Etiquette and Mourning Dress

Have we any right to sadden others with our grief? The sight of somber colors, of dull crepe and clinging sable veils is actually painful to many. Perhaps it recalls to them a kindred and terrible experience, perhaps they are merely supersensitlve and easily affected. 

SHALL WE WEAR MOURNING? 

TIME was when such a question would have been simply preposterous. That was the age when widows went into deepest mourning. Black crepe and all, for the rest of their natural lives, or until they married again; when mothers wore black even for little babies that had not lived an hour; when third cousins and almost-fiancés and intimate friends were all subjects for mourning. But, no doubt about it, public opinion has changed. 

Thirty years ago you would have shocked a conventional world by suggesting all-white for deep mourning; now it is almost as common as all-black. Thirty years ago, even those who looked forward to some day terminating their mourning never expected to do so under three or four years at the very least. Now there is much confusion in the matter that from a question of etiquette it has become a question of taste. And that is all it ever really can be. 

You certainly are in no way affecting the dead by wearing black for them; if it were possible thus to show your sorrow to their eyes, there is not one of us who would not wear, on the heart at least, that badge of unforgotten grief. But the dead sleep and cannot dream. You are left, then, with two sides to the situation. Those who wear mourning reasonably — I mean those with whom it is not a mere matter of unthinking convention— say that it is to them a means of withdrawal from pleasures and excitements they could not bear. It puts up a screen between them and the world— a screen that says, "Respect my affliction and leave me for a little time alone." And that is the only good argument for mourning. 

Yet even for these there is another side to the question, and it is this: Have we any right to sadden others with our grief? The sight of somber colors, of dull crepe and clinging sable veils is actually painful to many. Perhaps it recalls to them a kindred and terrible experience, perhaps they are merely supersensitlve and easily affected. Then there are the children; have you ever watched the pathetic solemnity creep over a child's face when he is being made to live in the midst of blackness? 

Sully-Prudlhomme, the French poet, lost his father at an early age. and he tells how the mourning his mother wore and put upon him "sank from the clothing to the heart." Have you a right to subject a child to your sorrow? There are those, too, who even while in mourning cannot endure shutting themselves entirely out from life. How often I have known women to ask if it was proper to go to a wedding in deep mourning! And always, if it was I that was asked, I have answered, "You have no right to intrude your grief on the bride's joy. Unless you can lay aside your mourning, stay away." 

As for those who wear mourning simply because every one else does, they deserve no reverence, and hardly respect. "I am simply crazy to get into colors, and to go around again." said a young widow to me recently. In one year she had lost her father, her sister and her husband. If, after all this, she still felt like "getting into colors and going around again," why in the name of good sense, was she wearing mourning at all?  

At any rate, whatever your position on the subject, one thing you should make your most anxious care. You should never too lightly condemn the man or woman who, after a death in the family, makes no change in garments or in mode of living. How do you know, because a woman wears green and blue and brown, and because she goes to concerts and the theater and to club meetings, that her heart is not heavy and sore? Often, it is this woman who carries with her the heaviest burden, and carries it the longest. "Judge not, that ye be not judged!" —San Francisco Call, 1910

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

More Mourning Etiquette

“To go to the opera, or a dinner, or a party, before six months have elapsed, is considered heartless and disrespectful. If one chooses, as some do, to wear no mourning, then he can go, unchallenged, to any place of amusement, but if he put on mourning he must respect its etiquette.”– Scarlett O'Hara seemed to be in mourning through a third of the film, "Gone with the Wind," yet she still sought amusement at social gatherings.

The duration of a mourner’s retirement from the world has been much shortened of late. For one year no formal visiting is undertaken, nor any gayety. 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 not absolutely necessary. Friends may call on the bereaved family within a month, not expecting, of course to see them. Kind notes expressing sympathy are welcome from intimate friends; and flowers, or any similar testimonial of sympathy, are thoughtful and appropriate.

Cards and note-paper are put in mourning, but very broad borders of black are in bad taste. A narrow border of black is correct. The use of handkerchiefs with a two-inch square of white cambric and a four-inch border of black is to be deprecated.

Mourning which soldiers, sailors, and courtiers wear is pathetic and effective. A flag draped with crape, a gray cadet-sleeve with a black band, or a piece of crape about the left arm of a senator, a black weed on a hat, are in proper taste.      

Advertisement for mourning attire from a Victorian publication

Before a funeral the ladies of a family see no one but the most intimate friends. The gentlemen, of course, 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. Pall-bearers are invited by note, and assemble at the house. They, 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. It is not expected that a bereaved wife or mother will see any one other than the members of her family for several weeks.

All 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. The body of a man is usually dressed in black.

The custom of decorating the coffin with flowers is beautiful, but has been overdone, and now the request is frequently made that no flowers be sent.

No one in mourning for a parent, child, brother, or 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. If one choose, as some do, to wear no mourning, then he can go, unchallenged, to any place of amusement, but if he put on mourning he must respect its etiquette. –From How to Behave and How to Amuse, by G. H. Sandison, 1895

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber is the Site  Editor for Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia