Castle Aching

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

38 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I got beards out of my system in my late teens/early twenties, when I had a whopper, bushy black one that may or may not have been inspired by reading a certain C19th political philosopher ....... even pre-teen I couldn’t keep it at bay, and learned reflexive verbs by having my German teacher repeatedly ask in sarcastic tone “Rasierst du dich?” and having to reply “Nein, ich rasierer mich nicht.”.

Son now has an emerging black ‘tache at just the same age, so he’ll doubtless get the same in French!

 

The Germans have had unfortunate experiences with leaders with distinctive moustaches - first the Kaiser then that Hitler chap.  

[ChrisN]

I have no ability to grow a beard.  Most of the hair on my face is still thin and colourless, but there is enough of the real stuff to be itchy if I do not shave for more than two days.  I once decided to grow a moustache just to see what it looked like, and to see if it was possible.  After six weeks there was this black smudge either side of my top lip, except that on the left there was a gap where no hair grew at all.  I gave up and shaved it off,

[Hroth]

2 hours ago, jcredfer said:

He gave up because of the continual faff, trimming, combing etc.

 

15 minutes a fortnight shaping with a pair of scissors and a flick through with a comb in the morning do not a faff make!  And the bits of food/itchiness argument evaporates with the morning shower.

 

HO! for the life of a barbarian!!!

[jcredfer]

2 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

15 minutes a fortnight shaping with a pair of scissors and a flick through with a comb in the morning do not a faff make!  And the bits of food/itchiness argument evaporates with the morning shower.

 

HO! for the life of a barbarian!!!

 

Bl**dy thing just kept growing, all over the place and I had to keep trimming it to avoid looking like something that had consumed too many illicit substances, over many years.  I am a school governor and there are {well, were, until recently} too many tender minds around for me to frighten with such wild unkempt looks.   

 

Julian

 

[uax6]

I've had a beard for the best part of 22 years. I found shaving a real pain, as I have a jaw with 90* corners on it, and I was forever cutting myself open.

My beard routine is a complex affair, I get a beard trimmer with a number 1 comby thing on it, and shave it about once every 5 weeks (Well when the hairs in the corner of my mouth get to the stage where I can feel them with my lips). Other than a wash with a flannel everyday, that's it.

 

The present Mrs Uax hasn't seen me without the beard, but the thing that worries me more is the long hair (which she has also never seen me without) has thinned so much on top, that I've now got to make a decision on when it gets cut and what style to then have. The long hair is great, one haircut a year, I'm fearing short hair is going to be a major maintenance thing....

 

Andy G

[Compound2632]

I recommend a close study of A.E. Overton and R.F.Burrows, The Functions and Organisation of the Midland Railway Engineer's Department (Midland Railway Society, 2015), which should be subtitled The History and Development of Pre-Grouping Facial Hair. Lavishly illustrated with portraits of senior officers of the Engineering Department, it charts the decline of the beard, starting from the luxuriant high-Victorian growths of worthies as Sir James Allport, through the clean-shaven chins but prominent moustaches of the early Edwardians to the rather spivvy clean-shaven brylcreamed look of Guy Granet.

[TT-Pete]

3 hours ago, uax6 said:

(Well when the hairs in the corner of my mouth get to the stage where I can feel them with my lips)

 

Hah! Ditto!! :^)

 

Two years ago I went into hospital for a week and didn't shave, on coming out Madame said she liked it and convinced me to keep it. Last trim I gave it was before a job interview 3 weeks ago (it seems I would have got it if it hadn't been for the current situation...) can't see myself doing that again for a while (either trim or interview)...

[brianusa]

For years between the wars, beards were largely forgotten due to the services dislike of facial hair and the time spent to keep them trimmed.  In these more leisurely times , men of a certain age group seem to think its a good idea but can't be bothered to shave as often as necessary which results in dark stubble on every chin; which looks as though they can't be bothered to shave!  No doubt it is thought to be cool!

