Vous chargez la fureur de vos embrassements;
Et quand je vous demande après, quel est cet homme,
À peine pouvez-vous dire comme il se nomme.
La Bruyère has, time after time, satirised this foolish custom, which, especially at Court, seems to have assumed colossal dimensions; but even in middle-class circles etiquette required men to salute ladies with a kiss.
In an old comedy entitled Le Gentilhomme guespin a father presents his son, who is extraordinarily awkward and clumsy. The latter does not know how he ought to behave to the ladies of the house, so the father in despair gives him a dig in the ribs, and whispers in his ear: “He’s bashful. Kiss the lady. One always greets a lady with a kiss.”
... Il est honteux. Là, baisez donc Madame;
C’est toujours en baisant qu’on salue une femme,
Molière has made use of this scene in Le Malade imaginaire, where Thomas Diafoirus pedantically asks when he is introduced to Angélique: Baiserai-je? (Am I to kiss?).
In England we come across pretty nearly the same state of things. Erasmus of Rotterdam, in one of his Epistolæ familiares, expresses his great satisfaction with English customs: “When you arrive every one kisses you; at your departure they bid you good-bye and kiss you; you come back, then fresh kisses. You are kissed when you meet any one, and so, too, when you separate. Wheresoever you go everything is filled with kisses, and if you have only once tasted how delicate these kisses are, and the deliciousness of their savour, you would want, my dear Faustus, to be banished to England for time and eternity.” In another passage, where Erasmus is speaking of the state of the inns in England, which he mentions in terms of unqualified praise, he winds up as follows: “Everywhere at the inns one meets with pretty, smiling girls: they come and ask for one’s soiled clothes; they wash them and soon bring them back again. When the travellers are about to resume their journey these girls kiss them, and take as affectionate a farewell of them as if the latter were their brothers or near relations.”
And Holberg in his letter writes: “In England it is considered uncourteous to enter a house without saluting one’s hostess with a kiss.”
Even in the Low Countries the friendly kiss was much in vogue. Adrianus Höreboord, a professor at the University of Leyden, has, in a Latin treatise, investigated the question as to whether the custom of allowing strangers to kiss young girls, widows, and other persons’ wives, on paying a visit, can be said to be in conformity with the laws of chastity. Höreboord’s opinion is that such practice is in no way objectionable: as a kiss can be given without any arrière pensée the kisses demanded by politeness may be quite chaste.
Erycius Puteanus, the learned Dutch philosopher, on the contrary, holds that the aforesaid custom is not without danger—at any rate to more sensually-disposed temperaments. In a letter on the education of a young Italian girl he writes that he would never suffer any one to kiss his pupil, adding: “Our Flemish girls never do so; they are not so ardent. They do not comprehend the language of love in glances and kisses. In the matter of Italian girls on the other hand, things are quite different, and I teach my pupil the speech of our country and our customs, kissing excepted.”