Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge

by Lindy Woodhead

  Showing a younger man’s enthusiasm for technology—especially aviation—he applauded Amy Johnson at the dinner hosted in her honor by the Hon. Esmond Harmsworth of the Daily Mail to celebrate her epic flight to Australia. Selfridge’s was by now inexorably linked with aviation, swiftly negotiating rights to display Amy’s green De Havilland Moth first in Oxford Street and then at their key provincial outpost, Cole Brothers in Sheffield. The store even launched its own aviation department, where keen customers could not merely order a bespoke airplane—not to mention the wardrobe to wear when flying it—but take lessons on a flight simulator operated by trained pilots. Studying the feasibility of an autogyro landing space on the roof, Selfridge commented: “This is the way the rich will want to come shopping.” For sheer glamour, flying was hard to beat. Lady Heath flew from the Cape to Croydon, as did Lady Bailey, while the redoubtable 64-year-old Duchess of Bedford set off for the Cape in her tiny Spider, saying it “helped her tinnitus.”

  Flight, whether solo or piloted, wasn’t without very real danger. In July 1930, an air taxi carrying the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, the society hostess Lady Ednam, and three others returning from a weekend at Le Touquet, crashed. Broken bits of fuselage—not to mention broken bodies—scattered over a Kent cherry orchard. Reporting the accident, the media showed especial interest in jewels worth sixty-five thousand pounds that were lost in the crash. In October, the giant R101 airship came down, killing Lord Thomson, the government’s minister for air, along with forty-five other passengers. Four years later, the by then seasoned pilot, the “Flying Duchess” of Bedford, took off from Norfolk and was lost at sea.

  Harry’s daughter Violette and her air-ace husband had flown from Stag Lane aerodrome in 1928 on an adventure to hunt big game, circumnavigating the world in their Moth, Safari II. Ignoring the challenges of such an epic journey, the Daily Mail excitedly reported that “Violette Selfridge will fly wearing trousers.” She also packed a lace evening gown and twelve pairs of silk stockings in her luggage—hunting guns and fishing tackle being conveniently shipped ahead by the store.

  Violette and her husband returned safely, but her brother Gordon Jr. was less fortunate, crashing his Moth into a tree. Apart from a few bruises, only his pride was hurt, but his father insisted he get rid of the plane, putting it up for sale in the store aviation department where it was snapped up for £450 by a young man named Oscar Garden. After just twenty hours of tuition, Mr. Garden headed for home—in New Zealand. Selfridge devoted a “Callisthenes” column to the very modest Mr. Garden’s amazing achievement, telling awed readers that after a hair-raising journey via Syria and India, he landed safely in Western Australia before crossing to Sydney, thereafter shipping his rather bruised and battered Moth home to Christchurch. By the middle of the decade, however, the adventures of the lone aviator were coming to a close. The rickety, reckless charm of the “string and sticks” light airplane had had its day. In 1936, Selfridge’s advertised their aviation department was selling: “The Jubilee Monospar”—Britain’s first complete aeroplane and priced at £1,750.00.” This erstwhile rich man’s toy was a five-seater, twin-engine aircraft, the model of which would soon be developed to play its part in the war.

  Retailing of a different kind was preoccupying Harry Selfridge. Jenny Dolly had opened a lingerie shop on the Champs-Elysées in Paris. This was no ordinary boutique but rather an astonishing blend of boudoir brash, glitz, and glamour. Pink-gilt bedroom furniture created by the designer and artist Jean-Gabriel Domergue included a mirrored bed considered glamorous enough even for Jenny who, according to Variety, “knew a thing or two about beds.” Exquisitely embroidered bed linen was said to have “kept a couple of convents working for months,” while the display of intimate apparel—wispy pieces of black chiffon, silk stockings and a fine selection of jeweled garter belts—was “enough to make you think sinful thoughts.” Harry was seen beaming broadly at the opening night party, while the guests sipped gin slings and dunked salt crackers in caviar, and Selfridge’s star mannequin, Gloria, wafted through in silks, satin, and lace, a chinchilla coat casually flung over her shoulders, and Jenny’s fabled black pearls, once owned by Gaby Deslys, around her neck.

