Beards, Snuff and the English Bar.

1895

Forty years ago an Old Bailey practitioner who wore a beard was summoned to attend a meeting of the bar and charged with "violating the honorable traditions of the profession." He sought acquittal on the ground that a serious affection of the throat compelled his transgression of the unwritten ordinances of the bar, but his judges declined to accept his defense and sent him to Coventry. Times, The Law Journal, points out, have changed now. "Half of the ordinary members of the court of appeals now wear beards, Lord Justice Lopes, Lord Justice Rigby and now Lord Justice Kay having departed from the traditions of the bench. The only other judges who wear beards are Lord Watson and Sir Francis Jeune."

Another terrible instance of departure from ancient precedent was deplored last night by the lord chief justice in his amusing speech to the Hardwicke society. The "eminently judicial" habit of taking snuff was, he regretted to say, falling into almost complete desuetude. He remembered Sir James Bacon telling him on one occasion that when he was a junior there was not a single man in the court, from the judge on the bench to the usher, who did not carry a snuffbox, and he ended by saying, "Here I am, the only man left with a snuffbox." And now the only man left is the chief himself, but all that one man can do he does. — Westminster Gazette.

Bench, Bar and Beard

1895

The regulations for shaving observed in the bench and bar probably come down from Roman times, and the history of the custom among that people is a curious one. Pliny says that beards were universally cultivated as a matter of course till about 300 B. C., when Sicilian barbers, who probably acquired their art from Greece, first came to Rome, and Scipio Africanus set the fashion of shaving every day. Thenceforward it became so much the vogue in good society that the term barbaus, outlandish, was long supposed to mean bearded, in allusion to the unkempt hair of uncivilized nations. Increased accuracy in etymology has shown the real meaning to be akin to balbus, stammering, in allusion to their uncouth speech.

For three centuries barbers had it all their own way in Roman circles. Then came the Emperor Hadrian, who, as Plutarch affirms, grew his beard to hide some ugly scars, and forthwith it became the mode. Lawyers and priests, even more conservative in their observances than other folks, continued to shave; hence, it is supposed, came the traditional practice of the English bar, through the law courts of Italy and France. — Good Words.

A Beard Twelve Feet Long

1895

In 1882 Adam Kirpin, a German 66 years old, at that time residing in Chicago, claimed to be the owner of the longest growth of whiskers. He was a large man, nearly 6 feet in height, and had a beard more than twice the length of his body. Kirpin's beard had been growing steadily for 22 years.


To Battle

Explain it as we may, a martial strain will urge a man into the front rank of battle sooner than an argument and a fine anthem excite his devotion more certainly than a logical discourse.


Wheat

One or another variety of wheat is found in almost every climate and country on the earth.

He Never "Collars Down"

1915

One of the proudest boasts of "Cyclone" J. H. Davis, the Congressman from Texas in the new House, now in session, is that he has "never collared down to anybody." As a matter of fact, "Cyclone" Davis doesn't allow anything to graze his neck but his flowing beard, the largest yet seen in the halls of Congress.

—Saturday Blade, Chicago, Dec. 18, 1915, p. 11.

Wood for Resisting Fires

1896

A report from Consul Robertson on the free port system of Hamburg, just published by the State Department, contains the curious item of information that in the great new warehouses constructed in the German port wood is being substituted for iron to secure better protection against fire.

These buildings were originally provided with iron beams and girders, but when one of them was burned some years ago it was found that the iron had been so bent and twisted by the heat as to become a source of great danger to the adjoining structures. "In all the warehouses, therefore, which have since been built," observes Mr. Robertson, "it has been deemed advisable to substitute wood for iron as much as possible." Probably a heavy wooden beam, imbedded in some non-conducting material that would exclude the air, would be as nearly fireproof as anything except brick or stone. It might be charred on the outside, but the interior would probably remain sound in any ordinary heat.

