At the Sign of the Barber's Pole Part 3

The Roman T, in its bravery, Doth first itself disclose, But so high it turns, that oft it burns With the flames of a too red nose.

The stiletto-beard, oh! it makes me afeared, It is so sharp beneath, For he that doth place a dagger in 's face, What wears he in his sheath?

But, methinks, I do itch to go thro' stich The needle-beard to amend, Which, without any wrong, I may call too long, For man can see no end.

The soldier's-beard doth march in shear'd In figure like a spade, With which he'll make his enemies quake, And think their graves are made.

The grim stubble eke on the judge's chin, Shall not my verse despise; It is more fit for a nutmeg, but yet It grates poor prisoners' eyes.

What doth invest a bishop's breast But a milk-white spreading hair?

Which an emblem may be of integrity, Which doth inhabit there.

But, oh! let us tarry for the beard of King Harry, That grows about the chin, With his bushy pride, and a grove on each side, And a champion ground between.

Last, the clown doth rush, with his beard like a bush, Which may be well endur'd."

Charles I. wore the Vand.y.k.e-beard, made familiar to us by the great artist. This fashion, set by the king, was followed by nearly the whole of his Cavaliers. It has been thought by some students of this subject that with the tragic death of the king the beard disappeared, but if we are to put our faith in an old song, dated 1660, we must conclude that with the Restoration it once more came into fashion. It says:--

"Now of beards there be such company, Of fashions such a throng, That it is very hard to treat of the beard, Tho' it be never so long."

It did not remain popular for any length of time, the razor everywhere keeping down its growth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Gunpowder Conspirators, from a print published immediately after the discovery. Shows the Beards in Fashion in 1605.]

Sir Walter Scott's great grandsire was called "Beardie." He was an ardent Jacobite, and made a vow that he would never shave his beard until the Stuarts were restored. "It would have been well," said the novelist, "if his zeal for the vanished dynasty had stopped with letting his beard grow. But he took arms and intrigued in their cause, until he lost all he had in the world, and, as I have heard, ran a narrow risk of being hanged, had it not been for the interference of Anne, d.u.c.h.ess of Buccleuch and Monmouth." Sir Walter refers to him in the introduction to Canto VI. of "Marmion":--

"With amber beard and flaxen hair, And reverend apostolic air.

Small thought was his, in after time E'er to be pitched into a rhyme.

The simple sire could only boast That he was loyal to his cost; The banish'd race of kings revered, And lost his land--but kept his beard."

He died in 1729 at Kelso. "Beardie's" second son, named Robert, was a farmer at Sandyknowe, and was Sir Walter Scott's grandfather.

A contributor to _Notes and Queries_, for October 1st, 1859, gives the following interesting particulars of a Shaving Statute relating to Ireland:--"In a parliament held at Trim by John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, then Lord-Lieutenant, anno 1447, 25 Henry VI., it was enacted 'That every Irishman must keep his upper lip shaved, or else be used as an Irish enemy.' The Irish at this time were much attached to the national foppery of wearing mustachios, the fashion then throughout Europe, and for more than two centuries after. The unfortunate Paddy who became an enemy for his beard, like an enemy was treated; for the treason could only be pardoned by the surrender of his land. Thus two benefits accrued to the king: his enemies were diminished, and his followers provided for; many of whose descendants enjoy the confiscated properties to this day, which may appropriately be designated Hair-breadth estates." The effects of this statute became so alarming that the people submitted to the English revolutionary razor, and found it more convenient to resign their beards than their lands. This agrarian law was repealed by Charles I., after existing two hundred years.

