Seating myself on an easy chair of velvet, and placing my legs on an easy stool, also of velvet, I become drowsy under the influence of the fingers and thumbs of the operator, as they are passed over my skull, as if with a view to making a phrenological chart, and which produce a feeling at last as if hundreds of fingers and thumbs were at work, and the whole force of the establishment were scratching my head.
I am conducted to a marble washstand, and a tap of cold water is turned on me. I thought I had washed my head in the bath, but it appears not, judging by the colour of the water. My head is dried by hard labour, then it is wetted again by a shower of eau de Cologne and water, thrown at me when least expected. “Will I be shaved, sir?� Of course I will! “Take a seat.� I sink into the velvet chair, and contemplate my dirty boots, that for days have not known blacking, but have known mud, as they contrast with the crimson pile velvet on which they rest. The back of the chair is raised by means of a screw, until my head is in the proper position for operation. First I have hot water on my chin, and a finger and thumb (generally the property of a coloured gentleman) feels for my beard in a dreamy way with a view to softening the stubble. Then comes the lather, and shave the first, and I am about to get up, when I am stopped by more lather, and shave the second; this is conducted in a slow methodical manner, the finger and thumb wandering about in search of any stray hairs, like gleaners after the harvest.
The operator says not a word to me, San Francisco barbers are not loquacious, but his eyes wander to the open door, and suddenly he leaves me with a rush, and apostrophising some one passing in the street, he says, “Say, how about that sugar?� The reply is inaudible, but I observe that the barber produces a sample of cigars from his pocket, and says, “See here! fifty dollars a thousand for these won’t hurt you;� and so, having failed to make a “trade;� he comes back, and, as he “finishes� me, he observes, in a general way, that “Damn him if that (the gentleman in the street) wasn’t the meanest man in all creation!� I am then released, and this was a San Francisco shaving-saloon in 1852. From the barber’s I proceeded to a boot-blacking saloon kept by Frenchmen. I seat myself on a comfortable fauteuil, two Gauls are at my feet, each Gaul has two brushes, and such a friction is commenced that my feet are being shampooed as much as my head was. The morning paper has been handed to me, and I have scarcely settled to the leading article when “V’la M’sieur,� announces that all is over. What a change! my boots rival that famous effigy of Day and Martin, whose polish is ever exciting the ire of a contemplative cat; I pay the money with pleasure, one shilling, not before I am brushed though. Shall I exchange my battered wide-awake for a beaver hat? Certainly; and now reader I don’t think you would believe, if you saw me, that I had just returned from Tuttle Town, and from a life of leather breeches and self-inflicted horse grooming. It is eight o’clock now, and, in an instinctive search for breakfast, I enter the Jackson House. Here are a hundred small tables nearly all occupied, I secure one and peruse the bill of fare. I could have wished for fresh eggs, but these were marked at two shillings each, and in the then uncertain state of the mine I considered economy a duty. “Fricassée de Lapin,� that sounded well, so I ordered it; I didn’t tell the waiter, when he brought it, that it was not rabbit but grey squirrel, but I knew it from the experience I had had in the anatomy of that sagacious animal. It was very good, however, and if it had been a fat Sacramento rat I daresay that, under the circumstances, I should not have turned my nose up at it; for I have eaten many things in my time that are not found on the “carte� at Verrey’s; and when a man has once dined off monkey soup and has ladled a human-looking head out of the pot and has eaten still, regardless of that piteous parboiled look, he can stomach anything in reason ever after.
But the San Francisco bills of fare present at all seasons great variety, and no one has a right to complain who has but to choose from bear, elk, deer, antelope, turtle, hares, partridges, quails, wild geese, brant, numerous kinds of ducks, snipe, plover, curlew, cranes, salmon, trout, and other fish, and oysters.
