Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist Part 2

CHAPTER III. BARBER AND HAIRDRESSER.

Jasmin was sixteen years old when he was apprenticed to a barber and hairdresser at Agen. The barber's shop was near the Prefecture--the ancient palace of the Bishop. It was situated at the corner of Lamoureux Street and the alley of the Prefecture. There Jasmin learnt the art of cutting, curling, and dressing hair, and of deftly using the comb and the razor. The master gave him instructions in the trade, and watched him while at work. Jasmin was willing and active, and was soon able to curl and shave with any apprentice in Agen.

After the day's work was over, the apprentice retired to his garret under the tiles. There he spent his evenings, and there he slept at night. Though the garret was infested by rats, he thought nothing of them; he had known them familiarly at home.

They did him no harm, and they even learnt to know him. His garret became his paradise, for there he renewed his love of reading. The solitariness of his life did him good, by throwing his mind in upon himself, and showing the mental stuff of which he was made. All the greatest and weightiest things have been done in solitude.

The first books he read were for the most part borrowed. Customers who came to the shop to be shaved or have their hair dressed, took an interest in the conversation of the bright, cheerful, dark-eyed lad, and some of them lent him books to read. What joy possessed him when he took refuge in his garret with a new book! Opening the book was like opening the door of a new world. What enchantment! What mystery! What a wonderful universe about us!

In reading a new book Jasmin forgot his impoverished boyhood, his grandfather Boe and his death in the hospital, his expulsion from the Seminary, and his mother's sale of her wedding-ring to buy bread for her children. He had now left the past behind, and a new world lay entrancingly before him. He read, and thought, and dreamed, until far on in the morning.

The first books he read were of comparatively little importance, though they furnished an opening into literature. 'The Children's Magazine'{1} held him in raptures for a time. Some of his friendly customers lent him the 'Fables of Florian,' and afterwards Florian's pastoral romance of 'Estelle'--perhaps his best work. The singer of the Gardon entirely bewitched Jasmin. 'Estelle' allured him into the rosy-fingered regions of bliss and happiness. Then Jasmin himself began to rhyme. Florian's works encouraged him to write his first verses in the harmonious Gascon patois, to which he afterwards gave such wonderful brilliancy.

In his after life Jasmin was often asked how and when he first began to feel himself a poet. Some think that the poetical gift begins at some fixed hour, just as one becomes a barrister, a doctor, or a professor.

But Jasmin could not give an answer.

"I have often searched into my past life," he said, "but I have never yet found the day when I began my career of rhyming."{2}

There are certain gifts which men can never acquire by will and work, if G.o.d has not put the seed of them into their souls at birth; and poetry is one of those gifts.

When such a seed has been planted, its divine origin is shown by its power of growth and expansion; and in a n.o.ble soul, apparently insurmountable difficulties and obstacles cannot arrest its development.

The life and career of Jasmin amply ill.u.s.trates this truth. Here was a young man born in the depths of poverty. In his early life he suffered the most cruel needs of existence. When he became a barber's apprentice, he touched the lowest rung of the ladder of reputation; but he had at least learned the beginnings of knowledge.

He knew how to read, and when we know the twenty-four letters of the alphabet, we may learn almost everything that we wish to know. From that slight beginning most men may raise themselves to the heights of moral and intellectual worth by a persevering will and the faithful performance of duty.

At the same time it must be confessed that it is altogether different with poetical genius. It is not possible to tell what unforeseen and forgotten circ.u.mstances may have given the initial impulse to a poetic nature. It is not the result of any fortuitous impression, and still less of any act of the will.

It is possible that Jasmin may have obtained his first insight into poetic art during his solitary evening walks along the banks of the Garonne, or from the nightingales singing overhead, or from his chanting in the choir when a child. Perhaps the 'Fables of Florian' kindled the poetic fire within him; at all events they may have acted as the first stimulus to his art of rhyming. They opened his mind to the love of nature, to the pleasures of country life, and the joys of social intercourse.

There is nothing in the occupation of a barber incompatible with the cultivation of poetry. Folez, the old German poet, was a barber, as well as the still more celebrated Burchiello, of Florence, whose sonnets are still admired because of the purity of their style. Our own Allan Ramsay, author of 'The Gentle Shepherd,' spent some of his early years in the same occupation.

In southern and Oriental life the barber plays an important part. In the Arabian tales he is generally a shrewd, meddling, inquisitive fellow. In Spain and Italy the barber is often the one brilliant man in his town; his shop is the place where gossip circulates, and where many a pretty intrigue is contrived.

Men of culture are often the friends of barbers. Buffon trusted to his barber for all the news of Montbard. Moliere spent many long and pleasant hours with the barber of Pezenas. Figaro, the famous barber of Seville, was one of the most perfect prototypes of his trade. Jasmin was of the same calling as Gil Bias, inspired with the same spirit, and full of the same talent. He was a Frenchman of the South, of the same race as Villon and Marot.

Even in the prim and formal society of the eighteenth century, the barber occupied no unimportant part. He and the sculptor, of all working men, were allowed to wear the sword--that distinctive badge of gentility. In short, the barber was regarded as an artist. Besides, barbers were in ancient times surgeons; they were the only persons who could scientifically "let blood." The Barber-Surgeons of London still represent the cla.s.s. They possess a cup presented to the Guild by Charles II., in commemoration of his escape while taking refuge in the oak-tree at Boscobel.{3}

But to return to the adventures of Jasmin's early life. He describes with great zest his first visit to a theatre. It was situated near at hand, by the ancient palace of the Bishop. After his day's work was over--his shaving, curling, and hairdressing--he went across the square, and pressed in with the rest of the crowd. He took his seat.

"'Heavens!' said he, 'where am I?' The curtain rises! 'Oh, this is lovely! It is a new world; how beautifully they sing; and how sweetly and tenderly they speak!' I had eyes for nothing else: I was quite beside myself with joy. 'It is Cinderella,' I cried aloud in my excitement. 'Be quiet,' said my neighbour. 'Oh, sir! why quiet? Where are we? What is this?' 'You gaping idiot,' he replied, 'this is the Comedy!'

"Jasmin now remained quiet; but he saw and heard with all his eyes and ears. 'What love! what poetry!' he thought: 'it is more than a dream!

It's magic. O Cinderella, Cinderella! thou art my guardian angel!'

And from this time, from day to day, I thought of being an actor!"

Jasmin entered his garret late at night; and he slept so soundly, that next morning his master went up to rouse him. "Where were you last night? Answer, knave; you were not back till midnight?" "I was at the Comedy," answered Jasmin sleepily; "it was so beautiful!" "You have been there then, and lost your head. During the day you make such an uproar, singing and declaiming. You, who have worn the ca.s.sock, should blush.

But I give you up; you will come to no good. Change, indeed! You will give up the comb and razor, and become an actor! Unfortunate boy, you must be blind. Do you want to die in the hospital?"

"This terrible word," says Jasmin, "fell like lead upon my heart, and threw me into consternation. Cinderella was forthwith dethroned in my foolish mind; and my master's threat completely calmed me. I went on faithfully with my work. I curled, and plaited hair in my little room.

As the saying goes, S'il ne pleut, il bruine (If it does not rain, it drizzles). When I suffered least, time pa.s.sed all the quicker. It was then that, dreaming and happy, I found two lives within me--one in my daily work, another in my garret. I was like a bird; I warbled and sang.

What happiness I enjoyed in my little bed under the tiles! I listened to the warbling of birds. Lo! the angel came, and in her sweetest voice sang to me. Then I tried to make verses in the language of the shepherd swain. Bright thoughts came to me; great secrets were discovered. What hours! What lessons! What pleasures I found under the tiles!"

During the winter evenings, when night comes on quickly, Jasmin's small savings went to the oil merchant. He trimmed his little lamp, and went on till late, reading and rhyming. His poetical efforts, first written in French, were to a certain extent successful. While shaving his customers, he often recited to them his verses. They were amazed at the boy's cleverness, and expressed their delight. He had already a remarkable talent for recitation; and in course of time he became eloquent. It was some time, however, before his powers became generally known. The ladies whose hair he dressed, sometimes complained that their curl papers were scrawled over with writing, and, when opened out, they were found covered with verses.

The men whom he shaved spread his praises abroad. In so small a town a reputation for verse-making soon becomes known. "You can see me," he said to a customer, "with a comb in my hand, and a verse in my head. I give you always a gentle hand with my razor of velvet. My mouth recites while my hand works."

When Jasmin desired to display his oratorical powers, he went in the evenings to the quarter of the Augustins, where the spinning-women a.s.sembled, surrounded by their boys and girls. There he related to them his pleasant narratives, and recited his numerous verses.

Indeed, he even began to be patronized. His master addressed him as "Moussu,"--the master who had threatened him with ending his days in the hospital!

