The Art of Kissing/Chapter 2
II
THE HISTORY OF LIP KISSING
In Antiquity.—The antiquity of lip kissing may be traced, in no very pronounced form, to the Aryan and Semitic peoples. Among the ancient Arabs, and their Semitic relatives, the Hebrews, the kiss had many uses, most of these being related to religion. The kiss was used as a direct method of worship of some gods: "Let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves" (Hosea xiii 2). Similarly the Lord said to Elijah: "Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him" (I Kings xix 18). A stranger religious rite is referred to by Job (xxxi 27) when he refers to kissing his hand to the moon or sun, as a symbol of worship.
The kiss of salutation, especially among men, was common. Thus Jacob kissed his father Isaac; Joseph kissed all his brethren, his sons, and his father; Aaron kissed Moses, and Moses in turn kissed his father-in-law Jethro; Samuel, when he anointed Saul as king, kissed him; David kissed Jonathan, and later his son Absalom; and Absalom kissed all who came to see him, in order to win their allegiance by this grant of near-royal favor. Later all the Macedonian Christians kissed Paul, as he was leaving them. This kiss was extended, among the early Christians, to include women as well: the perfect Christian greeted both man and women with a "holy kiss," or a "kiss of charity." There are some Christians whom it would indeed be charity to kiss—but the custom had its advantages. David's kiss to Absalom betokened reconciliation with the rebel; and the king's command, in the Psalms, was that all should kiss the king, the Lord's Son, or be genially wiped out for omitting the kiss of subjection.
The kiss among relatives was not unknown: Laban eldered Jacob for not permitting Laban to kiss his sons and daughters, and Elisha asked permission of Elijah to kiss his father and mother. The kiss betokened approbation also: "Every man shall kiss his lips that giveth a right answer" (Prov. xxiv 26). This is a custom we are glad has passed. Indiscriminate kissing from many men in public life, for instance, we would regard as a punishment beyond any that savage ingenuity could devise. The woman who had sinned kissed the feet of Jesus, in token of her reformed adoration. And there was the kiss of treachery, given by an enemy, warned against in Proverbs, and used by Joab in murdering Amasa, and by Judas in delivering Jesus to the posse that sought him.
So far, we have not had the kiss of love, between man and woman. Naomi's kisses to her daughters-in-law were not quite the love that we mean, but we find it, too, sparsely scattered through the Bible. Thus, upon their first meeting, we read: "And Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice and wept" (Gen. xxix 11). The kiss is understandable, for Rachel is said to have been a young and attractive damsel; but why the weeping? Something must be left out of the story: perhaps she would let him kiss her but once. And, in the great love song of the Old Testament, we find what we are seeking: "Then let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth" (Song of Solomon i 2). We can overlook countless kissings of the dust, to show humble subjection, for one real description of the kiss of love like this. The Old Testament worthies were on the right track, after all. The other kisses made us feel like the British soldier in Kipling's Mandalay:
An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot:
Bloomin' idol made o' mud,
Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd—
Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed 'er where she stud!
But we have arrived at last at a real kiss, and with this we can pass onward.
We learn that Arabian women and children kiss the beards of their husbands and fathers, which must be about as thrilling as kissing a shredded wheat biscuit or a clothes brush. The Mohammedans, on their pious pilgrimage to Mecca, kiss the sacred black stone, which was worshipped long before Mohammed was born. In Egypt, the inferior kisses the hand of a superior, generally on the back, but sometimes on the palm; the son kisses the hand of his father, the wife that of her husband, the slave and servant that of their master. Here the kiss spells subjection. We know that, among the Greeks, Homer scarcely knew the kiss, and later poets mentioned it only rarely.
When we come to Rome, the kiss has a more varied practice. There was the religious kiss, similar to Job's: persons were treated as atheists who would not kiss their hands when they entered a temple. In early Roman ages, the kiss was given by inferiors to superiors; in the pre-Cæsarean republic, this fell into disrepute. The emperors restored the practice of kissing hands, which gradually was etherealized until the crowd had to kiss their hands to the emperors, as one would to a god. Solomon spoke of the same custom among the Hebrews, and Cortez found it among the Mexicans whom he pillaged. A strange custom in Rome was to give the dying a last kiss, in order, as they thought, to catch the dying breath. As for kissing among men, let Martial, the old satirist, speak for Rome:
Every neighbor, every hairy-faced farmer presses on you with a strongly scented kiss. Here the weaver assails you, there the fuller and the cobbler, who has just been kissing leather; here the owner of a filthy beard, and the one-eyed gentleman; there one with bleared eyes, and fellows whose mouths are defiled with all manner of abominations.
