Books: Umbrellas and their History
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William Sangster >> Umbrellas and their History
When to this description is added the fact that the hoop petticoat
and another article of dress monopolised the whalebone, it will be
seen how much had to be got over before an Umbrella could be carried
out by the citizens of London, as a walking-staff, with satisfactory
assurance of protection in case of a shower. The earliest English
Umbrellas, we must also remember, were made of oiled silk, very
clumsy and difficult to open when wet; the stick and furniture were
heavy and inconvenient, and the article very expensive.
At the end of the century allusions to the Umbrella are not
infrequent. Cowper, in his "Task" (1780), twice mentions it, but
seems to mean a Parasol:--
"We bear our shades about us; self-deprived
Of other screen, the thin umbrella spread,
And range an Indian waste without a tree."
--B. i.
And again:--
"Expect her soon, with footboy at her heels,
No longer blushing for her awkward load,
Her train and her umbrella all her care."
--B. iv,
The Rev. G. C. Renouard, writing in 1850 to Notes and Queries, says:--
"In the hall of my father's house, at Stamford, in Lincolnshire,
there was, when I was a child, the wreck of a large green silk
umbrella, apparently of Chinese manufacture, brought by my father
from Scotland, 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 Hants, 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 then umbrellas were at that time almost unknown."
Since this date, however, the Umbrella has come into general use,
and in consequence numerous improvements have been effected in it.
The transition to the present portable form is due, partly to the
substitution of silk and gingham for the heavy and troublesome oiled
silk, which admitted of the ribs and frames being made much lighter,
and also to the many ingenious mechanical improvements in the
framework, chiefly by French and English manufacturers, many of which
were patented, and to which we purpose presently to allude.
CHAPTER IV.
THE STORY OF THE PARACHUTE.
In giving an account of the Umbrella, it would not be right to omit
mentioning another, and far from legitimate use in which it has been
employed by notoriety-hunting _artistes_--we allude to the
Parachute; and a short narration of its origin and progress may not
be uninteresting to our readers.
The Parachute commonly in use is nothing more or less than a huge
Umbrella, presenting a surface of sufficient dimension to experience
from the air a resistance equal to the weight of descent, in moving
through the fluid at a velocity not exceeding that of the shock which
a person can sustain without danger or injury. It is made of silk or
cotton. To the outer edge cords are fastened, of about the same
length as the diameter of the machine (24 to 28 feet). A centre cord
is attached to the apex and meets the cords from the margin, acting,
in fact, as the stick of the Umbrella. The machine is thus kept
expanded during descent. The car is fastened to the centre cord, and
the whole attached to the balloon in such a manner that it may be
readily and quickly detached, either by cutting a string, or pulling
a trigger. Consequently, in the East, where the Umbrella has been
from the earliest ages in familiar use, it appears to have been
occasionally employed by vaulters, to enable them to jump safely from
great heights. Father Loubère, in his curious account of Siam,
relates, that a person famous in that country for his dexterity, used
to divert the King and Court by the extraordinary leaps he took,
having two Umbrellas with long slender handles, fastened to his
girdle. In 1783 M. le Normand demonstrated the utility of the
Parachute; by lifting himself down from the windows of a high house
at Lyons. His idea was that it might be made a sort of fire-escape.
Blanchard was the first person who constructed a Parachute to act as
a safety-guard to the aeronaut in case of any accident. During an
excursion he made from Lille, in 1785, when he traversed, without
stopping, a distance of 300 miles, he let down a Parachute with a
basket fastened to it containing a dog. This he suffered to fall from
a great height, and it reached the ground in safety.
The first Parachute descent from a balloon, however, was made by
Jacques Garnerin, on the 22nd of October, 1797, in the Park of
Monceau. De la Lande, the celebrated astronomer, has furnished a
detailed and highly interesting account of this foolish experiment.
Garnerin resided in London during the short peace of 1802, and made
two ascents with his balloon, in the second of which he let himself
fall, at an amazing height, with a Parachute of 23 feet diameter. He
started from an enclosure near North Audley Street, and descended
after having been seven or eight minutes in the air. After cutting
himself away, he floated over Marylebone and Somers Town, and fell in
a field near St. Pancras Old Church. The oscillation was so great,
that he was thrown out of the Parachute, and narrowly escaped death.
He seemed a good deal frightened, and said that the peril was too
great for endurance. One of the stays of the machine having given
way, his danger was increased. The next person who tried this
dangerous experiment was his niece, Eliza Garnerin, who descended
several times in safety. Her Parachute had a large orifice in the
top, in order to check the oscillation, and this appears to have been
tolerably successful.
