The trouble with hairdressers

Representations

Volumn 53, Issue , 1996, Pages 21-43

  Herzog, Don ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60950048096     PISSN: 07346018     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/rep.1996.53.1.99p0313h     Document Type: Review

References (104)

1. Sholto and Reuben Percy, London: or Interesting Memorials of Its Rise, Progress & Present State (London, 1824), 1:353.
2. Susan Ferrier, The Inheritance [1824], in The Works of Susan Ferrier (London, 1929), 2:154.
3. Walter Scott, The Antiquary [1816], in Waverley Novels, 48 vols. (Edinburgh, 1829), 5:147; for the setting, 5:i; note too 6:111-14 for bantering about Caxon's stupidity. A caxon is a kind of wig.
4. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 34 (October 1823): 672-73.
5. The Barber of Seville, or the Useless Precaution; a Comedy in Four Acts (London, 1776);
6. Thomas Holcroft, The Follies of a Day (London, 1811);
7. John Fawcett, The Barber of Seville: A Comic Opera, in Two Acts; as Performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (London, 1818);
8. Henry R. Bishop, The Marriage of Figaro, 2d ed. (London, 1823).
9. Horace Walpole, letter of 1766, Paris Journals, in The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence, ed. W. S. Lewis (New Haven, Conn., 1937-83), 7:357;
10. Dorothy Wordsworth, 30 September 1820, Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. E. de Selincourt (New York, 1941), 2:328.
11. Charlotte Smith, The Old Manor House [1793], ed. Anne Henry Ehrenpreis (Oxford, 1989), 142.
12. Richard Sheridan, A Trip to Scarborough [1781], 1.2, in The Dramatic Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, ed. Cecil Price (Oxford, 1973), 2:577.
13. George Rose to William Wilberforce, ca. 1802, Private Papers of William Wilberforce, ed. A. M. Wilberforce (London, 1897), 87-88.
14. Note "Lament for the Loss of Lord B-th - st's Tail," in The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore, ed. A. D. Godley (London, 1915), 607.
15. Compare the story of Naples in 1799, The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 1 (25 August 1832): 206-7.
16. Fanny Burney, 13 August 1786, Diary & Letters of Madame D'Arblay, ed. Charlotte Barrett (London, 1904), 2:457-58.
17. Charles Knight, Passages of a Working Life During Half a Century (London, 1864-65), 1:49.
18. Mary Frampton, journal entry of 1791, The Journal of Mary Frampton from the Year 1779 Until the Year 1846, ed. Harriot Georgiana Mundy (London, 1885), 36.
19. James Stewart, Plocacosmos: or the Whole Art of Hair Dressing (London, 1782), 242.
20. see too Frida Knight, University Rebel: The Life of William Frend, 1757-1841 (London, 1971), 31;
21. Thomas Erskine, "The Barber: Parody upon Gray's Celebrated Ode of 'The Bard,'" in The Poetical Register and Repository of Fugitive Poetry for 1810-1811 (London, 1814), 327-31.
22. Of the histories of hair style I've consulted, the best is Richard Corson, Fashions in Hair: The First Five Thousand Years (London, 1965).
23. Charles Dibdin, "Miss Muz, the Milliner, and Bob, the Barber," in The Universal Songster; or, Museum of Mirth (London, 1825-26), 2:229-30.
24. William Ewart Gladstone, 25 April 1832, The Gladstone Diaries, ed. M. R. D. Foot and H. C. G. Matthew (Oxford, 1968-90), 1:482.
25. The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, ed. Timothy L. S. Sprigge et al. (London and Oxford, 1968-), 3:604-5.
26. Horace Walpole to Earl of Strafford, 8 September 1769, Walpole's Correspondence, 35:336.
27. Joseph Farington, 12 September 1802, The Diary of Joseph Farington, ed. Kenneth Garlick et al. (New Haven, Conn., 1978), 5:1849.
28. John Thomas Smith, Ancient Topography of London (London, 1815), 38.
29. Compare the description of Chinese barbers, essentially flying barbers who do their work right in the street, in The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 3 (3 May 1834): 172.
30. William Cobbett to John Wright, August 1805, in Lewis Melville, The Life and Letters of William Cobbett in England & America (London, 1913), 1:242.
31. Samuel and Sarah Adams, The Complete Servant, Being a Practical Guide to the Peculiar Duties and Business of All Descriptions of Servants (London, 1825), 5-7 has rosters of servants for even lavish estates; none includes a hairdresser. But various recipes they offer (162-64, 168, 170-71, 247) make it clear that servants are tending to hair, and they attribute some of the responsibilities involved to the valet (362-65).
