The Moustache Movement.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 342, 13 February 1889, Page 3

The Moustache Movement.

The German Emperor has renewed the decree of his grandfather, by which all the servants of the Imperial Court are pi'ohibited from wearing moustaches. Why tho order was ever issued, the ' Standard' writes, we are not informed. Bub Kaisers are potentates whose, commands are law to their dependents, and so henceforth the Imperial footmen must be content either to forego their comfortable posts, or submit to be deprived of the superlabial ornaments so generally worn by the rest of his Majesty's subject 3 . It is not difficult for people still in middle ago to remember the time 'whenjall men in England were smoothfaced, and when the appearance of a moustache on an upper lip at once delared tho weai'er, in the eyes of the mob, ' to be either a Cavalry officer, an Italian fiddler, a billiard sharper, or — what was quite as bad in the ; opinion of the Chauvinist of forty years ago — a ' foreigner ' of some sort. Even in " Edinburgh, a reasonably cosmopolitan city, and understood to be an extremely cultured one, a distinguished man of science, on first appearing in the streets with a moustache just forty years ago,,, was followed by a rabble of rude "boys shouting .' Frenchy !' though, as a matter o£ fact, he was a German. Students of Leech will remember his picture representing. ' the dismay of the British^swell on, seeing the .postmen with moustaches ;' for, even in 1854, not to shave the upper lip was still regarded as supreme dandyism. It is difficult not^o realise tho group which circled round the* pioneer of the ' Moustache Movement, and' how, wh'en the news went out that' another, and still another well-known man had fallen in with thejashipri, his y 'frierida held up their hands at the thought 'of the fate which had befallen this trangressor of the social convafi ances. '

The biggest theatrical poster i5 yefc attempted was recently used in -London to puff" Harbour Lights.": It .measured 58Q square feet and cost £600 per I,'QOO^ .-