Come Rain or Shine: Vintage Photos of Umbrellas and Parasols

“Life has its sunshine and its rain, sir… its days and its nights… its peaks and its valleys…”

― Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts Guide to Life: Wit and Wisdom

 

 

Good morning. How’s the weather in your parts? “This may be not the most exciting of posts,” says Robert E. Jackson, “but it is what I had in my head to do and I think there are some fun things here.” He’s right. There are.

In this album, the collector shows us pictures of people posing with umbrellas and parasols. Some are cheeky; others suggestive. All are, as one caption puts it, ‘Just for fun.’

As ever, let’s enjoy the pictures and imagine the stories between…

 

 

‘Georgi Ivanov Markov, aged 49, died yesterday in a London hospital of septicaemia, a form of blood poisoning. Before he died he claimed that he had been stabbed with an umbrella by a stranger who bumped into him last Thursday evening in the Strand.’

– Report from 1978 on the death of Georgi Ivanov Markov, the Bulgarian playwright who defected to the West

 

 

I need an old—fashioned whore
at the door tonight
closing her green umbrella,
drops her green umbrella,
drops of moonlit rain on her
purse, saying “shit, man,
can’t you get better music
than that on your radio?
and turn up the heat…”
it’s always when a man’s swollen
with love and everything
else
that keeps raining
splattering
flooding
rain
good for the trees and the
grass and the air…
good for things that
live alone.

— Charles Bukowski, Prayer in Bad Weather

 

 

‘The drip is seen thudding against an umbrella improbably held by one of the penguins. As he emerges from the pack, we see that he wears a grimy coat. Then he flaps down his umbrella, revealing his face for the first time in glory. It is not a penguin but The Penguin.’

– Batman Returns 1991 – The Penguin’s father died of pneumonia in a rain storm and his “overprotective mother” made him carry around an umbrella with him everywhere. 

 

 

So Mary Poppins put on her white gloves and tucked her umbrella under her arm — not because it was raining but because it had such a beautiful handle that she couldn’t possibly leave it at home.”

– Mary Poppins by P.L.Travers

 

 

“Don’t worry about the bullets, I’ve got an umbrella”

– Major Allison Digby Tatham-Warter, famed for wearing a bowler hat and carrying an umbrella into battle.

 

 

“In the midst of that blizzard, that tempest of unknown faces, of awnings along the public way, of men changing clothes in the street, of women with open parasols sitting on trunks, and of mule after abandoned mule dying of hunger on the block by the hotel, the first of us came to be the last; we were the outsiders, the newcomers. After the war, when we came”

— Gabriel García Márquez, Leaf Storm

 

 

“His brain might be full of names, he might have even heard of Monet and Debussy; the trouble was that he could not string them together into a sentence, he could not make them “tell,” he could not quite forget about his stolen umbrella. Yes, the umbrella was the real trouble.”

– E.M. Forster, Howard’s End

 

 

“But at that moment, Hagrid leapt from the sofa and drew a battered pink umbrella from inside his coat. Pointing this at Uncle Vernon like a sword, he said, ‘I’m warning you, Dursley – I’m warning you – one more word …’

– JK Rowling, Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone

 

 

Do I have to tell the story
Of a thousand rainy days since we first met?
It’s a big enough umbrella
But it’s always me that ends up getting wet

– Police, Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic

 

 

You’ll find your fortune’s fallin’
All over the town
Be sure that your umbrella
Is upside down

– Pennies From Heaven by Arthur Johnston and Johnny Burke

 

 

We’ve lots more from Robert E. Jackson on the site. And you can follow him here for more great stuff.