UMBRELLAS.
By one of the year 1750.
Umbrellas, in my youth, were not ordinary things; few but the macaronis of the day, as the dandies were then called, would venture to display them. For a long while it was not usual for men to carry them without incurring the brand of effeminacy, and they were vulgarly considered as the characteristics of a person whom the mob hugely disliked, namely, a mincing Frenchman! At first, a single umbrella seems to have been kept at a coffee-house for some extraordinary occasion—lent as a coach or chair in a heavy shower—but not commonly carried by the walkers. The Female Tatler advertises, "the young gentleman belonging to the custom-house who, in fear of rain, borrowed the umbrella from Wilks' Coffee-House, shall the next time be welcome to the maid's pattens." An umbrella carried by a man was obviously then considered as extreme effeminacy. As late as in 1778, one John Macdonald, a footman, who has written his own life, informs us that when he used "a fine silk umbrella, which he had brought from Spain, he could not with any comfort to himself use it; the people calling out 'Frenchman! why don't you get a coach?'" The fact was that the hackney-coachmen and the chairmen, joining with the true esprit de corps, were clamorous against this portentous rival. This footman, in 1778, gives us further information. "At this time there were no umbrellas wore in London, except in noblemen's and gentlemen's houses, where there was a large one hung in the hall to hold over a lady or a gentleman, if it rained between the door and their carriage." His sister was compelled to quit his arm one day from the abuse he drew down on himself and his umbrella. But he adds, that "he persisted for three months till they took no further notice of this novelty. Foreigners began to use theirs, and then the English. Now it is become a great trade in London." This footman, if he does not arrogate too much to his own confidence, was the first man distinguished by carrying and using a silken umbrella. He is the founder of a most populous school. The state of our population might now in some degree be ascertained by the number of umbrellas.
New Monthly Magazine.
GIPSIES.
Gipsies in times of yore were the scape-goats of the peasantry: if "cock" were "purloined" or any other rural mischief done by night, it was immediately fathered upon a neighbouring tent of "the dark race." No further evidence was required than the pot boiling on stick transverse: no one hesitated to conclude that the said pot contained the corpus delicti: that the individual missing cock was there parboiling, and that the swarthy race lolling around the fire, or peeping from beneath the canvass roof, were resting from the unholy labours of the night. Crime, however, has made such rapid marches that it has long been seen that the gipsies could not perpetrate the whole of it: and now it is pretty clear they are, and probably have always been, innocent of the whole of it. It is an event of extreme rarity to see a gipsy in a court of justice, and we have reason to believe that it has come to pass that farmers entertain a belief that the tent of the wanderer, with its nightly blaze and its dark shadows flitting about it, is a protection to their property. There is every probability in favour of the justice of this character. The life of the gipsy is not unlucrative: his wants are few and coarse, and the calls upon him are scarcely any. He pays no rent: he is exempt from taxes: he spends nothing in the luxury of attire: no man can bring him in a bill. Being himself a mender and universal repairer, he is under the necessity of demanding no man's aid. His horse or his ass feeds on Nature's common, the hedge-side, the waste corner, the forest thicket, well known and long haunted by him and his tribe. Gipsies are subject to few diseases: they seldom ask the doctor's assistance but for one friendly office, and that serves a man his lifetime. The open air, the inconstancy of their labour, the sufficiency of their food, and the quantity of healthy exercise, necessarily render these Arabs of civilization the healthiest part of the people. As the monks of old always managed to select a happy site for their establishments, so does the gipsy always contrive to fix upon a pleasant and healthy spot for the pitching of his tent. It is sure to be near a brook for the supply of fresh water for the pot, and a washing-place for the family rags: it generally lies under the shelter of some umbrageous tree, it will always be found to have a view of the road, and invariably placed on the edge of some nice short and sweet morsel of grass for the recreation of the quadrupeds of the party.
The character of the gipsy has not been well understood. It is altogether oriental: he is quiet, patient, sober, long suffering, pleasant in speech, indolent but handy, far from speculative, and yet good at succedaneum: when his anger is kindled, it descends like lightning: unlike his dog, his wrath gives no notice by grumbling: he blazes up like one of his own fires of dried fern. Quarrels do not often take place among them, but when they do, they are dreadful. The laws of the country in which they sojourn have so far banished the use of knives from among them that they only grind them, otherwise these conflicts would always be fatal. They fight like tigers with tooth and nail, and knee and toe, and seem animated only with the spirit of daemonism. Luckily the worst weapon they use is a stick, and, if the devil tempts, a hedge-stake.
We have been put in mind to say something of the gipsies by having witnessed the consequences of one of these affrays, which has brought us still better acquainted with these singular people. A quarrel originating in jealousy had produced results of the most serious nature. A blow on the head with a tent-pole had evidently produced concussion of the brain if not fracture, and the victim was lying on his straw bed in a state of profound coma. The tent was tripartite, being formed of three main tops meeting in a centre: one was sacred to the women—the gynekeion of the Greeks, the anderoon of the Persians: in the others were collected the whole faction of the dying man. Nine or ten swarthy but handsome countenances were anxiously watching the struggling breath of their unhappy comrade—some sobbing, some grief-stricken, some sombre, none savage. An old crone was administering ineffectual milk, perhaps the very woman who had found the same fluid so nutritious some thirty years ago. Before, or rather, under her lay as noble a form as nature ever moulded, with a fine dark, but thoroughly Indian face, covered with the clammy sweat of apoplectic death. There was no want of light, the fire at the mouth every now and then sent in a volume of illumination, and when the medical men arrived there was scarcely a hand that did not contain a candle in the hope of aiding their investigation. The man died on the fourth day: the surgeons were compelled to mangle him in their search for a fracture; after his death justice demanded a still further investigation of the corpse: and yet during all these trying circumstances an important witness can declare that the behaviour of the supposed lawless people was not merely decent—it was more than exemplary—it was delicate, tender, nay, refined; it was moreover exempt from prejudice, at the same time that it was full of feeling. Were the details in place here, it would perhaps be allowed that few brighter examples of friendship and right feeling were to be found than in this instance occurred among the "dark race," as they call themselves.