SHAKING HANDS.
IF there is a custom which is supposed by our neighbours on the Continent to be essentially British, it is that of shaking hands. They speak of the English " shake-hand " as if it were a practice only indulged in by that eccentric islander whose manners and customs they affect to despise, and yet not unfrequently imitate. It is certainly the case that we are more given to shaking hands than other nations are. Where the Frenchman or the German would content himself with a comprehensive bow that includes a whole company of people in one courteous sweep, the Englishman, especially if he is country-bred, will patiently and perseveringly shake hands with every one who is present. Perhaps it is owing to a feeling that an unnecessary use of the practice is provincial, that we may trace a visible decline in it at the present day. But it is difficult to say to what cause is attributable the present extraordinary form which it takes among certain people when they do practise it,—a form which is especially prevalent among those people whose ambition it is to be known as " smart ;" a term, by-the-way, which is at once curiously inclusive and exclusive, and which can only be earned by a rigid performance of certain social rites, and a strict obedience to mysterious and unwritten rules, rules that are unknown even to the rest of the world. When two members of this class, or of the far more numerous class that imitates them, meet each other, they go through a ceremony which certainly bears a faint resemblance to that of shaking hands, but is in all real essentials absolutely different. The lady lifts her elbow as high as a tight sleeve will permit her, and dangles a little hand before her face, carefully keeping the wrist as stiff and as high as possible, while she allows the fingers to droop down. The man contrives to lift his elbow a little higher, and, by a dexterous turn of the wrist, touches her fingers,—that is all. That is the whole ceremony : it sounds a little awkward, it looks very awkward, and it is difficult enough to require a good deal of practice before it can be performed at all. It is a very curious development of an ancient practice ; but the reason that is assigned for this, its last development, is more curious still. It is said that ladies who are bidden to Court, and whose privilege it is to exchange greetings with Royal personages, find it difficult to combine a curtsey with a shake of a gracious hand, without raising their own hands to the level of their faces. Hence their too frequent communications with illustrious people have corrupted their good manners ; they acquire a habit, and are so forgetful as to introduce it into their ordinary life and their relations with more ordinary people. It may be so ; but it is strange, at least, that they should remember to forget the curtsey, while they forget to remember to lower their hands. But a defective memory is also very often a result of keeping good company. It is the same forgetfulness that causes a butler to address his new master as, " My Lord— I mean, Sir ;" the force of habit is too strong for him, and the poor fellow cannot remember that be is not always associating with Peers. Another reason that has been suggested for this greeting, as it is practised by the best society, is that they have borrowed it from the coachman. With his reins in one hand and his whip in the other, the only approach to a saluta- tion that a coachman can make is by a sharp upward move- ment of the elbow and whip-hand. Indeed, this explanation is a very plausible one, for there is a kind of natural affinity between the manners of the stable and those of the very smart people. " Smart " is a detestable word, but it is the one by which they love best to describe themselves. Perhaps it would be fair to conclude that the form of their greeting has been subject to both of these influences, for it is difficult to think of any other source from which they can have derived it. It is hardly possible that the habit can have come to them from the bar-loafer of the United States, though it is certainly the custom among bar-loafers, as the Americans term them, to lift
their elbows by way of greeting; but the gesture with them is merely indicative of a hospitable wish to " stand " each other drinks, and can hardly be dignified by the name of a salutation.
Wherever the habit was derived from, it is not a pretty one, and by no means an improvement upon the original custom. How ancient a custom is the shaking of hands no one can say. Mankind always employed some kind of ceremony of greeting. The oldest forms, those of kissing and the rubbing of noses, date from even pre-historic times. Authorities declare that tmcivilised men by these means either tasted or sniffed at each other, in order to distinguish their friend from their enemy. The custom of rubbing noses is still practised by the Poly- nesians, and some of the Malays and Mongols ; but it does not appear to have ever made its way into Europe. The kiss, or salute by taste, was and is still much more extensively used ; it is not unknown in England. The giving and clasping of right hands had its origin most probably in a wish to show that the right hand was unarmed, and that no danger need be apprehended from its owner. In the same way, among certain African tribes, it is the custom on meeting, not only to disarm themselves, but also to unclothe the upper portion of the body, in order to show that there is no weapon concealed. There is evidence to show that the clasping of hands was an ancient Hindoo usage in legal transactions, as it was also among the Romans in such matters as a marriage contract. As a mode of salutation, it certainly existed among the latter ; for we have Horace's description of a bore :- " Arreptaque mann, Quid agis, dulcissime rerum ' " from which we may argue that the methods of the bore in those days, and his ingenuity in button-holing, did not differ greatly from those in use now. In yet further antiquity, it is said of the heroes in the " Odyssey," when they meet, that "they grow together with their palms,"—an energetic, a Homeric description of the clasp of hands. But these are matters of ancient history. Nor do they explain how the action of shaking the hands came in ; probably this too, in its time, was an innovation, but one that was adopted for the sake of displaying greater heartiness, which the latest innova- tion certainly does not.
