Part 2

"After the /Thong-ya/, it is only under the first Wei (A.D. 220-264) that gentlemen began the use of Parasols; these Parasols were most frequently made of little rods of bamboo and oiled paper; pedestrians never made use of them before the second Wei (386-554). Parasols figure ordinarily in processions and funerals since the seventh century. Thus, in 648, at the time of the inauguration of the Convent of the Grand Beneficence, at Si-ngan-Fou, one counted--says the historian of the /Life of Hiouen thsang/--only in the procession three hundred Parasols of precious stuffs. The Parasol in China, as in India, has always been a sign of elevated rank, although it has not been exclusively used by emperors and mandarins. Formerly, it seems, four-and-twenty Parasols were carried before the Emperor when his Majesty went to the chase.

"A Chinese of a rank at all elevated, such as a mandarin, a bonze, or a priest, never goes out without a Parasol, according to M. Marie Cazal, a Sunshade manufacturer, who, about the year 1844, wrote a small /Essay on the Umbrella, the Walking-stick, and their Manufacture/.--'Every Chinese of a superior order is followed by his slave, who carries his Parasol extended over him.'

"The Umbrella in China is destined to the same use as the Parasol, says M. Cazal: it belongs to all. Never, when the weather is the least degree doubtful, does a Chinese go out of doors without his Umbrella. Even horses are sheltered, as well as elephants, by Parasols or Umbrellas fastened to branches of bamboo. Their drivers take very good care not to illtreat them; imbued as they are, like every good Chinaman, with the doctrines of metempsychosis, they fear to torture the soul of their father or their grandfather, reduced, in order to expiate his faults, to animate the body of these quadrupeds."

The Umbrellas and Parasols which are most common in China resemble very much those which are imported into Europe; they are made entirely of stalks of bamboo, disposed with enormous art, and covered with oiled, tarred, or lacquered paper. Some are coloured, and have printed on them religious allegories or sentences of Confucius.

All the voyages in China and around the world are filled with details of the Chinese Parasol. "The Chinese women, whose feet have been compressed from infancy," remarks M. Charles Lavollée, "can scarcely walk, and are obliged to support themselves on the handle of their Parasol, which serves them for a walking-stick."

The Parasol and the Fan in China play a rôle so considerable, that it would be necessary to write a special monograph on each of these two objects in order to consider properly their importance in the history of the country and its current manners. In a general and summary sketch like the present, must we not skim through, rather than sew together documents collected with difficulty, or found within reach, and leave aside the more bulky bundles, under pain of foundering in the folio form of heavy dictionaries?

Everywhere on the exquisite decorative combinations of Japan, we see a large Parasol opened amidst delicate peach-blossoms, gracious flights of strange birds, indented leaves, and rosy ibises. Sometimes, on the inimitable paintings of the enamelled vases, the Japanese Sunshade shelters a king's daughter, escorted by her followers, who makes her chaste preparations for entering the bath; sometimes, on a thin gauze, the Parasol half hides women, promenading on the margin of some vast blue lake, full of ideal dreams. Sometimes, in fine, in a fantastic sketch of an album, which one reads as a riot of the imagination, is perceived some human being excited to a singular degree, with hair tossed by the wind, and haggard eye, floating at the will of the tumultuous waves on a Parasol turned upside down, to the handle of which he clings with the energy of despair. The plates of the /Voyage de Ricord/, and especially the old Japanese albums, are useful to consult in order to understand better the varieties of forms of the Sunshade in Japan. We gain a bizarre notion of the effects and services which a Japanese can obtain from a common Parasol of his country by looking at the games of the acrobats who come to us occasionally from Tokio, Yedo, or Yokohama. Théophile Gautier, who was highly astonished, and not without reason, at the quickness, grace, and daring of these marvellous equilibrists, has left us on this matter the fairest pages, perhaps, of his /Feuilletons de Lundiste/. The worthy Théo, that Gallic Rajah borrowed from these clowns, astonishing in their lightness, an enthusiasm which put on his palette as a colourist the most vibrating tones and the finest shades. The Sunshade and the Fan are in fact presented by these magicians of the East with particular graces in the jugglery of the most varied exercises. Here it is a ball of ivory which rolls with the bickering of a babbling stream over the lamels or ribs of the Sunshade; there it is a Parasol held in equilibrium on the blade of a dagger, and a thousand other astonishing inventions. All these fascinating feats of skill cannot be described save in the manner of Gautier, in other words, by veritable pen-pictures. Admirable interpretation of things glimpsed at!

