But he carried
on these trades apart from each other.
His barber's shop projected its long and mysterious pole into Fleet
Street, painted party-coloured-wise, to represent the ribbons with
which, in elder times, that ensign was garnished. In the window were
seen rows of teeth displayed upon strings like rosaries--cups with a
red rag at the bottom, to resemble blood, an intimation that patients
might be bled, cupped, or blistered, with the assistance of
"sufficient advice;" while the more profitable, but less honourable
operations upon the hair of the head and beard, were briefly and
gravely announced. Within was the well-worn leather chair for
customers, the guitar, then called a ghittern or cittern, with which a
customer might amuse himself till his predecessor was dismissed from
under Benjamin's hands, and which, therefore, often flayed the ears of
the patient metaphorically, while his chin sustained from the razor
literal scarification. All, therefore, in this department, spoke the
chirurgeon-barber, or the barber-chirurgeon.
But there was a little back-room, used as a private tap-room, which
had a separate entrance by a dark and crooked alley, which
communicated with Fleet Street, after a circuitous passage through
several by-lanes and courts. This retired temple of Bacchus had also a
connexion with Benjamin's more public shop by a long and narrow
entrance, conducting to the secret premises in which a few old topers
used to take their morning draught, and a few gill-sippers their
modicum of strong waters, in a bashful way, after having entered the
barber's shop under pretence of being shaved.
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