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

for a lost child makes all the earth

seem barren to them.

 

We are often asked whether letters of condolence should be written

on black-edged paper. Decidedly not, unless the writer is in

black. The telegraph now flashes messages of respect and sympathy

across sea and land like a voice from the heart. Perhaps it is

better than any other word of sympathy, although all who can

should write to a bereaved person. There is no formula possible

for these letters; they must be left to the individual’s good

taste, and perhaps the simplest and least conventional are the

best. A card with a few words pencilled on it has often been the

best letter of condolence.

 

In France a long and deeply edged mourning letter or address,

called a faire part, is sent to every one known to the family to

advise them of a death. In this country that is not done, although

some mention of the deceased is generally sent to friends in

Europe who would not otherwise hear of the death.

 

Wives wear mourning for the relatives of their husbands precisely

as they would for their own, as would husbands for the relatives

of their wives. Widowers wear mourning for their wives two years

in England; here only one year. Widowers go into society at a much

earlier date than widows, it being a received rule that all

gentlemen in mourning for relatives go into society very much

sooner than ladies.

 

Ladies of the family attend the funeral of a relative if they are

able to do so, and wear their deepest mourning. Servants are

usually put in mourning for the head of the family—sometimes for

any member of it. They should wear a plain black livery and weeds

on their hats; the inside lining of the family carriage should

also be of black.

 

The period of mourning for an aunt or uncle or cousin is of three

months’ duration, and that time at least should elapse before the

family go out or into gay company, or are seen at theatres or

operas, etc.

 

We now come to the saddest part of our subject, the consideration

of the dead body, so dear, yet so soon to leave us; so familiar,

yet so far away—the cast-off dress, the beloved clay. Dust to

dust, ashes to ashes!

 

As for the coffin, it is simpler than formerly; and, while lined

with satin and made with care, it is plain on the outside—black

cloth, with silver plate for the name, and silver handles, being

in the most modern taste. There are but few of the “trappings of

woe.” At the funeral of General Grant, twice a President, and

regarded as the saviour of his country, there was a gorgeous

catafalque of purple velvet, but at the ordinary funeral there are

none of these trappings. If our richest citizen were to die

tomorrow, he would probably be buried plainly. Yet it is touching

to see with what fidelity the poorest creature tries to “bury her

dead dacent.” The destitute Irish woman begs for a few dollars for

this sacred duty, and seldom in vain. It is a duty for the rich to

put down ostentation in funerals, for it is an expense which comes

heavily on those who have poverty added to grief.

 

In dressing the remains for the grave, those of a man are usually

“clad in his habit as he lived.” For a woman, tastes differ: a

white robe and cap, not necessarily shroudlike, are decidedly

unexceptionable. For young persons and children white cashmere

robes and flowers are always most appropriate.

 

The late cardinal, whose splendid obsequies and whose regal “lying

in state” were in keeping with his high rank and the gorgeous

ceremonial of his Church, was strongly opposed to the profuse use

of flowers at funerals, and requested that none be sent to deck

his lifeless clay. He was a modest and humble man, and always on

the right side in these things; therefore let his advice prevail.

A few flowers placed in the dead hand, perhaps a simple wreath,

but not those unmeaning memorials which have become to real

mourners such sad perversities of good taste, such a misuse of

flowers. Let those who can afford to send such things devote the

money to the use of poor mothers who cannot afford to buy a coffin

for a dead child or a coat for a living one.

 

In the course of a month after a death all friends of the deceased

are expected to leave cards on the survivors, and it is

discretionary whether these be written on or not. These cards

should be carefully preserved, that, when the mourner is ready to

return to the world, they may be properly acknowledged.

 

CHAPTER XXIII.

LETTERS OF CONDOLENCE.

 

Probably no branch of the epistolary art has ever given to

friendly hearts so much perplexity as that which has to do with

writing to friends in affliction. It is delightful to sit down and

wish anybody joy; to overflow with congratulatory phrases over a

favorable bit of news; to say how glad you are that your friend is

engaged or married, or has inherited a fortune, has written a

successful book, or has painted an immortal picture. Joy opens the

closet of language, and the gems of expression are easily found;

but the fountain of feeling being chilled by the uncongenial

atmosphere of grief, by the sudden horror of death, or the more

terrible breath of dishonor or shame, or even by the cold blast of

undeserved misfortune, leaves the individual sympathizer in a mood

of perplexity and of sadness which is of itself a most

discouraging frame of mind for the inditing of a letter.

 

And yet we sympathize with our friend: we desire to tell him so.

