He had a great many other particularities in his character, which I shall not mention, as the reader will himself very easily perceive them, on his farther acquaintance with this extraordinary person.
Jones being impatient to be drest, for a reason which may be easily imagined, thought the shaver was very tedious in preparing his suds, and begged him to make haste; to which the other answered with much gravity, for he never discomposed his muscles on any account, “Festina lente, is a proverb which I learned long before I ever touched a razor.”— “I find, friend, you are a scholar,” replied Jones. “A poor one,” said the barber, “non omnia possumus omnes.”— “Again!” said Jones; “I fancy you are good at capping verses.”— “Excuse me, sir,” said the barber, “non tanto me dignor honore.” And then proceeding to his operation, “Sir,” said he, “since I have dealt in suds, I could never discover more than two reasons for shaving; the one is to get a beard, and the other to get rid of one. I conjecture, sir, it may not be long since you shaved from the former of these motives. Upon my word, you have had good success; for one may say of your beard, that it is tondenti gravior.”— “I conjecture,” says Jones, “that thou art a very comical fellow.”— “You mistake me widely, sir,” said the barber: “I am too much addicted to the study of philosophy; hinc illae lacrymae, sir; that’s my misfortune. Too much learning hath been my ruin.”— “Indeed,” says Jones, “I confess, friend, you have more learning than generally belongs to your trade; but I can’t see how it can have injured you.”— “Alas! sir,” answered the shaver, “my father disinherited me for it. He was a dancing-master; and because I could read before I could dance, he took an aversion to me, and left every farthing among his other children. — Will you please to have your temples — O la! I ask your pardon, I fancy there is hiatus in manuscriptis. I heard you was going to the wars; but I find it was a mistake.”— “Why do you conclude so?” says Jones. “Sure, sir,” answered the barber, “you are too wise a man to carry a broken head thither; for that would be carrying coals to Newcastle.”
“Upon my word,” cries Jones, “thou art a very odd fellow, and I like thy humour extremely; I shall be very glad if thou wilt come to me after dinner, and drink a glass with me; I long to be better acquainted with thee.”
“O dear sir!” said the barber, “I can do you twenty times as great a favour, if you will accept of it.”— “What is that, my friend?” cries Jones. “Why, I will drink a bottle with you if you please; for I dearly love good-nature; and as you have found me out to be a comical fellow, so I have no skill in physiognomy, if you are not one of the best-natured gentlemen in the universe.” Jones now walked downstairs neatly drest, and perhaps the fair Adonis was not a lovelier figure; and yet he had no charms for my landlady; for as that good woman did not resemble Venus at all in her person, so neither did she in her taste. Happy had it been for Nanny the chambermaid, if she had seen with the eyes of her mistress, for that poor girl fell so violently in love with Jones in five minutes, that her passion afterwards cost her many a sigh. This Nanny was extremely pretty, and altogether as coy; for she had refused a drawer, and one or two young farmers in the neighbourhood, but the bright eyes of our heroe thawed all her ice in a moment.
When Jones returned to the kitchen, his cloth was not yet laid; nor indeed was there any occasion it should, his dinner remaining in statu quo, as did the fire which was to dress it. This disappointment might have put many a philosophical temper into a passion; but it had no such effect on Jones. He only gave the landlady a gentle rebuke, saying, “Since it was so difficult to get it heated he would eat the beef cold.” But now the good woman, whether moved by compassion, or by shame, or by whatever other motive, I cannot tell, first gave her servants a round scold for disobeying the orders which she had never given, and then bidding the drawer lay a napkin in the Sun, she set about the matter in good earnest, and soon accomplished it.
This Sun, into which Jones was now conducted, was truly named, as lucus a non lucendo; for it was an apartment into which the sun had scarce ever looked. It was indeed the worst room in the house; and happy was it for Jones that it was so. However, he was now too hungry to find any fault; but having once satisfied his appetite, he ordered the drawer to carry a bottle of wine into a better room, and expressed some resentment at having been shown into a dungeon.
