Rome in the age of Augustus, two slaves were obligatory: the fan-bearer (flabellifera) and the follower (pedis sequa). The latter carried an elegant Parasol of linen stretched over light rods at the extremity of a very long reed, so that, at the least sign of her mistress, she might direct over her the shadow of this movable defence.

The Roman Umbrella seems to have been nothing but a simple morsel of leather, according to these verses, which Martial wrote by way of advice:

This “leather cloth” was assuredly an Umbrella, which, except perhaps in weight, need have envied nothing of our own.

At Rome, as at Athens, the Sunshade appears to have hidden people from the looks of the gods, for, according to Montfauçon, even the Triclinia were covered with a sort of Sunshade, that folk might deliver themselves more mysteriously to orgies of every kind and to the pleasures of Venus.

The material used in the manufacture of Sunshades was originally, according to Pliny, leaves of palm divided into two, or the tresses of the osier; afterwards they were made in silk, in purple, in Eastern stuffs, in gold, in silver; they were adorned with Indian ivory; they were starred with trinkets and jewels. One author tells us even of Sunshades made out of women’s hair—the hair of women so arranged as to supply the place of a Sunshade.

Singular headdress or singular Parasol!

Juvenal speaks of a green Sunshade sent with some yellow amber to a friend to celebrate her birthday and the return of spring.

And with regard to this green Sunshade, apropos of the viridem, all the commentators enter into the field, and make a deafening noise to explain that the epithet had no reference to the colour of the Sunshade, but to the spring.

Let us, if you please, leave Rome, without entering into these idle dissertations.

It would be difficult for us to find in the Middle Ages numerous manifestations of the Sunshade in private life; it was evidently adopted in the ceremonies of the Christian Church and in the royal entrées; but it was especially the privilege of the great, and never appeared save on solemn days in the processions, as later on the dais, reserved for kings and ecclesiastical nobles.

At Venice the Doge had already his celebrated Sunshade in 1176. The Pope Alexander III. had accorded to the Venetian chiefs the right to carry the Sunshade in the processions. Under the reign of the Doge Giovanni Dandolo (1288) it was ordered that the pretty golden statuette of the Annunciation should be added, which is seen represented at the top of the Sunshade of the Venetian dogate.

One can get some idea of this marvellous Sunshade, all of gold brocade, and of a pompous and original shape, by looking at most of the prints of the time, and particularly at the celebrated engraving of the Procession of the Doge, as well as at the pictures of Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, Tiepolo, and the greater number of the charming Venetian painters of the eighteenth century.

It seems evident that the Roman Gauls knew the use of the Parasol, but it would not be easy to demonstrate its existence logically in the martial and Gothic epochs. One can scarcely imagine these men of arms, these gentle pages, and these noble damsels, with their lofty head-gear and long dress, defended by a frail silken encas (in case). They feared not then assuredly either sun or rain; they dreamed of nought but batailloles (little battles), according to the language of that day; everything was done in honour of the ladies, after the laws of the good King René, and the ladies would certainly never have wished at the hour of the glorious tournaments to shelter themselves at the approaches of the lists, against a sun which sparkled on the breastplate of their brave knights with as much brightness as the hope which shone in their eyes.

Let us come now to China, to find there Parasols and Umbrellas in great honour, since the beginning of the dynasty Tchéou (eleventh century before Christ).

“The Umbrellas of that time,” says M. Natalis Rondot, “resembled ours; the mounting was composed of twenty-eight curved branches, and covered with silken stuff. The Parasols were of feathers.

“After the Thong-ya, it is only under the first Wei (A.D. 220-264) that gentlemen began the use of Parasols; these Parasols were most frequently made of little rods of bamboo and oiled paper; pedestrians never made use of them before the second Wei (386-554). Parasols figure ordinarily in processions and funerals since the seventh century. Thus, in 648, at the time of the inauguration of the Convent of the Grand Beneficence, at Si-ngan-Fou, one counted—says the historian of the Life of Hiouen thsang—only in the procession three hundred Parasols of precious stuffs. The Parasol in China, as in India, has always been a sign of elevated rank, although it has not been exclusively used by emperors and mandarins. Formerly, it seems, four-and-twenty Parasols were carried before the Emperor when his Majesty went to the chase.

“A Chinese of a rank at all elevated, such as a mandarin, a bonze, or a priest, never goes out without a Parasol,” according to M. Marie Cazal, a Sunshade manufacturer, who, about the year 1844, wrote a small Essay on the Umbrella, the Walking-stick, and their Manufacture.—‘Every Chinese of a superior order is followed by his slave, who carries his Parasol extended over him.’

“The Umbrella in China is destined to the same use as the Parasol, says M. Cazal: it belongs to all. Never, when the weather is the least degree doubtful, does a Chinese go out of doors without his Umbrella. Even horses are sheltered, as well as elephants, by Parasols or Umbrellas fastened to branches of bamboo. Their drivers take very good care not to illtreat them; imbued as they are, like every good Chinaman, with the doctrines of metempsychosis, they fear to torture the soul of their father or their grandfather, reduced, in order to expiate his faults, to animate the body of these quadrupeds.”

The Umbrellas and Parasols which are most common in China resemble very much those which are imported into Europe; they are made entirely of stalks of bamboo, disposed with enormous art, and covered with oiled, tarred, or lacquered paper. Some are coloured, and have printed on them religious allegories or sentences of Confucius.