THE BEARD
M
en’s hair on their heads hath ever been at odds with that on their
face. If the head were well covered and the hair long, then the face
was smooth shaven. William the Conqueror had short hair and a beard,
then came a long-haired king, then a cropped one; Edward IV’s subjects
had long hair and closely cut beards. Henry VII fiercely forbade
beards. The great sovereign Henry VIII ordered short hair like the
French, and wore a beard. Through Elizabeth’s day and that of James the
beard continued. Not until great perukes overshadowed the whole face
did the beard disappear. It vanished for a century as if men were
beardless; but after men began to wear short hair in the early years of
the nineteenth century, bearded men appeared. A few German mystics who
had come to America full-bearded were stared at like the elephant, and
a sight of them was recorded in a diary as a great event.
There is no doubt that, to the general reader, the ordinary thought of
the Puritan is with a beard, a face and figure much like the Hogarth
illustrations of Hudibras—one of the “Presbyterian true Blue,” “the
stubborn crew of Errant Saints,”—without the grotesquery of face and
feature, perhaps, but certainly with all the plainness and
gracelessness of dress and the commonplace beard. The wording of
Hudibras also figures the popular conception:—
“His tawny Beard was th’ equal Grace
Both of his Wisdom and his Face:
* * * * *
“His Doublet was of sturdy Buff
And tho’ not Sword, was Cudgel-Proof.
His Breeches were of rugged Woolen
And had been at the Siege of Bullen.”
Herbert Westphaling, Bishop of Hereford. Herbert Westphaling, Bishop of
Hereford.
In truth this is well enough as far as it runs and for one suit of
clothing; but this was by no means a universal dress, nor was it a
universal beard. Indeed beards were fearfully and wonderfully varied.
That humorous old rhymester, Taylor, the “Water Poet,” may be quoted at
length on the vanity thus:—
“And Some, to set their Love’s-Desire on Edge
Are cut and prun’d, like to a Quickset Hedge.
Some like a Spade, some like a Forke, some square,
Some round, some mow’d like stubble, some starke bare;
Some sharpe, Stilletto-fashion, Dagger-like,
That may with Whispering a Man’s Eyes unpike;
Some with the Hammer-cut, or Roman T.
Their Beards extravagant, reform’d must be.
Some with the Quadrate, some Triangle fashion;
Some circular, some ovall in translation;
Some Perpendicular in Longitude,
Some like a Thicket for their Crassitude,
That Heights, Depths, Breadths, Triform, Square, Ovall, Round
And Rules Geometrical in Beards are found.”
Taylor’s own beard was screw-shaped. I fancy he invented it.
The Anglo-Saxon beard was parted, and this double form remained for a
long time. Sometimes there were two twists or two long forks.
A curious pointed beard, a beard in two curls, is shown here, on James
Douglas, Earl of Morton. A still more strangely kept one, pointed in
the middle of the chin, and kept in two rolls which roll toward the
front, is upon the aged herald, here.
Richard II had a mean beard,—two little tufts on the chin known as “the
mouse-eaten beard, here a tuft, there a tuft.” The round beard “like a
half a Holland cheese” is always seen in the depictions of Falstaff; “a
great round beard” we know he had. This was easily trimmed, but others
took so much time and attention that pasteboard boxes were made to tie
over them at night, that they might be unrumpled in the morning.
The Herald Vandum. The Herald Vandum.
In the reign of Elizabeth and of James I a beard and whiskers or
mustache were universally worn. In the time of Charles I the general
effect of beard and mustache was triangular, with the mouth in the
centre, as in the portrait of Waller here.
A beard of some form was certainly universal in 1620. Often it was the
orderly natural growth shown on Winthrop’s face; a smaller tuft on the
chin with a mustache also was much worn. Many ministers in America had
this chin-tuft. Among them were John Eliot and John Davenport. The
Stuarts wore a pointed beard, carefully trimmed, and a mustache; but
the natural beard seems to have disappeared with the ruff. Charles II
clung for a time to a mustache; his portrait by Mary Beale has one; but
with the great development of the periwig came a smooth face. This
continued until the nineteenth century brought a fashion of bearded men
again; a fashion which was so abhorred, so reviled, so openly warred
with that I know of the bequest of a large estate with the absolute and
irrevocable condition that the inheritor should never wear a beard of
any form.
