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.