How an UMBRELLA helped win Waterloo
We tend to take them for granted, leaving them on trains and buses at almost every opportunity. But in researching my new book, The Umbrella Unfurled, I have discovered there’s rather more to the humble umbrella than meets the eye.
The word umbrella means simply ‘little shade’.
Parasols, offering protection from the sun, date back to ancient Egypt, Persia, India, China and Greece. Wall paintings of around 1200 BC from tombs in Thebes (Luxor) show ladies driving in elegant, two-horse chariots with fringed sunshades.
In mosaics of about AD 330 in the Roman villa at Piazza Amerina in Sicily, a woman holding a tiny parasol pirouettes flirtatiously. She is notable for another reason: this is the first recorded sighting of the bikini – it would be another 1,600 years before the bikini gained wider acceptance.
Neville Chamberlain took his umbrella to a meeting with Adolf Hitler; A woman with a small parasol in a Roman mosaic
In China, a mandarin’s rank could be discerned from whether his parasol had one, two or three tiers. The highest-ranking were given parasols of black lo (a form of Chinese gauze) with red silk linings and three tiers. Ordinary people had to carry umbrellas of oiled paper.
Despite our weather, the umbrella was slow to win acceptance in Britain. In A Tale Of The Tub of 1704, Jonathan Swift refers to ‘a large skin of parchment’ serving as an ‘umbrella in rainy weather’.
Its fortunes began to change after Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) became the world’s first bestseller. In it, Crusoe reports: ‘I spent a great deal of time and pains to make an umbrella… so that it cast off the rain like a pent-house, and kept off the sun so effectually… and when I had no need of it could close it, and carry it under my arm’.
Returning from abroad, Englishman Jonas Hanway began carrying an umbrella with him around London whenever rain threatened. At first he was widely mocked, but his determined brolly-carrying made the umbrella an accepted part of a gentleman’s get-up. There is a memorial to him in Westminster Abbey.
Umbrella-wielding Major Harry Carlyle in A Bridge Too Far was based on Major Digby Tatham-Warter
The umbrella soon became widespread. In 1810 Universal Magazine reported that the umbrella ‘is now made of such cheap material that it is the hands of every class.’ The cheaper ones, cumbersome and made of linens or cottons, were called gamps, after Mrs Gamp in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit.
Dandies differed over umbrellas. In his 1830 Treatise On Elegant Living, Honoré de Balzac said the umbrella was ‘a bastard born of the walking stick and the cabriolet’.
The umbrella’s top end is called the ferrule or finial.
In the 19th century they were particularly popular among army officers. During the 1813 siege of Bayonne, Grenadier Guards raised their brollies against the rain – only to be chastised by their commander, the Duke of Wellington. The Duke’s own umbrella was of oiled cloth and concealed a swordstick.
At the 1815 battle of Waterloo, French commander Marshal Soult dubbed the British officers, ‘les efféminés avec leurs parapluies’ (effeminates with their umbrellas). These effeminates – with their dry uniforms – went on to defeat him.
130 years on, an umbrella was carried by Major Digby Tatham-Warter who used it to fend off the rain during the ferocious battle of Arnhem.
The young Queen Victoria carried one when riding in an open carriage. After an assassination attempt, she experimented with one lined with chain mail. In 2011, French President Nicolas Sarkozy tried something similar when he ordered a Kevlar-coated umbrella for his bodyguards.
By 1851, the Great Exhibition in London was showcasing umbrellas being made in Britain and France. 20 years later, William Sangster claimed that his firm had sold four million.
To emphasise his honesty and decency, Neville Chamberlain took his brolly to Munich in 1938 when he sought to appease Hitler. Hitler reportedly said afterwards, ‘If that silly old man comes interfering here again with his umbrella, I’ll kick him downstairs and jump on him’.
In one of the 20th century’s most famous photographs (taken in 1948 by Robert Capa), Pablo Picasso carries a parasol to shade his mistress, Françoise Gilot. Historically, this was a role performed by a slave.
Mary Poppins, of course, used hers to fly.
In London on 7 September 1978, a poison-tipped umbrella was used to assassinate Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov.
The Chinese city of Shangyu is the centre of modern umbrella making, with 1,000 factories dedicated to their manufacture.
