Part 107

Bartholomew Fair must and will be put down. It is for this reason that so much has been said of its former and present state. No person of respectability now visits it, but as a curious spectator of an annual congregation of ignorance and depravity.

* * * * *

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Mushroom. _Agaricus Campestris._ Dedicated to _St. Laurence Justinian_.

[273] Stowe.

[274] Strutt.

[275] Mr. Nares’s Glossary.

[276] Fosbroke Dict. Antiq.

[277] Smith’s Anc. Top. of London.

[278] Maitland.

[279] Stow.

[280] Fitz Stephen.

[281] Cotton MS.

[282] Harl. MS. Strutt.

[283] Stow.

[284] Ibid.

[285] Maitland.

[286] Nares.

[287] Hentzner.

[288] Old Ballads.

[289] Ward’s London Spy.

[290] New European Magazine, 1822-3.

[291] Smith’s Anc. Topog. Lond.

[292] Ibid.

[293] 12mo., “published by John Arliss, No. 87, Bartholomew Close,” about 1810.

[294] Gentleman’s Magazine.

[295] Ibid.

[296] Ibid.

[297] Ibid.

[298] Ibid.

~September 6.~

_St. Pambo_ of Nitria, A. D. 385. _St. Eleutherius_, Abbot. _St. Bega_, or _Bees_, 7th Cent.

_St. Eleutherius._

Alban Butler boldly says, that this saint raised a dead man to life. He died at Rome, in St. Andrew’s monastery, about the year 585.

* * * * *

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Autumnal Dandelion. _Apargia Autumnalis._ Dedicated to _St. Pambo_.

~September 7.~

_Cloud_, A. D. 560. _St. Regina_, or _St. Reine_, A. D. 251. _St. Evurtius_, A. D. 340. _St. Grimonia_, or _Germana_. _St. Madelberte_, A. D. 705. _Sts. Alchmund_ and _Tilberht_, Bps. of Hexham, A. D. 780 and 789. _St. Eunan_, first Bp. of Raphoe.

_St. Enurchus_, or _Evurtius_.

This saint is in the church of England calendar, and therefore in the English almanacs, but on what ground it is difficult to conjecture; for Butler himself merely mentions him as a bishop of Orleans, who lived in the reign of Constantine, and died about 340:--he adds, that “his name is famous, but his history of no authority.”

“_Fine Feathers make fine Birds._”

The subjoined letter, dated the 7th of September, 1825, appears in _The Times_ newspaper of the following day:--

_To the Editor of the Times._

Sir,--I consider it necessary to inform the public, through your paper, that there is a fellow going about the town, (dressed like a painter,) imposing upon the unwary, by selling them painted birds, for foreign ones. He entered my house on Monday last, and after some simple conversation with the customers in the room, he introduced the topic of his birds, which he had in a paper bag, stating that he had been at work in a gentleman’s family at the west end of the town, and the gentleman being on the point of leaving England for a foreign country, he made him a present of them; “but,” says he, “I’m as bad as himself, for I’m going down to Canterbury to-morrow morning myself, to work, and they being of no use to me, I shall take them down to Whitechapel and sell them for what I can get.” Taking one out of the bag, he described it as a Virginia nightingale, which sung four distinct notes or voices: the colour certainly was most beautiful; its head and neck was a bright vermilion, the back betwixt the wings a blue, the lower part to the tail a bright yellow, the wings red and yellow; the tail itself was a compound mixture of the above colours, the belly a clear green--he said it was well worth a sovereign to any gentleman. However, after a good deal of lying, bidding, and argument, one of the party offered five shillings, which he at last took; and disposing of the others much in the same way, he quickly decamped. In the course of an hour after, a barber, a knowing hand in the bird way, who lives in the neighbourhood, came in, and taking a little water, with his white apron he transferred the variegated colours of the nightingale to the white flag of his profession. The deception was visible--the swindler had fled--and the poor hedge-sparrow had his unfortunate head severed from his body, for being forced to personate a nightingale.

A LICENSED VICTUALLER.

