The Art of Kissing

Front matter

LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius | 987

The Art of Kissing

Clement Wood

Chapter 1

THE ART OF KISSING

I

THE ORIGIN OF KISSING

—The most helpful dictionary, before attempting the tough task of defining a word, gives us the names of its father and mother, and often of its grandparents, as well as something of the history of its wanderings. We shall take our cue from the dictionary, and see what kiss and its synonyms came from. Kiss, that enchanter's magical wand conjuring up the entrance to the temple of the highest physical pleasure, comes from the Anglo-Saxon coss, a kiss; and is, by general gossip, descended from the Gothic kustus, a proof or test, which in turn is a close relative of the Latin gustus, a taste. It is also kin to the Anglo-Saxon coesan, to choose. We have so far, then, a test, a taste, and a choice, all involved in the pleasant idea of a kiss.

There are only a few other words in English with the same meaning. The antiquated buss is of uncertain origin, a byblow of unknown race; although it is clearly close to the Bavarian bussen, to kiss, and may be related to the Spanish and Portuguese buz, a kiss of reverence, which seems to have come from the Turkish bus, Persian busa, and Hindu bosa, a kiss. Some words, you see, roam further than the distance from Lake Kissimmee, Florida, that Paradise of osculation, to distant Lapland, the only spot in Europe where kissing is not known. Osculation, the more highbrow word, has a prettier parentage, coming from the Latin osculari, to kiss, which developed from Latin osculum, a little mouth, the pretty mouth, this being the diminutive of os, mouth. Smack, defined as "a kiss, especially in a coarse or noisy manner," is akin to the German schmatzen and schmacken, to knock, or to smack the lips. Salute, the courtly word for kiss, comes from the Latin salus, safety, which grew out of salvus, from which we get salvation, and also a salvo of guns. Here we must quarrel with the word's parents: a kiss does not, as a rule, spell safety—it should rather be a glorious peril; the salvation it brings is at least not of the religious kind; and, if it sounds like a salvo of guns, we should ask the lady to put on a Maxim silencer thereafter, in order to avoid waking the neighbors.

So much for the family tree of kissing. As to its meaning, the dictionary says that a kiss is "a salute or caress, given with the lips." What an incredible understatement! Imagine a drowning man describing a life-buoy as a floating contrivance stuffed with cork! We much prefer Sam Slick's definition or description, that a kiss is like creation, because it is made out of nothing, and is very good. An old poet came closer than the dictionary, when he wrote:

What is a kiss? alacke! at worst, A single drop to quench a thirst, Tho' oft it proves in happier hour The first sweet drop of one long shower.

—Havelock Ellis, in Appendix A to volume IV of his Studies in the Psychology of Sex, has done most toward establishing the origins of kissing. The kiss as we know it, the tactile or touch kiss (as distinguished from the more widespread olfactory or smell kiss) is a specialized development of the sense of touch. The same is largely true, as Ellis points out, of the whole expression of physical love: the sexual embrace itself may be spoken of as a method of obtaining, through a specialized organization of the skin, the most exquisite and intense sensations of touch. The tactile kiss is confined to man, and largely to the civilized European man; but its roots go far below him, in the long upward climb of life.

Even as low as the insects, as Ellis points out, manifestations resembling the kiss are found. Thus snails and other insects, during their active mating, caress each other with their antennæ. Among birds, the bills are used for touches and caresses which partake of the nature of the kiss. Many mammals have touches and lickings, during the love episode, which are of kindred nature. Dogs, especially, smell, lick, and gently bite their mates. Yet too much significance must not be seen in these phenomena, since all our senses are merely extensions and specializations of the primitive sense of touch.

