Chapter III: Historical Survey (2)

In 1610, died Henry IV, of France, whose Beard is said “to have diffused over his countenance a majestic sweetness and amiable openness;” his son Louis XIII,[33] ascending the throne while yet a minor, the courtiers and others, to keep him in countenance, began to shave, leaving merely the tuft called a mouche or royal. Sully, however, the famous minister of Henry, stoutly refused to adopt the effeminate custom. Being sent for to court, and those about the king having mocked at his old-fashioned Beard, the duke indignantly turned to Louis and said, “Sire! when your father of glorious memory did me the honor to hold a consultation on grave and important business, the first thing he did was to order out of the room all the buffoons and stage dancers of his court!” About this time also, Marshal Bassompierre having been released from a long imprisonment, declared the chief alteration he found was, “that the men had lost their Beards and the horses their tails.”

Footnote 33:

“In this reign, whiskers however attained to a high degree of favour
at the expense of the expiring Beard, and continued so under Louis
XIV, who, with all the great men of his court, took a great pride in
wearing them. In those days of gallantry, it was no uncommon thing for
a lover to have his whiskers turned up, combed and pomatumed by his
mistress; and a man of fashion was always provided with every
necessary article for this purpose, especially whisker wax.” _Percy
Anecdotes._

Under our first Charles,[34] the sides of the face were often shaven, and the Beard reduced to the moustache, and a long chin-tuft, as in the portrait of that monarch, retaining however still some of its former gracefulness. As the contest grew hotter between Cavalier and Roundhead, doubtless some of the latter cropped chin as well as head; though others are said to have been so careful of their Beards, as to provide them with pasteboard night-caps to prevent the hairs being rumpled.

Footnote 34:

D’Israeli quotes an author of this reign, who in his “Elements of
Education” says, “I have a favourable opinion of that young gentleman
who is _curious in fine moustachios_. The time he employs in
adjusting, dressing and curling them, is no lost time; _for the more
he contemplates his moustachios, the more his mind will cherish and be
animated by masculine and courageous notions_.”

D’Israeli also states, that the grandfather of Mrs. Thomas, the
“Corinna of Dryden,” was very nice in the mode of that age, his valet
being some hours every morning in _starching his Beard and curling his
whiskers_, during which time he was always read to.

In one instance it was worn long for a sign, as we see by the following verse—

“This worthy knight was one that swore
He would not cut his Beard,
’Till this ungodly nation was
From kings and bishops cleared:

Which holy vow he firmly kept,
And most devoutly wore
A grizzly meteor on his face,
’Till they were both no more.”[35]

Footnote 35:

Taylor, the Water Poet, who lived from the end of Elizabeth to nearly
the end of the Commonwealth, thus humorously describes the various
fashions of this appendage.

“Now a few lines to paper I will put,
Of men’s Beards strange and variable cut,
In which there’s some that take as vain a pride,
As almost in all other things beside:
Some are reaped most substantial like a brush,
Which makes a natural wit known by the bush;
And in my time of some men I have heard,
Whose wisdom hath been only wealth and Beard:
Many of these the proverb well doth fit,
Which says _bush_ natural more hair than wit:
Some seem as they were starched stiff and fine,
Like to the bristles of some angry swine;
And some, to set their loves’ desire on edge,
Are cut and prun’d like to a quickset hedge.
Some like a spade, some like a fork, some square,
Some round, some mow’d like stubble, some stark bare,
Some sharp, stiletto-fashion,[36] dagger-like,
That may, with whispering, a man’s eyes outpike.
Some with the hammer cut or Roman T,
Their Beards extravagant reform’d must be;
Some with the quadrate, some triangle-fashion,
Some circular, some oval in translation;
Some perpendicular in longitude,
Some like a thicket for their crassitude.
The heighths, depths, breadths, triform, square, oval, round,
And rules geometrical in Beards are found.”

Footnote 36:

“The stiletto Beard
It makes me afeard
It is so sharp beneath:

For he that doth wear
A dagger in his face,
What must he wear in his sheath.”
_Old Author._

“Who make sharp Beards and little breeches Deities.”
_Beaumont and Fletcher._

Under Charles the 2nd, the Beard dwindled into the mere moustache, and then vanished. And when we consider the French apery of that un-English court, it is no wonder the Beard appeared too bold and manly an ensign to be tolerated. It went out first among the upper classes in London, and by slow degrees the sturdy country squires and yeomen also yielded their free honors to the slavish effeminate fashion, which, by the force of example, descended even to the working classes, on whom it imposed new burdens and some bodily diseases from which their hardy frames had been hitherto exempt. It is to be hoped, that when any one for the future talks about the Beard being a _foreign_ fashion, he will be reminded that it is a good old English natural fashion, and that the present custom of shaving was borrowed from France, at a time when we had no credit to borrow anything else, seeing that king, courtiers, and patriots, were all the pensioned dependents of the French monarch! The sooner therefore we cease to shave, the sooner shall we wipe out the remembrance of a disgraceful period of our history!