The Umbrella Unfurled, by Nigel Rodgers, is published by Bene Factum, priced £9.99.
The word umbrella means simply ‘little shade’.
Parasols, offering protection from the sun, date back to ancient Egypt, Persia, India, China and Greece. Wall paintings of around 1200 BC from tombs in Thebes (Luxor) show ladies driving in elegant, two-horse chariots with fringed sunshades.
In mosaics of about AD 330 in the Roman villa at Piazza Amerina in Sicily, a woman holding a tiny parasol pirouettes flirtatiously. She is notable for another reason: this is the first recorded sighting of the bikini – it would be another 1,600 years before the bikini gained wider acceptance.
Neville Chamberlain took his umbrella to a meeting with Adolf Hitler; A woman with a small parasol in a Roman mosaic In China, a mandarin’s rank could be discerned from whether his parasol had one, two or three tiers. The highest-ranking were given parasols of black lo (a form of Chinese gauze) with red silk linings and three tiers. Ordinary people had to carry umbrellas of oiled paper.
Despite our weather, the umbrella was slow to win acceptance in Britain. In A Tale Of The Tub of 1704, Jonathan Swift refers to ‘a large skin of parchment’ serving as an ‘umbrella in rainy weather’.
Its fortunes began to change after Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) became the world’s first bestseller. In it, Crusoe reports: ‘I spent a great deal of time and pains to make an umbrella… so that it cast off the rain like a pent-house, and kept off the sun so effectually… and when I had no need of it could close it, and carry it under my arm’.
Returning from abroad, Englishman Jonas Hanway began carrying an umbrella with him around London whenever rain threatened. At first he was widely mocked, but his determined brolly-carrying made the umbrella an accepted part of a gentleman’s get-up. There is a memorial to him in Westminster Abbey.
Umbrella-wielding Major Harry Carlyle in A Bridge Too Far was based on Major Digby Tatham-WarterThe umbrella soon became widespread. In 1810 Universal Magazine reported that the umbrella ‘is now made of such cheap material that it is the hands of every class.’ The cheaper ones, cumbersome and made of linens or cottons, were called gamps, after Mrs Gamp in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit.
Dandies differed over umbrellas. In his 1830 Treatise On Elegant Living, Honoré de Balzac said the umbrella was ‘a bastard born of the walking stick and the cabriolet’.
The umbrella’s top end is called the ferrule or finial.
In the 19th century they were particularly popular among army officers. During the 1813 siege of Bayonne, Grenadier Guards raised their brollies against the rain – only to be chastised by their commander, the Duke of Wellington. The Duke’s own umbrella was of oiled cloth and concealed a swordstick.
At the 1815 battle of Waterloo, French commander Marshal Soult dubbed the British officers, ‘les efféminés avec leurs parapluies’ (effeminates with their umbrellas). These effeminates – with their dry uniforms – went on to defeat him.
130 years on, an umbrella was carried by Major Digby Tatham-Warter who used it to fend off the rain during the ferocious battle of Arnhem.
The young Queen Victoria carried one when riding in an open carriage. After an assassination attempt, she experimented with one lined with chain mail. In 2011, French President Nicolas Sarkozy tried something similar when he ordered a Kevlar-coated umbrella for his bodyguards.
By 1851, the Great Exhibition in London was showcasing umbrellas being made in Britain and France. 20 years later, William Sangster claimed that his firm had sold four million.
To emphasise his honesty and decency, Neville Chamberlain took his brolly to Munich in 1938 when he sought to appease Hitler. Hitler reportedly said afterwards, ‘If that silly old man comes interfering here again with his umbrella, I’ll kick him downstairs and jump on him’.
In one of the 20th century’s most famous photographs (taken in 1948 by Robert Capa), Pablo Picasso carries a parasol to shade his mistress, Françoise Gilot. Historically, this was a role performed by a slave.
Mary Poppins, of course, used hers to fly.
In London on 7 September 1978, a poison-tipped umbrella was used to assassinate Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov.
The Chinese city of Shangyu is the centre of modern umbrella making, with 1,000 factories dedicated to their manufacture.
The Umbrella Unfurled, by Nigel Rodgers, is published by Bene Factum, priced £9.99.