To travel closer to the immediate ancestors of our kiss, consider the baby. He regards his most reliable witness, in every case, as his tongue. Anything that his tongue can reach, or that can be carried up to his tongue, is promptly tasted and, if found agreeable, licked. Animals far below the mammals share this trait with the human infant. Especially among the mammals, including man, the trait is prominent: and it traces back to the infant's pleasure in sucking the maternal nipple. The lowest mammal, it may be remembered, which is the intermediate stage to the forms of life below the mammalian, has no breasts: the young lick the mother's entire body, which exudes milk at many places. Among mammals, the overpowering instinct to touch with the lips and tongue, that food may be found and life preserved, is specialized into the inner command to touch and suck the nipple for the same purpose. Out of this grows the trait among children of kissing and licking everything and everyone that they like, including people and pet animals.

On the mother's side, there is an impulse almost as strong to lick her young. The mother cat will commence licking her young almost at the moment of birth; other mammals share the trait. The world's leading scientists are inclined to find the immediate origin of the kiss as we know it in the kiss bestowed by the mother upon her child. Negative evidence is of value here. The maternal kiss is not universal throughout the human world; but it is much more widely distributed than the love kiss, as we know it. Furthermore, there is no locality in which the love kiss is found, where the maternal kiss is missing.

Freud, the psychoanalyst, has laid great em- phasis on the close love tie uniting mother and child—a tie frequently too close for the good of either. We have pointed out what the great Viennese overlooked: that the first separate male among animals, appearing at about the stage of the barnacles, was produced as a pocket-husband by the much larger female; and that the first separate male thus mated with his own mother. The roots of this mother-and-son complex, horrendously named the Œdipus complex, are found in this fact. Now we learn that the love kiss originated in the maternal kiss, as we might have expected to find.

An old poser is, Which kissed first, the man or the woman? The answer is simple: the woman. The mother's kiss, in the history of the race, preceded the kiss of love, as it does in the case of each one of us.

Another element enters into the kiss as we know it—the impulse to bite, increased during active loving. The teeth are used widely among animals, to grasp the female mate more firmly during the love episode. Of course, with the spread of the feminist movement during the last century, women have taken over much of man's activity, in all lines. Thus when we read references to a "biting blonde" we do not understand a blond Nordic sheik, but one of the sex long libeled as gentler.

—Throughout the world there are two main varieties of kisses: the touch, tactile, or lip kiss, osculus Europeanus, and the nose or olfactory kiss, osculus Asiaticus. Most of this study will be devoted to the lip kiss: but the first lesson in the art of kissing should be devoted to the exotic method called the nose kiss. This method may be stored for future reference by those essaying the kiss for the first time; but hardened veterans in love’s sweet practice may at once proceed to try it out, along the lines indicated below.

So far, we have assumed the necessity for a manual of osculation. This is as good a place as any to indicate the two essential reasons for this book.

First, kissing is an art, and not a gift. Indeed, the whole practice of love is one of the most charming of the applied arts. No man or woman is born a perfect kisser, or a perfect lover. The teacher may be experience—there is no more competent instructor. But unless you wish your Cupid’s Boulevard to be full of unnecessary ups and downs, of countless incidents where a little more knowledge on your part would have caused the love incident to become immeasurably more pleasurable both to the kisser and the kissed, you will not suffer from a few lessons given by an OO.D.—doctor of osculations. Society, as now constituted, is sadly lacking in proper facilities for learning the technique of love and kissing. A hundred years from now, every well-equipped school will contain departments of Erotology, teaching theory as well as laboratory experimentation. If I live that long, I expect to become at one leap a full-fledged professor in kissing. I may even rise higher.

Second, American men and women are woefully ignorant on the proper technique of love, and of the kiss. There is a Puritan tradition behind many of us, which forbids kissing any woman but one's wife (or, by grudging extension, one's fiancee): and which even forbids kissing one's wife on Sundays and holy days. The latter prohibition, some husbands hold, might well be broadened; but the very spice of love lies in kissing one who is not one's wife or husband, if popular belief is at all right. This Puritan tradition has had its weight; it has made women offer lips no more attractive than damp salt mackerel, and men try to kiss a human being as if she were the man's mother-in-law. Then there is the recoil from this tradition, which makes a man's first kiss like a vacuum cleaner, often alarming the girl for life; and a girl's first kiss so marvelous, that all proper sense of climax is lost. There is ample room for a little common science on the heavenly art of kissing.

