The British Empire- Empire of the Moustache
The British Empire- Empire of the Moustache.
or
The 100 year itch
The British Empire was one of the greatest and most diverse the world has ever seen.
At its height, it was seven times the size of the Roman Empire, its Navy ruled the oceans and a quarter of the earth was painted red on the map.
Military victories, trade expansion and a talent for bureaucracy all played a part, but even the wisest Briton could not fathom why they were blessed to rule so much of the world. My belief is that the answer lies just under their nose…
HISTORY
The impetus for the moustache fashion came from two sources. It began during the Napoleonic Wars of 1799 to 1815 when some British officers began to emulate fighting Frenchmen, whose moustaches were said to be "appurtenances of terror".
At about the same time, Britons, who by then formed the dominant caste in India, adopted the customs of the country, smoking hookahs, drinking a locally distilled spirit called arrack, wearing pyjamas and growing moustaches.
By the 1830s this sort of behaviour was condemned as "going native" and the British were discouraged from adopting such ways.
But some Indian habits remained - the British continued to eat curry, kedgeree and mulligatawny soup.
And the moustache became imperative because it was seen as a potent symbol of virility. As one contemporary noted, Indians looked upon "the bare faces of the English with amazement and contempt", regarding as na-mard (unmanly) countenances emasculated by the razor.
British soldiers, in particular, could not afford to appear less masculine and aggressive than their Indian comrades in the Army.
They had to assert the supremacy of the imperial race.
So began what became known as "the moustache movement".
It scored an early victory in 1831 when the 16th Lancers hailed with delight an order permitting them to wear moustaches. But the battle for this war-like appendage was far from won.
In 1843, for example, political officer James Abbott's 'large mustachios' raised eyebrows, despite his gallant feats on the north-west frontier.
Such hirsute accessories - condemned by some as being worn by "the vulgar clever" - still seemed to many a foreign affectation, the kind of thing expected only of French coxcombs.
And when Lord Dalhousie, the Governor-General of India, disparaged "capillary decorations" in 1849 they fell like leaves in October.
But they soon sprouted again, especially when newspapers campaigned for them. In 1854, moustaches were made compulsory for European troops of the East India Company's Bombay army and they were enthusiastically adopted elsewhere.
The Royal Durban Rangers at once ceased to shave their upper lips, for instance, and the Durban Mercury complimented them on their improved appearance.
Moustaches were religiously cultivated and subjected to severe discipline, enforced by Queen's Regulations which by the 1860s had made them obligatory.
They were brushed and pomaded. The follicles were fertilised with patent unguents such as Ayre's Formula, Elliott's Tonic Lotion and Oldridge's Balm of Columbia. The topiary luxuriance was trained with iron curling tongs.
During and after the Crimean War, barbers advertised different patterns such as the Raglan and the Cardigan, the latter "a remarkable affair, alternately billowing out and narrowing".
Moustaches were clipped and trimmed until they curved like sabres and bristled like bayonets. Their ends were waxed and given a soldierly erection.
They became the talisman of militant imperialists such as Alfred Milner, who served in Egypt and South Africa in the late-19th century; Frederick Lugard, a governor of Hong Kong and Nigeria; Lieutenant-Colonel D.M.C.T.
Lumsden who served in India at the turn of the 20th century; and the great explorer of Africa Sir Richard Burton (who challenged a fellow Oxford undergraduate to a duel for laughing at his moustache, which matured into the most prodigious walrus of the age).
As a martinet in the Pacific, George McGhee Murdoch paraded his determination to dominate by "the deliberate, waxed bristle of his sergeant-major's moustache".
In Kenya, the famous lion hunter Colonel J. H. Patterson groomed his moustache into "two imperious curls" to symbolise his courage. Imitating warriors, civilians too stiffened their upper lips: Karl Marx's collaborator, Friedrich Engels, mocked Anglo-Irish aristocrats with "enormous moustaches under colossal Roman noses".
By the 1890s, the moustache was the mark of every successful dandy. As far away as Hong Kong, it was said to be social death for a man to forget to curl the ends of his moustache.
At home, Edwardian gentlemen rebuked servants who aped the "fancy hairdressing" of their betters.
So the moustache became the emblem of Empire. But as the British Empire faltered under the hammer blows of war, depression and nationalist resistance, the moustache too beat a retreat.
The British commanding officer who surrendered to the Japanese at Singapore, General Percival, had a miserable apology of a moustache.
