Part 5

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!”

HADDOCK, (LATE PAWSEY,) PRINTER, IPSWICH.

● 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