Among many other refinements of the ancients, the mediæval nations lost
the sense of the sacredness of kissing between the sexes. England was
apparently the greatest sinner in this respect; for it appears to have
been customary on visiting to kiss the host’s wife and daughters.
Indeed, up to a comparatively recent time, kissing on every occasion was
almost as prevalent and permissible as handshaking is at the present
day. In the sixteenth century it was customary in England for ladies to
reward their partners in the dance with a kiss; and for a long time the
minister who united a couple in the holy bonds of matrimony had the
privilege of kissing not only the bride but even the bridesmaids! No
wonder the ministry was the most popular profession in those days.
“It is quite certain,” says a writer in the _St. James’s Magazine_
(1871), “that the custom of kissing was brought into England from
Friesland, as St. Pierius Wensemius, historiographer to their High
Mightinesses, the states of Friesland, in his _Chronicle_, 1622, tells
us that the pleasant practice of kissing was utterly ‘unpractised and
unknown in England till the fair Princess Romix (Rowena), the daughter
of King Hengist of Friesland, pressed the beaker with her lippens, and
saluted the amorous Vortigern with a kusjen’ (little kiss).”
Having recovered this lost art, however, the English lost no time in
making up for neglected opportunities. Erasmus writes in one of his
epistles: “If you go to any place (in Britain) 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 ... wherever you move, nothing
but kisses. And if you, Faustus, had but once tasted them,—how soft they
are, how fragrant! on my honour, you would wish not to reside here for
ten years only, but for life!!!”
Bunyan, however, frowned on this practice, and inquired most
pertinently—and impertinently—why the men only “salute the most handsome
and let the ill-favoured alone?”
Pepys, in his _Diary_ for 1660, gives this account of some Portuguese
ladies in London: “I find nothing in them that is pleasing; and I see
they have _learnt to kiss_, and look freely up and down already, and I
do believe will soon forget the recluse practice of their own country.”
One of the luckiest of mortals was Bulstrode Whitelock, who at the Court
of Christine of Sweden was asked to teach her ladies “the English mode
of salutation; which, after some pretty defences, their lips obeyed, and
_Whitelock most readily_!”
The following extraordinary kissing story is told in _Chambers’s
Journal_ for 1861:—
“When the gallant cardinal, Count of Lorraine, was presented to the
Duchess of Savoy, she gave him her hand to kiss, greatly to the
indignation of the irate churchman. ‘How, madame,’ exclaimed he, ‘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_? I would have you know I have kissed as handsome ladies, and of
as great or greater family than you.’ Without more ado he made for the
lips of the proud Portuguese princess, and, despite her resistance,
kissed her thrice on her mouth before he released her with an exultant
laugh.”
The fashion of universal kissing appears to have gone out about the time
of the Restoration.