Shooting Canes and Dagger Sticks

James Smith + Sons since 1830 - canes, umbrellas...and wands?

LONDON
We found Diagon Alley the other day with my parents in London.  It was in the form of James Smith &Sons, established 1830.  


We walk in and feel we have entered Ollivander’s wand shop.  I grew up on my dad’s stories of this “shooting canes and dagger stick” shop. 

It is small.  One half is dedicated to canes, the other to umbrellas.  Four attendants are ready to serve serious clients.  Each looks like a Dickensian character.  One is reed thin, young but with a shock of white hair.  Another is plump and red faced.  Naturally the five of us entering with our camera, backpack and American accents are not smothered with attention.  This gives us an opportunity to consider the hundreds of canes and umbrellas.  My mom approaches the “Ollivander” behind the glass case.  After some warming up he explains that until recently (last 50 years?) when laws changed, daggers and guns could be provided inside the sticks.  In fact he showed us one handsome, narrow dagger safely locked under the counter.  More popular today, he informed us, are liquor bottles recessed in the canes. 

I touched the silver handle of a smooth, straight-shaft cane.  I felt cool.  A lovely heft.  I’m sure it is the style Sherlock Holmes purchased here.  Harry admires a 295 GBP ($450) umbrella. It has a polished wood grain handle that settles nicely in his large smooth hand.  My mom asks how people decide which cane or umbrella is for them.  “It is a very personal match,” he explains.  We assume this means that the canes choose the person – just like Harry Potter’s wand chose him.  As we thank the gentleman and begin to file out I ask, “How have umbrellas changed since you opened this store in 1830.”  “The change has been from silk to nylon fabric.” He explains.  “If you’d like silk we still have it, but the cost is about double.”  We thank him and exit onto the Bloomsbury Way.  It is drizzling.


Peter