It is contended by an American humorist, in an argument in favor of osculation, that it would imply a great want of reverence in us if we were to set ourselves up as wiser than our ancestors, and refuse to continue a practice that has been sanctioned by their approval. Yet, if we follow the curious aberrations in the extent of favor accorded to it by these ancestors during the last century, we shall be somewhat puzzled over the reflex as we find it in the novels of different periods. With the exception of Richardson, however, it must be owned that the eighteenth-century novelists, from Fielding and Smollett down to the time of the appearance of Goldsmith, and Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen, prove the truth of the remark of Shaw (“History of English Literature”) that “the time when Fielding wrote was remarkable for the low tone of manners and sentiment; perhaps the lowest that ever prevailed in England, for it was precisely a juncture when the romantic spirit of the old chivalrous manners was extinguished, and before the modern standard of refinement was introduced.” Accordingly, in Fielding and Smollett the heroes and heroines kiss with all the gusto of a coarse and licentious age, and without waiting for the interesting time which the novelists of our day select for granting the first long kiss of affection. The readers of Fielding’s “Amelia” will remember the insulting young nobleman who, upon meeting the heroine at Vauxhall, cries out, “Let the devil come as soon as he will, d——n me if I have not a kiss.”
In singular contrast with such athletic and boisterous rudeness are the overwrought refinement and strained sentiment of Richardson, Fielding’s contemporary and sometime friend. In the one it is an outbreak of coarseness or ungoverned passion; in the other it is a ceremonial whose observance is attended with decorum and solemnity. As a consequence, there is a great deal of the “naughty but nice” fascination in the former, and a large proportion of tedious and mawkish twaddle in the latter. For a specimen of Richardson’s namby-pambyism we may advert to his “Sir Charles Grandison,” in which we are told that after leaving Italy and returning to England Sir Charles solicits the hand of Harriet Byron in true Grandisonian manner. It is amusing to see the lofty style in which this mirror of chivalry makes love, and to note the extravagance of his compliments. But let Miss Byron tell the story:
“‘There seems,’ said he, ‘to be a mixture of generous concern and kind curiosity in one of the loveliest and most intelligent faces in the world.’”
“‘Thus,’ resumed he, snatching my hand and ardently pressing it with his lips, ‘do I honor to myself for the honor done me. How poor is man, that he cannot express his gratitude to the object of his vows for obligations confessed, but by owing to her new obligations!’” [What a formal pedant of a lover!]
“In a soothing, tender, and respectful manner, he put his arm round me, and, taking my own handkerchief, unresisted, wiped away the tears as they fell on my cheek. ‘Sweet humanity! charming sensibility! check not the kindly gush. Dew-drops of heaven! (wiping away my tears and kissing the handkerchief)—dew-drops of heaven, from a mind like that heaven, mild and gracious.’
“He kissed my hand with fervor; dropped down on one knee; again kissed it. ‘You have laid me, madam, under everlasting obligations; and will you permit me before I rise, loveliest of women, will you permit me to beg an early day?’”
“He clasped me in his arms with an ardor that displeased me not on reflection, but at the time startled me. He thanked me again on one knee; I held out the hand he had not in his, with intent to raise him, for I could not speak. He received it as a token of favor; kissed it with ardor; arose, again pressed my cheek with his lips. I was too much surprised to repulse him with anger. But was he not too free? Am I a prude, my dear?”
Yes, Miss Byron, we are afraid you are a prude, to feel such surprise and doubt at an innocent kiss after a formal engagement.
By way of another contrast we copy the following passages: In the “Unhappy Mistake” of Mrs. Behn (Astræa), a lover, who is about to fight a duel, goes early in the morning to his sister’s bedroom, with whom Lucretia, the mistress of his affections, is sleeping. “They both happened to be awake and talking as he came to the door, which his sister permitted him to unlock, and asked him the reason of his so early rising, who replied that since he could not sleep he would take the air a little. ‘But first, sister,’ continued he, ‘I will refresh myself at your lips.’ ‘And now, madam,’ added he to Lucretia, ‘I would beg a cordial from you.’ ‘For that,’ said his sister, ‘you shall be obliged to me for once.’ Saying so, she gently turned Lucretia’s face toward him, and he had his wish. Ten to one but he had rather have continued with Lucretia than have gone to her brother, had he known him, for he loved her truly and passionately. But, being a man of true courage and honor, he took his leave of them, presently dressed, and tripped away with the messenger, who made more than ordinary haste.”