  “Glorious Gloria,” as the press called her, had been under contract to Selfridge’s for four years. The most successful commercial model of her era and the original catwalk star, she was the first “Ovaltine Girl,” and her image was printed on posters and postcards throughout the country. When Gloria appeared in the Palm Court fashion shows, she caused a sensation, not least because when she posed, smothered in jewels and furs, the press office would hire bodyguards for her photo calls—as much to protect her as what she was wearing. Among the staff it was rumored that she had an affair with the Chief. They were certainly close, and as “the face of the store” she accompanied him at dozens of events, everything from air shows to premieres. Whatever their earlier relationship, however, in the early 1930s they were simply good friends. Besotted by Jenny Dolly, however cruel, casual, or calculating she might be, Harry always came back begging for more.

  During the opening week of Jenny’s boutique, Gloria stayed at her Paris town house and in a “girls together” moment shared Jenny’s bedroom. Each morning, Selfridge would knock, and come in in his silk dressing-gown, carrying a breakfast tray. He’d then sit on the edge of Jenny’s bed, butter her toast, pour coffee and chat about the shop and plans for lunch as though none of them had a care in the world. Sometimes Jenny would smile. At other times she’d violently push away the tray, yelling at him to get out. Mario Gallati, the famous restaurateur who ran the Caprice and the Ivy, was fond of Selfridge, who had dined there for years, “dominating the table, erect and stern, looking every inch the formidable tycoon.” It was a different story when he was with Jenny, whose tantrums were well known at the Ivy. “Mr. Selfridge would ring me up before bringing her to dine, ordering the most elaborate meals and the finest vintage wines. All Jenny’s favorites were prepared for her—then she’d decide to have a hamburger.” According to Mario, “Selfridge was like a gauche schoolboy with her. When she made a scene, going off in a huff, he would sit there, eyes downcast …”

  As the Depression took hold, Jenny’s deluxe lingerie shop hemorrhaged money. At Selfridge’s, things were little better. Selfridge, faced with a weekly wages bill of £155,000, refused to cut costs. The staff repaid him by offering to work until 7:00 P.M. without overtime—a gesture that thrilled Selfridge as much as it annoyed the hierarchy at the National Union of Shop Assistants. Defying the Depression, with his usual sangfroid he urged local and regional investment. “Let’s make Marble Arch the focal point of an avenue as magnificent as the Bois de Boulogne,” he told the Daily Chronicle, while suggesting that councillors in Brighton should “dream a future” for the town by opening cafés and restaurants and making it “more tourist friendly.” In the meantime, money was tight. Harry sold over three hundred acres of Hengistbury Head to Bournemouth Council, with the proviso that they would never build on it, but retained thirty-three acres—complete with planning permission—for future use himself. Store profits were down. Trade suppliers, already used to slow payments from Selfridge’s, now had to wait longer and longer.

  In 1931, the store celebrated the installation of The Queen of Time, a magnificent eleven-foot-high bronze statue flanked by winged figures symbolizing Progress and surmounted by a stupendous clock. Designed by the sculptor Gilbert Bayes and the store’s architect Albert Miller, The Queen was hailed as a “horological masterpiece.” Lilliput magazine thought otherwise, printing a little ditty:

  Hickory-dickory-dock, a mouse ran up Selfridges’ clock

  It didn’t expect such a bizarre effect and it never got over the shock.

  While the Chief’s watch was five minutes fast, it was always said that the store clocks were kept five minutes slow, though the management later denied it. On the wall near the Information Bureau was a row of accurate clocks, each showing the time in a capital city overs
eas and part of what was described as the store’s “time-honored tradition of keeping customers informed on all things of interest.” Time had run out for many of Harry’s friends, however. Sir Thomas Lipton, the America’s Cup challenger who was only granted membership of the Royal Yacht Squadron in his old age, died without ever setting foot in the place. Harry’s old flame Anna Pavlova died of pleurisy in January 1931 at the untimely age of forty-five. Arnold Bennett was also dead. Harry missed him greatly. Ever since Bennett had written his early novel, Hugo: A Fantasia on Modern Themes, loosely based on a combination of Harrods and Whiteley’s, Selfridge had hoped he would write about the store. He wasn’t alone. Trevor Fenwick, of Fenwick’s of Newcastle, also lobbied Bennett in 1930. The author replied: “The idea of writing a novel about a department store has suggested itself to me many times during the past ten years. Mr. Selfridge has offered to place the whole of his establishment at my disposal, and has urged me to do such a novel. But I do not think I shall ever write it … I have had enough of these vast subjects.” There may not have been a book, but there would be a film, when the producer Victor Saville used the store as the live background for his film Love on Wheels, made in 1932.