32. William Combe, The Second Tour of Doctor Syntax, in Search of Consolation (London, 1820), 46, 128;
33. William Combe, The Third Tour of Doctor Syntax, in Search of a Wife (London, 1821), 123, 253.
34. Byron's Bulldog: The Letters of John Cam Hobhouse to Lord Byron, ed. Peter W. Graham (Columbus, Ohio, 1984), 149 n. 2.
35. Memoirs of Richard Cumberland: Written by Himself (London, 1807), 2:28.
36. Smith, Topography, 38, mentions (and so finds noteworthy) three women hairdressers.
37. John Bennett, Letters to a Young Lady, on a Variety of Useful and Interesting Subjects (Warrington, Eng., 1789), 1:240 (and note 1:241-42).
38. Mary Hays, Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in Behalf of Women (1798; reprint, New York, 1974), 200.
39. Pierce Egan, Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Revised and Corrected (London, 1823), s.v. "barber's chair," "barber's sign."
40. Peter Pindar, The Lousiad [1785-95], in John Wolcot, The Works of Peter Pindar, Esq., 4 vols. (London, 1797-1806), vols. 1 and 3; the quotation is at 1:171.
41. Morning Post, 4 July 1789, quoted in John Ashton, Old Times: A Picture of Social Life at the End of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1885), 45.
42. Lady Charlotte Bury, 15 December 1815, Diary Illustrative of the Times of George the Fourth (London, 1838-39), 3:118-19.
43. Mary Russell Mitford, Our Village, 5 vols. (London, 1824-1832), 3:164-65.
44. The World, 25 July 1789, quoted in Folarin Shyllon, Black People in Britain, 1555-1833 (London, 1977), 96;
45. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France [1790], in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, 9th ed. (Boston, 1889), 3:296.
46. For a useful treatment of the French debate, see William H. Sewell, Jr., Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge, 1980), 23-24, 68, 223-42.
47. Harriet Arbuthnot, 24 March 1822, 3 April 1827, The Journal of Mrs. Arbuthnot, 1820-1832, ed. Francis Bamford and the Duke of Wellington (London, 1950), 1:153-54, 2:101-2;
48. note too Charles Arbuthnot to Lord Liverpool, ca. 7 October 1823, in The Correspondence of Charles Arbuthnot, Camden Third Series, ed. A. Aspinall (London, 1941), 54-55.
49. For a similar use of "washerwoman" as an epithet, Benjamin Disraeli to Ralph Disraeli, 17? September 1830, in Benjamin Disraeli, Letters: 1815-1834, ed. J.A. W. Gunn et al. (Toronto, 1982), 162.
50. James Lawrence, On the Nobility of the British Gentry, or the Political Ranks and Dignities of the British Empire, Compared with Those on the Continent, in The Pamphleteer 23 (1824): 159-205, esp. 200. Lawrence reports "a similar abuse in Germany, that every barber there receives his letters addressed to him, to the noble-born" (202).
51. Pierce Egan, Real Life in London (London, 1824), 2:404 n.
52. William Wordsworth to Bishop of Llandaff, ca. 1793, The Prose Works of William Wordsworth, ed. W.J.B. Owen and Jane Worthington Smyser (Oxford, 1974), 1:45.
53. Capel Lofft, Remarks on the Letter of the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke, Concerning the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London, Relative to That Event (London, 1790), 35-36.
54. Charles Pigott, A Political Dictionary: Explaining the True Meaning of Words (London, 1795), 67.
55. Richard Cumberland, The Box-Lobby Challenge, act 1 (London, 1794);
56. the play is reprinted in The Plays of Richard Cumberland, ed. Roberta F. S. Borkat (New York, 1982), 4:8-9.
57. Scott, Antiquary, Waverley Novels, 6:203.
58. Elizabeth Hamilton, Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800; reprint, New York, 1974), 1:207-14.
59. Burney, 3 September 1788, Diary, 1:145-46.
60. A Friend to the People, A Review of the Constitution of Great Britain (London, 1791), 22-23.
61. Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Written by Himself, In His Majesty's Jail at Ilchester (London, 1820-22), 3:238.
62. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 14 (November 1823): 590-94.
63. So too "The Barber" of the popular song is a hopeless failure at his job: Universal Songster, 1:349.
64. But for an account of London workers as fiercely independent, emphasizing the role of law and honor, see Modern London; Being the History and Present State of the British Metropolis (London, 1804), 135-36.
65. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 445.
66. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 20 (July 1826): 42.
