Ephemera.
Fragile pieces of paper that survive the vicissitudes of time to remind us of days gone past.
Postcards, tickets, greeting cards, trade cards, advertisements, letters, invoices...treasures all.
This advertisement for Blanchet's - a hair saloon in Fenchurch Street in London - is printed on very thin (presumably cheap) yellow paper. I bought it many years ago from my favourite dealer in ephemera - Bella. Bella has a stall at Covent Garden market on Mondays and Spitafields Market on Thursdays and is hugely appreciated by a seemingly vast number of customers (mostly men) who throng around her stall, practically pushing other people out of their way in their eagerness to find that elusive special something.
This elusive special something is so charming I framed it.
Blanchet's was run by one Etienne Celestin Blanchet, a Frenchman. It seems that he was quite successful because he has three branches of his business on Fenchurch St, sharing one of them with a hosier, Mr T L Blackmore, next door to the fibre merchants Taye and Bromely. Just up the road are a clutch of wine merchants including Veuve Cliquot-Ponsardin and Haig - purveyors of champagne and whiskey, respectively; surely the area must have been quite upmarket. An inexhaustible compendium of Old and New London, published by Cassell's in 1878, begs to differ, damningly describing Fenchurch Street as being 'another thoroughfare scanty in memories, and therefore still open for future fame'.
As early as 1866 Blanchet was cutting hair in Fenchurch Street because I discover him publicly dissolving a partnership with another hairdresser, Henry Mazet. In October that same year, Blanchet takes out an advertisement in the London City Press for his, presumably newly started, Parisian Hair-cutting Saloon, open from nine until seven in the evening at 134 Fenchurch Street. The advert modestly declares that Blanchet's 'celebrated Brilliantine à la Violette may be had in the smallest size bottles.' This is the first of many advertisements for his shop - the same advert runs and runs in the London City Press through till the end of 1867 with the exact same wording throughout the year.
Fast forward to 1870 and Blanchet is advertising in the Clerkenwell Times for a 'boy (respectable) of 18, with good reference' to work at his saloon. Six years later, in July 1876, he is after an extra barber or, as he describes it, 'a good gentleman's hand', putting an advert in the rather more upmarket London Daily News.
By 1886, a decade on, Blanchet's are still in business and Etienne and his hosier mate Blackmore are both paying land tax to the Cooper's Company for their Fenchurch Street premises.
Two years later and everything comes to an end...
Born in Tours in France in 1828, Blanchet and his English wife Marianne can be found living with a twenty-four year old niece and a twenty-four year old boarder (possibly their servant), at 50, Herne Hill Road, Camberwell in the census of 1881. Etienne, now 53, is easily identifiable - he lists his occupation as a hairdresser. There is no evidence of any children. Ten years earlier, in the 1871 census, the couple's names are both spelt differently - Ellien for Ettienne and Mary Anne for Marianne - and they are living in St Mary Newington with an 18 year old general servant. Again Etienne lists his occupation as hairdresser. No children once more so rather than them having left home by 1881 it appears that they didn't ever have any.
Etienne dies on the 22nd July 1888, aged only sixty. Recently, he had been living at 110, Lavender Hill where there is no mention of wife Marianne. Instead, the sole executrix of his will is named as a spinster, Mary Ann Watson...
Etienne leaves her £426 10s. The next person on the alphabetical list of wills of this period, a Norfolk farmer, leaves £37,673 1s and 3d - Blanchet's life savings pall into insignificance in comparison. But then again, after Farmer Blanchflower, poor Margaret Blanchflower from Chester is listed as having only the paltry sum of £30 to leave her husband...
And there you go. But for this framed piece of yellow paper (most probably dating from the late 1860s after Etienne had freed himself from Henry Mazet) there would be no physical evidence of the childless Etienne Celestin Blanchet. That is the magic of ephemera. With it, we can revive him, this thriving barber, who could give you 'proper attention' and turn your scarecrow hair-do into a coiffure worthy of a careful dab of violet-scented brilliantine. We can re-imagine him beavering away with his scissors in Fenchurch Street over a period of twenty long years, snipping, snipping, snipping, enticing people into his Parisian Hair Saloon with each click of his scissors.
Today, in 2017, ten doors down from Blanchet's nineteenth century premises, at 141, Fenchurch St, there is a barber's called Bolatti - 'a fine gentleman's barbers in the heart of the City'. So it goes on, now as before, immigrant hairdressers plying their trade, grooming the fat cats and champagne guzzlers of the City of London. Long may it stay thus, say I.
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