THE UMBRELLA COMES
TO EUROPE
Apparently the
umbrella entered Europe via Greece, Italy and Turkey. Tradition has
it that the Normans brought the umbrella to England with them
(presumably some sort of canopy regalia) in 1066, but there is
nothing very tangible to support this. Umbrellas were however in
common use in France in 1620. It is often claimed that umbrellas
were introduced to England by Jonas Hanway about 1750, but this is
definitely not correct. They are mentioned in Gays Trivia, The Art
of Walking the Streets of London, published in 1712 and also in the
Female Tattler for December 12th 1709. But Jonas Hanway was the
first Englishman to carry an umbrella regularly. He was pelted by
coachmen and chairmen for his persistence, since they saw this craze
could endanger there own means of livelihood.
It should be
remembered that in those days the only covered transport was the
private coach or Sedan chair. Also that the umbrellas were very
heavy, ungainly things made with whalebone or cane ribs, mounted on a
long, stout stick of about 1" in diameter and covered with a
heavy cotton fabric, waterproofed by oiling or waxing.
Only on a few public
buildings was rainwater led from the roofs by gutters and fallpipes.
In the main the water simply ran off the roof into the street.
Although sometimes it was collected in gutters under the eaves and
poured out like a miniature Niagara Falls, through the mouths of
grotesque gargoyles at each corner of the building. Pavements were
unknown and the gutter or kennel was in the middle of the street.
The choice was then either to carry one of these portable tents or
get soaked.
By 1787 the umbrella
had achieved some considerable measure of popularity within a short
period of time and the French ladies umbrellas had achieved
remarkable elegance, and on the continent they were used as much as a
sunshade as protection from rain. And it is from this period and via
the sunshade that umbrellas began to develop into something lighter
and more graceful.
Between 1816 and
1820 men's umbrellas had again reached a weight of over four pounds,
but ladies umbrellas continued to be much lighter, weighing less than
one pound. This was partly due to the use of finer fabric of silk
and by the substitution of light iron stretchers, but in general
umbrellas in this country, until the middle of the last century, were
made with ribs of whalebone for the best quality and of split cane
for the cheaper quality.
Then in the late
1800's came the development of the Fox Steel Ribs and Frames. And so
the modern umbrella was born.
Marchesa Elena
Grimaldi, by Anthonis van Dyck, 1623
17th century
Thomas Wright, in
his Domestic Manners of the English, gives a drawing from the
Harleian MS., No. 604, which represents an Anglo-Saxon gentleman
walking out attended by his servant, the servant carrying an umbrella
with a handle that slopes backwards, so as to bring the umbrella over
the head of the person in front. It probably could not be closed, but
otherwise it looks like an ordinary umbrella, and the ribs are
represented distinctly.
The use of the
parasol and umbrella in France and England was adopted, probably from
China, about the middle of the seventeenth century. At that period,
pictorial representations of it are frequently found, some of which
exhibit the peculiar broad and deep canopy belonging to the large
parasol of the Chinese Government officials, borne by native
attendants.
John Evelyn, in his
Diary for June 22, 1664, mentions a collection of rarities shown to
him by "Thompson", a Roman Catholic priest, sent by the
Jesuits of Japan and China to France.[23] Among the curiosities were
"fans like those our ladies use, but much larger, and with long
handles, strangely carved and filled with Chinese characters",
which is evidently a description of the parasol.
In Thomas Coryat's
Crudities, published in 1611, about a century and a half prior to the
general introduction of the umbrella into England, is a reference to
a custom of riders in Italy using umbrellas:
And many of them doe
carry other fine things of a far greater price, that will cost at the
least a duckat, which they commonly call in the Italian tongue
umbrellas, that is, things which minister shadowve to them for
shelter against the scorching heate of the sunne. These are made of
leather, something answerable to the forme of a little cannopy, &
hooped in the inside with divers little wooden hoopes that extend the
umbrella in a pretty large compasse. 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 heate of the sunne from the
upper parts of their bodies.
In John Florio's "A
WORLD of Words" (1598), the Italian word Ombrella is translated
a fan, a canopie.
also a testern or cloth of state for a prince. also a kind of round
fan or shadowing that they vse to ride with in sommer in Italy, a
little shade. Also a bonegrace for a woman. Also the husk or cod of
any seede or corne. also a broad spreding bunch, as of fenell, nill,
or elder bloomes.
In Randle Cotgrave's
Dictionary of the French and English Tongues (1614), the French
Ombrelle is translated
An umbrello; a
(fashion of) round and broad fanne, wherewith the Indians (and from
them our great ones) preserve themselves from the heat of a scorching
sunne; and hence any little shadow, fanne, or thing, wherewith women
hide their faces from the sunne.
In Fynes Moryson's
Itinerary (1617) is a similar allusion to the habit of carrying
umbrellas in hot countries "to auoide the beames of the Sunne".
Their employment, says the author, is dangerous, "because they
gather the heate into a pyramidall point, and thence cast it down
perpendicularly upon the head, except they know how to carry them for
auoyding that danger".
