Beards and no beards / by J. Cuthbert Hadden ; illustrated by Joseph Grego.

  • Hadden, J. Cuthbert (James Cuthbert), 1861-1914
Date:
1892?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Beards and no beards / by J. Cuthbert Hadden ; illustrated by Joseph Grego. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    listening- to an extempore discourse from the words, “Tarry at Jericho till your beards be grown.” Not so many years ago some one issued a rhyming dissertation in which we are told that Moses com¬ manded the oppressed of Pharaoh to wear the beard, and so displaced the razors of Egypt. So far as I know Moses never lifted his lip against the razors of Egypt, but there is something very like an injunc¬ tion to wear the beard and to wear it long in Leviticus— “ Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.” It will be remembered how Sir Roger de Coverley, wanted to know “ whether our forefathers did not look much wiser in their beards than we do without them,” and declared how he loved “ to see your Abrahams, your Isaacs and your Jacobs, as we have them in the old pieces of tapestry, with beards below their girdles, that cover half the hangings.” Likely enough the Theodore Beza, Theologian, John Calvin, Theologian, died 1605. died 1564. old patriarchs really rejoiced in an unusual length of beard, but whether the artists are right in carrying the hirsute appendage below the girdle is another matter. The ancient Jews considered it the greatest insult that could be offered to a man to pluck his beard, which may account in part for the wonderful state of preserva¬ tion that tradition has connected with the beard of the old-world male. ~ It was a notion of the Mohammedans that though Noah reached his thousandth birthday no hair of his blessed beard fell off or became white ; but the Mohammedans had no more authority for that than for their belief that the devil has but one solitary long hair for a beard. It was, as some say, in order to distinguish themselves from the ancient Israelites that the followers of Mohammed cropped the beard ; but Mohammed, as we know, sanctioned the dyeing of the beard, and preferred a cane colour, because that was the traditional hue of Abraham’s beard. More than that, have we not the common Moham¬ 29 medan oath, “By the beard of the Prophet,” as well as the supplication, “ By your beard, or the life of your beard.” And then look at the veneration paid in Asia to even a single hair of the beard of Mohammed. This precious relic is en¬ shrined in a monument erected especially Archbishop Cranmer, died 1556. [The dotted line below describes the length of John Knox’s beard.] F. Morus, Theologian, died 1592. Also Titian and Corregio. for it in 1135, five hundred years after the prophet’s death. Where it had reposed during the long interval is as great a mystery as that connected with the Holy Coat of Treves. But at any rate, there it is now, a precious “ heir ’’-loom, kept in a box of gold and crystal, in which small holes have been bored for the purpose of admitting water to float the blessed hair, which is done at an annual festival when the faithful from all parts are gathered together. There is no human feature that has been more the subject of the changing humours of fashion than the beard, and the his¬ torian would assuredly have his work cut out for him—occasionally in a double sense—who should seek to follow its vagaries down the ages. The early Captain John Smith, Admiral of New England, died 1631. fathers of the Church of course approved of it, and most of them wore it. Father Clement of Alexandria has it that “nature adorned man like the lion with a beard as the index of strength and empire ; ” and an early Council enacted that “ a clergy¬ man shall not cherish his hair nor shave his beard.” St. Augustine is figured with a beard, when he comes to make Christians of our ancestors in the sixth century. But men were not long in beginning to be proud of their fine beards, and pride in a