In the tea-houses of Tokio, the pretty /Geishas/ often employ, to mimic an expressive dance, the Fan and the little paper Parasol.

One of the most usual of their dances, managed something like our ballets, is called the Rain-dance. This is the way in which a /Globe-trotter/ gives an account of its leading idea and character:--

"Some young girls prepare to leave their homes, and to pose as beauties in the streets of Yedo. They admire each other in playing their fans, they are dressed in superb toilets--they are sure of turning the heads of all the young /samouraï/ of the town.

"Scarcely have they got out of doors when a thick cloud appears. Great disquietude! They open their Parasol, and make a thousand pretty grimaces, to show how sadly they fear the ruin of their charming dresses. . . . A few drops of rain begin to fall: they quicken their steps on their way home again.

"A burst of thunder occasioned by the /Samisen/ and the drums, is heard, which announces a terrible downpour. Then our four dancers catch their robes with both hands, and throw them with one sweep under their arms, and suddenly turning, take to their heels, showing us a row of little . . . . frightened faces, saving themselves at the full speed of their legs."

What a series of pantomimes, in which the Sunshade must assume in the hands of the charming /Geishas/ the most seductive positions!

"Among the Arabs the Parasol was a mark of distinction" (as we learn from M. O. S., the English reporter of a commission which published a small notice on /Umbrellas, Parasols, and Walking-sticks/ in London about 1871). There is the same importance attached to it among certain blacks of Western Africa, who have probably borrowed it from the Arabs. Niebuhr, in the description of the procession of the Imam of Sanah, tells us that the Imam, and every one of the princes of his numerous family, had carried by their side a /Madalla/ or large Parasol. It is in that country a privilege of princes of the blood. The same writer relates that many independent chiefs of Yemen bear /Madallas/ as a mark of their independence. In Morocco the Emperor alone and his family have the privilege of the Parasol. In the /Voyages of Aly Bey/ we read in fact:--"The retinue of the Sultan was composed of a troop of from fifteen to twenty gentlemen as the vanguard; behind them, some hundred paces, came the Sultan, mounted on a mule, having beside him, also mounted on a mule, an officer carrying the Imperial Parasol. The Parasol is the distinctive sign of the sovereign of Morocco. No one but he would dare to use it."

In certain tribes of central Africa explorers speak of having encountered, amidst the tribes of the desert, kings half-dressed in European old clothes, taken or exchanged no one knows where; and, strangely enough, on the top of an old silk hat, half-knocked in, one of these negro kings, says a traveller, held with a sort of grotesque majesty an old torn Umbrella of which the whalebone appeared to be half-broken. This Robert Macaire of the desert, does he not recall that pleasant equatorial fantasy of the /Parnassiculet Contemporain/, a sonnet terminating with the verses:--

What then is strange about this desert's pride, Who in the desert without thee had died? Bétani answered, "Child of open mien,

Where on board ship he comes, I tell you that For full court-dress, this half-blood wears a hat Of an old shako, trimmed with tufts of green!"

This fantasy might serve as a theme for a dissertation on the subject, "Whither do worn-out things go?--what becomes of the old umbrellas?" It would be a ballad full of colour for a Villon of the present time.

To return to France, many writers, romancists or dramatic authors, having greater care of the splendour of the /mise-en-scène/ than of absolute historic truth, have presented us with some hunting parties of the time of Henri II. and Henri III., in which the noble huntresses followed the deer on horses magnificently harnessed, holding in their hands hexagonal Sunshades fringed with gold and enriched with pearls.

