By nature more practical than spiritual, with his interests firmly rooted in the present—and the future—Selfridge seems unlikely to have shared Sir Oliver’s zeal for the afterlife, although he did have a “near death” experience early in 1911 after a serious car crash in the Lake District. He was unconscious for over forty hours—long enough for his family to be gravely concerned—but then woke up quite suddenly, pronounced himself “fit as a fiddle” and two days later, to the astonishment of colleagues who later said he had “wished himself well,” went straight back to work.
After the accident, perhaps feeling more in touch with his own mortality, he seemed even more hypercharged than usual. From that point on, he developed insomnia, rarely sleeping more than four or five hours a night, although he did take brief catnaps during the day. Time was the thing. Like the White Rabbit, he rushed around looking at his watch. He was always very nearly late, creating havoc with traveling companions by seemingly enjoying arriving at the boat train just as the departure whistle was being blown. There just weren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done. Things were planned to the last second and he was a brilliant judge of timing, in more ways than one. When the Daily Mirror invited eighteen well-known figures to see if they could judge precisely how long a minute took to pass, only two of them got it right. One of them was Harry Gordon Selfridge.
Selfridge was always keen to investigate anything new. As he was a regular commuter to America as well as a devotee of the White Star shipping line, it might have been expected that he would have considered joining the maiden voyage of the Titanic in April 1912. His daughter Rosalie was by this time at Finch in New York, in those days a smart “post-graduate” finishing school that offered the daughters of the rich a grounding in art and music, lectures on world affairs and advice on hiring and firing servants. Rose and Harry had in fact crossed the Atlantic in January and had plans to go again in June. Selfridge himself often went over every couple of months, but in April that year, assisted by their faithful butler and housekeeper, Mr. and Mrs. Fraser, they were busy moving from Arlington Street to their new house at 30 Portman Square. As always with Selfridge’s English homes, it was a house with a history, having been the family home of George and Alice Keppel throughout “Mrs. George’s” affair with Edward VII, who had been a constant visitor.
The sinking of the Titanic stunned the world, not least because it shattered people’s faith in advanced technology. Among the 1,523 people who died in the catastrophe was Isador Straus, the owner of Macy’s in New York, who had visited Selfridge in London just a few days earlier. The elderly Mr. Straus went to his death accompanied by his devoted wife who, having been offered a place on a lifeboat, refused to leave his side. Harry Selfridge also mourned his friend W. T. Stead, the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, who had often dined with the family at Arlington Street. Stead was another member of Sir Oliver Lodge’s coterie and himself a great believer in psychical research. He had often dreamed about drowning, and just before boarding the ship he wrote to his secretary, “I feel as if something is going to happen and that it will be for ever.”
Among the survivors were Lucy and Cosmo Duff Gordon who were bound for Lucile’s New York showrooms. Elinor Glyn was at her house in Green Street when news of the catastrophe started to filter through. Desperate for news of her sister and close to hysteria, she immediately rang Ralph Blumenfeld’s office. She needn’t have worried. Lucy and her husband had managed to get into a lifeboat, despite the convention of the day that priority should go to women and children. More disturbing was the subsequent news that the boat wasn’t even full and did not turn back to pick up other passengers. The Duff Gordons were bitterly attacked in the press, and gossip-mongers had a field day. Some said Duff had hastily piled on some of his wife’s exotic clothes and masqueraded as a woman to secure his place (unlikely, given that he had a full beard). Others claimed that Lucy had insisted he stay with her, which is more plausible. When the Duff Gordons were called to account for their actions at an inquiry, they were vindicated, but Lucile’s reputation in London never really recovered and she moved the hub of her fashion business to New York. Duff and Lucy soon separated, but both were haunted by the experience. For years afterward, the accusation that they had deserted a sinking ship followed them wherever they went. Only today, ninety-five years later, has the truth come out with the publication of a letter from her maid, proving that luck had been on their side in being ushered by a crew member on to a virtually empty boat.
