Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge

by Lindy Woodhead

  As the Fair drew to a close, visitors could reflect on what they had seen. First and foremost, they had been exposed to the wonders of electricity, in itself an icon of technological advance. They had drunk the world’s first carbonated drinks, eaten the world’s first hamburgers, and admired the world’s largest cheese—which weighed in at thirteen tons. Visitors had sent picture postcards to friends using the world’s first commemorative stamps, enjoyed cookery demonstrations involving new products such as Quaker Oats and Aunt Jemima’s Pancake Mix, and fallen in love with the bicycle. Some had heard Dvorak’s New World Symphony which he composed for the Fair, while others had seen Anschutz’s “electrotachyscope” project the world’s first moving images. Mayor Harrison, receiving the plaudits of his colleagues on Mayor’s Day, October 28, must have felt justifiably proud, but the ebullient mayor didn’t live long enough to enjoy the plaudits. He was assassinated that night by Eugene Prendergast, who in his defense subsequently pleaded insanity. Prendergast lost his case and was executed.

  The World’s Fair had a profound impact on Harry Selfridge who, having witnessed at firsthand how to entertain a crowd, later became devoted to showing all manner of technical innovations to a captivated audience in London. The Fair itself, quite apart from being the precursor of global theme parks from Coney Island to Disney World, also so enchanted the young writer L. Frank Baum that he turned its “White City” into his “Emerald City” of Oz.

  The World’s Fair was symptomatic of changes taking place everywhere in the western world, particularly in women’s lives. The World’s Congress of Representative Women had met in Chicago during the Fair, where over 150,000 women flocked to listen to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone speak. Fresh ideas poured forth from a huge number of newly successful women’s magazines. Women in Chicago now traveled alone on the cable streetcars and elevated trains. There were changes too in fashion. Women would have to wait another decade to abandon their corsets, but there was an important shift in the shape and weight of clothes as more and more women took to wearing two-pieces and blouses.

  The “jacket-and-skirt” combination had first been seen in America during the Civil War. Women in the intellectual and professional classes had continued to wear it, calling it their “emancipation suit.” Dress reformers also adopted front-buttoning soft underwear as pioneered in fine knit by Dr. Jaeger and in cotton by Dr. Kellogg. The leisured classes and newly rich, however, had relentlessly clung to the formality of the back bustle both by day and by night, until the “two-piece” with its faintly military cut and gored skirt was given a huge boost when it was adopted by the Prince of Wales’s beautiful wife, Princess Alexandra, whose every move in fashion was eagerly watched in America. For once the trend hadn’t originated from Worth. It was the British tailoring genius Charles Poynter of Redfern who made the suits for the princess—in tweed for shooting parties and in navy blue and white grosgrain for yachting. The waist was still cinched, but the bustle had disappeared, and the sleeves were puffed from shoulder to elbow and then narrowed from elbow to wrist.

  The trend for what the stores referred to as “tailor-mades,” along with the ornate, high-necked blouses that went with them, triggered the mass production of much better-quality ready-to-wear. Marshall Field’s still had its own in-house workrooms for handmade clothes, but bulk stock, for them as for other stores, was now sourced from the clothing factories and sweatshops of New York and Chicago.

  America’s “new woman,” as the media styled her, energetically took to sport, particularly tennis, which in itself created a fashion trend. Players wore softer skirts, with a plainer “shirtwaist” blouse and an unbuttoned cotton-drill jacket. Nothing typified this image more than the drawings of the graphic artist Charles Dana Gibson. The “Gibson Girl” was officially launched in 1890 and for the next twenty-five years she came to represent the ideal female form in the United States. The tall, rangy and patrician young woman styled by Gibson, with her casually upswept hair and sportif clothes, had a huge impact on fashion. Women wanted to look, dress, and live their lives like her.