Leaping away, then, from the European or lip kiss, we find that much more widely distributed throughout the world of men is the nose or olfactory kiss. As performed by the Japanese, this kiss involves three distinct stages:

The man lays his nose gently upon the beloved girl's cheek.

He draws in a long nasal inspiration, lowering his eyelids as if in the extremity of bliss.

The lips give a slight smack, without touching the girl's cheek.

Kisses similar to this are the staple product in China, India, Ceylon, much of Africa. The connoisseur in kisses might try this variety: but, compared to many of the Occidental varie- ties, it will seem as tepid and insipid as warmed-over buckwheat cakes, or campaign pledges a week after election. Yet, throughout most of the world, our kiss is regarded as inelegant to the highest degree; and the nose kiss as the height of human ecstasy. Similarly a man who had never eaten anything but hardtack might regard it as the height of culinary art.

Chapter 2

II

THE HISTORY OF LIP KISSING

—The antiquity of lip kissing may be traced, in no very pronounced form, to the Aryan and Semitic peoples. Among the ancient Arabs, and their Semitic relatives, the Hebrews, the kiss had many uses, most of these being related to religion. The kiss was used as a direct method of worship of some gods: "Let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves" (Hosea xiii 2). Similarly the Lord said to Elijah: "Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him" (I Kings xix 18). A stranger religious rite is referred to by Job (xxxi 27) when he refers to kissing his hand to the moon or sun, as a symbol of worship.

The kiss of salutation, especially among men, was common. Thus Jacob kissed his father Isaac; Joseph kissed all his brethren, his sons, and his father; Aaron kissed Moses, and Moses in turn kissed his father-in-law Jethro; Samuel, when he anointed Saul as king, kissed him; David kissed Jonathan, and later his son Absalom; and Absalom kissed all who came to see him, in order to win their allegiance by this grant of near-royal favor. Later all the Macedonian Christians kissed Paul, as he was leaving them. This kiss was extended, among the early Christians, to in- clude women as well: the perfect Christian greeted both man and women with a "holy kiss," or a "kiss of charity." There are some Christians whom it would indeed be charity to kiss—but the custom had its advantages. David's kiss to Absalom betokened reconciliation with the rebel; and the king's command, in the Psalms, was that all should kiss the king, the Lord's Son, or be genially wiped out for omitting the kiss of subjection.

The kiss among relatives was not unknown: Laban eldered Jacob for not permitting Laban to kiss his sons and daughters, and Elisha asked permission of Elijah to kiss his father and mother. The kiss betokened approbation also: "Every man shall kiss his lips that giveth a right answer" (Prov. xxiv 26). This is a custom we are glad has passed. Indiscriminate kissing from many men in public life, for instance, we would regard as a punishment beyond any that savage ingenuity could devise. The woman who had sinned kissed the feet of Jesus, in token of her reformed adoration. And there was the kiss of treachery, given by an enemy, warned against in Proverbs, and used by Joab in murdering Amasa, and by Judas in delivering Jesus to the posse that sought him.

So far, we have not had the kiss of love, between man and woman. Naomi's kisses to her daughters-in-law were not quite the love that we mean, but we find it, too, sparsely scattered through the Bible. Thus, upon their first meeting, we read: "And Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice and wept" (Gen. xxix 11). The kiss is understandable, for Rachel is said to have been a young and attractive damsel; but why the weeping? Something must be left out of the story: perhaps she would let him kiss her but once. And, in the great love song of the Old Testament, we find what we are seeking: "Then let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth" (Song of Solomon i 2). We can overlook countless kissings of the dust, to show humble subjection, for one real description of the kiss of love like this. The Old Testament worthies were on the right track, after all. The other kisses made us feel like the British soldier in Kipling's Mandalay:

An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot, An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot: Bloomin' idol made o' mud, Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd— Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed 'er where she stud!

