I collect fictional quotes about umbrellas. I first did so after reading ‘No one writes to the Colonel” by Gabriel García Márquez. Since then I have found fictional brollies everywhere!
At the beginning of Howards End, Helen Schlegel absent-mindedly takes home the wrong umbrella. Leonard Bast, a low paid clerk who yearns for education and ‘culture’, retrieves his brolly from the Schlegels’ house. Here the gulf between their classes yawns wide — they have countless umbrellas and he has just the one, and it’s in appalling condition .
