‘It is wonderful to think what a turn has been given to our whole Society by the fact that we live under the sign of Aquarius – that our climate is essentially wet.
‘A mere arbitrary distinction, like the walking-swords of yore, might have remained the symbol of foresight and respectability, had not the raw mists and dropping showers of our island pointed the inclination of Society to another exponent of those virtues.
‘A ribbon of the Legion of Honour or a string of medals may prove a person’s courage; a title may prove his birth; a professorial chair his study and acquirement; but it is the habitual carriage of the umbrella that is the stamp of Respectability.
So wrote former Broughton resident Robert Louis Stevenson in an essay of 1894: 'The Theory of Umbrellas'.
In those days, such a complicated structure of whalebone, silk, and cane was so costly (26 shillings) that its possessor would never think of whacking an offender over the head with it.
An umbrella owner was thus ‘necessarily a man of peace’.
Now that these mass-produced 'microcosms of modern industry' are so affordable, Spurtle wondered what umbrellas say today about the people who own, share or do without them.
This afternoon we squelched the streets of Edinburgh in search of answers.
