The barber's chair; and, The hedgehog letters

by Douglas William Jerrold

Introduction.

These dialogues on passing events appeared in Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper, a journal started by my father in 1846. They became at once very popular. The idea was a fresh and happy one that, like “Caudle’s Lectures,” went home to all classes of readers. Indeed, in Mrs Nutts we have indications of Mrs Caudle’s vein: Mrs Nutts might have been a poor relation of the Caudle family. Nutts is such a barber as the Gossip was, who for many years occupied a little shop against Temple Bar—with one door in the City and the other in Middlesex. He was the most talkative, the most knowing, the most confident of barbers. His mind had possibly been sharpened by the distinguished men from the Temple, and from the Fleet Street newspaper offices, whom he had shaved. He had more than a smattering of literary and forensic gossip: he was something of a humourist, and, like Mr Nutts, it took very much in the way of news to surprise him. Mr Nutts observes that he has had so much news in his time, that he has lost the flavour of it. He could relish nothing weaker than a battle of Waterloo. To this state of satiety had the Temple Bar barber shaved and talked himself.

Indeed it is my firm belief that the “Barber’s Chair,” which in 1847 was set up in the offices of Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper, next door to the Strand Theatre, was the chair taken from Temple Bar; and that the most loquacious and original of barbers sat for Mr Nutts.

These weekly humorous commentaries on passing events, made by Mr Nutts and his customers, carry me back to the bright time when they were written. It was about the happiest epoch of my father’s life. He had won his place; he had troops of friends; he could gather Dickens, Leigh Hunt, Maclise, Macready, Mark Lemon, Lord Nugent, and other merry companions, to dine under his great tent by the mulberry-tree at West Lodge; he was in good health—a rare enjoyment in his case; and his own newspaper and magazine were prospering. On the stage, in the volumes of Punch, and in his own organs, he was addressing the public. All his intellectual forces were at their brightest. With Dickens, Mr Forster, Leech, and Lemon he had recently delighted picked audiences as Master Stephen in “Every Man in his Humour.” He wrote about this time to Dickens that his newspaper was a substantial success; and that henceforth he was beyond the reach of stern Fortune, who had treated him roughly for many a weary year. Dickens, in reply, said, “Two numbers of the ‘Barber’s Chair’ have reached me. It is a capital idea, and capable of the best and readiest adaptation to things as they arise.”

Suddenly the glowing lights of the picture faded. A daughter who was living in Guernsey fell dangerously ill; and he was called away from the editorial chair, and from the “Barber’s Chair.” He was so affected by the danger in which he found my sister that he could not write a line. Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper began to appear without Mr Nutts and his customers; and each week the newsboys would ask, “Any Barber?”

Answered in the negative, they would take a less number of copies. Week after week, while my father remained away, the circulation of the paper fell. Not only was his pen absent, but he had weighted it with heavy contributors, who were possibly sound, but unquestionably dull. He could not say nay to a friend; and directly he had installed himself as editor of a weekly journal, he was besieged. He would take a series, thinking rather of the pleasure he was giving the writer than of the way in which the public would receive it. Thus he became entangled in a currency series of interminable length, that tried the patience of readers to the utmost. In Angus Reach he had a lively and spirited colleague, and Frederick Guest Tomlins was a fair manager; but these could not make way, in his absence, against the dull men, and the decline of circulation continued. My father returned to London to find a newspaper which he had left a handsome property, dwindled to a concern that hardly paid its expenses.

The “Barber’s Chair” was resumed, and with it the flagging paper revived. Messrs Nutts, Nosebag, Tickle, Bleak, Slowgoe, and the rest of the authorities of the barber’s shop, talked about the events of the week in the old sprightly manner. Nutts and his wife cross to France, and the lady is rudely treated at the Customhouse. They were searched, said Nutts, as though they had brought a cutler’s shop and a cotton-mill in every one of their pockets. Slowgoe reproaches the barber as the advocate of universal peace, “and all that sort of stuff;” and defends war on the ground that “there’s nothing so little as doesn’t eat up something as is smaller than itself.”

