18 January, 2006

The unmustachio'd Kiss

MISS D. That—that being kissed [with a rush] by a man who didn't wax his moustache was—like eating an egg without salt.

— Rudyard Kipling, Soldiers Three (1888)

The book had been written in the age when long black stockings and long black gloves had been the height of pornographic fashion, when "kissing a man without a moustache was like eating an egg without salt." The seductive and priapic major's moustaches had been long, curly, and waxed.

— Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point (1928)

Above all no profane comparisons he said. Perhaps he was thinking of the kiss without a moustache or beef without mustard.

— Samuel Beckett, Molloy (1951)

Un baiser sans moustache, disait-on alors, c'est comme un oeuf sans sel: j'ajoute: et comme le Bien sans Mal, comme ma vie entre 1905 et 1914.

— Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Mots (1964)

You know what the Victorians said? I read it in the Daily Mail. They said kissing a man without a moustache is like eating an egg without salt!

— Philip Pullman, The Broken Bridge (1990)


. . . Well, ladies?

1 comment:

John Cowan said...

When my wife and I first became an item, she insisted that I grow not merely a mustache but a full beard. Kissing had everything to do with it.

I did, and have never looked back (almost 28 years now).

Sincerely but sine cera,