Part 2
“Oh that the Greeks would send me hence to try If I could make your stubborn heart comply! Few words I’d use; all should be sighs, and tears, And looks, and kisses, mixed with hopes and fears; My love like lightning through my eyes should fly, And thaw the ice which round your heart does lie; Sometimes my arms about your neck I’d throw; And then embrace your knees and humbly bow. There is more eloquence in tears and kisses Than in the smooth harangues of sly Ulysses.”[2]
In the letter of Sappho to her lover, Phaon, when he had forsaken her, and she had resolved upon suicide, we have a picture of that “sorrow’s crown of sorrow,” the remembrance in adversity of happier days:
“Yet once your Sappho could your cares employ, Once in her arms you centred all your joy; Still all those joys to my remembrance move, For, oh, how vast a memory has love! My music then you could forever hear, And all my words were music to your ear; You stopped with kisses my enchanting tongue, And found my kisses sweeter than my song. The fair Sicilians now your soul inflame: Why was I born, ye gods, a Lesbian dame?”
A wife’s affection is shown in the letter of Laodanna to her husband at Aulis with the Grecian fleet:
“Yet while before the leaguer thou dost lie, Thy picture is some pleasure to my eye; There must be something in it more than art, ’Twere very thee, could it thy mind impart: I kiss the pretty idol, and complain, As if (like thee) ’twould answer me again.”
This pretty conceit, which the moderns have often copied from Ovid, occurs in the epistle of Paris to Helen:
“If you your young Hermione but kiss, Straight from her lips I snatch the envied bliss.”
In his “Art of Love” (Book I.) Ovid thus pursues his course of instruction:
“Tears, too, are of utility: by tears you will move adamant. Make her, if you can, to see your moistened cheeks. If tears shall fail you, for indeed they do not always come in time, touch your eyes with your wet hand. What discreet person will not mingle kisses with tender words? Though she should not grant them, still take them ungranted. Perhaps she will struggle at first, and will say, ‘You naughty man!’ Still, in her struggling she will wish to be overcome. Only, let them not, rudely snatched, hurt her tender lips, and take care that she may not be able to complain that they have proved a cause of pain. He who has gained kisses, if he cannot gain the rest as well, will deserve to lose even that which has been granted him. How much is there wanting for unlimited enjoyment after a kiss! Oh, shocking! ’twere clownishness, not modesty. Call it violence, if you like; such violence is pleasing to the fair; they often wish, through compulsion, to grant what they are delighted to grant.”
* * * * *
Turning from Ovid to the Greek Anthology, we find this epigram:
“The kiss that she left on my lip Like a dew-drop shall lingering lie: ’Twas nectar she gave me to sip, ’Twas nectar I drank in her sigh!
“The dew that distilled in that kiss To my soul was voluptuous wine: Ever since it is drunk with the bliss, And feels a delirium divine.”
* * * * *
Anacreon, in one of his odes, speaks of the heart flying to the lips; and Plato, in a distich quoted by Aulus Gellius, tells us of the effect of a kiss upon his susceptibility:
“Whene’er thy nectared kiss I sip, And drink thy breath in melting twine, My soul then flutters to my lip, Ready to fly and mix with thine.”
Plato also wrote:
“My soul, when I kissed Agathon, did start Up to my lips, just ready to depart.”
“Oh! on that kiss my soul, As if in doubt to stay, Lingered awhile, on fluttering wing prepared To fly away.”
* * * * *
Anacreon uses this figurative expression:
“They tainted all his bowl of blisses, His bland desires and hallowed kisses.”
By the ancient expression “cups of kisses,” reference is most probably made to a favorite gallantry among the Greeks and Romans of drinking when the lips of their mistresses had touched the brim. Ben Jonson’s oft-quoted verses to Celia, in which occur the lines—
“Or leave a kiss within the cup, And I’ll not ask for wine,”—
are translated from Philostratus, a Greek poet of the second century.
Lucian has a conceit upon the same idea: “that you may at once both drink and kiss.” And Meleager says:
“Blest is the goblet, oh! how blest, Which Heliodora’s lips have pressed! Oh! might thy lips but meet with mine, My soul should melt away in thine.”
