Wide chops

These mutton chops seem ready to lift the wearer far above the mundane world. I dream of having a beard like this.

Bostonian

Now these are some mutton chops to be proud of. This distinguished gentleman has clearly spent quite a number of years with this style of beard. Yet, that is not all. His expression clearly speaks to his forward thinking and confidence that his beard style will be long remembered.

ˈmə-tən-ˌchäps

Sideburns are one thing but mutton chops are something much, much more. Of course, you couldn't tell by the examples that parade around today that dare call themselves mutton chops. Barren shadows of a once magnificent history.

Case in point, the popular character of graphic novella and kinetoscope, Wolverine. (I will not sully this fine company with a tintype of of his anemic beard.) While he is assuredly overflowing with manly vim and vigor, his so-called mutton chops look as if he has merely neglected to shave for a week or so. Is this what passes for mutton chops in this century?

Poppycock! The New Yorker herin presented has mutton chops to be proud of. And what's more, in the following weeks I will present even more impressive examples by men who truly have "The Chops."

High flyin

I simply cannot let this photograph go unremarked upon even though it is not actually from the 19th Century. Herein, three fine gentlemen with absolutely spectacular beards are enjoying the spoils of victory in the World Beard and Mustache Championships. The original by dogseat, using the newfangled color-process photography, was modified by Mousewrites into the more vintage and gloriously black and white format you see here.

I am insanely jealous of these gentlemen. Though I am proud of my own beard, it pales to insignificance before their mastery of the art.

It is a great tragedy of the 20th and 21st Centuries that such magnificence has fallen out of fashion yet there is some small comfort that in some small corners of the population a fine tradition of stylish masculinity endures and through the aethertubes, endures for posterity.

Ambrose Burnside

It was for American Civil War General Ambrose Everett Burnside, that the term sideburns was derived. Originally, he word burnsides was coined to describe this style. The syllables were later reversed to give sideburns.

Of course, aficionados of facial adornment realize that this particular style of beard already had a name before the Americans came up with the term sideburns in honor of General Burnside. In England, the word mutton chops was first used in 1865 to describe a facial adornment that starts off narrow at the top in front of the ears and widen across the cheek and jawline to the corner of the mouth. When the mutton chops are connected across the face with a mustache, or perhaps described as a full beard with the chin clean shaven, they are called friendly mutton chops. General Burnside has a fine example of friendly mutton chops that became even more distinguished in his later years.