One amusing proof that the Beard continued to be worn by the country people after its decline about the court, is afforded by an anecdote of the notorious Judge Jeffries, who, in his browbeating way, thus addressed a party before him. “If your conscience be as large as your Beard, fellow! it must be a swinging one.” To which the witness replied, “If consciences be measured by Beards, I am afraid your lordship has none at all.”

In 1700, Charles V ascended the throne of Spain, with a smooth chin; and his example was gradually followed, though the popular feeling has been condensed into the proverb—“Since we have lost our Beards, we have lost our souls;” and no one can question that loss of Beard and empire in that country have singularly coincided.

Two brief anecdotes will shew the sense of honor which formerly resided in Spanish and Portuguese Beards.

Cid Rai Diaz dying, a spiteful Jew stole into the room to do what he durst not when Diaz was alive—pluck the noble Spaniard’s Beard! As he stooped for the purpose, the body started up and drew the sword lying in state by its side. The Jew fled horror-struck; the corpse smiled grimly, and resumed its repose; and the Jew turned Christian.

When the brave John de Castro had taken the Indian fortress of Dieu, being in want of supplies, he pledged one of his moustaches for a thousand pistoles, saying “all the gold in the world cannot equal the value of this natural ornament of my valour.” The inhabitants of Goa, especially the ladies, were so struck with this magnaminous sacrifice, that they raised the money and redeemed the pledge.

The last European nation to lay aside the Beard was the Russian, in whose ancient code it was enacted that whoever plucks hair from another’s Beard shall be fined four times as much as for cutting off a finger. Peter the Great, (who always remained a semi-savage), like many other half-informed reformers, sought to accomplish his objects by arbitrary measures rather than by moral persuasion. Having, when in the west, seen unbearded faces, he jumped to the conclusion that absence of Beard was a necessary part of civilization; forgetting that a shaven savage is a savage still. He therefore ordered all his subjects to shave, imposing a tax of one hundred roubles on all nobles, gentlemen, tradesmen, and artizans, and a copeck on the lower classes. Great commotions were the result; but Peter was obstinate and made a crusade with scissors and razor, much resembling a Franco-African Razzia, which you know means a clean shave of everything with very dirty hands! Some, to avoid disgrace, parted with their Beards voluntarily, but all preserved the hairs to be buried in their coffins; the more superstitious believing that unless they could present theirs to St. Nicholas, he would refuse them admission to heaven as Beardless Christians.

One of the most difficult tasks was to deal with the army; in this, Peter proceeded with characteristic cunning. Through the agency of the priests, the soldiers were told that they were going to fight the Turks, who wore Beards, and that their patron saint St. Nicholas would not be able to protect his beloved Russians, unless they consented to distinguish themselves by removing their Beards! You see how stale are the Czar’s late tricks! Convinced by this pious fraud, the credulous soldiers obeyed the imperial mandate. The next war, however, was against the Swedes, and the soldiers, who had suffered severely from shaving, turned the tables upon the priests, and said, “the Swedes have no Beards, we must therefore let ours grow again, lest, as you say, the holy Nicholas should not know us!”

It is a note-worthy historical fact, which shews the danger arising from discarding the natural for the artificial, that as _Beards died out, false hair came in_. A mountain of womanish curls rested on the head, and was made to fall in effeminate ringlets over neck and shoulders, while the whole face was kept as smooth, and smug, and characterless as razor could make it. This renders it so disagreeable a task to look through a series of Kneller’s portraits, who, clever as he was, could not impart the freedom and vigour of nature to this absurd fashion. A portrait of Addison,[37] was shewn as an illustration, because, as has been seen, though he complied with the mode, he was occasionally favored with visions of better times, past and to come.[38]

Footnote 37:

I cannot refrain from alluding in a note to a curious fact. On the day
this Lecture was given, a little boy was brought to look at the
portraits just after they were hung. I said to him, “Edward, which
face do you like best?” He instantly touched the portrait of Addison,
and said, “that’s the best woman,” and “that’s the best man!” pointing
to the well-bearded face of Leonardo da Vinci.