We found truly a mention of the Parasol in the /Description of the Isle of the Hermaphrodites/; but it was then very rare in France, and what is more, very heavy, and handled with such ceremonies that a strong lackey must have had considerable difficulty in holding it up. From this to place light Sunshades of silk between the dainty fingers of "fair and gentle dames" of that time, especially for a hunt through the woods, there is, it seems to us, a departure which good sense alone, not to mention historic science, is quite enough to point out.

The Parasol was still very little known in France, even in the second half of the sixteenth century. It is fairly certain that, like the /Fan/, and other objects so much in favour with Catherine de Medici, it was brought into France out of Italy. Henri Estienne, in his /Dialogues of the new French Language Italianised/, 1578, makes one of his interlocutors called Celtophile say: " . . . . and /à propos/ of pavilion, have you ever seen what some of the lords in Spain or Italy carry or cause to be carried about in the country, to defend themselves, not so much from the flies, as from the sun? It is supported by a stick, and so made that being folded up and occupying very little space, it can when necessary be opened immediately and stretched out in a circle so as to cover three or four persons." And Philausone answers: "I have never seen one; but I have heard talk of them often; and if our ladies were to see them carrying these things, they would perhaps tax them with too great delicacy."

In Italy it is little probable that since the Romans the inhabitants of the higher classes have ever unlearned the pleasant use of Parasols. The majority of travellers notice them in all epochs, and in the /Italian Mysteries/, played in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it is nearly certain that at the moment of their naïve representation of the Deluge, the Deity appeared on the stage with an Umbrella in his hand.

In the /Journal and Voyage of Montaigne/ in Italy, the good philosopher, who teaches us so few matters beyond his own personal sufferings, deigns, nevertheless, to aver that the supreme good taste of the women of Lucca was to have incessantly a Parasol in their hands.

"No season," says also elsewhere this charming epicurean essayist, "is so much my enemy as the sharp heat of sunshine, for the /Sunshades/, which are used in Italy since the time of the ancient Romans, charge the arms more than they discharge from the head."

So, too, Thomas Coryat, an English tourist of that time, in his /Crudities/ (1611), speaks of the Italian Parasols, after having noticed the presence of Fans in the towns through which he had travelled: "Many Italians," he says, "do carry other fine things of a far greater price, that will cost at the least a ducat (about seven francs), which they commonly call in the Italian tongue /Umbrellæs/, that is, things that minister shadow unto them for shelter against the scorching heat of the sun. These are made of leather, something answerable to the form of a little canopy, and hooped in the inside with divers little wooden hoops, that extend the /Umbrella/ in a pretty large compass. 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 heat of the sun from the upper parts of their body."

Fabri, in his useful and remarkable work, /Diversarum Nationum Ornatus/ (additio) confirms this fact from 1593, in taking care to represent a noble Italian, travelling on horseback with a Parasol in his hand: "/Nobilis Italus ruri ambulans tempore æstatis/."

What variety this simple detail, more propagated or rather better vulgarised among our romancists, would have thrown into the great romances of adventure! We should have seen the protecting Sunshade marking from a distance, by its colour and elevated shape, the presence of the rich traveller to be robbed, in the mountains of Tuscany, while the brigands of the time kept their watch in the folds of the rocks; then, too, we should surely have witnessed, in passionate recitals of heroic combats, the buckler Parasol, already full of holes, torn into shreds, yet still serving to parry victoriously the blows of the ferocious cut-throats and cloak-snatchers.

And how many sonorous and unforeseen titles are there of which we have been deprived by this fact of our ignorance: /The Knights of the Sunshade/--/The Heroic Parasol/--/The State Courier/, or /the Sunshade Recovered/! . . . . and who can say how many more!

The Arsenal, the old Hotel de Sully, preserved for a long time one of those Parasols, which librarians named the /Pepin/ (seed-fruit) /of Henri IV./ It was very big, and entirely covered with blue silk, with long and distinctly precious flowers of the golden lily scattered over it. This Parasol, ministerial or royal, is doubtless lost, and we speak of it only after the description which the learned bibliophile Jacob has given us.

