BEARDED PATRIARCHS

Author: Middleton, Jacob
History Today February 2006 | Volume: 56 Issue: 2 | Page 26 to 27<
Copyright History Today Ltd

Jacob Middleton investigates the eccentric set of prejudices against shaving that led our Victorian forefathers to adorn their chins with a lush growth of facial hair.

In 1847 the writer William Henry Henslowe published a pamphlet warning the men of Britain of a danger they faced every day of their lives. This �efatal fashion', as he described it, was the cause of the rising rates of murder and suicide, was linked with the growing immorality of mid-Victorian Britain, and was instrumental in spreading disease. Somewhat surprisingly, this social danger was a behaviour thought innocuous by most of his contemporaries - none other than the practice of shaving.

“...with leading periodicals such as The Times often advocating the value of growing the beard”

Henslowe was not alone in his beliefs. Between the late 1840s and the middle of the 1860s a number of pamphlets and books were published warning the Victorian public about the dangers of shaving. The popularity of this literature was such that it was widely discussed in contemporary newspapers, with leading periodicals such as The Times often advocating the value of growing the beard. The reasons given for not wanting to shave varied greatly, depending on the prejudices of particular authors. One, for instance, suggested that men should not shave because it required too much time and effort, while another stated that barbers should be distrusted because few of them had risen to eminence in the world.

Many proponents of the beard put forward graver and more compelling reasons not to shave. One frequently heard argument was that shaving happened to be in some way ungodly. Man had been produced, it was said, in God's image; to shave was therefore to defile this image and to show a disturbing lack of Christian faith. The popularity of shaving was seen as being of such importance that in 1860 one opponent of the practice, writing under the name of Theologos, complained that shaving was a �ehindrance to the spread of the Gospel' and that by shaving man was �efrittering away �c God's heritage'. For the religious writers of the mid-Victorian era, the acceptance of shaving and the opening of barbers' shops on Sundays were signs that the cities of Britain were nothing other than modern Babylons.

Fuelling these complaints was a belief that the bearded man was naturally more religious than his clean-shaven counterpart, a view that may have been reinforced by the prevalence of beards amongst Jews and Orthodox Christians since - although their religious beliefs might be viewed as inferior to those of the Church of England - it was grudgingly conceded that they were often far more devout in their worship than the Anglican population of Britain. When John Nichol Tom, claiming to be the Messiah, led a failed rebellion of the Kentish peasantry in 1838, some of his followers admitted that his luxuriant beard was evidence of divine blessing.

While religious arguments in favour of the beard might attract some, other writers appealed to the reasonableness and common sense of the reader - the nineteenth century, after all, was perceived as an age of reason. They stressed the benefits to health that stemmed from growing a beard, arguing that shaving endangered the lives of men and threatened their respiratory organs in particular. In a period when tuberculosis was a common killer, when most major cities were blanketed with smog each winter, the lungs were seen as especially vulnerable, to be protected at all costs. Proponents of the beard argued that a thick moustache would act as a �enatural respirator' that filtered the air and protected the wearer from harm. Similarly, the beard kept the neck warm. Shaving would expose it to the elements, causing bronchitis and a hoarseness of speech dubbed �eclergyman's throat'. More extreme arguments in favour of the beard even suggested that shaving was a cause of facial cancers and blindness.

Absurd as such suggestions might seem to the modern reader, they were credible in an age when comparatively little was understood about the causes of disease. Moreover, not all the suggestions that were made by the opponents of shaving were necessarily unreasonable. One author, writing as Xerxes, suggested in a work entitled The Folly and Evil of Shaving that diseases might be introduced into the human body when men cut themselves shaving. The belief that there were inherent hazards in using the razor was not entirely irrational.

The opponents of shaving, therefore, sought to portray the practice as irrational, unnatural and dangerous, preserved only by the fashions of the day. Many of them were pessimistic about returning the beard to the kind of popularity enjoyed in the distant past, but fashion is notoriously fickle. Whilst Xerxes, Theologos and their like were lamenting the lack of facial hair to be found on contemporary men, beards and, in particular, moustaches were coming back into favour. The newspapers of the day observed the �emoustache movement', as it was called, with some amusement. Employers at first opposed it, believing that bearded workers did not project the correct public image. A number of railway companies refused to employ bearded clerks and it was even said that the Bank of England enacted regulations prohibiting its clerks from wearing moustaches �eduring office hours'.

