George Frederick Muntz, M.P.
The enlightened electors, however, did not take kindly to the bearded politician. It is related by Dr Hedderwick, the well-known Glasgow journalist, that at the time the moustache movement was making slow progress, the candidate for Linlithgowshire was an officer in the Lancers, a man of ability, family, and fashion, who wore a heavily hirsute upper lip. He received an intimation from a leader of his party that his moustache might prejudice him in the eyes of a rural population. The candidate replied that he had already considered the point, but it was the rule in his regiment that it would be cowardly to succumb, and that he was "determined to face it out."
We have it on good authority that a Cabinet Minister, about 1855, caused a gentleman to be told that the beard and moustache did not look well on a man holding a civic position under the Crown. This Minister did not then imagine that shortly men with beards and moustaches would sit by his side as members of the Cabinet. Even a Colonial Governor about half a century ago was not supposed to wear a moustache. Dr Hedderwick, in his "Backward Glances" (Edinburgh, 1891), tells us that on a certain Sunday he was rambling with his friend, Mr Charles Maclaren, the well-known editor of the Scotsman, to Loch Long, when he saw some carriages conveying a number of ladies and gentlemen to church. "Sitting obliquely on an Irish jaunting-car," says the doctor, "was a portly personage with a dark heavy fringe on his upper lip, and otherwise distinguished appearance. I suggested that it might be Sir Henry Pottinger, the celebrated diplomatist and Colonial Governor. We knew he had returned to England, and I had heard he was visiting in Scotland on the banks of Loch Long. 'No, no,' said Mr Maclaren, 'it's quite impossible it can be he. A civilian of great intelligence and sense would never wear a moustache.'" We may gather from the foregoing the prejudice of the period against facial adornments.
From about 1855 to some years afterwards we resided at the small town of Alfreton, Derbyshire, where, if by chance the boys saw a man with a moustache, with one accord they commenced calling after him, "Jew, Jew, Jew," or "Frenchy, Frenchy, Frenchy," and, if that did not make any impression, they commenced stoning the offender against the unwritten laws of the land. In later years our barber at Wakefield was somewhat of a dandy, and would, perhaps, have preferred being called a tonsorial artist. He was the first to cultivate a moustache in that West Riding town, and he told the writer with pride that in those distant days he was one of the sights of the place, but his vanity had many checks from the rough lads, and even men, of Wakefield. Before his death he saw many follow his lead.
A teacher of music was the first to wear a moustache in Nottingham. He attracted the attention of young and old, and was deemed a great curiosity. The younger generation made matters lively for the music master. Speaking on this theme to an old Nottinghamshire friend, with whom we often discuss olden days and ways, he stated to us how he won his wife because he had not a moustache. It appears another eligible young man was anxious to win the young lady, but his character was regarded as doubtful because he cultivated a moustache. After a short engagement our friend was married in the year 1855. At this period the moustache movement was making slow progress in Nottingham.
Mr W. P. Frith, R.A., published in 1887 an amusing "Autobiography," and devotes not the least attractive chapter of his work to "The Bearded Model." He relates how difficult it was to find a bearded model, and how at last he discovered one. He says that in crossing Soho Square one day his attention was drawn to a crowd of little boys, who seemed to be teasing an old man in the manner of the London street boy. "Why don't you get your 'air cut?" said one. "Yah! where's your bundle of old clothes? Yer ain't got 'em in that 'ere basket, 'ave you?" said another, "Let's 'ave a look. You're a Jew, you know; now, ain't you?" and so on. All this, observes the artist, because the old man wore a long grey beard, then such a rarity. The young gentlemen had mistaken their man. He soundly punished two elder boys, and Mr Frith found he was not a Jew. How he became a model does not come within the scope of our present studies.
Mr Frith says that the head of a well-known firm of drapers in Regent Street refused to employ shopmen who wore moustaches, or men who parted their hair down the middle. In days before the moustache was popular, Mr Frith shows how even in art circles its adoption retarded progress. "I well remember," says Mr Frith, "a book illustrator named Stuart, who, according to his own notion, ought to have been on the throne of England instead of drawing on insensible wood blocks. He could trace his descent from James I. He could sing Jacobite songs, and very well, too, and he was certainly like Charles I. There was not the least doubt about his pedigree in his own mind; and he was such a nuisance when once launched into the long list of Royal blood, that we declared our unanimous conviction of the justice of his claims, and implored him to put them forward in the proper quarter, as we were powerless in the matter. The Stuart beard, exactly like the Vandyke portrait of Charles, was the treasured ornament of our friend's face, and though he was assured that the publishers felt such doubt of his abilities, and such a conviction of his utterly unreliable character and general dishonesty in consequence of his beard—one man going so far as to tell him it cost him £200 a year—he refused to remove it." Mr Frith says when the Vandyke beard became white his poor friend would have died in extreme poverty had he not received well-deserved assistance from a fund established to meet cases like his.
The directors and managers of banks made a stand against the moustache movement. It is asserted that the authorities of the Bank of England issued an order "that the clerks were not to wear moustaches during business hours." It is not surprising to learn that the amusing order was soon cancelled. At the present time, at one of the great banks in the Strand, the clerks have to be clean shaven. To illustrate the rigid manner of enforcing the order, Mr Frith quotes the case of an old servant of the bank, who was severely attacked by erysipelas in the face and head. Even after convalescence the tenderness of the skin made shaving impossible, but the old clerk begged to be allowed to return to his desk. He was told by one of the principals, in a kind note in answer to his application, that the bank would endeavour to get on without him until his face was in a condition to bear the attention of his razor.
In the earlier years of the moustache movement, clerks might be dismissed for not being clean shaven. Contractors, as a rule, we should regard as being the least particular of any class of employers about the personal appearance of their servants. Yet we have it on reliable authority that a trusted superintendent of one of the great contractors served the firm in Russia, and there cultivated the beard and moustache. On his return to England he displayed no disposition to resume the use of the razor. The head contractor grew alarmed at the terrible example he was setting those engaged in the office, and insisted that the adornment should be cut off, which was done. The poor fellow caught cold, and in a few days died.