WE MOURN MORE REASONABLY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 122, 25 May 1936, Page 10

WE MOURN MORE REASONABLY

Crepe No Longer Popular

f£HE WAR LOOSENED our minus about many things that had formerly been regarded as almost sacred, and it is true to say that it acted to an extent that scarcely anyone yet realises as an active agent in the alteration of old habits and old ways of thinking, writes St. John Ervine in < *Good Housekeeping, 7 ’ London. The point I want to make is in con nection with our attitude towards the dead. Here we have changed our views tremendously in a short time, and for the better, I think. We no longer cover ourselves with crape, nor do we make Bur lives mournful for long periods because our kindred have died. A et it is plain to anyone with eyes in his head that our grief for the dead is no less than such grief ever was. I lately attended a memorial service for one of my friends. Every person present at the service, which was held in a small country town, wore his usual clothes. The chief male mourner, who escorted the widow, wore a grey suit and. a soft collar, and might have been going to a cricket match instead of to a funeral. I think I am right in saying that this garb for a funeral would ha' • been almost inconceivable twenty year' ago. Had the principal male mourner it any memorial service arrived in the church and walked to the grave in an ordinary lounge suit and wearing a soft, coloured collar, he would, undoubtedly, have caused a great scandal. The place would have rung with his offence. Yet not one person in that congregation saw anything odd in his dress. A few very elderly people occasionally express a sense of shock nt the sight of ordinary clothes at a funeral, but fiiey are few and their censure is not severe. On the morning on which I began to Frite this article, I met a lady who cold me that she and her mother and her other near relatives had gone to r. cinema to see a funny film less than *i week after the funeral of her father A. friend, to whom 1 told this story, informed me that when she was a young girl and so distressed by ht/ mother’s death that she was in danger of a breakdown, her father, about fvu» months after the funeral, took her a. pantomime, thinking that thus himight relieve her sorrow. Their rcla fives and neighbours were scandalise' 7 , ind as good as accused them loth rt being heartless. The convention then was that a family should mourn ti e

' of near relatives for not less than year, and that this mourning should be expressed in crape and black clol.'es and by abstention form all entertain merit. A widow was thought to be some 1 thing of a hussy if she did not envcloi ’ J herself in hideous dark draperies 1’ several years after her husbandT i death, and was only accounted a good wife if she kept herself darkened for the rest of her life. 1 dare not wr'.h the things that would have been said . of a widow who went to n theatre within a week of her husband’s buri;: 1 , lest I should not be believed. In those days a family abstained from as many activities as possible for the period between death and buria i The whole family mourned togethei and did no work. The house was hushed, and all the blinds were drawn. Every- ’ body sat about tin* house and talked in whispers. Many tears were shed. H I was thought to be highly creditable to ; the bereaved women in a family if they , bad hysterics as the body was plm-ed in the hearse, Funeral mutes were hi’cd for their lugubrious expression, and , they eked out with artificial aids what ■ nature had already done for them in the provision of gloomy* features. The driver of the hearse and the mourning coaches added “weepers” to their . hats. A horrible gloom was deliberately The War altered all that. Death be . came commoner than it had previous!, been in the experience of any one person, and a family would find itself . grieving, not for a single person in tci: years, but for several persons in a few ■ months. After the War, a new attitude ■ to death was taken up. Grief was not less, but display was, and people became increasingly reluctant to pai ohtheir sorrow. It is not uncommon new to see notices of death in the newspapers, ending with the request that there shall not be any mourning am! this custom was immensely accelerjJ»•<) by the funeral of .Ellen Terry, who had left a request that there should be no blackness at her burial. Every person who was present at her funeral service in St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, wa. dressed as if for a garden party. For my part. I abominate the wlioji- • ghastly custom of dressing in black for the dead, ami I have informed my wife . that if T die before her. she is to come tr niv funeral in -her prettiest frock. 1 want her to buv a new hat for my burial.