mixed population of this country—a diversity which contributes not a little to the remarkable beauty of the women of Great Britain—while the intermixture of race has doubtless stamped that daring and energy upon the people which have made these isles the Palladium of Liberty and the envy of the world. We notice some marked peculiarities among certain tribes in respect to the colour and character of the hair. The Mongols and Northern Asiatics, for instance, are scantily furnished with hair and beard; the Kurilians, on the contrary, are said to be the most hairy race of people in the world. Their beards hang upon their breasts, and arms, neck and back are covered with hair. Some of the Esquimaux have so much beard upon the face that it is difficult to make out their features. The Incas of South America, with long thick hair, very soft and straight, have only a few scanty hairs for a beard. The North American Indians have straight lank hair. The African Negroes, woolly hair, which, it is needless to say, is very different from wool, being merely hair in a peculiar state of crispness. The colouring matter in the hair of the Negro is in much greater quantity than in the European. Sometimes this woolly hair is met with of great length; a tribe of Negroes on the Gold Coast have woolly hair fully half a yard long, which is usually black, but red hair is not uncommon. The Papuas of New Guinea have long black frizzled hair growing in tufts in the most strange but admired disorder, which makes their heads appear of enormous size. The Cafusos in the Brazils, known to have sprung from the native Americans and the Negroes from Africa, have their hair excessively long, half woolly and curly at the ends, rising eighteen inches or more perpendicularly from the scalp, forming a very ugly and ridiculous kind of wig: the wearers are obliged to stoop as they go in and out of their huts, and the mass of hair is so entangled that it is impossible to comb it. The Chinese have very little beard, although extremely anxious to make the most of it. Some tribes are at great pains to eradicate the beard, and a tribe of Indians on the Coppermine River not only pluck out the beard, but pull out the hairs from the head, thus realizing the condition of the Myconians, who, says Pliny, have naturally no hair at all. Generally speaking, the coloured races are most wanting in beard, and the white races most liberally furnished therewith. In the Albino, the hair is of the palest flaxen or a dull whitish hue, and the colouring matter altogether wanting; the skin partakes of the same deadly paleness, and the pupils of the eyes are of a pink colour. Albinoes cannot endure a strong light; when exposed to the light, the eyelids are half closed and continually blinking. In disposition, the Albinoes are gentle and not deficient in intellect. This peculiar variety was first noticed among the blacks, and obtained the name of white negroes. But Albinoes, it is known, are not confined to any particular race or country. In some Africans, patches of white hair are seen covering portions of the head, and in those parts the skin is invariably white.

That the colour of the hair in certain races has undergone a considerable change in the course of time is apparent from what is known to have taken place in Britain. The ancient Germans were universally characterized by red hair and blue eyes, and what is termed a strongly marked zanthous constitution; but, Niebuhr says, the Germans are now far from being a light-haired race; and Chevalier Bunsen remarks that he has often looked in vain for the golden or auburn locks and light cærulean eyes of the old Germans among their descendants, but in Scandinavia he found the colour of the hair and eyes precisely those described by Tacitus. From this it is inferred that the altered conditions of life, brought about by civilization, have produced a change in the physical character of the people. Such change, however, is confined within very narrow limits; in the hair it is but a mere shade of colour or variation in its crispness. Under the microscope, the definite form of the human hair is most exact and uniform; so much so, that Mr. Queckett was enabled by this test to confirm the conjectures of the Archæological Society, in a very scientific manner, respecting some portions of skin taken from church doors in Essex, and from Worcester Cathedral. Tradition said, pirates and persons guilty of sacrilege in old time were flayed, and their skins nailed to the church door. Mr. Queckett was to determine if the relics confided to his charge, and which looked exactly like scraps of old parchment, were really portions of the human body. A few hairs were discovered adhering to the skin and this decided the point—it was unmistakeably human hair and human skin—and the Archæologists were made happy by the discovery. Would that we could send the smallest fragment of one of those skins with but a solitary hair upon it—which Hanno hung up in the Temple of Juno—to Mr. Q., with the publishers’ compliments, that he might ascertain the true character of the hairy people the old Carthaginian fell in with on his route.

The colour of the hair is also an indication of temperament: black hair is usually accompanied by a bilious temperament; fair and auburn, with the sanguine and sanguine-nervous; and very light hair, with a temperament mild and lymphatic.

Will any one undertake to say what was the precise colour of the golden hair so vaunted of by the great poets of antiquity? One of our living poets, the author of “The Bride of Rimini,” has brought the light of genius and his fine taste and scholarship to the task, and the matter is yet doubtful. Some have not hesitated to decide that it was red, fiery red, and nothing short of red; and sneered at the ancients for affecting to be connoisseurs in these things. Some have contended that it was auburn, which is a glorious colour, and seems naturally associated with smiles and the rich imagery of poets. In the well-known ode of Anacreon, where he speaks of the beauty of his mistress as a fit subject for the painter’s art, it is difficult to say what colour we must choose. Some prefer to think dark jetty locks were intended, such, possibly, as Byron has given to one of his beauties:

“The glossy darkness of that clustering hair,

Which shades, yet shows a forehead more than fair.”

