The Social Significance of the 'Buster Brown'

With our latter-day contempt for everything save some platitudinous proverbs which have grown hoary in wrong-doing we are ever prone to ignore externals. We have heard so much of the fallacy of judging by appearances that we are content to appear mediocre. We are so certain that our characters are deep that we have swung our sounding-line inboard. Consequently we are totally unable to appreciate the certitude with which great men have recognised their enemies and opponents.

"At least," said Gladstone, watching Citizen Chamberlain advancing to the Commons to take the oath, "at least he wears his eyeglass like a gentleman," and in so saying declared war upon him irrevocably. This spirit is a thing we can little understand, but the well known fact is that none but shallow people do not judge by appearances, for the appearance often is the man.

The "Buster Brown" is in direct line of descent from Dionysius, the Maenads, St. Augustine, and the Salvation Army. In it we detect that spirit which Barry placed in Peter Pan, that Lewis Carroll wrought into the Book of Wonder, the spirit that all of us would seek if we were constituted sufficiently like Mr. Chesterton to appreciate the wonder of things and spent an hour occasionally in admiration of our feet. For, by a natural paradox, that very thing which hastens men's age and brings a thrice accursed sense of responsibility flitting from the unimaginable void to rest upon their narrow shoulders, that very visit to the hairdresser's which tells us in the sharp iteration of a pair of scissors that we Are men is the self-same fact which will keep a woman young. Men were more youthful in the days of perfumed curls and lace frills than they may ever hope to be again. The last of the schoolboys rode with Wogan from Dover to the north and died upon the sunlit hills. With the cropped pates and severe broadcloth of the Puritans the prospects of the Millenium vanished in mist. Who could imagine a Christian that visited a barber's? Who could picture St. Paul undergoing a that we may read his riddle. Every hair upon his head is a shampoo? It is in the hirsute adornments of the average man tongue to prate his infirmities to the winds, and possibly this is why many of our eminent statesmen hasten to grow bald. Next to his choice in umbrellas or vegetables there is nothing that reveals a man's character so much as his hairdresser. That the legal fraternity have recognised this is shown by the fact that they cloak their shortcomings under heavy wigs in court. And was not the age of affectation also the age of powdered perukes? Of what use would be Beau Brummell without his curled locks; of what use would be the Chinaman without his pig-tail? I am not the first to recognise the significance of the hair-cropping habit. Three hundred years ago a young English provincial gentleman named William Shakespeare also saw its possibilities. He realised the value of a golden head and gave it to Portia accordingly, Phoebe he made black-haired, Orlando has chestnut curls that cluster round his forehead, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek's hair hangs like flax on a distaff. Lear has a white beard, the King of Denmark a grizzled one, and Benedick is to shave his in the course of the play. Nor could we imagine them otherwise. Upon the subject of stage beards, indeed, Shakespeare is most elaborate, tells of the many different page 31 colours in use, and gives a hint to the actors always to see that their own are properly tied on. Bernard Shaw, also, has shown his appreciation of the romantic element in hairdressing, and one half of the criticisms which were hurled at his "Julius Caesar" emanated from irritated students who did not like the notion of the consuls being bald.

Everybody, after a little thought, will see that certain forms of hairdressing are inseparably connected with a certain type, that there are differentiations betwixt the statesmen, the prize-fighter, and the pantaloon. And with what should we connect the "Buster Brown" but with that elfishneas and propensity for the mischievous which we find in young maidens and in young kittens. It is a deliberate defiance of the encroaching years. It is a perpetual evidence of irresponsibility. And, as men are continually reminded by their visit to the hairdresser of the fact that they are men and therefore have obligations, so women are continually reminded by the same process that they are women, but may be tomboys. And this is the social significance of the "Buster Brown."

C.P.