Beard Review: Charles Darwin

The nineteenth century was, to many, the golden age that the beard enjoyed before its swift decline in the early twentieth following developments in shaving technology. Although recalling quite how domineering the British imperialists of the era were can be somewhat embarrassing, it remains difficult to deny that it was also the golden age of Great Britain in many respects: as well as imperially, economically, politically, democratically (not only in the sense of incremental franchise extension, but also the emergent Feminism that underpinned the foundation of several women’s colleges in Oxbridge), culturally and intellectually.
Of all the emblems of Britain’s nineteenth century intellectual fecundity that might be cited, Charles Darwin’s beard is surely the most acute. No self-conscious desire to project an unjustifiable image of intellectual brilliance was at work in this follicular feat – Darwin was intellectually brilliant, and he grew the beard in 1862, between his two great works (On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871)), largely because shaving was giving him recurrent facial eczema. His beard evidently served as a protective layer for his chin and cheeks, which, no doubt, had suffered terribly as a result of the persistent thoughtful rubbing that a mind as active as Darwin’s must have required. It was, therefore, not an attempt to cultivate a veneer of intellect, but the organic by-product of it.
The beard clearly embodies Darwin’s intellectual merits – especially the meticulousness that led him to develop his theory over a twenty-year period before giving it public exposure, and the dignified confidence with which he adhered to it in the face of criticism from an array of angles. Though not trimmed with pedantic precision, its overall symmetry and smooth inward curve indicate that it was maintained with care. The same is suggested also by the fact that he never allowed it to get too bushy. His confidence, on the other hand, is reflected in the beard’s fairly unusual length, which (like his theories), was capable of raising eyebrows, but (again, like his theories) was equally capable of withstanding all criticism convincingly.
Although Darwin’s own had little to do with vanity, he expressed full academic recognition of the colossal impact that beards exert on the fairer sex. By 1869, he diverged from Wallace, his fellow original proponent of the natural selection theory, over sexual selection in proposing a working list of various species’ characteristics that, since they confer no adaptive value, must have evolved purely to attract mates, and in which human beards were enumerated. In doing so, Darwin probably contributed to the belated acknowledgment of the elegance of beards that the nineteenth century brought, by rightfully placing them alongside what have now become clichéd examples of nature’s functionless splendour (for example, peacock feathers).
As much as Darwin’s beard radiates a sense of Victorian intellectual progressiveness and optimism, his writings on the subject of facial hair were amongst his more controversial. It cannot, for instance, have left the sensibilities of his readership unturned to hear that “the early progenitors of man were no doubt once covered with hair, both sexes having beards” (The Descent of Man). Female emancipation and empowerment was, of course, an implied corollary of Darwin’s claim here; the logic of his female reader being that, since her sex had once been bearded too, it must possess equal intellectual prowess. It would be unrealistic, of course, to suggest that Darwin put more effort into instigating female emancipation than Mill. However, he did go much further towards that end in one sentence than Mill managed to in an entire treatise laden with in-depth anthropological argument.
It is deeply ironic that, although Darwin’s study of evolution led him to believe that his own ill health was attributable to an inadequate gemmule makeup (his notion of gemmules having been his theory’s equivalent to the twentieth century concept of genetics), his own beard proves conclusively otherwise. Quite simply, it was testament to his having been a magnificent physical specimen, and it is highly appropriate that the principle of natural selection was discovered by one so impeccably adapted to the environment in which he thought and wrote.