Agathias also says:
“I love not wine; but thou hast power T’ intoxicate at any hour. Touch first the cup with thine own lip, Then hand it round for mine to sip, And temperance at once gives way; My sweet cup-bearer wins the day. That cup’s a boat which ferries over Thy kiss in safety to thy lover, And tells by its delicious flavor Plow much it revels in thy favor.”
* * * * *
Longepierre, to give an idea of the luxurious estimation in which garlands were held by the ancients, relates an anecdote of a frail beauty, who, in order to gratify three lovers without leaving cause for jealousy with any of them, gave a kiss to one, let the other drink after her, and put a garland on the brow of the third; so that each was satisfied with his favor, and flattered himself with the preference.
* * * * *
In one of Anacreon’s odes we find the strong and beautiful phrase, “a lip provoking kisses.”
“Then her lip, so rich in blisses, Sweet petitioner for kisses.”
Tatius speaks of “lips soft and delicate for kissing;” and that grave old commentator, Lambinus, in his notes upon Lucretius, tells us, with all the authority of experience, that girls who have large lips kiss infinitely sweeter than others!
* * * * *
Æneas Sylvius, in his story of the loves of Euryalus and Lucretia, where he particularizes the beauties of the heroine, describes her lips as exquisitely adapted for biting.[3] And Catullus, in his poems (viii.), asks, “Whom will you love now? Whose will you be called? Whom will you kiss? Whose lips will you bite? But you, Catullus, be stubbornly obdurate.” As Lamb has it:
“Whose fondling care shalt thou avow? Whose kisses now shalt thou return? Whose lip in rapture bite? But thou, Hold, hold, Catullus, cold and stern.”
Or, as Elton renders it:
“Whom wilt thou for thy lover choose? Whose shall they call thee, false one, whose? Who shall thy darted kisses sip, While thy keen love-bites scar his lip? But thou, Catullus, scorn to feel: Persist—and let thy heart be steel.”
Plautus alludes to this biting;[4] and Horace says (Ode XIII.), as already quoted:
“Or on thy lips the fierce fond boy Marks with his teeth the furious joy.”
Plutarch tells us that Flora, the mistress of Cn. Pompey, used to say, in commendation of her lover, that she could never quit his arms without giving him a bite. And Tibullus, in his confession of his illicit love for Delia, the wife of another, and of his devices for covering his tracks, says, among other things, “I gave her juices and herbs for removing the livid marks which mutual Venus makes by the impress of the teeth.”
* * * * *
Anacreon finds in the brevity of life arguments for the voluptuary as well as for the moralist:
“Can we discern, with all our lore, The path we’re yet to journey o’er? No, no, the walk of life is dark, ’Tis wine alone can strike a spark! Then let me quaff the foamy tide, And through the dance meandering glide; Let me imbibe the spicy breath Of odors chafed to fragrant death, Or from the kiss of love inhale A more voluptuous, richer gale.”
* * * * *
Of the amatory writers who exhaust rhetoric to express the infinity of kisses which they require from the lips of their mistresses, Catullus takes the lead. In his famous verses to Lesbia (Carm. 5), he says:
“Let us live and love, my Lesbia, and a farthing for all the talk of morose old sages! Suns may set and rise again; but we, when once our brief light has set, must sleep through a perpetual night. Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then still another thousand, then a hundred. Then, when we shall have made up many thousands, we will confuse the reckoning, so that we ourselves may not know their amount, nor any spiteful person have it in his power to envy us when he knows that our kisses were so many.”
Roman superstition recognized an occult and mischievous potency in the sentiment of envy. Moreover, there was a prevalent notion that it excited the envy of the gods to _count_ what gave one pleasure.
The following metrical versions of the foregoing are worth a place here. The first is by George Lamb (1821):
“Love, my Lesbia, while we live; Value all the cross advice That the surly graybeards give At a single farthing’s price.
“Suns that set again may rise; We, when once our fleeting light, Once our day in darkness dies, Sleep in one eternal night.
“Give me kisses thousand-fold, Add to them a hundred more; Other thousands still be told, Other hundreds, o’er and o’er.