Thus far, everything had gone well with him. What with shaving, hairdressing, and rhyming, two years soon pa.s.sed away. Jasmin was now eighteen, and proposed to start business on his own account.

This required very little capital; and he had already secured many acquaintances who offered to patronize him. M. Boyer d'Agen, who has recently published the works of Jasmin, with a short preface and a bibliography,{4} says that he first began business as a hairdresser in the Cour Saint-Antoine, now the Cour Voltaire. When the author of this memoir was at Agen in the autumn of 1888, the proprietor of the Hotel du Pet.i.t St. Jean informed him that a little apartment had been placed at Jasmin's disposal, separated from the Hotel by the entrance to the courtyard, and that Jasmin had for a time carried on his business there.

But desiring to have a tenement of his own, he shortly after took a small house alongside the Promenade du Gravier; and he removed and carried on his trade there for about forty years. The little shop is still in existence, with Jasmin's signboard over the entrance door: "Jasmin, coiffeur des Jeunes Gens," with the barber's sud-dish hanging from a pendant in front. The shop is very small, with a little sitting-room behind, and several bedrooms above. When I entered the shop during my visit to Agen, I found a customer sitting before a looking-gla.s.s, wrapped in a sheet, the lower part of his face covered with lather, and a young fellow shaving his beard.

Jasmin's little saloon was not merely a shaving and a curling shop.

Eventually it became known as the sanctuary of the Muses. It was visited by some of the most distinguished people in France, and became celebrated throughout Europe. But this part of the work is reserved for future chapters.

Endnotes to Chapter III.

{1} Magasin des Enfants.

{2} Mes Nouveaux Souvenirs.

{3} In England, some barbers, and barber's sons, have eventually occupied the highest positions. Arkwright, the founder of the cotton manufacture, was originally a barber. Tenterden, Lord Chief Justice, was a barber's son, intended for a chorister in Canterbury Cathedral.

Sugden, afterwards Lord Chancellor, was opposed by a n.o.ble lord while engaged in a parliamentary contest. Replying to the allegation that he was only the son of a country barber, Sugden said: "His Lordship has told you that I am nothing but the son of a country barber; but he has not told you all, for I have been a barber myself, and worked in my father's shop,--and all I wish to say about that is, that had his Lordship been born the son of a country barber, he would have been a barber still!"

{4} OEUVRES COMPLETES DE JACQUES JASMIN: Preface de l'Edition,, Essai d'orthographe gasconne d'apres les langues Romane et d'Oc, et collation de la traduction litterale. Par Boyer d'Agen. 1889. Quatre volumes.

CHAPTER IV. JASMIN AND MARIETTE.

Jasmin was now a bright, vivid, and handsome fellow, a favourite with men, women, and children. Of course, an attractive young man, with a pleasant, comfortable home, could not long remain single. At length love came to beautify his existence. "It was for her sake," he says, "that I first tried to make verses in the sweet patois which she spoke so well; verses in which I asked her, in rather lofty phrases, to be my guardian angel for life."

Mariette{1} was a pretty dark-eyed girl. She was an old companion of Jasmin's, and as they began to know each other better, the acquaintance gradually grew into affection, and finally into mutual love. She was of his own cla.s.s of life, poor and hardworking. After the day's work was over, they had many a pleasant walk together on the summer evenings, along the banks of the Garonne, or up the ascending road toward the Hermitage and the rocky heights above the town. There they pledged their vows; like a poet, he promised to love her for ever. She believed him, and loved him in return. The rest may be left to the imagination.

Jasmin still went on dreaming and rhyming! Mariette was a lovely subject for his rhymes. He read his verses to her; and she could not but be pleased with his devotion, even though recited in verse. He scribbled his rhymes upon his curl-papers; and when he had read them to his sweetheart, he used them to curl the hair of his fair customers. When too much soiled by being written on both sides, he tore them up; for as yet, he had not the slightest idea of publishing his verses.

When the minds of the young pair were finally made up, their further courtship did not last very long. They were willing to be united.

"Happy's the wooing that's not long a-doing."

The wedding-day at length arrived! Jasmin does not describe his bride's dress. But he describes his own. "I might give you," he says in his Souvenirs, "a picture of our happy nuptial day. I might tell you at length of my newly dyed hat, my dress coat with blue facings, and my home-spun linen shirt with calico front. But I forbear all details. My G.o.dfather and G.o.dmother were at the wedding. You will see that the purse did not always respond to the wishes of the heart."