Etiquette of Wartime Beards

Twenty-five years ago, the fashion of shaving was so tyrannical and bigoted that the Englishman who wore a beard was looked upon as revolutionary in politics and heretical in faith. Archbishop Tait, a most liberal prelate, when Bishop of London, forbade a clergyman of the highest character to read prayers in his own church on the occasion of a confirmation, because he let the hair grow on his upper lip. – Above, an 1891 patent for a mustache spoon. These types of spoons supposedly helped keep soups off of the popular Gilded Age beards, too.

It is reported that a recent order allows the British soldier to do as he pleases about shaving. He can now suffer a natural growth to conceal the least shapely part of his face and protect important organs of life. The permission marks the highest reach of the beard movement in England.

Yet twenty-five years ago, the fashion of shaving was so tyrannical and bigoted that the Englishman who wore a beard was looked upon as revolutionary in politics and heretical in faith. Archbishop Tait, a most liberal prelate, when Bishop of London, forbade a clergyman of the highest character to read prayers in his own church on the occasion of a confirmation, because he let the hair grow on his upper lip.

Lord Chief Justice Bruce refused to hear a bearded young lawyer, who attempted to address him. Merchants forbade beards to their clerks. A London bank issued an edict that “Gentlemen were not to wear beards or mustaches during office-hours.” Congregations refused to hear the sermons of ministers who appeared as, doubtless, the Master did, with their faces. unshorn of their natural growth of hair.

Even in the United States, the beard-movement encountered fierce and foolish opposition. The late Dr. Hopkins, of Vermont, was one of the few clergymen who dared to go unshorn. When he was elected a Bishop of the Episcopal Church, many hints were given him that he should shave and thus show proper respect for the sacred office. He declined to follow the suggestion, and now a score of members of the House of Bishops wear their beards.

Men may not match women in the extravagance of their devotion to fashion, but, certainly, no brother has the right to cast a stone at his sister, seeing that the history of the beard records so many illustrations of male folly. She may be guilty of tight-lacing and thereby suffer from ill-health and a disfigured form. But he, if he shaves, exposes himself to throat diseases and possibly the weakest and most unsightly part of his face to public view, and that, too, against the efforts of nature to protect and hide it. — Daily Telegraph, 1914

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