Expression: One umbrella, ..., is worth ten stopgaps

[Haihao]

Hi,

Long time no see! Could you help me with just a short sentence as follows?

One umbrella, were it no bigger than a fairy mushroom, is worth ten such stopgaps.(XIV, Ulysses)

What does the sentence really mean? Why ‘no bigger than a fairy mushroom’?

Thank you!

Haihao

[Mister_Micawber]

.
Which literary period of XIV is it in, Haihao?-- I cannot comment until I find the reference for ‘such’.
.

[Haihao]

Hi Mister Micawber,

Thank you for your consideration and I am sorry for the lack of context for the sentence. It is about in the middle of Oxen of the Sun and its context is like this:

I could weep to think of it. Then, though it had poured seven showers, we were neither of us a penny the worse. But beshrew me, he cried, clapping hand to his forehead, tomorrow will be a new day and, thousand thunders, I know of a marchand de capotes, Monsieur Poyntz, from whom I can have for a livre as snug a cloak of the French fashion as ever kept a lady from wetting. Tut, tut! cries Le Fecondateur, tripping in, my friend Monsieur Moore, that most accomplished traveller (I have just cracked a half bottle avec lui in a circle of the best wits of the town), is my authority that in Cape Horn, ventre biche, they have a rain that will wet through any, even the stoutest cloak. A drenching of that violence, he tells me, sans blague, has sent more than one luckless fellow in good earnest posthaste to another world. Pooh! A livre! cries Monsieur Lynch. The clumsy things are dear at a sou. One umbrella, were it no bigger than a fairy mushroom, is worth ten such stopgaps. No woman of any wit would wear one. My dear Kitty told me today that she would dance in a deluge before ever she would starve in such an ark of salvation for, as she reminded me (blushing piquantly and whispering in my ear though there was none to snap her words but giddy butterflies), dame Nature, by the divine blessing, has implanted it in our hearts and it has become a household word that il y a deux choses for which the innocence of our original garb, in other circumstances a breach of the proprieties, is the fittest, nay, the only garment. The first, said she (and here my pretty philosopher, as I handed her to her tilbury, to fix my attention, gently tipped with her tongue the outer chamber of my ear), the first is a bath . . . But at this point a bell tinkling in the hall cut short a discourse which promised so bravely for the enrichment of our store of knowledge.

Thank you!

Haihao

[Mister_Micawber]

.
Ah, yes-- this is the part that is a take-off of Tristram Shandy. Your sentence is commenting on the efficacy of capes as a protection from rain: one umbrella, no matter how small (even as small as a mushroom), is better than ten clumsy capes.
.

[Haihao]

Oh, this metaphor is so subtle (others too, though)! But it had right caught me into a stupefied state of mind trying to figure it out by itself. Now I am a freeman again.

Thank you, MM!

HH