Thanks for more instances. And another that comes back to me from Jane Austen: in Sense & Sensibility, when Willoughby first appears cold towards Marianne, who has had romantic hopes of him, but he has only been dallying & has now found a rich heiress to marry, she exclaims '"Good God, Willoughby ... will you not shake hands with me?" He could not then avoid it, but her touch seemed painful to him, and he held her hand only for a moment'.

So when, I continue to wonder, did the handshake cease to be an expected part of lovers' conduct towards one another, and become the more formal gesture, not implying any sort of affection, that it has become?

Trouble is, hard to establish a negative. When did it vanish, as such, from folksong & fiction?

~M~