     Brian.

[Hroth]

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

... to the rather spivvy clean-shaven brylcreamed look of Guy Granet.

 

Just googled him, he looks more like one of the more disreputable dance band crooners!

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Granet

 

Evidently he started out as a barrister....

 

 

 

 

 

[Andy Hayter]

38 minutes ago, brianusa said:

For years between the wars, beards were largely forgotten due to the services dislike of facial hair and the time spent to keep them trimmed.  In these more leisurely times , men of a certain age group seem to think its a good idea but can't be bothered to shave as often as necessary which results in dark stubble on every chin; which looks as though they can't be bothered to shave!  No doubt it is thought to be cool!

     Brian.

Wasn't the military problem with facial hair, that the then rudimentary gas masks were prone to even greater failure?

 

 

[jcredfer]

15 minutes ago, Andy Hayter said:

Wasn't the military problem with facial hair, that the then rudimentary gas masks were prone to even greater failure?

 

 

 

Yes, one of several reasons for clean shaved faces.  Others included, prevention of  suitable lodgings for undesirable critters, bacteria and viruses lodging in the beard, from the filth that can surround soldiers at war.

 

Julian

[Regularity]

46 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

Just googled him, he looks more like one of the more disreputable dance band crooners!

 

Looks more like a hard-nosed bouncer!

Quote

Evidently he started out as a barrister....

Ah. I rest my case...

[Hroth]

3 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Ah. I rest my case...

 

I was trying not to make too much of that, in deference to our Genial Host... 

 

[Regularity]

Just now, Hroth said:

 

I was trying not to make too much of that, in deference to our Genial Host... 

 

I, on the other hand, have no such qualms...

 

[Clearwater]

I shaved yesterday for the first time in a week.  Clearwater Minor, 4, put his hands on my face and asked “Daddy, where’s the tickly stuff on your face gone?”

[CKPR]

1 hour ago, jcredfer said:

 

Yes, one of several reasons for clean shaved faces.  Others included, prevention of  suitable lodgings for undesirable critters, bacteria and viruses lodging in the beard, from the filth that can surround soldiers at war.

 

Julian

I seem to recall reading that whilst beards were out, moustaches were actually mandatory in the British Army before the Great War.

 

[Edwardian]

There's a book to be written; The Rise and Fall of the British Beard. I daresay someone has done just that.

 

It struck me that the beard-thing, while becoming almost total, was confined largely to the second half of the Nineteenth Century. The beard is noticeable by its absence in the Age of Enlightenment, and I would say that they don't really seem to get going until the 1850s. Perhaps Peak Beard, like Peak Bustle, is acheived in the 1880s. 

 

Turning to the army, depictions of British officers on campaign in the Victorian era often show them allowing beards to grow extensively.  Contrast contemporary illustrations of Chard, Bromhead and Dalton at Rorke's drift with the clean-shaven Baker and Caine. In contrast, we were told to shave daily on exercise so that our gas mask fit would not be compromised, although I'm sure it was as much to do with the fact that RSM's must have everything neat and tidy, and facial hair seems to be a privilege of the semi-feral 'special forces' these days.

 

By the Naughty Nineties, when a certain PG Wodehouse was a young blood about Town, among the monde of the Strand, doubtless both the beau and the demi, I have read that the only clean shaven male faces to be seen were those of actors and barristers (a distinction without a difference, perhaps).  Yet, as has been mentioned, the end of the beard was nigh, with the fashion very much clean-shaven for the Edwardians.

 

Yes, there are exceptions - monarchs and naval officers and so forth - and odd moments of trendiness among the trendy - cool cats and hipsters - but nothing like that 50-year ascendancy of the beard under Victoria has been seen since.  

 

It remains only for me to tender today's Beard of the Day, James Robertson Justice (here as Sir Lancelot Spratt) ...

