I do not understand the current hipster
fascination with facial hair, especially mustaches. This is probably one of many signs that I am
on the precipice of fogey-dom. It is not
something that particularly worries me.
Then again, perhaps the very fact that I am reading the collected
Wodehouse is a billboard pointing to the fact that I do not mingle well with
the hip and with-it.
What further perplexes me is not that mustaches
adorn the upper lips of select gentlemen, but that they have made their way
onto an alarming array of goods including, but not limited to, necklaces,
automobiles, t-shirts, and pacifiers.*
There must be some humor that I’m failing to grasp, much like my
inability to enjoy The Flight of the Conchords as much as everyone seemed to.
It would seem that, once again, I have a
comrade-in-arms in Wodehouse. One of the
stories in “Lord Emsworth and Others” features a mustache growing contest
between two local worthies. At the
height of the action one of them is shaved off in the dead of night. When the denuded victim of the prank appears
the next day, everyone is delighted by his appearance and remarks how much
better he looks.
Mustaches in Wodehouse seem to be reserved for
the older set. I remember at one point that
Bertie attempted to grow one, but was ultimately convinced by Jeeves to part
with it. One gets the sense that they
are vestiges of the Victorian age, something that is not embodied in the
frothiness of Bertie and his gang. A man
with a mustache in Wodehouse is a figure of fun, although perhaps not meant in
the same way that it is today, since I cannot imagine one of Wodehouse’s
characters in skinny jeans and a knit beanie.
*I do stand firm in my belief that the former UK
PM John Major would have benefited from a mustache. It might have lent him an air of panache that
his administration sorely lacked.
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