37

THE BARBER OF BEAULIEU.

BY MASK.

WITH AN ILLUSTRATION BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.

On the skirts of the New Forest, and deeply embosomed in groves and orchards, stands the little village of Beaulieu, a name it richly merits, though the inhabitants have been pleased to vulgarize this descriptive appellation into the unmeaning sound of Bewley. The ground, in fact, may be called a circular valley, of considerable extent, and is surrounded by well-wooded hills, through the middle of which runs a forest-stream to the extent of nearly two miles above the village. Here, however, it swells into an ample lake, which meets the tide from Southton Water, ebbing and flowing with it beneath all that remains of the ancient abbey. These ruins, which form the present church, were, in olden time alas for the days gone by! the refectorium of the monks who belonged to the order of Benedictines.

In this quiet nook dwelt, some few years ago, Master Nicodemus Bibbet, who throughout all the villages of the New Forest was popularly known under the sobriquet of the Barber of Beaulieu, he being, in fact, the recognised lion of the district. And a very rare specimen of the genus HOMO was this same Barber of Beaulieu. It was gene-: rally held that he bore a striking likeness to that remarkable character in quadruped history, called Puss in Boots, his face being manifestly formed on the feline model.

Now, it must be obvious to the discerning reader that Nature, who in all things studies a certain fitness and proportion of means to ends, would never have dreamt of lodging any particularly good qualities of head or heart in such an uncouth tenement. To have vested either genius or philosophy in a form like this would indeed have been to hide her candle under a bushel, and accordingly the thrifty dame had animated this feline case with a soul that by no means deserved a better garment. Like George Selwyn, of gallows-loving memory, the supreme delight of our Barber was in witnessing the infliction of death either on man or animal, but more particularly the former. Yet Master Nicodemus had a crook in his lot:-it had never been his good hap to see a man strangled on the gallows. On this score, fate seemed to owe him a decided grudge; for though he extended his range of travel for that purpose even up to fifty miles, and executions had occurred over and over again within that limit, still, by some unaccountable chance, he had invariably been disappointed.

At length the annual assize came round again, and again the net of the law had caught a victim in its meshes. This time it was a woman, a poor servant-girl, who had been accused of attempting to poison her master and all his family, and was actually condemned upon the evidence of the very scoundrel that had himself mixed the arsenic in the oatmeal. Upon these glad tidings, our barber resolved not to give a chance away; but, taking occasion by the forelock, he set out for Winchester two days previous to the appointed morning of execution.

Even then how slowly did the time creep on! To his eager fancy it seemed as if the long minute-hand of the town-clock had been struck with palsy, and, instead of taking huge hops, as it did at other times, was moving along at the more deliberate pace of the hourhand. At length, however, the blissful moment did actually arrive,

of

the bell tolled out the death-summons to the living, the plumeless hearse stood below the scaffold ready for the body, in which the life-blood was still flowing as fresh and red as in the veins of any the speculators,-the hangman pulled the white cap over his victim's face, he fixed the noose about her neck, and-a reprieve came. The girl's innocence had been discovered only just in time to save both judge and jury from the crime of murder.

Sad and disconsolate was the condition in which Nicodemus returned home, so much so, indeed, that not even the sharp tongue of his wife could induce him to resume his usual occupation. For ten whole days not a head was clipped, not a beard was shaved in Beaulieu; and in fact the villagers were one and all beginning to look as bristly as their own swine that fed, troop-wise, in the forest; even the squire's poodle remained unshorn; and there is no guessing what might have been the consequence; when, one morning, he found neither butter nor bread upon his breakfast-table-but pure water cold and hot, contained in two distinct jugs of equal size for his election. Suddenly the conviction flashed across his mind, that to eat he must work; and forthwith he handled his comb and scissors, stropped his razor, and, instead of deluging his stomach with the hot water, put it to the more legitimate use of working up a lather for the chins of his expectant customers. Still he went about his business like a man in a dream; he lost his appetite; rarely gossiped; could not sleep o' nights; nay, what was the worst sign of all, being invited by a friendly butcher to attend the slaughter of a prize-ox, he actually declined the invitation. After this, it was evident to all Beaulieu that their barber was a doomed man. The village-undertaker already began to talk of him as a certain job; the parson was heard to wonder if he would leave enough to pay the church's fees, as was the duty of every good Christian; sundry cronies of his Xantippe published somewhat too loudly their conjectures, whether his widow would marry the sexton, or the brewer's head-clerk, while a few whispered their votes in favour of his apprentice, a tall, rawboned lad, not quite seventeen years old, with locks of a fiery hue, a most capacious mouth, and a formidable squint in his left eye. Sad and dreary, as was Nicodemus, those friendly purposes had not escaped him, and forthwith he determined to disappoint the speculators. Early one fine morning, without previous notice given to any living soul, he decamped with his wife and household goods, including the fiery-haired apprentice, and set himself down in the Modern Babylon-need I explain?—in London.

Behold our barber now safely established in the metropolis, his tent being pitched on the skirts of the classical Saint Giles, where a long pole, duly garlanded with red circlets, announced his occupation to all whom it might concern.