  Women also took enthusiastically to dance as an acceptable form of exercise, in particular adopting the “stretch and body poses” movement program originally pioneered by the Frenchman François Delsarte, which became a huge craze in America. Not that “doing Delsarte” meant breaking a sweat, it was more about grace and control. His system was the precursor of contemporary dance as pioneered by Loie Fuller and her disciple Isadora Duncan, who naturally chose Chicago—acclaimed as the most progressive city in America—to launch her professional career in 1895. When she auditioned at Chicago’s leading variety house, the Masonic Temple Roof Garden, Isadora so impressed its manager Charles Fair that he booked her on the spot. Knowing his audience, however, the cigar-chomping Mr. Fair doubted that her dance program would hold them. “You might do the Greek thing first,” he suggested, “then change to something with petticoats and frills so you can do kicks.” With only her “Grecian” shift in her luggage—and no money for shopping—Fair sent Isadora to see his friend Selfridge.

  Selfridge was enchanted with Isadora, overseeing her selection of red gingham, white organdy and lace ruffles for her outfit. Billed as “the California Faun,” Isadora was a sensation, and, having dressed her, Selfridge was in the audience to watch. Some people later said he undressed her too—she was after all a believer in free love, and Harry was an attractive man, with a tendre for dancers and a wife who was often to be found 90 miles away, supervising the construction of their imposing mock-Tudor house on the shores of Lake Geneva. Whatever the case, Isadora Duncan and Harry Selfridge remained friends until she died.

  Field himself continued to add to his property portfolio, one particular acquisition having a certain poignancy. In 1898, Levi Leiter’s only son, Joe, who so far had excelled himself solely in playing high-stakes poker, decided to gamble on making his own fortune by attempting to corner the world’s wheat market, buying all he could on margin. When the Chicago meat baron P. D. Armour needed 9 million bushels in a hurry he contacted young Leiter, who refused to sell. Armour wasn’t going to be pushed around by “an uppity kid.” He sent a fleet of ice-breaking tugs over the frozen lake north to Duluth, buying wheat for himself and an extra nine million bushels, which he poured into the market. Young Joe Leiter’s margins were called in and he ended up owing $10 million. With his son facing certain bankruptcy and possibly prison, Levi Leiter had to liquidate assets fast, among them a valuable parcel of land on the corner of State Street, housing the site of department store Schlesinger & Mayer, for which Field paid his ex-partner $2,135,000.

  The Leiters’ financial disaster had a dramatic impact in London, where Leiter’s daughter Mary, now Lady Curzon, was putting together the sumptuous wardrobe required for her forthcoming position as Vicereine of India. It wasn’t only her clothes and jewels that were needed. George Curzon required an impressive wardrobe of uniforms, and the couple were also expected to pay the outgoing Viceroy for his wine cellar, horses, carriages, and silver plate. Curzon, who had little money of his own, had always assumed his rich father-in-law would be able to provide everything necessary. All he got from Levi Leiter was three thousand pounds and a new tiara for Mary, leaving him in the embarrassing position of having to request an advance on his salary.

  Back in Chicago, by 1900, fourteen million tons of cargo were passing through the port. Over five hundred miles of streetcar tracks—called “street railroads”—threaded their way through the city, and the elevated railroad was packed every day. Automobiles were also slowly beginning to make an appearance, though to visitors it must have seemed as if everyone was riding a bicycle as the new craze for cycling swept the nation. Happily for women cyclists their skirts didn’t sweep the ground. When Lillian Russell took to cycling—on a custom-made Tiffany gold-plated machine, with mother-of-pearl handlebars and her initials worked in diamonds on the wheels—she wore a cream leg-of-mutton-sleeved cycling suit with the skirt shortened by
three inches, which set an unstoppable fashion trend.

  Fashion also had a huge impact on Marshall Field. Since the World’s Fair, Field’s had imported over $3 million worth of goods annually from around the world. By 1900 the retail division alone turned over an astonishing $12.5 million. With the store severely short of space, that year Field acquired the rest of the buildings in the block, including the Central Music Hall where Harry and Rose had married, enabling him to demolish the building on the original site and replace it with an enormous twelve-story structure, retaining only the comparatively new annex. Once more Daniel Burnham and his team swung into action, and once more Harry Selfridge was flying with excitement. At every stage of the development he booked advertisements to inform shoppers about progress, at the same time reassuring them that Field’s was “committed to fair prices and good value.” Selfridge was busier than ever at work, and Rose was busy at home with their two daughters—Rosalie’s sister Violette was born in 1897—and their son, Gordon, who was born three years later. Their fourth child, another daughter named Beatrice, born in 1901, would complete their family.