It is not until you have been a long time without an oyster that you find how indispensable to your complete happiness this bivalve is; so soon as the want of it was generally expressed by the inhabitants of San Francisco, some enterprising individual gave his attention to the subject, and, after an adventurous voyage of discovery along the coast, he found a bed, and returned with a cargo of natives in triumph. This cargo, however, was not to be vinegared and peppered that year, but was transferred to a bed prepared for its reception in the bay; here the oysters were left to fatten on bran and other luxuries, and by next year the young colony had increased sufficiently to supply a small quantity to the restaurateurs. They were very small innocent oysters at first, and tasted like a teaspoon-full of salt water, they also cost sixpence a piece, which was about their weight in silver; but they were oysters; a victory had been gained; an imperious want had been supplied: we thought of this as we swallowed them, and were grateful for them even at the price. Since then the submarine colony has thrived so well that oysters in San Francisco are not only large, but comparatively cheap, so that many of the inhabitants gratuitously supply the city with pavement by throwing the shells out into the street as oyster-venders do in every city in the world where the law permits. And, by the way, it is not inappropriate that the law should wink at hecatombs of obstructive oyster shells, if, as they say, that part of the fish alone falls to the share of the public; and indeed it strikes me that any man who has been unfortunate enough to inherit a chancery suit in this country, should be allowed to pile his oyster shells before his door, for in this way he would denote the number of shells that, figuratively speaking, had been returned to him, and might thus exemplify the certainty of the law of equity in a manner suited to the meanest capacity.
Places of amusement were springing up rapidly in San Francisco, and these were of a better character than would have been supposed. It was pleasant to observe that gambling houses, and those low haunts which in every country minister to degrading appetites, were rapidly being swept away in this young country, and giving place to rational recreations. Theatres, reading rooms, and gymnasiums; these are good sources of amusement, be you where you will; read for the improvement of your mind, exercise the clubs and dumb-bells for the benefit of your body, laugh or cry over a good play, and in a colony you are safe for a cheerful, and perhaps grateful man.
My old schoolmaster, I remember, was wont to characterise the theatre as the house of the devil; if so, this personage is a very temporary lodger, for often when the devil is in a man, the merriment a farce excites, or the moral a drama displays, will drive it out of him; and perhaps before to-day a comedy has done more for a man, in the way of correction, than the best sermon that ever was preached to his inattentive ears. For, when you can interest a man, his feelings and judgment are open to your appeal, and I dare say a great many of my readers have, like myself, felt deeply moved at a drama, the moral of which would have been unheeded in a sermon, as inapplicable to our own cases or positions in life; just as, when children, we can only stomach a powder when it is presented to us in the fascinating shape of jam.
Some representations of poses plastiques that were exhibited about this time found no favour, and were cried down, but the enterprising manager of them, who was really a clever fellow, shifted his ground from the study of the human frame to that of the human head, and gave phrenological disquisitions on the sculls of Jenkins, Stewart, and others, who had been executed by the Vigilance Committee. As the bump of acquisitiveness had probably been the cause of the execution of these men, the lecturer had some difficulty in avoiding personalities, for this bump was largely developed in the craniums of his audience. However, he had an advantage over most lecturers on the same subject, for he could prove two distinct facts: first, that the subjects of his dissertation had been hung, and secondly, that many of his audience had helped to hang them.
Since that date, a famous Mexican robber, Joaquin Carrillo by name, has with much trouble and loss of life been caught and decapitated. When I left San Francisco his head was to be seen by the curious preserved in spirits of wine; and however revolting such a spectacle may be, it is a punishment that one would think would deter the reflective from crime. Fancy one’s features distorted by the convulsive throes of a violent death, staring whitened and ghastly from a glass bottle, turned from with horror by the gaping crowd, and then deposited for all ages, growing more hideous with each year on the shelves of a surgical museum!
To take one’s head as in olden times, and place it on a pole until it became a whitened scull, is a benevolent act as compared with the glass bottle and aqua fortis that hand distorted features down to posterity. For my own part I can contemplate with calmness my bones bleaching, as they may do, perhaps, in a desert, but the mere thought that a diseased liver or brain of mine should ever be labelled and ticketted in the museum of the College of Surgeons, excites a disgust that makes me think burning or drowning preferable to a quiet death-bed and a post mortem examination; for your operative surgeons always find something in their subjects worth pocketing, and if robbing the dead of their valuables is sacrilegious, robbing the dead of their liver and lights is equally so.