As an offset to this, we recur to the story of “Sir Charles Grandison.” In proof of the “humorous character” of Charlotte Grandison, we are told that soon after her marriage her husband made her a present of some old china. “And when he had done,” writes she to Harriet Byron, “taking the liberty, as he phrased it, half fearful, half resolute, to salute his bride for his reward, and then pacing backwards several steps with such a strut and crow—I see him yet,—indulge me, Harriet!—I burst into a hearty laugh; I could not help it; and he, reddening, looked round himself and round himself to see if anything was amiss on his part. The man, the man, honest friend,—I could have said, but had too much reverence for my husband,—is the oddity; nothing amiss in the garb.”
It is remarkable, says Forsyth, that some of the most immoral novels in the English language should have been written by women. This bad distinction belongs to Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, and Mrs. Heywood. Corruptio optimi est pessima, and that such corrupt stories as they gave to the world were the offspring of female pens is an unmistakable proof of the loose manners of the age. It is impossible, without the risk of offence, to quote freely from the works of an age when vice and indelicacy were triumphant and modesty had left its last footsteps upon earth.
It is refreshing to pass from their details of profligacy, and the insidious mischief of their assaults upon domestic purity, to that later school of fiction which, as Lord Bacon says, “serveth and conformeth to magnanimity, morality, and delectation.” Foremost among those at the dawn of the present century, whose ideals are framed according to the healthful and ennobling standards which conform to the government and will of God and which command the reverence of man, was Miss Jane Porter. If her heroes are paragons like Grandison, they are not, like Sir Charles, models of solemn foppery, insipid in their superiority, correct as automata in their elaborate politeness, or passing their lives, as Taine says, “in weighing their duties and making salutations.” They are quite as irreproachable, while they are far more consistent with the conditions of our human nature and our human life.
It would be interesting to trace the course of Sobieski, in “Thaddeus of Warsaw,” from the time when, as an enforced exile, he dropped on his knees and, “plucking a turf of grass and pressing it to his lips, exclaimed, ‘Farewell, Poland! farewell all my hopes of happiness!’” to the hour when he clasped his newly-wedded wife at the grave of Butzou. But two extracts will suffice to show what manner of man he was. Upon reading for the third time a letter from Lady Tinemouth containing assurances of Miss Beaufort’s high regard for him, his heart throbbed with violent emotion:
“‘Delicious poison!’ cried he, kissing the paper. ‘If adoring thee, lovely Mary, be added to my other sorrows, I shall be resigned. There is sweetness even in the thought. Could I credit all that my dear Lady Tinemouth affirms, the conviction that I possess one kind solicitude in the mind of Miss Beaufort would be ample compensation for——’
“He did not finish the sentence, but, sighing profoundly, rose from his chair.
“‘For anything, except beholding her the wife of another!’ was the sentiment with which his heart panted. Thaddeus had never known a selfish feeling in his life; and this first instance of his wishing that good unappropriated which he might not himself enjoy, made him start.
“‘There is a fault in my heart, a dreadful one!’ Dissatisfied with himself, he was preparing to answer her ladyship’s letter, when,” etc.
When the infatuated and distracted Lady Sara had failed in her desperate efforts to entice Sobieski from the path of honor and virtue in his own lodgings, he pityingly and forgivingly attended her to her own home, where, we are told:
“When Thaddeus had seated Lady Sara in her drawing-room, he prepared to take a respectful leave; but her ladyship, getting up, laid one hand on his arm, whilst with the other she covered her convulsive features, and said, ‘Constantine, before you go, before we part, perhaps eternally, oh, tell me that you do not hate me! That you do not hate me!’ repeated she, in a firmer tone; ‘I know too well how deeply I am despised!’
“‘Cease, my dearest madam,’ returned he, tenderly replacing her on the sofa, ‘cease these vehement expressions. Shame does not depend on possessing passions, but on yielding to them. You have conquered, Lady Sara, and in future I shall respect and love you as a dear friend. Whoever holds the first place in my heart, you shall always retain the second.’
“‘Noble, generous Constantine!’ cried she, straining his hand to her lips and bathing it with her tears; ‘I can require no more. May Heaven bless you wherever you go.’
“Thaddeus dropped upon his knee, imprinted on both her hands a compassionate and fervent kiss, and, rising hastily, quitted the room without a word.”
