Etiquette - Emily Post (english novels for students TXT) 📗

slighting of the dead for no women at all to be at the graveside. If any women are to be present and the interment is to be in the ground, some one should order the grave lined with boughs and green branches—to lessen the impression of bare earth.

Distant Country Funeral

In the country where relatives and friends arrive by train, carriages or motors must be provided to convey them to the house or church or cemetery. If the clergyman has no conveyance of his own, he must always be sent for, and if the funeral is in a house, a room must be set apart for him in which to change his clothes.

It is unusual for a family to provide a "special car." Sometimes the hour of the funeral is announced in the papers as taking place on the arrival of a certain train, but everyone who attends is expected to pay his own railway fare and make, if necessary, his own arrangements for lunch.

Only when the country place where the funeral is held is at a distance from town and a long drive from the railway station, a light repast of bouillon, rolls and tea and sandwiches may be spread on the dining-room table. Otherwise refreshments are never offered—except to those of the family, of course, who are staying in the house.

House Restored To Order

While the funeral cortège is still at the cemetery, some one who is in charge at home must see that the mourning emblem is taken off the bell, that the windows are opened, the house aired from the excessive odor of flowers, and the blinds pulled up. Any furniture that has been displaced should be put back where it belongs, and unless the day is too hot a fire should be lighted in the library or principal bedroom to make a little more cheerful the sad home-coming of the family. It is also well to prepare a little hot tea or broth, and it should be brought them upon their return without their being asked if they would care for it. Those who are in great distress want no food, but if it is handed to them, they will mechanically take it, and something warm to start digestion and stimulate impaired circulation is what they most need.

Mourning

A generation or two ago the regulations for mourning were definitely prescribed, definite periods according to the precise degree of relationship of the mourner. One's real feelings, whether of grief or comparative indifference, had nothing to do with the outward manifestation one was obliged, in decency, to show. The tendency to-day is toward sincerity. People do not put on black for aunts, uncles and cousins unless there is a deep tie of affection as well as of blood.

Many persons to-day do not believe in going into mourning at all. There are some who believe, as do the races of the East, that great love should be expressed in rejoicing in the re-birth of a beloved spirit instead of selfishly mourning their own earthly loss. But many who object to manifestations of grief, find themselves impelled to wear mourning when their sorrow comes and the number of those who do not put on black is still comparatively small.

Protection Of Mourning

If you see acquaintances of yours in deepest mourning, it does not occur to you to go up to them and babble trivial topics or ask them to a dance or dinner. If you pass close to them, irresistible sympathy compels you merely to stop and press their hand and pass on. A widow, or mother, in the newness of her long veil, has her hard path made as little difficult as possible by everyone with whom she comes in contact, no matter on what errand she may be bent. A clerk in a store will try to wait on her as quickly and as attentively as possible. Acquaintances avoid stopping her with long conversation that could not but torture and distress her. She meets small kindnesses at every turn, which save unnecessary jars to supersensitive nerves.

Once in a great while, a tactless person may have no better sense than to ask her abruptly for whom she is in mourning! Such people would not hesitate to walk over the graves in a cemetery! And fortunately, such encounters are few.

Since many people, however, dislike long mourning veils and all crepe generally, it is absolutely correct to omit both if preferred, and to wear an untrimmed coat and hat of plainest black with or without a veil.

A Word Of Economy

In the first days of stress, people sometimes give away every colored article they possess and not until later are they aware of the effort necessary, to say nothing of the expense, of getting an entire new wardrobe. Therefore it is well to remember:

Dresses and suits can be dyed without ripping. Any number of fabrics—all woolens, soft silks, canton crepe, georgette and chiffon, dye perfectly. Buttonholes have sometimes to be re-worked, snaps or hooks and eyes changed to black, a bit of trimming taken off or covered with dull braid, silk or crepe, and the clothes look every bit as well as though newly ordered.

Straw hats can be painted with an easily applied stain sold in every drug and department store for the purpose. If you cannot trim hats yourself, a milliner can easily imitate, or, if necessary, simplify the general outline of the trimming as it was, and a seamstress can easily cover dyed trimmings on dresses with crepe or dull silk. Also tan shoes—nearly all footwear made of leather—can be dyed black and made to look like new by any first class shoemaker.

Mourning Materials

Lustreless silks, such as crepe de chine, georgette, chiffon, grosgrain, peau de soie, dull finish charmeuse and taffeta, and all plain woolen materials, are suitable for deepest mourning. Uncut velvet is as deep mourning as crepe, but cut velvet is not mourning at all! Nor is satin or lace. The only lace permissible is a plain or hemstitched net known as "footing."

