THE SUNSHADE

/THE PARASOL ---- THE UMBRELLA/

The author of a /Dictionary of Inventions/, after having proved the

use of the Parasol in France about 1680, openly gives up any attempt

to determine its precise original conception, which indeed seems to

be completely concealed in the night of time.

It would evidently be childish to attempt to assign a date to the

invention of Parasols; it would be better to go back to Genesis at

once. A biblical expression, /the shelter which defends from the

sun/, would almost suffice to demonstrate the Oriental origin of

the Parasol, if it did not appear everywhere in the most remote

antiquity--as well in the Nineveh sculptures, discovered and

described by M. Layard; as on the bas-reliefs of the palaces or

frescoes of the tombs of Thebes and Memphis.

In China they used the Parasol more than two thousand years before

Christ. There is mention of it in the /Thong-sou-wen/, under the

denomination of /San-Kaï/, in the time of the first dynasties, and a

Chinese legend attributes the invention of it to the wife of Lou-pan,

a celebrated carpenter of antiquity. "Sir," said this incomparable

spouse to her husband, "you make with extreme cleverness houses for

men, but it is impossible to make them move, whilst the object which

I am framing for their private use can be carried to any distance,

beyond even a thousand leagues."

And Lou-pan, stupefied by his wife's genius, then saw the unfolding

of the first Parasol.

Interesting as these legends may be, handed down by tradition to the

peoples of the East, they have no more historical credit than our

delicate fables of mythology: they preserve in themselves less of

the poetic quintessence, and above all seem less connected with that

mysterious charm with which Greek paganism drowned that charming

Olympus wherefrom the very origins of art appear to descend.

Let the three Graces be represented burned by Apollo, tired of

flying through the shadows, where Fauns and Ægipans lie in ambush,

or let these three fair ones be painted in despair at the fiery

sensation of sunburning which brands their epidermis; let them invoke

Venus, and let the Loves appear immediately, bearers of unknown

instruments, busily occupied in working the little hidden springs,

ingeniously showing their different uses and salutary effects; let

a poet--a Voltaire, a Dorat, a Meunier de Querlon, or an Imbert

of the time--be kind enough to forge some rhymes of gold on this

fable; let him, in fine, inspired by these goddesses, compose an

incontestable master-piece, and behold /the Origin of the Sunshade/!

graven in pretty legendary letters on the temple of Memory, not to be

contradicted by any spectacled /savant/ in the world.

But if no poet, in smart affected style, has told us in rhyme /the

Story of the Parasol/, many poets of all times have recalled the use

of it in precious verses, which appear to serve as landmarks for

history, and as references to discoveries of archæology. In ancient

Greece, in the time of the festivals of Bacchus, it was the custom,

not then confounded with fashion, to carry a Sunshade, not so much

to extenuate the ardour of the sun, but as a sort of religious

ceremonial. Paciaudi, in his treatise /De Umbellæ Gestatione/,

shows us on the carriage on which the statue of Bacchus is placed a

youth seated, the bearer of a Sunshade, a sign of divine majesty.

Pausanias, in his /Arcadics/, mentions the Sunshade in describing the

festivals of Alea in Argolis, whilst later on, in the /Eleutheria/,

we see the Parasol also. Lastly, after having painted for us, in a

marvellous description of Alexandria on a holiday, the hierophants,

bearers of emblems and the mystic vase, the Monads covered with ivy,

the Bassarids with scattered hair wielding their thyrsus, Athenæus

suddenly shows us the magnificent chariot of Bacchus, where the

statue of the god, six cubits high, all in gold, with a purple robe

falling to his heels, had over his head a Sunshade ornamented with

gold. Bacchus alone, of all the gods, had the privilege of the

Sunshade, if we rely on the evidence of ancient monuments, earthen

vases, and graven stones drawn from the museums of Stosch and other

archæologists.

As a result of their frequent relations with the Greeks after the

death of Alexander the Great, the Jews appear to have borrowed from

the Gentiles, in the celebration of their Feast of Tabernacles,

the use of the Sunshade. The subjoined medal of Agrippa the Old,

struck by the Hellenised Jews, in some sort supports this, although

Spanheim, in a passage relating to this medal, says he has hesitated

a long while as to the signification of the symbols which it

represents. Do the ears of corn mark the fertility of the governed

provinces, or do they refer to the Feast of Tabernacles? As for

the tent on the obverse, it is little probable that it represents

a tabernacle according to Moses' rite, since the roofs of these

tabernacles, far from being pointed, were flat and cloven in the

midst, so as to allow rain, sun, and starlight to pass through. It

must then be the Sunshade, the emblem of royalty; this at least seems

probable.

The Parasol played among the Greeks a very important part, as well in

the sacred and funeral ceremonies as in the great holidays of nature,

and even in the private life of the noble ladies of Athens.

The Parasol in its elegant form may be seen drawn on the majority of

Greek vases, either painted with straight or arched branches, concave

or convex, or in the shape of a hemisphere or a tortoise's back. But

the Sunshade with movable rods, opening or shutting, existed at that

time, as is sufficiently indicated by the phrase of Aristophanes in

the /Knights/ (Act v. Scene 2)--"His ears opened and shut something

like a sunshade."

An archæologist might amuse himself with writing a special work on

the rôle of the Sunshade in Greece; documents would not fail him;

nay, the book would soon grow big, and might bristle with notes from

all quarters, abounding in the margins, after the example of those

good solid volumes of the sixteenth century, which none but a hermit

would have the leisure to read conscientiously to-day. Such is not

our business in this light chapter.

One cannot exactly say for what motive the Sunshade was carried

by young virgins in all the processions in the Thesmophoria, the

festivals of Eleusis, and the Panathenæa. Aristophanes calls the

baskets and the white Sunshades "symbolic instruments, destined to

recall to human beings the acts of Ceres and Proserpine."

Perhaps it is not necessary to search beyond this Aristophanic

definition, which may on the whole entirely satisfy us. Moreover,

these Sunshades were white, not, say they, because the statue erected

by Theseus to Minerva was of that colour, but because white marked

the liveliest joy and pomp according to Ovid, who recommends very

carefully in his /Fasti/ the wearing in sign of rejoicings white

tunics worthy of pleasing Ceres, in whose cult both the priestesses

and the things they used ought to be entirely white.

In a man, according to Anacreon, the carrying a Parasol was the mark

of a libertine and effeminate life; one might draw an analogous

conclusion from a scene in the /Birds/ of Aristophanes, in which

Prometheus, through fear of Jupiter, cries to his slave, before

abandoning himself to a sweet passion for Venus only, "Quick, take

this sunshade, and hold it over me, in order that the gods may not

see me."

It is also doubtless for the same reason, which virtually interdicted

the use of the Parasol to men, that the daughters of the Metœci,

or strangers domiciled at Athens, carried, according to Ælian,

the sunshade of the Athenian women in the spectacles and public

ceremonies, whilst the fathers carried the vases destined for the

sacrifices.

The Θολἱα, or "Sunshade Hat," succeeded the Parasol properly so

called. It is of these Θολἱα that Theocritus speaks in several

places; it is also this hat, and not a Sunshade, which we must see in

the curious medal above, stamped by the Ætolians, which represents

Apollo bearing this strange hat, in the style of Yokohama, hanging on

his back.

From the most distant epochs the Sunshade has been considered, so

far as it is the attribute of gods and sovereigns, as the ensign

of omnipotence. We see it playing this supreme rôle, not only by

right of an emblem of blazonry, in the curious dissertation of the

Chevalier Beatianus /On a Sunshade of vermeil on a field argent,

symbol of power, sovereign authority and true friendship/, but also

we see it universally adopted as a sign of the highest distinction by

Oriental peoples, to be displayed over the head of the king in time

of peace, and occasionally in time of war.

It is thus that it may be contemplated on the sculptures of ancient

Egypt, where its usage was not exclusively indeed reserved to the

Pharaohs, but sometimes also to the great dignitaries, but to

these only. There is to be seen in Wilkinson a strange engraving

representing an Æthiopian princess seated on a /plaustrum/ or

carriage drawn by oxen, and having behind her a vague personage armed

with a large Parasol of an undecided form, something between the

screen and the /flabellum/ in the segment of a circle. Is it not also

in sign of adoration that it was the custom to put above the heads of

divine statues crescents, Sunshades, little spheres, which served not

only to guarantee these august heads against the injuries of time and

the ordures of birds, but also to set their physiognomy in relief as

by a nimbus or crown of paganism?

The kings or satraps of Persia of the oldest dynasties were sheltered

by the sovereign Parasol. Chardin, in his /Voyages/, describes

bas-reliefs of a time long before that of Alexander the Great,

in which the king of Persia is frequently represented sometimes

just about to mount his horse, at others surrounded by young

slave-girls--beautiful as day, as a poet might write for sake of

a simile--among whom one inclines a Sunshade, while another uses

a flyflap made of a horse's silky tail. Other bas-reliefs, again,

represent the Persian monarch on a throne, at the conclusion of a

victorious battle, whilst the rebels are being crucified, and writhe

under the punishment, and prisoners brought up, one after the other,

make humble submission. Here the Sunshade has the floating appearance

of a glorious standard. It symbolised also the power of life and

death, vested in the savage conqueror over the unfortunate conquered,

delivered up wholly to his mercy.

In ancient India, the cradle of the human race, as it is said, the

Parasol in every time, and more than anywhere else, is unfolded in

its splendour and the grace of its contexture, as an immutable symbol

of royal majesty. It seems really that it was under the deep azure

of the admirable Indian sky that the coquettish instrument, of which

we are exposing here by literary zigzags the historic summary, was

invented. It must have been born there first as a fragile buckler to

oppose the ardour of the sun; afterwards, doubtless, it developed,

little by little, into a large dome, carried in the arms of slaves,

or on the back of an elephant, showing the sparkle of its colours,

the originality of its form, the richness of its tissues, all

overloaded with fine gold and silver filigree, making its spangles

and jewels scintillate in the full leaping light, in the slow

oscillation given to it by the march of its bearers, or the swayings

of a heavy pachyderm, in the midst of magic powers, of dancers and

enchantments without number among the most bizarre palaces of the

world.

In Hindostan the large Parasol is commonly called /Tch'hâtâ/, the

small ordinary Parasol /Tch'hâtry/, and the bearer of the Parasol for

dignitaries /tch'hâtâ-wâlâ/.

The Parasol /of seven stages/ (/savetraxat/) is the first ensign of

royalty: it is found graven on the royal seal. The mythology and

literature of the Hindoos are, so to speak, confusedly peopled with

Parasols. In his fifth incarnation, Vishnu descends to Hades with a

Parasol in his hand. On the other hand, from the seventh century,

Hiouen Thsang has remarked, according to the rites of the kingdom of

Kapitha, Brâhma and Indra were represented holding in their hand, one

a flyflap, the other a Parasol. In the /Râmayana/ (ch. xxvi. /scloka/

12), Sitâ, speaking of Râma, whose beautiful eyes resemble the petals

of the lotus, expresses herself thus--"Covered with the Parasol

striped with a hundred rays, and such as the entire orb of the moon,

why do I not see thy most charming face shining beneath it?"

We read also in the /Mahâbârata/ (/sclokas/ 4941-4943)--"The litter

on which was placed the inanimate body of the monarch Pândou was

adorned with a flyflap, a fan, and a white /Sunshade/; at the sound

of all the instruments of music, men by hundreds offered, in honour

of the extinguished shoot of Kourou, a crowd of flyflaps, /white

Sunshades/, and splendid robes."

The Mahratta princes who reigned in Punah and Sattara held the title

of /Tch'hâtâ pati/, "Lord of the Parasol;" and we are told that one

of the most esteemed titles of the monarch of Ava was also that

of "King of the White Elephant, and Lord of the Four-and-twenty

Parasols."

When, in 1877, the Prince of Wales, future inheritor of the throne of

England, undertook his famous voyage into India, it was absolutely

necessary--says Dr. W. H. Russell, the scrupulous historian of that

princely expedition--in order to make him known to the natives, to

set the Prince upon an elephant, and to hold over his head the golden

Sunshade, symbol of his sovereignty.

There may be seen to-day in the South Kensington Museum, in the

admirable Indian gallery which has just been installed, some score

of the Parasols brought back by the Prince from his voyage, of which

each particular type deserves a description which cannot, alas! to

our sincere regret, find its place here. One may admire there the

state Umbrella of Indore, in the form of a mushroom; the Sunshade of

the Queen of Lucknow, in blue satin stitched with gold and covered

with fine pearls; next the Parasols of gilt paper, others woven of

different materials, some entirely covered with ravishing feathers of

rare birds, all with long handles in gold or silver, damascened, in

painted wood, in carved ivory, of a richness and an execution not to

be forgotten.

Let us tear ourselves away, as in duty bound, from Hindustan, to meet

again with the Parasol on more classic ground in ancient Rome, in the

middle of the Forum and of the games of the Circus. The Sunshade is

found very frequently in the most ancient paintings, on stones and

vases of Etruria, a long while even before the Roman era. According

to Pliny and Valerius Maximus, it is from Campania that the Velarium

comes, which is destined to defend the spectators from the sun. The

use of /the private Sunshade for each person/ established itself by

degrees on those days when, on account of the wind, the Velarium

could not be used. Martial says in his /Epigrams/ (Book IV.):

/Accipe quæ nimios vincant umbracula soles

Sit licet et ventus, te tua vela tegent./

People used the Sunshade not only at theatres, but also at battles,

and above all in the promenade. Ovid, in his /Fasti/, shows us

Hercules protecting his well-beloved Omphale by means of a Sunshade

from the sun's rays:

/Aurea pellebant tepidos umbracula soles

Quæ tamen Herculeæ sustinuere manus./

This image of Hercules carrying a light Parasol would surely be

worthy to replace the used-up theme of the distaff?

The ancient Romans brought to the decoration of their Parasols a

magnificence unknown in our days. They borrowed from the East its

stuffs, its jewels, its ornamental style, to enrich in the best

manner possible these pretty portable tents. When Heliogabalus,

forgetting his sex, after the example of the priests of Atys,

appeared on his car clothed with the long dress and all the gewgaws

that women wear; when he caused himself to be drawn along surrounded

by legions of nude slave-girls, he carried a fan in the guise of a

sceptre; and not only was there a golden Parasol in the form of a

dais stretched over his head, but also at each side two /umbelliferæ/

held light Sunshades of silk, covered with diamonds, mounted on

Indian bamboo, or on a stem of gold carved and encrusted with the

most wondrous jewels.

In the train which accompanied a matron on the Appian Way, if we can

believe the historian of /Rome in the age of Augustus/, two slaves

were obligatory: the fan-bearer (/flabellifera/) and the follower

(/pedis sequa/). The latter carried an elegant Parasol of linen

stretched over light rods at the extremity of a very long reed, so

that, at the least sign of her mistress, she might direct over her

the shadow of this movable defence.

The Roman Umbrella seems to have been nothing but a simple morsel of

leather, according to these verses, which Martial wrote by way of

advice:

/Ingrediare viam cœlo licet usque sereno;

Ad subitas nunquam scortea desit aquas./

This "leather cloth" was assuredly an Umbrella, which, except perhaps

in weight, need have envied nothing of our own.

At Rome, as at Athens, the Sunshade appears to have hidden people

from the looks of the gods, for, according to Montfauçon, even the

Triclinia were covered with a sort of Sunshade, that folk might

deliver themselves more mysteriously to orgies of every kind and to

the pleasures of Venus.

The material used in the manufacture of Sunshades was originally,

according to Pliny, leaves of palm divided into two, or the tresses

of the osier; afterwards they were made in silk, in purple, in

Eastern stuffs, in gold, in silver; they were adorned with Indian

ivory; they were starred with trinkets and jewels. One author tells

us even of Sunshades made out of women's hair--/the hair of women so

arranged as to supply the place of a Sunshade/.

Singular headdress or singular Parasol!

Juvenal speaks of a green Sunshade sent with some yellow amber to a

friend to celebrate her birthday and the return of spring.

/En cui tu viridem umbellam, cui succina mittas

Grandia, natalis quoties redit, aut madidum ver

Incipit./

And with regard to this /green/ Sunshade, apropos of the /viridem/,

all the commentators enter into the field, and make a deafening noise

to explain that the epithet had no reference to the colour of the

Sunshade, but to the spring.

Let us, if you please, leave Rome, without entering into these idle

dissertations.

It would be difficult for us to find in the Middle Ages numerous

manifestations of the Sunshade in private life; it was evidently

adopted in the ceremonies of the Christian Church and in the royal

/entrées/; but it was especially the privilege of the great, and

never appeared save on solemn days in the processions, as later on

the dais, reserved for kings and ecclesiastical nobles.

At Venice the Doge had already his celebrated Sunshade in 1176.

The Pope Alexander III. had accorded to the Venetian chiefs the

right to carry the Sunshade in the processions. Under the reign of

the Doge Giovanni Dandolo (1288) it was ordered that the pretty

golden statuette of the Annunciation should be added, which is seen

represented at the top of the Sunshade of the Venetian dogate.

One can get some idea of this marvellous Sunshade, all of gold

brocade, and of a pompous and original shape, by looking at most of

the prints of the time, and particularly at the celebrated engraving

of the /Procession of the Doge/, as well as at the pictures of

Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, Tiepolo, and the greater number of the

charming Venetian painters of the eighteenth century.

It seems evident that the Roman Gauls knew the use of the Parasol,

but it would not be easy to demonstrate its existence logically in

the martial and Gothic epochs. One can scarcely imagine these men

of arms, these gentle pages, and these noble damsels, with their

lofty head-gear and long dress, defended by a frail silken /encas/

(in case). They feared not then assuredly either sun or rain; they

dreamed of nought but /batailloles/ (little battles), according

to the language of that day; everything was done in honour of the

ladies, after the laws of the good King René, and the ladies would

certainly never have wished at the hour of the glorious tournaments

to shelter themselves at the approaches of the lists, against a sun

which sparkled on the breastplate of their brave knights with as much

brightness as the hope which shone in their eyes.

