THERE'S ROMANCE IN BEARDS

Evening Post, Issue 52, 2 March 1935, Page 25

THERE'S ROMANCE IN BEARDS

"Beaver" was an unfair cry, and one Ranting in discernment, since the shape and cut of masculine hair, both on head/and face; have ever played a most important part in the political and aesthetic . development of mankind, Bays a writer in the "Sunday Referee."

In numberless countries, both in the jjpast and present, a special style, as a coiffeur would say, in beard or hairdressing was reserved to the priesthood, our earliest rulers; and doubtless our own British druids, when they reported to their old mistletoe bough, Wore their hair after a special fashion. In England the style of a man's -hair Jtas always signified much. ' Consider, the Roundhead and the Cavalier. How well the cropped head of Cromwell suits his blunt and clumsy face and his obstinate political views; how well the flowing brown hair, the pointed, iconic, beard and moustache of Charles I sum up his belief in the essential mystery of kingship; an appearance created, as it were, solely to be the effigy on. a coin or.to lie,so galJantly upon the canvases of Van Dyck. Only to look at the style of that head, ■where beard and hair are concerned, emphasises the truth of the lines of Maxweil:—

He nothing common, did or mean Upon that memorable scene, But with his keener eye The axe's edge did try; Kor called the gods, with vulgar spite, To vindicate his helpless right; ;But bowed his comely head Down, as upon a bed.

Nevertheless, it is the head of one doomed to failure; the fatal romance pf the Stuarts clings to every hair.. . .

The Quakers, of course, demonstrated their political views and religious beliefs no less by the cut of their hair than by the cut of their clothes.

Later, too, the shape of a wig very clearly- reflected the colour of a man's political opinions, just as, on the Continent today, does the hue of the shirt.

When, again, wigs began to perish fes a fashion, at first, if a man wore his own hair cut short, it was safe to assume the radical trend of his political beliefs.

The abandoning of the wig altogether affected all Europe, politically and economically, to such a degree that the terrible revolution which broke out in 1799 in Naples, in which so many of the most courageous and liberal-minded of the Neapolitan aristocracy were most brutally murdered by bigoted Koyalist mobs, was undoubtedly instigated by barbers as a vengeance on those young men for the loss of profit which had been entailed by the wigJess fashion they had initiated.

Again, the wearing of "moustachios" (as moustaches were then called) was, during the thirties and forties of the last century, reserved only to cavalry officers and artists—an odd combination, but one which is often mentioned in the less tedious pages of Thackeray, and especially in "The Newcomes."

No other profession was allowed by public opinion to indulge in this physical expression of bravado: which ■would constitute infringement, almost (an impertinence, against the establfeh-

Ed order and the deity who presided over it (for in those days everything, from a fortune down to German measles or ringworm, possessed a purpose, and not least ;the moustache, the mystic emblem of mastery in both the equestrian and pictorial arts).

Similarly, in the early days.of this century, side-whiskers—which have now slid very far down the social scale—denoted an interest in the arts.

And what, you ask, does the outward appearance of our fellows signify today? What the handsome grey hair and moustache: of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, what the moustache of Hitler, so like a swastika cut in half?

These two subjects alone are of such enthralling interest that they must be left to a later day. Instead of exploring these mysteries, we must be content to note that both beard and moustache, at the present moment, are rare; each has its own locale.

Bearded Englishmen are. only to be met at good concerts, travelling in Greece, or at a "picture exhibition; while the old-fashioned "handsome moustache" of twenty years ago lingers solely in theatres at which are still performed musical comedies or revues; the cinema knows them not.

But at these-theatres, watching the pre-war antics under the paper roses, young men can still be seen balancing these absurd bars, cutting the face in two, upon their upper lips; proudly, too, as though they were so many cleyer and highly-educated seals, vain because of some new feat of circus equilibrium. But the most singular fact of all, touching the beard of today, is that we are much more likely to find it clustered round the chin of a young man —anxious, perhaps, to lend outward support to an inner conviction of genius—than upon an old man; whereas twenty years ago the reverse was very much the truth; never a young man, except a few iconoclasts like Augustus John, indulged in one.

Since then, of course, other eminent artists and writers, such as the late Mr. Lytton Strachey, have helped to popularise among the intelligent some special style in beard-dressing; but, more usually today, the beard denotes, again, politics; if woolly, Bolshevik; if neat and semi-imperial, a Fascist inclination.

And finally, in the arts, a bearded man is as sure to love the works of El Greco, Cezanne, and Eembrandt as to be opposed to Boucher and Fragonard.

A beard is often an assertion, an over-emphasis of virility. It is amazing what voices, weak and high, come out from behind such ambush.

And a beard, too, is a barrier behind which shyness and delicacy can hide, a buffer grown against the blows and battles of the world.

It is not without significance that the Kaiser has only grown his beard since he lost his throne. In.his exile he hides behind it, playing at being an artist or a musician, for the amateur of the arts loves a beard.

Bankers, as much as fallen kings, tend to them. What would Mr. Montagu Norman be without his hairdress> ing?