Inventing Kisses XxX

For centuries, people have been signing off love letters with an X, blissfully unaware of how it all began. Was it a case of X marks the spot? Did it represent two lips meeting in a moment of passion? Or was it just the 19th-century equivalent of an emoji?

One thing is certain: the history of X as a kiss is just as dramatic as a Jane Austen novel - complete with romance, betrayal, and even a bit of courtroom scandal.

The kiss in court

Back in 1898, a British laundry maid named Harriet Ann McLean had racked up quite the collection of love letters - 1,030, to be exact, containing a whopping 15,000 Xs from her supposedly devoted fiancé, Francis Charles Matthews. That’s a whole lot of kisses and, presumably, a whole lot of ink.

But despite all those affectionate little crosses, Francis eventually got cold feet, ditching Harriet and leaving her with nothing but a decade’s worth of passionate correspondence. She promptly took him to court, suing for breach of promise to marry. The English press had a field day. “1,000 Letters and 15,000 Kisses!” the headlines screamed. It was the Victorian equivalent of a viral tweet.

At the time, Xs were a well-established way of sealing love notes, particularly among the working class. If your social life involved scrubbing shirts or stacking vegetables rather than attending debutante balls, an X was an easy, universally understood sign of affection.

It could also be construed as a legal promise - you may like to know that Harriet sued Francis for breach of promise. (Did she win? Read on...)

So, why X?

Decades after Harriet won her case, many of us wonder why does X mean a kiss?

The most popular explanation - one that has been recycled by journalists ever since - traced it back to medieval times, when people who couldn’t read or write would sign documents with an X. To prove their sincerity, they’d then kiss the mark. Over time, the X became synonymous with a smooch.

There’s probably some truth to this theory. After all, the very same working-class lovers who were filling their letters with Xs in the 19th century were only a few generations removed from ancestors who had actually used Xs as their legal signatures.

That said, earlier expressions of love didn’t really feature Xs. In the Regency era, for example, people were far more into hearts, Cupid’s arrows, and interlocking initials. The X = kiss formula wasn’t quite there yet.

Kisses through the ages

While the X may be a more recent romantic shorthand, the act of sealing something with a kiss has a much older pedigree.

Medieval Europeans took their kissing very seriously. In church, the holy kiss - a full-on mouth-to-mouth snog - was used to unite congregants in spiritual harmony (can you imagine?). Meanwhile, a kiss of fealty was an essential part of sealing land deals, with vassals locking lips with their lords to show their loyalty (I mean…?)

Love letters, too, had long included kisses, but they were usually written out in words. Poet Judith Madan, writing to her husband in 1728, didn’t mess around: “I send you a thousand kisses.”

Secret love codes

Before X took over, lovers had their own secretive ways of sending kisses. From at least the 16th century, people used everything from wax drippings to ink splotches as a way of sneaking a kiss into a letter. These symbols were personal, mysterious, and often incomprehensible to anyone but the intended recipient.

By the mid-19th century, these coded symbols became more recognisable. Charles Dickens wrote about a detective who tracked down a suspect by a wax dot left on his envelopes, which was his signature way of sending a kiss.

Meanwhile, in an 1862 courtroom drama, a jury examined a series of love letters where the defendant had used “spots of ink” to indicate kisses. A decade later, a Scottish suitor upped the ante by throwing in both crosses and circles at the bottom of his love notes, because why settle for just one symbol when you can have a whole collection?

By the early 20th century, X had taken the lead as the shorthand for a kiss. It became so universal that, during World War II, military censors in Australia, the UK, and the US even briefly banned its use, fearing it could be part of some top-secret coded messages. (One imagines lovesick soldiers getting letters from home full of “I miss you” but tragically void of the reassuring row of Xs at the end.)

While X became standard across the Anglophone world, it didn’t take off as much on the European continent, where people preferred to write their kisses out in full. The French, for example, continued to sign off with bises or bisous, which arguably sounds a bit more romantic than just one lonely letter.

XOXO

So, the next time you sign off a text with an X, spare a thought for Harriet Ann McLean and her 15,000 kisses. What started as a love-struck laundry maid’s affectionate shorthand turned into a global symbol of affection - surviving court battles, medieval feudal contracts, and even wartime censorship.

And while no one can say for sure whether an X really represents two lips meeting, one thing’s clear: it's one of the most effective ways to send love across the centuries.

PS: Harriet did win her case by the way - Happy Valentine's day Harriet. Did you think we'd forget you? :-) Love, Clyve XxX