The drawer having obeyed his commands, he was, after some time, attended by the barber, who would not indeed have suffered him to wait so long for his company had he not been listening in the kitchen to the landlady, who was entertaining a circle that she had gathered round her with the history of poor Jones, part of which she had extracted from his own lips, and the other part was her own ingenious composition; for she said “he was a poor parish boy, taken into the house of Squire Allworthy, where he was bred up as an apprentice, and now turned out of doors for his misdeeds, particularly for making love to his young mistress, and probably for robbing the house; for how else should he come by the little money he hath; and this,” says she, “is your gentleman, forsooth!”— “A servant of Squire Allworthy!” says the barber; “what’s his name?”— “Why he told me his name was Jones,” says she: “perhaps he goes by a wrong name. Nay, and he told me, too, that the squire had maintained him as his own son, thof he had quarrelled with him now.”— “And if his name be Jones, he told you the truth,” said the barber; “for I have relations who live in that country; nay, and some people say he is his son.”— “Why doth he not go by the name of his father?”— “I can’t tell that,” said the barber; “many people’s sons don’t go by the name of their father.”— “Nay,” said the landlady, “if I thought he was a gentleman’s son, thof he was a bye-blow, I should behave to him in another guess manner; for many of these bye-blows come to be great men, and, as my poor first husband used to say, never affront any customer that’s a gentleman.”
CHAPTER V.
A dialogue between Mr Jones and the barber.
This conversation passed partly while Jones was at dinner in his dungeon, and partly while he was expecting the barber in the parlour. And, as soon as it was ended, Mr Benjamin, as we have said, attended him, and was very kindly desired to sit down. Jones then filling out a glass of wine, drank his health by the appellation of doctissime tonsorum. “Ago tibi gratias, domine” said the barber; and then looking very steadfastly at Jones, he said, with great gravity, and with a seeming surprize, as if he had recollected a face he had seen before, “Sir, may I crave the favour to know if your name is not Jones?” To which the other answered, “That it was.”— “Proh deum atque hominum fidem!” says the barber; “how strangely things come to pass! Mr Jones, I am your most obedient servant. I find you do not know me, which indeed is no wonder, since you never saw me but once, and then you was very young. Pray, sir, how doth the good Squire Allworthy? how doth ille optimus omnium patronus?”— “I find,” said Jones, “you do indeed know me; but I have not the like happiness of recollecting you.”— “I do not wonder at that,” cries Benjamin; “but I am surprized I did not know you sooner, for you are not in the least altered. And pray, sir, may I, without offence, enquire whither you are travelling this way?”— “Fill the glass, Mr Barber,” said Jones, “and ask no more questions.”— “Nay, sir,” answered Benjamin, “I would not be troublesome; and I hope you don’t think me a man of an impertinent curiosity, for that is a vice which nobody can lay to my charge; but I ask pardon; for when a gentleman of your figure travels without his servants, we may suppose him to be, as we say, in casu incognito, and perhaps I ought not to have mentioned your name.”— “I own,” says Jones, “I did not expect to have been so well known in this country as I find I am; yet, for particular reasons, I shall be obliged to you if you will not mention my name to any other person till I am gone from hence.”— “Pauca verba,” answered the barber;” and I wish no other here knew you but myself; for some people have tongues; but I promise you I can keep a secret. My enemies will allow me that virtue.”— “And yet that is
not the characteristic of your profession, Mr Barber,” answered Jones. “Alas! sir,” replied Benjamin, “Non si male nunc et olim sic erit. I was not born nor bred a barber, I assure you. I have spent most of my time among gentlemen, and though I say it, I understand something of gentility. And if you had thought me as worthy of your confidence as you have some other people, I should have shown you I could have kept a secret better. I should not have degraded your name in a public kitchen; for indeed, sir, some people have not used you well; for besides making a public proclamation of what you told them of a quarrel between yourself and Squire Allworthy, they added lies of their own, things which I knew to be lies.”— “You surprize me greatly,” cries Jones. “Upon my word, sir,” answered Benjamin, “I tell the truth, and I need not tell you my landlady was the person. I am sure it moved me to hear the story, and I hope it is all false; for I have a great respect for you, I do assure you I have, and have had ever since the good-nature you showed to Black George, which was talked of all over the country, and I received more than one letter about it. Indeed, it made you beloved by everybody. You will pardon me, therefore; for it was real concern at what I heard made me ask many questions; for I have no impertinent curiosity about me: but I love good-nature and thence became amoris abundantia erga te.”
Every profession of friendship easily gains credit with the miserable; it is no wonder therefore, if Jones, who, besides his being miserable, was extremely open-hearted, very readily believed all the professions of Benjamin, and received him into his bosom. The scraps of Latin, some of which Benjamin applied properly enough, though it did not savour of profound literature, seemed yet to indicate something superior to a common barber; and so indeed did his whole behaviour. Jones therefore believed the truth of what he had said, as to his original and education; and at length, after much entreaty, he said, “Since you have heard, my friend, so much of my affairs, and seem so desirous to know the truth, if you will have patience to hear it, I will inform you of the whole.”— “Patience!” cries Benjamin, “that I will, if the chapter was never so long; and I am very much obliged to you for the honour you do me.”
