Part 3

The definition of Richelet is almost the same. He adds, however, these words: "Only women carry Parasols, and they only in spring, summer, and autumn." Richelet, it is true, borders upon the eighteenth century, since he died but a little before the end of the reign of Louis the Great. This brings us to the aurora of the Regency, and a renaissance then occurs in feminine coquetry. We are now about to find our Sunshade in gallant parties, supported by little turbaned negroes; already we see it decorated with fringes of gold and trimmings of silk, enhanced with plumes of feathers, mounted on Indian bamboos, covered with changing silks, embellished in a thousand and one ways, worthy, in a word, of casting a discreet shade on those rosy and delicate faces which Pater, Vanloo, Lancret, La Rosalba, and Latour did their best to reproduce in luminous paintings or fresh pastels, those enchanting pictures where the coquetry of the past smiles still.

Like all objects of adornment in the hands of women, the Sunshade in the last century became, like the Fan, almost a light and graceful plaything, serving to punctuate an expression, to round a gesture, to arm an attitude of charming reverie, in which, guided by pretty indolent fingers, its point traces vague designs upon the sand. Before the burning breath of amorous declarations, often the frail Sunshade escapes from the hands of a beauty, in sign of armistice, and as an avowal of abandonment.

Be it open, and daintily held over powdered hair, or shut, and brushing the brocaded petticoat, it is always the "balancing pole of the Graces." It gives a value to listlessness on the rustic seat of the parks, under the vaulted roofs of grottoes, and it adds a piquancy to the frowardness of the feminine chatterers, who defend themselves by making fun of libertine attacks. In a word, in the light amorous allegories of the century, it is worthy to appear in those love-duets of /Leanders/ and /Isabellas/, which Watteau often composed with so rare an art of refinement.

From the middle of the last century the Umbrella of taffety became the fashion at Paris. Caraccioli, in his /Picturesque and Sententious Dictionary/, gives us evidence of this: "It has long been the custom," he says, "not to go out save with one's Umbrella, and to trouble oneself by carrying it under one's arm. Those who wish not to be confounded with the vulgar, prefer to run the risk of getting wet to being regarded as people who walk on foot, for the Umbrella is the sign of having no carriage."

The Parasols were made by the purse-makers, and when, by an edict of August 1776, the manufacturers of gloves, purses, and girdles were united in one community, an article thus conceived may be read in their statutes: "They alone also still have the right to make and manufacture all sorts of Umbrellas and Parasols, in whalebone and in copper, folding and non-folding, to garnish them atop with stuffs of silk and linen, to make Umbrellas of oilcloth, and Parasols adorned and ornamented in all sorts of fashions." According to the /Journal of a Citizen/, published at the Hague in 1754, the price of folding Parasols was then from 15 to 22 livres a piece, and the Parasol for the country from 9 to 14 livres.

We must, however, believe that the common folk of Paris did not yet dare to purchase Parasols, since Bachaumont, in the /Secret Memoirs/, dated 6th September 1769, records the following enterprise:--

"A company has lately formed an establishment worthy of the town of Sybaris. It has obtained an exclusive privilege to have Parasols, and to furnish them to such as fear being incommoded by the sun during the crossing of the Pont-Neuf. There are to be offices at each extremity of the bridge, where the voluptuous dandies who are unwilling to spoil their complexion, can obtain this useful machine; they will return it at the office on the other side, so alternately, at the price of two farthings for each person. This project has already been put in execution. It is announced that if this invention succeeds, there is authority to establish like offices in other places in Paris, where skulls might be affected, such as the Place Louis XV., &c. It is probable that these profound speculators will obtain the exclusive privilege of Umbrellas."

Did this enterprise succeed? We cannot tell. All that is certain is, that it was tried many times in our own epoch by innovators, who had no idea that even the letting out of Parasols was not absolutely new under the sun.