“But, with thousands when we burn, Mix, confuse the sums at last, That we may not blushing learn All that have between us past.
“None shall know to what amount Envy’s due for so much bliss; None—for none shall ever count All the kisses we will kiss.”
The second is by C. A. Elton, whose translations of the classic poets were first published in 1814:
“Let us, my Lesbia, live and love; Though the old should disapprove; Let us rate their saws severe At the worth of a denier. Suns can set beneath the main, And lift their fated, orbs again, But we, when sets our scanted light, Must slumber in perpetual night. Give me, then, a thousand kisses; Add a hundred billing blisses; Give me a thousand kisses more; Then repeat the hundred o’er; Give me other thousand kisses; Give me other hundred blisses; And when thousands now are done, Let us confuse them every one, That we the number cannot know, And none that saw us kissing so Might glut his envious busy spleen By counting o’er the kisses that had been.”
In another poem addressed to Lesbia (Carm. 7), Catullus says:
“You ask how many kisses of yours, Lesbia, maybe enough for me; and more. As the numerous sands that lie on the spicy shores of Cyrene, between the oracle of sultry Jove and the sacred tomb of old Battus;[5] or as the many stars that in the silence of night behold men’s furtive amours; to kiss you with so many kisses is enough and more for madly fond Catullus; such a multitude as prying gossips can neither count, nor bewitch with their evil tongues.”
Lamb’s translation is as follows:
“Thy kisses dost thou bid me count, And tell thee, Lesbia, what amount My rage for love and thee could tire, And satisfy and cloy desire?
Many as grains of Libyan sand Upon Cyrene’s spicy land, From prescient Ammon’s sultry dome To sacred Battus’ ancient tomb: Many as stars that silent ken At night the stolen loves of men. Yes, when the kisses thou shalt kiss Have reached a number vast as this, Then may desire at length be stayed, And e’en my madness be allayed, Then when infinity defies The calculations of the wise, Nor evil voice’s deadly charm Can work the unknown number harm.”
Thomas Moore gives the following exceedingly free rendering of the answer to the question:
“As many stellar eyes of light As through the silent waste of night, Gazing upon the world of shade, Witness some secret youth and maid, Who, fair as thou, and fond as I, In stolen joys enamored lie,— So many kisses, ere I slumber, Upon those dew-bright lips I’ll number; So many vermil, honeyed kisses, Envy can never count our blisses: No tongue shall tell the sum but mine; No lips shall fascinate but thine!”
We cannot dismiss Catullus without one more specimen of his osculatory exuberance. In his lines “To My Love” (Carm. 48), he says:
“Were I allowed to kiss your sweet eyes without stint, I would kiss on and on up to three hundred thousand times; nor even then should I ever have enough, not though our crop of kissing were thicker than the dry ears of the cornfield.”
Or in Lamb’s metrical version:
“If, all-complying, thou wouldst grant Thy lovely eyes to kiss, my fair, Long as I pleased, oh! I would plant Three hundred thousand kisses there.
“Nor could I even then refrain, Nor satiate leave that fount of blisses, Though thicker than autumnal grain Should be our growing crop of kisses.”
* * * * *
Martial, in his “Epigrams,” bestows a variety of attentions upon the promiscuous custom of kissing in Rome, as he found it in his day. In an epigram addressed to his friend Flaccus (xii. 98), he complains in very strong and very amusing terms of the persistent salutes of a certain class, who paid no heed whatever to times and seasons, places and circumstances, but broke through all forms and guards and conventional restraints.
On another occasion he pointed his invective in this manner (xii. 59):
“Rome gives, on one’s return after fifteen years’ absence, such a number of kisses as exceeds those given by Lesbia to Catullus. 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 a one-eyed gentleman; there one with bleared eyes, and fellows whose mouths are defiled with all manner of abominations. It was hardly worth while to return.”
His epigram to Linus (vii. 95) is rarely exceeded in its sarcastic severity. It closes in this manner:
——“No doubt, Th’ icicles hanging at thy dog-like snout, The congealed snivel dangling on thy beard, Ranker than th’ oldest goat of all the herd. The nastiest mouth in town I’d rather greet, Than with thy flowing frozen nostrils meet. If therefore thou hast either shame or sense, Till April comes no kisses more dispense.”
