THE LIVERY OF WOE. 



93 



scales vary somewhat, but each milliner has her 

 definite scale of lamentation in trimmings, and 

 the widow and the orphan costume their grief by 

 her dictation. And if any lady, having to show 

 the world that she has suffered a bereavement 

 and is correctly afflicted by it, mistrusts the mil- 

 liner's or the mourning-salesman's authority, there 

 are manuals on the etiquette of mourning to in- 

 struct her minutely, to a button or a frill, how to 

 express the exact tribute of regret according to 

 the degree of relationship, and, to a day, exactly 

 how long to go on expressing it. There is no for- 

 mality with so little feigning in it as the wearing 

 mourning ; for its matter-of-form nature is not 

 merely confessed but made its chief claim to polite 

 admiration. 



There is little to be said in blame of the un- 

 truthfulness of mourning. Every courtesy, wheth- 

 er to the living or the dead, which society adopts 

 as a duty, becomes of necessity, from a matter of 

 prescription, frequently a matter of pretense. 

 But, just because it is a matter of prescription, 

 such pretense has no guile in it, and neither con- 

 templates nor commits deception. The "very 

 happys " and " very sorrys " of society pass the 

 truest lips meaninglessly without tainting them, 

 for no one understands them by the dictionary, 

 they are merely the bows and courtesies of speech ; 

 and the " very happys " and " very sorrys " which 

 go into acts and clothing follow the same rule. 

 Your black hat-band to the memory of the kins- 

 man you feel unable to regret, from want of know- 

 ing him, or from knowing him too well, is no more 

 deceitful than your white favor, sign of rejoicing, 

 at a wedding which need never have taken place 

 for anything you care. It is not often that the 

 acceptance of a common custom can convey any 

 meaning — although very often the refusal to ac- 

 cept a common custom passes as conveying much 

 more than a neutral meaning. Not to say " very 

 sorry" or "very happy" in the usual contingen- 

 cies may be considered, not merely an honest 

 avoidance of an expression of feeling beyond the 

 literal fact, but as tantamount to an offensive 

 declaration in so many words that we are glad at 

 that for which civility required us to use a court- 

 esy sorrow, or sorry at that for which civility re- 

 quired us to use a courtesy pleasure : not to wear 

 mourning under customary circumstances may be 

 considered, not merely a refusal to parade a real 

 or a regulation grief in a masquerade of doleful 

 coats and trousers or distressed falls and fur- 

 belows, but the ostentatiously parading content 

 or indifference under the loss to which black 

 clothes were expected to bear their regretful tes- 



timony. To refuse to pin on the bridal rosette 

 may be considered, not a loyal abstinence from 

 over-expressions of belief or joy in the bliss of 

 the bridal pair, but a surly manifestation of ill- 

 will or ill-temper. And, as all language, of words 

 and of things, is for the sake of him toward whom 

 it is used as well as of him who uses it, whenever 

 a custom, by common consent meaningless in the 

 observance, but not by common consent meaning- 

 less in the breach, i3 completely harmless, we had 

 much better accept it than hurt our friends' feel- 

 ings. 



But that the custom of wearing mourning is 

 harmless is by no means incontrovertible. It is 

 not one which the fashionable and the wealthy 

 can assign to themselves and leave the humble 

 their freedom if they choose to take it. If the 

 duchess likes to hobble herself inside " pulled- 

 back " skirts and impart a Chinese elegance to 

 her impeded steps, we need not waste sympathy 

 on the washer-woman who follows suit ; nothing 

 worthy sympathy in her impels her to the imita- 

 tion. But, if fashion and respectability combine 

 to establish the rule that not to wear some par- 

 ticular kind or color of dress is to do dishonor to 

 the memory of our dead, the poorest draggletails 

 are coerced by all they have of tender feelings, 

 and all they have left of self-respect, to wear the 

 livery of woe — at what cost God knows, and often 

 the devil knows too. And with the victims of 

 that coercion we ought to sympathize. And the 

 very tribute of decency toward the dead is, where 

 poverty comes in, a source of hideous, though un- 

 meant, irreverence to the dying. The new dress be- 

 comes needful past waiting for, there will too prob- 

 ably be mourning to wear soon, so the new dress 

 is chosen to serve for mourning and the black for 

 the funeral hangs in a cupboard in the invalid's 

 room, and goes out to Sunday church and pleasur- 

 ing before his eyes. How else, when money for 

 new dresses is so hard to come by, and respect for 

 him and the neighbors will require good black ? If 

 one may judge by the advertisements of a well- 

 known mourning-dealer's firm, this thoughtful 

 provision of mourning beforehand is not unknown 

 in families capable of paying Regent Street bills ; 

 for ladies are informed with bland iteration in 

 pretty well every newspaper they can lay hands 

 on, how, in cases of sudden and unexpected 

 mournins, special and prompt attendance to their 

 dressmaking necessities can be afforded them by 

 this energetic firm — the inevitable inference from 

 the wording of the advertisements being that, 

 where the need for mourning is not sudden and 

 unexpected, the proper clothes will have been laid 