  Advertising had become a major tool in the promotion of retail. The industry with which Selfridge had experimented in the early days was now virtually unrecognizable. Nationally, the biggest spenders were the food companies and the tobacco industry, but businesses producing toiletries and soft drinks were not far behind. By 1899, eighty companies were making, or beginning to make, automobiles, and advertising agencies were keenly anticipating the day when cars would appear on the pages of influential magazines. In the meantime, they had to make do with the bicycle, and for the first time ever women were shown outside the home in a nondomestic setting riding their bicycles.

  Advertisements for Marshall Field were, like most retail pages, booked locally rather than nationally, with newspapers being the biggest beneficiary. Indeed, the growth of retail advertising paralleled the growth of the big city newspapers, which created arts, event, and fashion features by way of reciprocal editorial. Following company policy, Marshall Field pages never appeared on Sunday, this being still a day devoted to family, friends, and church.

  The first phase of the six-year building program opened in 1902. Marshall Field’s was a monument to new technology with over fifty elevators, fifteen thousand fire sprinklers, and a cold-storage vault with room for twenty thousand fur coats. There was a library, a first-aid room with a trained nurse, an information bureau, a concierge service to book theater tickets and hotel rooms, a crèche where mothers could leave their children in the care of trained nannies, and seven restaurants. Harry Selfridge had supervised every inch of the project from the miles of carpets to the hundreds of mirrors. He hadn’t forgotten the staff either. Now numbering seven thousand, they had a special canteen, recreation rooms, locker rooms, a gymnasium, and their own library. He instigated a three-day training system whereby new salespeople were given an intensive course in manners and in how to make the customer feel at home.

  John Wanamaker, the famously enlightened Philadelphia retailer—regarded as the originator of ethical advertising—who then owned America’s largest emporium, came to visit, and even he was impressed. In the first three days of business, more than one hundred fifty thousand people came through the doors and were given special celebration souvenirs costing over ten thousand pounds. Marshall Field’s old mentor Potter Palmer wasn’t there to share his triumph. Palmer had died that year, leaving an estate worth over eight million dollars to his wife Bertha, even setting aside a sum for her next husband “because he’ll need it.” In the event, Bertha remained a wealthy widow. Field was dumbstruck when he heard that Palmer’s fortune had passed directly to his wife, bypassing their son. “What on earth does she need with all that money?” he asked. “One million dollars is quite enough for any woman.”

  Field was increasingly isolated. His estranged wife was dead. His brother Henry was dead. Many of his friends were dead. He never entertained in his vast, empty house. His children and grandchildren lived in England. He eschewed the poker circle at his club—gambling, in his opinion, was a weakness. His only activity was work—and playing the occasional round of golf. Peter Funk, a colleague who had the courage to speak his mind, said to him: “Marshall, you have no home, no family, no happiness, nothing but money.”

  Harry Selfridge had played a huge part in masterminding the development of the retail division and in helping to create Marshall Field’s fortune, but despite his lavish lifestyle, he was still merely a salaried man. When the business was incorporated as a private limited company in 1901, Field allocated six thousand shares to Harry, but John Shedd got more, which irked him.

  In the winter of 1903, with the retail division’s annual turnover now at $17 million, profits a shade under $1.5 million and the next phase of development being planned, Selfridge lobbied Marshall Field for more. It wasn’t just about money. He craved recognition. Gambling on the fact that Field would give him what he wanted (including the renaming of the business as “Marshall Field & Selfridge”) he made his bid—and lost.

  Field turned him down, and with that, Harry Selfridge made plans to leave.

  5.

  Going It Alone

  “Our deeds determine us, as much

  as we determine our deeds.”

