Umbrellas and Their History

by William Sangster

A mediæval gem represents a bishop, attended by a cross-bearer, and a servant who carries behind him an Umbrella.

In the Basilican churches of Rome is suspended a large Umbrella, and the cardinal who took his title from the church has the privilege of having an Umbrella carried over his head on solemn processions. It is not, altogether impossible that the cardinal's hat may be derived from this Umbrella. The origin of this custom of hanging an Umbrella in the Basilican churches is plain enough. The judge sitting in the basilica would have it as part of his insignia of office. On the judgment hall being turned into a church, the Umbrella remained, and in fact occupied the place of the canopy over thrones and the like in our own country. Beatiano, an Italian herald, says that "a vermilion Umbrella in a field argent symbolises dominion."

References crop up now and then throughout the middle age records, to Umbrellas; but the extreme paucity of such allusions goes to show that they were not in common use. In an old romance, "The Blonde of Oxford," a jester makes fun of a nobleman for being out in the rain without his cloak. "Were I a rich man," says he, "I would bear my house about with me." By this very valiant joke he meant, as he afterwards explained, that the nobleman should wear a cloak, not that he ought not to forget his Umbrella So it is clear, we find, that our forefathers depended on their cloaks, not on their Umbrellas, for protection against storms.

Careful research has enabled us to light on a solitary instance of an ancient English Umbrella, for Wright, in his "Domestic Manners of the English," gives a drawing from the Harleian MS., No. 603, 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, therefore, could not be shut up, but otherwise it looks like an ordinary Umbrella, and the ribs are represented distinctly.

Whether this earliest Jonas Hanway (the reputed first importer of the Umbrella, of whom more hereafter) was peculiarly sybaritic in his notions, or whether, like the mammoth of Siberia, he is the one remaining instance of a former "umbrelliferous" race, must, at least for the present, remain undecided. The general use of the Parasol 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 the 22nd June, 1664, mentions a collection of rarities shown him by one Thompson, a Catholic priest, sent by the Jesuits of Japan and China to France. 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 the title-page of Evelyn's "Kalendarium Hortense," also published in the same year, we find a black page represented, bearing a closed Umbrella or Sunshade. It is again evident that the Parasol was more an article of curiosity than use at this period, from the fact that it is mentioned as such in the catalogue of the "Museum Tradescantium, or Collection of Rarities, preserved at South Lambeth, by London, by John Tradescant."

In Coryat's "Crudities," a very rare and highly interesting work, published in 1611, about a century and a half prior to the general introduction of the Umbrella into England, we find the following curious passage:—

After talking of fans he goes on to say, "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 shadow veto 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 cornpasse. 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."

Reference to the same custom, of riders in Italy using umbrellas, is made in Florio's "Worlde of Wordes" (1598), where we find "Ombrella, a fan, a canopie, also a festoon or cloth of State for a prince, also a kind of round fan or shadowing that they use to ride with in sommer in Italy, a little shade."