General Sir Gerald Templer, the Chief of the Imperial Staff at the time of Suez in 1956, had a late-imperial moustache that was "so thin as to be barely perceptible".
Sir Anthony Eden's was somewhat similar but, to make matters worse, it was said to have "curled inside out" in an embarrassingly effete manner.
One young Tory MP said that "Eden had to prove he had a real moustache" - a metaphor for proving his courage. The Prime Minister's wife, Clarissa, did her best to help.
Moments before her husband's broadcast on November 3, 1956, the eve of the invasion of Suez, she saw on a television monitor that his moustache was almost invisible and quickly blackened it with her mascara. By then, the moustache was vanishing as fast as the Empire.
True, it had ceased to be compulsory in the Army as early as 1916, when King's Regulations had permitted shaving the upper lip.
Allegedly that change took place to accommodate the Prince of Wales, whose growth was less than manly.
It had become a joke thanks to Charlie Chaplin and Groucho Marx and an international symbol of villainy thanks to Hitler's toothbrush and "the huge laughing cockroaches" under Stalin's nose - the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam paid with his life for coining this image. In Britain, it was seen primarily as the badge of Colonel Blimp.
In one P.G. Wodehouse novel of 1954, Bertie Wooster tries cultivating one to give himself a dashing air. It is stigmatised by Jeeves, that infallible arbiter of fashion, as a "dark stain like mulligatawny soup".
The last British Prime Minister to sport a moustache in office was Harold Macmillan. It was an indication of his desire, not fulfilled, to preserve the Empire.
And it had survived terrible vicissitudes - as he emerged from the wreckage of a war-time plane crash in Algiers, his moustache was "burning with a bright blue flame".
MOUSTACHES AND THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE
As can be seen from this graph, the hundred year period 1857-1957 saw the terminal decline of the Empire coincide directly with the decline in the popularity of large moustaches.
The time following the Sudan is seen as a particularly bad one for the moustache and for the Empire in general. WW1 saw many finely moustachioed gents gunned down whilst bare-lipped commoners cowered in their trenches. The Battle of Britain saw a return of large moustaches for a while, mostly co-pilots and Navigators named ‘Woolly Thompson’ ‘Archie Ack-ack’ and so forth.
The time of Suez brought about the death or large moustaches and, consequently, the Empire.
Proved himself during the India Mutiny by making contact with the British Army at no small danger to himself. Troops joked that 'There’s no chin behind Thomas Kavanagh’s moustache, only another fist'
Russian fled in terror at the sight of a tusk-less walrus bearing down on them.
Lord Napier had such a stiff upper lip his moustache had a concrete foundation.
The Boer high command fell into Roberts’ hands after searching the end of a rainbow for a pot of gold and mistaking Roberts for a Leprechaun.
The Boer lived up to their reputation for cunning by replacing Symon’s moustache wax for Lioness pheromone.
Lumsdan avoided dark caves at all costs as his moustache attracted Bats.
Lord Lugard lost his job in Hong Kong when his moustache started making racist jokes about the local Chinese populace.
A lion of the Empire, Kitchener won his moustache in a card game in South Africa and had it stuck on with a strong adhesive. When this got out the troops were demoralized and the popularity of large moustaches reached an all time low.
Whereas Haig was known as ‘The Butcher of the Somme’ General Melchett was known as ‘The Baker of Ypres’ for keeping his moustache dry with flour during the rainy spring. Although a figure of ridicule among the rank and file, A certain Captain E. Blackadder noted that General Melchett’s moustache was "as funny as getting an arrow through the neck, and then finding there's a gas bill tied to it".
Oh Monty, Monty, Monty. With Market-garden meeting full success, Monty made the fateful decision to cut his ‘tache to a more manageable size to take part in the annual Bognor Regis soup-eating contest. This emboldened the Germans to counter-attack…
Oversaw the disaster at Singapore. Blame can be placed directly on the moustache size preferred by Percival, described by a Japanese Officer as ‘Nasal hair trying to escape’.
A limited moustache may be all well and good defeating communist insurgents in Malaya, but against large and powerful Egyptian moustaches there was no hope of victory.
Suez saw the end of Britain as a great power, and consequently saw an end to large moustaches. Eden died in 1977. His moustache died a year later.
As can clearly be seen, imperial ambitions need large moustaches to assure victory. America and its allies are doomed in Iraq if we do not return to the days of Roberts or Cardigan.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
History and pics taken from The Daily Mail. All caption jokes are copyrighted Markas inc.
Originally Posted by Emperor Richard