Ben Jonson—no mean authority—blends with the jetty locks threads of fine gold:

“Gold upon a ground of black.”

If a mere stripling might handle the bow of Ulysses, we would venture to select the colour which Tennyson has bestowed upon a pretty little portrait:

“Her eyes a bashful azure, and her hair

In gloss and hue the chesnut, when the shell

Divides threefold to show the fruit within.”

But why be beholden to poets, who, after all, are but the interpreters of nature? Does not Scotland to this day own many a fair complexion, and tresses which Venice cannot match for sunny splendour; and are not the dark, flowing locks of the Lancashire witches working as secret charms as ever enthralled the courteous knights of old? It is certain that, in regard to the hair, the ancients had no monopoly of beauty.

Concerning grey hair, we may remark that the term is a misnomer applied to single hairs; for the greyness merely arises from the commingling of white and dark hairs. When the secretion of the colouring matter in the pulp ceases, all succeeding growth from the bulb is colourless. Every one feels some little anxiety about grey hairs. To the moralist they are Death’s blossoms—the solemn warning to adjust the mantle e’er we fall. With some, grey hairs will even intrude upon the pleasures of youth; with others, they are but as the ripening of the corn—when wisdom gathers her full harvest against the time of declining strength; again, in others, they wait upon old age, like a wreath of snow on the brow of winter; and some enjoy life to its fullest span, and there is no sign of “the sere and yellow leaf:” so various are the conditions of life which produce the change of constitution which accompanies grey hairs. It is amusing to notice the special theory which each one contrives to account for the presence of these tell-tales. “Ah!” said Louis XII., as he looked in the mirror, somewhat astonished at the number of grey hairs, “these are owing to the long speeches I have listened to, those especially of M. le——, have ruined my hair.” It was mere folly for the Teian bard to tell the girls how prettily the white hairs of age contrast with the rich tresses of youth, like roses and lilies in a chaplet, or milk upon roses; for at his time of life, the old Sybarite ought to have known better. We remember to have felt deeply for the unfortunate bridegroom, when we first read the tragical story, in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, of the gentleman, “who, at his marriage, when about forty years old, had a dark head of hair; but, on his return from his wedding trip, had become so completely snow white, even to his eyebrows, that his friends almost doubted his identity.” Even the curled Anthony must needs make excuses to the fair Egyptian for his grey hairs:

“What, girl? though grey

Do something mingle with our younger brown;

Yet ha’ we a brain that nourishes our nerves,

And can get goal for goal of youth.”

How sudden grief and consuming care will blanch the hair is known to all. Memory recalls the lone prisoner in the castle of Chillon, and the lofty queen who passed from a throne to a prison and the scaffold, to teach heroes how to face death. And by these truthful signs, these silver hairs, may oftentimes be traced the story of a broken heart—of hope too long deferred—of fallen ambition—of blighted affection, or of man’s ingratitude. What more sacred than these secret sorrows; who would seek to pry into them with idle questionings? The leaf is withered, for the worm is at the heart of the tree:

“This white top writeth mine oldé years;

Mine heart is also mouldered as mine hairs.”

But hope and sunshine gather about the grey hairs ripe for immortality:

“Thy silver locks, once auburn bright,

Are still more lovely in my sight

Than golden beams of orient light,

My Mary.”

We have hitherto regarded the hair as a thing of beauty and the crowning ornament of man’s structure. We have now to consider the diseases to which it is subject; and first we will speak of Baldness. Where partial baldness arises from debility of the system, the growth of hair usually follows on restoration to health, and accidental baldness may generally be removed by the ordinary applications. But the baldness of a more permanent character, which results from the obliteration of the hair-follicles, seldom admits of a perfect remedy. In such cases the skin is smooth and glossy, as is duly noted by Chaucer, in his portrait of the monk:

“His head was bald, and shone as any glass.”

This is the alopecia of pathologists, so called because it was said foxes were especially subject to baldness; or, as some think to express, by way of irony, that cunning and duplicity may be looked for in bald men. The ridicule and contempt which the ancients heaped upon these unfortunate individuals is very obvious. Among the Hebrews the term bald-pate was an insult and a reproach. The origin of this appears to have been that baldness was held to be the sign of a corrupt youth and a dissolute life. And when physiologists are asked to certify to the falsehood of such calumnies, they answer in riddles like the Sphinx.

