Manners and Social Usages by Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (best english novels for beginners .TXT) 📕

course, manage to dress without going to extremities in either

direction. We see many a pale-faced mourner whose quiet

mourning-dress tells the story of bereavement without giving us

the painful feeling that crape is too thick, or bombazine too

heavy, for comfort. Exaggeration is to be deprecated in mourning

as in everything.

The discarding of mourning should be effected by gradations. It

shocks persons of good taste to see a light-hearted young widow

jump into colors, as if she had been counting the hours. If black

is to be dispensed with, let its retirement be slowly and

gracefully marked by quiet costumes, as the feeling of grief,

yielding to the kindly influence of time, is shaded off into

resignation and cheerfulness. We do not forget our dead, but we

mourn for them with a feeling which no longer partakes of anguish.

Before a funeral the ladies of a family see no one but the most

intimate friends. The gentlemen, of course, must see the clergyman

and officials who manage the ceremony. It is now the almost

universal practice to carry the remains to a church, where the

friends of the family can pay the last tribute of respect without

crowding into a private house. Pallbearers are invited by note,

and assemble at the house of the deceased, accompanying the

remains, after the ceremonies at the church, to their final

resting-place. The nearest lady friends seldom go to the church or

to the grave. This is, however, entirely a matter of feeling, and

they can go if they wish. After the funeral only the members of

the family return to the house, and it is not expected that a

bereaved wife or mother will see any one other than the members of

her family for several weeks.

The preparations for a funeral in the house are committed to the

care of an undertaker, who removes the furniture from the

drawing-room, filling all the space possible with camp-stools. The

clergyman reads the service at the head of the coffin, the

relatives being grouped around. The body, if not disfigured by

disease, is often dressed in the clothes worn in life, and laid in

an open casket, as if reposing on a sofa, and all friends are

asked to take a last look. It is, however, a somewhat ghastly

proceeding to try to make the dead look like the living. The body

of a man is usually dressed in black. A young boy is laid out in

his everyday clothes, but surely the young of both sexes look

more fitly clad in the white cashmere robe.

The custom of decorating the coffin with flowers is a beautiful

one, but has been, in large cities, so overdone, and so purely a

matter of money, that now the request is generally made that no

flowers be sent.

In England a lady of the court wears, for her parent, crape and

bombazine (or its equivalent in any lustreless cloth) for three

months. She goes nowhere during that period. After that she wears

lustreless silks, trimmed with crape and jet, and goes to court if

commanded. She can also go to concerts without violating

etiquette, or to family weddings. After six months she again

reduces her mourning to black and white, and can attend the

“drawing-room” or go to small dinners. For a husband the time is

exactly doubled, but in neither case should the widow be seen at a

ball, a theatre, or an opera until after one year has elapsed.

In this country no person in mourning for a parent, a child, a

brother, or a husband, is expected to be seen at a concert, a

dinner, a party, or at any other place of public amusement, before

three months have passed, After that one may be seen at a concert.

But to go to the opera, or a dinner, or a party, before six months

have elapsed, is considered heartless and disrespectful. Indeed, a

deep mourning-dress at such a place is an unpleasant anomaly. If

one choose, as many do, not to wear mourning, then they can go

unchallenged to any place of amusement, for they have asserted

their right to be independent; but if they put on mourning they

must respect its etiquette, By many who sorrow deeply, and who

regard the crape and solemn dress as a mark of respect to the

dead, it is deemed almost a sin for a woman to go into the street,

to drive, or to walk, for two years, without a deep crape veil

over her face. It is a common remark of the censorious that a

person who lightens her mourning before that time “did not care

much for the deceased;” and many people hold the fact that a widow

or an orphan wears her crape for two years to be greatly to her

credit.

Of course, no one can say that a woman should not wear mourning

all her life if she choose, but it is a serious question whether

in so doing she does not injure the welfare and happiness of the

living. Children, as we have said, are often strangely affected by

this shrouding of their mothers, and men always dislike it.

Common-sense and common decency, however, should restrain the

frivolous from engaging much in the amusements and gayeties of

life before six months have passed after the death of any near

friend. If they pretend to wear black at all, they cannot be too

scrupulous in respecting the restraint which it imposes.

CHAPTER XXII.

MOURNING AND FUNERAL USAGES.

Nothing in our country is more undecided in the public mind than

the etiquette of mourning. It has not yet received that hereditary

and positive character which makes the slightest departure from

received custom so reprehensible in England. We have not the

mutes, or the nodding feathers of the hearse, that still form part

of the English funeral equipage; nor is the rank of the poor clay

which travels to its last home illustrated by the pomp and

ceremony of its departure. Still, in answer to some pertinent

questions, we will offer a few desultory remarks, beginning with

the end, as it were—the return of the mourner to the world.