One week, a poor babe is picked up in a basket, on a doorstep: the same week the papers have an account of the betrothal of the young Queen of Spain to a man whom she loathed. She sobbed as she was forced to plight her troth to him. The two cases are contrasted in the barber’s shop. On the one hand we have Betsy of Bermondsey, and on the other Isabella of Spain. Betsy gets on in life “as a football gets on by all sorts o’ kicks and knocks.” Betsy has the humblest fortune, but she gives her heart away, and is all the lighter and rosier for the gift. And “she marries the baker, and in as quick a time as possible she’s in a little shop, with three precious babbies, selling penny rolls, and almost making ’em twopennies by the good nature she throws about ’em.” Then comes the case of the Queen of Spain—a “poor little merino lamb!” Next week Mr Bleak reads glorious news—the Duke of Marlborough intends shortly to take up his permanent residence at Blenheim Palace. Whereupon Nosebag observes, “Well, that’s somethin’ to comfort us for the ’tato blight;” and he wonders why the papers that tell the people when dukes and lords change their houses, don’t also tell them when they change their coats. Nutts supplies an instance: “We are delighted to inform our enlightened public that the Marquis of Londonderry appeared yesterday in a bran-new patent paletot. He will wear it for the next fortnight, and then return to his usual blue for the season.” Gilbert à Beckett had ridiculed the Court newsman and the Jenkinses of the period, years before. One bit was especially good: “Her Royal Highness the Princess Victoria walked yesterday morning in Kensington Gardens. We are given to understand that her Royal Highness used both legs.”

Farther on there is a conversation in the shop on the possibility of contemplating such a social revolution as the marriage of a princess with a commoner. “What!” cries Slowgoe, “marry a princess to a husband with no royal blood! do you know the consequence? What would you think if the eagle was to marry the dove?” Nutts replies, “Why, I certainly shouldn’t think much of the eggs.” They were, for the most part, “dreadful Radicals” in Mr Nutts’ shop. They said many good things, however. Mr Tickle remarks, “Married people grin the most at a wedding, ’cause other folks can get into a scrape as well as themselves.” Slowgoe opines that “the world isn’t worth fifty years’ purchase,” because the railway people are using up all the iron, which “we may look upon as the bones of the world.” Nutts says, “The real gun-cotton’s in petticoats.” Again, “Family pride, and national pride, to be worth anything, should be like a tree: taking root years ago, but having apples every year.” He describes Justice as keeping a chandler’s shop in the Old Bailey, to “serve out penn’orths to poor people.”

In due course the dialogues of Mr Nutts and his customers were brought to a close. The sage reflections of Mr Tickle were left unreported, albeit at the very last he was at his best. “How often,” he remarked to loyal Mr Slowgoe, “has Fortune crowned where she ought to have bonneted.”

Other series were essayed in the newspaper. In 1848 my father went to Paris, well furnished with letters of introduction to Lamartine and the prominent men of the Republican Government, to write a number of papers on the aspects of the French capital. He would never speak about that journey afterwards. He was not at home by the banks of the Seine. He hated turmoil. He could never write in a hurry, nor under uncomfortable circumstances. He felt directly he had reached the hotel that he had made a mistake, and that descriptive reporting was no gift of his. His secretary was sent abroad to gather bits of information, and brought back a budget of peculiar and exclusive news in the evening—but it was left unused. Even the letters of introduction remained upon the writing-table; and they were never delivered. Only a few columns of writing ever reached the newspaper; and “Douglas Jerrold in Paris” had been advertised far and wide!

In brief, Douglas Jerrold had tired of his newspaper. He could not work up against the tide. The break in the “Barber’s Chair,” and the consequent loss of circulation, had never been recovered; whereas the Currency series, signed Aladdin, was interminable, and its dulness provoked protests and wearied out subscribers. The papers were perhaps admirable. They were written by a very clever man. But they should have been in the Banker’s Magazine, or the Economist, and not in the columns of a popular newspaper. The end was a heavy loss, which might have been substantial fortune. It was a bitter result, brought about by the editor’s inability to sustain a continuous effort; and by his easy-going friendship, that led him to open his columns to incompetent writers. This latter editorial defect harmed the Illuminated Magazine, and hastened the death of the Shilling Magazine. Both were suffocated by importunate dullards, who would besiege the editor in his study, and never leave him till they had obtained his consent to print a score of articles from their fatally facile pens.

Of Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper there remains only—“The Barber’s Chair.” It is a bright remnant, however; and this, I trust, the reader will fully admit.

Blanchard Jerrold.

Reform Club, June 1874.

THE BARBER’S CHAIR.

Chapter I.

