 Chapter 8 of Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Volume 1. Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Volume 1 by Charles McKay. Influence of Politics and Religion on the Hair and Beard. Speak with respect and honor, both of the beard and the beard's owner—Hutipris. The famous declaration of Saint Paul that long hair was a shame unto a man has been made the pretext for many singular enactments, both of civil and ecclesiastical governments. The fashion of the hair and the cut of the beard were state questions in France and England, from the establishment of Christianity until the 15th century. We find, too, that in much earlier times men were not permitted to do as they liked with their own hair. Alexander the Great thought that the beards of the soldiery afforded convenient handles for the enemy to lay hold of, preparatory to cutting off their heads, and, with a view of depriving them of this advantage, he ordered the whole of his army to be closely shaven. His notions of courtesy towards the enemy were quite different from those entertained by the North American Indians, and amongst whom it is held a point of honor to allow one chivalrous lock to grow, that the foe in taking the scalp may have something to catch hold of. At one time long hair was the symbol of sovereignty in Europe. We learn from Gregory of Tore that among the successors of Clovis it was the exclusive privilege of the royal family to have their hair long and curled. The nobles equal to kings in power would not show any inferiority in this respect, and wore not only their hair, but their beards of an enormous length. This fashion lasted with but slight changes till the time of Louis the Debonair, that his successors up to Hugh Capet were their hair short by way of distinction. Even the serfs had set all regulation at defiance and allowed their locks and beards to grow. At the time of the invasion of England by William the Conqueror the Normans were their hair very short. Harold, in his progress towards Hastings, sent forward spies to view the strength and number of the enemy. They reported, amongst other things, on their return, that the host did almost seem to be priests because they had all their face and both their lips shaven. The fashion among the English at the time was to wear the hair long upon the head and the upper lip, but to shave the chin. When the haughty victors had divided the broad lens of the Saxon Thames and Franklins among them, when tyranny of every kind was employed to make the English feel that they were indeed a subdued and broken nation, the latter encouraged the growth of their hair, that they might resemble as little as possible their cropped and shaven masters. This fashion was exceedingly displeasing to the clergy and prevailed to a considerable extent in France and Germany. Towards the end of the eleventh century it was decreed by the Pope and zealously supported by the ecclesiastical authorities all over Europe that such persons as wore long hair should be excommunicated while living and not be prayed for when dead. William of Momsbury relates that the famous St. Wollstone, Bishop of Wooster, was peculiarly indignant whenever he saw a man with long hair. He declined against the practice as one highly immoral, criminal, and beastly. He continually carried a small knife in his pocket, and whenever anybody offending in this respect knelt before him to receive his blessing. He would whip it out slyly and cut off a handful, and then, throwing it in his face, tell him to cut off all the rest, or he would go to hell. But fashion, which at times it is possible to move with a wisp, stands firm against a lever. A man preferred to run the risk of damnation to parting with the superfluity of their hair. In the time of Henry I, Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, found it necessary to republish the famous decree of excommunication and outlawry against the offenders. But as the court itself had begun to patronize curls, the fulminations of the church were unavailing. Henry I and his nobles wore their hair in long ringlets down their backs and shoulders, and became a scandalous magnatum in the eyes of the godly. One Serlo, the king's chaplain, was so grieved in spirit at the impiety of his master that he preached a sermon from the well-known text of St. Paul before the assembled court, in which he drew so dreadful a picture of the torments that awaited them in the other world, that several of them burst into tears and wrung their hair as if they would have pulled it out by the roots. Henry himself was observed to weep. The priest, seeing the impression he had made, determined to strike while the iron was hot, and pulling a pair of scissors from his pocket cut the king's hair in presence of them all. Several of the principal curdiers consented to do the like, and for a short time long hair appeared to be going out of fashion. But the curdiers thought, after the first glow of their penitents had been cooled by reflection, that the clerical Delilah had shorned them of their strength, and in less than six months they were as great sinners as ever. Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been a monk at back, in Normandy, and who had signalized himself in Rouen by the fierce opposition to long hair, was still anxious to work a reformation in this matter. But his pertinacity was far from pleasing to the king, who had finally made up his mind to wear ringlets. There were other disputes of a more serious nature between them, so that when the Archbishop died the king was so glad to be rid of him that he allowed the seat remain vacant for five years. Still the cause had other advocates, and every pulpit in the land resounded with anathemas against that disobedient and long hair generation. But all was of no avail. Stowe, in writing of this period, asserts on the authority of some more ancient chronicler, that men, forgetting their birth, transformed themselves by the length of their hairs into the semblance of womankind. And that when their hair decayed from age or other causes they knit about their heads certain rolls and braidings of false hair. At last accident turned the tide of fashion. A night of the court, who was exceedingly proud of his beautyous locks, dreamed one night that as he lay in bed the devil sprang upon him and endeavored to choke him with his own hair. He started in a fright, and actually found that he had a great quantity of hair in his mouth. Sorely stricken and conscious, and looking upon the dream as a warning from heaven, he set about the work of reformation, and cut off his luxuriant tresses the same night. The story was soon brooded abroad. Of course it was made the most of by the clergy, and the night, being a man of influence and consideration, and the acknowledged leader of the fashion. His example, aided by priestly exhortations, was very generally imitated. Men appeared almost as decent as St. Wolston himself would have wished. The dream of a dandy having proved more efficacious than the entreaties of a saint. But as Stowe informs us, scarcely was one year passed when all that thought themselves courteers fell into the former vice, and contended with women in their long hairs. Henry the king appears to have been quite uninfluenced by the dreams of others, for even his own would not induce him a second time to undergo a cropping from priestly shears. It is said that he was much troubled at this time by disagreeable visions. Having offended the church in this and other respects, he could get no sound, refreshing sleep, and used to imagine that he saw all the bishops, abbots, and monks of every degree standing around his bedside, and threatening to belabor him with their pastoral staves. Which sight, we are told, so frightened him that he often started naked out of his bed, and attacked the phantoms soared in hand. Grimbaldi, his physician, who, like most of his fraternity at that day, was an ecclesiastic, never hinting that his dreams were the result of a bad digestion, but told him to shave his head, be reconciled to the church, and reform himself with alms and prayer. But he would not take this good advice, and it was not until he had nearly drowned a year afterwards in a violent storm at sea that he repented of his evil ways, cut his hair short, and paid proper deference to the wishes of the clergy. In France, the thunders of the Vatican, with regard to long curly hair, were hardly more respected than in England. Louis VII, however, was more obedient than his brother King, and cropped himself as closely as a monk, to the great sorrow of all the gallants of his court. His queen, the gay, haughty, and pleasure-seeking Eleanor of Guyane, never admired him in this trim, and continually reproached him with imitating, not only the headdress, but the asceticism of the monks. From this cause a coldness arose between them. The lady, proving at last unfaithful to her shaven and indifferent lord, they were divorced, and the kings of France lost the rich provinces of Guyane and Poitou, which were her dowry. She soon after bestowed her hand and her possessions upon Henry, Duke of Normandy, afterwards Henry II of England, and thus gave the English sovereigns that strong footing in France, which was for so many centuries the cause of such long and bloody wars between the nations. When the Crusades had drawn all the smart young fellows into Palestine, the clergy did not find it so difficult to convince the staid-burgers who remained in Europe of the enormity of long hair. During the absence of Richard Curdilion, his English subjects not only cut their hair close, but shaved their faces. William Fitz Osbert, or Longbeard, the great demagogue of that day, reintroduced among the people who claimed to be of Saxon origin the fashion of long hair. He did this with the view of making them as unlike as possible to the citizens and the Normans. He wore his own beard hanging down to his waist, from whence the name by which he is best known to posterity. The church never showed itself so great an enemy to the beard as to the long hair on the head. It generally allowed fashion to take its own course, both with regard to the chin and the upper lip. This fashion varied continually, for we find that, in little more than a century after the time of Richard I, when beards were short, that they had again become so long as to be mentioned in the famous epigram made by the Scots, who visited London in 1327. When David, son of Robert Bruce, was married to Joan, the sister of King Edward, this epigram, which was stuck on the church door of St. Peter's Standgate, ran as follows. Longbeards heartless, painted hoods witless, grey coats graceless, make England thriftless. When the emperor, Charles V, ascended the throne of Spain, he had no beard. It was not to be expected that the obsequious parasites, who also surround a monarch, could presume to look more virile than their master. Immediately all the courtiers appeared beardless, with the exception of such few grave old men as had outgrown the influence of fashion, and who had determined to dye bearded as they had lived. Sober people, in general, saw this revolution with sorrow and alarm, and thought that every