_Upper Thames-street._

By the preceding letter in _The Times_, a great number of persons were first acquainted with a fraud frequently practised. As a useful and amusing communication it has a place here. It may, however, be as well to correct an error which the intelligent “Licensed Victualler” falls into by venturing beyond a plain account, to indulge in figurative expression. It is not doubted that his “barber, a knowing hand in the bird way,” wore “a white apron;” but when the “Licensed Victualler” calls the barber’s white apron “the _white_ flag of his profession,” he errs; a _white_ apron may be the “flag” of the “Licensed Victualler’s profession,” but it is not the barber’s “flag.”

Randle Holme, an indisputable authority, in his great work on “Heraldry,” figures a barber as above. “He beareth _argent_,” says Holme; “a barber bare-headed with a pair of cisers in his right hand, and a comb in his left, clothed in _russet_, his apron _checque_ of the first, and _azure_; a barber is always known by his checque party-coloured apron, therefore it needs not mentioning.” Holme emphatically adds, “neither can he be termed a barber, (or poler, or shaver,) as anciently they were called, till his apron be about him;” that is to say, “his checque party-coloured apron.” This, and this only, is the “flag of his profession.”

Holme derives the denomination barber from _barba_, a beard, and describes him as a cutter of hair; he was also anciently termed a _poller_, because in former times to _poll_ was to cut the hair: to _trim_ was to cut the beard, after shaving, into form and order.

* * * * *

The instrument-case of a barber, and the instruments in their several divisions, are particularly described by Holme. It contained his looking-glass, a set of horn combs with teeth on one side and wide, “for the combing and readying of long, thick, and stony heads of hair, and such like perriwigs;” a set of box combs, a set of ivory combs with fine teeth on both sides, an ivory beard-comb, a beard-iron called the forceps, being a curling iron for the beard, a set of razors, tweezers with an earpick, a rasp to file the point of a tooth, a hone for his razors, a bottle of sweet oil for his hone, a powder box with sweet powder, a puff to powder the hair, a four square bottle with a screwed head for sweet water, wash balls and sweet balls, caps for the head to keep the hair up, trimming cloths to put before a man, and napkins to put about his neck, and dry his hands and face with. After he was shaved and barbed, the barber was to hold him the glass, that he might see “his new-made face,” and instruct the barber where it was amiss: the barber was then to “take off the linens, brush his clothes, present him with his hat, and, according to his hire, make a bow, with ‘_your humble servant, sir_.’”

The same author thus figures

He describes it to be “a wooden turned stick, having a socket in the streight peece, and another in the cross or overthwart peece; this he sticketh in his apron strings on his left side or breast when he useth to trim by candlelight.”

* * * * *

Without going into every particular concerning the utensils and art of “Barbing and Shaving,” some may be deemed curious, and therefore worthy of notice. It is to be observed, however that they are from Randle Holme, who wrote in 1688, and relate to barbers of former days.

The barber’s washing or trimming-basin had a circle in the brim to compass a man’s throat, and a place like a little dish to put the ball in after lathering. Holme says, that “such a like bason as this, valiant Don Quixote took from a bloody enchanting barber, which he took to be a golden head-piece.”

The barber’s basin is very ancient; it is mentioned by Ezekiel the prophet. In the middle age it was of bright copper.[299]

This is a figure of the old razor of a superior kind, tipped with silver; “that is,” says Holme, “silver plates engraven are fixed upon each end of the haft, to make the same look more gent and rich.” The old man, being fidgetted by this ornament, declares, “it is very oft done by yong proud artists who adorne their instruments with silver shrines, more then seting themselves forth by the glory that attends their art, or praise obtained by skill.” Before English manufactures excelled in cutlery, razors were imported from Palermo.[300] Razors are mentioned by Homer.

