Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge

by Lindy Woodhead

  Back in London, Selfridge found that not everyone had written him off, particularly the media. Newspaper proprietors gathered together to host a New Year’s luncheon in his honor, where he sat with Ralph Blumenfeld, by now known as “the father of Fleet Street,” and Lord Ashfield, who spoke glowingly of his friend’s “transformation of Oxford Street,” adding that perhaps he should after all have agreed to name Bond Street tube station “Selfridges.” A powerful group of retailers applauded the post-lunch talk: Sir Montague Burton, Trevor Fenwick, Frederick Fenwick, Sir Woodman Burbidge of Harrods, and L. H. Bentall. Everyone said Selfridge looked well. He wasn’t. But he knew how to put on a show.

  Surprising as it may seem, he still went into the store on most days, taking the lift once exclusively reserved for him but now designated for all directors and stubbornly sitting in his office, where he and Miss Mepham went through the ritual of “let’s pretend.” They pretended there were letters, memos, invitations, or meetings. In reality there were none. He would still don his top hat and walk the store where staff, though pleased to see him, were also embarrassed. They didn’t know what to say. What could they say? He was said to be “making plans.” Why, no one could really fathom, but word went out that he had dreams of starting a new enterprise, and Mr. Holmes struck again with a letter:

  It was clearly the intention of the Directors and especially in the minds of their advisers that for practical and psychological reasons, you would vacate the Managing Director’s accommodation so as to give complete freedom to the new Management … I am instructed by the Board to ask you to be good enough to arrange for such personal possessions as you would wish to be removed before the 26th April … one other matter which the Directors view with some concern is that you are contemplating commencing independent business activities … they do object and deprecate very seriously that such negotiations should be conducted from the store address.

  In case Selfridge didn’t get the point, he was given the use of a small office in Keysign House, a company property across the road, his pension was cut by a third, and the services of Miss Mepham were withdrawn.

  In May 1940, Selfridge was honored by the dedication of a bronze plaque and illuminated scroll, to which the owners of forty-one stores subscribed and which was unveiled at a luncheon given in the store’s Palm Court Restaurant. In thanking those present, Harry said: “I realize my generation has pretty nearly lived out its life.” Conspicuous by his absence was Mr. Holmes.

  When the Blitz began, London braced itself. During one raid the store roof was hit by bombs that started a fierce fire. Most of the upper windows were shattered, including the Chief’s much-loved signature window. When he went to inspect the damage, the old man broke down. It was the first time anyone had seen him cry. He continued to spend several hours a day sitting alone in his empty room on the opposite side of the street, writing letters to various acquaintances in authority, offering his services “for the war effort” and hoping—in vain—that he might be given some useful work. Eventually he stopped coming.

  In January 1941, just a few days before his eighty-fifth birthday, the board stripped Harry Selfridge of his title of president and, with year-end net profits at an all-time low of only £21,093, slashed his pension yet again. Now living on a meager £2,000 a year, Harry, Serge, and Rosalie vacated Brook House and moved to a two-bedroom flat in Ross Court, Putney. In June that year, isolated and alone in Hollywood, Jenny Dolly committed suicide, hanging herself with the sash of her dressing gown.

  In August, Harry’s cherished collection of rare French and English books was auctioned at Sotheby’s. The family was struggling to make ends meet. While Serge spent his mornings drinking in the Green Man, Rosalie could be found from time to time visiting a rather dubious antiques shop in the Lower Richmond Road, where she was forced to sell their valuables for hard cash. Her father spent his days reading correspondence, sifting through archives and playing the odd game of poker with the ever-cheerful Mr. Robertson of the Evening News.

  As Oxford Street was pounded by bombs, the store continued to be hit. The ground-floor windows were bricked up, the roof garden was left in ruins and the Palm Court Restaurant, the scene of so much excitement over the years, was decimated by fire and closed forever. In 1942, the store’s ex–star model Gloria once again made headlines when she was found dead in her Maida Vale flat, apparently having suffered a heart attack from an overdose of slimming pills.