In the novels of our day, kissing is as indispensable an adjunct to love-making as it ever was, but its treatment has changed as the æsthetic and practical views of courtship have changed with the influences of society. Whether as the impulse of passionate attachment or the expression of refined affection, it is, for the most part, handled by our modern writers in a healthful, natural, legitimate, decorous, and felicitous manner. Those who indulge in namby-pamby effusion or sentimental gush, on the one hand, or the startling aberrations and obliquities of inconventionalism on the other, may expect to hear from the satirists and reviewers. No one entertained for weakly sentimentalism or affected prettiness more profound contempt and impatience than Thackeray. Yet where shall we find more exquisite touches than those which abound in the pages of the great humorist and satirist? Take, for example, a few scattered passages from “The Newcomes:”
“There she sits; the same, but changed: as gone from him as if she were dead; departed indeed into another sphere, and entered into a kind of death. If there is no love more in yonder heart, it is but a corpse unburied. Strew round it the flowers of youth. Wash it with tears of passion. Wrap it and envelop it with fond devotion. Break heart, and fling yourself on the bier, and kiss her cold lips, and press her hand! It falls back dead on the cold breast again. The beautiful lips have never a blush or a smile.”
“He took a little slim white hand and laid it down on his brown palm, where it looked all the whiter: he cleared the grizzled mustachio from his mouth, and, stooping down, he kissed the little white hand with a great deal of grace and dignity. There was no point of resemblance, and yet a something in the girl’s look, voice, and movements, which caused his heart to thrill, and an image out of the past to rise up and salute him.”
“The sisters-in-law kissed on meeting, with that cordiality so delightful to witness in sisters who dwell together in unity.”
“He would not even stop and give his Ethel of old days his hand. I would have given him I don’t know what, for one kiss, for one kind word; but he passed on and would not answer me.”
“For months past they had not had a really kind word. The tender old voice smote upon Clive, and he burst into sudden tears. They rained upon his father’s trembling old brown hand as he stooped down and kissed it.”
“Clive felt the pathetic mood coming on again, and an immense desire to hug Lady Ann in his arms and to kiss her. How grateful are we—how touched a frank and generous heart is—for a kind word extended to us in our pain!”
“The lips of the pretty satirist who alluded to these unpleasant bygones were silenced, as they deserved to be, by Mr. Pendennis. ‘Do you think, sir, I did not know,’ says the sweetest voice in the world, ‘when you went out on your fishing excursions with Miss Amory?’ Again the flow of words is checked by the styptic previously applied.”
“‘Oh, Pen,’ says my wife, closing my mouth in a way which I do not choose further to particularize, ‘that man is the best, the dearest, the kindest creature. I never knew such a good man; you ought to put him into a book. Do you know, sir, that I felt the very greatest desire to give him a kiss when he went away? and that one which you had just now was intended for him?’”
“Laura drove to his lodgings, and took him a box, which was held up to him, as he came to open the door to my wife’s knock, by our smiling little boy. He patted the child on his golden head and kissed him. My wife wished he would have done as much for her; but he would not,—though she owned she kissed his hand. He drew it across his eyes and thanked her in a very calm and stately manner.”
“On the day when he went away, Laura went up and kissed him with tears in her eyes. ‘You know how long I have been wanting to do it,’ this lady said to her husband.”
“She fairly gave way to tears as she spoke; and for me, I longed to kiss the hem of her robe, or anything else she would let me embrace, I was so happy, and so touched by the simple demeanor and affection of the noble young lady.”
“Ethel walked slowly up to the humble bed, and sat down on a chair near it. No doubt her heart prayed for him who slept there; she turned round where his black Pensioner’s cloak was hanging on the wall, and lifted up the homely garment and kissed it. The servant looked on, admiring, I should think, her melancholy and her gracious beauty.”
From Thackeray to Charles Dickens the transition is easy and pleasant. The difficulty, in both cases, is to limit the number of our extracts. These are from “Nicholas Nickleby:”
“It was very little that Nicholas knew of the world, but he guessed enough about its ways to think that if he gave Miss La Creevy one little kiss, perhaps she might not be the less kindly disposed towards those he was leaving behind. So he gave her three or four with a kind of jocose gallantry, and Miss La Creevy evinced no greater symptoms of displeasure than declaring, as she adjusted her yellow turban, that she had never heard of such a thing, and couldn’t have believed it possible.”
“‘Do you remember the boy that died here?’
“‘I was not here, you know,’ said Nicholas, gently; ‘but what of him?’
“‘Why,’ replied the youth, drawing closer to his questioner’s side, ‘I was with him at night, and when it was all silent he cried no more for friends he wished to come and sit with him, but began to see faces round his bed that came from home; he said they smiled, and talked to him; and he died at last lifting his head to kiss them.’”
“‘Oh, uncle, I am so glad to see you!’ said Mrs. Kenwigs, kissing the collector affectionately on both cheeks. ‘So glad!’
“Now, this was an interesting thing. Here was a collector of water-rates, without his book, without his pen and ink, without his double knock, without his intimidation, kissing—actually kissing—an agreeable female, and leaving taxes, summonses, notices that he had called, or announcements that he would never call again, for two quarters’ due, wholly out of the question. It was pleasant to see how the company looked on, quite absorbed in the sight, and to behold the nods and winks with which they expressed their gratification at finding so much humanity in a tax-gatherer.”