Daniel Defoe, who published his /Robinson Crusoe/ in 1719, was one of the first to mention to any extent the Parasol in England. Before him, as we shall see farther on, it had been named only very summarily in literary works. So firmly fixed in our imaginations as men, the children of yesterday, is the great Umbrella of Crusoe, and his dreadful alarm on seeing the print of a man's foot on the shore, as well as his walks with his dog and /Friday/ the good Caribbee; it presents itself, moreover, so clearly in our first literary remembrances, that we will reproduce the passage of the journal where it is mentioned:

"After this," says Crusoe, "I spent a deal of time and pains to make me an Umbrella. I was indeed in great want of one, and had a great mind to make one. I had seen them made in the Brazils, where they are very useful in the great heats which are there; and I felt the heats every jot as great here, and greater too...; besides, as I was obliged to be much abroad, it was a most useful thing to me, as well for the rains as the heats. I took a world of pains at it, and was a great while before I could make anything likely to hold; nay, after I thought I had hit the way, I spoiled two or three before I made one to my mind; but at last I made one that answered indifferently well; the main difficulty, I found, was to make it to let down: I could make it to spread, but if it did not let down too, and draw in, it would not be portable for me any way, but just over my head, which would not do. However, at last, as I said, I made one to answer; I covered it with skins, the hair upward, so that it cast off the rain like a pent-house, and kept off the sun so effectually, that I could walk out in the hottest of the weather, with greater advantage than I could before in the coolest; and when I had no need of it, I could close it and carry it under my arm."

And this Parasol, for a century and a half, has been popularised by the engraver, with its dome of hair and rude manufacture; and so all the poor little prisoners at school invoke it, and dream often that they carry it in some desert isle, for it represents to their eyes a life of open air and liberty.

* * * * *

Before Daniel Defoe, Ben Jonson had already mentioned the Parasol in England in a comedy played in 1616; and Drayton, sending some doves to his mistress in 1620--a delicious lover's fancy--formulated in his passioned verses the following desire: "/May they, these white turtle doves I send you, shelter you like Parasols under their wings in every sort of weather./"

In the relation of his /Voyage in France/ in 1675, Locke, speaking of Sunshades, says: "These are little articles and very light, which women use here, to defend themselves from the sun, and they seem to us very convenient." Afterwards the English ladies desired to possess these pretty Parasols, although, by reason of their climate, such things could hardly be of any use to them. It was not, however, till the eighteenth century that a London manufacturer bethought himself of inventing the Sunshade-Fan, compared with which it appears the French folding /marquises/ were as nothing. This ingenious fabricator made a considerable fortune; but if we are to believe the /Improvisateur François/, his invention was rapidly imitated and much improved in Paris. Why has it not been preserved to our own days?

But let us linger in this seventeenth century, and remain awhile in France, where the Parasol was not in use, save at court among the great ladies. Men never used it to shelter themselves from the rain--the cloak and sword were still alone in fashion.

Ménage tells us in his /Ménagiana/, that being with M. de Beautru, about 1685, in the midst of a pouring rain at the door of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, up came a Gascon gentleman, without a cloak, and nearly wet through; the Gascon, seeing himself stared at, cried out, "I would lay a wager now my people have forgotten to give me my cloak." To which M. de Beautru quickly replied, "I go halves with you."

The silk Sunshade, however, properly so called, appeared in the hands of women of quality, at the promenade, on the race-course, or in the vast alleys of the royal park of Versailles, towards the middle of the reign of Louis XIV. The Umbrella of that time was an instrument astonishingly heavy and very coarse in appearance, which it seemed almost ridiculous to hold in the hand. In 1622 it was in some measure a novelty in Paris, since in the /Questions Tabariniques/, cited by that useful author, the late M. Édouard Fournier, in /The Old and the New/, we read these lines about the famous felt hat of Tabarin:--

"It was from this hat that the invention of Parasols was drawn, which are now so common in France that they are no longer called Parasols, but /Parapluyes/ (Umbrellas) and /Garde-Collet/ (collar guards), for they are used as much in winter against the rain as in summer against the sun."