“Turpe pecus mutilum, turpis sine gramine campus

Et sine fronde frutex, et sine crine caput.”

The ancients were so proud of their curls and flowing locks, the physical beauty of manhood, and the charms of their female deities, earthly and celestial, that, for the sake of antithesis it may be, they hurled their sarcasms and their sneers with a savage vengeance or ignoble pity upon their bald-pated victims in a style which modern politeness declines to imitate. It is surprising that Cæsar should have shown such sensitiveness about his baldness as to have sought permission of the Senate to wear his laurel crown at pleasure. The privilege was granted, and the laurels shaded the bald pate. Fortunately women are so very rarely bald that we may consider them exempt from this infliction. Apuleius, in his Melesiacs, says, that Venus herself, if she were bald, though surrounded by the Graces and the Loves, could not be pleasing even to her husband, Vulcan. Herodotus remarked that few Egyptians were bald; and eunuchs, who have much subcutaneous fat about the scalp, are free from baldness. It may be some consolation to bachelors to know, that according to Pliny man in a state of single blessedness is never bald. Caligula and Nero are numbered among the bald, and kings have been honored with the title. Baldness has even found panegyrists. Synesius, bishop of Syrene, in the fifteenth century, wrote in praise of it; and Hucbald, a Benedictine monk, made it the subject of a curious poem, which he very appropriately dedicated to Charles the Bald. But these perverse eulogists were ecclesiastics who reckoned the beauty of the hair and its enticements part of the vanities of this wicked world it would be well to get rid of. Happily the hair escaped their treacherous shears. It is possible, however, to have too much of a good thing; and the excessive growth of hair where least wanted is numbered among the ills which flesh is heir to. No one in these days would think the King of Persia’s porter, seen by Tavernier, deserved a double pension because he could tie his moustaches behind his neck; for something very like this may be seen any afternoon in Hyde Park; there is a fashion in such things, and Nature is by no means niggardly in her gifts to man. But what is meant by an extraneous growth of hair is very different from this, and by no means ornamental. We allude to cases where the whole body has been covered by a growth of long hair. Some miserable Fakirs, in India, have been seen clothed with hair several inches long. About 1650, a hairy child was shown as a sight, and the strange phenomenon is thus accounted for in an old play:

“’Tis thought the hairy child that’s shewn about,

Came by the mother’s thinking on the picture

Of St. John Baptist in his camel’s coat.”

But the most frightful instances are those of bearded women. “I like not when a ’oman has a great peard,” says Sir Hugh; and the old naturalists are at some pains to assure us that woman is not barbigerous, for which a very sufficient reason has been given:

“Nature, regardful of the babbling race,

Planted no beard upon a woman’s face;

Not MAPPIN’S razors, though the very best,

Could shave a chin which never is at rest.”

One of the best known examples of this repulsive class, (Trifaldi, the afflicted Duenna not excepted), is that of Barbara Urselin, born at Augsburg, and shown in Ratcliffe Highway, in 1668; her portrait may be seen in Granger’s Biography, and Evelyn takes note of her in his Journal. Her face and hands were all over hairy, the hair on her forehead and eyebrows combed upwards, she had a long spreading beard, the hair of which hung loose and flowing like the hair of the head. A fellow of the name of Van Beck married the frightful creature to carry about as a show. Charles XII. had in his army a female grenadier, who had both the beard and the courage of a man. She was taken prisoner at the battle of Pultowa, and carried to St. Petersburg, where she was presented to the Czar; her beard measured a yard and a half. In 1852, a young woman, a native of Switzerland, with beard and whiskers four inches long, could find no clergyman to marry her to the object of her affections, until provided with a certificate from Charing Cross Hospital. Many other authentic cases are on record, but the subject is not inviting.

In rare instances, the colour of the hair undergoes a strange metamorphosis from red to black, or it may be from brown to blue or green, and sometimes it has been seen spotted like the leopard’s skin. Instances are known in which it became so sensitive that the slightest touch caused exquisite pain. Sometimes the hair splits at the point, and becomes forked. There is also, the very rare disease—plica Polonica—originating, no doubt, in filth and neglect, in which the hair becomes inextricably tangled and matted together by a glutinous fluid from the roots, and the hairs when cut are said to bleed. In the Museum of the College of Surgeons, the hair of a cat may be seen exhibiting all the peculiarities of this singular disease. The elf-locks of the old chieftains which Scott describes:—

“His plaited hair in elf locks spread

Around his bare and matted head—”

and the locks which Queen Mab and the Fairies are accused of weaving “in foul sluttish hairs,” are no doubt symptoms of the same diseased and monstrous plaiting.

That the hair is any standard of physical strength is one of those popular notions which rest on no sufficient data. Samson’s strength was the direct gift of God—

“God when he gave me strength, to show withal

How slight the gift was, hung it in my hair.”