But we have arrived at last at a real kiss, and with this we can pass onward.

We learn that Arabian women and children kiss the beards of their husbands and fathers, which must be about as thrilling as kissing a shredded wheat biscuit or a clothes brush. The Mohammedans, on their pious pilgrimage to Mecca, kiss the sacred black stone, which was worshipped long before Mohammed was born. In Egypt, the inferior kisses the hand of a superior, generally on the back, but sometimes on the palm; the son kisses the hand of his father, the wife that of her husband, the slave and servant that of their master. Here the kiss spells subjection. We know that, among the Greeks, Homer scarcely knew the kiss, and later poets mentioned it only rarely.

When we come to Rome, the kiss has a more varied practice. There was the religious kiss, similar to Job's: persons were treated as atheists who would not kiss their hands when they entered a temple. In early Roman ages, the kiss was given by inferiors to superiors; in the pre-Cæsarean republic, this fell into disrepute. The emperors restored the practice of kissing hands, which gradually was etherealized until the crowd had to kiss their hands to the emperors, as one would to a god. Solomon spoke of the same custom among the Hebrews, and Cortez found it among the Mexicans whom he pillaged. A strange custom in Rome was to give the dying a last kiss, in order, as they thought, to catch the dying breath. As for kissing among men, let Martial, the old satirist, speak for Rome:

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 the one-eyed gentleman; there one with bleared eyes, and fellows whose mouths are defiled with all manner of abominations.

He gives the other side of the picture, when he describes the kisses of his favorite:

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; the flowery meadows of spring; amber warmed by the hand of a maiden; a garden that attracts the bees.

That Roman love-kisses were not frigid is indicated by many lines in the poets. Thus Catullus wrote:

Whom wilt thou for thy lover choose? Whose will they call thee, false one, whose? Who will thy darted kisses sip, While thy keen love-bites scar his lip?

Horace, in one of his odes, refers to the same nibbling propensity of Roman women and men:

Or on thy lips the fierce, fond boy Marks with his teeth the furious joy.

—With this good start, the admirable custom of kissing spread over the world: but its progress was slow. It did not conquer the Orient: Japan, China, India, still have small use for it. Among nearly all the black races of Africa, not only is the kiss between lovers unknown, but the mother's kiss is usually unknown. Among the American Indians, the lip kiss was not found, although the mouth might be used in the love episode. The Fuegians, in South America, have the custom of lovers rubbing their cheeks together. The present limited kissing among Australian natives may be due to white lessons.

Today, the kiss is known through Europe, and among Europeans everywhere, with the single exception of Lapland. Yet, even in Europe, it is a comparatively modern discovery, spreading first to the higher classes, and then down. One medieval ballad has the lady of the castle discover that a varlet has substituted himself for the absent lord during the night, by remembering that the varlet embraced with- out kissing. The Celtic tongue, as Rhys found out, has no word for kiss, but uses the Latin pax, which means literally "peace," because it occurs in the religious phrase osculum pacis, kiss of peace. Yet the Welsh Cymri early learned kissing. Its religious use is widespread. Among European pagans, house gods were greeted, on entering and leaving, with a kiss. The Eastern and Western churches have derived from this such customs as kissing the relics of saints, the foot of the pope, and the hands of bishops. The surviving custom of kissing the Testament, on administering an oath in many of our courts, is a vestige of the dying religious usage.

