THE ADVENTURES OF THE BEARD

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 30 September 1933, Page 11

THE ADVENTURES OF THE BEARD

'J'HE recent visit of two distinguished 1 ■forei'gn'etrs wearing beard® lias led! American men to take stock of their chins. Though Americans are a beard- ! less nation, one prophet ha's) had the) temerity to announce that “a new bearded age is on the way,’* says the "New York Times.” In America., as in. other lands, the 1 beard has had its up® and down®. In Colonial days, beards were scarce; later, though the clean-shaven face was. : the rule, the bearded man l became mono prevalent; in the covered-wagon days a|nd the days of the Fonty-Niner the' • beard flourished on the frontier. I FeW American Presidents have, worm! ' beards —among them Lincoln, Grant,; ■ Hayes, Garfield and Benjamin Hariri- < son. Chester A. Arthur wore flowing i side-whiskers; Van Bur. cm’® whiskers : were less prominent. I 1 To. follow the beard chrbnologiea.lly ] one must go back to the first man. But; : the records of its gyrations appear tot! start! around the year 1100. Ban 1 ] through a series of fashion! plates frotrn ! 1480 tot 1800, and one find®: a. changing i vogue in 'beards as well as in style. 1 The round beard came ini with the six- i teenth century when ,puffed alnd slashed ! costumes accentuated squareness and : brlelaidth of figure. .Stalwart Henry 1 VIII., in plumed hat and velvet doub- 1 let, wore this type of beard 1 ending alt his ears. j After the Holbeinesque disguise of; ! Henry Comies the more natural, un- J ] dipped growth of hair revealed in a'J j portrait of that favourite of Queen i Elizabeth, the Earl of Essex, and to

Is Fashion Revival on the Way ?

i called by a contemporary wag "a ! bunch of spinach.” Thirty years later the Vandyke, popularised by the painter of the same name, carried it's waxed point into the courts of Europe. Even the Beau BrummielLs of Paris let their whiskers grow, though courtier® under the Louises preferred smooth cheeks slightly rouged. Through the .eighteenth century beards waxed and waned in the world’s fashion centres. At the beginning of the nineteenth the bushy .Style of beard-dressing came back more or less. Beards, however, were never again to be what they had been, when, according to one chronicler, a beard five feet two inches long, 'on an envoy son* to his court, iso fascinated Ivan the Terrible o;f Russia that he. asked permission to rim his fingers through it. Ivan’s interest. was understandable, for the heavy beards of the world have been found mostly in Russia. Times have changed .since vain emperors perfumed their whiskers, brrided gold and silver threads into them, and added various or name, nits. Historians tell us that beards went out wilth leisurely living and verbose oratory. Since Civil War days, when it enjoyed a short, .renaissance in AmeriCJa, the beard as a fashionable adjunct has been steadily losing followers. Grieat mien have succumbed to. the lure of the beard. Dickon®, Tennyson, Swinburne, Carlyle, Ruben's the pointer, Brahms 'the composer, all 1 word beards. Augustus John and Bernard Shaw arc two later-day celebrities still faithful' o the fashion of yesteryear.