manly virtue would be banished with the beard. It became at the time a common saying, desteceno he barba, no he mas alma. We have no longer souls, since we have lost our beards. In France, also, the beard fell into disrepute after the death of Henry IV, from the mere reason that his successor was too young to have one. Some of the more immediate friends of the great bairne, and his minister, Sully, among the rest, refused to part with their beards, notwithstanding the jeers of the new generation. Who does not remember the division of England into the two great parties of round heads and cavaliers? In those days every species of vice and iniquity was thought by the Puritans to lurk in the long curly tresses of the monarchist, while the latter imagined that their opponents were as destitute of wit, of wisdom, and of virtue as they were of hair. A man's locks were the symbol of his creed, both in politics and religion. The more abundant the hair, the more scant the faith, and the bolder the head, the more sincere the piety. But among all the instances of the interference of governments with men's hair, the most extraordinary, not only for its daring, but for its success, is that of Peter the Great in 1705. By this time fashion had condemned the beard in every other country in Europe, and with a voice more potent than popes or emperors, had banished it from civilized society. But this only made the Russians cling more fondly to their ancient ornament, as a mark to distinguish them from foreigners, whom they hated. Peter, however, resolved that they should be shaven. If he had been a man deeply read in history, he might have hesitated before he attempted so despotic an attack upon the time hallowed customs and prejudices of his countrymen. But he was not. He did not know or consider the danger of the innovation. He only listened to the promptings of his own indomitable will, and his fiat went forth, that not only the army, but all ranks of citizens, from the nobles to the serfs, should shave their beards. A certain time was given that people might get over the first throes of their repugnance, after which every man who chose to retain his beard was to pay a tax of one hundred rubles. The priests and the serfs were put on a lower footing, and allowed to retain theirs upon payment of a copac, every time they passed the gate of a city. Great discontent existed in consequence, but the dreadful fate of the streelitzes was too recent to be forgotten, and thousands, who had the will, had not the courage to revolt. As is well remarked by a writer in the Encyclopedia Britannica, they thought it wiser to cut off their beards than to run the risk of incensing a man who would make no scruple in cutting off their heads. Wiser too, than the popes and bishops of a former age, he did not threaten them with eternal damnation, but made them pay in hard cash the penalty of their disobedience. For many years a very considerable revenue was collected from this source. The collectors gave in receipt for its payment a small copper coin, struck expressly for the purpose, and called the boradovia, or the bearded. On one side it bore the figure of a nose, mouth, and mustaches, with a long bushy beard, surmounted by the words, dweye vieti. Money received. The hole encircled by a wreath, and stamped with the black eagle of Russia. On the reverse it bore the date of the year. Every man who chose to wear a beard was obliged to produce this receipt on his entry into a town. Those who were refractory and refused to pay the tax were thrown into prison. Since that day the rulers of modern Europe have endeavored to persuade, rather than to force, in all matters pertaining to fashion. The Vatican troubles itself no more about beards or ringlets, and men may become hairy as bears, if such is their fancy, without fear of excommunication or deprivation of their political rights. The folly has taken a new start, and cultivates the mustache. Even upon this point governments will not let men along. Religion as yet has not meddled with it, but perhaps it will. And politics already influence it considerably. Before the revolution of 1830 neither the French nor Belgian citizens were remarkable for their mustaches. But after that event there was hardly a shopkeeper, either in Paris or Brussels, whose upper lip did not suddenly become hairy with real or mock mustaches. During a temporary triumph gained by the Dutch soldiers over the citizens of Louvain in October 1830 it became a standing joke against the Patriots, that they shaved their faces clean immediately. And the wits of the Dutch army asserted that they had gathered mustaches enough from the denuded lips of the Belgians to stuff mattresses for all the sick and wounded in their hospital. The last folly of this kind is still more recent. In the German newspapers of August 1838 appeared an ordinance signed by the King of Piveria, forbidding civilians on any pretense whatever to wear mustaches, and commanding the police and other authorities to arrest and cause to be shaved the offending parties. Strange to say, adds Le Droit, the journal for which this account is taken, mustaches disappeared immediately like leaves from the trees in autumn. Everybody made haste to obey the royal order and not one person was arrested. The King of Piveria, a rhymester of some celebrity, has taken a good many poetical licenses in his time. His license in this matter appears neither poetical nor reasonable. It is to be hoped that he will not take it into his royal head to make his subjects shave theirs. Nothing but that is wanting to complete their degradation.