a girl from new york begged him to grow a beard

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Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. NY: Harcourt Brace, 1939—

Just why Lincoln took to whiskers at this time nobody seemed to know. A girl in New York had begged him to raise a beard. But something more than her random wish guided him. Herndon, Whitney, Lamon, Nicolay, Hay, heard no explanation from him as to why after fifty-two years with a smooth face he should now change.

Would whiskers imply responsibility, gravity, a more sober and serene outlook on the phantasmagoria of life? Perhaps he would seem more like a serious farmer with crops to look after, or perhaps a church sexton in charge of grave affairs. Or he might have the look of a sea-captain handling a ship in a storm on a starless sea. Anyhow, with whiskers or without, he would be about the same-sized target.

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Book Jacket Design | Austin Montelius

Book jacket © Austin Montelius

Above Proposed dust jacket for Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, designed by Austin Montelius (2014), undergraduate at  the Department of Art at the University of Northern Iowa, in a graphic design studio course (as taught by Roy R. Behrens).

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Bertrand Russell, quoted in Norman Sherry, Conrad and His World (London: Thames and Hudson, 1973)—

[Joseph Conrad] thought of civilized and morally tolerable human life as a dangerous walk on a thin crust of barely cooled lava which at any moment might break and let the unwary sink into fiery depths.

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Anon, in Academy (February 20, 1904)—

In appearance Mr. Conrad suggests the seaman. His figure is stalwart and short, his dark beard well trimmed, and his walk nautical. Meet him near the docks and one would write him down "ship's captain" without hesitation. But his eyes, curiously distinctive and striking, mark him out from his kind. Ship captain he may be, but his eyes proclaim an artist.

William James | Collage Portrait

Roy R. Behrens, Portrait of William James (1981). Collage w/colored pencil.©

A Bearded Virgin Mary

Above Engraving of a young, bearded John Singer Sargent, published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine Vol LXXV No 447 (October 1887), p. 68. Compare that with this statement by Pablo Picasso about beards and the generation of ideas, as quoted in Brassai, Picasso and Company. New York: Doubleday, 1966, p. 55—

Ideas are just points of departure. It's rare for me to be able to pinpoint them, just as they came to my mind. As soon as I set to work, others seem to flow from the pen. To know what you want to draw, you have to begin drawing it. If it turns out to be a man, I draw a man—if it's a woman, I draw a woman. There's an old Spanish proverb: "If it has a beard, it's a man; if it doesn't have a beard, it's a woman." Or, in another version, "If it has a beard, it's Saint Joseph; if it doesn't have a beard, it's the Virgin Mary."