A Note on Qualification

Some men who do have a moustache are unfortunately disqualified from being entered in the catalogue. They include Rene Descartes, Emperor Franz Joseph I, Karl Benz, Robert Louis Stevenson, Honore de Balzac, Diego Velazquez, Christopher Marlowe, John Bunyan, John Millington Synge, Butch Cassidy, Alexandre Dumas, Charles “Black Bart” Boles, Harry Paget Flashman, Frank Zappa and Lemmy from Motorhead. These men scuppered themselves by wearing, along with their moustache, either “burnsides” or a “royale”.

Burnsides are named for the American Civil War General Ambrose Burnside, whose facial hair consisted of a moustache joined to his sideburns (also named for Burnside). Royales, or soul patches, are normally square or triangular and are worn beneath the lower lip but above the chin.

I found it necessary to be fascistic about what exactly determines a “moustache”. I felt at an early stage I could not include men with beards. Sadly this ruled out several of my heroes including Charles Dickens, Edward “Blackbeard” Teach and Mr. T. No-one would look at these or other bearded men and say “he has a moustache”. They would say “he has a beard”. The assumption is that anyone with a beard has a moustache unless expressly stipulated to the contrary – Abraham Lincoln or Michael Eavis for example.

So beards were out. I was then left to decide what exactly defined a moustache. My conclusion was that it should be the only facial hair on the face with the exception of sideburns, unless the sideburns joined the moustache to create burnsides. My decision has caused me some heartbreak as Flashman, Bolles, Vlad the Impaler, Brandon Flowers and Carlos Valderrama would have been proud additions to the catalogue.

As it is they must take their resting place in the moustache cemeteries that will be posted as appendices at the end of the catalogue.