Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers Part 24

The stiletto-beard, oh, it makes me afear'd, 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' the st.i.tch The needle-beard to amend, Which, without any wrong, I may call too long, For a 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.

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.

"Barnes in the defence of the Berde" is another curious piece of verse, or rather of arrant doggrel, printed in the 16th century. It is addressed to Andrew Borde, the learned and facetious physician, in the time of Henry VIII, who seems to have written a tract against the wearing of beards, of which nothing is now known. In the second part Barnes (whoever he was) says:

But, syr, I praye you, yf you tell can, Declare to me, when G.o.d made man, (I meane by our forefather Adam) Whyther he had a berde than; And yf he had, who dyd hym shave, Syth that a barber he coulde not have.

Well, then, ye prove hym there a knave, Bicause his berde he dyd so save: I fere it not.

Sampson, with many thousandes more Of auncient phylosophers (!), full great store, Wolde not be shaven, to dye therefore; Why shulde you, then, repyne so sore?

Admit that men doth imytate Thynges of antyquite, and n.o.ble state, Such counterfeat thinges oftymes do mytygate Moche ernest yre and debate: I fere it not.

Therefore, to cease, I thinke be best; For berdyd men wolde lyve in rest.

You prove yourselfe a homly gest, So folysshely to rayle and jest; For if I wolde go make in ryme, How new shavyd men loke lyke sc.r.a.ped swyne, And so rayle forth, from tyme to tyme, A knavysshe laude then shulde be myne: I fere it not.

What should this avail him? he asks; and so let us all be good friends, bearded and unbearded.[166]

[166] _The Treatise answerynge the boke of Berdes, Compyled by Collyn Clowte, dedicated to Barnarde, Barber, dwellyng in Banbury_: "Here foloweth a treatyse made, Answerynge the treatyse of doctor Borde upon Berdes."--Appended to reprint of Andrew Borde's _Introduction of Knowledge_, edited by Dr. F. J. Furnivall, for the Early English Text Society, 1870--see pp. 314, 315.

But Andrew Borde, if he did ever write a tract against beards, must have formerly held a different opinion on the subject, for in his _Breviary of Health_, first printed in 1546, he says: "The face may have many impediments. The first impediment is to see a man having no beard, and a woman to have a beard." It was long a popular notion that the few hairs which are sometimes seen on the chins of very old women signified that they were in league with the arch-enemy of mankind--in plain English, that they were witches. The celebrated Three Witches who figure in _Macbeth_, "and palter with him in a double sense," had evidently this distinguishing mark, for says Banquo to the "weird sisters" (Act i, sc.

2):

You should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you are so.

And in the ever-memorable scene in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, when Jack Falstaff, disguised as the fat woman of Brentford, is escaping from Ford's house, he is cuffed and mauled by Ford, who exclaims, "Hang her, witch!" on which the honest Cambrian Sir Hugh Evans sapiently remarks: "Py yea and no, I think the 'oman is a witch indeed. I like not when a 'oman has a great peard. I spy a great peard under her m.u.f.fler!" (Act iv, sc. 2.)

There have been several notable bearded women in different parts of Europe. The Duke of Saxony had the portrait painted of a poor Swiss woman who had a remarkably fine, large beard. Bartel Graefje, of Stuttgart, who was born in 1562, was another bearded woman. In 1726 there appeared at Vienna a female dancer with a large bushy beard.

Charles XII of Sweden had in his army a woman who wore a beard a yard and a half in length. In 1852 Mddle. Bois de Chene, who was born at Genoa in 1834, was exhibited in London: she had "a profuse head of hair, a strong black beard, and large bushy whiskers." It is not unusual to see dark beauties in our own country with a moustache which must be the envy of "young shavers." And, _apropos_, the poet Rogers is said to have had a great dislike of ladies' beards, such as this last described; and he happened to be in a circulating library turning over the books on the counter, when a lady, who seemed to cherish her beard with as much affection as the young gentlemen aforesaid, alighted from her carriage, and, entering the shop, asked the librarian for a certain book. The polite man of books replied that he was sorry he had not a copy at present. "But," said Roger, slily, "you have the _Barber of Seville_, have you not?" "O yes," said the bookseller, not seeing the poet's drift, "I have the _Barber of Seville_, very much at your ladyship's service." The lady drove away, evidently much offended, but the beard afterwards disappeared. Talking of barbers--but they deserve a whole paper to themselves, and they shall have it, from me, some day, if I live a little longer.

In No. 331 of the _Spectator_, Addison tells us how his friend Sir Roger de Coverley, in Westminster Abbey, pointing to the bust of a venerable old man, asked him whether he did not think "our ancestors looked much wiser in their beards than we without them. For my part," said he, "when I am walking in my gallery in the country, and see my ancestors, who many of them died before they were my age, I cannot forbear regarding them as so many patriarchs, and at the same time looking upon myself as an idle, smock-faced young fellow. I love to see your Abrahams, your Isaacs, and your Jacobs, as we have them in old pieces of tapestry, with beards below their girdles, that cover half the hangings."

During most part of last century close shaving was general throughout Europe. In France the beard began to appear on the faces of Bonaparte's "braves," and the fashion soon extended to civilians, then to Italy, Germany, Spain, Russia, and lastly to England, where, after the gradual enlargement of the side-whiskers, the full beard is now commonly worn--to the comfort and health of the wearers.