Let us come now to China, to find there Parasols and Umbrellas in

great honour, since the beginning of the dynasty /Tchéou/ (eleventh

century before Christ).

"The Umbrellas of that time," says M. Natalis Rondot, "resembled

ours; the mounting was composed of twenty-eight curved branches, and

covered with silken stuff. The Parasols were of feathers.

"After the /Thong-ya/, it is only under the first Wei (A.D. 220-264)

that gentlemen began the use of Parasols; these Parasols were most

frequently made of little rods of bamboo and oiled paper; pedestrians

never made use of them before the second Wei (386-554). Parasols

figure ordinarily in processions and funerals since the seventh

century. Thus, in 648, at the time of the inauguration of the

Convent of the Grand Beneficence, at Si-ngan-Fou, one counted--says

the historian of the /Life of Hiouen thsang/--only in the procession

three hundred Parasols of precious stuffs. The Parasol in China, as

in India, has always been a sign of elevated rank, although it has

not been exclusively used by emperors and mandarins. Formerly, it

seems, four-and-twenty Parasols were carried before the Emperor when

his Majesty went to the chase.

"A Chinese of a rank at all elevated, such as a mandarin, a bonze,

or a priest, never goes out without a Parasol, according to M.

Marie Cazal, a Sunshade manufacturer, who, about the year 1844,

wrote a small /Essay on the Umbrella, the Walking-stick, and their

Manufacture/.--'Every Chinese of a superior order is followed by his

slave, who carries his Parasol extended over him.'

"The Umbrella in China is destined to the same use as the Parasol,

says M. Cazal: it belongs to all. Never, when the weather is the

least degree doubtful, does a Chinese go out of doors without his

Umbrella. Even horses are sheltered, as well as elephants, by

Parasols or Umbrellas fastened to branches of bamboo. Their drivers

take very good care not to illtreat them; imbued as they are, like

every good Chinaman, with the doctrines of metempsychosis, they

fear to torture the soul of their father or their grandfather,

reduced, in order to expiate his faults, to animate the body of these

quadrupeds."

The Umbrellas and Parasols which are most common in China resemble

very much those which are imported into Europe; they are made

entirely of stalks of bamboo, disposed with enormous art, and covered

with oiled, tarred, or lacquered paper. Some are coloured, and have

printed on them religious allegories or sentences of Confucius.

All the voyages in China and around the world are filled with details

of the Chinese Parasol. "The Chinese women, whose feet have been

compressed from infancy," remarks M. Charles Lavollée, "can scarcely

walk, and are obliged to support themselves on the handle of their

Parasol, which serves them for a walking-stick."

The Parasol and the Fan in China play a rôle so considerable, that it

would be necessary to write a special monograph on each of these two

objects in order to consider properly their importance in the history

of the country and its current manners. In a general and summary

sketch like the present, must we not skim through, rather than sew

together documents collected with difficulty, or found within reach,

and leave aside the more bulky bundles, under pain of foundering in

the folio form of heavy dictionaries?

Everywhere on the exquisite decorative combinations of Japan,

we see a large Parasol opened amidst delicate peach-blossoms,

gracious flights of strange birds, indented leaves, and rosy

ibises. Sometimes, on the inimitable paintings of the enamelled

vases, the Japanese Sunshade shelters a king's daughter, escorted

by her followers, who makes her chaste preparations for entering

the bath; sometimes, on a thin gauze, the Parasol half hides women,

promenading on the margin of some vast blue lake, full of ideal

dreams. Sometimes, in fine, in a fantastic sketch of an album, which

one reads as a riot of the imagination, is perceived some human

being excited to a singular degree, with hair tossed by the wind,

and haggard eye, floating at the will of the tumultuous waves on a

Parasol turned upside down, to the handle of which he clings with

the energy of despair. The plates of the /Voyage de Ricord/, and

especially the old Japanese albums, are useful to consult in order

to understand better the varieties of forms of the Sunshade in

Japan. We gain a bizarre notion of the effects and services which a

Japanese can obtain from a common Parasol of his country by looking

at the games of the acrobats who come to us occasionally from Tokio,

Yedo, or Yokohama. Théophile Gautier, who was highly astonished, and

not without reason, at the quickness, grace, and daring of these

marvellous equilibrists, has left us on this matter the fairest

pages, perhaps, of his /Feuilletons de Lundiste/. The worthy Théo,

that Gallic Rajah borrowed from these clowns, astonishing in their

lightness, an enthusiasm which put on his palette as a colourist

the most vibrating tones and the finest shades. The Sunshade and

the Fan are in fact presented by these magicians of the East with

particular graces in the jugglery of the most varied exercises. Here

it is a ball of ivory which rolls with the bickering of a babbling

stream over the lamels or ribs of the Sunshade; there it is a Parasol

held in equilibrium on the blade of a dagger, and a thousand other

astonishing inventions. All these fascinating feats of skill cannot

be described save in the manner of Gautier, in other words, by

veritable pen-pictures. Admirable interpretation of things glimpsed

at!

In the tea-houses of Tokio, the pretty /Geishas/ often employ, to

mimic an expressive dance, the Fan and the little paper Parasol.

One of the most usual of their dances, managed something like our

ballets, is called the Rain-dance. This is the way in which a

/Globe-trotter/ gives an account of its leading idea and character:--

"Some young girls prepare to leave their homes, and to pose as

beauties in the streets of Yedo. They admire each other in playing

their fans, they are dressed in superb toilets--they are sure of

turning the heads of all the young /samouraï/ of the town.

"Scarcely have they got out of doors when a thick cloud appears.

Great disquietude! They open their Parasol, and make a thousand

pretty grimaces, to show how sadly they fear the ruin of their

charming dresses. . . . A few drops of rain begin to fall: they

quicken their steps on their way home again.

"A burst of thunder occasioned by the /Samisen/ and the drums, is

heard, which announces a terrible downpour. Then our four dancers

catch their robes with both hands, and throw them with one sweep

under their arms, and suddenly turning, take to their heels, showing

us a row of little . . . . frightened faces, saving themselves at the

full speed of their legs."

What a series of pantomimes, in which the Sunshade must assume in the

hands of the charming /Geishas/ the most seductive positions!

"Among the Arabs the Parasol was a mark of distinction" (as we learn

from M. O. S., the English reporter of a commission which published a

small notice on /Umbrellas, Parasols, and Walking-sticks/ in London

about 1871). There is the same importance attached to it among

certain blacks of Western Africa, who have probably borrowed it from

the Arabs. Niebuhr, in the description of the procession of the Imam

of Sanah, tells us that the Imam, and every one of the princes of

his numerous family, had carried by their side a /Madalla/ or large

Parasol. It is in that country a privilege of princes of the blood.

The same writer relates that many independent chiefs of Yemen bear

/Madallas/ as a mark of their independence. In Morocco the Emperor

alone and his family have the privilege of the Parasol. In the

/Voyages of Aly Bey/ we read in fact:--"The retinue of the Sultan

was composed of a troop of from fifteen to twenty gentlemen as the

vanguard; behind them, some hundred paces, came the Sultan, mounted

on a mule, having beside him, also mounted on a mule, an officer

carrying the Imperial Parasol. The Parasol is the distinctive sign of

the sovereign of Morocco. No one but he would dare to use it."

In certain tribes of central Africa explorers speak of having

encountered, amidst the tribes of the desert, kings half-dressed in

European old clothes, taken or exchanged no one knows where; and,

strangely enough, on the top of an old silk hat, half-knocked in, one

of these negro kings, says a traveller, held with a sort of grotesque

majesty an old torn Umbrella of which the whalebone appeared to be

half-broken. This Robert Macaire of the desert, does he not recall

that pleasant equatorial fantasy of the /Parnassiculet Contemporain/,

a sonnet terminating with the verses:--

What then is strange about this desert's pride,

Who in the desert without thee had died?

Bétani answered, "Child of open mien,

Where on board ship he comes, I tell you that

For full court-dress, this half-blood wears a hat

Of an old shako, trimmed with tufts of green!"

This fantasy might serve as a theme for a dissertation on the

subject, "Whither do worn-out things go?--what becomes of the old

umbrellas?" It would be a ballad full of colour for a Villon of the

present time.

To return to France, many writers, romancists or dramatic authors,

having greater care of the splendour of the /mise-en-scène/ than

of absolute historic truth, have presented us with some hunting

parties of the time of Henri II. and Henri III., in which the noble

huntresses followed the deer on horses magnificently harnessed,

holding in their hands hexagonal Sunshades fringed with gold and

enriched with pearls.

We found truly a mention of the Parasol in the /Description of the

Isle of the Hermaphrodites/; but it was then very rare in France,

and what is more, very heavy, and handled with such ceremonies that

a strong lackey must have had considerable difficulty in holding it

up. From this to place light Sunshades of silk between the dainty

fingers of "fair and gentle dames" of that time, especially for a

hunt through the woods, there is, it seems to us, a departure which

good sense alone, not to mention historic science, is quite enough to

point out.

The Parasol was still very little known in France, even in the second

half of the sixteenth century. It is fairly certain that, like the

/Fan/, and other objects so much in favour with Catherine de Medici,

it was brought into France out of Italy. Henri Estienne, in his

/Dialogues of the new French Language Italianised/, 1578, makes one

of his interlocutors called Celtophile say: " . . . . and /à propos/

of pavilion, have you ever seen what some of the lords in Spain or

Italy carry or cause to be carried about in the country, to defend

themselves, not so much from the flies, as from the sun? It is

supported by a stick, and so made that being folded up and occupying

very little space, it can when necessary be opened immediately and

stretched out in a circle so as to cover three or four persons." And

Philausone answers: "I have never seen one; but I have heard talk of

them often; and if our ladies were to see them carrying these things,

they would perhaps tax them with too great delicacy."

In Italy it is little probable that since the Romans the inhabitants

of the higher classes have ever unlearned the pleasant use of

Parasols. The majority of travellers notice them in all epochs, and

in the /Italian Mysteries/, played in the fourteenth and fifteenth

centuries, it is nearly certain that at the moment of their naïve

representation of the Deluge, the Deity appeared on the stage with an

Umbrella in his hand.

In the /Journal and Voyage of Montaigne/ in Italy, the good

philosopher, who teaches us so few matters beyond his own personal

sufferings, deigns, nevertheless, to aver that the supreme good taste

of the women of Lucca was to have incessantly a Parasol in their

hands.

"No season," says also elsewhere this charming epicurean essayist,

"is so much my enemy as the sharp heat of sunshine, for the

/Sunshades/, which are used in Italy since the time of the ancient

Romans, charge the arms more than they discharge from the head."

So, too, Thomas Coryat, an English tourist of that time, in his

/Crudities/ (1611), speaks of the Italian Parasols, after having

noticed the presence of Fans in the towns through which he had

travelled: "Many Italians," he says, "do carry other fine things of a

far greater price, that will cost at the least a ducat (about seven

francs), which they commonly call in the Italian tongue /Umbrellæs/,

that is, things that minister shadow unto them for shelter against

the scorching heat of the sun. These are made of leather, something

answerable to the form of a little canopy, and hooped in the inside

with divers little wooden hoops, that extend the /Umbrella/ in a

pretty large compass. They are used especially by horsemen, who carry

them in their hands when they ride, fastening the end of the handle

upon one of their thighs, and they impart so large a shadow unto them

that it keepeth the heat of the sun from the upper parts of their

body."

Fabri, in his useful and remarkable work, /Diversarum Nationum

Ornatus/ (additio) confirms this fact from 1593, in taking care to

represent a noble Italian, travelling on horseback with a Parasol in

his hand: "/Nobilis Italus ruri ambulans tempore æstatis/."

What variety this simple detail, more propagated or rather better

vulgarised among our romancists, would have thrown into the great

romances of adventure! We should have seen the protecting Sunshade

marking from a distance, by its colour and elevated shape, the

presence of the rich traveller to be robbed, in the mountains of

Tuscany, while the brigands of the time kept their watch in the

folds of the rocks; then, too, we should surely have witnessed,

in passionate recitals of heroic combats, the buckler Parasol,

already full of holes, torn into shreds, yet still serving to

parry victoriously the blows of the ferocious cut-throats and

cloak-snatchers.

And how many sonorous and unforeseen titles are there of which we

have been deprived by this fact of our ignorance: /The Knights of

the Sunshade/--/The Heroic Parasol/--/The State Courier/, or /the

Sunshade Recovered/! . . . . and who can say how many more!

The Arsenal, the old Hotel de Sully, preserved for a long time one

of those Parasols, which librarians named the /Pepin/ (seed-fruit)

/of Henri IV./ It was very big, and entirely covered with blue

silk, with long and distinctly precious flowers of the golden lily

scattered over it. This Parasol, ministerial or royal, is doubtless

lost, and we speak of it only after the description which the learned

bibliophile Jacob has given us.

Daniel Defoe, who published his /Robinson Crusoe/ in 1719, was

one of the first to mention to any extent the Parasol in England.

Before him, as we shall see farther on, it had been named only very

summarily in literary works. So firmly fixed in our imaginations as

men, the children of yesterday, is the great Umbrella of Crusoe, and

his dreadful alarm on seeing the print of a man's foot on the shore,

as well as his walks with his dog and /Friday/ the good Caribbee;

it presents itself, moreover, so clearly in our first literary

remembrances, that we will reproduce the passage of the journal where

it is mentioned:

"After this," says Crusoe, "I spent a deal of time and pains to make

me an Umbrella. I was indeed in great want of one, and had a great

mind to make one. I had seen them made in the Brazils, where they

are very useful in the great heats which are there; and I felt the

heats every jot as great here, and greater too...; besides, as I was

obliged to be much abroad, it was a most useful thing to me, as well

for the rains as the heats. I took a world of pains at it, and was a

great while before I could make anything likely to hold; nay, after I

thought I had hit the way, I spoiled two or three before I made one

to my mind; but at last I made one that answered indifferently well;

the main difficulty, I found, was to make it to let down: I could

make it to spread, but if it did not let down too, and draw in, it

would not be portable for me any way, but just over my head, which

would not do. However, at last, as I said, I made one to answer; I

covered it with skins, the hair upward, so that it cast off the rain

like a pent-house, and kept off the sun so effectually, that I could

walk out in the hottest of the weather, with greater advantage than

I could before in the coolest; and when I had no need of it, I could

close it and carry it under my arm."

And this Parasol, for a century and a half, has been popularised by

the engraver, with its dome of hair and rude manufacture; and so all

the poor little prisoners at school invoke it, and dream often that

they carry it in some desert isle, for it represents to their eyes a

life of open air and liberty.

* * * * *

Before Daniel Defoe, Ben Jonson had already mentioned the Parasol in

England in a comedy played in 1616; and Drayton, sending some doves

to his mistress in 1620--a delicious lover's fancy--formulated in his

passioned verses the following desire: "/May they, these white turtle

doves I send you, shelter you like Parasols under their wings in

every sort of weather./"

In the relation of his /Voyage in France/ in 1675, Locke, speaking

of Sunshades, says: "These are little articles and very light, which

women use here, to defend themselves from the sun, and they seem

to us very convenient." Afterwards the English ladies desired to

possess these pretty Parasols, although, by reason of their climate,

such things could hardly be of any use to them. It was not, however,

till the eighteenth century that a London manufacturer bethought

himself of inventing the Sunshade-Fan, compared with which it appears

the French folding /marquises/ were as nothing. This ingenious

fabricator made a considerable fortune; but if we are to believe the

/Improvisateur François/, his invention was rapidly imitated and much

improved in Paris. Why has it not been preserved to our own days?

But let us linger in this seventeenth century, and remain awhile

in France, where the Parasol was not in use, save at court among

the great ladies. Men never used it to shelter themselves from the

rain--the cloak and sword were still alone in fashion.

Ménage tells us in his /Ménagiana/, that being with M. de Beautru,

about 1685, in the midst of a pouring rain at the door of the Hôtel

de Bourgogne, up came a Gascon gentleman, without a cloak, and nearly

wet through; the Gascon, seeing himself stared at, cried out, "I

would lay a wager now my people have forgotten to give me my cloak."

To which M. de Beautru quickly replied, "I go halves with you."

The silk Sunshade, however, properly so called, appeared in the hands

of women of quality, at the promenade, on the race-course, or in the

vast alleys of the royal park of Versailles, towards the middle of

the reign of Louis XIV. The Umbrella of that time was an instrument

astonishingly heavy and very coarse in appearance, which it seemed

almost ridiculous to hold in the hand. In 1622 it was in some measure

a novelty in Paris, since in the /Questions Tabariniques/, cited by

that useful author, the late M. Édouard Fournier, in /The Old and the

New/, we read these lines about the famous felt hat of Tabarin:--

"It was from this hat that the invention of Parasols was drawn, which

are now so common in France that they are no longer called Parasols,

but /Parapluyes/ (Umbrellas) and /Garde-Collet/ (collar guards), for

they are used as much in winter against the rain as in summer against

the sun."

The most ancient engraving or /documentary/ image of French manners

in which we see a Parasol is dated 1620. It is the frontispiece of a

Collection of Saint Igny, /The French Nobility at Church/.

