Barbers were chiefly peripatetics, when I was a boy. They ran about town, and shaved at their customers’ houses. There were fewer shops. This was the genteel mode in Rome. The wealthy had their domestic barbers, as the planters have now, among their slaves. I am really surprised, that we hear of so few throats cut at the South. Some evidence of this custom—not of cutting throats—may be found, in one of the neatest epitaphs, that ever was written; the subject of which, a very young and accomplished slave-barber, has already taken a nap of eighteen hundred years. I refer to Martial’s epitaphium, on Pantagathus, a word, which, by the way, signifies one, who is good at everything, or, as we say—a man of all works. It is the fifty-second, of Book VI. Its title is Epitaphium Pantagathi, Tonsoris:

Hoc jacet in tumulo raptus puerilibus annis
Pantagathus, domini cura, dolorque sui,
Vix tangente vagos ferro resecare capillos
Doctus, et hirsutas excoluisse genas.
Sic, licet, ut debes, Tellus placata, levisque;
Artificis levior non potes esse manu.

In attempting a version of this, I feel, as if I were about to disfigure a pretty spinster, with a mob-cap.

Here lies Pantagathus, the slave,
Petted he liv’d, and died lamented;
No youth, like him could clip and shave,
Since shears and razors were invented.
So light his touch, you could not feel
The razor, while your cheeks were smoothing;
And sat, unconscious of the steel,
The operation was so soothing.
Oh, mother Earth, appeas’d, since thou
Back to thy grasping arms hast won him,
Soft be thy hand, like his, and now
Lie thou, in mercy, lightly on him.

Rochester was right; few things were ever benefited, by translation, but a bishop.

The TonstrinÆ, or barbers’ shops, in Rome, were seldom visited by any, but the humbler classes. They were sometimes called the Shades. Horace, Ep. i. 7, 50, describes Philippus, an eminent lawyer, as struck with sudden envy, upon seeing Vulteius Mena, the beadle, sitting very much at ease, in one of these shades, after having been shaved, and leisurely cleaning his own nails, an office commonly performed by the barbers:—

Adrasum quendam vacua tonsoris in umbra,
Cultello proprios purgantem leniter ungues.

There were she-barbers, in Rome, residing in the Saburra and Argiletum, very much such localities, as “the Hill,” formerly in Boston, or Anthony Street, in New York. Martial describes one of these tonstrices, ii. 17—

Tonstrix SaburrÆ fancibus sedet primis, etc.

Some there were, of a better order. Plautus, Terence, and Theophrastus have many allusions to the barbers’ shops. They have ever been the same “otiosorum conciliabula,” that they were, when Terence wrote—resorts of the idle and garrulous. In old times—very—not now, of course—not now, a dressmaker, who was mistress of her business, knew that she was expected to turn out so much work, and so much slander. That day has fortunately gone by. But the “barber’s tale” is the very thing that it was, in the days of Oliver Goldsmith, and it was then the very thing, that it was, as I verily believe, in the days of Ezekiel. There are many, who think, that a good story, not less than a good lather, is half the shave.

It is quite in rerum natura, that much time should be consumed, in waiting, at the tonstrinÆ—the barbers’ shops; and to make it pass agreeably, the craft have always been remarkable, for the employment of sundry appliances—amusing pictures around the walls—images and mechanical contrivances—the daily journals—poodles, monkeys, squirrels, canaries, and parrots. In the older countries, a barber’s boy was greatly in request, who could play upon the citterne, or some other musical instrument.

If there had not been a curious assemblage of materiel, in an old Roman tonstrina, it would not have been selected as an object for the pencil. That it was so selected, however, appears from a passage in Pliny, XXXV. 37. He is writing of Pureicus—arte paucis postferendus: proposito, nescio an destruxerit se: quoniam humilia quidem sequutus, humilitatis tamen summam adeptus est gloriam. Tonstrinas, sutrinasque pinxit, et asellos, et obsonia, ac similia—He had few superiors in his art: I know not if the plan he adopted was fatal to his fame; for, though his subjects were humble, yet, in their representation, he attained the highest excellence. He painted barbers’ and shoemakers’ shops, asses, eatables, and the like.