He gives the other side of the picture, when he describes the kisses of his favorite:
The fragrance of balsam extracted from aromatic trees; the ripe odor yielded by the teeming saffron; the perfume of fruits mellowing in their winter repository; the flowery meadows of spring; amber warmed by the hand of a maiden; a garden that attracts the bees.
That Roman love-kisses were not frigid is indicated by many lines in the poets. Thus Catullus wrote:
Whose will they call thee, false one, whose?
Who will thy darted kisses sip,
While thy keen love-bites scar his lip?
Horace, in one of his odes, refers to the same nibbling propensity of Roman women and men:
Marks with his teeth the furious joy.
The Spread of Kissing.—With this good start, the admirable custom of kissing spread over the world: but its progress was slow. It did not conquer the Orient: Japan, China, India, still have small use for it. Among nearly all the black races of Africa, not only is the kiss between lovers unknown, but the mother's kiss is usually unknown. Among the American Indians, the lip kiss was not found, although the mouth might be used in the love episode. The Fuegians, in South America, have the custom of lovers rubbing their cheeks together. The present limited kissing among Australian natives may be due to white lessons.
Today, the kiss is known through Europe, and among Europeans everywhere, with the single exception of Lapland. Yet, even in Europe, it is a comparatively modern discovery, spreading first to the higher classes, and then down. One medieval ballad has the lady of the castle discover that a varlet has substituted himself for the absent lord during the night, by remembering that the varlet embraced without kissing. The Celtic tongue, as Rhys found out, has no word for kiss, but uses the Latin pax, which means literally "peace," because it occurs in the religious phrase osculum pacis, kiss of peace. Yet the Welsh Cymri early learned kissing. Its religious use is widespread. Among European pagans, house gods were greeted, on entering and leaving, with a kiss. The Eastern and Western churches have derived from this such customs as kissing the relics of saints, the foot of the pope, and the hands of bishops. The surviving custom of kissing the Testament, on administering an oath in many of our courts, is a vestige of the dying religious usage.
Yet the kiss made its way slightly into the East. The Arabic Perfumed Garden recommends the kiss, especially on the inside of the mouth. In feudal times in Europe, the vassal kissed the hand of his superior, or some symbol of the lord. Pliny may have been facetious when he said that the custom of kissing women originated in Rome, as a method of the husband's to test whether his wife had been drinking liquor or not. The custom, when extended to other women, justified itself. In France, the good girl is supposed to save her lips for her husband. This is so true, that Mme. Adam wrote that, when she first let a man kiss her as a girl, she thought she had parted with her virtue, and was sure that a child would follow the kiss. A similar misconception prevails among writers for and censors of American movies, if we are to judge by their product.
But in France the custom was once far more liberal. When the gallant cardinal, John of Lorraine, was presented to the Duchess of Savoy, she gave him her hand to kiss. The indignant churchman exclaimed, "How, madam? Am I to be treated in this manner? I kiss the queen, my mistress, who is the greatest queen in the world; and shall I not kiss you, a dirty little duchess?" Without more words, he caught hold of the princess and kissed her three times on the lips. France, alas, retains the custom of kissing among men. During the World War, every decoration given by a French general was accompanied by a hearty smack upon both cheeks. In an army of Amazons no one might object to this; but deliver me from formal masculine osculation!
In Russia, the Easter salutation is a kiss. Everybody kissed everybody, under the old regime, on this occasion. The Czar, who must have been a glutton for punishment, had to kiss his family, retinue, court, attendants, officers on parade, the palace sentinels, and a select party of private soldiers. In any part of Russia the poorest serf, meeting a high-born dame on the street, had only to say "Christ is risen!" to receive "Christ is truly risen" in reply, accompanied by a resounding kiss. Today it is probable that one of the old serfs is not above kissing a duchess who salutes him with the old sesame. It was the great Catherine of Russia who instituted assemblies of men and women, to aid the cultivation of manners. One of her rules for maintaining decency was: "No gentleman should force a kiss from, or strike a woman, in the assembly, under pain of execution." If manners were, as this rule indicates, a trifle crude under Catherine, under her husand, Peter the Great, who preceded her, they were a wee mite rougher. In the charming Peter the Czar, by Klabund, Peter's love technique is described:
The Grand Elector of Brandenburg led the Polonaise. The Czar led the Duchess of Mecklenburg, a delicate blonde. When the Polonaise had come to its end in the Hall of Mirrors the Czar and his partner were nowhere to be found.
