In days before the moustache was popular, Mr
Frith shows how even in art circles its adoption retarded progress. "I
well remember," says Mr Frith, "a book illustrator named Stuart, who,
according to his own notion, ought to have been on the throne of England
instead of drawing on insensible wood blocks. He could trace his descent
from James I. He could sing Jacobite songs, and very well, too, and he
was certainly like Charles I. There was not the least doubt about his
pedigree in his own mind; and he was such a nuisance when once launched
into the long list of Royal blood, that we declared our unanimous
conviction of the justice of his claims, and implored him to put them
forward in the proper quarter, as we were powerless in the matter. The
Stuart beard, exactly like the Vandyke portrait of Charles, was the
treasured ornament of our friend's face, and though he was assured that
the publishers felt such doubt of his abilities, and such a conviction
of his utterly unreliable character and general dishonesty in
consequence of his beard--one man going so far as to tell him it cost
him L200 a year--he refused to remove it.
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