Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge (28 page)

More of a café society crowd poured into the store at the end of October, to celebrate at the third General Election night party when 2,000 guests whooped it up on both the roof-top ice rink and the ballroom roller-skating rink. Fearful of gate-crashers, the store’s smarter staff – drawn from the growing band who had attended public school – were on duty at the entrance to vet, and sometimes veto, the arriving guests. Those admitted included Joseph Pulitzer Jr, Freda Dudley Ward, Sir Gerald du Maurier, Ivor Novello, Barbara Cartland, the Asquiths, the Aga Khan, the McAlpines, the very rich Lady Louis Mountbatten, and Marshall Field’s equally rich granddaughter Gwendoline and her husband, the Scottish baronet Charlie Edmonstone. The hottest actress in town, Tallulah Bankhead, was there with the best-selling author Michael Arlen, whose book
The Green Hat
was top of the lists in every lending library. ‘The whole
world
was at Selfridge’s,’ enthused
Tatler
breathlessly.

That night the Conservative Party won the General Election and the Bright Young People who would personify the Roaring Twenties came of age. They couldn’t have cared less who won the election; they just wanted to have fun. The next five years would be spent battling with the new Home Secretary, Sir William Joynson-Hicks, who tried his best to stop them. Called ‘Jix’ by the cartoonists, who mercilessly lampooned him, Sir William was a High Victorian disciplinarian
who represented everything about the establishment that the young loathed.

Jix loathed a lot of things, particularly ‘non-registered aliens’. When he discovered there were 272,000 of them in Britain, he instigated a visa system so strict that merely travelling without the precious document meant a spell in prison before being shipped straight back home. He didn’t care much for sex either – especially any forms of affection in public, which to his eye were ‘gross indecencies’. He viewed most modern authors, artists and sculptors with grave suspicion, unilaterally censoring their work. A life-long teetotaller who had yearned to see alcohol prohibited, he also had an absolute fixation about nightclubs, calling them ‘drug-filled sewers of society’, while contemporary dancing was a ‘disease against civilization’.

When an overseas visitor, awed by the scale of the Home Secretary’s impressive office and vast staff, asked Sir William what he did there, Sir William replied: ‘It is I who am the ruler of England.’ To a certain extent he was, at least as far as law, order and licensing were concerned. In all these things, he was ably assisted by his treasured friend DORA. Many who yearned for the Defence of the Realm Act to be modified to suit the times, waited in vain. Jix took it out, dusted it down and applied its regulatory powers with relish. The police were instructed to take a stern view of public morality and an even sterner view of nightclubs. Naturally, they made mistakes. A girl arrested in Liverpool and charged with being a prostitute turned out to be
virgo intacta
. When the former Liberal MP Sir Leo Money was arrested and charged for merely sitting next to a young woman on a bench in Hyde Park, his case was dismissed. Sir Basil Home Thomson, ex-Chief of London’s CID and one-time head of British Intelligence, was less fortunate. Found in a compromising situation with an actress called Thelma de Lava, he declared in his defence that he was researching material for a book on vice in the West End. The magistrates were unimpressed and fined him £5 with costs.

Harry never needed to risk a romp in the park – his children were
now grown-up and had an insouciant attitude towards his affairs – but the matter of a visa was pressing. To obtain one he enlisted the help of friends in high places – Sir Reginald McKenna, Chairman of the Midland Bank, various members of the Masonic Lodge frequented by the Home Secretary, and Ralph Blumenfeld, editor of the
Daily Express
. The latter was popular with Sir William, not just because his newspaper adopted a strict view of morality, but also because he had founded the Anti-Socialist Union, a group heartily approved of by Jix. Thus Selfridge acquired a letter on Home Office stationery allowing him residential status. Things weren’t as easy for his sonin-law Serge, whose Russian National Progressive Party was thought rather dubious. Conveniently, however, Alexander Onou, head of the Russian Refugees Permit Office in London, came to the rescue, issuing ‘Serge de Bolotoff, Prince Wiasemsky’ with the necessary photographic identity card confirming his refugee status.

In many ways, the jazz decade suited Selfridge. He had the ability to enter into the mood of the moment and was always enchanted by youth, which kept him if not literally, then certainly figuratively, on his toes. ‘Let me see, Mr Selfridge,’ said a reporter from the Manchester
Daily Dispatch
in 1924, ‘you’re sixty I believe?’ The answer was merely an agreeable smile. He was 68. Had he coupled the dignity of age and experience with youthful zest, his life might have taken a different turn. As it was, surrounded by a circle of sycophants and an eager press, he believed he was invincible. With no one to restrain him, his hedonistic cravings raged unchecked. By 1925, he had crossed the line.