Yet the kiss made its way slightly into the East. The Arabic Perfumed Garden recommends the kiss, especially on the inside of the mouth. In feudal times in Europe, the vassal kissed the hand of his superior, or some symbol of the lord. Pliny may have been facetious when he said that the custom of kissing women originated in Rome, as a method of the husband's to test whether his wife had been drinking liquor or not. The custom, when extended to other women, justified itself. In France, the good girl is supposed to save her lips for her husband. This is so true, that Mme. Adam wrote that, when she first let a man kiss her as a girl, she thought she had parted with her virtue, and was sure that a child would follow the kiss. A similar misconception prevails among writers for and censors of American movies, if we are to judge by their product.

But in France the custom was once far more liberal. When the gallant cardinal, John of Lorraine, was presented to the Duchess of Savoy, she gave him her hand to kiss. The indignant churchman exclaimed, "How, madam? Am I to be treated in this manner? I kiss the queen, my mistress, who is the greatest queen in the world; and shall I not kiss you, a dirty little duchess?" Without more words, he caught hold of the princess and kissed her three times on the lips. France, alas, retains the custom of kissing among men. During the World War, every decoration given by a French general was accompanied by a hearty smack upon both cheeks. In an army of Amazons no one might object to this; but deliver me from formal masculine osculation!

In Russia, the Easter salutation is a kiss. Everybody kissed everybody, under the old regime, on this occasion. The Czar, who must have been a glutton for punishment, had to kiss his family, retinue, court, attendants, officers on parade, the palace sentinels, and a select party of private soldiers. In any part of Russia the poorest serf, meeting a high-born dame on the street, had only to say "Christ is risen!" to receive "Christ is truly risen" in reply, accompanied by a resounding kiss. Today it is probable that one of the old serfs is not above kissing a duchess who salutes him with the old sesame. It was the great Catherine of Russia who instituted assemblies of men and women, to aid the cultivation of manners. One of her rules for maintaining decency was: "No gentleman should force a kiss from, or strike a woman, in the assembly, under pain of execution." If manners were, as this rule indicates, a trifle crude under Catherine, under her husand, Peter the Great, who preceded her, they were a wee mite rougher. In the charming Peter the Czar, by , Peter's love technique is described:

The Grand Elector of Brandenburg led the Polonaise. The Czar led the Duchess of Mecklenburg, a delicate blonde. When the Polonaise had come to its end in the Hall of Mirrors the Czar and his partner were nowhere to be found.

He had drawn her into a side apartment and had violated her behind a portiere. And he was so powerful that she neither could nor would defend herself.

And then he left her.

She drowns herself in the river outside the palace.

But the Czar had already forgotten her … Then he fell asleep and dreamed of a mouse of the steppes. She had a face like the Duchess of Mecklenburg and squeaked softly.

He bit off her head and flung the tiny carcass upon the fields.

Peter's technique was a bit too crude. Perhaps, if he had read this handbook of love and kissing, he might have loved the duchess with more diplomacy and more general enjoyment.

In Norway, one perplexing and, at times, delightful salute is furnished by one's hostess. The good woman always tucks her guest into bed for the night, and then gives him a resounding kiss upon the lips. As a rule, however, there is no second kiss. The kiss is known in Finland, but it is frowned upon as something tending upon the immoral. Iceland—thus does a frigid climate affect current standards of morality!—has elaborate penalties for most forms of kissing, including exclusion from the country for kissing another's man's wife, and a heavy fine for even a permitted kiss from an unmarried woman. Far to the south, in Paraguay, the custom requires you to kiss every lady you are introduced to. Since, at one time, all the females above thirteen chewed tobacco, this is a mixed blessing, even with maidens as attractive as South America produces.

In England, the story is that the kiss was introduced by Rowena, the beautiful daughter of Hengist the Saxon marauder. At a banquet given by King Vortigern to his Saxon allies, the princess is said to have kissed the delighted monarch upon the lips. By the time of Edward IV, a guest was expected, upon arrival and departure, to kiss his hostess and all the ladies of the household. In 1497, when Erasmus was in England, the practice was at its height; the good reformer approved:

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; you return, kisses are exchanged; people come to visit you—a kiss the first thing; they leave you—you kiss them all around. Do they meet you anywhere?—kisses in abundance. Lastly, wherever you move, there is nothing but kisses—and if you had once tasted them! how soft they are! how fragrant! on my honor you would not wish to reside here for ten years only, but for life!