About this time legal murder had begun to grow somewhat out of fashion; and the disappointed hangman even went so far as to petition the civic authorities for an increase of salary, upon the ground that though he was as ready and willing as ever to exercise his functions, yet the supply of necks for the halter was so scanty that he could scarcely earn salt to his porridge. Whether the patres conscripti of the city, the worshipful Lord Mayor and Aldermen were moved so far by the distress of their faithful servant as to open their purse-strings, does not appear upon the record; but just now an event occurred that proved Othello's occupation was not yet gone, and considerably miti

gated his dolour. Courvoisier (for it is of this worthy we are about to speak,) impelled by a vindictive spirit, and not less, perhaps, by his thirst of gold, assassinated, it will be remembered, Lord William Russell. The miscreant-for Courvoisier really was a miscreant, and one whom no man could pity,-was duly tried, and sentenced to be hanged by the neck till he was dead, though his learned counsel swore by all the saints in the calendar that they were condemning a poor creature, who was as innocent as themselves. It was truly a fine burst of Irish eloquence, strong and fiery as Pat's darling poteen when from the illicit still; but the judge told the jury it was all blarney and botheration. Nicodemus had watched the whole course of the trial with as much earnestness as if his own life had depended upon its issue; it was a rare sight to see how his face lengthened or shortened, and his jaw fell or rose, according to the shifting nature of the evidence, and when the judge put on his black cap to pronounce sentence, he verily thought he had never beheld a more becoming headdress. It was the evening of the day previous to the execution. Nicodemus sat in his back-parlour, luxuriating, over a glass of toddy, in sundry pleasing fancies on the spectacle of the morrow. He wondered how the murderer would look and act; what would he say? would he die craven, or make a bold face at the gallows? what was he about at that very moment? - praying, eating, or sleeping, and, if he slept, of what stuff were his dreams made of? - did they allow him a lamp in his cell?

"I would give half my shop," said Nicodemus to himself, "and my wife into the bargain, to have a peep at him only one little peep. 1 wonder if they have shaved him yet, -his beard was terribly long at

the trial."

This was a grave doubt, and Nicodemus felt it to be so, wherefore he rocked himself to and fro in his arm-chair, and took a long pull at the toddy-jug to help him in the solution. Under the combined influence of these two stimuli, his imagination expanded most marvellously. All the paraphernalia of the morrow shaped themselves out to him in the fire as vividly as if they had been limned on canvass by the hand of some skilful artist; there were the gallows, and the culprit, and Jack Ketch, with the parson at his elbow, all flashing and twinkling as the live coals flashed and twinkled, and shifting as they shifted, with the falling together of the embers.

The clock from St. Giles's church struck nine, and Nicodemus, tossing off what remained of his toddy, started up in a prodigious hurry. "It is time; I must be off, and secure a place near the scaffold, or the mob will be beforehand with me, and then I shall see nothing, or next to nothing. 'Zooks! I would not give a rush to be there, unless I could look into the fellow's eye, and hear his teeth chatter."

Thus saying, he wrapt about him the cloak that served himself and his wife in common, it being, by virtue of a family compact, her property when she went to market in the morning, and devolving again on him, when he paid his nightly visits to the public-house at the corner. But, just as he emerged from his little snuggery into the shop, a stranger made his appearance from the street. He was a short, broadshouldered figure, with a hooked nose, a long chin, a monstrously-high forehead, and ears that looked very like two horns, both from shape and situation, for they had a marvellous curl with them, and grew much higher up than is usual with such appendages. Then, too,

both his feet were clubbed, the right much more so than the left, which produced an awkward limp in his walk. His dress, moreover, was to the full as outré as his figure, that is, according to the present ideas of dress, though, probably, at one time it was the height of fashion; his breeches were of black velvet, large and swelling, like a Dutchman's slops; his frock-coat was of the same material; his flowered silk waistcoat being thrown open, and held only by a single button, discovered a curiously-slashed shirt, much in the style of an antique watch-paper; and his collar, rolled back, presented to view a stout bull-neck, that was excellently-well calculated to uphold the superincumbent weight of head and face-a burthen certainly much too great for any throat of ordinary dimensions.

"I want to be shaved," exclaimed this odd-looking customer.

"You do, indeed!" involuntarily ejaculated Nicodemus, struck by the bristly black chin of his visitant; "Courvoisier's beard was not half so long, it may be, though, by this time."

"You are out there," replied the stranger, taking out his watch; "ten minutes past nine! they have this moment done shaving him.”

"You don't say so!" cried the barber, in amazement.

"I do say so," repeated the stranger; "they have this moment done shaving him."

Nicodemus was thunderstruck. He could neither move nor speak from the excess of his astonishment.

"And had best do as much for me," continued the stranger, "or you you'll be too late for the show."

"It must be Jack Ketch!" murmured the barber, elated beyond measure at coming in contact with so illustrious a personage. "It must be Jack Ketch!" he repeated to himself with increasing animation; "who else could know thus precisely what was going on within the walls of Newgate?

"

So profound was the barber's veneration for this supposed dispenser of the law's last favour, that he did for him what he would not have done for any other customer in London, though that other had been the Lord Mayor in person. Albeit, dying with impatience to set off for Newgate, yet he placed the arm-chair for him, stropped his best razor, worked up a lather fit for king or kaisar, and tied a clean napkin under his chin, though this last was, in general, only a Sunday luxury.

"My beard is tough," growled the stranger, as Nicodemus prepared to make the first sweep.

"D-y!” replied the barber, surprized for the moment out of his politeness by the unexpected resistance of a beard that was more like hog's bristles than the natural product of the human chin. Never before had he come in contact with such a beard. But, then, the customer was Jack Ketch,—at least, he thought so,-and it would not do to disoblige a man of his functions in the state. Nicodemus, therefore, took a fresh razor, and made a renewed attack upon the tough, grisly stubble. But, with all his efforts he did not gain much ground, or rather chin-way, and the stranger winced grievously under the operation. Alarmed at these unpromising signs, he asked, with a great show of sympathy, "Do I hurt you, sir?

""

"Dy!" replied the stranger, giving him back his own exclamation, and precisely in his own tones.

The barber laughed, or at least affected to laugh, with infinite hilarity at this imitation of himself, that he might keep the great man in