Parasols, however, were still very little used in the seventeenth

century; the /Précieuses/ who, instead of saying "It rains," cried

out, "/The third element falls!/" would never have missed finding

some amiable qualificative to designate this necessary article

invented against Phœbus and Saint Swithin. But Saumaise reveals to us

nought on this subject, and one would be almost tempted to believe

that the /Philamintes/ and /Calpurnies/ attached no importance to

this "rustic and movable Pavilion." What, however, is clearly shown

by the ancient prints is the employment of the Parasol in the form

of a small round canopy which ladies of quality had borne by their

valets when walking in the primly arranged gardens of their lordly

residences, whilst the gentlemen marched before, wrapt in their

cloaks, with the felt hat inclined over one eye.

Parasols were then of so coarse a form, and their weight made them so

difficult to be carried, that they could not be easily utilised by

ordinary people; they are never found in any of those very curious

engravings which give a confused idea of the rumblings and mobs of

the streets under Louis XIV. Boileau and François Colletet have not

mentioned them amidst the /Obstacles and Bustle of Paris/; and the

/Cries of the Town/ which have come down to us do not indicate that

in the seventeenth century any man with "/'Brella-a-a-a-s to sell!/"

had contributed his mournful melopæa to the lagging cries of the

street.

That is easily understood. We see that a Parasol, in the middle of

the grand century, weighed 1600 grammes, that its whalebones had

a length of 80 centimetres, that its handle was of heavy oak, and

that its massive carcass was covered with oilcloth, with barracan,

or with coloured grogram. The whole was held by a copper ring fixed

at the extremity of the whalebones; it was the labour of a porter

to preserve oneself, with an instrument like this, from the pelting

shower! Better still: often these Parasols were made of straw, and,

if we believe the /Diary and Correspondence of Evelyn/, about 1650,

they affected in some degree the form of metal dish-covers.

However, it is something very like a Sunshade which we find about

1688 in the hands of a woman of quality, dressed in a summer habit

/à la Grecque/, of which N. Arnoult has preserved faithfully for us

the pleasing outline, in a pretty design made common by engravings.

This Parasol has the appearance of a mushroom, well developed and

slightly flattened at its borders; the red velvet which covers it is

divided into ribs or rays, by light girdles of gold, and the handle,

very curiously worked, is like that of a distaff, with swellings and

grooves executed by the turner. Altogether, this coquette's Sunshade

is very graceful, and of great richness.

In the most varied literary works of the seventeenth century,

memoirs, romances, varieties, dissertations, poems, enigmas, carols,

and songs, there is not a word of allusion to the Parasol, there

is an entire penury of anecdote, nothing whatever on the subject.

It is useless to torture your understanding, to look through a

miserable needle's eye, at the /Letters/ of Madame de Sévigné, the

gossip of Tallemant, the /Conversations/ of Mademoiselle de Scudéry,

the /Anecdotes/ of Ménage, the poetical collections, the different

/Chats/, the /Medleys/--it is but a library overturned to no purpose,

a headache gained without the slightest profit.

In a MS. collection, written about 1676, which relates the memoirs

of Nicolas Barillon, a comedian, this phrase alone attracts our

attention: "The days being very hot, the lady carried either a mask

or a Parasol of the most precious leather."

From this mask or Parasol of precious leather no conclusion can be

drawn better than that of the Dictionaries of the Anti-Academician,

Antoine Furetière, or of the learned Richelet, where we find a résumé

of the ideas of the time. Here, then, is the definition of the

first:--

/Parasol/, s. m., a small portable piece of furniture, or round

covering, carried in the hand, to defend the head from the great

heats of the sun; it is made of a circle of leather, of taffety, of

oilcloth, &c. It is suspended to the end of a stick; it is folded

or extended by means of some ribs of whalebone which sustain it. It

serves also to defend one from the rain, and then it is called by

some /parapluie/ (umbrella).

The definition of Richelet is almost the same. He adds, however,

these words: "Only women carry Parasols, and they only in spring,

summer, and autumn." Richelet, it is true, borders upon the

eighteenth century, since he died but a little before the end of

the reign of Louis the Great. This brings us to the aurora of the

Regency, and a renaissance then occurs in feminine coquetry. We are

now about to find our Sunshade in gallant parties, supported by

little turbaned negroes; already we see it decorated with fringes of

gold and trimmings of silk, enhanced with plumes of feathers, mounted

on Indian bamboos, covered with changing silks, embellished in a

thousand and one ways, worthy, in a word, of casting a discreet shade

on those rosy and delicate faces which Pater, Vanloo, Lancret, La

Rosalba, and Latour did their best to reproduce in luminous paintings

or fresh pastels, those enchanting pictures where the coquetry of the

past smiles still.

Like all objects of adornment in the hands of women, the Sunshade in

the last century became, like the Fan, almost a light and graceful

plaything, serving to punctuate an expression, to round a gesture,

to arm an attitude of charming reverie, in which, guided by pretty

indolent fingers, its point traces vague designs upon the sand.

Before the burning breath of amorous declarations, often the frail

Sunshade escapes from the hands of a beauty, in sign of armistice,

and as an avowal of abandonment.

Be it open, and daintily held over powdered hair, or shut, and

brushing the brocaded petticoat, it is always the "balancing pole

of the Graces." It gives a value to listlessness on the rustic seat

of the parks, under the vaulted roofs of grottoes, and it adds a

piquancy to the frowardness of the feminine chatterers, who defend

themselves by making fun of libertine attacks. In a word, in the

light amorous allegories of the century, it is worthy to appear in

those love-duets of /Leanders/ and /Isabellas/, which Watteau often

composed with so rare an art of refinement.

From the middle of the last century the Umbrella of taffety became

the fashion at Paris. Caraccioli, in his /Picturesque and Sententious

Dictionary/, gives us evidence of this: "It has long been the

custom," he says, "not to go out save with one's Umbrella, and to

trouble oneself by carrying it under one's arm. Those who wish not to

be confounded with the vulgar, prefer to run the risk of getting wet

to being regarded as people who walk on foot, for the Umbrella is the

sign of having no carriage."

The Parasols were made by the purse-makers, and when, by an edict of

August 1776, the manufacturers of gloves, purses, and girdles were

united in one community, an article thus conceived may be read in

their statutes: "They alone also still have the right to make and

manufacture all sorts of Umbrellas and Parasols, in whalebone and in

copper, folding and non-folding, to garnish them atop with stuffs of

silk and linen, to make Umbrellas of oilcloth, and Parasols adorned

and ornamented in all sorts of fashions." According to the /Journal

of a Citizen/, published at the Hague in 1754, the price of folding

Parasols was then from 15 to 22 livres a piece, and the Parasol for

the country from 9 to 14 livres.

We must, however, believe that the common folk of Paris did not yet

dare to purchase Parasols, since Bachaumont, in the /Secret Memoirs/,

dated 6th September 1769, records the following enterprise:--

"A company has lately formed an establishment worthy of the town of

Sybaris. It has obtained an exclusive privilege to have Parasols,

and to furnish them to such as fear being incommoded by the sun

during the crossing of the Pont-Neuf. There are to be offices at

each extremity of the bridge, where the voluptuous dandies who are

unwilling to spoil their complexion, can obtain this useful machine;

they will return it at the office on the other side, so alternately,

at the price of two farthings for each person. This project has

already been put in execution. It is announced that if this invention

succeeds, there is authority to establish like offices in other

places in Paris, where skulls might be affected, such as the Place

Louis XV., &c. It is probable that these profound speculators will

obtain the exclusive privilege of Umbrellas."

Did this enterprise succeed? We cannot tell. All that is certain is,

that it was tried many times in our own epoch by innovators, who had

no idea that even the letting out of Parasols was not absolutely new

under the sun.

* * * * *

A great progress was realised in the eighteenth century in the

manufacture of Sunshades for ladies. The small ordinary Parasols

became exceedingly light, and charmingly decorated. In a picture of

Bonaventure Delord, in the Louvre, we find the exact type of these

coquettish Sunshades of the last century. One, which is held by a

laughing beauty in the midst of a picnic, is mounted on a long stem,

and the top, made of yellow buckskin, appears to have four sides; a

cap of turned copper, and of a very pretty shape, profiles its tiny

Chinese gable on the grass.

So, too, may be seen in the collection of Madame la Baronne Gustave

de Rothschild, a very curious Sunshade which belonged to Madame de

Pompadour. It is of blue silk superbly decorated with wonderful

Chinese miniatures in mica, and ornaments in paper very finely

cut and affixed to the background. Fortified probably with such a

Sunshade as this, the pretty favourite, at the time of the rage for

pastorals, which followed the appearance of Bouffier's story of

/Aline/, betook herself to the shady walks of the Petit Trianon at

Versailles, with her female friends, to see the white sheep milked,

and to steep the carnation of her lips in the warm milk, of which

the young Abbé De Bernis--who gathered so willingly madrigals and

bouquets for Chloris--compared the whiteness to that of her peerless

bosom.

Everywhere, in the pictures and engravings of the century we catch

a glimpse of these same light Sunshades or Umbrellas which approach

so nearly those of the present day. We see the one or the other in

the /Prints of Moreau the Younger intended to serve as a Companion

to the History of Fashions and Customs in France/, in the /Crossing

the River/, after Gamier, in public festivals, as well as amidst

the hubbub of the crowds, which Moreau shows us in the /Great Court

Carriages in/ 1782, as in the minor popular rejoicings, like /The

Ascension of a Fire-balloon/, after the engravings of the period.