Nisus’ life was held by the singular tenure of one golden or purple hair, which grew on the top of his head; this was plucked by the hand of his unnatural daughter and his life fell a sacrifice to her craft: so runs the tale. We cannot say if hearts are still held in fief by the gift of a lock of hair, or if lovers in this stern iron-age recognize the old traditions in their love affairs; but broad lands were conveyed in other days by as slight a bond. The Earl of Warren, in the reign of Henry III., confirmed to the church of S. Pancras, at Lewes, certain land, rent, and tithe, of which he gave seisin per Capillos capitis sui et fratis sui Radulfi; and the hair of the parties was cut off by the Bishop of Winchester before the high altar.

The hair, from its imperishable nature, constitutes a material link between the living and the dead; it survives in form and beauty as when it graced the brows of the living; unchanged in death, it shares in the lasting homage which we gladly pay to the memory of the brave and the good. Who can regard with indifference the sacred relics preserved at Penshurst—the locks of hair of Sir Philip and Algernon Sidney? Leigh Hunt has other like-treasured memorials, of which an account has been given to the public by an American author. The locks are those of Milton, Keats, Shelley, Charles Lamb, Dr. Johnson, Swift; and the poet may well feel proud to own them.

From what has been said respecting the growth of the hair, it will be perceived that there are some special points to be attended to, if we would keep it in perfect order. As the hair rises from the bulb above the cuticle, it carries with it a thin pellicle, which adheres for a time to the shaft, and afterwards falls off in minute scales, and forms a kind of scurf in the hair. Now, this is simply a natural process, and not to be mistaken for a diseased state of the skin; the scales of detached film merely require to be removed with the brush and comb. Very different, however, are the scales on the skin of the head, which, at times, form a loose dandriff, filling the hair with a most unsightly scurf. This is a serious evil, and requires patient and careful treatment to get rid of thoroughly; and nothing can be less likely to effect a remedy than the use of very hard brushes, which, by irritating the scalp, tend to aggravate the symptoms. Anything which unnaturally irritates the skin of the head will originate dandriff; when the functions of the excretory pores and sebaceous glands are interrupted, the skin becomes dry, and the cuticle may be said partially to perish; the dead particles are then thrown off by cuticular exfoliation. Above all, extreme cleanliness, constant and habitual attention to the purity of the skin, are the best curatives, and the only safeguard against the occurence of this very simple, but troublesome and obstinate disease of the cuticle. The most disagreeable circumstance to be noted in this complaint is, that those who should enjoy perfect immunity from the annoyance,—those

“Who have but fed on the roses, and lain in the lilies of life”—

by the use of stimulant pomatums, improper hair-brushes, and badly made combs, but chiefly the use of abominable nostrums—not unfrequently entail upon themselves the very evils which are commonly produced by the opposite means, neglect and inattention to the state of the hair. The hair requires but a moderate supply of pommade; but this, to be of any real benefit, must be compounded secundem artem, and adapted to the purpose. Oils and pomatums which merely collect dust are not to be tolerated, and are frequently had recourse to merely to disguise the neglect which suffers the hair to become rough from being in ill-condition. Whenever proper attention is given to the hair, the most satisfactory results are usually obtained; and without bestowing such an amount of care, it is impossible to realize the beautiful softness and lustre which any lady’s tresses may be made to assume. It cost the poet little to bring together

“Love-darting eyes, and tresses like the morn;”

but we promise none but very ordinary tresses to such as will not, both night and morn, with brush and comb, and suitable preparation, detach every particle of dust from the hair. And to those who can appreciate the beautiful, and would gratify a more refined feeling than mere personal vanity, the disposition of the hair affords an admirable opportunity of setting off, by the graces of art, “the beauty of a woman’s face”—

“Angels are painted fair, to look like you.”

All the canons of criticism are summed up in the perfections of female beauty. What greater ornament to perfect beauty that luxuriant hair? We will conclude our advice to the fair with some old verses of Richard Lovelace, which express, with the freedom of a poet, a truth that might take the form of an aphorism, that the beauty of the hair consists in its flowing outline, its flexibility, and varying tints—the effect of light reflected from its glossy surface:

“Amarantha, sweet and fair,

Oh, braid no more that shining hair!

Let it fly, as unconfin’d

As its calm ravisher, the wind;

Who hath left his darling, th’ east,

To wanton o’er that spicy nest.

Every tress must be confest,

But neatly tangled, at the best;

Like a clue of golden thread

Most excellently ravelled.

Do not, then, wind up the light

In ribands, and o’ercloud in night,

Like the sun’s in early ray;

But shake your head, and scatter day!”

THE END.

Read & Co., Printers, Johnson’s-court, Fleet-street.

Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected silently.
2. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have been retained as in the original.