* * * * *

A great progress was realised in the eighteenth century in the manufacture of Sunshades for ladies. The small ordinary Parasols became exceedingly light, and charmingly decorated. In a picture of Bonaventure Delord, in the Louvre, we find the exact type of these coquettish Sunshades of the last century. One, which is held by a laughing beauty in the midst of a picnic, is mounted on a long stem, and the top, made of yellow buckskin, appears to have four sides; a cap of turned copper, and of a very pretty shape, profiles its tiny Chinese gable on the grass.

So, too, may be seen in the collection of Madame la Baronne Gustave de Rothschild, a very curious Sunshade which belonged to Madame de Pompadour. It is of blue silk superbly decorated with wonderful Chinese miniatures in mica, and ornaments in paper very finely cut and affixed to the background. Fortified probably with such a Sunshade as this, the pretty favourite, at the time of the rage for pastorals, which followed the appearance of Bouffier's story of /Aline/, betook herself to the shady walks of the Petit Trianon at Versailles, with her female friends, to see the white sheep milked, and to steep the carnation of her lips in the warm milk, of which the young Abbé De Bernis--who gathered so willingly madrigals and bouquets for Chloris--compared the whiteness to that of her peerless bosom.

Everywhere, in the pictures and engravings of the century we catch a glimpse of these same light Sunshades or Umbrellas which approach so nearly those of the present day. We see the one or the other in the /Prints of Moreau the Younger intended to serve as a Companion to the History of Fashions and Customs in France/, in the /Crossing the River/, after Gamier, in public festivals, as well as amidst the hubbub of the crowds, which Moreau shows us in the /Great Court Carriages in/ 1782, as in the minor popular rejoicings, like /The Ascension of a Fire-balloon/, after the engravings of the period. The Sunshade introduces also a little touch of gaiety into the large pictures of Joseph Vernet; in his /View of Antibes/ and his /Port of Marseille/ the painter has placed in the hands of pretty promenaders adorable little pink Sunshades, through which the light seems to filtrate, in the silk's transparency. Later on, lastly, before the royal sitting of 23d June, 1789, the Umbrella plays its historic part in the Revolution, by protecting the gentlemen of the Third Estate, left at the door of the Assembly under a pelting rain, not very well disposed to receive the King's order, "Gentlemen, I command you to disperse yourselves at once!"

Strange! at a time when the Parasol was generally adopted in France, it was yet very little known in England and among the peoples of the North. At Venice even, where we have made our researches, the first person who used a Sunshade, about the middle of the eighteenth century, was Michel Morosini, "a senator of high rank," who, braving all prejudices, appeared one day in his gondola, bearing a small green Sunshade, unarched, of a quadrangular form, surmounted by a tiny copper spire, of very delicate workmanship. The fair ladies of Venice adopted this "indispensable" after this manifestation of the noble Michel Morosini, but the Sunshade, nevertheless, appeared not in all patrician hands in the gondolas of the Great Canal, and on the Piazza of Saint Mark, till about the year 1760.

In England, in the first half of the last century, the Parasol and the Umbrella were hardly ever used; however, in a passage of the /Tatler/, Swift alludes to one of them in 1760, when he describes for us a little sempstress, with her petticoats tucked up, and walking along in a great hurry, whilst the rain trickles down from the Umbrella:

The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oiled Umbrella's sides.

Again, there is at Woburn Abbey an admirable portrait, painted about 1730, of the Duchess of Bedford, followed by a little negro, who holds above her head a sumptuously decorated state Parasol.

It is right to say that during the first years of the last century people could not procure Umbrellas in London except in the coffee-houses, where they were placed in reserve to be let out to customers during heavy showers of rain. The first English citizen who really introduced absolutely and unconditionally the Umbrella to the nation was Jonas Hanway, the founder of the Magdalen Hospital. This audacious man--for audacious he must have been thus to brave the prejudices of a people the most prejudiced in the world--this rash person had the courage never to go out into the streets of London without his Umbrella from the year of our Lord 1750. Like the majority of innovators, he was scoffed at, reviled, derided, caricatured; he had to bear in his daily walks the quips and insults of the mob, the stones and jostlings of the vagabond boys; but he had also the honour of triumphing, and of seeing by degrees, after twenty years of perseverance, his example followed to such an extent that at the time of his death in 1786 he could declare with pride that, thanks to him, the Umbrella was for ever implanted in England, an imperishable institution.