SCENE.—A Barber’s Shop in Seven Dials. Nutts (the Barber) shaving Nosebag. Pucker, Bleak, Tickle, Slowgoe, Nightflit, Limpy, and other customers, come in and go out.

Nightflit. Any news, Mr Nutts? Nothin’ in the paper?

Nutts. Nothing.

Nightflit. Well, I’m blest if, according to you, there ever is. If an earthquake was to swallow up London to-morrow, you’d say, “There’s nothin’ in the paper: only the earthquake.”

Nutts. The fact is, Mr Nightflit, I’ve had so much news in my time, I’ve lost the flavour of it. ’Couldn’t relish anything weaker than a battle of Waterloo now. Even murders don’t move me. No; not even the pictures of ’em in the newspapers, with the murderer’s hair in full curl, and a dresscoat on him: as if blood, like prime Twankay, was to be recommended to the use of families.

Tickle. There you go agin, Nutts: always biting at human nature. It’s only that we’re used to you, else I don’t know who’d trust you to shave him.

Slowgoe. Tell me—Is it true what I have heard? Are the Whigs really in?

Nutts. In! Been in so long that they’re half out by this time. As you’re always so long after everybody else, I wonder you ain’t in with ’em.

Bleak. Come now! I was born a Whig, and won’t stand it. In the battle of Constitution aren’t the Whigs always the foremost?

Nutts. Why, as in other battles, that sometimes depends upon how many are pushing ’em behind.

Tickle. There’s another bite! Why, Nutts, you don’t believe good of nobody. What a cannibal you are! It’s my belief you’d live on human arts.

Nutts. Why not? It’s what half the world lives upon. Whigs and Tories. Tell you what; you see them two cats. One of them I call Whig, and t’ other Tory; they are so like the two-legged ones. You see Whig there, a-wiping his whiskers. Well, if he in the night kills the smallest mouse that ever squeaked, what a clatter he does kick up! He keeps my wife and me awake for hours; and sometimes—now this is so like Whig—to catch a mouse not worth a fardin’, he’ll bring down a row of plates or a teapot or a punch-bowl worth half-a-guinea. And in the morning when he shows us the measly little mouse, doesn’t he put up his back and purr as loud as a bagpipe, and walk in and out my legs, for all the world as if the mouse was a dead rhinoceros. Doesn’t he make the most of a mouse, that’s hardly worth lifting with a pair of tongs and throwing in the gutter? Well, that’s Whig all over. Now there’s Tory lying all along the hearth, and looking as innocent as though you might shut him up in a dairy with nothin’ but his word and honour. Well, when he kills a mouse, he makes hardly any noise about it. But this I will say, he’s a little greedier than Whig; he’ll eat the varmint up, tail and all. No conscience for the matter. Bless you, I’ve known him make away with rats that he must have lived in the same house with for years.

Bleak. Well, I hate a man that has no party. Every man that is a man ought to have a side.

Nutts. Then I’m not a man; for I’m all round like a ninepin. That will do, Mr Nosebag. Now, Mr Slowgoe, I believe you are next. (Slowgoe takes the chair.)

Slowgoe. Is it true what I have heard, that the Duke of Wellington (a great man the Duke; only Catholic ’Mancipation is a little spick upon him)—is it true that the Duke’s to have a ’questrian statue on the Hyde Park arch?

Tickle. Why, it was true, only the cab and bus men have petitioned Parliament against it. They said it was such bad taste ’twould frighten their horses.

Slowgoe. Shouldn’t wonder. And what’s become of it?

Tickle. Why, it’s been at livery in the Harrow Road, eating its head off, these two months. Sent up the iron trade wonderful. Tenpenny nails are worth a shilling now.

Slowgoe. Dear me, how trade fluctuates! And what will Government do with it?

Tickle. Why, Mr Hume’s going to cut down the army estimates—going to reduce ’em—our Life Guardsmen; one of the two that always stands at the Horse Guards; and vote the statue of the Duke there instead. Next to being on the top of a arch, the best thing, they say, is to be under it. Besides, there’s economy. For Mr Hume has summed it up; and in two hundred years, five weeks, two days, and three hours, the statue—bought at cost price, for the horse is going to the dogs—will be cheaper by five and twopence than a Life-Guardsman’s pay for the same time.

Slowgoe. The Duke’s a great man, and it’s my opinion——

Nutts. Never have an opinion when you’re being shaved. If you whobble your tongue about in that way, I shall nick you. Sorry to do it; but can’t wait for your opinion. Have a family, and must go on with my business. Anything doing at the playhouses, Mr Nosebag?