“This is a small chafer which they use to carry about with them, when they make any progress to trim or barb gentiles at a distance, to carry their sweet water (or countreyman’s broth) in; the round handle at the mouth of the chafer is to fall down as soon as their hand leaves it;” so says Holme. Mr. J. T. Smith remarks, that “the _flying barber_ is a character now no more to be seen in London, though he still remains in some of our country villages; he was provided with a napkin, soap, and pewter bason, the form of which may be seen in many of the illustrative prints of Don Quixote.” The same writer speaks of the barber’s chafer as being--“A deep leaden vessel, something like a chocolate pot, with a large ring, or handle, at the top; this pot held about a quart of water boiling hot, and thus equipped, he flew about to his customers.” These chafers are no longer made in London; the last mould which produced them was sold in New-street, Shoe-lane, at the sale of Mr. Richard Joseph’s moulds for pewter utensils, in January, 1815: it was of brass and broken up for metal.[301]

This was a metal firepot, with a turning handle, and much used during winter, especially in shops without fire-places. It was carried by the handle from place to place, but generally set under a brass or copper basin with a flat broad bottom, whereon if linen cloths were rubbed or let remain, they in a little time became hot or warm for the barber’s use.

This is their ancient shape. “In former times these were much used to curl the side locks of a man’s head, but now (in 1688) wholly cast aside as useless; it openeth and shutteth like the forceps, only the ends are broad and square, being cut within the mouth with teeth curled and crisped, one tooth striking within another.”

_Scissors._

_Hair_-scissors were long and broad in the blades, and rounded towards the points which were sharp.

_Beard_-scissors had short blades and long handles.

The _barber’s_ scissors differed in these respects from others; for instance, the _tailor’s_ scissors had blunt points, while the _seamster’s_ scissors differed from both by reason of their smallness, some of them having one ring for the thumb only to fit it, while the contrary ring or bow was large enough to admit two or three fingers.

~Beards.~

“A full face with a sharp-pointed beard is termed, in blazon, a man’s face with a _pick-a-devant_ (or sharp pointed,) beard.” Mr. Archdeacon Nares’s “Glossary” contains several passages in corroboration of Holme’s description of this beard.

This Holme calls “the _broad_ or _cathedral_ beard, because bishops and grave men of the church anciently did wear such beards.” Besides this, and the _pick-a-devant_, he says there are several sorts and fashions of beards, viz. “the _British_ beard hath long mochedoes, (mustachios) on the higher lip, hanging down either side the chin, all the rest of the face being bare:--the _forked_ beard is a broad beard ending in two points:--the _mouse-eaten_ beard, when the beard groweth scatteringly, not together, but here a tuft and there a tuft,” &c.

* * * * *

Guillaume Duprat, bishop of Clermont, who assisted at the council of Trent, and built the college of the Jesuits at Paris, had the finest beard that ever was seen. It was too fine a beard for a bishop, and the canons of his cathedral, in full chapter assembled, came to the barbarous resolution of shaving him. Accordingly, when next he came to the choir, the dean, the _prevot_, and the _chantre_ approached with scissors and razors, soap, basin and warm water. He took to his heels at the sight, and escaped to his castle of Beauregard, about two leagues from Clermont, where he fell sick for vexation, and died.[302]

* * * * *

Ancient monuments represent the Greek heroes to have worn short curled beards. Among the Romans, after the year 454, B. C., philosophers alone constantly wore a beard; the beard of their military men was short and frizzed. The first emperors with a long and thick beard were Hadrian, who wore it to hide his wounds, and Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, who wore it as philosophers: a thick beard was afterwards considered an appendage that obtained for the emperors veneration from the people.[303]

~Wigs.~

It is figured as seen above by Holme, who also calls it in his peculiar orthography a “perawicke,” and says it was likewise called “a _short bob_, a _head of hair_--a wig that hath short locks and a hairy crown.” He describes it with some feeling. “This is a counterfeit hair which men wear instead of their own; a thing much used in our days by the generality of men; contrary to our forefathers who got estates, loved their wives, and wore their own hair; but,” says he, “in _these_ days (1688) there is no such things!”

He further gives the following as

This he puts forth as being “by artists called a long-curled-wig, with a _suffloplin_, or with a _dildo_, or pole-lock;” and he affirms, that “this is the sign or cognizance of the perawick-maker.”

That the peruke was anciently a barber’s sign, is verified by a very rare, and perhaps an unique engraving of St. Paul’s cathedral when building, with the scaffolding poles and boards up. This print, in the possession of the editor of the _Every-Day Book_, represents a barber’s shop on the north-side of St. Paul’s churchyard, with the barber’s pole out at the door, and a swinging sign projecting from each side of the house, a peruke being painted on each.