The next experimentalist was a person of the name of Cocking, who
ended his days in a manner unworthy his talents, through a series of
lamentable mistakes. His Parachute was constructed on the opposite
principle, of a wedge-like form, and was intended to cleave through
the air, instead of offering a resistance to it. It has not yet been
proved that the principle was wrong, but the defect lay in the
weakness of the materials employed in the formation of the Parachute.
On the 29th July, 1837, Mr. Cocking ascended in his new Parachute,
attached to the Great Nassau Balloon. Mr. Cocking liberated himself
from the balloon, the Parachute collapsed and fell, at a frightful
rate, into a field near Lea, where poor Cocking was found with an
awful wound on his right temple. He never spoke, but died almost
immediately afterwards. It is much to be regretted that the descent
was ever allowed to take place. The aeronauts themselves were for
some time in a state of imminent peril. Immediately the Parachute was
cut away, the balloon ascended with frightful velocity, owing to the
ascending power it necessarily gained by being freed from a weight of
nearly 500 pounds; and had it not been that its occupants applied
their mouths to the air-bags previously provided, they must have been
suffocated by the escaping gas. When the re-action took place, the
balloon had lost its buoyancy, and fell, rather than descended, to
the ground.
Mr. Hampton was the next person who attempted the experiment, and
made three descents in a Parachute in succession without injury.
Undeterred by the awful fate of his predecessor, this gentleman
determined on making a Parachute descent which should prove the
correctness of the theory, and the Montpellier Gardens at Cheltenham
were selected as the scene of the exploit. Owing to the censure which
was attached to the proprietors of the Vauxhall Gardens, for
permitting docking's ascent, the owners of the Gardens at Cheltenham
would not suffer the experiment to be made, and Mr. Hampton was
obliged to have recourse to stratagem. As he was permitted to display
his Parachute in the manner he intended to use it, the idea suddenly
flashed across his mind that, he could carry out his long-nursed
wishes. He suddenly cut the rope which kept him down, and went off,
to the astonishment of the spectators: the last cheering sound that
reached him being--"He will be killed to a dead certainty!"
After attaining an altitude of nearly two miles, Mr. Hampton
proceeded to cut the rope that held him attached to the balloon. He
paused for a second or two, as he remembered that it would soon be
life or death with him, but at length drew his knife across the rope.
The first feelings he experienced were both unpleasant and alarming;
his eyes and the top of his head appeared to be forced upwards, but
this passed off in a few seconds, and his feelings subsequently
became pleasant, rather than disagreeable.
So steady and slow was the descent that the Parachute appeared to be
stationary. Mr. Hampton remembered that a bag of ballast was fastened
beneath the car, he stooped over and upset the sand, he also noted by
his watch the time he occupied in descending. The earth seemed coming
up to him rapidly; the Parachute indicated its approach to _terra,
firma_ by a slight oscillation, and he presently struck the ground
in the centre of a field, where he was first welcomed by a sheep,
which stared at this visitor from the clouds in utter amazement. Mr.
Hampton repeated the experiment twice in London, though on both
occasions with considerable danger to himself, the first time falling
on a tree in Kensington Gardens, the second on a house, which threw
him out of the basket.
After this experiment there was a lull in the Parachute folly until
some twenty years ago, when Madame Poitevin startled the Metropolis
from its propriety by her perilous escapes both in life and limb.
Although considerable ingenuity was displayed in the plan of
expanding the Parachute by the sudden discharge of gas from the
balloon; still the very fact of a woman being exposed to such danger
by her husband, will, we trust, hereafter prevent Englishmen from
countenancing such an exhibition by their presence.
CHAPTER V.
UMBRELLA STORIES.
Who could for a moment suppose that so important an article as the
Umbrella would be without its lighter as well as its more serious
history? Umbrellas are still, we regret to say, regarded rather in a
comic than a serious light; so, if any of the following anecdotes
seem to treat of Umbrellas in too mocking or frivolous a vein, it is
the fault of the bad taste of the British public, not ours, who have
merely compiled. However, we may commence with a very neat little
French riddle.
"Quel est l'objet que l'on recherche le plus quand on s'en dégoûte?"
A mysterious inquiry, and all sorts of horrible but needful
abominations occur to the mind in answer. But the answer is not so
bad after all. Change the spelling without altering the
pronunciation, and you get _quand on sent des gouties,_ and, lo!
you have it at once--le Parapluie--the faithful friend whose presence
we most desire when we wish least for the necessity of it; the burden
of our fine days, the shelter of our wet ones.
