MEMORABLE KISSES.
That was a wonderful kiss which Fatima received from her lover:
“Last night when some one spoke his name,
From my swift blood that went and came,
A thousand little shafts of flame
Were shivered in my narrow frame.
Oh, love! oh, fire! Once he drew
With one long kiss my whole soul through
My lips—as sunlight drinketh dew.”[7]
Then there was the precious kiss which Margarida gave her troubadour lover, when “she stretched out her arms and sweetly embraced him in the love-chamber,” which coming to the knowledge of her husband (Raimon de Roussillon), he gave her the troubadour’s heart to eat, disguised as a savory morsel. And there was Francesca’s kiss, so sweet and yet so sad, so guilty and so pure, when trembling Paolo kissed her and they read no more that day. And there are the kisses that Antony wasted a world so gladly for, “on a brow of Egypt,”—or rather, we suspect, on lips of Egypt,—and Othello’s farewell kisses, which, tender and heart-broken as they were, had no magic in them to redeem poor Desdemona’s life. Who does not remember that grand kiss of Coriolanus—
“Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!”—
which exhibits such a world of character and passion? and Romeo’s dying kiss in the vault of the Capulets? and the famous kiss of Bassanio? Then there is the kiss Queen Margaret gave Alain Chartier, the memory of which is still fresh after three centuries have passed away. He was a poet, and the ugliest man in France. The last of his race died in Paris in November, 1863. The queen with her maids found him asleep one day, and bent over him and kissed his dreaming lips. “I kiss not the man,” she said; “I kiss the soul that sings.” Another poet, the countryman of Chartier, had, two centuries later, the honor of being publicly kissed in the stage-box by the young and lovely Countess de Villars; but in Voltaire’s case the lady gave the osculatory salute not of her own free will, but in obedience to the commands of the claqueurs in the pit, mad with enthusiasm for the poet’s “Merope.” Then there is the kiss which the fresh cheek of young John Milton received, during his college days, from the lips of the high-born Italian beauty, and the kisses of Laurence Sterne, concerning which he says, “For my own part, I would rather kiss the lips I love than dance with all the graces of Greece, after bathing themselves in the springs of Parnassus. Flesh and blood for me, with an angel in the inside.”
Here is a white rose that has not faded through three hundred years,—the white rose sent by a Yorkist lover to his Lancaster inamorata:[8]
“If this fair rose offend thy sight,
Placed in thy bosom bare,
’Twill blush to find itself less white,
And turn Lancastrian there.
“But if thy ruby lips it spy,
As kiss it thou mayst deign,
With envy pale ’twill lose its dye,
And Yorkist turn again.”
It is a pity that we do not know who plucked that rose with such courtly grace. The lines, like “Chevy Chase,” “The Nut-brown Maid,” and “Allan-a-Dale,” are a filius nullius, and, like many other anonymous waifs which have floated down to us, could, just as well as not, have carried a name on to immortality. What sort of a kiss was it that sweet Amy Robsart’s friend Leicester placed upon the lips of Queen Bess, and which, according to a chronicle of the time, “she took right heartilie”? It was certainly a bold proceeding “before folks,” considering who the parties were. The kiss that Chastelard asked of Mary Beaton was a notable one. Said the gallant Frenchman:
“Kiss me with some slow, heavy kiss,
That plucks the heart out at the lips.”
When the Cardinal John of Lorraine was presented to the Duchess of Savoy, she gave him her hand to kiss, greatly to the indignation of the churchman. “How, madam!” exclaimed he: “am I to be treated in this manner? I kiss the queen, my mistress, and shall I not kiss you, who are only a duchess?” and without more ado he, despite the resistance of the proud little Portuguese princess, kissed her thrice on the mouth before he released her with an exultant laugh. The doughty cardinal was apparently of one mind with Sheldon, who thought that “to kiss ladies’ hands after their lips, as some do, is like little boys who, after they eat the apple, fall to the paring.”
The proud and pompous Constable of Castile, on his visit to the English court soon after the accession of James I., we are told, was right well pleased to bestow a kiss on Anne of Denmark’s lovely maids of honor, “according to the custom of the country, and any neglect of which is taken as an affront.”