  —GEORGE ELIOT

  IN THE EARLY 1930S, HARRY GORDON SELFRIDGE HAD HIS PORTRAIT painted by Sir William Orpen RA. The artist captured his subject looking contemplative and dignified, pen in hand, studying what might perhaps have been a financial statement. Among the large collection of treasured family memorabilia packed away into trunks and boxes at the home of Simon Wheaton-Smith, Harry Selfridge’s great-grandson, is that same portrait turned into a jigsaw puzzle. Nothing could be more apt in trying to fathom Harry Selfridge. The man was puzzling indeed.

  In 1903, he was living in considerable comfort with his wife and family in their imposing house at 117 Lake Shore Drive, and at their even larger weekend home on Lake Geneva. He was a respected member of the business community, running what was virtually his own fiefdom at Marshall Field where he was doing a job he loved and receiving ever-increasing profits by dint of his shareholding. Selfridge had great faith, indeed an almost messianic belief, in what he thought was the right way forward commercially. But he forgot one salient fact. It wasn’t his business.

  Nancy Koehn of Harvard Business School, one of the world’s leading authorities on entrepreneurial history, has made an extensive study of Marshall Field & Co. “Selfridge,” she says, “deserves a lot of credit for bringing Field along, and helping him understand new developments in retailing.” On the topic of Harry’s complex personality, Professor Koehn says: “He was pushy, exuberant, with panache and vision.” However, she adds that what killed the partnership was Harry’s overweening ambition. “Field would have looked at his extravagances with a pursing of the lips—everything from the size of his office to the scale of his lifestyle—all this from a man with no visible investments, who lived solely off the business.”

  Chief among Harry’s ambitions had always been that Marshall Field should expand beyond Chicago. Disillusioned by Field’s refusal to open in New York, Selfridge set his sights even higher. Having made several buying trips to England, and being increasingly enamored with the business opportunities he saw there, he lobbied Field to open a branch in London. Marshall Field himself knew England well. Indeed, his daughter Ethel (recently divorced and now married to naval officer David Beatty) lived there, as did his son Marshall II. Visiting them was one thing, opening an overseas business quite another.

  Harry also wanted to adjust the system whereby the store buyers had first and foremost to source from the wholesale division, to whom they paid a 6 percent levy on all goods. In the early days, there had been advantages in sourcing bulk goods—especially household linen, hosiery and other basics—from the division. It was quick, easy and, even with the levy, cost-effective. But fashion and accessories were a different matter. Selfridge
had long felt that the wholesale offerings were simply too conservative, too “safe,” and not in keeping with the needs of Chicago’s increasingly sophisticated shoppers. He wanted the store’s retail buyers to have a free hand in where—and from whom—they ordered their stock. The idea was anathema to Marshall Field and, unsurprisingly, won little support from John Shedd, the altogether calmer, more conservative favorite of Field, who ran the wholesale department.

  Finally, there was the question of a change in name for the store. Field was growing old and his son played no part in the business, while Selfridge had poured every ounce of energy he had into the store. His achievements had been spectacular—in his own mind he was part of the store—and he wanted his name over the door.

  There were few colleagues Harry Selfridge could talk to. He wasn’t a man who shared his intimate fears and feelings easily. The hierarchical structure at Marshall Field was dominated by the original, elderly partners who were Field men to the core, and he was at odds with his one potential ally, John Shedd. There was, however, one person who was always ready to listen and offer shrewd advice. His best and most loyal friend was his mother. To outsiders, Madam Selfridge seemed to be merely gentle, dignified, and kindly. To those who knew her better, however, she was something else entirely. The costume designer and artist Grace Lovat Fraser, who later became close to the Selfridge family in London, wrote: “Madam Selfridge was white-haired and tiny. Always dressed in black with lots of exquisite lace, she seemed the embodiment of a classic sweet old lady. But her appearance was misleading, for though she looked frail she was strong and hardy, had a keen brain and was an excellent businesswoman. For all her deceptive fragility, she could be unobtrusively formidable and was a very important influence in her son’s career.”