Or again, would you like a verse or two on the same subject?
"Pour étrenne, on veut à l'envie
Du frais et du neuf et du beau,
Je dis que c'est un parapluie,
Que l'on doit donner en _cas d'eau._"
The author of these two _jeux de mots_ unhappily we do not
know, or we would thank him for them. The English poet of the
Umbrella has yet to be born.
The next story relates to the early history of the Umbrella in
Scotland, and may probably be referred to the time when good Dr.
Jamieson was walking about Glasgow with his new-fangled sheltering
apparatus, which he had brought with him on his return from Paris. As
it was the first ever seen in that city, it attracted universal
attention, and a vast amount of impudence from the "horrid boys." The
following anecdote, then, which we borrow from a Scotch paper, most
probably refers to the same period, or thereabouts :--
"When Umbrellas were first marched into Blairgowrie, they were
sported only by the minister and the laird, and were looked upon by
the common class of people as a perfect phenomenon. One day Daniel M--
went to Colonel McPherson, at Blairgowrie House; when about to
return, a shower came on, and the colonel politely offered him the
loan of an Umbrella, which he gladly accepted, and Daniel, with his
head two or three inches higher than usual, marched off. Not long
after he had left, however, the colonel again saw Daniel posting
towards him with all possible haste, still o'ertopped by his cotton
canopy (silk Umbrellas were out of the question in those days), which
he held out, saluting him with--' Hae, hae, Kornil, this'll never do!
there's nae a door in all my house that'll tak it in; my very
barn-door winna' tak it in.'"
In the veracious "History of Sandford and Merton," if our memory
serves us aright, there is an instance quoted of remarkable presence
of mind relating to an Umbrella and its owner. The members of a
comfortable pic-nic party were cosily assembled in some part of
India, when an unbidden and most unwelcome guest made his appearance,
in the shape of a huge Bengal tiger. Most persons would, naturally,
have sought safety in flight, and not stayed to hob-and-nob with this
denizen of the jungle; not so, however, thought a lady of the party,
who, inspired by her innate courage, or the fear of losing her dinner
--perhaps by both combined seized her Umbrella, and opened it suddenly
in the face of the tiger as he stood wistfully gazing upon brown
curry and foaming Allsop. The astonished brute turned tail and fled,
and the lady saved her dinner. Not many years ago the Umbrella was
employed in an equally curious manner, though not so successfully as
in the former instance. In the campaign of 1793, General
Bournonville, who was sent with four commissioners by the National
Convention to the camp of the Prince of Saxe-Coburg, was detained as
a prisoner with his companions, and confined in the fortress of
Olmütz. In this situation he made a desperate attempt to regain his
liberty. Having procured an Umbrella, he leaped with it from a window
forty feet above the ground, but being a very heavy man, it did not
prove sufficient to let him down in safety. He struck against an
opposite wall, fell into a ditch and broke his leg, and, worse than
all, was carried back to his prison.
One of the most remarkable instances on record, in which the
Umbrella was the agency of a man's life being saved, occurred,
according to his own statement, to our old friend Colonel Longbow. Of
course our kind readers know him as well as we do, for not to do so
"would be to argue yourselves unknown." At any Continental watering
place, Longbow, or one of his family--for it is a large one--can be
met with. He is, indeed, a wonderful man--on intimate terms with all
the crowned heads of Europe, and proves his intimacy by always
speaking of them by their Christian names.
He is at once the "guide, philosopher, and friend" of every stranger
who happens to form his acquaintance--a very easy task, be it
remarked--and, though so great a man, is not above dining at your
expense, and charming you by the terms of easy familiarity with which
he imbibes your champagne or your porter, for all is alike to him, so
long as he has not to pay for it: he can take any given quantity.
Well, the other day we happened to meet the Colonel, and he speedily
contrived to discover that we were on the point of going to dine, and
so invited him to share our humble meal, as a graceful way of making
a virtue of necessity, for had we not done so, he would have had no
hesitation in inviting himself. During dinner, conversation, of
course, turned upon one all-engrossing subject, the war, and the
Colonel proceeded to give us his experiences of former wars,
including his adventures in the Crimea, and the miraculous escape he
owed to an Umbrella.