When Charles II. was making his triumphal progress through England, certain country ladies who were presented to him, instead of kissing the royal hands, in their simplicity held up their pretty lips to be kissed by the king,—a blunder no one would more willingly excuse than the red-haired lover of pretty Nell Gwynn.
When the excommunicated German emperor Henry IV. had been humbled by three days of penance, barefoot and fasting, in the month of January, before the palace of Pope Gregory VII., he was admitted to “the superlative honor” of kissing the pontiff’s toe. This, perhaps, was no greater humiliation than that of the haughty Doge, who, after seeing Genoa bombarded by the fleet of Louis XIV. on account of the assistance he had given to the Algerines, was reduced to the indignity of going to Versailles to kiss the hand which had given his city to the flames.
Marie Antoinette frequently shocked the etiquette of her day at the French court. Once, upon receiving the Austrian ambassador, Count von Mercy, she advanced to meet him, and reached her hand to him, allowing him to press it to his lips. Of course Madame de Noailles was horror-stricken. The kissing of the queen’s hand was a state ceremonial, and inadmissible at a private interview.
A pleasanter incident at the court of this queen is thus related by Madame Campan:
“Franklin appeared at court in the costume of an American husbandman: his hair straight and without powder, his round hat, and coat of brown cloth, formed a strong contrast with the spangled and embroidered coats, the powdered and pomatumed head-dresses, of the courtiers of Versailles. This novelty charmed all the lively imaginations of the French ladies. They gave elegant fêtes to Doctor Franklin, who united the fame of one of the most skilful physicians [Madame Campan was led into this mistake by Franklin’s title of doctor] to the patriotic virtues which induced him to take the noble rôle of apostle of liberty. I was present at one of these fêtes, where the most beautiful (the Comtesse de Polignac) among three hundred ladies was chosen to go and place a crown of laurel on the white hair of the American philosopher, and kiss both cheeks of the old man.”
Tom Hood once asked whether Hannah More had ever been kissed,—that is to say, by a man. It is almost impossible to conceive of such a thing; and yet it has been asserted by one of the authors of the “Rejected Addresses.” But to think of her having been kissed “on the sly,” and in church-time! Horace Smith distinctly affirms that, on a certain occasion,
“Sidney Morgan was playing the organ,
While behind the vestry door,
Horace Twiss was snatching a kiss
From the lips of Hannah More!”
Chevalier Bunsen, who rose from a humble position in life to great honor, was a man of vast savoir but little erudition. As a theologian, the character to which he most aspired, he was severely criticised by the celebrated Dr. Merle d’Aubigné. The two savans met at Berlin at the Evangelical Alliance held several years ago. Bunsen kissed Merle; of course the polite Genevan could but return the compliment. Great was the ado about the “kiss of reconciliation,” as the Germans called it, much to the annoyance of Dr. Merle, who had no idea of compromising the solemn writers of theology by a kiss! Besides, he said, he preferred the English custom in kissing to the German. A delicate insinuation, that; but the professor meant nothing wrong.
In the famous Brooklyn trial, Tilton versus Beecher, in which the world was favored with some extraordinary revelations respecting the ethics and æsthetics of modern osculation, the defendant, Mr. Beecher, while on the witness-stand, testified to his singularly varied experiences. In the course of his testimony, he said:
“Mrs. Moulton then came in; she came to me and said, ‘Mr. Beecher, I don’t believe the stories they are telling about you; I believe you are a good man.’ I looked up and said, ‘Emma Moulton, I am a good man;’ she then bent over and kissed me on the forehead; it was a kiss of inspiration, but I did not think it proper to return it.”
When subsequently asked what he meant by a kiss of inspiration, he replied:
“I meant—well, it was a token of confidence; it was a salutation that did not belong to the common courtesy of life: neither was it a kiss of pleasure, or anything of that kind, but it was, as I sometimes have seen it in poetry—if you will excuse me—it was—it seemed to me, a holy kiss.”
Q. “You have said something about your not returning it?”
A. “Well, sir, I felt—I felt so deeply grateful that if I had returned the kiss, I might have returned it with an enthusiasm that would have offended her delicacy; it was not best, under the circumstances, that she and I should kiss.”
