In the hall of my father's house, at Stamford in Lincolnshire,
there was, when I was a child, the wreck of a very large green silk
umbrella, apparently of Chinese manufacture, brought by my father from
Holland, somewhere between 1770 and 1780, and as I have often heard,
the first umbrella seen at Stamford. I well remember also an amusing
description given by the late Mr. Warry, so many years consul at
Smyrna, of the astonishment and envy of his mother's neighbours at
Sawbridgeworth, in Herts, where his father had a country-house, when
he ran home and came back with an umbrella, which he had just brought
from Leghorn, to shelter them from a pelting shower which detained
them in the church-porch, after the service, on one summer Sunday.
From Mr. Warry's age at the time he mentioned this, and other
circumstances in his history, I conjecture that it occurred not later
than 1775 or 1776. As Sawbridgeworth is so near London, it is evident
that even there umbrellas were at that time almost unknown.
If I have "spun too long a yarn," the dates, at least, will not be
unacceptable to others like myself.