Holberg has also occupied himself with this question, and tells the following story in one of his epistles (No. 199):—
“Last week I was at a party where a curious incident happened. A person stole up to a lady and gave her a kiss unexpectedly. The Vestal virgin took this douceur in such ill part that, in her wrath, she gave him a sound box on the ears. He gave a start, and every one expected he was going to pay her back in the same coin; but, to show his respect for the fair sex, he made a low bow, and kissed the very hand that had but lately struck him. All present praised this act of courtesy, on his part.” Holberg, on the contrary, does not commend the man’s politeness; like the German jurist, he sees nothing wrong about a kiss—indeed, he even goes so far as to say that the young man ought to have given the maiden a box on the ears in return. This coarse way of looking at the subject from a bachelor’s point of view is wittily defended in the following rather startling way:
“I candidly confess that if anything of the kind had happened to me I should have returned the good lady’s salutation in the same way, and that not out of anger or desire of being revenged, but for the purpose of showing the courtesy with which one ought to treat a woman; for kissing the lady on the hand which has boxed his ears is equivalent to saying: ‘As you are a feeble creature of no importance, and cannot hurt me, your act deserves ridicule rather than revenge or rage.’ No sensible woman can be pleased with such a compliment, as there is nothing worse than being treated like a puppet; and I hope no maid or matron will take this opinion of mine in ill part, but will rather regard it as a proof of the justice I have always shown to women by always taking them seriously. A kiss is nothing but a salutation, and cannot be looked on as anything else. We are no longer living in the golden age, when a young lady almost fainted at hearing the word pronounced.”
English ladies regard the matter from quite another point of view. In 1837 Mr Thomas Saverland brought an action against Miss Caroline Newton, who had bitten a piece out of his nose for his having tried to kiss her by way of a joke. The defendant was acquitted, and the judge laid it down that “when a man kisses a woman against her will she is fully entitled to bite his nose, if she so pleases.”—“And eat it up, if she has a fancy that way,” added a jocular barrister half aloud.
Let us next consider how the thing stands when it is apparently only a question of a kiss snatched by force—for it is, you know, a matter of general knowledge that a woman’s “No” is not always to be taken seriously. The refusal may, you know, be merely feigned. The maiden’s “No” is the swain’s “Yes,” Peder Syv teaches us, and Runeberg, who also understood women, says:—
Ev’ry girl is fond of kisses,
Though she may pretend to scorn them.
W. F. H.
If one is now convinced that the German proverb which says: Auf ein Weibes Zunge ist Nein nicht Nein (On a woman’s tongue “no” is not “no”), what then? Well, but how the point is to be finally settled is not satisfactorily explained by the authorities within my reach; and this is the reason why I dare not pronounce an opinion on the question at issue. But I am convinced that the momentary difficulty will afford the man the necessary diplomatic qualities as well as the requisite tact. There is only one thing I can lay down for certain, viz., that if a man follows his natural simplicity and reserve, and takes the girl’s feigned “No” seriously, she will only laugh at him afterwards—such, again, is woman’s nature.
A well-known French chanson deals with a hunter who meets a young girl out in the forest. Struck by her beauty, he wants to kiss her:
And takes her by her white hand,
Intending to caress her;
W. F. H.
but she begins to cry, and, moved by her tears, he releases her; but he has hardly got clear of the wood before she begins to laugh at him heartily, and in derision shouts after him: “When you’ve got hold of a quail you ought to pluck it, and when you’ve got hold of a girl you ought to embrace her”: