THE BEARD

Men'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."

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.

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."

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.

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. 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.