The Barber's Shop
George Cruikshank, 1792-1878
1838
Etching on copper
10 x 8 cm, vignetted
Facing page 201 in Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi. Edited by "Boz." With ten illustrations by George Cruikshank.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> George Cruikshank —> Next]
Passage Illustrated: The Barber Shop in Preston
"Shaved, sir!" cried the girl. "Oh, dear me! what a pity it is you did not say so before! for I do most of the shaving for father when he's at home, and all when he's out."
"To be sure she does," said Howard; "I have been shaved by her fifty times."
"You have!" said Grimaldi. "Oh, I'm sure I have no objection. I am quite ready, my dear."
Grimaldi sat himself down in a chair, and the girl commenced the task in a very business-like manner, Grimaldi feeling an irresistible tendency to laugh at the oddity of the operation, but smothering it by dint of great efforts while the girl was shaving his chin. At length, when she got to his upper lip, and took his nose between her fingers with a piece of brown paper, he could stand it no longer, but burst into a tremendous roar of laughter, and made a face at Howard, which the girl no sooner saw than she dropped the razor and laughed immoderately also; whereat Howard began to laugh too, which only set Grimaldi laughing more; when just at this moment in came the barber, who, seeing three people in convulsions of mirth, one of them with a soapy face and a gigantic mouth making the most extravagant faces over a white towel, threw himself into a chair without ceremony, and dashing his hat on the ground, laughed louder than any of them, declaring in broken words as he could find breath to utter them, that "that gentleman as was being shaved, was out of sight the funniest gentleman he had ever seen," and entreating him to "stop them faces, or he knew he should die." When they were all perfectly exhausted, the barber finished what his daughter had begun; and rewarding the girl with a shilling, Grimaldi and the manager took their leaves.— Chapter XIX. "1816 to 1817. He quits Sadler's Wells in consequence of a disagreement with the Proprietors — Lord Byron — Retirement of John Philip Kemble— Immense success of Grimaldi in the Provinces, and his great Gains — A scene in a Barber's Shop," pp. 201-202.
What distinguishes Cruikshank's barber shop here from his previous shop scenes for Sketches by Boz is that it supports the reader's more general appreciation of a developing character. For example, Horatio Sparkins is an impostor unmasked, John Dounce a romantic old fool, and the shops in which these dubious characters appear are mere adjuncts to the action. Here, as in the The Gin-Shop and The Pawnbroker's Shopthe artist develops the shop and its company in some detail. Here, although the girl is no beauty (for drawing beautiful women seems to have been beyond his capacity) and text specifies "a pretty little girl, about sixteen years of age" (201), she is as amiable as the rest of the company, enjoying the joke of being the only female ever to shave the great Grimaldi, a situation so irresistably absurd to the Clown in civilian garb that he cannot but laugh at himself having his nose pulled by a female barber, a profession that was exclusively a male preserve in that era. Indeed, middle- and upper-class women were effectively barred from most professions and business roles until the advent of teaching and nursing as female professions in the 1850s. The barber's daughter is interesting insofar as she is perfectly competent with a straight razor, and has had considerable experience shaving her father's clients, rendering her something of an individual in a work which rarely offers anything more than stereotypical women.
The gentleman laughing heartily to the right of the frame is Howard, the manager of the theatre at Preston, and the moon-faced Grimaldi, seated in the chair, is recognizable immediately, despite the shaving soap. The barrel beside the roll of towels presumably contains water, and a mirror above the laughing barber is positioned so that the practitioner can watch the door (off right) while shaving a customer. This shop is far less cluttered than the London barber shop run by bird-fancier and wig-maker Poll Sweedlespipes in Chapter 29 of Martin Chuzzlewit, depicted by Phiz in Novemvber 1843: Easy Shaving. Poll vies with Miss Mowcher as being the most peculiar of Dickens's barbers, although she seems to confine her ministrations to men's hair styling, as depicted by Phiz in I make the acquaintance of Miss Mowcher in Chapter 22 of David Copperfield (December 1843).
Some Illustrations of Shops in Dickens, 1836-1859
Bibliography
Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens: A Biography. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.
Bentley, Nicholas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens: Index. Oxfiord: Oxford U. P., 1990.
Cohen, Jane Rabb. Part One, "Dickens and His Early Illustrators: 1. George Cruikshank. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1980. Pp. 15-38.
Dickens, Charles. Sketches by Boz; Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-Day People. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Chapman and Hall, 1839; rpt., 1890.
The Gentle Author, "Joseph Grimaldi, Clown."Spitalfield's Life. 5 February 2012. http://spitalfieldslife.com/2012/02/05/joseph-grimaldi-clown/
"Famous Londers — Joey Grimaldi." Exploring London. 8 February 2016. https://exploring-london.com/2016/02/08/famous-londoners-joseph-grimaldi/
Grimaldi, Joseph, and Charles Dickens. Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi, Edited By 'Boz'. With ten illustrations by George Cruikshank. London: George Routledge and Sons. The Broadway, Ludgate. New York: 416, Broome Street, 1869.
Kitton, Frederic G. "George Cruikshank." Dickens and His Illustrators. London: Chapman & Hall, 1899. Pp. 1-28.
Kitton, Frederic G. The Minor Writings of Charles Dickens: A Bibliography and a Sketch. London: Elliot Stock, 1900.
Knight, John JosephDictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900. Volume 23; https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Grimaldi,_Joseph_(DNB00)
Schlicke, Paul. "Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi. Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1999. P. 374.
Slater, Michael. Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing. New Haven and London: Yale U. P., 2009.
Stephen, Leslie, and Peter Lee. "Grimaldi, Joseph (1779-1837)." Dictionary of National Biography. 1890. P. 250-251.
Thornbury, Walter. Chapter 35, "Pentonville." Old and New London. Vol. 2. London: Cassell, Petter & Galpin, 1878. British History Online. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/old-new-london/vol2
Victorian
Web
Illus-
tration
George
Cruikshank
Charles
Dickens
Next
Last modified 12 June 2017