  Putting on a cheerful front, most of the family reunited at the King’s Chapel in the Savoy in June 1943 to celebrate Tatiana Wiasemsky’s marriage to Lieutenant Craig Wheaton-Smith. The wedding was followed by a small reception at Claridge’s, the hotel where once Harry Selfridge had always had the best table. Later that summer, his twenty-one-year-old grandson Blaise de Sibour, a pilot with the French Normandy Squadron flying sorties against the Germans, was shot down and killed in Russia. Violette de Sibour subsequently settled in America where she went to work for Elizabeth Arden. Conscious of his own mortality, Harry became reconciled with his son and grandchildren in America. He was increasingly frail and would sit by the fire in Ross Court, shuffling papers and burning his private letters while Rosalie looked on in despair.

  On some days he would stand at his local bus stop on Putney High Street, his rheumy blue eyes searching the road for the arrival of a No. 22. Virtually deaf, his mind rambling, he hardly spoke. Harry Gordon Selfridge had retreated into his own private world, full of memories no one could share. Still wearing curiously old-fashioned formal, shabby-genteel clothes, his patent leather boots cracked and down-at-heel, his untidy white hair falling over a frayed shirt collar, his by now battered trilby pulled low, he moved stiffly, aided by a Malacca cane. On the bus, he would carefully count out the pennies for his fare, buying a ticket to Hyde Park Corner, where he got off to wait for a No. 137 bus, quietly telling the conductor “Selfridge’s please.” Seemingly lost in memories of past glories, unrecognized by anybody, the old man shuffled the length of the majestic building before crossing the road to the corner of Duke Street. Stopping there, leaning heavily on his cane, he would look up to the roof of the store and along to the far right upper corner window, as though searching for something. Miss Mepham met him one day when he was suffering from a virulent attack of shingles and was in great pain. She fled back to her office, so distressed that she wept. Sometimes, when he was standing on the street, a hurrying pedestrian would bump into him. Once he fell heavily. On one pitiful occasion the police arrested him, suspecting he was a vagrant.

  As he looked up at his great store in those desperate days of the war, Selfridge had no idea that deep below the ground, in the sub-basement he had had blasted out of the London clay, men from the U.S. Army Signal Corps were on round-the-clock shifts protecting a top-secret telecommunications installation. Bell Telephone’s X-system, code-named Sigsaly and at the cutting edge of cryptography, was housed in what High Command felt was one of the most secure sites in London. Scrambled conversations between the men of war plotting and planning D-Day, indeed almost all communications on behalf of the British government and the Allied forces, took place in that guarded room deep below Selfridge’s. How proud he would have been.

  He would also have been proud to know that a perspiring subaltern returned to Company HQ after marching his platoon for many hot and weary miles on “training” somewhere in England to find his company commander and the CO looking very pleased with themselves, holding a piece of paper. It turned out to be The Times crossword. “Just finished it,” said the CO. “We thought it had beaten us though, eh Major?”

  “One blessed word,” replied the major, “but we rang up Selfridges Information Bureau and they knew.”

  Of course they did. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Holmes closed the Information Bureau down.

  Harry Gordon Selfridge died peacefully in his sleep at Ross Court on May 8, 1947. He was ninety-one. Following his funeral, held at St. Mark’s Church, the local newspaper reported on the many floral tribut
es. Among them was a large wreath of red and white roses from Miss Rosie Dolly, the message simply saying “from Rosie and Jenny,” and a huge bouquet with a card saying, “In memeory of a great citizen of the world who loved humanity” from the president, directors, vice presidents, and executives of Marshall Field and Co., Chicago, USA.

  In his will, Harry left jewelry and what remained of his sculpture collection to his three daughters. He had once said: “When I die, I want it said of me, ‘He dignified and ennobled commerce.’ ” His family had no money for a headstone to honor the man who did just that—and it never occurred to Selfridges to pay for one. Instead, he lies in a humble grave near his beloved wife and mother in the quiet churchyard of St. Mark’s in Highcliffe, where leaves from the overhanging trees gently fall around their tombs.

  Harry Gordon Selfridge married Rosalie Amelia Buckingham on November 11, 1890, in an extravagantly orchestrated ceremony held in Chicago. They spent their honeymoon in Newport, Rhode Island.

