After the funeral, and when one’s friends have begun to realize sorrow, is the time when it is the hardest to bear. It is then that the sympathetic person may do much toward brightening the long and dreary days in the house of mourning. Flowers left at the door occasionally, frequent calls, an occasional cheering note, a bright book lent, are a few of the small courtesies that amount to actual benefactions. Only those who have had to learn to live with a grief that is almost forgot by others know what such tokens of thoughtful sympathy mean. All who count themselves friends should call within a month, always telling the maid that if the ladies do not feel like appearing they are not to do so.
A WIDOW’S DRESS
The heaviest mourning demanded by conventionality is worn by a widow, but even she is now allowed to dispense with the heavy crape veil. In its place is the long veil of nun’s veiling, which is worn over the face only at the funeral. With it is a face-veil, trimmed with crape, and a white ruche or “widow’s cap” stitched inside of the brim of the small bonnet. The dress is of Henrietta cloth, or other lusterless material, and may be trimmed with crape. Black suède gloves and black-bordered handkerchiefs—if these are liked—are proper. The widow seldom discards her veil under two years,—some widows wear it always. After the first year it is shortened.
It is a matter for congratulation that crape, that most expensive, unwholesome, perishable and inartistic of materials, is worn less and less with each passing year. Surely to have to wrap one’s self in its stiff and malodorous folds adds discomfort to grief. It is now seldom worn except by widows, although a daughter may wear it for a parent, a mother for her child.
The matter of the mourning-veil is one each person must settle for herself, although the strictest followers of fashion deprecate its use for any women except widows. Some bereaved daughters and mothers wear it, but not for a long period, seldom longer than six months.
Mourning for the members of one’s immediate family may be worn for a year, then lightened. Mourning for a relative-in-law is lightened at the end of three or six months.
INCONGRUOUS MOURNING
While on this subject it would be well to call attention to the fact that one should either wear conventional black, or no black at all. For a widow to wear, as a well-known woman did recently, a long veil and gray suède gloves, borders on the ridiculous. Nor should velvet, cut jet, satin and lace be donned by those wearing the insignia of grief. Nor are black-and-white combined deep mourning. They may be worn when the weeds are lightened, but not when one is wearing the strictly conventional garb of dolor. Even widows may wear all white, but not with black ribbons, unless the heavy black has been laid aside for what may be called the “second stage” of bereavement. At first, all materials either in black or white, must be of dull finish. Dresses may be of nun’s veiling, Henrietta cloth, and other unshining wool fabrics, or of dull, lusterless silks. Simple white muslins, lawns and mulls are proper, but must not be trimmed with laces or embroidered.