Fuelled by the unrelenting fashion for everything new, business was booming. Since it had first been seen in the Broadway show
Runnin’ Wild
, the charleston had quite literally swept everyone off their feet. In London there were charleston competitions and charleston clothes. Flimsy underwear, especially Directoire knickers and silk chemises, beaded headbands, feathered fans and the essential ‘flappers” footwear – shoes with a powder compact in the jewelled buckle, whether for cheeks or cocaine – flew out of Selfridge’s. Skirts
were short and nights were long. Dance halls and nightclubs were crowded, and parents of all classes despaired of their offspring’s passion for dancing. Even the King was alarmed, writing to his wife, ‘I see David [the Prince of Wales] continues to dance every night and most of the night. People who don’t know will begin to think that either he is mad or the biggest rake in Europe. Such a pity.’ Young people didn’t think anything of the sort. They loved the informality, the energy and the gaiety of the Prince; they loved him
because
he danced. Such things, however, are not founded on substance. As the Prince of Wales became famous for his clothes, his lifestyle, his girlfriends and his aura of celebrity, he too was heading for disaster.

London was awash with nightclubs, much to the anguish of the Home Secretary who did his best to close them down, but the clubs – particularly those patronized by the Prince of Wales – reigned supreme. The list was endless. On Thursday nights, the Prince himself could usually be found at the Embassy, essentially a dining club with a tiny cheek-to-cheek dance floor, where he smooched with Freda Dudley Ward to music played by Bert Ambrose and his orchestra. A more bohemian, theatrical crowd hung out at Wardour Street’s Fifty Fifty, the Hambone or the rakish Uncle’s in Albemarle Street. Arnold Bennett, a keen nightclub aficionado, was a fan of the Gargoyle and Kate Meyrick’s Silver Slipper, with its glass dance floor and twinkling mirror globes, while those who really wanted kicks headed to another of Mrs Meyrick’s clubs, the infamous 43 in Gerrard Street. The 43 also had a distinguished clientele: even the Prince of Wales went from time to time, but it was really the haunt of European royalty – all those lost souls who had also lost their crowns – along with racing drivers, pilots and sportsmen like Steve Donoghue the jockey and ‘Gorgeous George’ Carpentier, the achingly handsome boxer. The 43 was frequented by people who lived on the edge – the serious gambler Major Jack Coats, the international financier Ivar Kreuger (who had been involved with Selfridge’s construction all those years ago), the theatrical and property entrepreneur Jimmy White and London’s richest asset stripper, Clarence Hatry. Michael Arlen, Avery
Hopwood, Jessie Mathews and Tallulah Bankhead were regulars – and a young Evelyn Waugh would sit quietly at a side table observing the sights, later immortalized in his novels.

Everyone in town went to the 43. When Rudolph Valentino paid a visit, wearing, in the very latest fashion, a short, fitted tuxedo jacket, he was mistaken for a waiter. He took it well apparently, picking up a bottle with a flourish to pour drinks for several delighted guests. The house champagne sold at £2 a bottle and the dance hostesses cost considerably more. Ma Meyrick presided over the door, taking 10 shillings a time from patrons eager to hear Sophie Tucker belt out a song or Paul Whiteman’s star musicians jam late into the night.

All this fun came at a cost, however, especially to Mrs Meyrick. Since she had launched her first club after the war, she had been arrested several times, fined thousands of pounds and served two six-month sentences in Holloway. She was the bane of the Home Secretary’s life and the target of the leading light in London’s Police Vice Squad, Station Sergeant George Goddard. Fortunately for Ma, Sergeant Goddard proved to be a man of extravagant tastes, which he found hard to meet on his police pay of £6 a week. His weekly wage was supplemented with a brown envelope containing £50 in crisp £1 pound notes courtesy of Ma, with the same amount paid by her friend Mr Ribuffi, the owner of Uncle’s. Every Friday afternoon, Sergeant Goddard would head to Selfridge’s where he carefully placed the envelope in his personal safety deposit box. It couldn’t last of course. Shopped by an envious colleague, Goddard was eventually caught in 1929. He tried to explain away a large house in Streatham, an extremely comfortable car and £12,000 in cash in his Selfridge’s deposit box by saying he had made the money ‘selling confectionery on the side at the British Empire Exhibition’, but he was laughed out of court. Goddard, Mr Ribuffi and Ma Meyrick were all sent to jail – Ma herself getting fifteen months’ hard labour.

