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.”