  Lois Selfridge, Harry’s mother, in 1906 at the age of seventy-one. Friends remarked that “she seemed the embodiment of a classic sweet old lady, but she was unobtrusively formidable.”

  Harry Gordon Selfridge, seen here ca. 1910, was always immaculately groomed and tailored. His taste was for formal clothes and he was rarely seen in anything remotely casual.

  Oxford Street at the corner of Duke Street, ca. 1907, before the construction of Selfridge’s.

  Selfridge dreamed of building a double-island site, extending from Oxford Street, flanked by Orchard and Duke Streets and stretching back to Wigmore Street. The architects, Sir John Burnet and Frank Atkinson, executed a series of ideas incorporating a dome, intended to be “as important as that of St. Paul’s.”

  One of the series of spectacular advertisements to launch Selfridge’s, drawn by leading illustrators and artists of the day such as Byam Shaw (this drawing by Sir Bernard Partridge), which formed the biggest retail advertising campaign ever seen in England at that time.

  Horse-drawn buses were a familiar site on London’s streets until the end of 1911, when the London General Omnibus Company replaced the service with motor buses. Selfridge’s name could be seen everywhere—except on the front of the store.

  Advertising copy often focused on family values—as well as good value—and promoted the concept of “having a family day out at Selfridge’s.” This image was part of a color series created for popular women’s magazines.

  The store’s famous roof terrace was always a focus of major entertainment, including dance demonstrations and exhibitions. Closed during the First World War, the roof gardens reopened with a series of afternoon fashion shows.

  Harry Selfridge on the roof terrace of the store in 1911, with the fashionable playwright Harley Granville-Barker (left) and the fashionably dressed author Arnold Bennett (right).

  The light and bright store interiors, with high ceilings, spacious aisles, and wide vistas, were unlike anything ever seen before in London. If Selfridge found dust on one of the glass counters, he scrawled his initials, HGS, on the surface. They wouldn’t be there for long.

  Selfridge’s created the concept of visual display as we know it today. Their window–dressing, under the direction of the American display manager, Edward Goldsman, was raised to a pinnacle of perfection.

  Harry and his daughter Rosalie, photographed at Chicago’s Grand Passenger Station in 1911. The family traveled back once, and often twice, a year to Chicago, where their arrival was always a local news item.

  The First World War gave women the opportunity to take over jobs previously held by men. At Selfridge’s, they cleaned windows, trained as firefighters, stoked the boilers, and drove the delivery vans. Here, one of the smart bottle-green and gold-lettered delivery vans is dressed for a staff member’s wedding—decorated with flowers to deliver the bride!

  The French chanteuse Gaby Deslys in 1915, described by Arnold Bennett as “the official amante” of Harry Selfridge and as famous for her hats as for her singing and dancing.

  From exhibiting airplanes such as Louis Blériot’s to the Sopwith Atlantic, Selfridge’s promoted aviation at every possible opportunity. In 1919, the year Harry Selfridge made the world’s first commercial air flight traveling from London to Dublin, he also staged a fashion show of leather flying suits on the Observation Tower on the store’s roof.

  Sports stars beat a path to the store to make personal appearances, often being handsomely paid to give master classes to customers in golf, cricket, and in particular, tennis. Harry Selfridge—a lifelong tennis fan, albeit watching, not playing—hired Wimbledon champion Suzanne Lenglen to endorse Selfridge’s as “the home of tennis equipment.” Innovative windows backed every in-store appearance.

  Highcliffe Castle, Christchurch, leased by the Selfridge family as their country home from 1916 to 1922. Selfridge spent today’s equivalent of $3.5 million on modernizing it to suit his tastes. Rose Selfridge and her daughters ran a hospital for wounded American soldiers at the castle during the First World War.

  In 1928, Harry’s daughter Violette and her aviator husband, Jacques de Sibour, flew in their tiny Gipsy Moth on a daring trip to go big-game hunting in Indochina. En route they mapped a new trail over the Burmese jungle down to Bangkok. Obliged to travel light, Violette (seen off here by her father at Stag Lane Airport) still packed a black lace evening dress and a dozen pairs of silk stockings.