This led the newspapers to ask for the interpretation of a kiss which Mr. Beecher had previously characterized as “paroxysmal.” It was comparatively easy even for people who were accustomed to do their kissing without analysis to comprehend the other varieties which had been introduced during the progress of the trial, such as the impulsive kiss, the enthusiastic kiss, the holy kiss, the kiss of reconciliation, the kiss of grace, mercy, and peace, and the kiss mutual. But the kiss “inspirational” and the kiss “paroxysmal” were likely to be understood only by those who remembered the story of the good old Methodist deacon. The young people of the church were in the habit of playing games whose forfeits were kisses; but the pious old gentleman was much troubled about it, and said that he was not so much opposed to kissing if they did not kiss with an appetite.
The Tilton-Beecher case evoked from the newspaper writers an infinite amount of comment. Among those whose views attracted marked attention was Mrs. Jane G. Swisshelm, who said, in the Chicago “Tribune:”
“We can all see the impropriety of verbal declarations of passion in such cases; and how much more unsafe any act bearing such interpretation! Wherever men and women meet in friendly or business relations, one or both must be constantly mindful of the differences and dangers of the sex,—must guard looks, words, and actions, and in no moment of overwrought sympathy can the stern barriers of decorum be safely broken down. Before kissing Mr. Beecher, Mrs. Moulton should have waited until he had taken that powder, until it had done its work and the undertaker had the body ready for burial. Only in his coffin is it safe for even ‘a section of the day of judgment,’ in the shape of a woman, to kiss any one man in a thousand. There seems to be no room for doubt that she is, or was, a perfectly upright woman; but her childish act shows the atmosphere in which these men have been living,—shows the unconscious steps by which they passed from virtue to vice,—and ought to awaken all lovers of virtue to a more careful guard of her outside defences. Chastity is not the natural condition of the race, but the very opposite, and it can only be secured by ages of culture and constant vigilance. It is a something to be acquired and maintained through grace and watchfulness, and those who open doors through which the enemy enters and causes the fall of others are responsible for their negligence and mistaken confidence.”
This judgment brought out some humorous responses. A lady thus expressed her indignation in the “Graphic:”
“I never saw Mrs. Swisshelm, thank goodness; but what a perfectly ridiculous old creature she must be! According to her own account, no live man could be found who would venture to kiss her, and so she was obliged to go and unscrew a dead man’s coffin and kiss him. I never heard of anything so dreadful in the whole course of my life.
“Mrs. Swisshelm’s letter is enough for me. I can understand just what a dreadful old person she must be. She wears trousers, I am told, besides that perfectly preposterous garment, the ‘chemiloon.’ If I was a man, I would no more kiss such a woman than I would kiss a pair of tongs that had been left out over-night in a snowbank.
“Kissing, when done innocently, is as innocent as strawberries-and-cream, and as nice. If Mrs. Swisshelm could only grow young and pretty, and take off her trousers and dress like a Christian, she would soon change her mind about kissing. Her letter is the expression of a cross old woman’s envious mind, and she ought to be ashamed of herself.”
Another writer, who objected to such forcibly expressed and sweeping opposition to kissing, said, in the “Inter-Ocean:”
“We believe in temperance, but not in total abstinence, so far as this business is concerned. Mrs. Swisshelm takes credit to herself for carefully avoiding kisses during her protracted life. To this she attributes, in part, her longevity and general heartiness. In one instance only did Mrs. Swisshelm deviate from this rule. It was in a hospital. A poor boy had been suffering long and much, and she had visited and cared for him. One day when she came in she found him dead and in his coffin. Then the law was suspended for a moment, and, bending her head, she kissed him, satisfied that he had passed beyond the thrill of an unholy thought thereat. A moment after, she bethought herself that others were in the room to whom the kiss might prove unprofitable, and for a second she upbraided herself for her foolish fervor; but an examination proved that these fears were groundless, for the others were dead also. This is the story as we gain it second-hand. We do not sympathize with this sentiment. If the poor boy needed a kiss at all, he needed it before his life had gone out and left the body only a clog. A kick or a kiss is equally unimportant to a piece of inanimate clay. The fact that there may have been too much kissing in high life of late years does not alter the fact that osculatory salutes are very good things in the family.”