“‘Mr. Nicholas!’ cried Miss La Creevy, starting in great astonishment.
“‘You have not forgotten me, I see,’ replied Nicholas, extending his hand.
“‘Why, I think I should even have known you if I had met you in the street,’ said Miss La Creevy, with a smile. ‘Hannah, another cup and saucer. Now, I’ll tell you what, young man; I’ll trouble you not to repeat the impertinence you were guilty of on the morning you went away.’
“‘You would not be very angry, would you?’ asked Nicholas.
“‘Wouldn’t I!’ said Miss La Creevy. ‘You had better try; that’s all.’
“Nicholas, with becoming gallantry, immediately took Miss La Creevy at her word, who uttered a faint scream and slapped his face; but it was not a very hard slap, and that’s the truth.
“‘I never saw such a rude creature!’ exclaimed Miss La Creevy.
“‘You told me to try,’ said Nicholas.
“‘Well, but I was speaking ironically,’ rejoined Miss La Creevy.
“‘Oh! that’s another thing,’ said Nicholas; ‘you should have told me that, too.’”
“‘Look at me,’ said Nicholas, wishing to attract his full attention. ‘There; don’t turn away. Do you remember no woman, no kind woman, who hung over you once, and kissed your lips, and called you her child?’
“‘No,’ said the poor creature, shaking his head, ‘no, never.’”
“‘It’s naterally very gratifying to my feelings as a father, to see such a man as that, a kissing and taking notice of my children,’ pursued Mr. Kenwigs. ‘It’s naterally very gratifying to my feelings as a man, to know that man. It will be naterally very gratifying to my feelings as a husband, to make that man acquainted with this ewent.’”
“‘No, no,’ cried Arthur, interrupting him, and rubbing his hands in an ecstasy. ‘Wrong, wrong again. Mr. Nickleby for once at fault: out, quite out! To a young and beautiful girl; fresh, lovely, bewitching, and not nineteen. Dark eyes, long eyelashes, ripe and ruddy lips that to look at is to long to kiss, beautiful clustering hair that one’s fingers itch to play with, such a waist as might make a man clasp the air involuntarily thinking of twining his arm about it, little feet that tread so lightly they hardly seem to walk upon the ground,—to marry all this, sir, this,—hey, hey!’”
“Upon his knees Nicholas gave him this pledge, and promised again that he should rest in the spot he had pointed out. They embraced, and kissed each other on the cheek. ‘Now,’ he murmured, ‘I am happy.’
“He fell into a light slumber, and waking smiled as before; then, spoke of beautiful gardens, which he said stretched out before him, and were filled with figures of men, women, and many children, all with light upon their faces; then, whispered that it was Eden,—and so died.”
The following passages are from “David Copperfield:”
“As my mother stooped down on the threshold to take me in her arms and kiss me, the gentleman said I was a more highly privileged little fellow than a monarch,—or something like that; for my later understanding comes, I am sensible, to my aid here.”
“I am glad to recollect that, when the carrier’s cart was at the gate, and my mother stood there kissing me, a grateful fondness for her and for the old place I had never turned my back upon before, made me cry. I am glad to know that my mother cried too, and that I felt her heart beat against mine.
“I am glad to recollect that, when the carrier began to move, my mother ran out at the gate, and called to him to stop, that she might kiss me once more. I am glad to dwell upon the earnestness and love with which she lifted up her face to mine.”
“When my mother came down to breakfast and was going to make the tea, Miss Murdstone gave her a kind of peck on the cheek, which was her nearest approach to a kiss.”
“‘And I’ll write to you, my dear. Though I ain’t no scholar. And I’ll—I’ll—’ Peggotty fell to kissing the keyhole, as she couldn’t kiss me.
“‘Thank you, dear Peggotty!’ said I. ‘Oh, thank you! Thank you! Will you promise me one thing, Peggotty? Will you write and tell Mr. Peggotty and little Em’ly, and Mrs. Gummidge and Ham, that I am not so bad as they might suppose, and that I sent ’em all my love,—especially to little Em’ly? Will you, if you please, Peggotty?’ The kind soul promised, and we both of us kissed the keyhole with the greatest affection,—I patted it with my hand, I recollect, as if it had been her honest face,—and parted.”
“Little Em’ly didn’t care a bit. She saw me well enough, but, instead of turning round and calling after me, ran away laughing. This obliged me to run after her, and she ran so fast that we were very near the cottage before I caught her.
“‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ said little Em’ly.
