The General’s Moustache

General Raymond E Lee is largely forgotten so just the man to be re-discovered. He doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry, an omission that should be rectified. He was US Military Attaché in London in WW II. I have ordered his London Journal.

21st July 1941.

While the barber, a very serious artist, was shaving me this morning, I said, ‘This moustache of mine is getting to be too bushy, too umbrageous. What are we going to do about it?’ “Well sir’, he said, ‘you will remember you put me in charge of it when you returned here last year, and I advised you to let it alone. It has grown beautifully ever since, sir, and in fact it is nearly perfect.’ ‘I think so, too,’ I replied, ‘but the fact remains that it is too luxurious, and when it comes down over my lip I can’t abide it, something must be done.’ He tried to pass this off and said that it was too important a matter to deal with in my bath, and at that time of day. ‘However,’ he said, ‘we might discuss it further when you come to have your hair cut, and that certainly will be some time this week.’

I stopped in at six o’clock, and had my hair trimmed, and then to his dismay said, ‘The moment is now come for the operation on the moustache, or the amputation, if you prefer to regard it seriously.’

He tried again to dissuade me from tinkering with it, but found me adamant and so began, very unwillingly, to singe it gently here and there. Then he brought the mirror, but to me it looked exactly as before. Therefore I said firmly, ‘It must be reduced in size’. ‘But, General,’ he said, plaintively, ‘if we go any further with it that moustache will get completely out of our control.’ After some discussion, I made him cut it back and prune it rather relentlessly, but he is as unhappy and glum as can be. I think he feels that this moustache belongs to him more than it does to me, and that I am quite unworthy of having such an ornament.

After I paid my bill and he said goodbye, he added, ‘I am very unhappy because I feel that we are going to have trouble with that moustache’.

(The London Journal of General Raymond E Lee)