The ancients were so proud of their curls and flowing locks, the physical beauty of manhood, and the charms of their female deities, earthly and celestial, that, for the sake of antithesis it may be, they hurled their sarcasms and their sneers with a savage vengeance or ignoble pity upon their bald-pated victims in a style which modern politeness declines to imitate. It is surprising that Cæsar should have shown such sensitiveness about his baldness as to have sought permission of the Senate to wear his laurel crown at pleasure. The privilege was granted, and the laurels shaded the bald pate. Fortunately women are so very rarely bald that we may consider them exempt from this infliction. Apuleius, in his Melesiacs, says, that Venus herself, if she were bald, though surrounded by the Graces and the Loves, could not be pleasing even to her husband, Vulcan. Herodotus remarked that few Egyptians were bald; and eunuchs, who have much subcutaneous fat about the scalp, are free from baldness. It may be some consolation to bachelors to know, that according to Pliny man in a state of single blessedness is never bald. Caligula and Nero are numbered among the bald, and kings have been honored with the title. Baldness has even found panegyrists. Synesius, bishop of Syrene, in the fifteenth century, wrote in praise of it; and Hucbald, a Benedictine monk, made it the subject of a curious poem, which he very appropriately dedicated to Charles the Bald. But these perverse eulogists were ecclesiastics who reckoned the beauty of the hair and its enticements part of the vanities of this wicked world it would be well to get rid of. Happily the hair escaped their treacherous shears. It is possible, however, to have too much of a good thing; and the excessive growth of hair where least wanted is numbered among the ills which flesh is heir to. No one in these days would think the King of Persia’s porter, seen by Tavernier, deserved a double pension because he could tie his moustaches behind his neck; for something very like this may be seen any afternoon in Hyde Park; there is a fashion in such things, and Nature is by no means niggardly in her gifts to man. But what is meant by an extraneous growth of hair is very different from this, and by no means ornamental. We allude to cases where the whole body has been covered by a growth of long hair. Some miserable Fakirs, in India, have been seen clothed with hair several inches long. About 1650, a hairy child was shown as a sight, and the strange phenomenon is thus accounted for in an old play:
“’Tis thought the hairy child that’s shewn about,
Came by the mother’s thinking on the picture
Of St. John Baptist in his camel’s coat.”
But the most frightful instances are those of bearded women. “I like not when a ’oman has a great peard,” says Sir Hugh; and the old naturalists are at some pains to assure us that woman is not barbigerous, for which a very sufficient reason has been given:
“Nature, regardful of the babbling race,
Planted no beard upon a woman’s face;
Not MAPPIN’S razors, though the very best,
Could shave a chin which never is at rest.”
One of the best known examples of this repulsive class, (Trifaldi, the afflicted Duenna not excepted), is that of Barbara Urselin, born at Augsburg, and shown in Ratcliffe Highway, in 1668; her portrait may be seen in Granger’s Biography, and Evelyn takes note of her in his Journal. Her face and hands were all over hairy, the hair on her forehead and eyebrows combed upwards, she had a long spreading beard, the hair of which hung loose and flowing like the hair of the head. A fellow of the name of Van Beck married the frightful creature to carry about as a show. Charles XII. had in his army a female grenadier, who had both the beard and the courage of a man. She was taken prisoner at the battle of Pultowa, and carried to St. Petersburg, where she was presented to the Czar; her beard measured a yard and a half. In 1852, a young woman, a native of Switzerland, with beard and whiskers four inches long, could find no clergyman to marry her to the object of her affections, until provided with a certificate from Charing Cross Hospital. Many other authentic cases are on record, but the subject is not inviting.