84. CHAPTER LXXXIV.
The allusion to one of the ship's barbers in a previous chapter,
together with the recollection of how conspicuous a part
they enacted in a tragical drama soon to be related, leads me
now to introduce them to the reader.
Among the numerous artists and professors of polite trades
in the Navy, none are held in higher estimation or drive a
more profitable business than these barbers. And it may well
be imagined that the five hundred heads of hair and five hundred
beards of a frigate should furnish no small employment
for those to whose faithful care they may be intrusted. As
every thing connected with the domestic affairs of a man-of-war
comes under the supervision of the martial executive, so
certain barbers are formally licensed by the First Lieutenant.
The better to attend to the profitable duties of their calling,
they are exempted from all ship's duty except that of standing
night-watches at sea, mustering at quarters, and coming
on deck when all hands are called. They are rated as able
seamen or ordinary seamen, and receive their wages as such;
but in addition to this, they are liberally recompensed for their
professional services. Herein their rate of pay is fixed for every
sailor manipulated—so much per quarter, which is charged
to the sailor, and credited to his barber on the books of the
Purser.
It has been seen that while a man-of-war barber is shaving
his customers at so much per chin, his wages as a seaman
are still running on, which makes him a sort of sleeping partner
of a sailor; nor are the sailor wages he receives altogether
to be reckoned as earnings. Considering the circumstances,
however, not much objection can be made to the barbers on
this score. But there were instances of men in the Neversink
receiving government money in part pay for work done for
private individuals. Among these were several accomplished
tailors, who nearly the whole cruise sat cross-legged on the
half-deck, making coats, pantaloons, and vests for the quarter-deck
officers. Some of these men, though knowing little or
nothing about sailor duties, and seldom or never performing
them, stood upon the ship's books as ordinary seamen, entitled
to ten dollars a month. Why was this? Previous to shipping
they had divulged the fact of their being tailors. True,
the officers who employed them upon their wardrobes paid
them for their work, but some of them in such a way as to
elicit much grumbling from the tailors. At any rate, these
makers and menders of clothes did not receive from some of
these officers an amount equal to what they could have fairly
earned ashore by doing the same work. It was a considerable
saving to the officers to have their clothes made on board.
The men belonging to the carpenter's gang furnished another
case in point. There were some six or eight allotted to
this department. All the cruise they were hard at work.
At what? Mostly making chests of drawers, canes, little
ships and schooners, swifts, and other elaborated trifles, chiefly
for the Captain. What did the Captain pay them for their
trouble? Nothing. But the United States government paid
them; two of them (the mates) at nineteen dollars a month,
and the rest receiving the pay of able seamen, twelve dollars.
To return.
The regular days upon which the barbers shall exercise
their vocation are set down on the ship's calendar, and known
as shaving days. On board of the Neversink these days are
Wednesdays and Saturdays; when, immediately after breakfast,
the barbers' shops were opened to customers. They were
in different parts of the gun-deck, between the long twenty-four
pounders. Their furniture, however, was not very elaborate,
hardly equal to the sumptuous appointments of metropolitan
barbers. Indeed, it merely consisted of a match-tub,
elevated upon a shot-box, as a barber's chair for the patient.
No Psyche glasses; no hand-mirror; no ewer and basin; no
comfortable padded footstool; nothing, in short, that makes a
shore “
shave” such a luxury.
Nor are the implements of these man-of-war barbers out of
keeping with the rude appearance of their shops. Their razors
are of the simplest patterns, and, from their jaggedness,
would seem better fitted for the preparing and harrowing of
the soil than for the ultimate reaping of the crop. But this
is no matter for wonder, since so many chins are to be shaven,
and a razor-case holds but two razors. For only two razors
does a man-of-war barber have, and, like the marine sentries
at the gangways in port, these razors go off and on duty in
rotation. One brush, too, brushes every chin, and one lather
lathers them all. No private brushes and boxes; no reservations
whatever.
As it would be altogether too much trouble for a man-of-war's-man
to keep his own shaving-tools and shave himself at
sea, and since, therefore, nearly the whole ship's company
patronize the ship's barbers, and as the seamen must be shaven
by evening quarters of the days appointed for the business, it
may be readily imagined what a scene of bustle and confusion
there is when the razors are being applied. First come, first
served, is the motto; and often you have to wait for hours together,
sticking to your position (like one of an Indian file of
merchants' clerks getting letters out of the post-office), ere you
have a chance to occupy the pedestal of the match-tub. Often
the crowd of quarrelsome candidates wrangle and fight for
precedency, while at all times the interval is employed by
the garrulous in every variety of ship-gossip.
