The Background
Attitudes toward sex were rapidly changing in the late 19th century, and 1898 was a banner year for kissing controversies.
Richmond P. Hobson was a dashingly handsome Navy lieutenant from Alabama who became a national celebrity when he was captured and held as a prisoner of war after sinking the Merrimac steamship in the Spanish-American War.
Following his release, Hobson went on a national tour, which was attended by throngs of admiring young girls, and in August 1898, he stopped in Atlanta to give a lecture at the Governor’s Mansion,1 2 which G.L. Norrman apparently attended.
A week after his Atlanta visit, Hobson visited Long Beach, California, where he was approached by Emma Arnold of St. Louis, visiting with a group of a dozen friends. Arnold brazenly asked Hobson for a kiss — to which he agreed. Arnold then proceeded to kiss each of her female friends to share Hobson’s kiss with them.3
The resulting scandal fueled a press flurry that lasted for months, and it launched Hobson’s status as an early sex symbol. Hobson kissed hundreds of girls for the remainder of his tour, which newspapers began dubbing “Hobson’s kissing tour”. At one event in Chicago, he reportedly kissed 163 women, followed by another in Kansas City where he broke his record by kissing 417.4
Incidentally, the famous Mrs. Kingsberry of Atlanta defended Hobson as a “nice manly fellow, and modest, too”, placing blame for his kissing escapades on the loose young women who flocked to him. “All young girls are enthusiastic hero worshipers!” she wrote. “Poor young fellow!” she added. “To think of marching up to 400 Kansas women and kissing 267 of them! What horrors!”5
As controversy swirled over Hobson’s incident with “the Long Beach girl”, Norrman wrote the following letter to The Atlanta Constitution, which was published on August 14, 1898.
“Patriotism and Kisses”
Editor Constitution—
“Lieutenant Hobson, in a short talk at the governor’s mansion, remarked to the effect that too much ado was made over the incident of the Merrimac, claiming that all our seamen would cheerfully embrace every opportunity of serving the country.
“From Miss Arnold’s explanation of the incident of the kiss I infer that she is equally modest and generous and gives every girl in the country credit for a desire of embracing the same opportunity of showing, with a merry smack, her appreciation of the heroism on the Merrimac.”
G.L. Norrman
Atlanta, August 12th.6
References
- “Hobson Here; Will Lecture”. The Atlanta Journal, August 2, 1898, p. 1. ↩︎
- “Great Reception Given Lt. Hobson”. The Atlanta Journal, August 3, 1898, p. 5. ↩︎
- “How Miss Arnold Got Hobson’s Kiss”. The Atlanta Constitution, August 12, 1898, p. 9. ↩︎
- “Hero Hobson’s Kissing Tour Through the Wild West”. The Atlanta Journal, December 22, 1898, p. 4. ↩︎
- “Lieut. Hobson’s Kissing Tour As Viewed By Mrs. Kingsberry”. The Atlanta Journal, December 24, 1898, p. 4. ↩︎
- “Patriotism and Kisses”. The Atlanta Journal, August 14, 1898, p. 16. ↩︎