It appeared that he had gone out with his friend, Lord Levant, on a
yachting excursion in the Mediterranean, and they eventually found
their way into the Black Sea. Stress of weather compelled them to put
into the little port of Yalta, on the north coast, where they went on
shore. The Colonel, on the Lucretian principle of "Suave mari magno,"
&c., proceeded the next morning to the verge of the precipice to
observe the magnificent prospect of a sea running mountains high. As
it was raining at the time, he put up a huge gingham Umbrella he
happened to find in the hotel. Suddenly, however, a furious blast of
wind drove across the cliff, and lifted the Colonel bodily in the
air. Away he flew far out to sea, the Umbrella acting as a Parachute
to let him fall easy.
Now to most men this would only have been a choice of evils, a
progress from Scylla to Charybdis: not so to our Colonel. On coming
up to the surface after his first dip, he found that swimming would
not save him; so he quietly emptied out the water contained in the
Umbrella, seated himself upon it, and sailed triumphantly into the
harbour, like Arion on his dolphin.
Our face, on hearing this anecdote, must have betrayed the
scepticism we felt, for the Colonel proceeded to a corner of the
room, and produced the identical Umbrella. Of course, such a proof
was irresistible, and we were compelled to do penance for our
unbelief by lending the gallant Colonel a sovereign, for "the Bank
was closed." We thought the anecdote cheap at the price.
There is a story told of one of our City bankers, that he owed an
excellent wife to the interposition of an Umbrella. It appears that
on returning home one day in a heavy shower of rain, he found a young
lady standing in his doorway. Politeness induced him to invite her to
take shelter under his roof, and eventually to offer her the loan of
an Umbrella. Of course, the gallant banker called for it the next
day, and the acquaintance thus accidentally made, soon ripened into
mutual affection. This species of Umbrella courtship has been
immortalised in more than one song, none of which, however, are quite
worth quoting.
A worthy little Frenchman of our acquaintance was ordered by his
medical man to take a course of shower-baths. Such things being
unknown to him in his fatherland, he of course found the first essay
remarkably unpleasant, but with native ingenuity he soon discovered a
remedy. On our asking him how he liked the hydropathic system, he
replied, "Oh, mais c'est charmant, mon ami; I always take my
parapluie wid me into de bath."
Douglas Jerrold, in his well-known "Punch's Letters to his Son,"
gives an anecdote of which we can only say, si non _è vero, è ben
trovato_. It at all events illustrates the frightful morality that
exists with regard to borrowing Umbrellas.
"Hopkins once lent Simpson, his next-door neighbour, an Umbrella. You
will judge of the intellect of Hopkins, not so much from the act of
lending an Umbrella, but from his insane endeavour to get it back again.
"It poured in torrents, Hopkins had an urgent call. Hopkins knocked
at Simpson's door. 'I want my Umbrella.' Now Simpson had also a call
in a directly opposite way to Hopkins; and with the borrowed Umbrella
in his hand, was advancing to the threshold. 'I tell you,' roared
Hopkins, 'I want my Umbrella.' 'Can't have it,' said Simpson. 'Why, I
want to go to the East-end; it rains in torrents; what'--screamed
Hopkins--'what am I to do for an Umbrella?'
"'Do!' answered Simpson, darting from the door, 'do as I did--BORROW
ONE.'"
The Umbrella has been most successfully introduced on the stage.
What, for instance, would Paul Pry have been without that valuable
implement for which to inquire with his stereotyped "Hope I don't
intrude?" Or his French successor, the nobleman in "The Grand
Duchess," who inquires, in plaintive accents, for "Le parapluie de ma
mere," just after Schneider has been declaiming about her father's
sabre? Merely to bring a big Umbrella on the stage is an acknowledged
way of raising a laugh. Mrs. Gamp again, with her receptacle for
unconsidered trifles, cannot be realised apart from her Umbrella. And
then, those hired waiters who come into our houses with an Umbrella
of graceful proportions, and emerge towards the small hours with a
most plethoric parapluie, which looks as if it had been regaling on
the good things as well as its master! It used to appear to us a
comical sight, years back, in the old city of Paris, to see the
National Guard going to exercise with a musket in one hand and an
Umbrella in the other, and we dare say it was a very sensible plan
after all, and might have been imitated with success before
Sebastopol. A stout steel Umbrella would offer no contemptible
shelter to a rifleman. This circumstance, too, may throw a light on a
hitherto obscure passage in "Macbeth," where Birnam Wood moves to
Dunsinane--for it is just possible that the soldiers cut down the
branches to serve them as a protection from the rain. We throw out
this as a hint to any enterprising manager.