The Sunshade introduces also a little touch of gaiety into the large

pictures of Joseph Vernet; in his /View of Antibes/ and his /Port of

Marseille/ the painter has placed in the hands of pretty promenaders

adorable little pink Sunshades, through which the light seems to

filtrate, in the silk's transparency. Later on, lastly, before the

royal sitting of 23d June, 1789, the Umbrella plays its historic part

in the Revolution, by protecting the gentlemen of the Third Estate,

left at the door of the Assembly under a pelting rain, not very well

disposed to receive the King's order, "Gentlemen, I command you to

disperse yourselves at once!"

Strange! at a time when the Parasol was generally adopted in France,

it was yet very little known in England and among the peoples of

the North. At Venice even, where we have made our researches, the

first person who used a Sunshade, about the middle of the eighteenth

century, was Michel Morosini, "a senator of high rank," who, braving

all prejudices, appeared one day in his gondola, bearing a small

green Sunshade, unarched, of a quadrangular form, surmounted by a

tiny copper spire, of very delicate workmanship. The fair ladies of

Venice adopted this "indispensable" after this manifestation of the

noble Michel Morosini, but the Sunshade, nevertheless, appeared not

in all patrician hands in the gondolas of the Great Canal, and on the

Piazza of Saint Mark, till about the year 1760.

In England, in the first half of the last century, the Parasol and

the Umbrella were hardly ever used; however, in a passage of the

/Tatler/, Swift alludes to one of them in 1760, when he describes for

us a little sempstress, with her petticoats tucked up, and walking

along in a great hurry, whilst the rain trickles down from the

Umbrella:

The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides,

While streams run down her oiled Umbrella's sides.

Again, there is at Woburn Abbey an admirable portrait, painted about

1730, of the Duchess of Bedford, followed by a little negro, who

holds above her head a sumptuously decorated state Parasol.

It is right to say that during the first years of the last century

people could not procure Umbrellas in London except in the

coffee-houses, where they were placed in reserve to be let out to

customers during heavy showers of rain. The first English citizen

who really introduced absolutely and unconditionally the Umbrella to

the nation was Jonas Hanway, the founder of the Magdalen Hospital.

This audacious man--for audacious he must have been thus to brave

the prejudices of a people the most prejudiced in the world--this

rash person had the courage never to go out into the streets of

London without his Umbrella from the year of our Lord 1750. Like

the majority of innovators, he was scoffed at, reviled, derided,

caricatured; he had to bear in his daily walks the quips and insults

of the mob, the stones and jostlings of the vagabond boys; but he had

also the honour of triumphing, and of seeing by degrees, after twenty

years of perseverance, his example followed to such an extent that

at the time of his death in 1786 he could declare with pride that,

thanks to him, the Umbrella was for ever implanted in England, an

imperishable institution.

To-day, our neighbours across the Channel talk of erecting a statue

to Jonas Hanway, as a homage publicly paid to a philanthropist. It

might be asked in what attitude this peaceable humanitarian is to be

represented, whether the Parasol of bronze is to remain shut up in

his right hand, or if it will be opened in all its amplitude over the

head of its protector, thus become its /protégé/.

About the time when Jonas Hanway died, Roland de la Platière made,

in his /Manufactures, Arts, and Trades/, this curious observation:

"The use of Parasols is to such an extent established in Lyons, that

not only all the women, but even the men, would not cross the street

without their little Parasol in red, white, or some other colour,

garnished with blonde lace, an article which, owing to its lightness,

can be carried with ease."

At the approach of the Revolution, the Umbrella became popular, and

served as a tent for the fishwomen and other feminine hucksters.

Then first appeared the enormous Umbrella of red serge among the

people of the markets, and the ordinary Umbrella in the hands of

the "Sans-Jupons" (the unpetticoated). Amidst the enthusiasms and

revolts of the streets the Umbrella was frantically waved by the

hands of the women of the people, and when, on the 31st May 1793,

Théroigne de Méricourt undertook her ill-starred defence of Brissot,

in the midst of a multitude of old hags, who cried "Down with the

Brissotins!" Umbrellas were lifted like so many improvised swords

over the /Liégeoise/, smote her in the face, lashed her everywhere,

scanning as it were with their strokes the odious cries of "/Ah! the

Brissotine!/" and provoking in the unhappy revolutionary Amazon the

madness of which she died so sadly at the Salpêtrière.

The Parasol of the Jacobins for a time made a show of severity,

in opposition to the knotty sticks and coquettish Parasols of the

Muscadins (dandies) and Incroyables (beaux); the Merveilleuses

(feminine exquisites), on the other hand, hoisted vaporous Sunshades

like their vestments of nymphs. Then it was that fashion gave their

due to the rights even of this frail protector of the Graces; every

kind of extravagance was allowed, every stuff accepted, however

dazzling and however precious. In the public gardens of Paris, all

the fashionable beauties displayed unusual luxury in the decoration

of their Sunshades; there were tender greens, figured gold stuffs,

flesh-coloured tints with scarlet fretworks, tender blues trimmed

with silver, Indian cashmeres or tissues, the whole mounted on

handles of affected roughness or of exquisitely delicate work. /Ma

paole supême/, as the exquisite used to say, it must be seen to be

believed. Nothing could be more coquettish than these Parasols,

streaked, striped, pied, fretted, as the complement of a dress /à

l'Omphale/, /à la Flore/, /à la Diane/, appearing in a swiftly driven

carriage, above a jacket /à la Galatée/, or a tunic /au Lever de

l'aurore/, amidst egrets, plumes, tufts of ribbons, and every kind of

feminine adornment.

Towards the close of the eighteenth century, the Sunshade was always

covered with the most fashionable tints and with stuff of the latest

taste of the time. Parasols were to be seen dressed in /stifled

sighs/, and garnished with /useless regrets/, others adorned with

ribbons /aux soupirs de Vénus/ (Venus' sighs), whilst the fashion

exacted by turns such colours as /coxcombs' bowels/, /Paris mud/,

/Carmelite/, /flea's thigh/, /king's eye/, /queen's hair/, /goose

dung/, /dauphin's dirt/, /opera flame/, /agitated nymph's thigh/,

and other names which were the singular qualificatives of particular

shades, the rage and infatuation of the hour.

The young priests carried a light violet or lilac Parasol, to remain

in the tone of their general dress--perhaps by episcopal orders. In

the same way, the Roman Cardinals are still followed in their walks

by a deacon, carrying a red Parasol, which makes part--like the

hat--of the ordinary luggage of the "Monsignori."

This word "luggage," which has just fallen from our pen, would seem

to call the attention to the rôle of the Sunshade or the Umbrella

in the Travels of the last century. Was the Parasol considered as

indispensable luggage before going on any expedition? We cannot

affirm this. The author of /A Journey from Paris to Saint-Cloud by

Sea and by Land/ writes, before embarking at Pont-Royal: "I kept

for my personal carriage only my repeater, my pocket-flask full of

/sans pareille/ water, my gloves, my boots, a whip, my riding-coat,

my pocket pistols, my fox-skin muff, my green taffety Umbrella, and

my big varnished walking-stick." But here we have more of a pretty

conceit of the eighteenth century, a sort of cotquean traveller,

who encumbers himself with useless objects. We have consulted many

/Almanacks serving as Guides for Travellers/, and containing "a

detail of everything which is necessary to travel comfortably,

usefully, and agreeably," from 1760 to 1765: nowhere, however, was

the Umbrella prescribed, either for foot passengers or for those on

horseback; on the contrary, the anonymous editor of those guides

seems sometimes to laugh at the simplicity of the tourist from Paris

to Saint-Cloud, and he adds that a traveller in good health ought to

content himself with strong boots and a cloak of good cloth. Even a

walking-stick, he says, often consoles the walker only in imagination.

The Umbrella-Walking-stick--who would believe it?--was, however,

known from 1758, and very convenient Parasols were then made, of

which the dimensions could be reduced so as to suit the pocket. A

certain Reynard announced in 1761 Parasols "which fold on themselves

triangularly, and become no thicker or more voluminous than a

crush-hat." These Umbrellas were, it seems, very common about 1770:

the stick was in two pieces, united by a screw, and the ribs were

folded back several times.

But let us not abandon the chronological order in returning thus

upon our own steps, after the example of a romance writer of 1840.

We have scarcely caught a glimpse of the Sunshade in our passage

through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, in the

desultory speed of this free chat, in which our prose leaps as in a

steeple-chase of charming designs. We have confounded occasionally

the two denominations /Sunshade/ and /Umbrella/ in the more general

word /Parasol/: but if we have travelled a little in every direction,

we have not had the leisure to stop anywhere as a lounger or

analyst. And here we are at the beginning of this century, at the

Empire, but the nation is helmed, the sun of Austerlitz requires

not a Sunshade; woman holds merely the second place in this hour in

which France handles but the costly toys of glory, and if we find

at all an Umbrella, it is in the field, with the general staff of

the army, during some misty night, when it is used to shelter the

commander-in-chief, who studies on his map the plan of battle of the

morn.

