The cittern is also mentioned by Ned Ward:—“I would sooner hear an old barber sing ‘Whittington’s Bells’ upon a cittern.”
But enough of their musical parts; as for their learning no examples are wanting: Partridge, the classical scholar, in Fielding’s “Tom Jones;” Vossius’ barber, who used to comb his hair in iambics;[502] and Smollett’s Hugh Strap, are excellent specimens. This last one was sketched from life; his real name was Hugh Hughson; he died in the parish of St Martin’s-in-the-Field, at the advanced age of eighty-five, having kept a barber-shop in that locality upwards of forty years. His shop was hung round with Latin quotations, and he would frequently point out to his customers the several scenes in “Roderick Random” pertaining to himself, which had their foundation, not in the Doctor’s inventive fancy, but in truth and reality. The meeting at the barber-shop in Newcastle, the subsequent mistake at the inn, their arrival together in London, and the assistance they experienced from Strap’s friends, were all facts. He is said to have left behind him an interleaved copy of “Roderick Random,” showing how far we are indebted to the creative fancy of Doctor Smollett, and to what extent the incidents recorded were founded upon fact.
Not many years ago there was a hairdresser in the Rue Racine, who, probably on account of his proximity to the universities of the Collège de France and the Sorbonne, had this inscription on his window: “κειρω τακιστα και σιναω,” “I shear quickly and am silent.” This classical hairdresser was evidently acquainted with the answers given by Anaxagoras to a barber who asked him, “How do you wish to have your beard shaved?” and who received the laconic answer, “without talking.” The shutters and windows of our Parisian worthy were covered with inscriptions in foreign languages, the number of which was only surpassed by the Bible shop in Brompton, during the time of the International Exhibition in 1862.
An eccentric barber opened a shop under the walls of the King’s Bench Prison; the windows being broken when he entered the house, he mended them with paper, on which appeared, “Shave for a penny,” with the usual invitation to customers; whilst on his door was scrawled the following rhymes:—
“Here lives Jemmie Wright,
Shaves almost as well as any man in England,
Almost—not quite.”
Foote, who delighted in anything eccentric, saw this inscription, and hoping to extract some wit from the author, whom he justly concluded to be an odd character, he pulled off his hat, and thrusting his head through a paper pane into the shop, called out, “Is Jimmy Wright at home?” The barber immediately forced his own head through another pane into the street, and replied: “No, sir, he has just popt out.”
Numerous more or less witty barbers’ inscriptions are recorded; one of the best is that attributed to Dean Swift, penned by him for a barber, who at the same time kept a public-house:—
“Rove not from pole to pole, but step in here,
Where nought excels the shaving but the beer.”
A variation often met is:—