Umbrella Whims

HAVE you ever noticed the difference between a New England rolled umbrella and one done up in New York? There is a vital significance in the general attitude toward the umbrella in these two sections of the country. Like many other things of inimitable lines, umbrellas are handed down in New England. Tinged with a rich amber color, large, strongly jointed, of the finest steel ribs, of hickory staff, and built of imperishable cotton, they are in daily use among the first families of the land. They adorn stately colonial halls, neat closets, of Massachusetts neatness, and are sometimes put away at night with the silver.

They are seldom used when there is not a drenching downpour. Cloudiness and light rains are not considered reasons for employing the aid of an umbrella — snow and hail, never. It is not a rare thing in New England towns to see citizens in firm and thick clothing, proceeding about their business with umbrella in hand, but with its ribs in vertical position, flapping unhappily, with the wrong end to the dripping skies. You quite frequently see it.

I have seen umbrellas used as weapons against, burglars, tramps, mice, and dogs. They are used, too, as aids in locating lost articles, which have rolled under furniture too antique to be moved. They are converted into window openers-and-shutters, into props of various kinds, shields from the public gaze and from the glare of the sun, and into parachutes, by youngsters who are impelled by some strange force to jump from haylofts and break their legs. They are often converted into common carriers. I have frequently seen an infinitely superior person dip down into her umbrella for a handkerchief or pocket book.

The umbrella, which in its origin was a sunshade or movable canopy, has always been regarded in the Far East as a privilege of high rank, and is even now used in ceremonial processions. In a northern New England town, at four or half-past, the front doors of every other house on a very beautiful elmshaded street open almost simultaneously, and prim ladies issue forth, umbrella in hand, to make their afternoon calls. It all breathes high ceremony, but without color and without sound.

I suppose the umbrella has been the cause of murder in all degrees, the direct stimulus to larceny, grand and petit, a breaker of friendships, and an all-round ready tool of the Devil. It incites fine, honest men and women of unquestioned integrity to the act of stealing: you yourself have observed this fact, and perhaps have some personal knowledge of the twist that a piece of silk or gloria stretched on ribs of steel can give to the most unbudgeable conscience. It is extraordinary to meet one of your best friends on a street car, possessed of an umbrella with a rather elaborate handle, in which initials are deeply cut. Neither the ornate staff (which sometimes happens to end in an alligator’s head or a bull dog or a rose), nor the initials, match up with your friend’s character or name; and he will conduct the conversation from the North Station to Brookline, oblivious to the fact that he is a thief caught with the goods on. I repeat: it is extraordinary that the ‘rugged honesty of New England’ has been given a death-blow by the umbrella. If you call his attention to the thing, no blush of shame appears, but he will casually remark how very fortunate he was to have found an umbrella in the reception-room of Parker’s, with no one sitting by it.

The umbrella is now recognized as a means of analyzing character — it is a key to the more elementary and basic things. Do you prefer a tall or a short umbrella? a silk or a cotton one? a steel or a wooden staff? a Straight, curved, or right-angled handle? Silver, gold, or plain, ungarnished and unvarnished wood? Do you prefer gargoyles, birds of paradise with glass eyes, or parrots, to grasping a knot of hickory? Docs it have to be of the folding variety? Answers to these and similar questions give simple data concerning temperament, habit, and taste; and they can be put by almost anybody into proper psychological form. Take the last question — if the umbrella does have to be a folding one, it would indicate vision; a decided interest in the relation of weather to clothes and, therefore, economy; an aversion to traveling with apparently unnecessary burdens, and, therefore, sensitiveness; it would also indicate a love of labor-saving devices, therefore laziness, or merely progressiveness— this would have to be decided in the final summing-up. I would say that the simplicity of classifying users of umbrellas might develop into a fascinating and popular indoor sport. Try it.

P. S. — Word has just come that the umbrella has been used in New York as a carrier of bombs. Two Germans were recently arrested for trying to blow up the outfit of J. P. Morgan & Co. The bomb was located by the police in an umbrella, which the aforesaid Germans were carrying aboard the Third Avenue Elevated.

P. S. No. 2 — A curious and really quite extraordinary comment on the baffling qualities of the umbrella has come to my attention through Ida Tarbell. In writing her experiences on a Chautauqua circuit, she says: ‘I informed an audience once that we were a nation of one hundred thousand people; and a gentleman on the front seat took me to task. I did not tell him that the reason I had made the slip was that directly in front of me was a little mother trying to keep quiet an obstreperous child of two and a half or three years, by raising and lowering as rapidly as she could a big blue cotton umbrella.’