The great difference that exists between the act of shaking hands and most of the other methods of salutation, is that it is expressive of equality between the two parties, and, as a rule, the others are not. In the one case, both the men stand erect, and salute each other equally ; whereas in the case of Orientals and of savage people, one man stands and the other abases himself before him. Salutation is merely an action of humility on the part of the inferior, deprecating the force of his superior. Even when both men are practically equal, they both go through the ceremony of self-abasement, as if each was anxious to disarm any hostile intentions on the part of the other. And strange are the ways in which they express themselves. The Oriental uncovers, not his head, but his feet, and bows down to 'the earth, often spreading his hands out in a fashion suggestive of the most utter helplessness. The South African will pick rup handfuls of dirt and rub them upon his stomach,—surely the most humiliating proceeding, and one most destructive to a white waistcoat ; but, happily, that is a garment which the 'untutored savage seldom, if ever, wears. Another tribe in Central Africa, the Batoka, or Batonga, roll themselves upon the ground, slapping their thighs violently, and crying out at intervals, " Kina Bomba!"—a particularly inconvenient cere- mony. But these are the salutations of savages, and probably they are inspired by very much the same feeling as those of animals. No one who has watched a meeting between two strange dogs, can have failed to observe how the smaller and less courageous will throw himself upon the ground, with his legs in the air, and wag his tail in the dust, as if to deprecate any violence on the part of the other by showing how meek and helpless he is. Where the two dogs are well matched, they still approach each other with infinite caution and circum- spection, fearing to give offence by any hasty action and 'so to precipitate an attack.
Of course the custom of hand-shaking, like all others, is nut without its drawbacks. A story is told of the wife of one of the Presidents of the United States, that she was obliged 'to wear her arm in a sling for some days after a reception at the White House, the consequence of shaking several thousand 'hands in the course of an evening. That, however, it is said, did not trouble her so much as the smile which she had fixed
upon her features for the occasion, and which threatened to become a permanent affection of the muscles. There are not many people who are called upon to go through such an ordeal, and as a rule the chief fault that can be found with hand- shaking lies not so much in the quantity as the quality of the hands that are shaken. There are people with whom it is supremely disagreeable to shake hands ; in that matter every one has his own pet aversion, and there is no need to par- ticularise them here. But in the hands themselves there is often a disagreeable diversity quite irrespective of their owners, who may be the worthiest of people. The limp, nerveless band that makes no effort to shake or to be shaken, but lies passively and flabbily inert within one's own until it is released ; the powerful grip, of a heartiness that approaches ferocity, that crushes an unhappy woman's rings into her fingers, and brings tears to her eyes, tears that are called up by no friendly and responsive emotion ; or the cold, damp band that slides in and out of one's grasp like a piece of raw meat, and whose touch affects one like the touch of a clammy toad, or some other cold-blooded reptile,—all these are hands that it is painful to shake. But most irritating of all are the people who can shake hands properly but who won't, preferring to mark by the different ways in which they perform the feat, the different degrees of estimation in which they hold their various acquaintances. It is not pleasant, as an old friend, to be vouchsafed two diminutive finger-tips when one sees the whole hand eagerly accorded to a more recent but more distinguished acquaintance. As a means of expressing different degrees of friendship, one can understand the practice, and to a certain extent excuse it ; but why should a woman, for in this respect they are the worst offenders, con- stitute herself a machine for registering the different social heights at which her acquaintances have arrived ? In sad seriousness, if it is worth our while to salute our friends and shake them by the hand, it is surely better to do it as if we liked it, and not as if it was an action of which we were ashamed. As it is, the custom of shaking hands is not a par- ticularly ceremonious one, and certainly far less troublesome than that of making rather high-flown and long-winded speeches in the way of greeting. It is necessary to have some kind of outward form of words or action by which to acknowledge the presence or approach of a friend. " C'est, an demeurant, une tres utile science que la science de l'entregent," said Montaigne, a polite man himself, and one who appreciated the value of politeness. When one considers the extremity of politeness that was the fashion not so very long ago, the magnificence of the bows, and the magniloquence of the compliments that were ex- changed, one is fain to confess that we have already cut down our own ceremonious usages to their extreme limit, and it would really be a pity to rob them of the scanty measure of
courtesy that they still possess. The modern idea of the science of politeness is a science that will save time ; and we do not consider so much what are the best means to express our esteem and friendship in the fullest manner possible, as how we can express them with the least trouble to ourselves.
No one would wish to bring back the stately obeisances, the sweeping curtseys, and the hollow compliments of last century. They were not worth an honest shake of the hand ; and, together with powder, patches, and periwigs, they have long passed away into the limbo of worn-out shams. But at least they were a pretty comedy while they lasted, whereas this last fashion of hand-shaking is a grotesque farce.
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