Nosebag. Well, I don’t know; not much. I go on sticking their bills in course, as a matter of business; but I never goes. Fash’nable hours—for now I always teas at seven—won’t let me. As I say, I stick their posters, but I haven’t the pride in ’em I used to have.

Tickle. How’s that, Nosey?

Nosebag. Why, seriously, they have so much gammon. I’ve stuck “Overflowing Houses” so often, I wonder I haven’t been washed off my feet. And then the “Tremendous Hits” I’ve contin’ally had in my eye—Oh, for a lover of the real drama—you don’t know my feelings!

Nutts. The actors do certainly bang away in large type now.

Nosebag. And the worst of it is, Mr Nutts, there seems a fate in it; for the bigger the type the smaller the player. I could show you a playbill with Mr Garrick’s name in it not the eighth of an inch. And now, if you want to measure on the wall “Mr Snooks as Hamlet,” why, you must take a three-foot rule to do it. Don’t talk on it. The players break my heart; but I go on sticking ’em of course.

Nutts. To be sure. Business before feelings. Have you seen Miss Rayshall, the French actress at the St James’s?

Nosebag. Not yet. I’m waiting till she goes to the ’Aymarket.

Tickle. But she isn’t a-going there.

Nosebag. Isn’t she? How can she help it? Being of the French stage, somebody’s safe to translate her.

Tickle. Ha, so I thought. But all the French players have been put on their guard; and there isn’t one of ’em will go near the Draymatic Authors’ Society without two policemen.

Pucker. Well, I’m not partic’lar; but really, gen’l’men, to talk in this way about plays and players, on a Sunday morning too, is a shocking waste of human life. I was about to say——

Nutts. Clean as a whistle, Mr Slowgoe. Mr Tickle, now for you. (Tickle takes the chair.)

Pucker. I was about to say, it’s nice encouragement to go a-soldiering—this flogging at Hounslow.

Nutts. Yes, it’s glory turned a little inside out. For my part, I shall never see the ribbands in the hat of a recruiting soldier again—the bright blue and red—that I shan’t think of the weals and cuts in poor White’s back.

Pucker. Or his broken heart-strings.

Nutts. What a very fine thing a soldier is, isn’t he? See him in all his feathers, and with his sword at his side, a sword to cut laurels with—and in my ’pinion, all the laurels in the world was never worth a bunch of wholesome watercresses. See him, I say, dressed and pipeclayed and polished, and turned out as if a soldier was far above a working man, as a working man’s above his dog—see him in all his parade furbelows, and what a splendid cretur he is, isn’t he? How stupid ’prentices gape at him, and feel their foolish hearts thump at the drum parchment, as if it was played upon by an angel out of heaven! And how their blood—if it was as poor as London milk before—burns in their bodies, and they feel for the time—and all for glory—as if they could kill their own brothers! And how the women——

Female voice. (From the back.) What are you talking about the women, Mr Nutts? Better go on with your shaving, like a husband and a father of a family, and leave the women to themselves.

Nutts. Yes, my dear. (Confidentially.) You know my wife? Strong-minded cretur.

Pucker. For my part, to say nothin’ against Mrs Nutts, I hate women of strong minds. To me they always seem as if they wanted to be men, and couldn’t. I love women as women love babies, all the better for their weakness.

Nosebag. Go on about the sojer.

Nutts. (In a low voice.) As for women, isn’t it dreadful to think how they do run after the pipeclay? See ’em in the Park—if they don’t stare at rank and file, and fall in love with hollow squares by the heap. It is so nice, they think, to walk arm-in-arm with a bayonet. Poor gals! I do pity ’em. I never see a nice young woman courtin’ a soldier—or the soldier courtin’ her—as it may be, that I don’t say to myself, “Ha! it’s very well, my dear. You think him a sweet cretur, no doubt; and you walk along with him as if you thought the world ought to shake with the sound of his spurs and the rattling of his sword, and you hold on to his arm as if he was a giant that was born to take the wall of everybody as wasn’t sweetened with pipeclay. Poor gal! You little think that that fine fellow—that tremendous giant—that noble cretur with mustarshis to frighten a dragon, may to-morrow morning be stript to his skin, and tied up, and lashed till his blood—his blood, dearer to you than the blood in your own good-natured heart—till his blood runs, and the skin’s cut from him;—and his officer, who has been, so he says, ‘devilishly’ well-whipt at schools perhaps, and therefore thinks flogging very gentlemanly—and his officer looks on with his arms crossed, as if he was looking at the twisting of an opera-dancer, and not at the struggling and shivering of one of God’s mangled creturs—and the doctor never feels the poor soul’s pulse (because there is no pulse among privates), and the man’s taken to the hospital to live or to die, according to the farriers that lashed him. You don’t think, poor gal, when you look upon your sweetheart, or your husband, as it may be, that your sweetheart, or the father of your children, may be tied and cut up this way to-morrow morning, and only for saying ‘Hollo’ in the dark, without putting a ‘sir’ at the tail of it. No: you never think of this, young woman; or a red coat, though with ever so much gold-lace upon it, would look like so much raw flesh to you.”