Jones now began, and related the whole history, forgetting only a circumstance or two, namely, everything which passed on that day in which he had fought with Thwackum; and ended with his resolution to go to sea, till the rebellion in the North had made him change his purpose, and had brought him to the place where he then was.
Little Benjamin, who had been all attention, never once interrupted the narrative; but when it was ended he could not help observing, that there must be surely something more invented by his enemies, and told Mr Allworthy against him, or so good a man would never have dismissed one he had loved so tenderly, in such a manner. To which Jones answered, “He doubted not but such villanous arts had been made use of to destroy him.”
And surely it was scarce possible for any one to have avoided making the same remark with the barber, who had not indeed heard from Jones one single circumstance upon which he was condemned; for his actions were not now placed in those injurious lights in which they had been misrepresented to Allworthy; nor could he mention those many false accusations which had been from time to time preferred against him to Allworthy: for with none of these he was himself acquainted. He had likewise, as we have observed, omitted many material facts in his present relation. Upon the whole, indeed, everything now appeared in such favourable colours to Jones, that malice itself would have found it no easy matter to fix any blame upon him.
Not that Jones desired to conceal or to disguise the truth; nay, he would have been more unwilling to have suffered any censure to fall on Mr Allworthy for punishing him, than on his own actions for deserving it; but, in reality, so it happened, and so it always will happen; for let a man be never so honest, the account of his own conduct will, in spite of himself, be so very favourable, that his vices will come purified through his lips, and, like foul liquors well strained, will leave all their foulness behind. For though the facts themselves may appear, yet so different will be the motives, circumstances, and consequences, when a man tells his own story, and when his enemy tells it, that we scarce can recognise the facts to be one and the same.
Though the barber had drank down this story with greedy ears, he was not yet satisfied. There was a circumstance behind which his curiosity, cold as it was, most eagerly longed for. Jones had mentioned the fact of his amour, and of his being the rival of Blifil, but had cautiously concealed the name of the young lady. The barber, therefore, after some hesitation, and many hums and hahs, at last begged leave to crave the name of the lady, who appeared to be the principal cause of all this mischief. Jones paused a moment, and then said, “Since I have trusted you with so much, and since, I am afraid, her name is become too publick already on this occasion, I will not conceal it from you. Her name is Sophia Western.”
“Proh deum atque hominum fidem! Squire Western hath a daughter grown a woman!”— “Ay, and such a woman,” cries Jones, “that the world cannot match. No eye ever saw anything so beautiful; but that is her least excellence. Such sense! such goodness! Oh, I could praise her for ever, and yet should omit half her virtues!”— “Mr Western a daughter grown up!” cries the barber: “I remember the father a boy; well, Tempus edax rerum.”
The wine being now at an end, the barber pressed very eagerly to be his bottle; but Jones absolutely refused, saying, “He had already drank more than he ought: and that he now chose to retire to his room, where he wished he could procure himself a book.”— “A book!” cries Benjamin; “what book would you have? Latin or English? I have some curious books in both languages; such as Erasmi Colloquia, Ovid de Tristibus, Gradus ad Parnassum; and in English I have several of the best books, though some of them are a little torn; but I have a great part of Stowe’s Chronicle; the sixth volume of Pope’s Homer; the third volume of the Spectator; the second volume of Echard’s Roman History; the Craftsman; Robinson Crusoe; Thomas a Kempis; and two volumes of Tom Brown’s Works.”
“Those last,” cries Jones, “are books I never saw, so if you please lend me one of those volumes.” The barber assured him he would be highly entertained, for he looked upon the author to have been one of the greatest wits that ever the nation produced. He then stepped to his house, which was hard by, and immediately returned; after which, the barber having received very strict injunctions of secrecy from Jones, and having sworn inviolably to maintain it, they separated; the barber went home, and Jones retired to his chamber.
CHAPTER VI.
In which more of the talents of Mr Benjamin will appear, as well as who this extraordinary person was.
