HISTORY OF THE KISS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 88, 15 April 1899, Page 2 (Supplement)

HISTORY OF THE KISS.

AN ART INTRODUCED BY A PRINCESS. 'You must not kiss a, woman against her will,' Judge Bacon informed a defendant in his court the other day. 'It is an assault to do so.' The law of at least one country is not so strict in this respect; for in 1595 the Dutch Court of Appeal decided that a man who kissed a lady, even a total stranger, in the public street could not be legally punished for the offence. 'To kiss a person," explained the president of the Supreme Court, 'cannot be a misdemeanour, as it is in the nature of a warm mark of sympathy.' The history of the kiss is interesting and curious. It appears that Princess Rowena, the beautiful Saxon, introduced the custom into Britain. She was present at a great banquet given by the monarch, and an old chronicle records that 'the fair Princess Rowena,the daughter of King Hengius of V riesland, pressed the beaker with her lipkins and saluted the amorous Vortigern with a busken.'

The practice, once established, grew apace. In the fourteenth century we find a worthy Greek traveller named Chalcondylcs wrote that the customs of 'the English females and children 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 none sees anything improper in the action."

In 1499 Erasmus wrote to his poet friend, Fausto Andrelini, in Italy, saying that in England 'are girls with angel faces, so kind and obliging that you would prefer them to all your muses. Besides, there is a custom here never to be sufficiently commended. Wherever you come you are received with a kiss by all; when you take your leave you are dismissed with kisses; you return, kisses are repeated. They come to visit you; kisses again; they leave you, you kiss them all around.

'Should they meet you anywhere,' continued the letter, 'kisses in abundance; in fine, wherever you move there is nothing but kisses. Ah, Faustus, If you had once tasted the tenderness, the fragrance of these kisses, you woud wish to stay in England, not for a ten years' voyage, like Solon's, but as long as you live.'

Kissing flourished in England until the advent of the Puritans, when the practiice was soundly denounced. 'The common salutation of women I abhor,' said John Bunyan. 'I have made my objections against. It, and they have answered that it was but a piece of civility. Some, indeed, have urged the holy kiss; but then I have asked them why they have made balks? Why did they salute the most handsome and l.et the ill-favoured ones go?' By the time of Queen Anne it would seem that the habit of promiscuous j KISSING HAD FLED' from the large cities to survive in the country. Thus, in the 'Spectator,' 'Rustic Sprightly' complained that since the unfortunate arrival in his neighbourhood of a courtier who was contented with a profound bow, no young gentlewoman had been kissed, though previously he had been accustomed, upon entering a room, to salute the ladies all round.

When William IV., then Duke of Clarence, . made an excursion into Lower Canada, he crossed over to the State of Vermont. There he stopped at a barber's shop to be shaved. The barber's wife, a pretty woman, happened iin just as the operation was completed. The prince unceremoniously stole a kiss from the lady with the remark, 'There, now, tell your countrywomen that the son \of the King of England has given a Royal kiss to a Yankee barber's wife.'

It is not known whether the-lady rejoiiced in the distinction. It is known that the Barber did not. He seiized the prince, and, helping him out of the shpp with his foot, exclaimed, 'There', now, go and tell your countrywomen that a Yankee barber has given a Royal kick to the son of the King of England.'

A stolen kiss/ once brought a Sydney butcher into possession of a fortune. The offended victim had him prosecuted for assault. He was fined heavily by the local magistrates, and the affair was commented on freely by the press.

Some of the comments arrested the notice of a firm of solicitors in Sydney, who had been appointed trustees of some property which had been left to the man by a distant relative 20 years earlier. They had failed to trace the heir until his newly-acquired newspaper notoriety revealed his whereabouts, and secured him his heritage.

At Boulonge, during the reception of Queen Victoria, June, 1855, a number of English ladles, in their anxiety to see everything, pressed with such force against the soldiers who were keeping the line that the latter were in some instances obliged to give way. The officer in command, observing the state of affairs, shouted out;—

'One roll of the drum—if they don't keep back, kiss them all,'

At the first sound, of the drum the English ladiies took to fjight. 'If they had been French,' was the comment of a Parisian journal, 'they would have remained.'