To-day, our neighbours across the Channel talk of erecting a statue to Jonas Hanway, as a homage publicly paid to a philanthropist. It might be asked in what attitude this peaceable humanitarian is to be represented, whether the Parasol of bronze is to remain shut up in his right hand, or if it will be opened in all its amplitude over the head of its protector, thus become its /protégé/.

About the time when Jonas Hanway died, Roland de la Platière made, in his /Manufactures, Arts, and Trades/, this curious observation: "The use of Parasols is to such an extent established in Lyons, that not only all the women, but even the men, would not cross the street without their little Parasol in red, white, or some other colour, garnished with blonde lace, an article which, owing to its lightness, can be carried with ease."

At the approach of the Revolution, the Umbrella became popular, and served as a tent for the fishwomen and other feminine hucksters. Then first appeared the enormous Umbrella of red serge among the people of the markets, and the ordinary Umbrella in the hands of the "Sans-Jupons" (the unpetticoated). Amidst the enthusiasms and revolts of the streets the Umbrella was frantically waved by the hands of the women of the people, and when, on the 31st May 1793, Théroigne de Méricourt undertook her ill-starred defence of Brissot, in the midst of a multitude of old hags, who cried "Down with the Brissotins!" Umbrellas were lifted like so many improvised swords over the /Liégeoise/, smote her in the face, lashed her everywhere, scanning as it were with their strokes the odious cries of "/Ah! the Brissotine!/" and provoking in the unhappy revolutionary Amazon the madness of which she died so sadly at the Salpêtrière.

The Parasol of the Jacobins for a time made a show of severity, in opposition to the knotty sticks and coquettish Parasols of the Muscadins (dandies) and Incroyables (beaux); the Merveilleuses (feminine exquisites), on the other hand, hoisted vaporous Sunshades like their vestments of nymphs. Then it was that fashion gave their due to the rights even of this frail protector of the Graces; every kind of extravagance was allowed, every stuff accepted, however dazzling and however precious. In the public gardens of Paris, all the fashionable beauties displayed unusual luxury in the decoration of their Sunshades; there were tender greens, figured gold stuffs, flesh-coloured tints with scarlet fretworks, tender blues trimmed with silver, Indian cashmeres or tissues, the whole mounted on handles of affected roughness or of exquisitely delicate work. /Ma paole supême/, as the exquisite used to say, it must be seen to be believed. Nothing could be more coquettish than these Parasols, streaked, striped, pied, fretted, as the complement of a dress /à l'Omphale/, /à la Flore/, /à la Diane/, appearing in a swiftly driven carriage, above a jacket /à la Galatée/, or a tunic /au Lever de l'aurore/, amidst egrets, plumes, tufts of ribbons, and every kind of feminine adornment.

Towards the close of the eighteenth century, the Sunshade was always covered with the most fashionable tints and with stuff of the latest taste of the time. Parasols were to be seen dressed in /stifled sighs/, and garnished with /useless regrets/, others adorned with ribbons /aux soupirs de Vénus/ (Venus' sighs), whilst the fashion exacted by turns such colours as /coxcombs' bowels/, /Paris mud/, /Carmelite/, /flea's thigh/, /king's eye/, /queen's hair/, /goose dung/, /dauphin's dirt/, /opera flame/, /agitated nymph's thigh/, and other names which were the singular qualificatives of particular shades, the rage and infatuation of the hour.

The young priests carried a light violet or lilac Parasol, to remain in the tone of their general dress--perhaps by episcopal orders. In the same way, the Roman Cardinals are still followed in their walks by a deacon, carrying a red Parasol, which makes part--like the hat--of the ordinary luggage of the "Monsignori."