This peruque, with a “curled foretop and bobs,” was “a kind of _travelling wig_, having the side or bottom locks turned up into bobs or knots tied up with ribbons.” Holme further calls it “a _campaign-wig_,” and says, “it hath knots or bobs, or a dildo, on each side, with a curled forehead.”

_A Grafted Wig_

is described by Holme as “a perawick with a turn on the top of the head, in imitation of a man’s hairy crown.”

This is so called by Holme; he also calls it “a _peruque_, with the crown or top cut off; some term it the _border_ of a peruque:” he adds, that “women usually wear such borders, which they call curls or locks when they hang over their ears.” He further says, they were called “_taures_ when set in curls on the forehead,” and “_merkins_” when the curls were worn lower, or at the sides of the face.

“Some,” says Holme, “term this curled forehead a _bull-head_, from the French word _taure_, because _taure_ is a bull; it was the fashion of women to wear _bull-heads_, or bull-like foreheads, anno 1674, and about that time: this is the coat (of arms) of _Taurell_, a French monsieur, or seigneur.”

According to our chief authority, Holme, a female thus “quoiffed,” with “a pair of locks and curls,” was in “great fashion, about the year 1670.” He adds, that “they are _false locks_, set on wyres, to make them stand at a distance from the head; as the _fardingales_ made their clothes stand out (from the hips downwards) in queen Elizabeth’s reign.”

There is a little difficulty in naming this head dress; for Holme is so diffuse and indignant that he gives it no term though he describes the engraving. The figure is remarkable because it is in many respects similar to the manner wherein the ladies of 1825 adjust the head. It will be remembered that Holme was a herald, and though his descriptions have not hitherto been here related in his armorial language, he always sets them out so, in his “storehouse of armory and blazon.” It may be amusing to conclude these extracts from him with his description of this figure in his own words: thus then the old “deputy for the kings of arms” describes it:--

“He beareth _argent_ a woman’s face; her forehead adorned with a knot of _diverse coloured_ ribbons; the head with a ruffle quoif, set in corners, and the like ribbons behind the head. This,” says Holme, “is a _fashion-monger’s_ head, tricked and trimed up, according to the mode of these times, wherein I am writing of it; and, in my judgment, were a fit _coat_ for such seamsters as are skilled in inventions. _But_” (he angrily breaks forth,) “_what_ do I talk of _arms_ to _such_, by reason they will be shortly old, and therefore not to be endured by them, whose brains are always upon new devises and inventions! But _all_ are brought again from the _old_; for there is no _new_ thing under the sun; for what _is_ now, _hath been_ formerly!”

* * * * *

In the great dining-room at Lambeth-palace, there are portraits of all the archbishops, from Laud to the present time. In these we may observe the gradual change of the clerical dress, in the article of wigs. Archbishop Tillotson was the first prelate who wore a wig, which then was not unlike the natural hair, and worn without powder.[304]

* * * * *

It is related of a barber in Paris, that, to establish the utility of his bag-wigs, he caused the history of Absalom to be painted over his door; and that one of the profession, at a town in Northamptonshire, used this inscription, “Absalom, hadst thou worn a perriwig, thou hadst not been hanged.”[305] It is somewhere told of another that he ingeniously versified his brother peruke-maker’s inscription, under a sign which represented the death of Absalom and David weeping; he wrote up thus:--

“Oh, Absalom! Oh, Absalom! Oh, Absalom! my son, If thou hadst worn a perriwig, Thou hadst not been undone!”

* * * * *

The well-known, light, flaxen wig of Townsend, the well-known police-officer, is celebrated in a song beginning thus:--

_Townsend’s Wig._

_Tune_--“Nancy Dawson.”

Of all the wigs in Brighton town, The black, the grey, the red, the brown, So firmly glued upon the crown, There’s none like Johnny Townsend’s: It’s silken hair and flaxen hue, (It is a scratch, and not a quene,) Whene’er it pops upon the view, Is known for Johnny Townsend’s!

* * * * *

Wigs were worn by the Romans when bald; those of the Roman ladies were fastened upon a caul of goat-skin. Perriwigs commenced with their emperors; they were awkwardly made of hair, painted and glued together.