“‘Why, you knew who it was, Em’ly,’ said I.
“‘And didn’t you know who it was?’ said Em’ly. I was going to kiss her, but she covered her cherry lips with her hands, and said she wasn’t a baby now, and ran away, laughing more than ever, into the house.”
“Peggotty was the best, the truest, the most faithful, most devoted, and most self-denying friend and servant in the world; who had ever loved me dearly, who had ever loved my mother dearly; who had held my mother’s dying head upon her arm, on whose face my mother had imprinted her last grateful kiss. And my remembrance of them both choking me, I broke down as I was trying to say that her home was my home, and that all she had was mine, and that I would have gone to her for shelter, but for her humble station, which made me fear that I might bring some trouble on her.”
“And, having carried her point, she tapped the doctor’s hand several times with her fan (which she kissed first), and returned triumphantly to her former station.”
“Mrs. Markleham was so overcome by this generous speech (which, I need not say, she had not at all expected or led up to) that she could only tell the doctor it was like himself, and go several times through that operation of kissing the sticks of her fan, and then tapping his hand with it.”
“She put her hand—its touch was like no other hand—upon my arm for a moment; and I felt so befriended and comforted that I could not help moving it to my lips and gratefully kissing it.”
“Miss Murdstone had been looking for us. She found us here; and presented her uncongenial cheek, the little wrinkles in it filled with hair-powder, to Dora to be kissed. Then she took Dora’s arm in hers, and marched us in to breakfast as if it were a soldier’s funeral.”
“I hardly knew what I did, I was burning all over to that extraordinary extent; but I took Dora’s little hand and kissed it, and she let me. I kissed Miss Mills’s hand, and we all seemed, to my thinking, to go straight up to the seventh heaven.”
“‘But I haven’t got any strength at all,’ said Dora, shaking her curls. ‘Have I, Jip?’ (the dog.) ‘Oh, do kiss Jip and be agreeable!’
“It was impossible to resist kissing Jip, when she held him up to me for that purpose, putting her own bright, rosy little mouth into kissing form as she directed the operation, which she insisted should be performed symmetrically, on the centre of his nose. I did as she bade me, rewarding myself afterwards for my obedience, and she charmed me out of my graver character for I don’t know how long.”
“At length her eyes were lifted up to mine, and she stood on tiptoe to give me, more thoughtfully than usual, that precious little kiss—once, twice, three times—and went out of the room.”
“My pretty little Dora’s face would fall, and she would make her mouth into a bud again, as if she would very much prefer to shut mine with a kiss.”
“And Mrs. Gummidge took his hand, and kissed it with a homely pathos and affection, in a homely rapture of devotion and gratitude that he well deserved.”
The remainder of our selections will be found in “Our Mutual Friend:”
“‘If I get by degrees to be a high-flyer at fashion, then Mrs. Boffin will by degrees come for’arder. If Mrs. Boffin should ever be less of a dab at fashion than she is at the present time, then Mrs. Boffin’s carpet would go back’arder. If we should both continny as we are, why then here we are, and give us a kiss, old lady.’
“Mrs. Boffin, who, perpetually smiling, had approached and drawn her plump arm through her lord’s, most willingly complied. Fashion, in the form of her black velvet hat and feathers, tried to prevent it, but got deservedly crushed in the endeavor.”
“‘This,’ said Mrs. Wilfer, presenting a cheek to be kissed as sympathetic and responsive as the back of the bowl of a spoon, ‘is quite an honor.’”
“Arrived at Mr. Boffin’s door, she set him with his back against it, tenderly took him by the ears as convenient handles for her purpose, and kissed him until he knocked muffled double knocks at the door with the back of his head. That done, she once more reminded him of their compact, and gaily parted from him.”
“She girded herself with a white apron, and busily with knots and pins contrived a bib to it, coming close and tight under her chin, as if it had caught her round the neck to kiss her. Over this bib her dimples looked delightful, and under it her pretty figure not less so.”
“Bella put her arms round his neck and tenderly kissed him on the high-road, passionately telling him he was the best of fathers and the best of friends, and that on her wedding morning she would go down on her knees to him and beg his pardon for having ever teased him or seemed insensible to the worth of such a patient, sympathetic, genial, fresh, young heart. At every one of her adjectives she redoubled her kisses, and finally kissed his hat off, and then laughed immoderately when the wind took it and he ran after it.”
“With a parting kiss of her fingers to it (the room), she softly closed the door, and went with a light foot down the great staircase, pausing and listening as she went, that she might meet none of the household. No one chanced to be about, and she got down to the hall in quiet. The door of the late secretary’s room stood open. She peeped in as she passed, and divined from the emptiness of his table and the general appearance of things that he was already gone. Softly opening the great hall-door and softly closing it upon herself, she turned and kissed it on the outside—insensible old combination of wood and iron that it was—before she ran away from the house at a swift pace.”