Social responsibility was high on Harry’s agenda, and he regularly hosted charitable events in the store. An auction or fashion show held in the name of a good cause had the added attraction of bringing the rich, the titled, and the famous together. That April, a fund-raising auction in the Palm Court Restaurant was held in support of the Titanic “Disaster Fund,” hosted by the celebrated actress Marie Tempest. Theatrical stars were a natural choice for Selfridge, who was addicted to the stage. They attracted the right sort of press attention and they were happy to sign customers’ autographs.
One of Harry’s favorite plays—not least because its theme was fashion—was The Madras House, written and produced by Harley Granville-Barker. Selfridge admired the young, ultra-fashionable playwright/producer enormously, buying blocks of tickets for all his productions and distributing them among the staff, who felt compelled to attend whether they wanted to or not. For Granville-Barker, whose intriguing work often received mixed reviews, Harry’s generosity was a boon. For the store’s staff it was a mixed blessing.
By now store turnover was up and profits were slowly but steadily rising: in 1912 to £50,000, in 1913 to £104,000, and in 1914 to over £131,000. Selfridge, having made a bet with Sir John Musker on meeting targets, was soon proudly driving a new Rolls-Royce. The financial press attacks had eased. The Economist commented on the latest figures: “Not a roaring success, but the business is increasing.”
At the morning meetings, the ideas were still coming thick and fast. “Merchandise” or gift vouchers were introduced. Sluggish morning trade was improved by special price-point promotions that ended at noon. A pet department opened, with special emphasis on the Selfridge family’s favorite pug dogs. During the 1912 eclipse of the sun, customers were invited to watch the excitement from the roof garden. Though they were given colored glasses for protection, most preferred to watch the reflection in the well-stocked fish ponds. Roger, the boiler-room cat—perhaps divining the fish—padded eight floors up from the sub-basement but then fell off the roof. Thousands of Londoners mourned his passing.
The death of the “company cat” had been announced by “Callisthenes,” Harry Selfridge’s new pet. The pseudonym appeared at the foot of a column that was published each day in the Morning Post. The column also appeared at random each day in various other newspapers, particularly The Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Evening Standard, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, as well as the late Mr. Stead’s Pall Mall Gazette. “Callisthenes,” explained Selfridge, “was the original Public Relations man”—in fact a relative of Aristotle who, having caught the eye of Alexander the Great, was invited to join him on his expeditions as official historian.
The “Callisthenes” column, usually about five hundred words long and discreetly signed off with “Selfridges & Co. Ltd,” reflected “the policies, principles and opinions of this House of Business upon various points of public interest.” All sorts of topics were covered, from Harry Selfridge’s grand passion for a Channel Tunnel to the store’s concern at the volume of traffic in Oxford Street. From time to time the column was given over to a celebrity pleading a cause: one early writer was Elinor Glyn.
Most other retailers were bemused by “Callisthenes,” unable to understand why Selfridge paid for such oblique advertising. In reality, the columns were often fascinating, sometimes sweetly sentimental but always sincere, and they drew people into the Selfridge’s “family.” New Age magazine howled with laughter, calling them “utter cant,” but �
�Callisthenes” forged a place in the daily life of Londoners until 1939.
“Callisthenes” was even bold enough to tackle female suffrage. Selfridge himself supported their cause, ensuring the store advertised regularly in the suffrage magazine Votes for Women, specifically promoting merchandise such as ribbons, belts, and handbags “in the Movement Colours.” The store stocked stationery overprinted with the suffrage slogan “Votes for Women”—and even sold Suffrage Christmas Crackers! When suffragettes went on the rampage in 1912, throwing bricks through West End store windows, they wreaked havoc, causing thousands of pounds’ worth of damage. The store director of Liberty’s mournfully told the Evening News, “Women have regrettably turned against the shrines at which they usually worship.” In the mêlée, Selfridge’s remained untouched. Perhaps Harry, as a sympathizer, remained immune—either that, or they knew the vast plate-glass windows were virtually impregnable.