The satirist thus pays his respects to a lady whose physical attractions do not appear to have had much charm for his fastidious taste:
“In vain, fond Philænis, thou woo’st my embrace: Bald, carrotty, one-eyed, thy tripartite grace! The wretch, poor Philænis, that would thee salute, Can never aspire to the buss of a brute.”
(ii. 33.)
And again:
“Why on my chin a plaster clapped? Besalved my lips that are not chapped? Philænis, why? The cause is this: Philænis, thee I will not kiss.”
(x. 22).
The illustrious Postumus comes in for a share of repugnance in this delicate fashion. We give the literal translation:
“I commend you, Postumus, for kissing me with only half your lip; you may, however, if you please, withhold even the half of this half. Are you inclined to grant me a boon still greater, and even inexpressible? Keep this whole half entirely to yourself, Postumus.” (ii. 10.)
And elsewhere, thus:
“To some, Postumus, you give kisses, to some your right hand. ‘Which do you prefer?’ you say: ‘choose.’ I prefer your hand.”
In another place (iii. 53) Martial addresses Chloe in this ungallant and uncourtly style:
“I could do without your face, and your neck, and your hands, and your limbs, and your bosom, and other of your charms. Indeed, not to fatigue myself with enumerating each of them, I could do without you, Chloe, altogether.”
This _brusquerie_ has been imitated by Thomas Moore in the following manner:
“I could resign that eye of blue, Howe’er its splendor used to thrill me; And e’en that cheek of roseate hue— To lose it, Chloe, scarce would kill me.
“That snowy neck I ne’er should miss, However much I’ve raved about it; And sweetly as that lip can kiss, I _think_ I could exist without it.
“In short, so well I’ve learned to fast, That sooth, my love, I know not whether I might not bring myself at last ——To do without you altogether.”
On the other hand, when it comes to the kisses of his favorite (xi. 8), Martial indulges in the following exuberant fancy:
“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; or of the flowery meadows in the vernal season; or of silken robes of the empress from her Palatine wardrobes; of amber warmed by the hand of a maiden; of a jar of dark Falernian wine, broken and scented from a distance; of a garden that attracts the Sicilian bees; of the alabaster jars of Cosmus, and the altars of the gods; of the chaplet just fallen from the brow of the luxurious;—but why should I mention all these things singly? not one of them is enough by itself; mix all together,[6] and you have the perfume of the morning kisses of my favorite. Do you want to know the name? I will only tell you of the kisses. You swear to be secret. You want to know too much, Sabinus.”
One more selection from Martial (vi. 34) will suffice for this branch of our subject:
“Give me, Diadumenus, close kisses. ‘How many?’ you say. You bid me count the waves of the ocean, the shells scattered on the shores of the Ægean Sea, the bees that wander on Attic Hybla, or the voices and clappings that resound in the full theatre when the people suddenly see the countenance of the emperor. I should not be content even with as many as Lesbia, after many entreaties, gave to the witty Catullus: he wants but few who can count them.”
The following imitation was written by Sir C. Hanbury Williams:
“Come, Chloe, and give me sweet kisses, For sweeter sure girl never gave; But why, in the midst of my blisses, Do you ask me how many I’d have?
“I’m not to be stinted in pleasure; Then, prithee, my charmer, be kind, For, while I love thee above measure, To numbers I’ll ne’er be confined.
“Count the bees that on Hybla are playing; Count the flowers that enamel its fields; Count the flocks that on Tempe are straying; Or the grain that rich Sicily yields.
“Go number the stars in the heaven; Count how many sands on the shore: When so many kisses you’ve given, I still shall be craving for more.
“To a heart full of love let me hold thee, To a heart which, dear Chloe, is thine; With my arms I’ll forever enfold thee, And twist round thy limbs like a vine.
“What joy can be greater than this is? My life on thy lips shall be spent; But the wretch that can number his kisses With few will be ever content.”