The Sunshade shows more favourably in the hour of peace, during the

Restoration. All the journals of fashion of the time give us curious

and varied specimens of it in their steel engravings, hand-coloured,

which show us, during those days of a lull, languid ladies in the

midst of amusing decorations, in winter amidst snowy country scenes,

in summer in a park of profound distances, on some rustic bridge,

where the mistresses of the manors of that time allowed their

romantic reveries slowly to wander. We can follow in the innumerable

Monitors of elegance, which appeared from 1815 to 1830, from year

to year, from season to season, the variations introduced into the

decoration of the little ladies' Parasols. Look for a moment: here

are Sunshades, covered with coloured crape, or damasked satin, with

checkered silk, streaked, striped, or figured; others enriched with

blonde or lace, embroidered with glass-trinkets, or garnished with

marabou feathers, with gold and silver lace, or silk trimming;

the fashionable shade is then very light or very deep, without

intermediate tones: white, straw yellow, pink or myrtle-green,

chestnut and black, purple-red, or indigo. But a hundred pages would

not suffice us to catalogue these fashions of the Sunshade: let us

pass onward.

The use of the Umbrella extends itself little by little through all

classes; already in the slang of the people it is known under the

names of the /Mauve/(?), the /Riflard/, the /Pépin/, the /Robinson/.

Umbrella manufactories have, since the beginning of this century,

propagated rapidly in France. Before 1815--this seems scarcely

credible--Paris had no great manufactory of Parasols. But from 1808

to 1851 alone, we can reckon more than 103 patents for inventions

and improvements relating to Umbrellas and Sunshades. Among the most

extravagant patents, we must quote, after M. Cazal:--

(1.) A patent for invention of an Umbrella walking-stick with a

field-glass;

(2.) A patent for invention of Umbrellas and Sunshades combined

with walking-sticks, shutting up in a copper case, in the form of a

telescope;

(3.) A patent for invention of an Umbrella walking-stick, containing

diverse objects for writing or other purposes, and called /Universal

Walking-stick/;

(4.) A patent for invention of methods of manufacturing Umbrellas

and Sunshades, opening of themselves, by means of a mechanism placed

inside the handle;

(5.) A patent for an Umbrella walking-stick, of which the sheath may

be folded at pleasure, and carried in the pocket.

In spite of these genially grotesque inventions of

Umbrella-Telescopes and of Parasol-Walking-sticks, we have always

come back to the Umbrella simple, without mechanism, or to a light

stick without any pretensions to defend us from the rain. There are

so many complications in an object intended for many uses, that an

educated mind will always refuse to adopt it.

But without speaking further of the technology of the Umbrella, we

will relate an anecdote which ran through all the minor journals of

the Restoration, terminating like an apologue. We shall adopt the

form and style of the time in our narrative of this little historic

story, which should be entitled /The Sunshade and the Riflard/.

One fair summer afternoon, the promenaders in the Parisian Champs

Elysées might have seen, seated on a chair beside a pretty woman,

whose interesting situation was plainly visible, a peaceable citizen

making an inventory of all his pockets in their turn, without finding

the purse from which he intended to draw the few halfpence which the

chair-proprietress demanded.

The search is useless; it is impossible for him to pay;--the

proprietress indignant, almost rude, threatening to make a

disturbance, is only satisfied by the gentleman taking from the hands

of his companion a Sunshade of green silk, with fringes, mounted on

a reed, and a yellow glove, and giving them to the irascible lady,

saying to her, "Well, madam, keep this Sunshade as a pledge, and give

it to no one unless he offer you a Glove the fellow of this."

The pair departed, slowly arrived at the Place de la Révolution,

then at the Boulevard de la Madeleine, when they were surprised

by a violent shower; cabs were not to be had, the rain increased,

they were forced to seek refuge underneath a carriage entrance. The

peaceable citizen had already taken his companion to this shelter,

when a "portier," with an otter-skin cap, came out, beseeching the

lady and gentleman to accept the hospitality of his little room,

where a leathern arm-chair and a stool were immediately, and with

very good grace, offered to the invited pair. The rain still pouring

down, the "portier," more and more affable, took from a corner of his

small lodge a superb Umbrella of green serge, and offered it to his

guests, declaring that all he had was at their service.

The gentleman, in much confusion, accepted with many thanks the

Umbrella, and sheltering with it the interesting young woman, who had

tucked up her dress in the prettiest style, they both ventured out

into the midst of the deluge.

. . . . An hour afterwards, a footman in very stylish livery

returned to the honest "portier" cobbler his precious Umbrella,

with four notes for a thousand francs, from the Duke de Berry; next

directing his course to the Champs Elysées, that same footman sought

out the chair-proprietress, and said to her:

"You recognise this Glove, Madam? Here are four pence, which my lord,

the Duke of Berry, has ordered me to remit to you, to redeem the

Sunshade of the Princess Caroline."

Touching and eternal legend of virtue, not without a recompense!

Under Louis Philippe, the Umbrella or Riflard became /patriarchal/

and /constitutional/; it represented manners austere and citizenlike,

and symbolised the domestic virtues of order and economy. It might be

set in the royal trophy in saltier with the sceptre, and it became

a part in some sort of the national militia, with the attributes of

angling, culinary laurels, and other symbols of Philistine life.

All the independents of Paris, Bohemians, literary men with flowing

manes, and artists chanted in the /Rapinéide/, all the hirsute folk

of the years 1830 to 1850 rose in insurrection against the "Pépin"

of the burgess. This word /Pépin/ was then an epigram against Louis

Philippe, whose pear-shaped head was caricatured, and who never left

his home without his Umbrella.

Anglomania had not yet penetrated, as in the present day, into French

manners; and the dandyism of 1830, which pretended that the carrying

of a walking-stick required a particular skill, repelled the Umbrella

as contrary to veritable elegance. The Umbrella was countrified, the

property of gaffer and gammer; it was tolerable only in the hands of

one who had long renounced all pretensions to any charm, and dreamed

no more of setting off in the promenade the haughty profile of a

conqueror. In the cross ways, in every public place in Paris, the

large Parasol, red, or the colour of wine-lees, had become, as it

were, the ensign of the strolling singer who retailed Béranger to

the crowd; it served as a shelter for acrobats in the open air; it

surmounted the improvised trestles of the sellers of tripoli, of an

universal ointment; it ascended even the chariot of the quacks; later

on it served as a set-off for the plumed helmet of Mangin, the pencil

merchant; and it is still under a copper Parasol, commonly called

/Chinese bells/, that the man-orchestra causes an excitement in the

court-yards by ringing his little bells.

In the provinces, on market or great fair days, the Umbrellas opened

in picturesque confusion above the flat baskets and provisional

establishments of the country women; there were red, faded blue or

chestnut ones, inexpressible green or old family Umbrellas, heirlooms

descended from generation to generation, which protected the little

rural tradeswomen, and added a particular character full of colour to

these primitive markets of little towns.

The Umbrella! we behold it in the dreams of our school-days. Here

is the severe and sombre Umbrella of the headmaster, symbol of his

pedantic authority, when he passed us in review in the cold and damp

playground. Here is the Riflard of the poor usher, a celebrated

/Pépin/, covered with a mottled cotton-stuff, its bill-headed handle

polished by his unctuous clasp. And here, above all, is an Umbrella

greeted with loud acclaim, a festive Crusoe, which followed us when

out walking, as the sutler follows the regiment on the march, the

Umbrella of /Mother Sun/, as we used to call it: /Mother Sun!/ an

honest jolly wench, with her head in a silk pocket-handkerchief tied

under her chin, who installed herself beneath the shelter of her

improvised tent about our playtime, to sell to her noisy /children/

cooling lemonade, fruit, barley-sugar, and little white rolls stuffed

with hot sausages.

But let us leave these souvenirs, which carry us too far away, and

return to the /Sunshade/ between 1830 and 1870. If we wished to show

only its transformations during these forty years, we should have

to write a volume quite full of coloured vignettes to give a feeble

idea of the history which fashion creates in an object of coquetry.

About 1834, in the journal called /Le Protée/, we see fashion

personified under the traits of a young and pretty woman visiting

the finest shops in Paris; she fails not to go to "Verdier, in the

Rue Richelieu, for Sunshades," and chooses two--one a full-dress

Sunshade, in unbleached silk casing, mounted on a stick of American

bindweed, with a top of gold and carved coral; the other in striped

wood, having a similar top with a fluted knob, and covered with

myrtle green paduasoy, with a satin border.

