The Perfect Gentleman | Page 7

does it in the Dime Museum. Byron did it, and composed poetry during the operation; although, as I have recently seen scientifically explained, the facility of composition was not due to the act of shaving but to the normal activity of the human mind at that time in the morning. Here, therefore, a man can refuse the offices of the barber. If he wishes to make one of a half-dozen apparently inanimate figures, their faces covered with soap, and their noses used as convenient handles to turn first one cheek and then the other--that is his own lookout. But human ingenuity has yet to invent a 'safety barber's shears.' It has tried. A near genius once invented an apparatus--a kind of helmet with multitudinous little scissors inside it--which he hopefully believed would solve the problem; but what became of him and his invention I have not heard. Perhaps he tried it himself and slunk, defeated, into a deeper obscurity. Perhaps he committed suicide; for one can easily imagine that a man who thought he had found a way to cut his own hair and then found that he hadn't, would be thrown into a suicidal depression. There is the possibility that he succeeded in cutting his own hair, and was immediately 'put away,' by his sensitive family where nobody could see him but the hardened attendants. The important fact is that the invention never got on the market. Until some other investigator succeeds to more practical purpose, the rest of us must go periodically to the barber. We must put on the bib--
Here, however, there is at least an opportunity of selection. There are bibs with arms, and bibs without arms. And there is a certain amount of satisfaction in being able to see our own hands, carefully holding the newspaper or periodical wherewith we pretend that we are still intelligent human beings. And here again are distinctions. The patrons of my own favored barber's shop have arms to their bibs and pretend to be deeply interested in the Illustrated London News. The patrons of the barber's shop where I lost part of my ear--I cannot see the place, but those whom I take into my confidence tell me that it has long since grown again--had no sleeves to their bibs, but nevertheless managed awkwardly to hold the Police Gazette. And this opportunity to hold the Police Gazette without attracting attention becomes a pleasant feature of this type of barber's shop: I, for example, found it easier--until my ear was cut--to forget my position in the examination of this journal than in the examination of the Illustrated London News. The pictures, strictly speaking, are not so good, either artistically or morally, but there is a tang about them, an I-do-not-know-what. And it is always wisest to focus attention on some such extraneous interest. Otherwise you may get to looking in the mirror.
Do not do that.
For one thing, there is the impulse to cry out, 'Stop! Stop! Don't cut it all off!
'Oh, barber, spare that hair! Leave some upon my brow! For months it's sheltered me! And I'll protect it now!
'Oh, please! P-l-e-a-s-e!--'
These exclamations annoy a barber, rouse a demon of fury in him. He reaches for a machine called 'clippers.' Tell him how to cut hair, will you! A little more and he'll shave your head--and not only half-way either, like the Norman soldiery at the time of the Conquest! Even if you are able to restrain this impulse, clenching your bib in your hands and perhaps dropping or tearing the Illustrated London News, the mirror gives you strange, morbid reflections. You recognize your face, but your head seems somehow separate, balanced on a kind of polka-dotted mountain with two hands holding the Illustrated London News. You are afraid momentarily that the barber will lift it off and go away with it.
Then is the time to read furiously the weekly contribution of G. K. Chesterton. But your mind reverts to a story you have been reading about how the Tulululu islanders, a savage but ingenious people, preserve the heads of their enemies so that the faces are much smaller but otherwise quite recognizable. You find yourself looking keenly at the barber to discover any possible trace of Tulululu ancestry.
And what is he going to get now? A kris? No, a paint-brush. Is he going to paint you? And if so--what color? The question of color becomes strangely important, as if it made any real difference. Green? Red? Purple? Blue? No, he uses the brush dry, tickling your forehead, tickling your ears, tickling your nose, tickling you under the chin and down the back of your neck. After the serious business of the haircut, a barber must have some relaxation.
There is one point on which you are independent: you will not