The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1923-01-05
BEARD IN HISTORY
At Times Fashionable and Again
Severely Frowned On.
Public Opinion as to the DesirabiIIty
Of the Facial Appendaoe Changes
Without Seeming Reason.

The prophets of fashion In England
announce that boards are to be worn
once more. Upon what signs and
tokens the prediction is founded does
not appear. 1t is hardly to be COP
tended that the beard has become a
more common object, or that In social
intercourse new interest In boards
Is to be observed, but one must not
discredit prophets. What the impulse
is which inspires one century with
desire for boards Is as much mystery
as that craving for the razor which
marks another. No man knows why
boards grew again In Victorian Eng
land after two hundred years of shaw
ing. It is easy to say that King Ed
ward VII set the fashion, but that
only puts the difficulty in another
manner. We cannot tell why the
prince Of Wales of Queen victoria's
reign should have chosen to wear
what no king had worn since Charles
l. But the changes Of fashion have
been many, even in England, observes
Henri Pickard In the Cincinnati En-
quirer. According to the Bayeaux
tapestry, Edward the Confessor had
beard, but not Harold The Normans
who came to England with the Con-
queror were clean-shaven. but it was
new fashion In Normandy. Though
vehement prelate called bearded men
"flthy goats and bristlyp Saracens,
there was for four hundred years no
dominant fashion In England. Mus
taches boards. and shaven faces were
all to be found. Henry v made shaw
ing the rule until boards came In again
with Henry VIII. But. lest any man
Is alarmed by that precedent, 1t must
be said that the first defender Of the
faith was only following European
fashion sanctioned by Pope Julius II
and the Emperor Charles v.
The Elizabethans were bearded. and
very deliberately, for they cut their
boards to all manner of shapes, per
fumed them. dyed them, starched
them, powdered them. Under the first
Stuarts the beard became chin tuft.
BY the beginning of the Eighteenth
century every man was clean shaved.
At the end of 1t mustaches and whisk-
ers were coming in again. At first
these decorations were military.
Every Englishman. remembers how
Give Newcombe, who was only a
painter, amused the marquis of Farm
tosh by wearing mustaches. In the
middle of the century Dickens went
abroad cleanly-shaven and grew HIM,
self pair. "They are Beautiful, beau|
tiful," he wrote. without them, life
would be blank" George w shaved
clean. In the year 1910 George Fred
erick Muntz, who. to be sure. was
desperate radical, brought huge
black beard" into the house of COM
mons, where such thing had not
been seen for two centuries, and timid
folk expected the immediate end of all
things The prince consOrt let hair
grow on his face. and whiskers became
longer and longer: but even in 1857
people thought it desperately bold of
Livingstone to "brave the prejudices
of his countrymen" wearing a mus
tache, and within the last 40 years
a bishop was blamed for wearing a
heard. Who knows what the next
turn Of fashion may be? Until the
war 1t seemed that the clean-shaven
face was likely to become the rule
once more. The wars crop of mus
taches still fiourishes and anything
may happen next-even a new Dun
droarv