Nosebag. I wonder the women don’t get up a Anti-Bayonet ’Sociation—take a sort of pledge not to have a sweetheart that lives in fear of a cat.

Slowgoe. Doesn’t the song say, “None but the brave deserve the fair”?

Nosebag. Well, can’t the brave deserve the fair without deserving the cat-o’-nine-tails?

Nutts. It’s sartinly a pity they should go together. I only know they shouldn’t have the chance in my case, if I was a woman.

Mrs Nutts. (From within.) I think, Mr Nutts, you’d better leave the women alone, and——

Nutts. Certainly, my dear. (Again confidentially.) She’s not at all jealous; but she can’t bear to hear me say anything about the women. She has such a strong mind! Well, I was going to say, if I was a sojer, and was flogged——

Nosebag. Don’t talk any more about it, or I shan’t eat no dinner. Talk o’ somethin’ else.

Slowgoe. Tell me—Is it true what I have heard? Have they christened the last little Princess? And what’s the poppet’s name?

Nosebag. Her name? Why, Hél-ena Augusta Victoria.

Slowgoe. Bless me! Helleena——

Nosebag. Nonsense! You must sound it Hél—there’s a-goin’ to be a Act of Parliament about it. Hél—with a haccent on the first synnable.

Slowgoe. What’s a accent?

Nosebag. Why, like as if you stamped upon it. Here’s a good deal about this christening in this here newspaper; printed, they do say, by the ’thority of the Palace. The man that writes it wears the royal livery; scarlet run up and down with gold. He says (reads), “The particulars of this interesting event are subjoined; and they will be perused by the readers with all the attention which the holy rite as well as the lofty ranks of the parties present must command.”

Nutts. Humph! “Holy rite” and “lofty rank,” as if a little Christian was any more a Christian for being baptized by a archbishop! Go on.

Nosebag. Moreover, he says (reads), “The ceremony was of the loftiest and most magnificent character, befitting in that respect at once the service of that all-powerful God who commanded His creatures to worship Him in pomp and glory under the old law.”

Nutts. Hallo! Stop there. What have we to do with the “old law” in christening? I thought the “old law” was only for the Jews. Isn’t the “old law” repealed for Christians?

Nosebag. Be quiet. (Reads.) “The vase which contained the water was brought from the river of Jordan”——

Nutts. Well, when folks was christened then, I think there was no talk about magnificence; not a word about the pomp of the “old law.” Don’t read it through. Give us the little nice bits here and there.

Nosebag. Well, here’s a procession with field-marshals in it, and major-generals, and generals.

Nutts. There wasn’t so much as a full private on the banks of the Jordan.

Nosebag. And “the whole of the costumes of both ladies and gentlemen were very elegant and magnificent; those of the former were uniformly white, of valuable lace, and the richest satins or silks. The gentlemen were either in uniform or full Court dress.”

Nutts. Very handsome indeed; much handsomer than any coat of camel’s hair.

Nosebag. The Master of the Royal Buckhounds was present——

Nutts. With his dogs?

Nosebag. Don’t be wicked,—and “the infant Princess was dressed in a rich robe of Honiton lace over white satin.”

Nutts. Stop. What does the parson say? “Dost thou in the name of this child renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of this world?”

Nosebag. (Reads.) “The Duke of Norfolk appeared in his uniform as Master of the Horse. The Duke of Cambridge wore the Orders of the Garter, the Bath, St Michael, and St George. Earl Granville appeared”——

Nutts. That will do. There was no “vain pomp,” and not a bit of “glory.”