Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge (19 page)

‘One should never give a woman anything she can’t wear in the evening.’
Oscar Wilde

O
ne morning early in 1914, Lord Northcliffe swung round 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 anti-consumer 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 800,000 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 labour 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 middle-men 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 colours 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 totalling nearly 3,000 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 called 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 house-warming 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 theatre, putting Maugham in a foul mood which worsened when he found Selfridge holding court at the party afterwards. A persistent story, much used by Maugham’s biographers, is that Selfridge, still besotted with her and disconcerted by the appearance of a rival, offered the astonishing sum of £5,000 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 favourite 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 co-respondent, 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.

The prospect of war with Germany hung in the air. The media was full of disturbing stories. Sir Maxwell Aitken, the thrusting Canadian-born British MP who was energetically buying his way into the Pearson-owned
Daily Express
, regularly lunched with Ralph Blumenfeld and Selfridge. They talked of the growing threat in Europe, the terrible, unresolved violence in the Balkans, the bitter unrest in Ireland and, to Aitken’s mind, the inadequacies of the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith. Harry’s increasing prominence came in part from the store’s huge advertising budget, but also from his willingness to air his opinions on life as he saw it at a growing number of civic, charitable and educational conferences and dinners. He particularly admired the Rotarians, travelling on their behalf to Glasgow, Liverpool and Dublin, where he delivered his talks in a soft American accent, regaling the audiences with anecdotal observations based on topics often covered in ‘Callisthenes’.

Invariably, he was asked about America and the mood in mighty Chicago. Selfridge kept in touch with his Chicago contacts, proudly sending his annual accounts to Harry Pratt Judson, President of the University, who wrote back saying: ‘Your Chicago friends are following your English career with great interest.’ Rosalie had made her debut there at the end of 1913, and the city’s press was full of stories of the balls, receptions and teas held in her honour during her stay, all complimenting her on her ‘American patriotism’ in making her debut
in her home city and not in London. It might have been expected that Rosalie would, at this point, have taken a job, if not in her father’s own store – that being exclusively reserved for Gordon Jr, now a pupil at Winchester – then perhaps in journalism. As a teenager, she had followed the family tradition by writing and producing her own edition of
Will o’ the Wisp
, modelled on the newspaper once produced by her father. She even sent a copy to President Theodore Roosevelt, receiving a charming note on a picture of the White House in return. But none of the three Selfridge daughters ever took a paid job during their father’s lifetime.

Early in 1914, Selfridge’s hosted an enormously popular ‘Dominions’ exhibition featuring Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. So many people crowded into the Palm Court Restaurant that the press office calculated they would have made a single file stretching for twenty miles. Visitors saw at first hand the delights of life in these far-flung countries, and more than a few admitted they were thinking of emigrating to them. Rudyard Kipling used the exhibition as his theme for a lecture at the Royal Geographical Society, saying that in the not-too-distant future it would only take four days to fly to Australia. The topic of aviation was rarely far away: exhibition-flying at Doncaster aerodrome was all the rage; industrialists were busy planning the building of aircraft; and England’s first acclaimed aviator, Claude Grahame-White, who ran the Hendon Flying Club, could hardly keep up with demand for lessons.

In March 1914, Selfridge’s raised £300,000 with an issue of 6 per cent cumulative preference shares. The offer was so oversubscribed that it closed by midday. A delighted Selfridge told the
Evening News
that his wholly owned ordinary shares were ‘not for sale at any price’. He was busy planning the opening of his first Food Hall at premises acquired on the opposite side of Oxford Street, and also devising yet more charts and graphs showing growth, stock turnover and depreciation. He even had a card index for every staff member, showing his or her personal capacity and performance.

The staff had become used to his exacting standards. As well as
obligatory morning staff training sessions for the whole workforce, anyone under the age of 18 – and many were – had to attend compulsory evening classes four nights a week. They were given lectures, slide shows and demonstrations, and when they had ‘qualified’ in the sense of completing the course, certificates and prizes – usually a signed book – were handed out at a strawberries-and-cream garden party on the roof terrace. Proud parents were invited to witness the passing-out parade at which their young son or daughter received a ribbon-tied certificate from Mr Selfridge himself.

Interviewed about his staff training methods, Selfridge said: ‘I consider it good policy, as well as good principle, to take your assistants as far as possible into mental partnership with you. Make them feel a real interest in the business. Pay a premium for good ideas and good suggestions from assistants. They should realize that they are part and parcel of a going concern, and sharers – definite sharers – in the success of that concern.’ Warming to his theme he continued: ‘Make their life as happy as possible. Feed and pay them well. Make them contented. To grind the life and soul out of a miserable white slave is sheer bad business policy.’

The wages paid seem ridiculously low. A 16-year-old in the cash department earned only 5 shillings a week. But if that same youngster’s figures weren’t out by more than a ha’penny for a month at a time, he or she would get a 10-shilling bonus. If the figures were still accurate after three months, that amount rose to 30 shillings – a huge sum at the time and one which certainly concentrated the mind. Junior sales staff averaged £1 a week before the First World War, with 3d in the pound on top in sales commission. Paid overtime was rare, there was no pension scheme, and sick pay was at the discretion of the management. But all staff had the opportunity to rise up the hierarchy. Selfridge left notes on the staff-room bulletin boards: ‘Merit will win’; ‘We want intelligent, loyal, happy, progressive employees’; ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’; and his favourite ‘Do it now!’ They usually did.

Meanwhile, the affair between the retail prince Selfridge and the
showgirl Gaby Deslys was intensifying. He had always had a curiously juvenile attitude towards stage stars. A showman by instinct, he responded sensitively and sensually to the atmosphere of the theatre, where the women who performed sang him a siren’s song.

Gaby Deslys was 31 when she met Selfridge, and already famous for a string of love affairs with rich admirers including the young (but by now deposed) King Manuel of Portugal, Prince Wilhelm of Germany and the original Wall Street Robber Baron Jay Gould’s son, Frank J. Gould. She was a sensation both on and off the stage. Born in Marseilles in 1881, she had moved to Paris where she worked her way up the musical revue ladder until, at the time she met Selfridge, she was probably the most famous personality in show-business – in today’s terms hovering somewhere between Marilyn Monroe and Madonna. Gaby was adored by shop-girls, chambermaids, secretaries, Lords, Ladies – and Harry Gordon Selfridge. Her dancing wasn’t bad. Her singing was pretty mediocre. Her comedy acting was adequate. But somehow the whole added up to utter magic.

Deslys had first come into Harry’s orbit when she launched the winter season of 1912 at Alfred Butt’s Palace Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. Her review, entitled
Mademoiselle Chic
, involved her playing a
demi-mondaine
trying to choose between love and money, in one scene stripping down to her underwear. London’s theatregoers hadn’t had as much excitement since Maude Allan last took to the stage. Gaby was a material girl. Money mattered to her. She once famously said she would only dine with a man ‘if they paid £50 for the pleasure of her company at supper’ – sex not included. Rich men showered her with jewellery. Yet while she took a lot from them, she also earned a lot herself and was a tough negotiator. On one American tour she was paid $3,000 a week, and when she signed with Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players Company to make a film in Paris, she was paid a fee of $15,000 plus 5 per cent of the gross. Not a bad deal for a fortnight’s work.