We want to say, “My friend, your grief is my grief; nothing can

hurt you that does not hurt me. I cannot, of course, enter into

all your feelings, but to stand by and see you hurt, and remain

unmoved myself, is impossible.” All this we wish to say; but how

shall we say it that our words may not hurt him a great deal more

than he is hurt already? How shall we lay our hand so tenderly on

that sore spot that we may not inflict a fresh wound? How can we

say to a mother who bends over a fresh grave, that we regret the

loss she has sustained in the death of her child? Can language

measure the depth, the height, the immensity, the bitterness of

that grief? What shall we say that is not trite and

commonplace—even unfeeling? Shall we be pagan, and say that “whom

the gods love die young,” or Christian, and remark that “God does

not willingly afflict the children of men?” She has thought of

that, she has heard it, alas! often before—but too often, as she

thinks now.

 

Shall we tell her what she has lost—how good, how loving, how

brave, how admirable was the spirit which has just left the flesh?

Alas! how well she knows that! How her tears well up as she

remembers the silent fortitude, the heroic patience under the pain

that was to kill! Shall we quote ancient philosophers and modern

poets? They have all dwelt at greater or less length upon death

and the grave. Or shall we say, in simple and unpremeditated

words, the thoughts which fill our own minds?

 

The person who has to write this letter may be a ready writer, who

finds fit expression at the point of his pen, and who overflows

with the language of consolation—such a one needs no advice; but

to the hundreds who do need help we would say that the simplest

expressions are the best. A distant friend, upon one of these

occasions, wrote a letter as brief as brief might be, but of its

kind altogether perfect. It ran thus: “I have heard of your great

grief, and I send you a simple pressure of the hand.” Coming from

a gay and volatile person, it had for the mourner great

consolation; pious quotations, and even the commonplaces of

condolence, would have seemed forced. Undoubtedly those persons do

us great good, or they wish to, who tell us to be resigned—that

we have deserved this affliction; that we suffer now, but that our

present sufferings are nothing to what our future sufferings shall

be; that we are only entering the portals of agony, and that every

day will reveal to us the magnitude of our loss. Such is the

formula which certain persons use, under the title of “letters of

condolence.” It is the wine mixed with gall which they gave our

Lord to drink; and as He refused it, so may we. There are, no

doubt, persons of a gloomy and a religious temperament combined

who delight in such phrases; who quote the least consolatory of

the texts of Scripture; who roll our grief as a sweet morsel under

their tongues; who really envy the position of chief mourner as

one of great dignity and considerable consequence; who consider

crape and bombazine as a sort of royal mantle conferring

distinction. There are many such people in the world. Dickens and

Anthony Trollope have put them into novels—solemn and ridiculous

Malvolios; they exist in nature, in literature, and in art. It

adds a new terror to death when we reflect that such persons will

not fail to make it the occasion of letter-writing.

 

But those who write to us strongly and cheerfully, who do not

dwell so much on our grief as on our remaining duties—they are

the people who help us. To advise a mourner to go out into the

sun, to resume his work, to help the poor, and, above all, to

carry on the efforts, to emulate the virtues of the deceased—this

is comfort. It is a very dear and consoling thing to a bereaved

friend to hear the excellence of the departed extolled, to read

and re-read all of the precious testimony which is borne by

outsiders to the saintly life ended—and there are few so

hard-hearted as not to find something good to say of the dead: it

is the impulse of human nature; it underlies all our philosophy

and our religion; it is the “stretching out of a hand,” and it

comforts the afflicted. But what shall we say to those on whom

disgrace has laid its heavy, defiling hand? Is it well to write to

them at all? Shall we not be mistaken for those who prowl like

jackals round a grave, and will not our motives be misunderstood?

Is not sympathy sometimes malice in disguise? Does not the phrase

“I am so sorry for you!” sometimes sound like “I am so glad for

myself?” Undoubtedly it does; but a sincere friend should not be

restrained, through fear that his motive may be mistaken, from

saying that he wishes to bear some part of the burden. Let him

show that the unhappy man is in his thoughts, that he would like

to help, that he would be glad to see him, or take him out, or

send him a book, or at least write him a letter. Such a wish as

this will hurt no one.

 

Philosophy—some quaint and dry bit of old Seneca, or modern

Rochefoucauld—has often helped a struggling heart when disgrace,

deserved or undeserved, has placed the soul in gyves of iron.

Sympathetic persons, of narrow minds and imperfect education,

often have the gift of being able to say most consolatory things.

Irish servants, for instance, rarely hurt the feelings of a

mourner. They burst out in the language of Nature, and, if it is

sometimes grotesque, it is almost always comforting. It is the

educated and conscientious person who finds the writing of