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Easy-Shaving
Phiz
November 1843: Part XI
Steel-engraving
11.4 cm high by 10.2 cm wide
Twenty-second monthly illustration for Dickens's Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, facing p. 346 (1844 edition) in Ch. XXIX.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"Poll," he said, "I ain't as neat as I could wish about the gills. Being here, I may as well have a shave, and get trimmed close."
The barber stood aghast; but Mr. Bailey divested himself of his neck-cloth, and sat down in the easy shaving chair with all the dignity and confidence in life. There was no resisting his manner. The evidence of sight and touch became as nothing. His chin was as smooth as a new-laid egg or a scraped Dutch cheese; but Poll Sweedlepipe wouldn't have ventured to deny, on affidavit, that he had the beard of a Jewish rabbi.
"Go with the grain, Poll, all round, please," said Mr. Bailey, screwing up his face for the reception of the lather. "You may do wot you like with the bits of whisker. I don't care for 'em."
The meek little barber stood gazing at him with the brush and soap-dish in his hand, stirring them round and round in a ludicrous uncertainty, as if he were disabled by some fascination from beginning. At last he made a dash at Mr Bailey's cheek. Then he stopped again, as if the ghost of a beard had suddenly receded from his touch; but receiving mild encouragement from Mr. Bailey, in the form of an adjuration to "Go in and win," he lathered him bountifully. Mr. Bailey smiled through the suds in his satisfaction. "Gently over the stones, Poll. Go a tip-toe over the pimples!"
Poll Sweedlepipe obeyed, and scraped the lather off again with particular care. Mr. Bailey squinted at every successive dab, as it was deposited on a cloth on his left shoulder, and seemed, with a microscopic eye, to detect some bristles in it; for he murmured more than once “Reether redder than I could wish, Poll.” The operation being concluded, Poll fell back and stared at him again, while Mr Bailey, wiping his face on the jack-towel, remarked, “that arter late hours nothing freshened up a man so much as a easy shave.” [Chapter XXIX, "In which some People are Precocious, others Professional, others Mysterious; all in their several Ways," p. 346 in the 1844 edition; descriptive headline in the 1867 edition: "Easy Shaving"]
In "Easy Shaving," the second illustration for the November 1843 instalment, Phiz underscores Tigg's unexpected rise in fortune by providing as a visual analogue the concomitant rise of Master Bailey to the enviable position of the financier Montague's liveried footman. His old friend, the barber-cum-bird fancier Poll Sweedlepipe, is astonished at his old friend's apotheosis. As Michael Steig remarks in Dickens and Phiz,
The themes of metamorphosis and parody are worked out intricately, for in the first etching ["The Board"] Browne parodies the melodramatic pose of "Montague" by a still more pretentious portrait. . . . The parallels in the companion plate amusingly deflate Tigg's pretence: Bailey is being shaved by the genuinely admiring Poll, although his beard — like Tigg's respectability and his capital — is imaginary. [71-72]
The footman's livery seems too big for Bailey, who is so small that he can barely straddle the barber's easy-shaving chair, the analogue for Montague's throne-like regency chair in the companion piece. And just as Poll studies the effect of his shaving on Bailey's visage, so Bailey seems impressed by the effect of his footman's hat and wig on Poll's coat rack (left), while a wig block (right) and the owl in a cage seem amazed — either at the transformation or at Bailey's effrontery. Steig notes the thematic connection between the two plates for November, 1843:
And as Tigg is being obsequiously waited upon by an associate, butler, servant, and physician, far beyond his intrinsic deserts, so Bailey is being served by the barber, Sweedlepipe, despite the totally imaginary quality of his "beard." This parody is something not brought out directly in the text, and it is a matter of speculation whether the idea to emphasize it in the illustrations was Dickens's or Browne's, since we have no such direct clue as contrasting captions. [Steig, DSA 2, 136]
Dickens takes considerable pains at the opening of chapter 26 to establish the reality of the easy-shaving shop and birds' nest as well as the odd figure of the barbering bird-fancier, a Regency throwback, "a little elderly man" in a velveteen coat, blue stockings, ankle boots, bright-coloured neckerchief, grimy apron, corduroy knee-shorts, and very tall hat. In drawing Poll Phiz, who has substituted leanness for shortness, has in fact given him top-boots to emphasize his height and angularity.
