Fashions historical and personal

More than the only mildly interesting title, it was the eye-grabbing photographs of Charles Darwin, of whom I'm sure we've all heard, of Wilkie Collins, who might be a bit more obscure, and of William Holman Hunt, who was new to me, that caught my interest in a story headlined on the BBC News front page this morning. 

In "The great Victorian beard craze", Lucinda Hawksley explains the reasons for the rises in popularity of full beards on men during the mid-19th century and their subsequent decline, showing how British wars and technological advances made their impacts, and concluding with reports on a couple of record breaking facial growths (2014).

Perhaps, as Hawksley says, the relaxation that the Crimean War (1854 - 56) forced on the British army's former ban on beards for soldiers led the way to Darwin's impressive beard in later life. When he published his world changing On the Origin of Species in 1859, Darwin was not yet bearded, so it sounds plausible that as a conservative older type of chap, he would in later years take up the more relaxed fashion that arrived in England when he was in his prime and shaking up our understanding of the world of living things and our place in it.

But what the photographs really reminded me of was my own impressive beard, which reached its height a couple of decades ago. As Hawksley suggests, I was like many men who found shaving an extremely tedious business, and not particularly pleasant for the skin, but being a slave to fashion, I had been shaving for a decade or so when I decided to rebel a bit. After the first embarrassing weeks were over, I was quite proud of my developing beard. I didn't want to go all the way, so clipped the cheek bits as you can see in the photographs, but clipping once a week or so was much easier than shaving every day.

At the time, beards weren't really in fashion and some of the comments mine got were not entirely flattering, my mother, for example, was not a big fan, but enough people were encouraging that I kept if up. The photographs here were taken in 1994 and 1995.

It was probably fortunate that I had already adopted my current habit of twice weekly clipping before 2000. Comparisons with bin Laden's impressive beard might otherwise have been very likely. I've sometimes thought of letting it grow again, but sadly, the colour now reflects my more mature years, and I don't know that washed-out gray, however well it might fit the older Darwin, would be as becoming as the richer "sable silver'd" of my past. I guess the only way to find out for sure is to do the experiment; maybe over Christmas I'll let it go for a couple of weeks and see what it looks like, but I suspect the best I can hope for is a silver sabled.

And I'm very grateful to the wonders of post 2000 Internet technology. I used to be a keen photographer, and by the time I switched entirely to digital photography, sometime early this century, had accumulated a couple of thousand roles of film. For those young people who missed the era of film photography, it was an awful way of keeping records. Sometime around 2007 I invested in a good quality scanner for film, and converted everything to digital images, which now live safely in on Google servers, ready for me to nostalgically flick through or dredge up when I want something;  vastly more convenient than film and hard copies.

At a more sedate pace, I'm also whittling away my largish collection of books in favour of ebook versions. I love the idea of having access to all my stuff, anywhere, at any time and of not having to lug boxes of film and boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes of books around.

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Reference

Hawksley, L. (2014, November 17). The great Victorian beard craze. BBC News Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30037914