In Germany, on the other hand, a soldier is--or used to be--strictly
forbidden from carrying an open Umbrella, unless he is accompanied by
a civilian or a lady. A worthy corporal, on one occasion, was sent to
fetch an Umbrella his Major's lady had left at a friend's house, and
at the same time took her lapdog for an airing. On the road home a
violent shower came on, and, to avoid committing a breach of the
regulations, under his arm he tucked the dog, which was contained,
according to his ideas, in both the above categories, put up the
Umbrella, and marched very comfortably to barracks.
With one more characteristic anecdote we will close our budget. One
evening, while Rowland Hill was preaching, a shower came on, and his
chapel was speedily filled with devotees. With that peculiar
sarcastic intonation which none could assume so successfully as
himself, he quietly remarked, "My brethren, I have often heard that
religion can be made a _cloak_, but this is the first occasion
on which I ever knew it could be converted into an _Umbrella_."
CHAPTER VI.
THE REGENERATION OF THE UMBRELLA.
Our task is now nearly completed: we have described the history of
the Parasol, and its near relation the Umbrella, as far as our space
permits us to treat of this interesting subject.
All that remains for us to do is to give an account of the principal
improvements effected in the Umbrella during later years.
It is certain that France was some way ahead of us with regard to
the use of Umbrellas, for they were comparatively common there before
they were at all known _l'autre côté 'de la Manche_. This was
but natural, considering that they were, as we have seen, used in
Italy, and consequently the folk of southern France would not be
likely to be far behind their neighbours in availing themselves of
the protection from the sun, whether or no they had sufficient genius
to shelter themselves from the rain by the aid of an Umbrella.
In France Parasols and Umbrellas used to be amongst the articles
made by the corporate body of Boursiers. M. Natalis Rondot quotes
from the _Journal du Citoyen_, of 1754, the price of Parasols.
It ranged from 7s. 3_d_. to 17s. 6_d_., according to the
construction, and to whether they were made to fold up or not. In
Diderot and D'Alembert's Encyclopédic, is figured an Umbrella, which
is described as follows, in the excellent introduction to the
"Abridgements of Specifications relating to Umbrellas," lately
published by the Commissioners of Patents:--
"The ribs bear about the same proportion (as in modern umbrellas) as
regards length, to the stick, but the stretchers are much shorter,
being less than a quarter of the length of the ribs. They are double,
each rib having a pair joined, one on each side of the rib, at the
same point. The ribs are joined at the top by being strung on a ring,
as in old English umbrellas, but the runner is made of precisely
similar construction to the modern runner, and seems almost identical
with that described in Caney's Specification (patent No. 5761, A.D.
1829). Ribs and sticks are jointed, the latter in two places. There
is no catch to hold the umbrella closed, but this upper catch is the
ordinary bent wire one. The upper joint of the stick is made with a
screw, the lower of a hinge with a slide, as in a modern parasol. The
slide has a catch, resembling the ordinary runner catch. At the top
is a ring for carrying or suspending the umbrella."
Such was the old French Umbrella, and that used in England was of
much the same sort. The old French folding Parasol is thus described
in the "Report of the Jurors for the Exhibition of 1851:"--
"The folding parasol was constructed with jointed ribs so as to fold
back, and was likewise self-opening. The rod was a metallic tube, and
contained a spiral spring which acted upon and pressed upwards an
inner rod. To this inner rod were jointed the stretchers, which in
this construction were placed above the ribs instead of below, as in
the ordinary form, beside which they were much shorter, so as to
admit of their being concealed by the covering. By the elasticity of
the spiral spring contained in the hollow stem, the inner rod was
pressed outwards and lifted the stretchers, and by their means raised
the ribs also, so that in its ordinary or natural state the umbrella
was always open, and would continue so unless constrained to remain
closed by a catch. On releasing the catch it consequently sprang
open. In order that it might be easily closed, four cords were
attached to four of the ribs and passed to the handle; and a loop
embracing these cords passed down by the side of the handle, and
enabled the possessor to close his umbrella without difficulty. From
the authority already quoted, we learn that whalebone was employed
for the ribs, and that their number varied with their length; for
example, when 24 inches long the number employed was 8; when 25
inches, 9; and when 26, 28 and 30 inches, 10 were used. Calico was
employed to cover umbrellas, and silk to cover parasols. The use of
parasols was common in Lyons at that period (1786); they were carried
by men as well as women; they were rose-coloured, white, and of
other colours, and were so light as to be carried without
inconvenience."