Footnote 38:

That Southey had the same compunctious visitings as Addison, appears
clearly enough, for while in his Doctor he compares “shaving at home”
with “slavery abroad;” states that “a good razor is more difficult to
meet with, than a good wife;” denounces the practice “as preposterous
and irrational,” as “troublesome, inconvenient,” and attended with
“discomfort, especially in frosty weather and March winds;” places it
on an equality with the curse pronounced on Eve; and concludes with
the opinion that “if the daily shavings of one year could be put into
one shave, the operation would be more than flesh and blood could
bear;” he has nothing to say in favour of shaving, but that it
encourages Barbers, compels the shaver to some moments of calm thought
and reflection, and enables him to draw lessons from the looking glass
that nobody with razor in hand ever thought of. These words in another
place give a key to his real opinion. “If I wore a Beard,” he writes,
“I would cherish it as the Cid Campeador did his, for my pleasure. I
would regale it on a Summer’s day with rose-water, and without making
it an idol, I should sometimes offer incense to it with a pastille, or
with lavender and sugar. My children, when they were young enough for
such blandishments, would have delighted to comb and stroke and curl
it, and my grandchildren in their time would have succeeded to the
same course of mutual endearment.”

See also Leigh Hunt’s humourous paper on Lie-abeds in the Indicator,
where he calls “shaving a villainous and unnecessary custom.”

To the reign of false curls, succeeded that still more egregious outrage—that climax of coxcombry—powder, pomatum, and pigtails! The former to give the snows of age to the ruddy face of youth; the latter being, I suppose, an attempt of some bright genius to outdo nature,

By hanging a stiff black tail behind,
Instead of a flowing beard before,
As if, by this ensign, the world to remind,
How wise it had grown since old father Noah.

This was the period when every breeze was a Zephyr, every maid a Chlöe, every woman a Venus, and every fat squinting child a Cupid! Later German critics even christen the writers of this school, “the Pigtail Poets.”[39]

Footnote 39:

Seume, a German poet of a better school, in his travels says, “To-day
I threw my powder apparatus out of window, when will the day come that
I can send my shaving apparatus after it!”

The first French Revolution made an end of all this trumpery, and though Alison and other professed historians have not classed the event among the good things flowing from that fearful flood of blood and blasphemy, it was not one of the least, and society cannot rejoice too much at being delivered from the example of systematic frippery, frivolity, and tricked-out vice of the later French Sovereigns, imitated as they were by most of the petty puppet Princes of Germany—

Each lesser ape in his small way,
Playing his antics like the greater.

About the rise of the first Napoleon to power, a more simple, severe, and classic taste, was beginning to prevail, and this dictated a return to the Beard. Under the military despotism, however, of that Emperor, moustaches were forbidden to civilians, and the Beard restrained to that petty, hairy imitation of a reversed triangle—called after its reviver, who never personally wore it—the _imperial_, as if to denote to the people that they were to have the smallest possible share in the _empire_.

With every attempt at freedom on the Continent, the Beard re-appears; it was one of the most effective standards in the war of freedom, when Germany rose against Napoleon. In 1830, it was partially revived in France, and later still it has made many a perjured continental monarch[40] “quake and tremble in his capital,” and reminded him that in spite of neglected promises and false oaths, the reign of injustice “hangs but on a hair,” of which the police will not always be able to check the free growth.

Footnote 40:

One hardly knows which is the most detestable, the canting hypocrisy
of Prussian constitutional pretence,—the more open poltroonery of
Neapolitan despotism—or the paternal care to prevent even the buddings
of free thought as in Austria, where I can state from my own knowledge
that Schiller’s works were seized as contraband on the Hungarian
frontier, and a party in the Austrian service who had attempted to
defend the conduct of the government at a Table d’Hôte was sent for by
the head of the police, and when to excuse himself he alleged he was
speaking for the government, was replied to—“Young man, the government
want no defence—no discussion—and your wisest course is to be silent!”

I have now merely to notice very briefly, four modern objections to the Beard.

I. “_That it is less cleanly than shaving._” To this, the answer is, that depends upon the wearer; and it will take less time to keep clean, than to shave, especially where, as in England, every one washes the face more than once a day. Besides, if this were an argument, we had better shave the head and eyebrows as well.

II. “_That it would take as much time to keep the Beard in order, as to shave._” Supposing even it did, still there is a most important difference both in the two operations and in their results. For the process of combing and brushing the Beard, instead of being tedious, uncertain, and often painful, like shaving,[41] confers a positively delightful sensation, similar to that which one may imagine a cat to experience,

Footnote 41:

There is something in the operation of shaving which, besides its
painfulness, ought to make it repulsive to those who do not shave
themselves—such as having the face bedaubed with lather and rubbed
with a brush, which has done the same office for hundreds of chins. It
is amusing to hear a knot of free and independent Englishmen roaring
“Britons never will be slaves;” most of whom will give their chins to
be mown and their noses to be pulled by any common Barber, and pay him
too for the pulling. Even when the party is a self-shaver, to say
nothing of the waste of time, what a number of petty annoyances and
exercises of temper does it involve! Notwithstanding the boasts of
cold water shavers, depend upon it in rigorous weather most people
prefer hot to cold water, which renders them slaves to their servants;
next, razors, as we know from puff advertisements and our own
experience, are the most uncertain of articles; then there is the
state of the nerves, that even the strongest cannot always control,
causing the unsteady hand to gash and hack the chin, or cover it with
blood from the beheading of those pimply eruptions of which the razor
has been ofttimes the originator.

