TOO CHEAP TO KEEP

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 115, 17 May 1930, Page 29

TOO CHEAP TO KEEP

UMBRELLA'S END

HOW.IT DEVELOPED

After some centuries of' service to the human race the ageless umbrella has at last presented in a now form a new material and at a price equal to that of a synthetic orange drink. The item, as it is technically called, is intended as a convenience in bad weather. Thus, though it has qualities that make it a novelty, its stated purposes remain primitive. For the umbrella appears, in the very earliest stage of its history, to have been taken out or left at home in response to some meteorological condition. According to Dr. Johnsonj who could speak for the eighteenth century, the umbrella was a screen used in hot countries to keep off the sun, and in others to Bear off the rain. His definition stood until the next lexicon was compiled, and with some slight modifications persists even in our latest dictionaries. But the umbrella has enormously improved its usefulness. The origin of the world umbrella has frequently been discussed by lexicographers, and they are a unit in saying that it has a common root with umbrage—a thing that is frequently taken. Umbrellas also used to be taken by our buccaneering ancestors, arid! in certain countries the custom.is still adhered to. No moral turpitude, it seems, was attached to the practice. A man who would steal his neighbour's umbrella was frequently a leader in the church who would shy at even coveting his neighbour's ox. Umbrellas are of great antiquity. Thoy wore known in Nineveh, whose kings, ibefore the lion andthe lizard started keeping watch, used to walk about under them. It made their arms tired to carry them, however, and they had slaves for that. Umbrellas were their exclusive property. The minute you saw a man walking down the street with a slave holding an umbrella over him you could say, "Well, there goes the king." USED IN EGYPT. The Egyptians used umbrellas and so did Ethiopian princesses, whose cpmploxions were notably better than those of their subjects, and from a very limited use in Asia and Africa, the parasol passed to Greece and Rome. Still it was a luxury and a distinction. As a skiadeion in Greece it was carried over the head of the god of wine who for reasons that are well understood was not able to carry it over his own. The umbrella was.'prominent enough in England in the earlydays of the seventeenth century: pa be mentioned by name in one of Ben Jonson's plays. And a century later Mr. Swift wrote about it in "The Tatler." But he did not help the umbrella. He said it was a thing to guard the maid from chilly showers, and thus ' contributed to a growing idea that the umbrella was not for men. ; Not only was the umbrella effeminate; it was positively Gallic. The Lieu-tenant-Colonel who was afterward Gen-, eral Wolfe wrote from Paris in 1752 to say that the umbrella looked like a workable idea. But when an English gentleman about that time appeared with one on the streets of London, he was hailed by the mob as a mincing Frenchman. And the next recorded adventurer who appeared twenty years later was recommended to get a coach. Indeed, it is said that some of the early British antagonism toward the portable shield against the rain—the sun of Old England being nothing.to bo shielded against—had its root in, the greed of chairmen and hackney r coachmen. They thought people >vho wished to go about should either ride, ij chairs or hackney-coaches, get wet. But from the moment the first umbrella was borrowed from Will's coffee house, the hackney-coachmen were doomed to fight a losing battle. HOW IT EVOLVED. The early specimens of the British umbrella, made of oiled silk, were exceedingly hard to open, or to close—a difficulty not remedied until the manufacturers stopped oiling the silk. Also the umbrella was originally formed and carried in a fashion the reverse of that which now obtains. It had a ring at the top, by which it was usually "carried on the finger when furled, and the wooden handle terminated in a rounded point to rest on the ground. Aa traffic conditions got worse, however, the ring was removed and a sharp point useful as a prodding iron was gubstiiuted. That made it almost necessary to place the handle at the other end, and the umbrella came to be what it is to-day.