Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge (23 page)

Serge’s mother attracted more attention than the bride. Madame Marie de Bolotoff – to call her correctly by her married name – was a petite, blonde bombshell with extravagant tastes. Already a beneficiary of the legendary Selfridge generosity, she was delighted by the marriage. She had separated from her husband some years earlier and, with four children to support, had decided that life would be
much easier if she had a title. She hadn’t entirely made it up. Instead, in about 1908, she persuaded the Tsar to allow her to use the title Princess Wiasemsky, claiming descent through maternal relatives.

Serge and Rosalie’s grandson, the guardian of a mass of family documents, tactfully admits that ‘there was a substantial argument about her claim to the title’ but points out that Marie had some powerful friends ready to back her claim, among them Lady Tyrrell, the wife of the Foreign Office Under-Secretary, who took an oath that she had seen the Tsar’s decree. Another supporter was Marie’s friend Sofia, the estranged wife of Admiral Kolchak, whose evidence also played a part. Harry, satisfied that his beloved eldest daughter would ultimately inherit a title, gave his blessing along with a lavish thirty-six setting Crown Derby dinner service for their use while living with him at Portman Square. A flat of their own might have been more useful. But he liked his family around him and, given he paid, that’s where they stayed.

In October 1918, Joseph Dillon finally went to America, without the Selfridge family but armed with letters of introduction to several of Harry’s powerful Chicago friends. ‘Over here,’ wrote Selfridge, ‘we feel he is the best informed man in the world of European politics.’ Selfridge himself went to France, making a tour of the battlefields at the invitation of General ‘Black Jack’ Pershing. As the year drew to its end, the huge job of clearing the battlefields began and soldiers started to return home. At Selfridge’s, the store kept its promise to take back its own serving men. By the time the Armistice was signed, nearly a thousand had returned.

In the wake of Rose’s death, Selfridge kept himself busy. As early as 1915, he had announced that a new extension would be designed by the architect Sir John Burnet, whose brief was to incorporate a majestic tower. The concept of a tower had always formed part of Harry’s grand plan for Oxford Street. After five years or so of lobbying, the Portman Estates and St Marylebone Council finally consented, at the same time agreeing to a plan drawn up by the engineer Sir Harley Dalrymple-Hay for a tunnel running under Oxford Street.

Sir John Burnet, who had designed the King Edward VII Galleries at
the British Museum (completed just before the war), found that he and his team were part of an extended group. Selfridge’s policy was always to hire several people to do the same job in the hope that one of them would get it right. Among the architects was Albert Miller, who at this point moved to London from Chicago to work full-time at the store.

Selfridge relished the new project, giving a mischievous speech to the London Society in which he declared that ‘All around us in Oxford Street are numerous little shops that should be burned because they are so ugly.’ Warming to his theme, he went on to tell the
Evening Standard
, ‘I shall try to build something that is good. A store used every day should be as ennobling a thing as a church or a museum. I love to look at a beautiful building.’

He bought on board yet another architect, the fashionable Philip Tilden, who was putting the finishing touches to Port Lympne, Philip Sassoon’s house overlooking Romney Marsh. Tilden executed various drawings for the Oxford Street tower, none of which came to fruition. No more did Sir John Burnet’s elegant efforts. ‘Forget it. Forget it,’ snapped Selfridge when a journalist asked him about the future of the much-publicized 450-foot tower. The difficulty of bringing his scheme to fruition was clearly irking him.

At the same time, however, Tilden was set to work on a project dear to Harry’s heart. Having acquired Hengistbury Head, a tract of land of outstanding beauty with a glorious view of the Isle of Wight, from his Highcliffe neighbour Sir George Meyrick, Harry planned to build his own castle. The project created unease in the local community. Hengistbury Head was recognized as one of the most important Bronze Age archaeological sites in Europe, and any plan to build on it was bound to be controversial, especially since Selfridge grandly announced that it was going to be ‘the largest castle in the world’.

Over the next five years, Tilden lovingly – and expensively – set about drawing Harry’s dream. The two men formed a close friendship, and Tilden later recorded how impressed he had been by ‘the magnitude of [Selfridge’s] imaginative thoughts’.

