Woolen Caused the Vogue of Beards

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 122, 19 November 1932, Page 18

Woolen Caused the Vogue of Beards

Elderly bearded men are getting rarer with each year that passes, although many young men in London are now proudly cultivating them.

That the feminine view has influenced the masculine vogue in this matter of -beards in all ages is fairly well established. Take those bearded young .gallants of the last century. *There has always been a theory that that fashion swept in as a- direct result of the Crimean "War, where the troops had no opportunity of shaving, and after which to sport a beard was regarded as a di'stinet sign of manliness.

That is a story one would like to believe. Were the truth known, however, many of those beautiful beards of "Victorian young men were cultivated specially because feminine fancies ran that way, says a writer in the Johannesburg "Star."

History • provides instances where quite sad results attended masculine indifference to Eve's preference for bearded men. There is, for example, the expedience of the kingly Louis of France which might be quoted as an awful warning to husbands cast in this mould. This Louis, at the behest of the clergy, changed himself overnight from a long-curled, handsome-bearded gallant to a close-cropped, clean-shaven man; and his wife" found the new face that, smiled at her over the breakfast things so funny that she promptly ran away to another king—one of Britain's

Other notable and unhappy men have made similar falls from grace. The famous painter, Liotard, for' instance, grew a beard for which the women of his time irresistibly lost their heads and hearts. Upon marrying one of them, however, he decided to face life clean-shaven—and with the beard went every scrap of the charm that had so fascinated his bride. Tho former, manly face had become peaked and comic, to her,. at any rate, and she made no bones about saying so and leaving "so ridiculous a figure." .'■».

There is an ancient tradition which, declares that Adam was-created quite beardless, but that after his expulsion from the Garden of Eden he was, as a corollary punishment, doomed to grow hair on his faco so that he might be more like the beasts of the field among whom he should roam.

. Europe may have learned tho fashion from the troops of the great Alexander, who were sternly forbidden to wear the customary beards of their time, for 'the curious reason that it was found to present dangers in battle. Enemies had discovered that a soldier seized, by his beard is fighting at a disadvantage! The fashion changed only when a certain Koman Emperor discovered that he looked a good deal more impressive in a beard—though I like to think his wife made the discovery for him. He grew one —and thus began another cycle of the age-old alternation of beards and no-beards.

'■'Do •women like bearded "men?" must Jds Jha jrorl&'fi oldest .question,