Fancy weaves in stockings are not mourning, nor is bright jet or silver. A very perplexing decree is that clothes entirely of white are deepest mourning but the addition of a black belt or hat or gloves produces second mourning.

Patent leather and satin shoes are not mourning.

People in second mourning wear all combinations of black and white as well as clothes of gray and mauve. Many of the laws for materials seem arbitrary, and people interpret them with greater freedom than they used to, but never under any circumstances can one who is not entirely in colors wear satin embroidered in silver or trimmed with jet and lace! With the exception of wearing a small string of pearls and a single ring, especially if it is an engagement ring, jewelry with deepest mourning is never in good taste.

When A Veil Is Not Worn

Nor should a woman ever wear a crepe veil to the theater or restaurant, or any public place of amusement. On the other hand, people left long to themselves and their own thoughts grow easily morbid, and the opera or concert or an interesting play may exert a beneficial relaxation. Gay restaurants with thumping strident musical accompaniment or entertainments of the cabaret variety, need scarcely be commented upon. But to go to a matinée with a close friend or relative is becoming more and more usual—and the picture theaters where one may sit in the obscurity and be diverted by the story on the silver screen which, requiring no mental effort, often diverts a sad mind for an hour or so, is an undeniable blessing. An observer would have to be much at a loss for material who could find anything to criticise in seeing a family together under such circumstances.

One generally leaves off a long veil, however, for such an occasion and drives bareheaded, if it be evening, or substitutes a short black face veil over one's hat on entering and leaving a building in the daytime.

Mourning For Country Wear

Except for church, crepe veils and clothes heavily trimmed with crepe are not appropriate in the country—ever! Mourning clothes for the summer consist of plain black serge or tweed, silk or cotton material, all black with white organdy collar and cuffs, and a veil-less hat with a brim. Or one may dress entirely in dull materials of white.

A Widow's Mourning

A widow used never to wear any but woolen materials, made as plain as possible, with deep-hemmed turn-back cuffs and collar of white organdy. On the street she wore a small crepe bonnet with a little cap-border of white crepe or organdy and a long veil of crepe or nun's veiling to the bottom edge of her skirt, over her face as well as down her back. At the end of three months the front veil was put back from over her face, but the long veil was worn two years at least, and frequently for life. These details are identical with those prescribed to-day excepting that she may wear lustreless silks as well as wool, the duration of mourning may be shorter, and she need never wear her veil over her face except at the funeral unless she chooses.

A widow of mature years who follows old-fashioned conventions wears deep mourning with crepe veil two years, black the third year and second mourning the fourth. But shorter periods of mourning are becoming more and more the custom and many consider three or even two years conventional.

The Very Young Widow

The young widow should wear deep crepe for a year and then lighter mourning for six months and second mourning for six months longer. There is nothing more utterly captivating than a sweet young face under a widow's veil, and it is not to be wondered at that her own loneliness and need of sympathy, combined with all that is appealing to sympathy in a man, results in the healing of her heart. She should, however, never remain in mourning for her first husband after she has decided she can be consoled by a second.

There is no reason why a woman (or a man) should not find such consolation, but she should keep the intruding attraction away from her thoughts until the year of respect is up, after which she is free to put on colors and make happier plans.

Mourning Worn By A Mother

A mother who has lost a grown child wears the same mourning as that prescribed for a widow excepting the white cap ruche. Some mothers wear mourning for their children always, others do not believe in being long in black for a spirit that was young, and, for babies or very young children, wear colorless clothes of white or gray or mauve.

A Daughter Or Sister

A daughter or sister wears a long veil over her face at the funeral. The length of the veil may be to her waist or to the hem of her skirt, and it is worn for from three months to a year, according to her age and feelings. An older woman wears deep black for her parents, sisters and brothers for a year, and then lightens her mourning during the second year. A young girl, if she is out in society or in college, may wear a long veil for her parents or her betrothed, if she wants to, or she wears a thin net veil edged with crepe and the corners falling a short way down her back—or none at all.

Very young girls of from fourteen to eighteen wear black for three months and then six months of black and white. They never wear veils of any sort, nor are their clothes trimmed in crepe. Children from eight to fourteen wear black and white and gray for six months for a parent, brother, sister or grandparent. Young children are rarely put into mourning, though their clothes are often selected to avoid vivid color. They