  Time had also run out for Ramsay MacDonald. Faced with a tidal wave of unemployment—two and a half million by the end of 1930—and having reached a deadlock over the financial crisis engulfing Britain, MacDonald was persuaded to form a national government. With the Conservatives pressing for a public mandate and MacDonald himself being expelled from the Labour Party, the only solution was a general election. In October 1931, the country headed for the polls again, and Selfridge’s, true to form, put on a party. Jenny Dolly flew in to be at Harry’s side when he received over three thousand guests in the store. The store’s sales director, Mr. Williams, recalled that “Jenny wore bracelets on both arms from wrist to elbow. As she moved, they flashed prismatic lights from emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and diamonds.” Winston Churchill, C. B. Cochran, Emerald Cunard, Prince and Princess Galitzine, the Rajah of Sarawak, Noël Coward, Prince and Princess von Bismarck, and a rather sozzled Rosa Lewis escorted by Charlie Cavendish were among the crowd who danced to Jack Hylton’s orchestra and were entertained by Cossack dancers, Jimmy Nervo and Teddy Knox of the Crazy Gang, and the Australian jugglers and gymnasts, the Rigoletto Brothers.

  When the votes were counted, the Conservatives had 470 seats, Labour 52 and the Liberals 33. As the national government’s prime minister, MacDonald spent the next four years isolated from his colleagues and at the beck and call of the Conservatives. Among a rash of new, independent political parties that had put up candidates at the election, Sir Oswald Mosley’s New Party failed to win a single seat. Undeterred, the Mosleys were among the guests at the election-night party, where Lady Cynthia—as with all Levi Leiter’s granddaughters—was always assured of a warm welcome. Sir Oswald seemed to have an unerring attraction for the Curzon women, marrying one, sleeping with both her sisters, and rumored to have had an affair with their stepmother. In troubled times, Sir Oswald attracted support from some who responded to his rabble-rousing speeches. Selfridge himself, grumbling at an American Chamber of Commerce luncheon about trade tariffs, government intervention and red tape, declared: “What the country needs is a strong leader, an inspirer.”

  Puzzling contradictions were a Selfridge trait. In support of a massive “Buy British” campaign launched by the Prince of Wales, he invited the mayor and master cutler of Sheffield to exhibit in London, giving them six thousand square feet to display the city’s steel products. At the same time, however, he filled the store’s front windows with a million pounds’ worth of diamonds, presented in burglar-proof showcases. Quite what prompted Selfridge to promote himself as the “King of Bling” when unemployment was rife is hard to fathom. People were looking—twenty-seven thousand crowded into the store to watch the American Bridge champion Ely Culbertson’s team play the British champion “Pops” Beasley in a soundproofed room and nearly as many watched the “Miss England” contest staged at Selfridge’s—but they weren’t buying much. Figures were down. There were murmurings in the City as well as rumors of Selfridge’s excessive losses at the gaming tables in France.

  By now Jenny Dolly’s foray into fashion had failed. The closure of her shop also marked the end of her relationship with Harry Selfridge. On a misty morning in March 1933, she crashed her car near Bordeaux, fracturing her skull and badly disfiguring her face. Her career as a femme fatale was finished and her famous jewels went up for auction that autumn to raise money for, among things, major plastic surgery. They only fetched three hundred thousand dollars, with Jenny tearfully acknowledging that “people got beautiful things for next to nothing.” Among the treasures that went were the black pearls once worn by Gaby Deslys and the “ice cube” 51.75 carat diamond bought for Jenny by Harry Selfridge in 1928.