This word "luggage," which has just fallen from our pen, would seem to call the attention to the rôle of the Sunshade or the Umbrella in the Travels of the last century. Was the Parasol considered as indispensable luggage before going on any expedition? We cannot affirm this. The author of /A Journey from Paris to Saint-Cloud by Sea and by Land/ writes, before embarking at Pont-Royal: "I kept for my personal carriage only my repeater, my pocket-flask full of /sans pareille/ water, my gloves, my boots, a whip, my riding-coat, my pocket pistols, my fox-skin muff, my green taffety Umbrella, and my big varnished walking-stick." But here we have more of a pretty conceit of the eighteenth century, a sort of cotquean traveller, who encumbers himself with useless objects. We have consulted many /Almanacks serving as Guides for Travellers/, and containing "a detail of everything which is necessary to travel comfortably, usefully, and agreeably," from 1760 to 1765: nowhere, however, was the Umbrella prescribed, either for foot passengers or for those on horseback; on the contrary, the anonymous editor of those guides seems sometimes to laugh at the simplicity of the tourist from Paris to Saint-Cloud, and he adds that a traveller in good health ought to content himself with strong boots and a cloak of good cloth. Even a walking-stick, he says, often consoles the walker only in imagination.

The Umbrella-Walking-stick--who would believe it?--was, however, known from 1758, and very convenient Parasols were then made, of which the dimensions could be reduced so as to suit the pocket. A certain Reynard announced in 1761 Parasols "which fold on themselves triangularly, and become no thicker or more voluminous than a crush-hat." These Umbrellas were, it seems, very common about 1770: the stick was in two pieces, united by a screw, and the ribs were folded back several times.

But let us not abandon the chronological order in returning thus upon our own steps, after the example of a romance writer of 1840. We have scarcely caught a glimpse of the Sunshade in our passage through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, in the desultory speed of this free chat, in which our prose leaps as in a steeple-chase of charming designs. We have confounded occasionally the two denominations /Sunshade/ and /Umbrella/ in the more general word /Parasol/: but if we have travelled a little in every direction, we have not had the leisure to stop anywhere as a lounger or analyst. And here we are at the beginning of this century, at the Empire, but the nation is helmed, the sun of Austerlitz requires not a Sunshade; woman holds merely the second place in this hour in which France handles but the costly toys of glory, and if we find at all an Umbrella, it is in the field, with the general staff of the army, during some misty night, when it is used to shelter the commander-in-chief, who studies on his map the plan of battle of the morn.

The Sunshade shows more favourably in the hour of peace, during the Restoration. All the journals of fashion of the time give us curious and varied specimens of it in their steel engravings, hand-coloured, which show us, during those days of a lull, languid ladies in the midst of amusing decorations, in winter amidst snowy country scenes, in summer in a park of profound distances, on some rustic bridge, where the mistresses of the manors of that time allowed their romantic reveries slowly to wander. We can follow in the innumerable Monitors of elegance, which appeared from 1815 to 1830, from year to year, from season to season, the variations introduced into the decoration of the little ladies' Parasols. Look for a moment: here are Sunshades, covered with coloured crape, or damasked satin, with checkered silk, streaked, striped, or figured; others enriched with blonde or lace, embroidered with glass-trinkets, or garnished with marabou feathers, with gold and silver lace, or silk trimming; the fashionable shade is then very light or very deep, without intermediate tones: white, straw yellow, pink or myrtle-green, chestnut and black, purple-red, or indigo. But a hundred pages would not suffice us to catalogue these fashions of the Sunshade: let us pass onward.