The hammer cut was of the reign of Charles I. It was T-shaped. In the
play, _The Queen of Corinth_, 1647, are the lines:—
“He strokes his beard
Which now he puts in the posture of a T,
The Roman T. Your T-beard is in fashion.”
The spade beard is shown here. It was called the “broad pendant,” and
was held to make a man look like a warrior. The sugar-loaf beard was
the natural form much worn by Puritans; by natural I mean not twisted
into any “strange antic forms.” The swallow-tail cut (about 1600) is
more unusual, but was occasionally seen.
“The stiletto-beard
It makes me afeard
It is so sharp beneath.
For he that doth place
A dagger in his face
What wears he in his sheath?”
An unusually fine stiletto beard is on the chin of John Endicott
(here). It was distinctly a soldier’s beard. Endicott was major-general
of the colonial forces and a severe disciplinarian. Shakespere, in
_Henry V_, speaks of “a beard of the General’s cut.” It was worn by the
Earl of Southampton (see here), and perhaps Endicott favored it on that
account. The pique-devant beard or “pick-a-devant beard, O Fine
Fashion,” was much worn. A good moderate example may be seen upon
Cousin Kilvert, with doublet and band, in the print here. An extreme
type was the beard of Robert Greene, the Elizabethan dramatist, “A
jolly long red peake like the spire of a steeple, which he wore
continually, whereat a man might hang a jewell; it was so sharp and
pendent.”
Scotch Beard. Scotch Beard.
The word “peak” was constantly used for a beard, and also the words
“spike” and “spear.” A barber is represented in an old play as asking
whether his customer will “have his peak cut short and sharp; or
amiable like an inamorato, or broad pendant like a spade; to be
terrible like a warrior and a soldado; to have his appendices primed,
or his mustachios fostered to turn about his eares like ye branches of
a vine.”
A broad square-cut beard spreading at the ends like an open fan is the
“cathedral beard” of Randle Holme, “so called because grave men of the
church did wear it.” It is often seen in portraits. One of these is
shown here.
Dr. William Slater. Cathedral Beard. Dr. William Slater. Cathedral
Beard.
In the _Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas_, 1731, she writes of her
grandfather, a Turkey-merchant:—
“He was very nice in the Mode of his 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 Companion always
read to him upon some useful subject.”
So we may believe they really “starched” their beards, stiffened them
with some dressing. Taylor, the “Water Poet” (1640), says of beards:—
“Some seem as they were starched stiff and fine
Like to the Bristles of some Angry Swine.”
Dr. John Dee. 1600. Dr. John Dee. 1600.
Dr. Dee’s extraordinary beard I can but regard as an affectation of
singularity, assumed doubtless to attract attention, and to be a sign
of unusual parts. Aubrey, his friend, calls him “a very handsome man;
of very fair, clear, sanguine complexion, with a long beard as white as
milke. He was tall and slender. He wore a gowne like an artist’s gowne;
with hanging sleeves and a slitt. A mighty good man he was.” The word
“artist” then meant artisan; and in this reference means a smock like a
workman’s.
A name seen often in Winthrop’s letters is that of Sir Kenelm Digby. He
was an intimate correspondent of John Winthrop the second, and it would
not be strange if he did many errands for Winthrop in England besides
purchasing drugs. His portrait, and a lugubrious one it is, is one of
the few of his day which shows an untrimmed beard. Aubrey says of him
that after the death of his wife he wore “a long mourning cloak, a high
cornered hatt, his beard unshorn, look’t like a hermit; as signs of
sorrow for his beloved wife. He had something of the sweetness of his
mother’s face.” This sweetness is, however, not to be perceived in his
unattractive portrait.