  Harry’s steam yacht, designed by Camper & Nicholson and first registered in 1911, weighed over 850 tons, was 211 feet long and slept twenty in considerable comfort. Used as an armed patrol yacht in the First World War, Selfridge acquired the yacht in 1927, renaming her the Conqueror.

  Harry Selfridge playing his favorite game of poker on board his yacht, Conqueror, ca. 1930. He always used heavy, mother-of-pearl chips—thought to bring good luck—and his own specially made cards embossed with his initials.

  The Dolly Sisters, Rosie and Jenny, danced into Harry’s life in the early 1920s. Whether his grown-up children approved or not, the “Dollies” were part of the extended Selfridge “family.” In Le Touquet in the summer of 1926, Harry looks fondly at the twins, shown flanking his daughter Beatrice. She looks less than amused.

  Otis Elevator Company launched the first step-type escalator at the Paris Exposition in 1900. By 1921 their engineers had refined the system to create the design we know today. Escalators revolutionized customer flow through department stores. This escalator was installed at Selfridge’s in 1926, the most up-to-date model in a London store at that time.

  Selfridge’s famous window displays were show-stopping productions. From furs to food, toys to telephones, their visual mastery won countless awards for the creative visual display staff, who took inspiration from all aspects of art and design. One of a series of windows based on surrealism, this is a typical sale window, promoting basic bath towels—with a twist.

  In 1910, anticipating the emergent trend for cosmetics, Harry Selfridge opened the first dedicated perfume and cosmetics hall on the ground floor of any department store. Buyer Nellie Elt presided over what became the store’s most profitable department and is seen here, ca. 1925, standing by the Elizabeth Arden counter. The temperamental cosmetics tycoon and Mr. Selfridge became lifelong friends.

  Film director Frank Capra—in London for the opening of his film You Can’t Take It With You in 1938—signs the famous autograph window in the chairman’s office, observed by Harry Selfridge and his son, Gordon, Jr. Celebrity guests had been writing their names with a diamond-tipped pen since the window was inaugurated in 1911.

  In 1935, Harry Selfridge’s last love interest was the Swedish French actress Marcelle Rogez. When their affair ended in 1938, she moved to Hollywood, where she met and married the film director Wesley Ruggles.

  During the founder’s lifetime, Selfridge’s adorned the exterior of the store for the Coronation of King George V, the Jubilee of King George V and, most sumptuously of all, the Coronation of King George VI in May 19
37, shown here.

  For Colin, Ollie and Max

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  HARRY GORDON SELFRIDGE LEFT THE STORE IN 1939, AND DIED aged ninety-one in 1947, so the chance of my meeting anyone who knew him in his prime, or worked with him from the early days, was never feasible. Biographers, however, depend on luck as well as their own judgment, and I was lucky with the treasures I found in the magnificent Selfridges archives (at the time of writing maintained by the History of Advertising Trust but now returned to a permanent home in the store itself).

  The archive collection contains not just the old press-cuttings books—with virtually every clipping personally noted by HGS himself—but also lists and notebooks, his private ledger, letters, photographs, personal ephemera and store catalogues, price lists, promotional material and advertisements. Over the years, friends, family, and retirees have donated all manner of additions, with the result that it is one of the finest examples of British retailing history in existence today.

  In the early 1900s HGS invested in a gold mine, at one point being told by the engineers that they had struck a seam. Sadly, it was worthless, but I struck my own seam of pure gold when Sue Filmer (of HAT) passed me a folder full of notes gathered by the store management in 1951 when they had the idea of publishing an official biography of Harry Gordon Selfridge. At that time, Selfridges was owned by Lewis’s of Liverpool, who agreed to finance the project. The book went through a series of three prospective authors and at least two publishers and agents before the finished work, Selfridge, by Reginald Pound, was finally published in 1960. The project was coordinated by the redoubtable Miss Mepham, who had been the gatekeeper to HGS’s inner sanctum. She was the one woman still alive who had intimate knowledge of what his son later described as “the several sides of my father.” She stayed at the store until 1957 and thanks to her diligence virtually all the senior retirees still alive between 1951 and 1957 were interviewed in depth to gather stories about HGS. Very few of them lived to see the finished book, but their contribution lives on.