The Macedonian soldiers were ordered by Alexander to shave, lest their beards should be handles for the enemy to capture them by. The smooth chin was adopted in the Greek army. To pull a person's beard has from remote times been regarded as an act of most degrading insult. Dr Doran tells a tragic story bearing on this usage. "When the Jew," says the doctor, "who hated and feared the living Cid Rui Dios, heard that the great Spaniard was dead, he contrived to get into the room where the body lay, and he indulged his revengeful spirit by contemptuously plucking at the beard. But the 'son of somebody' (the hidalgo) was plucked temporarily into life and indignation by the outrage; and starting up, endeavoured to get his sword, an attempt which killed the Jew by mere fright which it caused." In Afghanistan "the system of administering justice was such," says the "Life of Abdur Rahman"

(London, 1890) "that the humble were able to bring their claims before the sovereign by the simple process of getting hold of the sovereign's beard and turban, which meant to throw one's complaints on the shame of his beard, to which he was bound to listen. One day I was going to the Hum-hum (Turkish bath) when a man and his wife, running fast, rushed into the bathroom after me, and the husband, having got hold of my beard from the front, the wife was pulling me at the same time from behind. It was very painful, as he was pulling my beard rather hard. As there was no guard or sentry near to deliver me from their hands, I begged them to leave my beard alone, saying that I could listen without my beard being pulled, but all in vain. I was rather sorry that I had not adopted the fashion of the Europeans, whose faces are clean shaven. I ordered that in future a strong guard should be placed at the door of the Hum-hum."

Some of the ancient faiths regarded the beard as an appendage not to be touched with the razor, and a modern instance bearing on the old belief will be read with interest. Mr Edward Vizetelly, in his entertaining volume "From Cyprus to Zanzibar" (London, 1901), tells some good stories about the priests in Cyprus. Mr Vizetelly went to the island as soon as it pa.s.sed into the hands of the British Government, and remained there a few years. "On one occasion," he says, "when I happened to be in the bazaar at Larnaca in the early afternoon, I was amazed to witness all the shopkeepers, apart from the Maltese, suddenly putting up their shutters, as if panic-stricken, but without any apparent cause.

Inquiring the reason, it was only vouchsafed to me that someone had shaved off a priest's beard." The priest had been imprisoned for felling a tree in his own garden, which was against the laws of the land then in force. When in gaol the recalcitrant priest had his unclean hair and beard shorn off, in accordance with the prison regulations. The authorities were not aware that the hirsute adornments of the Orthodox Catholic faith were sacred. The act roused the Cyprist ire, and the High Commissioner had to issue orders that if any priest was locked up in future his hair and beard were to be left alone.

Respecting the beard are some popular sayings, and we deal with a few as follows.

A familiar example is "To pull the devil by the beard." When Archbishop Laud was advised to escape from this country he said, "If I should get into Holland, I should expose myself to the insults of those sectaries there, to whom my character is odious, and have every Anabaptist come to pull me by the beard." This insulting saying is by no means confined to England. To demand a person's beard was regarded as a still greater insult. King Ryons, when he sent a messenger to King Arthur to demand his beard, received the following answer:--

"Wel, sayd Arthur, thou hast said thy message, ye whiche is ye most vylaynous and lewdest message that ever man herd sent unto a kynge.

Also thou mayst see, my berd is ful yong yet to make a purfyl of hit.

But telle thou thy kynge this, I owe hym none homage, ne none of myn elders, but, or it be longe to, he shall do me homage on bothe his kneys, or else he shall lese his hede by ye feith of my body, for this is ye most shamefullest message that ever I herd speke of. I have aspyed, thy kyng met never yet with worshipful men; but tell hym, I wyll have his hede without he doo me homage. Thenne ye messager departed." ("The Byrth, Lyf and Actes of Kyng Arthur," edit, by Caxton, 1485, reprinted 1817.)

"To make any one's beard" is an old saying, which means "to cheat him,"

or "to deceive him." We read in Chaucer's _Prologue to the Wife of Bath_ thus:--

"In faith he shal not kepe me, but me lest: Yet coude I make his berd, so mete I the"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Geoffrey Chaucer, born about 1340, died 1400.]

And again, in the "Reve's Tale," the Miller said:--

"I trow, the clerkes were aferde Yet can a miller make a clerkes bearde, For all his art."

