One or two shop fronts of our old Regent Street still survive amongst the ruins and the new buildings which are more depressing than any ruins. But the goodly street is ended, and it seems fitting that Mr. Jaschke, the Barber of Kings, did not long survive the destruction of his famous shop.

There was a picture in his window that was one of the features of London, like the Filter in Fleet Street and — in the same thoroughfare — the Meerschaum Pipe, with the carving of the Battle of Leipsic on the bowl, priced at one hundred guineas. Mr. Jaschke’s picture represented a personage in the costume of a hundred years ago. Long, dark locks flowed luxuriant and profuse over his shoulders, and the inscription was, “The Secret of Beau Brummel.” It advertised some cunning preparation which would make baldness impossible; and it is gone, like many another London landmark. Too many, indeed, of these landmarks have departed from us, and the men who come back to us after their years of service in the Malay States and China and Persia will look round vainly, seeking for things that are to be seen no more. It was not so formerly. Twenty years ago a friend of mine who had been in China for some time came back and found London the same as ever. “Nothing has changed,” he said. “The chickens are still feeding in the window of the incubator shop at the top of Regent Street.” The chickens have long flown away.

But about Mr. Jaschke and his shop. We have all heard how King Edward pronounced him to be the perfect barber; the man who knew not only the art of beard-trimming in perfection, but also that more difficult art of hearing everything and saying nothing. Royalty was the province of Jaschke’s razor and scissors; his back shop was called the House of Lords, so noble was the custom of the place. And, considering these things, the awful question has just struck me: what would have happened to me if I had strolled into Jaschke’s and asked for a shave or a hair cut? This is a very deep and perplexing question, but the situation is not without precedent. Newman Noggs, it may be remembered, once escorted Miss Morleena Kenwigs to a highly genteel establishment in Soho, where they not only cut and curled ladies elegantly and children carefully, but shaved gentlemen easily. And while Morleena’s pigtails were being attended to there presented himself for shaving a big, burly, good-humoured coal-heaver, with a pipe in his mouth, who, drawing his hand across his chin, requested to know when a shaver would be disengaged.

The journeyman, to whom this question was put, looked doubtfully at the young proprietor, and the young proprietor looked scornfully at the coal-heaver, observing at the same time:

“You won’t get shaved here, my man.”

“Why not?” said the coal-heaver.

“We don’t shave gentlemen in your line,” remarked the young proprietor.

“Why, I see you a-shaving of a baker, when I was a-looking through the winder, last week,” said the coal-heaver.

“It’s necessary to draw the line somewheres, my fine fellow,” replied the principal. “We draw the line there. We can’t go beyond bakers. If we was to get any lower than bakers, our customers would desert us, and we might shut up shop.” The situations seem to me fairly analogous. But what would I have said, if I had ventured into the “House of Lords” at Jaschke’s, asked for a shave, and been told that Jaschke didn’t shave gentlemen in my line? Should I have observed, “I see you a-shaving of a temporary major,” and would Jaschke have replied that he drew the line at temporary majors? It is a curious and a doubtful point.

And that consideration led me to another curious point, how, formerly at all events, things that were nominally public were, in fact, private. In the mythical days before the War you might find yourself in an old-fashioned country town and wander into the bar-parlour of an old-fashioned inn. There would be half a dozen comfortable-looking men, substantial farmers and tradesmen, talking together over their reasonable potations, and by the fire an inviting and an empty chair. In it you would sit down, and as you did so a round man would beg your pardon “but that’s Mr. Apple’s chair.” “He’s sat in that chair every night for thirty years, has Mr Apple,” another round man would say to his neighbour, and there would be nothing for it ............