Erasmus's World of Kisses and Ruskin's Chastity
This is about culture change, specifically about
how attitudes in a single country may change over time, sometimes remarkably.
Many of us associate Victorian England with prudery. Women were supposed to
dress and behave modestly. They were to defer to their husbands in their
opinions. They were largely restricted to the domestic sphere as wives and
mothers. Men were supposed to maintain an outgoing, chivalrous deportment. They
were the breadwinners and protectors.
Of course, we know that men, especially affluent
men, had secret lives. Many had liaisons with mistresses and prostitutes. Yet,
sexual matters were not to be discussed in polite company, particularly between
the sexes. Victorianism at its most extreme might best be illustrated by the
marriage of the influential art critic, John Ruskin, to the much
younger Effie
Gray. Although the union lasted five years, the couple never had
sex. The story goes that on the wedding night Ruskin was disgusted to find that
Effie had pubic hair. He was familiar with the nudes of classical sculpture,
but not with flesh and blood nakedness. After meeting and falling in love with
the painter, John Everett Millais, whom Ruskin had commissioned to do his
portrait, Effie sued to have the marriage was annulled. She succeeded largely
because the union had never been consummated. Effie went on to wed Millais. By
all accounts, they—and their children—lived happily ever after. I call on this
anecdote as an illustration of a strait-laced, prudish element of late
19th-century England.
Accounts of English society during the reign of Henry VIII
provide a vivid contrast. One of these accounts comes from the letters of Desiderius Erasmus, a Dutch
philosopher-scholar who traveled among the courts of Europe. His collection of Apothegms consists of
thousands of “old sayings” that he traces to classical times. These volumes
might qualify as the original bedside readers if they were not so cumbersome!
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Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) |
At the
age of thirty-three, Erasmus visited England for the first time. He was smitten
by English culture, which his letters reveal to be far different than the
culture of Ruskin’s England. Erasmus wrote enthusiastically to the poet Faustus
Andrelinus, entreating his friend to join him in England.
Why are you so complacently burying your wit among French
dunghills while you turn into an old man?... If you were fully aware of what
England has to offer, you would rush hither, I tell you, on winged feet… There
is one custom that can never be commended too highly. When you arrive anywhere,
you are received with kisses on all sides, and when you take your leave they
speed you on your way with kisses. The kisses are renewed when you come back.
When guests come to your house, their arrival is pledged with kisses; and when
they leave kisses are shared once again. If you should happen to meet, then
kisses are given profusely. In a word, wherever you turn, the world is
full of kisses…
This “world full of kisses” sounds nothing like the proper Victorian world. It
extended into the reign of Elizabeth I, where kissing was particularly popular
on the dance floor. Accounts of a dance, nicknamed “Kissum,” describe
participants kissing every dancer of the other sex. These may sometimes have been
mere pecks on the cheek, but full on the mouth kisses were not uncommon. After
a particular round ended, couples would retire to the sideline where we are
told, they would sit—the young man on his partner’s lap—to exchange endearments
and to kiss some more!
Yet the seeds of Victorianism were already being planted. Kissing of all sorts
was popular in the Catholic Church, from kissing the prelate’s ring to kissing
the bones of dead saints. Elsewhere in his letters from England, Erasmus
describes touring a religious site where he and his companion were expected to
kiss relics, including the still-bloody arm of a reputed martyr. Then, too,
there was the kissing going on in Rome among the clergy and their mistresses.
It was opposition to such behavior that fed the Reformation and lent power to
Puritanism, which flowered over the next century and no doubt helped shape
Victorian England.
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