The late Father Taylor, of the Seamen’s Bethel at Boston, narrates the following incident:
“While in Palestine, I went out one evening, and sat upon the grass on what was thought to be the hill Calvary. I lay down, and, with my arms under my head, looked up at the stars and meditated on what had happened on that sacred spot. With pain I suddenly remembered a man in my far-distant home who had always been hostile to me. I felt that my feelings also had not been right towards him, and I told my Lord that if I lived to get home I would see that man and ask his forgiveness. It was permitted me in due time to reach home. The incident had faded from my mind, when, one day, walking in Exchange Street, I saw that man approaching. My old feeling returned. I passed him without a sign; but just then I remembered Calvary, and turned to look after him. To my surprise, he also was turning. I went back to him, threw my arms about him, and kissed him! and I felt better.”
Herr Hackländer, writing on the subject of osculation, says:
“There are three kisses by which the human race are blest: the first is that which the mother presses on the new-born infant’s head; the second, that which the newly-wedded bride bestows on your lips; the third, that with which love or friendship closes your eyes when your career is ended.”
After which rhetorical flourish he adds:
“But I, more blest than other mortals, have to boast of a fourth kiss of bliss, that of Father Radetzky!” Hackländer had written a description of the battle of Novara, which brought him, among other distinctions, a kiss from the old field-marshal.
Turning back to mediæval history, we find an amusing incident in the career of Charles the Simple, of France. The viking Rollo, having been banished from Norway by Harold, proceeded southward to conquer a new domain. Entering the mouth of the Seine, he took possession of Rouen, where he spent the winter of each year, employing the summer in ravaging France, till at last the king, Charles the Simple, as the only hope of obtaining peace, promised to give him the province of Neustria as a fief, provided he would become a Christian.
Rollo was baptized at Rouen, in 912. He had then to pay homage to King Charles by kneeling before him, kissing his foot, and swearing to pay him allegiance. Rollo took the oath, but nothing would induce him to perform the rest of the ceremony, and he appointed one of his followers to do homage in his stead. The Northman, as proud as his master, wilfully misunderstood, and, instead of kneeling, lifted the king’s foot up to reach his mouth, so as to upset king and throne together, amid the rude laughter of his countrymen.
When the famous crusade of Godfrey de Bouillon, early in the eleventh century, was nearing its successful issue, Tancred, with a few other knights, was the first to come in sight of Jerusalem. When the Crusaders beheld the Holy City, the object of all their hopes and toils, they all at once fell down on their knees, weeping and giving thanks, and even kissing the sacred earth, and, as they rose, hymns of praise were sung by the whole army. So when Columbus and his followers stepped on the beach of San Salvador, all knelt down, reverently kissing the ground, with tears and thanks to God.
Jean Paul Frederic Richter, in his “Autobiography,” thus describes a thrilling event in his life’s history:
MY FIRST KISS.
As earlier in life, on the opposite church-bench, so I could but fall in love with Catharine Bärin, as she sat always above me on the school-bench, with her pretty, round, red, smallpox-marked face,—her lightning eyes,—the pretty hastiness with which she spoke and ran. In the school carnival, that took in the whole forenoon succeeding fast nights, and consisted in dancing and playing, I had the joy to perform the irregular hop dance, that preceded the regular, with her. In the play, “How does your neighbor please you?” where upon an affirmative answer they are ordered to kiss, and upon a contrary there is a calling out, and in the midst of accolades all change places, I ran always near her. The blows were like gold-beaters’ by which the pure gold of my love was beaten out, and a continual change of places, as she always forbid me the court, and I always called her to the court, was managed.
All these malicious occurrences (desertiones malitiosæ) could not deprive me of the blessedness of meeting her daily, when with her snow-white apron and her snow-white cap she ran over the long bridge opposite the parsonage window, out of which I was looking. To catch her, not to say, but to give her something sweet, a mouthful of fruit, to run quickly through the parsonage court, down the little steps, and arrest her in her flight, my conscience would never permit; but I enjoyed enough to see her from the window upon the bridge, and I think it was near enough for me to stand, as I usually did, with my heart behind a long seeing and hearing trumpet. Distance injures true love less than nearness. Could I upon the planet Venus discover the goddess Venus, while in the distance its charms were so enchanting, I should have warmly loved it, and without hesitation chosen to revere it as my morning and evening star.
