“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—