A rude sketch of Heemskerck’s picture of a barber’s shop lies now upon my table. Here is the poodle, with a cape and fool’s cap, walking on his hind legs—the suspended bleeding basin, and other et cÆtera of the profession.

Little is generally known, as to the origin and import of the barber’s pole. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, surgery was in such low repute, that farriers, barbers, sow-spayers, and surgeons were much upon a level. The truth of this, in respect to surgeons and barbers, has been established by law: and, for about two hundred years, both in London and Paris, they were incorporated, as one company. I remember a case, reported by Espinasse—not having the book at hand, I cannot indicate the volume and page—which shows the judicial estimate of surgery then, compared with the practice of physic. A physician’s fees, in England, were accounted quiddam honorarium, and not matter of lucre, and therefore could not be recovered, in an action at law. Upon an action brought for surgical services, the fees were recoverable, because surgeons, upon the testimony of Dr. Mead, were of a lower grade, having nothing to do with the pathology of diseases, and never prescribing; but simply performing certain mechanical acts; and being, like all other artificers and operatives, worthy of their hire.Nothing can more clearly exhibit the low state of this noble science, at the time, and the humble estimation of it, by the public. Chirurgery seemed destined to grovel, in etymological bondage, ?e?? e????, a mere handicraft. Barbers and surgeons were incorporated, as one company, in the fifteenth century, in the reign of Edward IV., and were called barber-surgeons. At the close of the sixteenth century, Ambrose ParÉ, the greatest surgeon of his time in France, did not reject the appellation of barber-surgeon. Henry VIII. dissolved this union, and gave a new charter in 1540, when it was enacted, that “no person, using any shaving or barbery in London, shall occupy any surgery, letting of blood, or other matter, excepting only the drawing of teeth.” The barber-surgeon was thus reduced to the barber-dentist, which seems not so agreeable to the practitioner, at present, as the loftier appellation of surgeon-dentist. Sterne was right: there is something in a name. The British surgeons obtained a new charter, in 1745, and another, in 1800, and various acts have been subsequently passed, on their behalf. July 17, 1797, Lord Thurlow, in the House of Peers, opposed a new bill, which the surgeons desired to have passed. Thurlow was a man of morose temperament, and uncertain humor.

He averred, that so much of the old law was in force, that, to use his own words, “the barbers and surgeons were each to use a pole, the barbers were to have theirs blue and white, striped, with no other appendage; but the surgeons’, which was the same, in other respects, was likewise to have a gallipot and a red rag, to denote the particular nature of their vocation.”

Brand, in his Popular Antiquities, says, that the barber’s pole, used in bleeding, is represented, in an illuminated missal, of the time of Edward I., Longshanks, whose reign began in 1272. Fosbroke, in his Encyc. of Antiquities, page 414, says—“A staff, bound by a riband, was held, by persons being bled, and the pole was intended to denote the practice of phlebotomy.” According to Lord Thurlow’s statement, in the House of Peers, the pole was required, by the statute, to be used, as a sign. The first statute, incorporating the barber-surgeons, was that of Edward IV., as I have stated. The missal of Edward I., referred to by Brand, shows, that the usage was older than the law, and, doubtless, that the popular emblem was adopted, in the statute, to which Lord Thurlow refers, as still in force, in 1797.

In Brand’s Newcastle, I find, that “it is ordered, Dec. 11, 1711, that periwig-making be considered part and branch of the Company of Barber-Chirurgeons.”

The history of the pole is this: A staff about three feet high, with a ball on the top, and inserted, at the bottom, in a small cross-piece, was very convenient for the person to hold, who extended his arm, as he sat down, to be bled; and a fillet, or tape, was equally convenient for the ligature. These things the barber-surgeons kept, in a corner of their shops; and, when not in use, the tape or fillet was wound or twirled round the staff. When the lawgivers called for a sign, no apter sign could be given unto them, than this identical staff and fillet; much larger of course, and to be seen of men much farther.