In the mean time I have the satisfaction to draw all those, who expect in Schwarzenbach a repetition of the Joditz love, from their error, and inform them that it came to something. On a winter evening, when my princess’s collection of sweet gifts was prepared, and needed only a receiver, the pastor’s son, who among all my school companions was the worst, persuaded me, when a visit from the chaplain occupied my father, to leave the parsonage while it was dark, to pass the bridge, and venture, which I had never done, into the house where the beloved dwelt with her poor grandmother up in a little corner chamber. We entered a little ale-house underneath. Whether Catharine happened to be there, or whether the rascal, under the pretence of a message, allured her down upon the middle of the steps, or, in short, how it happened that I found her there, has become only a dreamy recollection; for the sudden lightning of the present darkened all that went behind. As violently as if I had been a robber, I first pressed upon her my present of sweetmeats, and then I, who in Joditz never could reach the heaven of a first kiss, and never even dared to touch the beloved hand, I, for the first time, held a beloved being upon my heart and lips. I have nothing further to say, but that it was the one pearl of a minute, that was never repeated; a whole longing past and a dreaming future were united in one moment, and in the darkness behind my closed eyes the fireworks of a whole life were evolved in a glance. Ah, I have never forgotten it,—the ineffaceable moment!
I returned like a clairvoyant from heaven again to earth, and remarked only that in this second Christmas festival Ruprecht[9] did not precede, but followed it, for on my way home I met a messenger coming for me, and was severely scolded for running away. Usually after such warm silver beams of a blessed sun there falls a closing, stormy gust. What was its effect on me? The stream of words could not drain my paradise,—for does it not bloom even to-day around and forth from my pen?
It was, as I have said, the first kiss, and, as I believe, will be the last; for I shall not, probably, although she lives yet, journey to Schwarzenbach to give a second. As usual, during my whole Schwarzenbach life I was perfectly contented with my telegraphic love, which yet sustained and kept itself alive without any answering telegram. But truly no one could blame her less than I that she was silent at that time, or that she continues so now after the death of her husband; for later, in stranger loves and hearts, I have always been slow to speak. It did not help me that I stood with ready face and attractive outward appearance; all corporeal charms must be placed over the foil of the spiritual before they can sufficiently shine and kindle and dazzle. But this was the cause of failure in my innocent love-time, that without any intercourse with the beloved, without conversation or introduction, I displayed my whole love bursting from the dry exterior, and stood before her like the Judas-tree, in full blossom, but without branch or leaf.
An incident previously referred to has been thus embodied in verse:
THE GUERDON.
Alain, the poet, fell asleep one day
In the lords’ chamber, when it chanced the queen
With her twelve maids of honor passed that way,—
She like a slim white lily set between
Twelve glossy leaves, for they were robed in green.
A forest of gold pillars propped the roof,
And from the heavy corbels of carved stone
Yawned drowsy dwarfs, with satyr’s face and hoof:
Like one of those bright pillars overthrown,
The slanted sunlight through the casement shone,
Gleaming across the body of Alain,—
As if the airy column in its fall
Had caught and crushed him. So the laughing train
Came on him suddenly, and one and all
Drew back, affrighted, midway in the hall.
Like some huge beetle curled up in the sun
Was this man lying in the noontide glare,
Deformed, and hideous to look upon,
With sunken eyes, and masses of coarse hair,
And sallow cheeks deep-seamed with time and care.
Forth from her maidens stood Queen Margaret:
The royal blood up to her temples crept,
Like a wild vine with faint red roses set,
As she across the pillared chamber swept,
And, kneeling, kissed the poet while he slept.
Then from her knees uprose the stately queen,
And, seeing her ladies titter, ’gan to frown
With those great eyes wherein methinks were seen
Lights that outflashed the lustres in her crown,—
Great eyes that looked the shallow women down.
“Nay, not for love,”—’twas like a sudden bliss,
The full sweet measured music of her tongue,—
“Nay, not for love’s sake did I give the kiss,
Not for his beauty, who’s nor fair nor young,
But for the songs which those mute lips have sung!”