The most ancient engraving or /documentary/ image of French manners in which we see a Parasol is dated 1620. It is the frontispiece of a Collection of Saint Igny, /The French Nobility at Church/.

Parasols, however, were still very little used in the seventeenth century; the /Précieuses/ who, instead of saying "It rains," cried out, "/The third element falls!/" would never have missed finding some amiable qualificative to designate this necessary article invented against Phœbus and Saint Swithin. But Saumaise reveals to us nought on this subject, and one would be almost tempted to believe that the /Philamintes/ and /Calpurnies/ attached no importance to this "rustic and movable Pavilion." What, however, is clearly shown by the ancient prints is the employment of the Parasol in the form of a small round canopy which ladies of quality had borne by their valets when walking in the primly arranged gardens of their lordly residences, whilst the gentlemen marched before, wrapt in their cloaks, with the felt hat inclined over one eye.

Parasols were then of so coarse a form, and their weight made them so difficult to be carried, that they could not be easily utilised by ordinary people; they are never found in any of those very curious engravings which give a confused idea of the rumblings and mobs of the streets under Louis XIV. Boileau and François Colletet have not mentioned them amidst the /Obstacles and Bustle of Paris/; and the /Cries of the Town/ which have come down to us do not indicate that in the seventeenth century any man with "/'Brella-a-a-a-s to sell!/" had contributed his mournful melopæa to the lagging cries of the street.

That is easily understood. We see that a Parasol, in the middle of the grand century, weighed 1600 grammes, that its whalebones had a length of 80 centimetres, that its handle was of heavy oak, and that its massive carcass was covered with oilcloth, with barracan, or with coloured grogram. The whole was held by a copper ring fixed at the extremity of the whalebones; it was the labour of a porter to preserve oneself, with an instrument like this, from the pelting shower! Better still: often these Parasols were made of straw, and, if we believe the /Diary and Correspondence of Evelyn/, about 1650, they affected in some degree the form of metal dish-covers.

However, it is something very like a Sunshade which we find about 1688 in the hands of a woman of quality, dressed in a summer habit /à la Grecque/, of which N. Arnoult has preserved faithfully for us the pleasing outline, in a pretty design made common by engravings. This Parasol has the appearance of a mushroom, well developed and slightly flattened at its borders; the red velvet which covers it is divided into ribs or rays, by light girdles of gold, and the handle, very curiously worked, is like that of a distaff, with swellings and grooves executed by the turner. Altogether, this coquette's Sunshade is very graceful, and of great richness.

In the most varied literary works of the seventeenth century, memoirs, romances, varieties, dissertations, poems, enigmas, carols, and songs, there is not a word of allusion to the Parasol, there is an entire penury of anecdote, nothing whatever on the subject. It is useless to torture your understanding, to look through a miserable needle's eye, at the /Letters/ of Madame de Sévigné, the gossip of Tallemant, the /Conversations/ of Mademoiselle de Scudéry, the /Anecdotes/ of Ménage, the poetical collections, the different /Chats/, the /Medleys/--it is but a library overturned to no purpose, a headache gained without the slightest profit.

In a MS. collection, written about 1676, which relates the memoirs of Nicolas Barillon, a comedian, this phrase alone attracts our attention: "The days being very hot, the lady carried either a mask or a Parasol of the most precious leather."

From this mask or Parasol of precious leather no conclusion can be drawn better than that of the Dictionaries of the Anti-Academician, Antoine Furetière, or of the learned Richelet, where we find a résumé of the ideas of the time. Here, then, is the definition of the first:--

/Parasol/, s. m., a small portable piece of furniture, or round covering, carried in the hand, to defend the head from the great heats of the sun; it is made of a circle of leather, of taffety, of oilcloth, &c. It is suspended to the end of a stick; it is folded or extended by means of some ribs of whalebone which sustain it. It serves also to defend one from the rain, and then it is called by some /parapluie/ (umbrella).