TRACES IN ENGLISH HISTORY.
Kissing appears to have been the usual method of salutation in England in former times. A Greek traveller, named Chalondyles, who visited Britain five centuries ago, says:
“As for English females and children, their customs are liberal in the extreme. For instance, when a visitor calls at a friend’s house, his first act is to kiss his friend’s wife; he is then a duly-installed guest. Persons meeting in the street follow the same custom, and no one sees anything improper in the action.”
Another Greek traveller of a century later, also adverts to this osculatory custom. He says:
“The English manifest much simplicity and lack of jealousy in their customs as regards females; for not only do members of the same family and household kiss them on the lips with complimentary salutations and enfolding of the arms round the waist, but even strangers, when introduced, follow the same mode, and it is one which does not appear to them in any degree unbecoming.”
Chaucer often alludes to it. Thus, the Frere in the Sompnour’s Tale, upon the entrance of the mistress of the house into the room where her husband and he were together,
“ariseth up ful curtisly, And hire embraceth in his armes narwe, And kisseth hire swete and chirketh as a sparwe With his lippes.”
Robert de Brunne (1303) says that the custom formed part of the ceremony of drinking healths:
“That sais wasseille drinkis of the cup, Kiss and his felow he gives it up.”
In Hone’s “Year-Book” occurs the following passage:
“Another specimen of our ancient manners is seen in the French embrace. The gentleman, and others of the male sex, lay hands on the shoulders, and touch the side of each other’s cheek; but on being introduced to a lady, they say to her father, brother, or friend, _Permettez moi_, and salute each of her cheeks.... And was not this custom in England in Elizabeth’s reign? Let us read one of the epistles of the learned Erasmus, which, being translated, is in part as follows:
“‘Although, Faustus, if you knew the advantages of Britain, truly you would hasten thither with wings to your feet; and, if your gout would not permit, you would wish you possessed the wings of Dædalus. For just to touch on one thing out of many here, there are lasses with heavenly faces, kind, obliging, and you would far prefer them to all your Muses. There is, besides, a practice never to be sufficiently commended. 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; if you return, the kisses are exchanged. Do they come to visit you, a kiss is the first thing; do they leave you, you kiss them all around. Do they meet you anywhere, kisses in abundance. In short, wherever you turn, there is nothing but kisses. Ah, Faustus, if you had once tasted the tenderness, the fragrance of these kisses, you would wish to stay in England, not for ten years only, but for life.”
This unctuous expatiation of the far-famed Dutchman is in rather broad contrast with the stern reprobation of John Bunyan, who says, in his “Grace Abounding:”
“The common salutation of women I abhor; it is odious to me in whomsoever I see it. When I have seen good men salute those women that they have visited, or that have visited them, I have made my objection against it; and when they have answered that it was but a piece of civility, I have told them that it was not a comely sight. Some, indeed, have urged the holy kiss; but then I have asked them why they have made balks? why they did salute the most handsome, and let the ill-favored ones go?”
More than a century before this decided expression of the great allegorist, Richard Whytford had said, in his “Type of Perfection” (1532):
“It becometh not, therefore, the personnes religious to follow _the manere of secular personnes_, that in theyr congresses or commune metynges, or departyngs, done use to kysse, take hands, or such other touchings that good religious-personnes shulde utterly avoyde.”
In Collet’s “Relics of Literature” maybe found this suggestive paragraph:
“Dr. Pierius Winsemius, historiographer to their High Mightinesses the States of Friesland, in his _Chronijck van Frieslandt_, 1622, tells us that the pleasant practice of kissing was utterly ‘unpractised and unknown’ in England till the fair princess Ronix (Rowena), the daughter of King Hengist of Friesland, ‘pressed the beaker with her lipkens, and saluted the amorous Vortigern with a husjen (a little kiss).’”
But, whether this Anglo-Saxon incident be true or mythical, it is certain that in the time of Cardinal Wolsey, who lived cotemporaneously with Erasmus, from whom we have quoted, the osculatory reputation of the English was widely spread. Cavendish, the biographer of Wolsey, says, in reference to a visit at the château of M. Créqui, a distinguished French nobleman: