Manners and Social Usages by Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (great book club books TXT) 📖

be blue, the color of

the sky, or white, in token of light which the redeemed soul has

reached.

 

Custom, which makes slaves of us all, has decreed that we shall

wear black, as a mark of respect to those we have lost, and as a

shroud for ourselves, protesting against the gentle ministration

of light and cheerfulness with which our Lord ever strives to

reach us. This is one side of the question; but, again, one word

as to its good offices. A mourning dress does protect a woman

while in deepest grief against the untimely gayety of a passing

stranger. It is a wall, a cell of refuge. Behind a black veil she

can hide herself as she goes out for business or recreation,

fearless of any intrusion.

 

The black veil, on the other hand, is most unhealthy: it harms the

eyes and it injures the skin. As it rubs against the nose and

forehead it is almost certain to cause abrasions, and often makes

an annoying sore. To the eyes enfeebled by weeping it is sure to

be dangerous, and most oculists now forbid it.

 

The English, from whom we borrow our fashion in funeral matters,

have a limitation provided by social law which is a useful thing.

They now decree that crape shall only be worn six months, even for

the nearest relative, and that the duration of mourning shall not

exceed a year. A wife’s mourning for her husband is the most

conventionally deep mourning allowed, and every one who has seen

an English widow will agree that she makes a “hearse” of herself.

Bombazine and crape, a widow’s cap; and a long; thick veil—such

is the modern English idea. Some widows even have the cap made of

black cr�pe lisse, but it is generally of white. In this country

a widow’s first mourning dresses are covered almost entirely with

crape, a most costly and disagreeable material, easily ruined by

the dampness and dust—a sort of penitential and self-mortifying

dress, and very ugly and very expensive. There are now, however,

other and more agreeable fabrics which also bear the dead black,

lustreless look which is alone considered respectful to the dead,

and which are not so costly as crape, or so disagreeable to wear.

The Henrietta cloth and imperial serges are chosen for heavy

winter dresses, while for those of less weight are tamise cloth,

Bayonnaise, grenadine, nuns’ veiling, and the American silk.

 

Our mourning usages are not overloaded with what may be called the

pomp, pride, and circumstance of woe which characterize English

funerals. Indeed, so overdone are mourning ceremonies in

England—what with the hired mutes, the nodding plumes, the costly

coffin, and the gifts of gloves and bands and rings, etc.—that

Lady Georgiana Milnor, of Nunappleton, in York, a great friend of

the Archbishop, wrote a book against the abuse, ordered her own

body to be buried in a pine coffin, and forbade her servants and

relatives to wear mourning. Her wishes were carried out to the

letter. A black, cloth-covered casket with silver mountings is

considered in the best taste, and the pall-bearers are given at

most a white scarf and a pair of black gloves. Even this is not

always done. At one time the traffic in these returned bands and

gloves was quite a fortune to the undertaker. Mourning is very

expensive, and often costs a family more than they can well

afford; but it is a sacrifice that even the poorest gladly make,

and those who can least afford it often wear the best mourning, so

tyrannical is custom. They consider it—by what process of

reasoning no one can understand, unless it be out of a hereditary

belief that we hold in the heathen idea of propitiating the manes

of the departed—an act of disrespect to the memory of the dead if

the living are not clad in gloomy black.

 

However, our business is with the etiquette of mourning. Widows

wear deep mourning, consisting of woollen stuffs and crape, for

about two years, and sometimes for life, in America. Children wear

the same for parents for one year, and then lighten it with black

silk, trimmed with crape. Half-mourning gradations of gray,

purple, or lilac have been abandoned, and, instead, combinations

of black and white are used. Complimentary mourning is black silk

without crape. The French have three grades of mourning—deep,

ordinary, and half mourning. In deep mourning, woollen cloths only

are worn; in ordinary mourning, silk and woollen; in half

mourning, gray and violet. An American lady is always shocked at

the gayety and cheerfulness of French mourning. In France,

etiquette prescribes mourning for a husband for one year and six

weeks—that is, six months of deep mourning, six of ordinary, and

six weeks of half mourning. For a wife, a father, or a mother, six

months—three deep and three half mourning; for a grandparent, two

months and a half of slight mourning; for a brother or a sister,

two months, one of which is in deep mourning; for an uncle or an

aunt, three weeks of ordinary black. In America, with no fixity of

rule, ladies have been known to go into deepest mourning for their

own relatives or those of their husbands, or for people, perhaps,

whom they have never seen, and have remained as gloomy monuments

of bereavement for seven or ten years, constantly in black; then,

on losing a child or a relative dearly loved, they have no

extremity of dress left to express the real grief which fills

their lives—no deeper black to go into. This complimentary

mourning should be, as in the French custom, limited to two or

three weeks. The health of a delicate child has been known to be

seriously affected by the constant spectacle of his mother in deep

mourning.

