Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/480

keeping the captives without beards. Some years before the Revolution the celebrated lawyer and political writer Linguet was incarcerated there. On the morning after his being locked up, an individual entered his room who announced himself as the barber of the Bastille. " Very well," said the sharp-witted Linguet, "as you are the

barber of the Bastille rasez-la."

Among the men of whom it was said of old that they would be known by their love for one another, the beard has been a cause of much fierce uncharitableness. The Greek Church, advocating the beard, and the Roman Church, denouncing it, were not more forgetful of ever- blessed charity than the Belgian Reformers, the close-shaven of whom wished the bearded members to be expelled as non-Christians. The tradition concerning the Master whom both proposed to follow was logically pleaded by the wearers of beards. As a general rule, in the earlier time, the man who wore his hair short and his beard long, was accounted as at least bearing the guise of respectability, looking like a priestly personage. There is a series of medals of the popes at Naples, from Clement VII. (1523- 34) to Alexander VIII. (1689-91). All these are bearded. Clement s beard is long and dark ; Alexander wears beard and moustaches. Perhaps Clement Giulio de Medici set the fashion. Certain it is that a few years before, his kinsman, Giovanni de Medici, Leo X. (1513-22), was always close-shaven, and beards were not to be seen on the chin of Leo s clerics and courtiers.

In the 13th century beards are said to have first come into fashion in England. If we may judge from the 15th century brasses in England, few men of distinction enough to be so commemorated wore beards. Hotspurs fop had his " chin new reaped." In the reign of Henry VIII. the fashion had so revived among lawyers that the authorities of Lincoln s Inn prohibited wearers of beards from sitting at the great table, unless they paid double commons ; but in all probability this was before that sovereign ordered (1535) his courtiers to "poll their hair," and he let that crisp beard grow which is familiar to us all. Thence came a fiscal arrangement; beards were taxed, and the levy was graduated according to the condition of the wearer. In the Burghmote Book of Canterbury (quoted in Notes and Queries) there is the following entry : " 2nd Ed. vi. The Sheriff of Canterbury and another paid their dues for wearing beards, 3s. 4d. and Is. 8d." In the next reign, and in the year 1555, Queen Mary sent four agents to Moscow ; all were bearded, but one of them, a certain George Killingworth, was especially distinguished by a beard 5 feet 2 inches long, at sight of which a smile crossed the grim features of Ivan the Terrible himself. George s beard was thick, broad, and yellow ; and, after dinner, Ivan played with it, as with a favourite toy. Most of the Protestant martyrs were burnt in their beards. Sir Thomas More, on the other hand, put his out of the way, as he laid his head on the block, with the innocent joke so well known. Elizabeth introduced a new impost with regard to beards. Every beard of above a fortnight s growth was subject to a yearly tax of 3s. 4d. The rate was as heavy as the law authorizing it was absurd. It was made in the first year of her reign, but it proved abortive. Fashion stamped it out, and men laughed in their beards at the idea of paying for them. The law was not enforced, and the Legislature left the heads of the people alone till much later times, when necessity and the costs of war put that tax on hair-powder which even now contributes a few thousands a year to the British Exchequer. The Vandyke beard, pointed (as Charles the First and the illustrious artist, with most cavaliers, wore it), was the most universally worn for a time. Beaumont and Fletcher, in the Queen of Corinth, make allusion, doubtless, to a fashion of wearing moustache and beard, common to the reign of the first James as well as that of Charles.

" His beard Which now he puts i the posture of a T, The Roman T. Your T beard is the fashion, And twofold doth express th" enamoured courtier As full as your fork-carving traveller." John Taylor, the water-poet, notices the T beard, and mentions at least a score of the various ways of wearing beards in his time, not forgetting the contemporary proverb, " Beard natural, more hair than wit." Hudibras, in text and notes, affords numerous illustrations of this subject. The general idea that beards did not come back with the monarchy does not seem to be correct, if the old song (date 1660) is to be trusted—

" Now of beards there be such a company, Of fashions such a throng, That tis very hard to treat of the beard, Tho it be never so long." Soon after this time, however, the beard in England was everywhere kept down by the razor. At the close of last century the second Lord Rokeby (Mat. Robineau) endeavoured to restore the fashion. " His beard," says a contemporary, " forms one of the most conspicuous traits of his person." But too short a period had elapsed since Lord George Gordon, the hero of " the Riots," had turned Jew and let his beard grow, to allow of any favour being awarded to an appendage which seemed a type of infamy. To the literature of the beard a remarkable addition was made in the present century by James Ward, R.A., the celebrated animal painter. Mr Ward published a Defence of the Beard, on Scriptural grounds; he gave eighteen reasons why man was bound to grow a beard, unless he was indifferent as to offending the Creator and good taste ; for the artist asserted himself as much as the religious zealot, and the writer asked, " What would a Jupiter be without a beard 1 Who would countenance the idea of a shaved Christ !" Mr Ward had what the French call " the courage of his opinions," and wore a beard of the most Jupiter-like majesty. Mr Muntz, M.P. for Birmingham, followed the example, but it was not adopted by many others. A new champion, however, appeared in 1860, but on peculiar ground. " Theologos" expressed his views in the title-page of his work, namely, Shaving: a Ireach of the Sabbath, and a hindrance to the spread of the Gospel. A carrying out of the views of the writer would lead to the full practice which prevailed among the Essenes, who never did on the Sabbath anything whatever that they were in the regular habit of doing on other days. "Theologos" points out that God gave the beard to man as a protection for his throat and chest; and, he adds, with the most amusing simplicity, " Were the beard in any other position its benefit and purpose might be doubted ; but situated where it is, no physiologist will dare to deny its intention." Since this na ive assertion was made, the beard, but not as a consequence, has grown into favour ; and though not universal, it is at least general, and a familiar sight to us all.

There is a disagreeable branch of the subject, demanding only a passing word, namely, bearded women, herma phroditic creatures, who have occasionally been found in all conditions of life, from princesses in " marble halls " to objects shown in exhibition-rooms or in vans at country fairs.

"You should be women," says Macbeth,

"And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you are so. " Sir Hugh Evans expressed the suspicion which attached to a bearded woman, when he said of Falstaff, disguised as

Mother Prat, " By yea and no, I think the oman is a witch