Pound-wise England : History of Umbrella Unfolds in English Shop

What has happened to the English umbrella--the tightly rolled brolly that a traditional English gentleman always carried when he wore his pin-striped suit and bowler hat on the streets of London?

Passing by the umbrellas in the window of what is probably London’s most famous umbrella shop, James Smith & Sons, 53 New Oxford St., WC 1, set me thinking. I entered to discover if the English gamp ( bumbershoot to an American) is still an item on the well-dressed gentleman’s list.

Inside I found an organized world from the 1830s, decorated with a collection of framed prints of old umbrellas. Long wood-and-glass counters had served society people as well as royalty since long before the Victorian period. Hundreds of umbrellas and walking sticks stood in tidy rows.

I was assured by assistant manager Jonathan Wardle that the delightful British tradition has survived modern casualness and that the shop is selling more than ever. But the clientele isn’t restricted to gentlemen any more.

“For women we have paisley and checkered materials, not dead formal, not black. Actually, all kinds buy,” Wardle said, “stage and film stars, businessmen with expensive suits. Carrying an umbrella is far more a matter of choice than in the old days when the job might have prescribed it. Umbrellas were necessary when men wore bowler hats, since bowlers don’t like the rain. But bowlers died out in the early 1960s.”

Another employee slid open a giant black umbrella that dwarfed him. It was what is referred to as a carriage umbrella, once used by the butler to help guests from their cars and now used by hotel doormen to see us to and from our taxis. It had a span of about five feet, more than half as big again as the average umbrella. The shaft was of thick wood with a hook at the end so that it could be hung when wet, since it is too large to be set out open to dry.

I learned that a prince had recently visited the shop to purchase a carriage umbrella for his household, but the discreet employee wouldn’t say which prince.

On display were umbrellas with handles of bamboo, rose quartz, ivory, silver, maple, buffalo horn . . . every material and shape imaginable. A duck’s head on one looked every bit as fanciful as the parrot on Mary Poppins’ parasol.

Smith & Sons is as much of an umbrella museum as it is a retail store, and I learned a great deal about the history of the contraption. For example, the shop lists Jonas Hanway as the first Englishman to carry an umbrella on a regular basis in 1780. Coachmen and chairmen saw the habit as a danger to their livelihood and threatened Hanway. But he continued undaunted, and his eccentricity soon became the custom.

Earlier, in 1611, Thomas Coryate wrote of the Italian umbrella:

Many of them doe carry other fine things . . . which they commonly call in the Italian tongue ‘umbrellaes’ . . . These are made of leather something answerable to the forme of a little caunopy and hooped in the inside with divers little wooden hoopes that extend the umbrella in a pretty large compasse. But Wardle attributes the umbrella’s origin to the Chinese.

“You can’t pinpoint, but they are seen in ancient Egyptian carvings. Certainly the Chinese knew about them in pre-Christian times, and the Persians. Then they were used largely as sunshades and for ceremonial purposes.”

In Eastern countries and in Africa, parasols and umbrellas were carried by servants or slaves, not only to keep off the sun but also to symbolize the wealth or power of their masters.

So it did not surprise me to hear that James Smith & Sons once made the staffs of office for the chiefs of African tribes. When a chief went into counsel, a standard bearer would go ahead of him, carrying the staff with a silver animal on top denoting the tribe.

A large section of the shop is taken up with walking sticks. People carry them for a variety of reasons: some because they have back trouble, some for protection.

Looking at an Irish thorn stick--black and tan, with thorny knobs up the stem and a round knob for a handle--I could well believe it would ward off any attacker. The shop used to carry swords disguised as canes, but stopped when they became illegal to manufacture or sell two years ago, Wardle said.

“The cane sword was most popular in the 18th Century when men stopped carrying swords,” he said. “But they’ve been around since medieval times.”

I was reminded of Patrick Macnee drawing his sword on the 1960s television show “The Avengers.”

“We made that sword,” Wardle said.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the shop’s best seller is anything but exotic. It is a sturdy, long-wearing umbrella with a Malacca handle and wood shaft made in 25- or 26-inch lengths to suit the height of the customer. It sells for $100 and up.

While admiring a sturdy black umbrella with a handle of maple and a nose of buffalo horn, I remembered an English friend arriving at a party in the 1960s, carrying something similar. He was furious that he had been caught in the rain unawares and had had to unfurl his precious brolly. “I’ll never get it right again,” he wailed.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson noted: “An Englishman walks in a pouring rain, swinging his closed umbrella like a walking-stick.”

My own choice? A Victorian lady’s umbrella with rosewood stem, handmade spring and silver handle. For about $240, it could be mine. A bit pricey for my travel budget, it was left behind. One day I shall return to James Smith & Sons and buy that umbrella. And I shall never unfurl it in the rain.