The retail industry is often cited as being among the first to offer women career opportunities. In reality, most women worked only on the shop floor—though in Selfridge’s, charmingly dressed in white pantaloons and faux-Russian tasseled boots, they also operated the lifts. There were of course lady buyers among the staff at Selfridge’s, and several of them were in charge of substantial budgets. Indeed, Madam Selfridge herself unveiled a charming bronze plaque on the roof terrace that stated: “This plaque is a tribute to women’s work in the establishing of this business and is set up as a permanent record of their splendid loyalty and the quality of the service they have rendered.” Despite the fine sentiment, however, during Harry Gordon’s lifetime and for long afterward, no woman ever got anywhere near executive level, sat on the board of directors, or was involved in investment planning.
The night before Christmas Eve 1912, a musical revue called Hullo, RagTime! burst onto the stage at the London Hippodrome. It was a storming success, appealing to all tastes—Rupert Brooke admitted to seeing the show ten times. Its thumping music and its snappy, sexy chorus girls parading down the “joy plank” through the cheering audience heralded the dawn of dance mania. The sellout show was a display of uninhibited, unashamed fun. Ragtime was American through and through, as American as the two ice-cream soda departments that opened that season at Selfridge’s, where on an average day they got through 4 gallons of lemon squash, 4 gallons of chocolate, the same of coffee and 240 quarts of cream. The two departments were equipped with brand-new brine ice freezers and a new piece of technology called a Lippincott carbonator that whipped up 100 gallons in less than an hour. There were soon queues of customers standing in line for seats. There were queues too at the Hippodrome the following year when Hullo, RagTime! was replaced by Hullo, Tango! This was an altogether different type of show. The Latin American dance became just as much of a craze, but its unashamed eroticism attracted criticism from many who felt it was sleazy.
Selfridge’s hosted a charity costume ball on the roof, where the social set enthused over a tango demonstration by Maurice and Florence Walton, London’s premier dance duo. Selfridge’s was quick to stock tango shoes and tango dresses, slit high up each side. The Bishop of London denounced the new craze as “shocking,” but respectable ladies soon started to host “tango teas.” Those yearning for something even more decadent went to the Cave of the Golden Calf, a breathtakingly avant-garde nightclub just off Regent Street, decorated with exotic murals painted by Wyndham Lewis, where a Negro jazz band played in a smoke-and dope-filled haze and customers danced as if the music would never stop.
9.
War Work, War Play
“One should never give a woman anything
she can’t wear in the evening.”
—OSCAR WILDE
ONE MORNING EARLY IN 1914, LORD NORTHCLIFFE SWUNG around from the desk at which he terrorized his secretarial staff at The Times and snapped: “How are we going to pay for a war?” Warming to his theme about the need for economy, he declared that women were “spending too much on nightdresses!” Word that the increasingly eccentric Northcliffe was about to launch an anticonsumer crusade flew around the building. The Times’s advertising manager, James Murray Allison, having just set in motion a sales initiative to secure more revenue from retail advertising, was so alarmed he found the courage to visit the inner sanctum and plead his cause. The last thing he wanted was for his irascible boss to turn against shopping. Northcliffe’s outburst had been triggered by a Board of Trade report citing an increase in consumer spending and a commensurate increase in the manufacture of women’s clothing, an industry in which nearly eight hundred thousand women themselves were now working.
Fashion was making news and the stores were making money—stores in the West End, that is: those in the suburbs were suffering. The Financial World, picking up on their plight, noted that “before the advent of Mr H. Gordon Selfridge and the perfecting of the motor-bus, much money now taken in Oxford Street was spent in the suburbs.”
Financed by the Midland Bank, Selfridge had repaid Musker’s loans and bought him out. With investment capital at his disposal, he spent a quarter of a million pounds acquiring not merely the “fancy goods” shop William Ruscoe at 424–426 Oxford Street, but also the eight adjoining shops that had belonged to the long-established draper’s Thomas Lloyd & Co., in order to begin his grand expansion plans.