False hair was always in use, though more from defect than fashion; but the year 1529 is deemed the epoch of the introduction of long perriwigs into France; yet it is certain that ladies _tetes_ were in use here a century before. Mr. Fosbroke, from whose “Encyclopædia of Antiquities” these particulars are derived, says, “that strange deformity, the judge’s wig, first appears as a _general_ genteel fashion in the seventeenth century.” Towards the close of that century, men of fashion combed their wigs at public places, as an act of gallantry, with very large ivory or tortoiseshell combs, which they carried in their pockets as constantly as their snuffboxes. At court, in the mall of St. James’s-park, and in the boxes of the theatre, gentlemen conversed and combed their perukes.

~Hair.~

Horace Walpole relates that when the countess of Suffolk married Mr. Howard, they were both so poor, that they took a resolution of going to Hanover before the death of queen Anne, in order to pay their court to the future royal family. Having some friends to dinner, and being disappointed of a full remittance, she was forced to sell her hair to furnish the entertainment. Long wigs were then in fashion, and the countess’s hair being fine, long, and fair, produced her twenty pounds.

* * * * *

A fashion of wearing the hair gave rise to a college term at Cambridge, which is thus mentioned and explained in a dictionary of common parlance at that university:--

“APOLLO. One whose hair is loose and flowing; Unfrizzled, _unanointed_, and untied; No powder seen.----

“His royal highness prince William of Gloucester was an _Apollo_ during the whole of his residence at the university of Cambridge! The strange fluctuation of fashions has often afforded a theme for amusing disquisition. ‘I can remember,’ says the pious archbishop Tillotson, in one of his sermons, discoursing on this _head_, viz. _of hair!_ ‘since the wearing the hair _below_ the ears was looked upon as a _sin_ of the first magnitude; and when ministers generally, whatever their text was, did either find, or make occasion to reprove the great _sin_ of long hair; and if they saw any one in the congregation guilty in that kind, they would point him out particularly, and _let fly at him_ with great zeal.’ And we can remember since, the wearing the hair _cropt_, i. e. above the ears, was looked upon, though not as a ‘sin,’ yet as a very vulgar and _raffish_ sort of a thing; and when the _doers_ of newspapers exhausted all their wit in endeavouring to rally the new-raised corps of _crops_, regardless of the noble duke who _headed_ them; and, when the rude, rank-scented rabble, if they saw any one in the streets, whether time, or the tonsor, had thinned his flowing hair, would point him out particularly, and ‘let fly at him,’ as the archbishop says, till not a shaft of ridicule remained! The tax upon hair powder has now, however, produced all over the country very plentiful _crops_. Among the _Curiosa Cantabrigiensia_, it may be recorded, that our ‘most _religious_ and gracious king,’ as he was called in the liturgy, Charles the Second, who, as his worthy friend, the earl of Rochester, remarked,

‘never said a foolish thing, Nor ever _did_ a wise one,’--

sent a letter to the university of Cambridge, forbidding the members to wear _perriwigs_, smoke tobacco, and read their sermons! It is needless to remark, that tobacco has not yet made its _exit in fumo_, and that _perriwigs_ still continue to adorn ‘the _heads of houses_!’--Till the present all prevailing, all accommodating fashion of crops became general at the university, no young man presumed to dine in hall till he had previously received a handsome trimming from the hair-dresser. An inimitable imitation of ‘The Bard’ of Gray, is ascribed to the pen of the honourable Thomas (the late lord) Erskine, when a student at Cambridge. Mr. E. having been disappointed of the attendance of his college barber, was compelled to forego his _commons_ in hall! An odd thought came into his head. In revenge, he determined to give his hair-dresser a good _dressing_; so he sat down, and began as follows:--

“‘Ruin seize thee, scoundrel Coe, Confusion on thy frizzing wait; Hadst thou the only comb below, Thou never more shouldst touch my pate.

“‘Club, nor queue, nor twisted tail, Nor e’en thy chatt’ring, barber, shall avail To save thy horse-whipped back from daily fears From Cantab’s curse, from Cantab’s tears.’”

The editor of the “Gradus ad Cantabrigiam” regrets that he has not room for the whole of the ode.