John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress, writing over a hundred years later, viewed the spectacle more sourly: he abhorred "the common salutation of women," and punctured the arguments of those who called these "holy kisses" thus:

But then, I have asked them why they make balks? why they did salute the most handsome, and let the ill-favored ones go?

The kiss at the point of death is not unknown in English chronicles. When Nelson was dying on board his flagship, he turned to his faithful friend at his side: "Kiss me, Hardy!" These were the last words he uttered. Sir Walter Scott, when dying, took leave of his friend Lockhart in the same fashion. The kiss among men, once popular in England, came over when England aped French notions of chivalry. Germany has the same custom: in 1888, when the Emperor William met the Czar at St. Petersburg, the two rulers embraced and kissed several times. As the kiss among men entered England, the general kissing of women declined—all due to the innovations of the "old goat," Charles II, at the time of the Restoration. Even canny Scotland has widespread kissing chronicled in several periods.

The state of kissing in the United States today is generally well known: it is a far cry from our liberality to the old Blue Laws of Connecticut, with a heavy penalty for kissing one's wife on Sundays or fast days, and, for all we know, boiling in oil for kissing the wife of another. It is still unlawful to kiss a girl against her will: the courts awarding damages to the girl varying from $750 in Pennsylvania and $2,500 in New York, to $1.15 in New Jersey. And while there are Anti-Osculation Leagues, with stern medical warnings of the danger of kissing, the custom shows no evidence of diminution. The kissing of children on the mouth, even by parents, is liable to be harmful; if the medicos are to be believed, diphtheria, malaria, scarlet fever, colds and pulmonary taints, blood poison, and at times death, lurk in the kiss. Let the children, then, remain unkissed, except for the cheek: but, with the proper girl, we would brave ten million germs for one taste of what the old Georgia farmer described as "sucking sugar."

Chapter 3

III

THE TECHNIQUE OF THE KISS

—The desire of a man to kiss a girl, and of a girl to be kissed by a man, and to kiss him in return, assumes a heightened form when adolescence is reached by each. Kissing, from the standpoint of its biological function, is a prelude to the ultimate love mating. From the standpoint of inexperienced kissers, it is a temporary substitute for the love hunger,—a substitute which may be all that the man or girl demands for weeks or months or years. From the standpoint of experienced kissers, it is a prelude to the mating; and, where the kissers have not previously mated, is a sort of preliminary test, to see if they are suited.

The immediate object of kissing is mutual pleasure. If you who read this, whether man or woman, ask me whom you are to kiss, I can only answer that you alone can give the answer. No general rules can be laid down. Many men prefer a girl shorter than themselves: yet the ideal mating might conceivably mean equal height, and there are men who prefer a girl taller. As to whether you wish the girl younger or older than yourself, that too depends upon your inclination at the moment. As a rule, the young man often desires an older woman, who is more experienced and—and, in brief, comes closer to his ideal woman, based largely upon his mother. As the man grows older, in proportion as his head remains hollow he desires a younger and younger girl. This is partly because he finds an experienced woman superior to himself: and the average "lordly" male, in all sadness I must confess, prefers an inferior woman to one the man's equal or superior. The choice of age for youth has another meaning as well: the older person, consciously or not, wants to restore his own lost youth in the kisses and caresses of a younger person. This, from the standpoint of the older person, is admirable. Some dark men prefer blonde girls, some prefer girls of their own coloring; and in every case generalities cannot be stated with certainty. If you want to kiss a girl or woman, set about doing it, or, at least, finding out if it will be well received.