“The good little fellow had become alarmingly limp, and his senses seemed to be rapidly escaping, from the knees upward. Bella sprinkled him with kisses instead of milk, but gave him a little of that article to drink, and he gradually revived under her caressing care.”
“Bella tucked her arm in his, with a merry, noiseless laugh, and they went down to the kitchen on tiptoe, she stopping on every separate stair to put the tip of her forefinger on her rosy lips, and then lay it on his lips, according to her favorite petting way of kissing pa.”
“The purity with which in these words she expressed something of her own love and her own suffering made a deep impression on him for the passing time. He held her, almost, as if she were sanctified to him by death, and kissed her, once, almost as he might have kissed the dead.”
Some of our best writers of fiction have successfully tried their descriptive power upon the “torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of passion” which maybe concentrated in a burning kiss, but none of them surpass Victor Hugo in graphic vigor. Take the following passages, for example, from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” In the exciting scene between Esmeralda, the gipsy, and Captain Phœbus, the unfortunate girl proceeds:
“‘Look at me! look on her who came to seek you. My soul, life, body, all are yours. Let us not marry, if it displeases you,—and then, what am I? a wretched stroller, while you, my Phœbus, are a gentleman. A pretty thing, truly, for a dancing-girl to wed an officer! I was out of my mind. No, Phœbus, I will be your toy, your plaything, a slave to you. I am made for that; sullied, scorned, dishonored, but loved! I will be the proudest and gladdest of women. And when I shall be old, Phœbus, when my days for loving you are over, you will, won’t you, still allow me to serve you? Let others broider your scarfs; I, the servant, may take care of them, and your sword and your spurs. You will grant me this, Phœbus? So, take me! we gipsies only are made for the free air and to love.’
“She had flung her arms around the officer’s neck, supplicating him with a smile shining through her tears. Her delicate throat was scratched by the rough lace. The intoxicated captain glued his burning lips on the rounded Moorish shoulders. The young girl, kneeling, her eyes looking upward, her head thrown back, quivered under the kiss. All at once, above the stooping head of Phœbus, she beheld another head, with a livid, convulsed face, wearing the look of a damned soul; near it was a hand armed with a dagger. It was the face and hand of the priest; he had burst through the door, and was there. Phœbus could not perceive him. The girl was frozen stiff and mute by the fear-inspiring apparition,—like a dove raising its head as the osprey stares over its nest with its round, unwinking eyes. She could not even utter a scream. She saw the poniard fall on Phœbus and rise smoking.
“‘Malediction!’ groaned the captain, and he fell.
“She swooned.
“As her eyes closed, as feeling vanished from her, she fancied she felt impressed on her lips a print of fire, a kiss more burning than the executioner’s red-hot branding-iron.
“When she came to herself, she was surrounded by the soldiers of the watch. They carried away the captain, bathed in his blood; the priest had disappeared (the window at the end of the room, looking on the river, was wide open); a cloak was picked up which they supposed belonged to the officer, and she heard it said around her, ‘She is a witch that has stabbed a captain.’”
The thrilling narrative proceeds with the imprisonment of the poor girl, the false confession of murder and witchcraft extorted by the terrible torture of rack and screw and pincer, the visit of the archdeacon, and his extraordinary confession of maddening love. In the course of his long and fervid and impetuous appeal for her favor, he says:
“‘Oh, I had not foreseen the torture! Listen: I followed thee into that chamber of agony; I looked upon thy rough treatment by the torturer’s infamous hands. I saw thy foot, which to kiss and die at I would give an empire, I saw it crushed by the horrible irons which have made of living limbs raw flesh and a pool of blood. While I beheld this, I wielded under my gown a dagger, with which I furrowed my breast. At the scream thou gavest, I buried it in my flesh; look, it still bleeds.’”
“‘Oh, to love a woman, to be a priest, to be hated! to love her with all the fury of one’s soul, to be willing to give for the least of her smiles one’s blood, salvation, immortality and eternity, this life and the other; to regret not being a king, genius, emperor, archangel, that a greater slave might be at her feet; to have her mingling day and night in one’s thoughts and dreams; and to see her enamored of a soldier’s livery, and only have to offer her a priest’s coarse gown which is frightful to and detested by her! To be present with rage and jealousy while she lavishes on a despicable, empty-brained dog her treasures of love and beauty! To see that body whose sight makes you burn, that bosom so peerless, that satin flesh redden under another’s kisses! Oh, to love her arms and neck, to think of her blue veins visible through her brown skin, almost to writhe whole nights through on the pavement of one’s cell, and see all the caresses dreamed of end with the torture!’”