 

 

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, Edwardian said:

There's a book to be written; The Rise and Fall of the British Beard. I daresay someone has done just that.

 

Vide supra, Overton & Burrows.

 

2 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Perhaps Peak Beard, like Peak Bustle, is achieved in the 1880s. 

 

Coterminous with the Gothic Revival.

 

 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

2 hours ago, Edwardian said:

It struck me that the beard-thing, while becoming almost total, was confined largely to the second half of the Nineteenth Century. The beard is noticeable by its absence in the Age of Enlightenment, and I would say that they don't really seem to get going until the 1850s. Perhaps Peak Beard, like Peak Bustle, is acheived in the 1880s. 

 

 

I could be wrong but I suspect that was down to the fashion of wearing wigs which began in the Restoration period and continued in various forms through to the end of the Georgian period. The problem with wearing a wig was that it, or your beard, would have to be the same colour wouldn't they, unless you adopted a false beard as did the Pharaohs. 

 

Plus as one had to keep one's own hair short or shaven in order to wear a wig in comfort then it would be easier to regularly shave one's beard. The preceding Tudor and early Jacobean periods were noted for their beard styles - the Van Dyke for instance. Beards in the medieval period and earlier seem to have been worn as a person chose rather than as a fashion although some monarchs like Henry V were clean shaven as was Richard III. But again that may have been a result of having to wear chain mail or armour which could catch on a beard.

 

But there is also the question of shaving in itself, until suitably sharp steel blades could be produced shaving was actually achieved by plucking rather than by what we recognise as a razor. So lot's of factors both utilitarian and fashionable are in play.

[Joseph_Pestell]

16 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

 

The problem with wearing a wig was that it, or your beard, would have to be the same colour wouldn't they, unless you adopted a false beard as did the Pharaohs. 

 

 

 

My real beard (at first ginger, latterly grey/white) has never been the same colour as my real head hair (brown). So why would a wig need to match?

[Hroth]

30 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

But there is also the question of shaving in itself, until suitably sharp steel blades could be produced shaving was actually achieved by plucking rather than by what we recognise as a razor.

 

Shaving with a cutting edge dates back a long time.  Prehistoric man is alleged to have used  flints (claimed to have been the first disposable razor), Egyptians used pumice, depiliatory creams or tweezers, later cultures used bronze razors.  From the Iron Age, iron razors became common.  Those cleanly shaven Romans certainly had them!  Eventually we got steel-bladed razors.

 

The rest is down to the vagaries of fashion!

 

( more: https://moderngent.com/history-of-shaving/ but finer details may possibly taken with a pinch of salt?)

 

Edited April 2, 2020 by Hroth
spelin...

[Buhar]

Wigs were surely the preserve of the upper class, what about the workers who couldn't pluck? The Romans shaved so anyway suitable blades were available before steel was developed. See above. 

Alan 

Edited April 2, 2020 by Buhar
Pace Hroth

[Buhar]

Skimming some Hogarths the eighteenth century is almost beard free. I spotted one elderly bystander with a full beard.

 

Is Prince Albert responsible for the Victorian hirsutisness?

 

Alan 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

41 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

My real beard (at first ginger, latterly grey/white) has never been the same colour as my real head hair (brown). So why would a wig need to match?

 

However where in images from the period do we see people with fashionable wigs and also beards - they are usually clean shaven. So I rest my case.

[Compound2632]

29 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

Eventually we got steel-bladed razors.

 

 

British technology clearly led the field here. Joseph Haydn's string quartet Op. 55 No. 2 of 1789 has the nickname Razor - the story being that Haydn joked to his English publisher, John Bland, who was visiting Eszterhaza, that he would give his best quartet in exchange for an English razor. (As usual, there's some confusion here: Bland was the publisher of the English edition of the Op. 64 quartets, not Op. 55 - along the same lines as the Miracle symphony being so named because a chandelier fell from the ceiling without injuring anyone during a performance of a different symphony.)