In the morning Jones grew a little uneasy at the desertion of his surgeon, as he apprehended some inconvenience, or even danger, might attend the not dressing his wound; he enquired of the drawer, what other surgeons were to be met with in that neighbourhood. The drawer told him, there was one not far off; but he had known him often refuse to be concerned after another had been sent before him; “but, sir,” says he, “if you will take my advice, there is not a man in the kingdom can do your business better than the barber who was with you last night. We look upon him to be one of the ablest men at a cut in all this neighbourhood. For though he hath not been her above three months, he hath done several great cures.”
The drawer was presently dispatched for Little Benjamin, who being acquainted in what capacity he was wanted, prepared himself accordingly, and attended; but with so different an air and aspect from that which he wore when his basin was under his arm, that he could scarce be known to be the same person.
“So, tonsor,” says Jones, “I find you have more trades than one; how came you not to inform me of this last night?”— “A surgeon,” answered Benjamin, with great gravity, “is a profession, not a trade. The reason why I did not acquaint you last night that I professed this art, was, that I then concluded you was under the hands of another gentleman, and I never love to interfere with my brethren in their business. Ars omnibus
communis. But now, sir, if you please, I will inspect your head, and when I see into your skull, I will give my opinion of your case.”
Jones had no great faith in this new professor; however, he suffered him to open the bandage and to look at his wound; which as soon as he had done, Benjamin began to groan and shake his head violently. Upon which Jones, in a peevish manner, bid him not play the fool, but tell him in what condition he found him. “Shall I answer you as a surgeon, or a friend?” said Benjamin. “As a friend, and seriously,” said Jones. “Why then, upon my soul,” cries Benjamin, “it would require a great deal of art to keep you from being well after a very few dressings; and if you will suffer me to apply some salve of mine, I will answer for the success.” Jones gave his consent, and the plaister was applied accordingly.
“There, sir,” cries Benjamin: “now I will, if you please, resume my former self; but a man is obliged to keep up some dignity in his countenance whilst he is performing these operations, or the world will not submit to be handled by him. You can’t imagine, sir, of how much consequence a grave aspect is to a grave character. A barber may make you laugh, but a surgeon ought rather to make you cry.”
“Mr Barber, or Mr Surgeon, or Mr Barber-surgeon,” said Jones. “O dear sir!” answered Benjamin, interrupting him, “Infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem. You recall to my mind that cruel separation of the united fraternities, so much to the prejudice of both bodies, as all separations must be, according to the old adage, Vis unita fortior; which to be sure there are not wanting some of one or of the other fraternity who are able to construe. What a blow was this to me, who unite both in my own person!” “Well, by whatever name you please to be called,” continued Jones, “you certainly are one of the oddest, most comical fellows I ever met with, and must have something very surprizing in your story, which you must confess I have a right to hear.”— “I do confess it,” answered Benjamin, “and will very readily acquaint you with it, when you have sufficient leisure, for I promise you it will require a good deal of time.” Jones told him, he could never be more at leisure than at present. “Well, then,” said Benjamin, “I will obey you; but first I will fasten the door, that none may interrupt us.” He did so, and then advancing with a solemn air to Jones, said: “I must begin by telling you, sir, that you yourself have been the greatest enemy I ever had.” Jones was a little startled at this sudden declaration. “I your enemy, sir!” says he, with much amazement, and some sternness in his look. “Nay, be not angry,” said Benjamin, “for I promise you I am not. You are perfectly innocent of having intended me any wrong; for you was then an infant: but I shall, I believe, unriddle all this the moment I mention my name. Did you never hear, sir, of one Partridge, who had the honour of being reputed your father, and the misfortune of being ruined by that honour?” “I have, indeed, heard of that Partridge,” says Jones, “and have always believed myself to be his son.” “Well, sir,” answered Benjamin, “I am that Partridge; but I here absolve you from all filial duty, for I do assure you, you are no son of mine.” “How!” replied Jones, “and is it possible that a false suspicion should have drawn all the ill consequences upon you, with which I am too well acquainted?” “It is possible,” cries Benjamin, “for it is so: but though it is natural enough for men to hate even the innocent causes of their sufferings, yet I am of a different temper. I have loved you ever since I heard of your behaviour to Black George, as I told you; and I am convinced, from this extraordinary meeting, that you are born to make me amends for all I have suffered on that account. Besides, I dreamt, the night before I saw you, that I stumbled over a stool without hurting myself; which plainly showed me something good was towards me: and last night I dreamt again, that I rode behind you on a milk-white mare, which is a very excellent dream, and betokens much good fortune, which I am resolved to pursue unless you have the cruelty to deny me.”
Complete Fictional Works of Henry Fielding Page 106