When persons who have been in mourning wish to re-enter society,

they should leave cards on all their friends and acquaintances, as

an intimation that they are equal to the paying and receiving of

calls. Until this intimation is given, society will not venture to

intrude upon the mourner’s privacy. In eases where cards of

inquiry have been left, with the words “To inquire” written on the

top of the card, these cards should be replied to by cards with

“Thanks for kind inquiries” written upon them; but if cards for

inquiry had not been left, this form can be omitted.

Of course there is a kind of complimentary mourning which does not

necessitate seclusion—that which is worn out of respect to a

husband’s relative whom one may never have seen. But no one

wearing a heavy crape veil should go to a gay reception, a

wedding, or a theatre; the thing is incongruous. Still less should

mourning prevent one from taking proper recreation: the more the

heart aches, the more should one try to gain cheerfulness and

composure, to hear music, to see faces which one loves: this is a

duty, not merely a wise and sensible rule. Yet it is well to have

some established customs as to visiting and dress in order that

the gay and the heartless may in observing them avoid that which

shocks every one—an appearance of lack of respect to the memory

of the dead—that all society may move on in decency and order,

which is the object and end of the study of etiquette.

A heartless wife who, instead of being grieved at the death of her

husband, is rejoiced at it, should be taught that society will not

respect her unless she pays to the memory of the man whose name

she bears that “homage which vice pays to virtue,” a commendable

respect to the usages of society in the matter of mourning and of

retirement from the world. Mourning garments have this use, that

they are a shield to the real mourner, and they are often a

curtain of respectability to the person who should be a mourner

but is not. We shall therefore borrow from the best English and

American authorities what we believe to be the most recent usages

in the etiquette of mourning.

As for periods of mourning, we are told that a widow’s mourning

should last eighteen months, although in England it is somewhat

lightened in twelve. For the first six months the dress should be

of crape cloth, or Henrietta cloth covered entirely with crape,

collar and cuffs of white crape, a crape bonnet with a long crape

veil, and a widow’s cap of white crape if preferred. In America,

however, widows’ caps are not as universally worn as in England.

Dull black kid gloves are worn in first mourning; after that

gants de Suede or silk gloves are proper, particularly in

summer. After six months’ mourning the crape can be removed, and

grenadine, copeau fringe, and dead trimmings used, if the smell of

crape is offensive, as it is to some people. After twelve months

the widow’s cap is left off, and the heavy veil is exchanged for a

lighter one, and the dress can be of silk grenadine, plain black

gros-grain, or crape-trimmed cashmere with jet trimmings, and

cr�pe lisse about the neck and sleeves.

All kinds of black fur and seal-skin are worn in deep mourning.

Mourning for a father or mother should last one year. During half

a year should be worn Henrietta cloth or serge trimmed with crape,

at first with black tulle at the wrists and neck. A deep veil is

worn at the back of the bonnet, but not over the head or face like

the widow’s veil, which covers the entire person when down. This

fashion is very much objected to by doctors, who think many

diseases of the eye come by this means, and advise for common use

thin nun’s-veiling instead of crape, which sheds its pernicious

dye into the sensitive nostrils, producing catarrhal disease as

well as blindness and cataract of the eye. It is a thousand pities

that fashion dictates the crape veil, but so it is. It is the very

banner of woe, and no one has the courage to go without it. We can

only suggest to mourners wearing it that they should pin a small

veil of black tulle over the eyes and nose, and throw back the

heavy crape as often as possible, for health’s sake.

Jet ornaments alone should be worn for eighteen months, unless

diamonds set as mementoes are used. For half-mourning, a bonnet of

silk or chip, trimmed with crape and ribbon. Mourning flowers, and

cr�pe lisse at the hands and wrists, lead the way to gray, mauve,

and white-and-black toilettes after the second year.

Mourning for a brother or sister may be the same; for a stepfather

or stepmother the same; for grandparents the same; but the

duration may be shorter. In England this sort of respectful

mourning only lasts three months.

Mourning for children should last nine months, The first three the

dress should be crape-trimmed, the mourning less deep than that

for a husband. No one is ever ready to take off mourning;

therefore these rules have this advantage—they enable the friends

around a grief-stricken mother to tell her when is the time to

make her dress more cheerful, which she is bound to do for the

sake of the survivors, many of whom are perhaps affected for life

by seeing a mother always in black. It is well for mothers to

remember this when sorrow