Umbrella

In the collection of pictures at Woburn Abbey is a full-length portrait of the beautiful Duchess of Bedford, who afterwards married the Earl of Jersey, painted about the year 1730. She is represented as attended by a black servant, who holds an open umbrella to shade her. Cowper's "Task," published in 1784, twice mentions the umbrella: "We bear our shades about us; self-deprived Of other screen, the thin umbrella spread, And range an Indian waste without a tree." Book i. In book iv., the description of the country girl, who dresses above her condition, concludes with the following lines— "Expe…