A more familiar saying is "To beard a person," meaning to affront him, or to set him at defiance. Todd explains the allusion in a note in his edition of Spenser's _Faerie Queene_--"did beard affront him to his face"; so Shakespeare's _King Henry IV._, Part I. Act i.: "I beard thee to thy face"--Fr. "Faire la Barbe a quelqu'un." Ital. "Fa la barbe ad uno" (Upton.)

See Steevens's note on the use of the word Beard in _King Henry IV._, which is adopted, he says, "from romances, and originally signified to 'cut off the beard.'" Mr John Ady Repton, F.S.A., to whom we are mainly indebted for our ill.u.s.trations of these popular sayings, directs attention to a specimen of defiance expressed in Agamemnon's speech to Achilles, as translated by Chapman:--

--"and so tell thy strength how eminent My power is, being compared with thine; all other making feare To vaunt equality with me, or in this proud kind beare Their beards against me."

In Shirley's play, _A Contention for Honour and Riches_, 1633:--

"You have worn a sword thus long to show ye hilt, Now let the blade appear.

COURTIER.--Good Captain Voice, It shall, and teach you manners; I have yet No ague, I can look upon your buff, And punto beard, and call for no strong waters."

"It is difficult to ascertain," says Repton, "when the custom of pulling the nose superseded that of pulling the beard, but most probably when the chin became naked and close shaven, affording no longer a handle for insult." In the reign of James II., William Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire, paid 30,000 for offering this insult to a person at Court.

An earlier instance of pulling the nose may be found in Ben Jonson's _Epicaene, or the Silent Woman_, Act iv. sc. 5.

In "Aubrey's Letters" is an allusion to wiping the beard. "Ralph Kettle, D.D.," we read, "preached in St Mary's Church at Oxford, and, in conclusion of a sermon, said, 'But now I see it is time for me to shutt up my booke, for I see the doctors' men come in wiping their beards from the ale-house' (he could from the pulpit plainly see them, and 't was their custome to go there, and, about the end of the Sermon, to return to wayte on their masters)." An old play by Lyly, ent.i.tled _Mother Bombie_ (1597-98), Act i. sc. 3, contains the following pa.s.sage:--

"Tush, spit not you, and I'll warrant I, my beard is as good as a handkerchief."

Our quotations from old plays are mainly drawn from Repton's little book, "Some account of the Beard and Moustachio," of which one hundred copies were printed for private circulation in 1839.

The extracts which we have reproduced are not such as to cause the beard to find favour with the ladies. In Marston's _Antonio and Melida_, (1602), Act v., we read as follows:--

"PIERO.--Faith, mad niece, I wonder when thou wilt marry?

"ROSSALINE.--Faith, kind Uncle, when men abandon jealousy, forsake taking tobacco, and cease to wear their beards so rudely long.

Oh! to have a husband with a mouth continually smoking, with a bush of furze on the ridge of his chin, ready still to flop into his foaming chaps; ah! 't is more than most intolerable."

In another part of the same play are other objections to the mustachios.

We find in other old plays allusions to women combing and stroking beards. "There is no accounting," says Repton, "for the taste of ladies.

Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, with his large ma.s.sive beard, won the heart of the fair sister of Henry VIII. Although the 'Cloth of friez may not be too bold,' the courtship was most probably begun by the lady (_i.e._ the Cloth of Gold). Although ladies do not speak out, they have a way of expressing their wishes by the 'eloquence of eyes.' That the fair princess ever amused herself in combing or brushing her husband's beard is not recorded in the history of England." Many references find a place in bygone plays relating to combs and brushes for the beard.

Starching the beard was an operation which occupied some time if carefully performed. It is stated in the "Life of Mrs Elizabeth Thomas,"

published in 1731, of Mr Richard Shute, her grandfather, a Turkey merchant, that he 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 a gentleman, whom he maintained as a companion, always read to him upon some useful subject. In closing, we have to state that cardboard boxes were worn at night in bed to protect the beard from being disarranged.

TAXING THE BEARD