When smoothing gently down its fur,
It answers with a purr, purr, purr;
And in its drooping half-shut eye,
A dreamy pleasure we espy.

And while the result of shaving is a mere negation, depriving us of a natural protection, and exposing us to disease, the other process, consume what time we will, is natural and instinctive, and attended with the satisfaction of adding the grace of neatness to nature’s stamp of man’s nobility.

III. “_That the ladies dont like it!_” This Professor Burdach and Dr. Elliotson, pronounce a foul libel.[42] Ladies by their very nature like every thing manly; and though from custom the Beard may at first sight have a strange look, they will soon be reconciled to it, and think, with Beatrice, that a man without, “_is only fit to be their waiting gentlewoman_.”[43] I have already mentioned one instance of a queen despising her husband, because he was priest-ridden enough to shave; and here I present you with a second in this veritable portrait (shewing it) of a painter in the reign of George I, of the name of Liotard, who having returned from his travels in the East, with this fine flow of curling comeliness, was irresistible. He followed his fate, and married, but then, alas, unhappy wretch! took one day the whim to shave off his Eastern glory. Directly his wife saw him, the charm of that ideal which every true woman forms of her lover, was broken; for instead of a dignified manly countenance, her eyes fell upon a small pinched face, with nose celestial and mouth most animally terrestial,

Footnote 42:

Old Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy adds his quaint testimony. “No
sooner doth a young man see his sweetheart coming, than he smugs up
himself, pulls up his cloak, ties his garter points, sets his band and
cuffs, sticks his hair, _twires his Beard_,” &c.

D’Israeli also says, “when the fair sex were accustomed to behold
their lovers with Beards, the sight of a shaved chin excited feelings
of horror and aversion; as much indeed as in this less heroic age
would a gallant whose luxuriant Beard should ‘Stream like a meteor to
the troubled air.’”

Footnote 43:

The whole dialogue from whence this phrase is taken, is suggestive of
the contempt with which the ladies of Elizabeth and James the 1st’s
time regarded a hairless chin. And there are numerous passages in our
old Dramatists which might be quoted to the same effect, but that some
of the allusions do not square with modern notions of delicacy.

And such a little perking chin,
To kiss it seemed almost a sin!

IV. “_That a Beard may be very comfortable in Winter but too hot in Summer!_” The better races of the sons of torrid Africa wear Beards, as did the ancient Numidians, and Tyro-African Carthaginians before them. The Arab in the arid parching desert cherishes his! Are we afraid of being warmer than these in an English Summer? Besides, as we have already shewn, the Beard is a non-conductor of heat as well as cold.[44]

Footnote 44:

It is scarcely conceivable what strange remarks have been made to me
on the subject of the Beard. One party very gravely enquired whether I
really thought that Adam had a Beard? Another was remonstrating with
me on the first manifestations of my moustache; against whom I
wickedly urged the argumentum ad feminam—you don’t object to it in the
military? when the daughter naively chimed in, “why you know, Sir, _it
is natural to them_!” Two or three acute persons, one of them a
lawyer, have objected, “but you have your hair cut!” To which I have
replied, “yes! but I don’t shave it off; and I trim my Beard instead
of removing it. You also pare your nails; but you don’t think of
plucking them out, do you?”

Having now, ladies and gentlemen, offered proofs that the Beard is a natural feature of the male face, and designed by Providence for distinction, protection, and ornament, and shewn you historically, that while there was never any sufficient reason alleged for leaving it off, unless a heaven condemned superstition, or the capricious dictates of fops and profligates, afford to any sound mind reasonable motives of action, need I ask you not to oppose the efforts of those who, reverencing the Creator’s laws as above the dictates of man, conceive themselves justified in returning to the more natural course. On our part we will, notwithstanding all that we have said, freely allow any one to continue the practice of shaving, who will be content with the same plea as a certain Duke de Brissac, who was often overheard uttering the following soliloquy while adjusting his razor to the proper angle. “Timoleon de Cosse, God hath made thee a Gentleman, and the King hath made thee a Duke; it is right and fit, however, that thou shouldst have something to do, therefore thou shalt shave thyself!”

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HADDOCK, (LATE PAWSEY,) PRINTER, IPSWICH.

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● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Some of the text on the title page was illegible, and was omitted.
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

End of Project Gutenberg's The Philosophy of Beards, by Thomas S. Gowing