The plan involved a huge castle, with a smaller, private house
below. Drawings were made for cloistered gardens, a winter garden, a Galerie des Glaces as at Versailles, dining-halls capable of seating hundreds, 250 bedroom suites and a domed central hall that would be seen from far out at sea. It was intended that artists from all fields would be able rent space at Hengistbury Head and work there surrounded by beauty. It was a strangely noble idea, but the locals hated it. Some said Selfridge was building a factory on the site, others that he intended to create a theme park with a Wild West show. Selfridge assured Christchurch Town Council that ‘he would work with archaeologists during construction and he would take steps to prevent erosion of the Head and always allow the public access’. Tilden meanwhile executed hundreds of drawings, admitting that the only way he could cope with the design was to develop it section by section. Whenever Selfridge was asked how, or when, the plan would be executed or what it would cost, he refused to be drawn. Tilden later recalled that he would simply look at his interrogator ‘with a cold, clear, blue and calculating eye, thrusting out his chin with never a glimmer of a smile’.

In March 1919 Selfridge’s celebrated its tenth birthday and Harry went on a spending spree. A swathe of impressive advertisements marked the anniversary. Lord Northcliffe in particular took note, writing to his managers: ‘I feel we all owe a great deal to Selfridge for the way in which he woke up the drapers. He should be helped in every possible way.’

Flush with funds from a new issue of 500,000 preference shares, and with post-war building restrictions curtailing the Oxford Street development programme, Selfridge expanded into the provinces. He was convinced that the drapery stores presented a unique development opportunity and he bought businesses in Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Gloucester, Peterborough, Reading and Northampton.

Selfridge was a man in a hurry. When he went to Dublin on 25 June to negotiate a deal to buy the city’s old-established draper’s Brown Thomas, he reasoned that the journey by train and ferry would take too long. So he flew. The chartered plane, a De Havilland Airco 9
piloted by Captain Gathergood, winner of the Aerial Derby, took off from Hendon just after lunch, touched down in Chester for refuelling and tea, and arrived in Dublin in time for dinner. It was the world’s first commercial flight. Back at Hendon the next afternoon Selfridge told the press: ‘This only shows what possibilities there are now in high speed aerial transport to the businessman in a hurry.’ Reading about it in a rival paper, Lord Northcliffe was furious, shooting a note off to his staff: ‘Why no reference to Selfridge’s air journey to Dublin? It was the first business flight.’ He might also have asked why Selfridge was proposing to buy a business in Dublin at a time when the city was under curfew and Michael Collins and his IRA men were battling it out on the streets with the brutal Black and Tans. Selfridge, however, felt that the city presented a ‘wonderful opportunity’.

From that point on, Selfridge became addicted to aviation, and the pioneering commercial airline Aircraft Transport & Travel flew him not just to Highcliffe but also around the country to visit his growing empire. As always, he milked the press potential for all it was worth, putting a Handley Page seventeen-seater passenger plane fuselage on show in the store as the back-drop for a fashion show of the latest leather ‘flying clothes’. At a time when flying was still a dangerous business and uninsurable, his bankers and his board members might have queried the wisdom of ‘the Chief’ – at the age of 63 – gallivanting around the skies. But such exploits were part of the Selfridge magic. He was on a roll, and no one could stop him.

At home, the loss of Rose had been a crushing blow. At work, the loss of his genial mentor Sir Edward Holden, who died in the summer of 1919, was another. Sir Edward’s portrait joined that of Marshall Field in Harry’s imposing office, where he had a new lady in his life. It had taken two years to find a suitable replacement for the inimitable Cissie Chapman who, having been his personal secretary since 1914, had been promoted to launch the store’s Information Bureau. Indeed, Selfridge – who had got through an entire battalion of temporary staff since her promotion – was beginning to think she was irreplaceable. Then he found Miss Mepham. Calm, organized, efficient, tactful,
loyal and discreet, Hilda Mepham was exactly the right woman to look after Harry Selfridge – and she did so until the day he left the store. She shared the outer office with an urbane young man called Eric Dunstan, who had joined the staff as his Social Secretary. The well-connected Dunstan had spent two years in Fiji working for a Colonial Governor and a period in the Conservative Party’s headquarters. He was also discreet, which, given some of the requirements of his job, was probably just as well.

With commercial construction curtailed, Selfridge turned his hand to residential development. Encouraged by his friend Sir Harry Brittain, the newly appointed Conservative MP for Acton, Harry made his own public-spirited contribution by forming the non-profit-making Victory Construction Company. His plan was to build 300 inexpensive brick and concrete dwellings. Admitting that ‘they were not very lovely’, they would, he said, ‘be easy to run and would serve as a temporary resting place for those whose lives have been disrupted until they see better days’. Each of the five-roomed, semi-detached houses on Lowfield and Westfield Roads was priced at £310 and offered initially to Acton residents. In the end, only seventy were built before the scheme went awry due to escalating costs, but it was a fine gesture.

