Her train and her umbrella all her care."
--B. iv,

The Rev. G. C. Renouard, writing in 1850 to Notes and Queries, says:--

"In the hall of my father's house, at Stamford, in Lincolnshire,
there was, when I was a child, the wreck of a large green silk
umbrella, apparently of Chinese manufacture, brought by my father
from Scotland, somewhere between 1770 and 1780, and, as I have often
heard, the first umbrella seen at Stamford. I well remember, also, an
amusing description given by the late Mr. Warry, so many years consul
at Smyrna, of the astonishment and envy of his mother's neighbours,
at Sawbridgeworth, in Hants, where his father had a country house,
when he ran home and came back with an umbrella, which he had just
brought from Leghorn, to shelter them from a pelting shower which
detained them in the church porch, after the service, on one summer
Sunday. From Mr. Warry's age at the time he mentioned this, and other
circumstances in his history, I conjecture that it occurred not later
than 1775 or 1776. As Sawbridgeworth is so near London, it is evident
that even then umbrellas were at that time almost unknown."

Since this date, however, the Umbrella has come into general use,
and in consequence numerous improvements have been effected in it.
The transition to the present portable form is due, partly to the
substitution of silk and gingham for the heavy and troublesome oiled
silk, which admitted of the ribs and frames being made much lighter,
and also to the many ingenious mechanical improvements in the
framework, chiefly by French and English manufacturers, many of which
were patented, and to which we purpose presently to allude.