Thread: Shaving in Literature

Originally Posted by Jimbo

Actually X, you reminded me. I'm honing a razor for a member - a George Butler (Sheffield). There's a quote from Love's Labor Lost etched into the blade (as well as a picture of the man himself)

"KEEN as is this razors edge invisible"

I've seen those on eBay and such. I'll get around to grabbing on some day.

X

Ok... this is long and is about safety razors but...

Jack London, Valley of the Moon "

The safety razor was a great achievement for Saxon. Privily she conferred with a clerk she knew in Pierce's hardware store and made the purchase. On Sunday morning, after breakfast, when Billy was starting to go to the barber shop, she led him into the bedroom, whisked a towel aside, and revealed the razor box, shaving mug, soap, brush, and lather all ready. Billy recoiled, then came back to make curious investigation. He gazed pityingly at the safety razor.
"Huh! Call that a man's tool!"
"It'll do the work," she said. "It does it for thousands of men every day."
But Billy shook his head and backed away.
"You shave three times a week," she urged. "That's forty-five cents. Call it half a dollar, and there are fifty-two weeks in the year. Twenty-six dollars a year just for shaving. Come on, dear, and try it. Lots of men swear by it."
He shook his head mutinously, and the cloudy deeps of his eyes grew more cloudy. She loved that sullen handsomeness that made him look so boyish, and, laughing and kissing him, she forced him into a chair, got off his coat, and unbuttoned shirt and undershirt and turned them in.
Threatening him with, "If you open your mouth to kick I'll shove it in," she coated his face with lather.
"Wait a minute," she checked him, as he reached desperately for the razor. "I've been watching the barbers from the sidewalk. This is what they do after the lather is on."
And thereupon she proceeded to rub the lather in with her fingers.
"There," she said, when she had coated his face a second time. "You're ready to begin. Only remember, I'm not always going to do this for you. I'm just breaking you in, you see."
With great outward show of rebellion, half genuine, half facetious, he made several tentative scrapes with the razor. He winced violently, and violently exclaimed:
"Holy jumping Jehosaphat!"
He examined his face in the glass, and a streak of blood showed in the midst of the lather.
"Cut!--by a safety razor, by God! Sure, men swear by it. Can't blame 'em. Cut! By a safety!"
"But wait a second," Saxon pleaded. "They have to be regulated. The clerk told me. See those little screws. There ... That's it .. turn them around."
Again Billy applied the blade to his face. After a couple of scrapes, be looked at himself closely in the mirror, grinned, and went on shaving. With swiftness and dexterity he scraped his face clean of lather. Saxon clapped her hands.
"Fine," Billy approved. "Great! Here. Give me your hand. See what a good job it made."
He started to rub her hand against his cheek. Saxon jerked away with a little cry of disappointment, then examined him closely.
"It hasn't shaved at all," she said.
"It's a fake, that's what it is. It cuts the hide, but not the hair. Me for the barber."
But Saxon was persistent.
"You haven't given it a fair trial yet. It was regulated too much. Let me try my hand at it. There, that's it, betwixt and between. Now, lather again and try it."
This time the unmistakable sand-papery sound of hair-severing could he heard.
"How is it?" she fluttered anxiously.
"It gets the--ouch!--hair," Billy grunted, frowning and making faces. "But it--gee!--say!--ouch!--pulls like Sam Hill."
"Stay with it," she encouraged. "Don't give up the ship, big Injun with a scalplock. Remember what Bert says and be the last of the Mohegans."
At the end of fifteen minutes he rinsed his face and dried it, sighing with relief.
"It's a shave, in a fashion, Saxon, but I can't say I'm stuck on it. It takes out the nerve. I'm as weak as a cat."
He groaned with sudden discovery of fresh misfortune.
"What's the matter now?" she asked.
"The back of my neck--how can I shave the back of my neck? I'll have to pay a barber to do it."
Saxon's consternation was tragic, but it only lasted a moment. She took the brush in her hand.
"Sit down, Billy."
"What?--you?" he demanded indignantly.
"Yes; me. If any barber is good enough to shave your neck, and then I am, too."
Billy moaned and groaned in the abjectness of humility and surrender, and let her have her way.
"There, and a good job," she informed him when she had finished. "As easy as falling off a log. And besides, it means twenty-six dollars a year. And you'll buy the crib, the baby buggy, the pinning blankets, and lots and lots of things with it. Now sit still a minute longer."
She rinsed and dried the back of his neck and dusted it with talcum powder.
"You're as sweet as a clean little baby, Billy Boy."
The unexpected and lingering impact of her lips on the back of his neck made him writhe with mingled feelings not all unpleasant.
Two days later, though vowing in the intervening time to have nothing further to do with the instrument of the devil, he permitted Saxon to assist him to a second shave. This time it went easier.
"It ain't so bad," he admitted. "I'm gettin' the hang of it. It's all in the regulating. You can shave as close as you want an' no more close than you want. Barbers can't do that. Every once an' awhile they get my face sore."
The third shave was an unqualified success, and the culminating bliss was reached when Saxon presented him with a bottle of witch hazel. After that he began active proselyting. He could not wait a visit from Bert, but carried the paraphernalia to the latter's house to demonstrate.
"We've ben boobs all these years, Bert, runnin' the chances of barber's itch an' everything. Look at this, eh? See her take hold. Smooth as silk. Just as easy... There! Six minutes by the clock. Can you beat it? When I get my hand in, I can do it in three. It works in the dark. It works under water. You couldn't cut yourself if you tried. And it saves twenty-six dollars a year. Saxon figured it out, and she's a wonder, I tell you."
"

Now you see how safety razors took over ... them women, always trying to emasculate us!

Jim,

reading this made me a little sad. Not so much for the way safeties took over - mostly for the poor guy who has to save so hard for the crib and the other stuff...

Thanks for sharing this
Ivo