Selfridge himself was more of a Kit Cat Club man. The expensive premises had opened on the Haymarket early in 1925, complete with the requisite big band but also with a line-up of gorgeous girls in a
showy cabaret. The Kit Cat too was raided and then closed down. In an attempt to circumvent the law, it subsequently reopened as a ‘cabaret restaurant’. To celebrate the event, the club’s Chairman, Sir Charles Rothen JP, engaged a dazzling dancing duo called the Dolly Sisters to perform on the opening night – and among the guests was Harry Gordon Selfridge. It wasn’t the first time he had seen the girls in action. They had been on the London stage in a C. B. Cochran show called
The League of Notions
in 1921, when Harry had carefully noted in his ledger that he had spent 17/6d on a ticket. After seeing them again four years later at the Kit Cat, he began an affair with Jenny – some say with both sisters – which, by the time it fizzled out in 1933, had cost him quite literally millions of pounds.

Jenny and her sister Rosie were identical twins. Hungarian by birth – their real names were Jansei and Rosika Deutsch – they were born in 1892. They moved with their family to America where the girls trained as dancers, going ‘on the road’ as entertainers when they were just 14. The Dollies got their first big break when Flo Ziegfeld signed them up in 1911. By the time they hit London they were 29 – rather old to be playing ingénues, but they did it well.

The twins specialized in synchronized ‘tandem’ dancing, their movements ‘mirroring’ each other so they blended into one – as indeed did the girls. The only way to identify one from the other was to listen to them – Jenny giggled more. She had been briefly married to the creator of the foxtrot, Harry Fox, and in post-war Paris she performed various outré dance numbers with a professional partner, Clifton Webb, while Rosie specialized in a particularly erotic form of flamenco. On the whole, though, the girls danced – as they did most other things –
à deux.
With their penchant for jewels, a passion for gambling and a fondness for rich men, they were quickly nicknamed ‘the Million Dollar Dollies’.

Their act was especially popular with the gay crowd (both happy and homosexual) and with the sex tourists who frequented the club world of Paris, where nightlife was more lavish and louche than in London. In the French capital Elsa Maxwell, the supreme party-organizer
of the period, ran a club called the Acacia in partnership with the fashion designer Captain Edward Molyneux. There Jenny would dance, making her entrance each night in a cloak of fresh gardenias. The sisters apparently regarded London as stuffy, preferring to perform in Paris and throughout France. In reality, their déclassé behaviour meant they weren’t accepted socially in a city that still regarded public performers which a shiver of unease. To call them uninhibited would be an understatement. As a cub reporter on the
Sunday Times
Charles Graves recalled interviewing them after a performance of
The League of Notion
s: ‘I knocked on the door and they said in chorus, “Wait a minute.” I did so. “Now you can come in,” they called. I entered. Both were stark naked.’

During their first foray on to the London stage, the Dollies had been squired around town by Sir Thomas Lipton. In reality, the genial Sir Thomas, although keen on promoting a reputation as a ladies’ man, was uninterested in women and happily returned home each night to his live-in companion, his loyal secretary John Westwood. During their Kit Cat season, when the Dollies found escorts who were more interested in their charms, it was share and share alike. Lord Beaverbrook’s daughter, Janet Aitken Kidd, recalled in her memoirs that ‘my father and his friend Harry Selfridge were batting Jenny and Rosie back and forth between them like a couple of ping-pong balls’. The Dollies were a
succèss fou
. They were painted by the artist Kees Van Dongen; Edouard Baudoin hired them to promote the opening of his divinely chic Casino Sea Bathing Club created out of a tattered wooden shack in Juan-les-Pins; and Cecil Beaton drew them for
Vogue
while playing chemin-de-fer at Le Touquet. The Dollies, in short, were the first celebrities to be famous merely for being famous.

While fame meant a lot to Selfridge, fashion hardly touched him. He wasn’t part of the ‘designer world’ nor was he on Condé Nast’s lunch list. He spent a fortune on entertaining, but had become frugal when it came to his own clothes. Arnold Bennett, killing time between appointments one day in the store’s basement, met Selfridge
‘wearing a rather old morning suit and silk hat. He at once seized hold of me and showed me over a lot of the new part – cold-storage for furs – finest in the world. Then up in his private lift to the offices and his room, where I had to scratch my name with a diamond on the window.’