Only later, however, does Master Bailey actually enter the barber's and demand a shave. Browne emphasizes his short stature by his turned-down top-boots, over-sized waistcoat, and white corduroy breeches with a low crotch (all of which, of course, the fashion-conscious Poll pronounces "Beau-ti-ful!" in Chapter 26). In Chapter 26, Bailey bumps into the barber at the corner of Holborn and Kingsgate, agreeing to bear Poll company to Jonas Chuzzlewit's. Finally in Chapter 29 we see together in a single scene Mr. Bailey clad as a footman and the interior of the bird-fancier's shop. The plate accurately includes details from the descriptions in both chapters 26 and 29: the favourite owl, the strop, the razors laid out in a row (right), and Bailey's smooth chin. Phiz, however, invented many of the details, including a can of bear's grease (at the left) and the wig stand surmounted by Bailey's imposing hat plus the large promotional sign "Shaving for the Million," which perhaps alludes obliquely to the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company and its promise to unwary investors of profits and which complements the advertisement for that useful Eastern commodity, Macassar oil (at right).
Phiz also poses Bailey's head here to match that of "Tigg Montague" in the portrait featured in the companion plate. Family portraits like high-crowned hats were marks of respectability, but in these plates signify the duplicity behind each stately image. Here, Bailey apes his master as his master there apes a gentleman. The exotic oriental screen behind Poll further connects the bird-fancier's and financier's worlds in that the latter, too, has an Eastern furnishing, "a Turkey carpet," which serves as a tangible assurance of the firm's "property in Bengal" (chapter 27).
The precise comic moment that the plate realizes occurs when Master Bailey attempts to enforce Poll's belief in his non-existent whiskers, which are as illusionary as the funds supporting the Anglo-Bengalee Life Assurance Company. The situation in the bird-fancier's shop therefore parallels the scenes in the Anglo-Bengalee boardroom. Like Pecksniff and Jonas, who place credence in Tigg's company owing to its respectable and confident facade, Poll against his better judgment as an experienced barber finds himself caught up in Bailey's illusion. Poll momentarily credits Bailey's self-confident imposture, ready to sweear in a legal document that Bailey possesses "the beard of a Jewish rabbi" (Chapter 29). However, the reader wonders whether, unlike Mr. Montague, Mr. Bailey is merely deluding himself. Perhaps Dickens and Phiz are implying that the artful Tigg, who once abandoned his troops to preserve himself, will fleece his unknowing board and shareholders as easily as Poll shaves the beardless Bailey, and will abscond once again.
Above: Fred Barnard's realistic wood-engraving of Bailey Junior at Todgers's, "I say — there's fowls to-morrow — not skinny ones. Oh, no!" by Fred Barnard. [Click on image to enlarge it.]
Above: Fred Barnard's picture of the Bailey Junior later in the sequence, as Mr. Montague's valet, "Times is changed, ain't they? I say, how you've growed!".
Above: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s Diamond Edition double portrait of Bailey Junior's being shaved by the eccentric bird-fancier, Mr. Bailey and Poll Sweedlepipe.
Allingham, Philip V. "Phiz's Illustrations, Part Three." [Ch. 29-35] The Dickens Magazine: Martin Chuzzlewit. 5.3 (February, 2009): 8-11.
Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by "Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1844.
_____. Martin Chuzzlewit. Edited by Andrew Lang and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne. The Works of Charles Dickens in Thirty-four Volumes, vol. III. The Gadshill Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1897. 2 vols.
Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.
Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington and London: Indiana U. P., 1978.
_____. "Martin Chuzzlewit's Progress by Dickens and Phiz." Dickens Studies Annual 2 (1972): 119-149.
Vann, J. Don. "Martin Chuzzlewit, twenty parts in nineteen monthly installments, January 1843 — July 1844." New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. Pp. 66-67.
Last modified 8 January 2019