As the shaving days are unalterable, they often fall upon
days of high seas and tempestuous winds, when the vessel
pitches and rolls in a frightful manner. In consequence, many
valuable lives are jeopardized from the razor being plied under
such untoward circumstances. But these sea-barbers pride
themselves upon their sea-legs, and often you will see them
standing over their patients, with their feet wide apart, and
scientifically swaying their bodies to the motion of the ship,
as they flourish their edge-tools about the lips, nostrils, and
jugular.
As I looked upon the practitioner and patient at such times,
I could not help thinking that, if the sailor had any insurance
on his life, it would certainly be deemed forfeited should the
president of the Company chance to lounge by and behold him
in that imminent peril. For myself, I accounted it an excellent
preparation for going into a sea-fight, where fortitude
in standing up to your gun and running the risk of all splinters,
comprise part of the practical qualities that make up an
efficient man-of-war's-man.
It remains to be related, that these barbers of ours had
their labors considerably abridged by a fashion prevailing
among many of the crew, of wearing very large whiskers;
so that, in most cases, the only parts needing a shave were
the upper lip and suburbs of the chin. This had been more
or less the custom during the whole three years' cruise; but
for some time previous to our weathering Cape Horn, very
many of the seamen had redoubled their assiduity in cultivating
their beards, preparatory to their return to America.
There they anticipated creating no small impression by their
immense and magnificent homeward-bounders—so they called
the long fly-brushes at their chins. In particular, the more
aged sailors, embracing the Old Guard of sea grenadiers on
the forecastle, and the begrimed gunner's mates and quarter-gunners,
sported most venerable beards of an exceeding length
and hoariness, like long, trailing moss hanging from the bough
of some aged oak. Above all, the Captain of the Forecastle,
old Ushant—a fine specimen of a sea sexagenarian—wore a
wide, spreading beard, grizzled and gray, that flowed over
his breast, and often became tangled and knotted with tar.
This Ushant, in all weathers, was ever alert at his duty;
intrepidly mounting the fore-yard in a gale, his long beard
streaming like Neptune's. Off Cape Horn it looked like a
miller's, being all over powdered with frost: sometimes it
glittered with minute icicles in the pale, cold, moonlit Patagonian
nights. But though he was so active in time of
tempest, yet when his duty did not call for exertion, he was
a remarkably staid, reserved, silent, and majestic old man,
holding himself aloof from noisy revelry, and never participating
in the boisterous sports of the crew. He resolutely
set his beard against their boyish frolickings, and often held
forth like an oracle concerning the vanity thereof. Indeed,
at times he was wont to talk philosophy to his ancient companions—the
old sheet-anchor-men around him—as well as
to the hare-brained tenants of the fore-top, and the giddy lads
in the mizzen.
Nor was his philosophy to be despised; it abounded in wisdom.
For this Ushant was an old man, of strong natural
sense, who had seen nearly the whole terraqueous globe, and
could reason of civilized and savage, of Gentile and Jew, of
Christian and Moslem. The long night-watches of the sailor
are eminently adapted to draw out the reflective faculties of
any serious-minded man, however humble or uneducated.
Judge, then, what half a century of battling out watches on
the ocean must have done for this fine old tar. He was a
sort of sea-Socrates, in his old age “pouring out his last philosophy
and life,” as sweet Spenser has it; and I never could
look at him, and survey his right reverend beard, without bestowing
upon him that title which, in one of his satires, Persius
gives to the immortal quaffer of the hemlock—Magister
Barbatus—the bearded master.
Not a few of the ship's company had also bestowed great
pains upon their hair, which some of them—especially the
genteel young sailor bucks of the after-guard—wore over their
shoulders like the ringleted Cavaliers. Many sailors, with
naturally tendril locks, prided themselves upon what they
call love curls, worn at the side of the head, just before the
ear—a custom peculiar to tars, and which seems to have
filled the vacated place of the old-fashioned Lord Rodney
cue, which they used to wear some fifty years ago.
But there were others of the crew laboring under the misfortune
of long, lank, Winnebago locks, or carroty bunches
of hair, or rebellious bristles of a sandy hue. Ambitious of
redundant mops, these still suffered their carrots to grow,
spite of all ridicule. They looked like Huns and Scandinavians;
and one of them, a young Down Easter, the unenvied
proprietor of a thick crop of inflexible yellow bamboos, went
by the name of Peter the Wild Boy; for, like Peter the
Wild Boy in France, it was supposed that he must have been
caught like a catamount in the pine woods of Maine. But
there were many fine, flowing heads of hair to counterbalance
such sorry exhibitions as Peter's.
What with long whiskers and venerable beards, then, of
every variety of cut—Charles the Fifth's and Aurelian's—
and endless goatees and imperials; and what with abounding
locks, our crew seemed a company of Merovingians or
Long-haired kings, mixed with savage Lombards or Longobardi,
so called from their lengthy beards.
