"Pour étrenne, on veut à l'envie
Du frais et du neuf et du beau,
Je dis que c'est un parapluie,
Que l'on doit donner en cas d'eau."
The author of these two jeux de mots unhappily we do not know, or we would thank him for them. The English poet of the Umbrella has yet to be born.
The next story relates to the early history of the Umbrella in Scotland, and may probably be referred to the time when good Dr. Jamieson was walking about Glasgow with his new-fangled sheltering apparatus, which he had brought with him on his return from Paris. As it was the first ever seen in that city, it attracted universal attention, and a vast amount of impudence from the "horrid boys." The following anecdote, then, which we borrow from a Scotch paper, most probably refers to the same period, or thereabouts :—
"When Umbrellas were first marched into Blairgowrie, they were sported only by the minister and the laird, and were looked upon by the common class of people as a perfect phenomenon. One day Daniel M— went to Colonel McPherson, at Blairgowrie House; when about to return, a shower came on, and the colonel politely offered him the loan of an Umbrella, which he gladly accepted, and Daniel, with his head two or three inches higher than usual, marched off. Not long after he had left, however, the colonel again saw Daniel posting towards him with all possible haste, still o'ertopped by his cotton canopy (silk Umbrellas were out of the question in those days), which he held out, saluting him with—' Hae, hae, Kornil, this'll never do! there's nae a door in all my house that'll tak it in; my very barn-door winna' tak it in.'"
In the veracious "History of Sandford and Merton," if our memory serves us aright, there is an instance quoted of remarkable presence of mind relating to an Umbrella and its owner. The members of a comfortable pic-nic party were cosily assembled in some part of India, when an unbidden and most unwelcome guest made his appearance, in the shape of a huge Bengal tiger. Most persons would, naturally, have sought safety in flight, and not stayed to hob-and-nob with this denizen of the jungle; not so, however, thought a lady of the party, who, inspired by her innate courage, or the fear of losing her dinner —perhaps by both combined seized her Umbrella, and opened it suddenly in the face of the tiger as he stood wistfully gazing upon brown curry and foaming Allsop. The astonished brute turned tail and fled, and the lady saved her dinner. Not many years ago the Umbrella was employed in an equally curious manner, though not so successfully as in the former instance. In the campaign of 1793, General Bournonville, who was sent with four commissioners by the National Convention to the camp of the Prince of Saxe-Coburg, was detained as a prisoner with his companions, and confined in the fortress of Olmütz. In this situation he made a desperate attempt to regain his liberty. Having procured an Umbrella, he leaped with it from a window forty feet above the ground, but being a very heavy man, it did not prove sufficient to let him down in safety. He struck against an opposite wall, fell into a ditch and broke his leg, and, worse than all, was carried back to his prison.
One of the most remarkable instances on record, in which the Umbrella was the agency of a man's life being saved, occurred, according to his own statement, to our old friend Colonel Longbow. Of course our kind readers know him as well as we do, for not to do so "would be to argue yourselves unknown." At any Continental watering place, Longbow, or one of his family—for it is a large one—can be met with. He is, indeed, a wonderful man—on intimate terms with all the crowned heads of Europe, and proves his intimacy by always speaking of them by their Christian names.
He is at once the "guide, philosopher, and friend" of every stranger who happens to form his acquaintance—a very easy task, be it remarked—and, though so great a man, is not above dining at your expense, and charming you by the terms of easy familiarity with which he imbibes your champagne or your porter, for all is alike to him, so long as he has not to pay for it: he can take any given quantity.
Well, the other day we happened to meet the Colonel, and he speedily contrived to discover that we were on the point of going to dine, and so invited him to share our humble meal, as a graceful way of making a virtue of necessity, for had we not done so, he would have had no hesitation in inviting himself. During dinner, conversation, of course, turned upon one all-engrossing subject, the war, and the Colonel proceeded to give us his experiences of former wars, including his adventures in the Crimea, and the miraculous escape he owed to an Umbrella.
It appeared that he had gone out with his friend, Lord Levant, on a yachting excursion in the Mediterranean, and they eventually found their way into the Black Sea. Stress of weather compelled them to put into the little port of Yalta, on the north coast, where they went on shore. The Colonel, on the Lucretian principle of "Suave mari magno," &c., proceeded the next morning to the verge of the precipice to observe the magnificent prospect of a sea running mountains high. As it was raining at the time, he put up a huge gingham Umbrella he happened to find in the hotel. Suddenly, however, a furious blast of wind drove across the cliff, and lifted the Colonel bodily in the air. Away he flew far out to sea, the Umbrella acting as a Parachute to let him fall easy.
Now to most men this would only have been a choice of evils, a progress from Scylla to Charybdis: not so to our Colonel. On coming up to the surface after his first dip, he found that swimming would not save him; so he quietly emptied out the water contained in the Umbrella, seated himself upon it, and sailed triumphantly into the harbour, like Arion on his dolphin.