Off The Record
A new beard gets Alan Crosby thinking about our forebears’ facial adornments
Why beards were a status symbol for our Victorian kin
Last summer I changed my appearance. I grew a beard. The reactions were mixed: words like ‘suave’, ‘distinguished’ and ‘fetching’ were occasionally used, mostly by me, while my daughter (for example) simply said “Oh my God” when she saw it. The main problem is that – how do I put this – the colour tends towards the paler end of the spectrum. It’s an age thing, and there’s not much I can do about it – apart from to resume the inexpressible tedium of daily shaving, of course.
So, what about my male forebears? My mother’s father was steadfastly clean-shaven, but quite a few of the men of the family opted for a moustache. Some, like great grandfather John, had a neat and restrained one, but great grandfather Alexander had a soup-strainer that bristled alarmingly from his rather crumpled face (at least in the only photograph of him that we have). My other grandfather had a rather wispy and feeble effort, at least as a young
‘It seems as if hirsuteness was a powerful force’
man, but then he removed it, possibly to facilitate a disguise since he was on the run from the authorities in three countries!
My wife’s family album features some fairly robust examples, including a thick and droopy snow-white moustache on her great grandfather, and a rather dashing dark goatee on another great grandfather.
But in all our albums of Victorian and Edwardian photographs, nothing compares to the awesome and spectacular facial hair sported by the famous poets and artists, celebrated politicians, bestselling novelists and sober professional men of later 19thcentury Britain. Dramatically long beards, some with partings or complex structures; immense sideburns concealing most of the face and sometimes meeting as a formidable walrus moustache; and waving tresses, hiding the collar and cascading beneath the hat… these visual sensations seem to have been obligatory for anybody who was anybody.
However, the trend had changed by the 1920s when short, rigidly controlled hair was obligatory, preferably oiled and slicked back until it shone. A pencil moustache was sometimes worn, if you didn’t mind being taken for a lounge lizard or gigolo (‘foreigners’ wore them, so were immediately suspect). Beards were, most oddly, regarded as effeminate – the fact that DH Lawrence had one marked him out as a dodgy Bohemian of very doubtful morals. The only exceptions were, equally oddly, sailors and especially naval men, who were positively encouraged to have beards. It was therefore OK for George V to be bearded, but absolutely impossible for the Prince of Wales.
Going back to those eminent Victorians, it seems as if competitive hirsuteness was a powerful force among men in the upper realms of society. The longer and more weird the beard, the greater the status of the man in question (a primitive instinct, no doubt, but plausible). Perhaps there was another logic – working men did not have long hair, because it got in the way and, during the operation of machinery for example, was a genuine danger. The same was true of long and luxuriant beards and sideburns. Those who worked by brain, not brawn, and those so leisured that they did not work at all, could grow their facial fuzz as long as they liked,
Books on the social history of Victorian Britain usually have plenty of photographs of men such as Tennyson, Gladstone, Darwin and Disraeli, sporting lush locks or mighty beards – or both. A favourite of mine is the 14th Earl of Derby, prime minster three times: he appears to have a gigantic ruff beneath his chin, as though to keep his neck warm. None of my ancestors got anywhere near such heights of creativity. But what about you, dear readers? Is there anybody dramatically hirsute in your albums?