Manners and Social Usages - Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (mobile ebook reader TXT) 📗
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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,
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