  In London, Harry’s own financial affairs made waves when, at a troubled annual general meeting, an irate shareholder asked about the “Chairman’s Account,” which owed £154,791 to the company. Selfridge stood up and said: “I will reduce the matter as soon as possible. I admit I have been wrong.” The trouble was he couldn’t reduce it. He also owed money to the Greek Syndicate, where even Nicolas Zographos wasn’t immune to the Depression. A lot of Zographos’s high rollers had faded away. Major Jack Coats had committed suicide in his Park Lane apartment and others no longer traveled to gamble. With casino earnings throughout France down 75 percent, the Syndicate sold on their debts. For Selfridge, this was a situation fraught with danger. Whatever he owed—and it’s rumored to have been over £100,000—was now being chased by extremely hard men. Liquidating assets, he sold his remaining parcel of land on Hengistbury Head and, in a move that alarmed his board of directors, he claimed thousands of pounds in arrears of salary for his titular role as chairman of Whiteley’s, a store he rarely even visited. His daughter Rosalie, who had hoped he would cover their heavy mortgage on Wimbledon Park House, was destined to be disappointed. The bank foreclosed on the Wiasemskys, forcing their return to Carlton House Terrace. Gordon Jr. meanwhile continued to live the high life, his photograph appearing in Tatler either alongside his plane or alongside a beautiful woman, such as the actress Anne Codrington. Staff would shake their heads, murmuring “like father, like son.”

  Financial catastrophe was claiming more and more victims. Ivar Kreuger, the store’s original construction engineer who had subsequently become an industrialist known as “the richest man in the world,” killed himself rather than face accusations of fraud to manipulate the markets. Yet few outsiders observing the apparently seamless operations at Selfridge’s would have guessed there was trouble. For the architects and builders who had been working on the new Duke Street extension it was another matter. The extension had originally been planned to have four stories above ground and two below. Now, because of financial constraints, it stopped at the first floor, albeit reinforced to allow for higher stories that came later. Work on-site being too slow to satisfy Selfridge, he came up with the original idea of using explosives. Half a pound stick of gelignite did the trick nicely, blasting ten tons of clay effortlessly out of the way.

  The extension, which used five thousand tons of Middlesbrough steel to create three and a half acres of extra floor space, finally opened in March 1933. It was nicknamed the SWOD by staff because it encompassed Somerset, Wigmore, Orchard and Duke Streets. The low flat roof was put to good use: Lord Clydesdale’s Westland PV-3, which he had triumphantly flown over Mount Everest, went on show, and Suzanne Lenglen arrived in town to demonstrate her skills on the newly fitted En-Tout-Cas court. Suzanne and Selfridge’s relationship was as tempestuous as her tennis. The Chief’s personal store messenger, the teenage Ernest Winn, recalled having to deliver a letter from Selfridge to Miss Lenglen’s rented flat nearby. “She finished reading and started to scream and scream … I didn’t know what to do … so I just stood there, watching and waiting. I was pleased I was so small the way she was swingi
ng her arms about, I might otherwise have been decapitated.”

  Selfridge continued to “put on a show.” He spent excessively on advertising. He became a financial patron of the new Business School at Harvard University. He chartered an Imperial Airways four-engined plane for an aerial VIP New Year’s Eve party with a live in-flight fashion show. He stabled horses that didn’t win races and, very charmingly—given he couldn’t afford it—he paid Messrs. Gillett & Johnston to replace the fabled Great Bell of Bow, which, having rusted beyond repair, had been silent since 1928.

  The store celebrated its Silver Jubilee in 1934. Draper’s Record wrote: “He has not merely transformed Oxford Street into one of the world’s finest shopping centers, he gave a lead to the entire store trade.” At a banquet hosted in his honor by fellow traders in the borough of St. Marylebone, held at the Grosvenor House Hotel, Harry was presented with a beautifully illuminated “Book of Signatures” containing a heartfelt message: “From the first you have been a pioneer, and, even in difficult and disheartening times, have had the courage to go forward. Your energy and enterprise have brought fame to your firm, and have added to the prosperity of the community.” Behind his glasses, Harry Selfridge’s eyes filled with emotion.

  The year 1935 marked another Silver Jubilee, that of King George V and Queen Mary. Selfridge busied himself planning another set of majestic external decorations, much as he had done for their Coronation. They were utterly magnificent and they cost a fortune. Created by the noted architect and graphic designer William Walcot and the store’s own resident design expert, Albert Miller, their theme was “Empire.” A huge statue of Britannia towered eighty feet above the rooftop, attended by two golden lions, flags flew and trumpeters blew.