It is a curious speculation to imagine what would have happened if the present method of construction in Chicago had been in vogue before the great fire. A twenty-five-story, steel-cage building warping into a corkscrew and boring a hole in the sky would be a spectacle worth going miles to see.


Derivation of Whiskers

The word whiskers is derived from whisk, and the Anglo-Saxon wisch, which means a slight brush. Less than a century ago the expression was unheard of, the whiskers as well as the mustache being spoken of as part of the beard. It was only when the latter was divided, and the true whiskers disappeared as well, that their name was changed to the mutton chop part of the beard left on the cheek.

Full Beards and Red Petticoats

1886

People who can remember back of the civil war must know that shaving was almost universal in those days, and that when the contrary practice began it so agitated the country that the newspapers were filled with leading articles on "The Beard Movement" and "The Mustache Movement."

Probably most of our older readers can remember when they first saw a preacher in the pulpit wearing a mustache and the shock it gave them. It was, if possible worse than the other sacrilegious act of bringing fiddles into the choir.

The event which started the beard movement was the visit of the wonderful Hungarian orator, Louis Kossuth, who was extremely handsome and picturesque in the full beard and mustache and soft felt hat with curling feather. He introduced the soft hat as well as the mustache, and as he traveled all over the country in 1854 and 1855 and spoke every where to great crowds whom he powerfully impressed with the masterly English which he had learned from the Bible, Shakespeare, and Webster's dictionary while he lay in an Austrian prison he advertised both his hat and his hair very widely. It would seem rather trivial nowadays for the newspapers to gravely discuss the "beard movement," but that was not the most trivial matter with which the newspapers of thirty years ago busied themselves.

Prominent among their themes shortly before the war was "the Red Petticoat Movement." It became the sensible fashion for women to wear red flannel petticoats instead of the white cotton one which had been the universal wear before. This was an innovation that worried the newspapers seriously. Many of them held the red garment to be, if not actually immodest, at least bold and daunting, and a symbol of the degeneracy of the age. Charles Mackay, then visiting in the country, published an earnest poetical appeal for "the white, the modest petticoat," which went the round of the press. — Buffalo Express.


1858

The Red Petticoat and the White

Charles Mackay sends the following lines, on an absorbing subject, to the public press:

Oh, the red, the flaunting petticoat,
That courts the eye of day,
That loves to flare and be admired,
And blinks from far away;
It may delight the roving sight,
And charm the fancy free,
But if its bearer's half as bold,
I'll pass and let her be;—
With her red, her flaunting petticoat,
She's not the girl for me!

But the white, the modest petticoat,
As pure as drifted snow,
That shuns the gaze in crowded ways,
Where follies come and go.
It stirs the primrose on its path,
Or daisy on the lea;
And if the bearer's like the garb,
How beautiful is she!
With her white, her modest petticoat,
Oh, she's the girl for me!

His Facial Foliage Given a Trim and Wrapped

1916

Its Fate When Living Up to Its Dignity Was Suggested

There is a comic artist on a New York paper who used to drink a little too much and a little too often. Also he wore a heavy brown beard of which he was very proud.

One morning he came to the office, showing signs of indiscretions the night before. His managing editor endeavored to appeal to his better judgment.

"Old man," he said seriously, "you're too old and too smart to be doing this sort of thing. It might be all right for a lot of smooth faced kids to spend the night over a bar, but you ought to remember that you're no longer a kid. You ought to try to live up to the dignity of that beard of yours."

This last suggestion seemed to throw the culprit into a brown study. He retired to his corner of the art room to think it over. In a few minutes he put on his hat and coat and slipped out, and he didn't come back for two weeks either. But within an hour after his departure the managing editor heard from him. A messenger boy brought in a pasteboard box such as florists use to pack flowers in. The managing editor cut the wrappings and opened the box.

There was nothing inside except a heavy brown beard, which had been newly sheared off the owner's face, with one lone rosebud reposing in the center of it — Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post.

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 3.