Allied victory, meanwhile, was being discussed at the Paris Peace Conference, held at Versailles. As the protracted negotiations neared completion, Selfridge planned a special celebration. His creative director, Edward Goldsman, was dispatched to Paris where he was given special access to sketch and photograph the famous Hall of Mirrors, using Louis XIV’s marvel as the theme for the store’s ‘budget no option’ décor planned to coincide with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. It wasn’t just about window displays. The store took the decoration right out into the street, laying out a ‘Court of Honour’ in front of the main building, with imposing plaster columns and bas-relief figures holding shields and flags. Even the lamp-posts were decorated. Selfridge’s was no longer just a part of Oxford Street. To the thousands of people who flocked to see the decorations, it had
become
Oxford Street.

‘A store should be like a song of which one never tires.’
H. G. Selfridge

A
s the new decade arrived, the band in the store’s Palm Court played all the latest hits at the daily
thés dansants
and the place was packed. To some observers, it was astonishing how many people had so much time in the day to dance. Why weren’t they at work? But at a time when jobs were proving increasingly difficult to find, very often dancing
was
a job. A lot of unemployed ex-officers danced for a living. There was many a ‘gentleman escort’ available to take a turn on the floor with a war widow, while the impresario Albert de Courville used to boast that several of the more talented chorus boys in his revues at the London Hippodrome held either the MC or the DSO. Honours, however, didn’t pay the rent.

At Selfridge’s there was no cover charge in the Palm Court – Harry reasoned that those who came to dance might do a little shopping in between numbers. At the Piccadilly Hotel or the Café de Paris, the charge was 4 shillings for ‘afternoon tea and dancing’, while at the swankier Savoy, it was 5 shillings. For the lonely, a mere 2 shillings bought tea and sympathy at the Regent Palace or the Astoria Dance Hall, where girls were rumoured to offer more to those who wanted it. The lost and the louche went to Kate ‘Ma’ Meyrick’s Dalton’s Club in Leicester Square, which really was a pick-up place and where
for the price of £2, ‘Ma’s’ girls would offer a lot more than sympathy. When Mrs Meyrick subsequently appeared in court on vice charges, part of her defence was that ‘the West End was a regular hotbed of lawlessness’ and that ‘her girls’ were just ‘bringing cheer to some of the terribly disfigured boys home from the war’.

The big musical hit of the moment was ‘Ain’t We Got Fun?’ but as Mrs Meyrick had so aptly put it, for a lot of people, life wasn’t much fun. Most young men, regardless of their social background, were struggling to rebuild their shattered lives after the horrors of the war. Demobbed with brutal haste and little if any government support, many of them faced a bleak future. Some were so shell-shocked that nothing but prescribed morphine, cocaine or the illicit but widely used opium could numb the pain. Others, haunted by the blood and gore of the trenches, simply drank their memories away. Large numbers of young men, without much education other than being trained to kill, joined gangs in London, where there were rich pickings to be had from protection rackets. Petty crime – pick-pocketing and bagsnatching in Oxford Street, shoplifting in the stores – was on the increase. At Selfridge’s, where the open-plan floors were particularly vulnerable, dozens of extra store superintendents were hired to keep a watchful eye.

The media took to blaming all the woes facing society on ‘drink, dancing and drugs’, especially the latter which made for better copy. When the young and rather pretty dancer Billie Carleton died in late 1918 of a cocaine overdose, her companion, the fashion designer Reggie de Veulle, was charged with her manslaughter and viciously attacked in the press. In the end, the rather pathetic Mr de Veulle was found innocent of anything except ‘having an effeminate face and a mincing little smile’, whereupon he disappeared into obscurity. Meanwhile, the real culprit was found to be a Chinese immigrant, Lau Ping You, a drug dealer who worked for Britain’s biggest supplier, Brilliant Chang. The tabloid press whipped itself into a frenzy over the ‘yellow peril in Limehouse’, while mothers were warned not to let their daughters ‘go anywhere near a Chinese laundry or other places
where the yellow men congregate’. In 1920, only six years after the Army had first handed out tablets containing cocaine to its troops, the Dangerous Drugs Act banned the drug altogether.