Although Kings have often vainly endeavoured to impose their will upon the people in the matter of apparel it has often happened that monarchs have set the prevailing fashion of the period. This is especially noticeable in the Cavaliers of Charles I., numbers of whom adopted the short, pointed beard and moustachios and long hair of their master, in striking contrast to the close cropped and shaven round heads of the Cromwellians. It was so with the Bonapartists of the Third Empire, when the "imperial" became the vogue.
A REIGNING MONARCH.
At a still more recent period, the illustrious personage who is figured here, and who, be it known, appears here strictly incognito (we would fain escape the dire consequences of lèse-majesté), has imposed his imperious will, not only upon his own countrymen, but upon the world at large, in the matter of the turned up moustachio.
"When you come to be trimed, they will aske you whether you will be cut to looke terrible to your enimie, or amiable to your freend, grime and sterne in countenance, or pleasant and demure,—how their mowchatowes must be preserved and laid out, from one cheke to another, yea, almost from one eare to another, and turned up like two hornes towards the forehead" (Stubbes, "Anatomy of Abuses," 1583).
PHILIP IV. OF SPAIN.
The angle at which it is pointed provides an index as to character, and of the degree of pugnacity of the wearer. At an angle of, say, 45 degrees forward we may expect to see its owner enter a crowded omnibus with the point of his umbrella held at the same angle, or as a soldier makes ready to present arms.
In the dressing of the hair, as in costume generally, the lowest depth of the commonplace has been reached during the nineteenth century. It is, however, extremely dangerous to indulge in any kind of sweeping generalities with respect to our own epoch; we are either, from long habit and custom, prejudiced in favour of a particular régime, or we are afflicted with that contempt which is born of a too great familiarity. The chignon, in its many developments, is within the memory of most of us; the odious Piccadilly fringe still endures with those persons who are either slaves to habit or who find that the curling and frizzing of the hair of the forehead destroys its capacity for growth. Dundreary and mutton-chop whiskers are even now to be found in out-of-the-way country places. Goldsmith, in one of his delightful essays, tells a story of a traveller who, on his way to Italy, found himself in a country where the inhabitants had each a large excrescence depending from the chin—a deformity which, as it was endemic and the people little used to strangers, it had been the custom, time immemorial, to look upon as the greatest beauty. Ladies grew toasts from the size of their chins, and no men were beaux whose faces were not broadest at the bottom. It was Sunday; a country church was at hand, and our traveller was willing to perform the duties of the day. Upon his first appearance at the church door the eyes of all were fixed upon the stranger; but what was their amazement when they found that he actually wanted that emblem of beauty, a pursed chin! Stifled bursts of laughter, winks, and whispers circulated from visage to visage; the prismatic figure of the stranger's face was a fund of infinite gaiety. Our traveller could no longer patiently continue an object of deformity to point at. "Good folks," said he, "I perceive that I am a very ridiculous figure here, but I assure you I am reckoned no way deformed at home."