He had drawn her into a side apartment and had violated her behind a portiere. And he was so powerful that she neither could nor would defend herself.
And then he left her.
She drowns herself in the river outside the palace.
But the Czar had already forgotten her . . . . Then he fell asleep and dreamed of a mouse of the steppes. She had a face like the Duchess of Mecklenburg and squeaked softly.
He bit off her head and flung the tiny carcass upon the fields.
Peter's technique was a bit too crude. Perhaps, if he had read this handbook of love and kissing, he might have loved the duchess with more diplomacy and more general enjoyment.
In Norway, one perplexing and, at times, delightful salute is furnished by one's hostess. The good woman always tucks her guest into bed for the night, and then gives him a resounding kiss upon the lips. As a rule, however, there is no second kiss. The kiss is known in Finland, but it is frowned upon as something tending upon the immoral. Iceland—thus does a frigid climate affect current standards of morality!—has elaborate penalties for most forms of kissing, including exclusion from the country for kissing another's man's wife, and a heavy fine for even a permitted kiss from an unmarried woman. Far to the south, in Paraguay, the custom requires you to kiss every lady you are introduced to. Since, at one time, all the females above thirteen chewed tobacco, this is a mixed blessing, even with maidens as attractive as South America produces.
In England, the story is that the kiss was introduced by Rowena, the beautiful daughter of Hengist the Saxon marauder. At a banquet given by King Vortigern to his Saxon allies, the princess is said to have kissed the delighted monarch upon the lips. By the time of Edward IV, a guest was expected, upon arrival and departure, to kiss his hostess and all the ladies of the household. In 1497, when Erasmus was in England, the practice was at its height; the good reformer approved:
If you go to any place, you are received with a kiss by all; if you depart on a journey you are dismissed with a kiss; you return, kisses are exchanged; people come to visit you—a kiss the first thing; they leave you—you kiss them all around. Do they meet you anywhere?—kisses in abundance. Lastly, wherever you move, there is nothing but kisses—and if you had once tasted them! how soft they are! how fragrant! on my honor you would not wish to reside here for ten years only, but for life!
John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress, writing over a hundred years later, viewed the spectacle more sourly: he abhorred "the common salutation of women," and punctured the arguments of those who called these "holy kisses" thus:
But then, I have asked them why they make balks? why they did salute the most handsome, and let the ill-favored ones go?
The kiss at the point of death is not unknown in English chronicles. When Nelson was dying on board his flagship, he turned to his faithful friend at his side: "Kiss me, Hardy!" These were the last words he uttered. Sir Walter Scott, when dying, took leave of his friend Lockhart in the same fashion. The kiss among men, once popular in England, came over when England aped French notions of chivalry. Germany has the same custom: in 1888, when the Emperor William met the Czar at St. Petersburg, the two rulers embraced and kissed several times. As the kiss among men entered England, the general kissing of women declined—all due to the innovations of the "old goat," Charles II, at the time of the Restoration. Even canny Scotland has widespread kissing chronicled in several periods.
The state of kissing in the United States today is generally well known: it is a far cry from our liberality to the old Blue Laws of Connecticut, with a heavy penalty for kissing one's wife on Sundays or fast days, and, for all we know, boiling in oil for kissing the wife of another. It is still unlawful to kiss a girl against her will: the courts awarding damages to the girl varying from $750 in Pennsylvania and $2,500 in New York, to $1.15 in New Jersey. And while there are Anti-Osculation Leagues, with stern medical warnings of the danger of kissing, the custom shows no evidence of diminution. The kissing of children on the mouth, even by parents, is liable to be harmful; if the medicos are to be believed, diphtheria, malaria, scarlet fever, colds and pulmonary taints, blood poison, and at times death, lurk in the kiss. Let the children, then, remain unkissed, except for the cheek: but, with the proper girl, we would brave ten million germs for one taste of what the old Georgia farmer described as "sucking sugar."