67. for mockery of similar scenes from France, see Isaac D'Israeli, Domestic Anecdotes of the French Nation, during the Last Thirty Years (London, 1794), 273-74.
68. Benjamin Haydon, 21 September 1820, The Diary of Benjamin Robert Haydon, ed. Willard Bissell Pope (Cambridge, Mass., 1960-63), 2:282.
69. Richard Graves, The Spiritual Quixote; or, the Summer's Ramble of Mr. Geoffry Wildgoose, 2d ed. (London, 1774), 1:122.
70. The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. E. V. Lucas (New York, 1913), 1:202 n. 1 [1818].
71. For instantly recognizable banter, sometimes on politics, see The Barber's Chair [1846] in Douglas Jerrold, The Barber's Chair, and The Hedgehog Letters, ed. Blanchard Jerrold (London, 1874).
72. Scott, Fortunes of Nigel [1822], Waverley Novels, 27:178.
73. Robert Bage, Hermsprong; or, Man As He Is Not, 2d ed. (London, 1799), 1:11.
74. John Torrington, 7 May 1794, The Torrington Diaries: Containing the Tours through England and Wales of the Hon. John Byng (Later Fifth Viscount Torrington) between the Years 1781 and 1794, ed. C. Bruyn Andrews (London, 1934-38), 4:13.
75. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass., 1989).
76. Liverpool General Advertiser, 9 June 1791,
77. quoted in Frank O'Gorman, Voters, Patrons, and Parties: The Unreformed Electoral System of Hanoverian England, 1734-1832 (Oxford, 1989), 286;
78. note too Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 24 (November 1828): 615.
79. I can't explain why Smith took this custom to be obsolete, but I suspect practices were changing (what else is new?) and there was regional variation. Compare Mitford, Our Village, 1:282
80. J. M. L., "The Barber, the Preacher, and the Beards: Founded on Fact," Poetical Magazine 1 (August 1809): 189-91.
81. James Lackington, Memoirs of the First Forty-Five Years of the Life of James Lackington, new ed. (London, 1792), 259-60.
82. John Bowles, A Dispassionate Inquiry into the Best Means of National Safety (London, 1806), 114-15.
83. The etching is reproduced in John Clubbe, Victorian Forerunner: The Later Career of Thomas Hood (Durham, N.C., 1968), facing 18.
84. Joseph Gerrald, A Convention the Only Means of Saving Us from Ruin (London, 1793), 2-3.
85. contrast William Cobbett in his Gazette [January 1800], in Porcupine's Works (London, 1801), 11:140.
86. Memoirs of Hildebrand Freeman, Esq. or a Sketch of "The Rights of Man" (London, 1792), 35.
87. Charles Marsh, The Clubs of London (London, 1828), 1:292-95.
88. I found no account of this story in Holden Furber, Henry Dundas: First Viscount Melville, 1742-1811 (London, 1931)
89. or Michael Fry, The Dundas Despotism (Edinburgh, 1992).
90. Quoted in E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1966), 465.
91. Recollections of the Life of John Binns: Twenty-nine Years in Europe and Fifty-three in the United States (Philadelphia, 1854), 47;
92. for a more complete account of Muir's trial, see An Account of the Trial of Thomas Muir . before the High Court of Justiciary, at Edinburgh, on the 30th and 31st days of August, 1793, for Sedition, ed. James Robertson (Edinburgh, 1793).
93. Sir Brooke Boothby, Observations on the Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, and on Mr Paine's Rights of Man (London, 1792), 98.
94. Thomas Peacock, Melincourt [1817], in The Works of Thomas Love Peacock, Halliford Edition, ed. H. F. B. Brett-Smith and C. E.Jones (London, 1924-34), 2:188, 189.
95. Mary Thale, ed., Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society, 1792-1799 (Cambridge, 1983), 149.
96. The Trial of Thomas Hardy for High Treason, rep. J. Gurney (London, 1794-95), 2:249-50; for more of George Widdison's testimony, see 1:325-38, 2:245-62.
97. Trial of Hardy, 2:352-70.
98. Albert Goodwin, The Friends of Liberty: The Engish Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), 328.
99. Nicholas Roe, Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Radical Years (Oxford, 1988), 88-89.
100. Roger Wells, Insurrection: The British Experience, 1795-1803 (Gloucester, 1983), 233.
101. David Worrall, Radical Culture: Discourse, Resistance, and Surveillance, 1790-1820 (New York, 1992), 146-63.
102. Archibald Prentice, Historic Sketches and Personal Recollections of Manchester: Intended to Illustrate the Progress of Public Opinion from 1792 to 1832 (London, 1851), 97.
103. John Lovett, The Citizen of the World (London, 1793), 15-16; and note 34-35.
104. Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals, ed. Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Gossman (Sussex, 1979-88), 1:303-4.