Despite such opposition, the fashion for facial hair proved to be no short-term phenomenon. By the end of the Victorian age the majority of men were sporting beards, moustaches and side-whiskers of every kind of description. Even after the beard's decline in the Edwardian era, the moustache was to retain its popularity throughout the early part of the twentieth century, as American sociologist Dwight Robinson's survey of male images through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries makes clear. The anti-shaving literature of the mid-1800s therefore coincided with a genuine upsurge in the acceptance of the beard.

Both the complaints about the dangers of shaving and the increase in beards tell us something about popular mid-Victorian culture. The idea that men should not shave was connected closely with contemporary ideas about the nature of masculinity. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had been periods of massive urbanization and changing work patterns. The literate population to whom the pamphlets on beards were aimed was the urban middle class, the first generation of office workers. While the muscular labourer, working in the open air, was still held up as an epitome of manliness, this was an ideal that few middle-class men could aspire to. Another means was required of representing masculinity, and the beard proved to be a convenient symbol.

The anti-shaving pamphleteers appealed to their audience because they suggested a way in which all men might display their masculinity, regardless of class or profession. The egalitarian nature of this fashion was even the basis of a play, The Moustache Movement (published by Robert Brough in 1884), the plot of which revolved around the �ehumorous' contention that all men with moustaches looked alike. As one character says in the play, �enow all classes have left off shaving there's no telling a duke from a dustman.'

The opponents of shaving compounded this belief by suggesting that there was something effeminate about shaving. Clean-shaven men, they claimed, were �ederanged' by their experiences and became timid and bashful. Some beard enthusiasts even suggested that this was a trait common to all mammals, and enterprising scientists shaved quadrupeds and recorded their reactions, noting that they were �edisturbed' by the experience.

The idea that men without beards were effeminate was taken as evidence that facial hair marked a firm dividing line between the sexes and their roles in society. That women lacked the natural respirator of the beard was additional proof of the weakness of the sex, which made it inconceivable for them to lead independent lives outside the home. Arguments in favour of bearded men often concealed conservative views of how society should be organized, frequently related to imperial anxieties. The fact that the administrators and soldiers of the British empire were heavily outnumbered by their colonial subjects helped to feed the myth of the superior British male, whose moral strength and physical courage was responsible for maintaining the empire. This myth, however, fared poorly when compared with the realities of nineteenth-century Britain, and many would-be imperialists feared that dissolute urban living and a lack of moral values endangered British superiority.

The proponents of the beard looked back to history to find support for the idea that growing facial hair would inspire men with the values required by imperial Britain. It was claimed that the bearded Anglo-Saxons were fine examples of masculinity, men who loved freedom and liberty, while the shaven Normans were cowardly and morally dissolute. One writer, Artium Magister, even suggested that the destruction of the Roman empire was a direct result of shaving, a habit that had created an effeminate population, unable to defend themselves from the manly, bearded barbarians.

The fear that British men were becoming effeminate and unable to defend the imperial interest was a typical anxiety of mid-Victorian Britain. Although growing a beard might not be an effective response to this fear, it was something that every man could attempt. It could similarly be employed as a solution to many other concerns, such as a remedy for the perceived irreligious nature of Britain, or a protection against the air pollution of an industrializing nation. Many of these claims were ludicrous and contemporary observers pointed out that they had no more evidence to support them than did the prejudices of their proponents. Despite this, anti-shaving literature remained popular for more than twenty years, providing as it did a simple and elegant solution to many difficult problems of the day. It was, moreover, a solution that any man could adopt if he wished to change society for the better. As one anonymous writer noted in the 1880s, few people �ehave not felt the offence of the razor, but in the matter of beards it is never too late to mend'.

About the Author:
Jacob Middleton is a civil servant working in London.