 

The period of a mourner’s retirement from the world has been very

much shortened of late. For one year no formal visiting is

undertaken, nor is there any gayety in the house. Black is often

worn for a husband or wife two years, for parents one year, and

for brothers and sisters one year; a heavy black is lightened

after that period. Ladies are beginning to wear a small black

gauze veil over the face, and are in the habit of throwing the

heavy crape veil back over the hat. It is also proper to wear a

quiet black dress when going to a funeral, although this is not

absolutely necessary.

 

Friends should call on the bereaved family within a month, not

expecting, of course, to see them. Kind notes expressing sympathy

are most welcome to the afflicted from intimate friends, and gifts

of flowers, or any testimonial of sympathy, are thoughtful and

appropriate. Cards and notepaper are now put into mourning by

those who desire to express conventionally their regret for the

dead; but very broad borders of black look like ostentation, and

are in undoubted bad taste. No doubt all these things are proper

enough in their way, but a narrow border of black tells the story

of loss as well as an inch of coal-black gloom. The fashion of

wearing handkerchiefs which are made with a two-inch square of

white cambric and a four-inch border of black may well be

deprecated. A gay young widow at Washington was once seen dancing

at a reception, a few months after the death of her soldier

husband, with a long black veil on, and holding in her

black-gloved hand one of these handkerchiefs, which looked as if

it had been dipped in ink. “She should have dipped it in blood,”

said a by-stander. Under such circumstances we learn how much

significance is to be attached to the grief expressed by a

mourning veil.

 

The mourning which soldiers, sailors, and courtiers wear has

something pathetic and effective about it. A flag draped with

crape, a gray cadet-sleeve with a black band, or a long piece of

crape about the left arm of a senator, a black weed on a hat,

these always touch us. They would even appear to suggest that the

lighter the black, the more fully the feeling of the heart is

expressed. If we love our dead, there is no danger that we shall

forget them. “The customary suit of solemn black” is not needed

when we can wear it in our hearts.

 

For lighter mourning jet is used on silk, and there is no doubt

that it makes a very handsome dress. It is a singular fact that

there is a certain comfort to some people in wearing very handsome

black. Worth, on being asked to dress an American widow whom he

had never seen, sent for her photograph, for he said that he

wished to see “whether she was the sort of woman who would relish

a becoming black.”

 

Very elegant dresses are made with jet embroidery on crape—the

beautiful soft French crape—but lace is never “mourning.” Even

the French, who have very light ideas on the subject, do not trim

the most ornamental dresses with lace during the period of even

second mourning, except when they put the woolen yak lace on a

cloth cloak or mantilla. During a very dressy half mourning,

however, black lace may be worn on white silk; but this is

questionable. Diamond ornaments set in black enamel are allowed

even in the deepest mourning, and also pearls set in black. The

initials of the deceased, in black brilliants or pearls, are now

set in lockets and sleeve-buttons, or pins. Gold ornaments are

never worn in mourning.

 

White silk, embroidered with black jet, is used in the second

stage of court mourning, with black gloves. Deep red is deemed in

England a proper alternative for mourning black, if the wearer be

called upon to go to a wedding during the period of the first

year’s mourning. At St. George’s, Hanover Square, therefore, one

may often see a widow assisting at the wedding of a daughter or a

son, and dressed in a superb red brocade or velvet, which,

directly the wedding is over, she will discard for her solemn

black.

 

The question of black gloves is one which troubles all who are

obliged to wear mourning through the heat of summer. The black kid

glove is painfully warm and smutty, disfiguring the hand and

soiling the handkerchief and face. The Swedish kid glove is now

much more in vogue, and the silk glove is made with such neatness

and with such a number of buttons that it is equally stylish, and

much cooler and more agreeable.

 

Mourning bonnets are worn rather larger than ordinary bonnets. In

England they are still made of the old-fashioned cottage shape,

and are very useful in carrying the heavy veil and in shading the

face. The Queen has always worn this style of bonnet. Her widow’s

cap has never been laid aside, and with her long veil of white

falling down her back when she appears at court, it makes the most

becoming dress that she has ever worn. For such a grief as hers

there is something appropriate and dignified in her adherence to

the mourning-dress. It fully expresses her sad isolation: for a

queen can have no near friends. The whole English nation has

sympathized with her grief, and commended her black dress. Nor can

we criticise the grief which causes a mother to wear mourning for

her children. If it be any comfort to her to wrap herself in

crape, she ought to do so. The world has no right to quarrel with

those who prefer to put ashes on their heads.

 

But for the mockery, the conventional absurdities, and the

affectations which so readily lend themselves to caricature in the

name of mourning, no condemnation can be too strong. There is a

ghoul-like ghastliness in talking about “ornamental,” or

“becoming,” or “complimentary” mourning. People of sense,