Not everyone was pleased. People bemoaned the passing of Lloyd’s, one elderly customer fondly recalling, “It was the sort of place where ladies bought antimacassars for their horsehair furniture.” Negative editorials appeared about large stores crushing small shops, a criticism that in one form or another still rumbles on today. Selfridge himself countered the criticism, saying that investment was essential to create jobs and, as he put it, “to diffuse as much sunshine as we can among all people, whose combined loyalty and labor make business possible.”
The wholesalers who made a lot of business possible were less keen on his methods. Selfridge’s was beginning to bypass the middlemen and go straight to the manufacturer, where the sheer volume of their orders ensured enormous discounts. Selfridge himself was fond of making grand statements about the business of retailing, and about his own store—proudly boasting that it was now “the third biggest attraction in town after Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London.” Adamant, as always, that his business existed not merely to make money but to bring a whole new experience to women shoppers, he declared: “I want them to enjoy the warmth and light, the colors and styles, the feel of fine fabrics.”
There were those who sneered—in particular G. K. Chesterton, who took every opportunity to mock what he called “the sentimentality of Selfridge.” Yet those close to Harry never doubted he meant every word. Arthur Williams later recalled: “I don’t remember ever hearing him utter an insincere remark.” His staff, now totaling nearly three thousand people, never doubted him. They had gladly contributed to the cost of a bronze bust cast by the noted sculptor Sir Thomas Brock as a gift for “the Chief” to celebrate the store’s fifth birthday, presented to deafening applause at a huge gathering held at Queen’s Hall, Langham Place.
Harry’s affair with Syrie Wellcome meanwhile was waning. Syrie had recently met the writer W. Somerset Maugham and was now juggling her affections between Maugham, Selfridge, and a dashing army officer named Desmond FitzGerald (who subsequently dumped her to marry Millicent, the Duchess of Sutherland). Her complex love life imploded on the first night of Maugham’s play, The Land of Promise, which Syrie had promised to attend as his guest, not realizing that the date clashed with the grand housewarming party she was hosting to celebrate her top-to-toe redecoration of the Regent’s Park house provided by Selfridge. Having had to deal with florists and caterers, she was late for the theater, putting Maugham in a foul mood that worsened when he found Selfridge holding court at the party afterward. A persistent story, much used by Maugham’s biographers, is that Selfridge, still besotted with Syrie and disconcerted by the appearance of a rival, offered the astonishing sum of five thousand pounds a
year for her upkeep, the inference being he wanted fidelity. It is more likely that Syrie was trying to save face. There had never been any suggestion that she was his sole possession. That wasn’t Selfridge’s style. The truth is that her benefactor had fallen for the charms of the petite French chanteuse Gaby Deslys.
Usually cheerful around the store, where one of his favorite sayings was “There’s no fun like work,” Selfridge could be moody. He was capable of going off people very quickly for no apparent reason. This habit was generally confined to his girlfriends or the beaux of his daughters, but he did occasionally turn on members of his growing staff. A case in point was Miss Borwick, an elegant and extremely competent senior knitwear buyer whose department was always in profit. Selfridge called her into his office and—so the story goes—fired her abruptly. After years of service, the weeping Miss Borwick was given a month’s pay and told to leave. It was the same with Syrie Wellcome. Uneasy about her talk of divorce, and tiring of her temperamental moods, he left her in her luxuriously appointed house, filled with the expensive furniture he had provided, and moved on to pastures new. Maugham was left to pick up the pieces.
Sir George Lewis, Oscar Wilde’s solicitor and an old friend of Maugham, tried to warn the writer that there would be a scandal. “You’re to be the mug to save her,” he wrote, explaining that Selfridge had left her and, worse, that she was deeply in debt. When divorce proceedings were initiated by Henry Wellcome the following year, Selfridge, who could easily have been cited as corespondent, escaped unscathed. Wellcome would never have put a brother Mason through that indignity, and in any event, Syrie was now pregnant with Maugham’s child.
Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge Page 14