Let us skip over some hundreds of intermediate varieties to look a

dozen years afterwards, under the Second Republic, at the Sunshade

described by M. A. Challamel in his /History of Fashion/: "As soon,"

says this writer, "as the first ray of sunshine appeared, ladies

armed themselves for their walks or morning calls with little

Sunshades, entirely white, or pink, or green. Sometimes the Sunshades

called 'Marquises' were edged with lace, which gave them rather

a ragged appearance; or having the shape of little Umbrellas, the

Sunshades could serve at need against a sudden storm. Very soon we

saw Sunshades /à dispositions/ bordered with a figured garland, or

a satin stripe of the same colours, or blue or green on unbleached

silk, or violet on white or sulphur."

A fashion, not, it will be allowed, in the very best taste:--Up

to 1853 or 1854, we find no innovation worthy of exciting our

enthusiasm; it is only in the first days of the Second Empire that we

can see a marked change. The straight Sunshades were then abandoned

to introduce Sunshades with a folding stick, principally for those

made in satin and in moire antique, bordered with trimmings or set

off with streamers. These Sunshades were called "/à la Pompadour/,"

and they were worthy, in a certain degree, of the beauty who

personified grace and delicate elegance in the eighteenth century;

they were embroidered after the old fashion with gold and silk, and

on the richness of the stuffs was cast or "frilled in" Chantilly,

point d'Alençon, guipure, or blonde. The folding-sticks were of

sculptured ivory, of carved mother-of-pearl, of rhinoceros horn, or

of tortoise-shell. It is with this light Sunshade that the Parisian

ladies saluted the Empress, caracoling by the side of the Emperor, at

the commencement of his reign, on their return from the Wood, in the

Champs Elysées, which began to look beautiful, as everything looks

beautiful at the spring-tide of years, as well as at the springtime

of governments. All in nature has surely its fall of the leaf, after

having had the verdure of its blossom!--all tires, all passes, all

breaks: men, kings, fashions, and peoples!

The Sunshade is found to-day in the hands of every one, as it

should be in this practical and utilitarian age. There is not, at

the present hour, any woman or girl of the people, who has not her

sunshade or her satin /en-tout-cas/--it seems to be the indispensable

complement of the toilet for the promenade; and our modern painters

have so well understood this gracious adjunct of feminine costume,

that they take very good heed not to forget, in a study of a

woman made in a full light, a rosy head with dishevelled hair, on

the transparent ground of a Japanese Sunshade, thus producing an

exquisite work with all freshness of colouring, and discreet shadows

sifted upon sparkling eyes or a laughing mouth. On Sundays and

holidays, in the jostlings of the crowd at suburban fêtes, it is like

an eddy of Sunshades; such the spectacle of ancient besiegers, who

covered themselves with their bucklers and made the "tortoise," so in

the shimmer of the summer sun in the great Parisian parish festivals:

gingerbread fairs of Saint-Cloud or Vaugirard, the Sunshade is on

the trestles and among the promenaders; it protects equally the girl

dancing on the tight-rope and the respectable citizen's wife in her

Sunday best, who rumples the flounce of her petticoats in these

popular gatherings.

Surely the Sunshade adds new graces to woman! It is her outside

weapon, which she bears boldly as a volunteer, either at her side,

or inclined over her shoulder. It protects her head-dress, in

supporting her carriage, it surrounds as with a halo the charms of

her face.

"The Sunshade," writes M. Cazal--or rather Marchal, as the so-called

Charles de Bussy, who edited, in the name of the manufacturer, the

little work already quoted,--"the Sunshade, like a rosy vapour,

attenuates and softens the contour of the features, revives the

vanished tints, surrounds the physiognomy with its diaphanous

reflections. There is the Sunshade of the great lady, of the young

person, of the tradesman's wife, of the pretty lorette, of the little

workwoman, just as there is the Sunshade of the town, of the country,

of the garden, of the bath, of the barouche, and the Sunshade-whip."

"How many volumes," continues the same writer with animation, "would

be required to describe in its thousand fantasies the kaleidoscope of

feminine thought in the use of the Sunshade? Under its rosy or azure

dome, sentiment buds, passion broods or blossoms; at a distance the

Sunshade calls and rallies to its colours, near at hand it edifies

the curious eye, and disconcerts and repels presumption. How many

sweet smiles have played under its corolla! How many charming signs

of the head, how many intoxicating and magic looks, has the Sunshade

protected from jealousy and indiscretion! How many emotions, how many

dramas, has it hidden with its cloud of silk!"

M. Charles Blanc, less dithyrambic, in his /Art in Dress and

Ornament/, commences his chapter on the Sunshade--"Do you imagine

that women have invented it to preserve their complexion from the

heats of the sun? . . . . Certainly, without doubt; but how many

resources are furnished them by this need of casting a penumbra over

their face, and what a grudge they would have against the sun, if it

gave them no pretext for defending themselves against his rays! In

that work of art called a woman's toilet, the Sunshade sustains the

part of the chiaro-oscuro.

"In the play of colours it is as a glazing. In the play of light it

is as a blind."

For the last dozen years, fashion has varied, with every new season,

the mode and covering of Sunshades. To-day they have become artistic

in all points, and after having been in turns in spotted foulard,

and set off with ribbons or lace, after the Parasol walking-stick,

the maroon or cardinal-red Parasol, have succeeded the checkered

taffetas, the Madras cretonnes, the Pompadour satins, the figured

silks. Their handles are adorned with porcelain of Dresden, of

Sèvres, or of Longwy, with various precious stones, and with jewels

of all sorts; and lately, among some wedding presents, amidst a dozen

Sunshades, one remarkable specimen was entirely covered with point

lace, on a pink ground clouded with white gauze, having a jade handle

with incrustations of precious stones up to its extreme point. A

golden ring gemmed with emeralds and brilliants, attached to a gold

chain, served as a clasp for this inestimable jewel.

But in this style of hasty conference in which we are running from

the Sunshade to the Umbrella, let us not neglect the latter, whose

last name is /paratrombe/ and /paradéluge/, which M. de Balzac, in

the /Père Goriot/, calls "a bastard descended from a cane and a

walking-stick." The Umbrella has inspired many writers--writers of

vaudevilles, romances, poetry, and humorous pieces; on it little

ingenious monographs have been composed, little sparkling verses,

articles in reviews, very serious from the trade point of view; many

couplets have been rhymed at the Caveau and elsewhere on the Pépin

and the Riflard; on the stage has been interpreted /My Wife and

My Umbrella/, /Oscar's Umbrella/, /The Umbrella of Damocles/, and

/the Umbrella/ of the poet D'Hervilly. This useful article has also

inspired the realist Champfleury in a joyous tale, entitled--/Above

all, don't forget your Umbrella!/ Everywhere, with variations and

unheard-of paraphrases, has the social part of the Umbrella been

shown to us; the meetings occasioned by it on stormy days; the

/Pépin/ gallantly offered to young girls eating apples in distress

whilst it is raining on the Boulevards; we have had described to us

the gentleman who follows the ladies fortified with his Umbrella,

the weapon of his fight, and many tales and novels begin with one

of these Parisian meetings at a street corner on a wet evening.

The utility of the Umbrella in different ways has been insisted

on, of the painter's Umbrella, of the Umbrella for men called /sea

bath/; and the sad melopæa of the French seller of Umbrellas in the

street, whose prolonged cry of /parrrphluie/ has been carefully

annotated. Lastly, there have been too many pictures representing a

coquettish workwoman, whose petticoats have been turned up by the

wind, and whose Parasol has been turned inside out; but that which

has never been written with the humour which such a subject allows,

the master-piece which has never yet been accomplished, is the

/Physiology of the Umbrella/.

There is no doubt that bibliographers will put under our eyes a thin

book of the lowest character which affects this title, and is edited

by /Two Hackney Coachmen/, but it is nought but the "humbug" of the

Umbrella--its /Physiology/ in its entirety is yet unaccomplished.

Balzac would have found therein matter for an immortal work, for

there is a dash of truth in that fantastic aphorism uttered by some

journalist in distress, "The Umbrella is the man."

Eugène Scribe has left us a modest quatrain on the Umbrella, worthy

of his operatic muse--

A friend of mine, new, true, and rare,

And all unlike the common form;

Who leaves me when my sky is fair,

And reappears in days of storm.

This almost equals that other quatrain, more ancient still, signed by

the good abbé Delille--

This precious, supple instrument, confect

Of the whale's bone, and of the silkworm's grave,

With outstretched wing, my brow will oft protect

From the wet onslaught of the pluvial wave.

Have we not here Academic verse well made for the Umbrellas of the

Academicians!

To come to extremes: among the popular songs, we hear the song of

/the Umbrella/, "a ditty found in a whale"--

The good Umbrella may be sung

In many airs and ways;

The Umbrella, be we old or young,

Will serve us all our days.

It keeps true love from getting wet,

And catching cold at night;

It hides the thief, to business set,

From the policeman's sight.

Umbrella!

Then buy yourself, for fear of rain,

A solid, useful, good, and plain

Umbrella!

In fact, for rain we cannot sell a

Much better thing than our Umbrella!