The use of the Umbrella extends itself little by little through all classes; already in the slang of the people it is known under the names of the /Mauve/(?), the /Riflard/, the /Pépin/, the /Robinson/. Umbrella manufactories have, since the beginning of this century, propagated rapidly in France. Before 1815--this seems scarcely credible--Paris had no great manufactory of Parasols. But from 1808 to 1851 alone, we can reckon more than 103 patents for inventions and improvements relating to Umbrellas and Sunshades. Among the most extravagant patents, we must quote, after M. Cazal:--

(1.) A patent for invention of an Umbrella walking-stick with a field-glass;

(2.) A patent for invention of Umbrellas and Sunshades combined with walking-sticks, shutting up in a copper case, in the form of a telescope;

(3.) A patent for invention of an Umbrella walking-stick, containing diverse objects for writing or other purposes, and called /Universal Walking-stick/;

(4.) A patent for invention of methods of manufacturing Umbrellas and Sunshades, opening of themselves, by means of a mechanism placed inside the handle;

(5.) A patent for an Umbrella walking-stick, of which the sheath may be folded at pleasure, and carried in the pocket.

In spite of these genially grotesque inventions of Umbrella-Telescopes and of Parasol-Walking-sticks, we have always come back to the Umbrella simple, without mechanism, or to a light stick without any pretensions to defend us from the rain. There are so many complications in an object intended for many uses, that an educated mind will always refuse to adopt it.

But without speaking further of the technology of the Umbrella, we will relate an anecdote which ran through all the minor journals of the Restoration, terminating like an apologue. We shall adopt the form and style of the time in our narrative of this little historic story, which should be entitled /The Sunshade and the Riflard/.

One fair summer afternoon, the promenaders in the Parisian Champs Elysées might have seen, seated on a chair beside a pretty woman, whose interesting situation was plainly visible, a peaceable citizen making an inventory of all his pockets in their turn, without finding the purse from which he intended to draw the few halfpence which the chair-proprietress demanded.

The search is useless; it is impossible for him to pay;--the proprietress indignant, almost rude, threatening to make a disturbance, is only satisfied by the gentleman taking from the hands of his companion a Sunshade of green silk, with fringes, mounted on a reed, and a yellow glove, and giving them to the irascible lady, saying to her, "Well, madam, keep this Sunshade as a pledge, and give it to no one unless he offer you a Glove the fellow of this."

The pair departed, slowly arrived at the Place de la Révolution, then at the Boulevard de la Madeleine, when they were surprised by a violent shower; cabs were not to be had, the rain increased, they were forced to seek refuge underneath a carriage entrance. The peaceable citizen had already taken his companion to this shelter, when a "portier," with an otter-skin cap, came out, beseeching the lady and gentleman to accept the hospitality of his little room, where a leathern arm-chair and a stool were immediately, and with very good grace, offered to the invited pair. The rain still pouring down, the "portier," more and more affable, took from a corner of his small lodge a superb Umbrella of green serge, and offered it to his guests, declaring that all he had was at their service.

The gentleman, in much confusion, accepted with many thanks the Umbrella, and sheltering with it the interesting young woman, who had tucked up her dress in the prettiest style, they both ventured out into the midst of the deluge.

. . . . An hour afterwards, a footman in very stylish livery returned to the honest "portier" cobbler his precious Umbrella, with four notes for a thousand francs, from the Duke de Berry; next directing his course to the Champs Elysées, that same footman sought out the chair-proprietress, and said to her:

"You recognise this Glove, Madam? Here are four pence, which my lord, the Duke of Berry, has ordered me to remit to you, to redeem the Sunshade of the Princess Caroline."

Touching and eternal legend of virtue, not without a recompense!

Under Louis Philippe, the Umbrella or Riflard became /patriarchal/ and /constitutional/; it represented manners austere and citizenlike, and symbolised the domestic virtues of order and economy. It might be set in the royal trophy in saltier with the sceptre, and it became a part in some sort of the national militia, with the attributes of angling, culinary laurels, and other symbols of Philistine life.

All the independents of Paris, Bohemians, literary men with flowing manes, and artists chanted in the /Rapinéide/, all the hirsute folk of the years 1830 to 1850 rose in insurrection against the "Pépin" of the burgess. This word /Pépin/ was then an epigram against Louis Philippe, whose pear-shaped head was caricatured, and who never left his home without his Umbrella.