"All four of us sisters wore mourning for two years

"All four of us sisters wore mourning for two years. Nowadays the proprieties are observed poorly, but in my time everything was done strictly, and according to the proverb, 'count your kinship and render it its honour', kinship was reckoned most exactly, and when a relation died, one wore mourning for him, according to nearness or remoteness of the tie, for as long as was prescribed. Widows wore mourning for three years: in the first year only black wool and crape, in the second black silk, and black lace might be worn, and in the third year, on state occasions, one might put on a silver net over the gown, not a gold one. This was worn at the end of the three years, but widows did not lay aside the black dress, the elderly ones in particular. And a young widow would not have been praised if she had hastened to take off her mourning.

For a father and mother one wore mourning for two years: the first year, wool and crape; on great feast days one might put on something of plain wool, but not too light, or else, as often as not, people would remark: So-and-so observes no proprieties at all: in deep mourning, and look what a light dress she has put on."

For the first two years widows did not powder or rouge; in the third year a little rouge was permitted, but whitening the face and powdering was allowed only when the mourning was over. Nor might one use scent, except that they used eau de Cologne, eau de lavande and eau de Laurent Dégonry… Rich and eminent people upholstered their carriages in black too, and the harness had no studs, and the coachmen and footmen were in black.

For our mother we wore mourning for two years, for so it pleased our father, and for our grandmother too we might perhaps have worn it for more than a year, but I married, and so we all took off our mourning.

When there were weddings in a family in deep mourning, the black dress was laid aside for the time and lilac was worn, which was considered mourning for brides. I cannot now recall which of our acquaintances married while in mourning, but the whole trousseau was made in lilac, of various materials and various shades (violet-dauphin, as they called the darkest lilac, because the French dauphins did not wear black in mourning but violet, lilac, gillyflower, lilac-blue, grey-de-lin and the like)." So, in the nineteenth century, the mourning customs of the previous century were described by Elizaveta Yankova, who left memoirs of the life of five generations of a Moscow family.