The priest’s nightly dreams, we are told, were dreadful. Writhing on his bed, “his delirious fancy represented Esmeralda in all the attitudes that could make blood boil in one’s veins. He saw her as when he had stabbed the captain, her white throat spotted with the blood of Phœbus, when the archdeacon had impressed on her shoulders that kiss which, though half dying then, she had felt scorch her.” One night he became so inflamed with his uncontrollable passion that he sought relief by a visit to the gipsy’s cell, to which he had access. His entrance awakened and bewildered her.
“‘Oh, the priest,’ said she, in a faint voice.
“Her misfortunes came back to her in a flash. She fell back chilled. The next moment, she felt the priest’s arms enclasp her. She would have screamed, but could not.
“‘Away, monster, assassin, begone!’ gasped she, in a voice low and tremulous from rage and fear.
“‘Mercy, mercy!’ muttered the priest, kissing her shoulders.
“She caught his bald head, with both her hands entwined in the rest of his hair, and forced it away as if his kisses were bites.”
His utmost efforts to win her regard and sympathy were ineffectual. He was baffled at every step in his desperate advances, and repelled with immeasurable scorn upon the repetition of his visits. He offered her the alternative of the gibbet or escape and life; he humbled himself before her to an incredible degree. In his passionate entreaties, he says:
“‘Why, here am I who would kiss thy feet,—no, no, not thy feet, thou wouldst not permit that,—but the very ground under thy feet. I weep like a very child; I tear from my breast, not words, but my heart and my vitals, to tell thee that I love thee; all is in vain, all! And yet in thy spirit thou hast naught but tenderness and clemency, thou art radiant with gentleness; thou art good, kind, merciful as charming. Woe is me! thou hast not cruelty save for me. Oh, what fatality!’”
At their last meeting he closes a strain of fervid supplication the rejection of which settles the girl’s fate:
“‘I entreat thee by all that is holy, do not delay until I am of stone like this scaffold thou choosest in my stead. Think that I hold our two destinies in my palm, that I am mad, that I can make yawn betwixt us a bottomless pit, thou unfortunate! wherein my lost soul will pursue thine through all eternity! One word of kindness! say one word! nothing more than a word.’
“She parted her lips to answer him. He rushed and fell on his knees before her to receive with adoration the word—perhaps affectionate—which was about to leave her lips.
“‘You are an assassin,’ was what she said.
“The priest threw his arms furiously around her, and laughed a devil’s laugh. ‘Assassin—be it so!’ said he, ‘I will be thine. Thou wouldst not have me as a slave,—thou shalt have me as master. I have a place to which I’ll drag thee. Thou shalt go with me; I will make thee go. Thou art to die, fair one, or be mine! be the priest’s, the apostate’s, the assassin’s! To-night, dost hear? The grave or my bed!’
“The girl fought in his arms while he covered her with kisses.
“‘Do not bite me, monster!’ she shrieked. ‘Oh, the hateful, infectious monk! leave me! I will tear out that vile gray hair of yours.’
“He reddened, turned white, then released her, and regarded her moodily. She thought herself victorious, and went on: ‘I tell you I am for Phœbus; that it is Phœbus I love, because he is handsome. You, priest, are old and ugly. Begone.”
The unalterable and final decision was made. It sent Esmeralda to execution in the Place de Grève, and as the archdeacon watched the tragedy,—the judicial murder of an innocent creature for his own crime,—the revengeful hunchback pushed him violently from the tower of Notre Dame to meet a horrible death upon the pavement below.
Charles Reade deals with the kiss in the sturdy and energetic manner which usually characterizes his writings. In “Put Yourself in his Place,” the bursting of Ouseley Reservoir gives him one of his best opportunities for the display of vivid descriptive power and the production of startling effects and situations. One of the most exciting incidents attending the avalanche of water occasioned by the rupture of the embankment was the rescue of Grace Carden from the flood by her lover, Henry Little:
“He set his knee against the horizontal projection of the window, and that freed his left hand; he suddenly seized her arm with it, and, clutching it violently, ground his teeth together, and, throwing himself backward with a jerk, tore her out of the water by an effort almost superhuman. Such was the force exerted by the torrent on one side, and the desperate lover on the other, that not her shoes only, but her stockings, though gartered, were torn off her in that fierce struggle.
“He had her in his arms, and cried aloud, and sobbed over her, and kissed her wet cheeks, her lank hair, and her wet clothes, in a wild rapture. He went on kissing her and sobbing over her so wildly and so long, that Coventry, who had at first exulted with him at her rescue, began to rage with jealousy.