In France, the
umbrella (parapluie) began to appear in 1660s, when the fabric of
parasols carried for protection against the sun was coated with wax.
The inventory of the French royal court in 1763 mentioned "eleven
parasols of taffeta in different colours" as well as "three
parasols of waxed toile, decorated around the edges with lace of gold
and silver." They were rare, and the word parapluie ("against
the rain") did not enter the dictionary of the Académie
française until 1718.
18th and 19th
centuries
Kersey's Dictionary
(1708) describes an umbrella as a "screen commonly used by women
to keep off rain".
The first
lightweight folding umbrella in Europe was introduced in 1710 by a
Paris merchant named Jean Marius, whose shop was located near the
barrier of Saint-Honoré. It could be opened and closed in the same
way as modern umbrellas, and weighed less than one kilogram. Marius
received from the King the exclusive right to produce folding
umbrellas for five years. A model was purchased by the Princess
Palatine in 1712, and she enthused about it to her aristocratic
friends, making it an essential fashion item for Parisiennes. In
1759, a French scientist named Navarre presented a new design to the
French Academy of Sciences for an umbrella combined with a cane.
Pressing a small button on the side of the cane opened the umbrella.
Their use became
widespread in Paris. In 1768, a Paris magazine reported:
"The common
usage for quite some time now is not to go out without an umbrella,
and to have the inconvenience of carrying it under your arm for six
months in order to use it perhaps six times. Those who do not want to
be mistaken for vulgar people much prefer to take the risk of being
soaked, rather than to be regarded as someone who goes on foot; an
umbrella is a sure sign of someone who doesn't have his own
carriage."
In 1769, the Maison
Antoine, a store at the Magasin d'Italie on rue Saint-Denis, was the
first to offer umbrellas for rent to those caught in downpours, and
it became a common practice. The Lieutenant General of Police of
Paris issued regulations for the rental umbrellas; they were made of
oiled green silk, and carried a number so they could be found and
reclaimed if someone walked off with one.
 |
Parisians in the
rain with umbrellas, by Louis-Léopold Boilly (1803)
|
By 1808 there were
seven shops making and selling umbrellas in Paris; one shop, Sagnier
on rue des Vielles-Haudriettes, received the first patent given for
an invention in France for a new model of umbrella. By 1813 there
were 42 shops; by 1848 there were three hundred seventy-seven small
shops making umbrellas in Paris, employing 1400 workers. By the end
of the century, however, cheaper manufacturers in the Auvergne
replaced Paris as the centre of umbrella manufacturing, and the town
of Aurillac became the umbrella capital of France. The town still
produces about half the umbrellas made in France; the umbrella
factories there employ about one hundred workers.
In Daniel Defoe's
Robinson Crusoe, he constructed his own umbrella in imitation of
those that he had seen used in Brazil. "I covered it with
skins," he says, "the hair outwards, 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." From this description the
original heavy umbrella came to be called "Robinson" which
they retained for many years in England.
Captain James Cook,
in one of his voyages in the late 18th century, reported seeing some
of the natives of the South Pacific Islands with umbrellas made of
palm leaves.
The use of the
umbrella or parasol (though not unknown) was uncommon in England
during the earlier half of the eighteenth century, as is evident from
the comment made by General (then Lieut.-Colonel) James Wolfe, when
writing from Paris in 1752; he speaks of the use of umbrellas for
protection from the sun and rain, and wonders why a similar practice
did not occur in England. About the same time, umbrellas came into
general use as people found their value, and got over the shyness
natural to its introduction. Jonas Hanway, the founder of the
Magdalen Hospital, has the credit of being the first man who ventured
to dare public reproach and ridicule by carrying one habitually in
London. As he died in 1786, and he is said to have carried an
umbrella for thirty years, the date of its first use by him may be
set down at about 1750. John Macdonald[disambiguation needed] relates
that in 1770, he used to be addressed as, "Frenchman, Frenchman!
why don't you call a coach?" whenever he went out with his
umbrella. By 1788 however they seem to have been accepted: a London
newspaper advertises the sale of 'improved and pocket Umbrellas, on
steel frames, with every other kind of common Umbrella.' But full
acceptance is not complete even today with some considering umbrellas
effete.
 |
Paris Street; Rainy
Weather, by Gustave Caillebotte (1877)
|
Since then, the
umbrella has come into general use, in consequence of numerous
improvements. In China people learned how to waterproof their paper
umbrellas with wax and lacquer. 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 many ingenious
mechanical improvements in the framework. Victorian era umbrellas had
frames of wood or baleen, but these devices were expensive and hard
to fold when wet. Samuel Fox invented the steel-ribbed umbrella in
1852; however, the Encyclopédie Méthodique mentions metal ribs at
the end of the eighteenth century, and they were also on sale in
London during the 1780s. Modern designs usually employ a telescoping
steel trunk; new materials such as cotton, plastic film and nylon
often replace the original silk.
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