“‘Please remember she is my wife,’ he shrieked; ‘don’t take advantage of her condition, villain!’
“‘Your wife, you scoundrel! You stole her from me once; now come and take her from me again. Why didn’t you save her? She was near to you. You let her die; she lives by me and for me, and I for her.’ With this he kissed her again and held her to his bosom. ‘D’ye see that? liar! coward! villain!’
“Even across that tremendous body of rushing death, from which neither was really safe, both rivals’ eyes gleamed hate at each other.”
After a series of miraculous escapes, they descend from the roof of the house whither they had finally sought protection from the raging waters, and, staggering among the débris, they finally reach rising ground, where they discover a horse, upon which Henry seats the barefooted Grace. Their conversation eventually takes this turn:
“‘Let us talk of ourselves,’ said Grace, lovingly. ‘My darling, let no harsh thought mar the joy of this hour. You have saved my life again. Well, then it is doubly yours. Here, looking on that death we have just escaped, I devote myself to you. You don’t know how I love you, but you shall. I adore you.’
“‘I love you better still.’
“‘You do not; you can’t. It is the one thing I can beat you at, and I will.’
“‘Try. When will you be mine?’
“‘I am yours. But if you mean when will I marry you, why, whenever you please. We have suffered too cruelly and loved too dearly for me to put you off a single day for affectations and vanities. When you please, my own.’
“At this Henry kissed her little white feet with rapture, and kept kissing them at intervals all the rest of the way; and the horrors of the night ended to these two in unutterable rapture, as they paced slowly along to Woodbine Villa with hearts full of wonder, gratitude, and joy.”
These pleasant passages are from Reade’s “Very Hard Cash:”
“The young man, ardent as herself, and not, in reality, half so timorous, caught fire, and, seeing a white, eloquent hand rather near him, caught it and pressed his warm lips on it in mute adoration and gratitude.
“At this she was scared and offended. ‘Oh, keep that for the queen!’ cried she, turning scarlet and tossing her fair head into the air like a startled stag, and she drew her hand away quickly and decidedly, though not roughly. He stammered a lowly apology. In the very middle of it she said, softly, ‘Good-by, Mr. Hardie,’ and swept with a gracious little courtesy through the door-way, leaving him spell-bound.
“And so the virginal instinct of self-defence carried her off swiftly and cleverly. But none too soon; for, on entering the house, that external composure her two mothers, Mesdames Dodd and Nature, had taught her, fell from her like a veil, and she fluttered up the stairs to her own room with hot cheeks, and panted there like some wild thing that has been grasped at and grazed. She felt young Hardie’s lips upon the palm of her hand plainly; they seemed to linger there still,—it was like light but live velvet. This and the ardent look he had poured into her eyes set the young creature quivering. Nobody had looked at her so before, and no young gentleman had imprinted living velvet on her hand. She was alarmed, ashamed, and uneasy. What right had he to look at her like that? What shadow of a right to go and kiss her hand? He could not pretend to think she had put it out to be kissed; ladies put forth the back of the hand for that, not the palm. The truth was, he was an impudent fellow, and she hated him now, and herself too, for being so simple as to let him talk to her. Mamma would not have been so imprudent when she was a girl.
“She would not go down, for she felt there must be something of this kind legibly branded on her face: ‘Oh! oh! just look at this young lady! She has been letting a young gentleman kiss the palm of her hand, and the feel has not gone off yet; you may see that by her cheeks.’”
“Jan. 14th. A sorrowful day. He and I parted, after a fortnight of the tenderest affection, and that mutual respect without which neither of us, I think, could love long. I had resolved to be very brave; but we were alone, and his bright face looked so sad; the change in it took me by surprise, and my resolution failed: I clung to him. If gentlemen could interpret as we can, he would never have left me. It is better as it is. He kissed my tears away as fast as they came; it was the first time he had ever kissed more than my hand,—so I shall have that to think of, and his dear, promised letters; but it made me cry more at the time, of course. Some day, when we have been married years and years, I shall tell him not to go and pay a lady for every tear, if he wants her to leave off.” [Julia’s Diary.]
“‘Oh, how good you are! oh, how I love you!’
“And she flung a tender arm round his neck, like a young goddess making love; and her sweet face came so near his he had only to stoop a little, and their lips met in a long, blissful kiss.
“That kiss was an era in her life. Innocence itself, she had put up her delicious lips to her lover in pure, though earnest, affection; but the male fire with which his met them made her blush as well as thrill, and she drew back a little, abashed and half scared, and nestled on his shoulder, hiding a face that grew redder and redder.”