Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge (29 page)

The signature window, the Chief’s pride and joy, was by now a
Who’s Who
of fame and included Charlie Chaplin, Fred Astaire, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Suzanne Lenglen and Michael Arlen. During his working day, Selfridge was still orderly and in control, working longer hours than men half his age. But he was playing hard too, delighting in showing off his conquests. He would walk the store with Suzanne, or Jenny, or Fanny Ward – just as he had done with Gaby – helping them to chose various things and telling the staff to ‘send the bill upstairs’. One wonders what the sales girls, earning a few pounds a week, thought about their ageing, albeit much-revered boss blithely signing off shopping worth hundreds – sometimes thousands – of pounds for his famous lady friends. Were they impressed by contact with celebrity? Absolutely. Did they talk about it when they got home? Definitely. Did it sadden them to see a doting old man fussing over rather greedy women? Almost certainly.

The life of the store continued apace. During the week of Selfridge’s sixteenth birthday celebrations in 1925, it is estimated that over a million people came through the doors. To mark the occasion, Selfridge sponsored an innovative fifteen-minute radio broadcast by the actress Yvonne Georges from the Eiffel Tower on the couture collections in Paris. This early attempt at commercial radio was the brainchild of an ex-Flying Corps radio wizard, Captain Leonard Plugge. Sadly for Selfridge, when the research survey notes were completed, only three people admitted to having heard the broadcast. Captain Plugge, cheerful in adversity, went on to launch the radio station Radio Normandy as well as making a fortune perfecting the first motor-car radio.

Meanwhile, some shoppers in the store stumbled across history in the making as they watched the young Scottish inventor John Logie
Baird demonstrate his ‘televisor’. Baird had struggled long and hard to get recognition for his work. Calling in at the
Daily Express
in the hope of explaining the principles of television to the science editor, he was met with the response: ‘For God’s sake go down to Reception and get rid of a lunatic who’s down there. He says he’s got a machine for seeing by wireless. Watch him – he may have a knife!’ At Selfridge’s, where they were more enlightened, Baird was paid £25 to demonstrate his apparatus, for one week, three times daily. Since he was penniless, the money was a godsend.

It was a time of change not just outside the business but inside it too. Staff were leaving. Well-trained and experienced, they were able to command high salaries elsewhere. Percy Best went to the traditional drapers Schoolbred’s, while the three Americans went home, the display chief Edward Goldsman rejoining Marshall Field, although he returned at vast expense once a year to mastermind Selfridge’s Christmas windows. Crossing the Atlantic in the other direction, young Ralph Isidor Straus of the then family-owned Macy’s in New York, who was studying for an MBA at Harvard, joined the store as a hard-working summer intern. Eric Dunstan left to work for Syrie Maugham, who had by now moved to Grosvenor Street. It wasn’t a happy experience. Dunstan soon moved out, saying: ‘I cared little for her décor and less for her.’ His replacement in the Selfridge inner sanctum was Captain Leslie Winterbottom, late of the Hussars, who stayed with the Chief until 1939.

In 1925 the Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill presided over a return to the gold standard. The aristocracy were being hit hard by death duties – on the Duke of Rutland’s death, the Duchess had to put their Arlington Street mansion up for sale – while the newly rich were awash with money. For those with an eye for acquisitions, mergers and debt reconstruction, there were fortunes to be made. Selfridge himself would soon become part of that trend, making him rich beyond even his dreams. But what would he do with the money?

Meanwhile, Mr Asquith had finally accepted a peerage, becoming
the Earl of Oxford. From the stage of a hugely successful revue called
The Punch Bowl,
Norah Blaney sang to an applauding audience:

Mr Asquith now is an Earl
Oxford is his seat:
But Mr Selfridge still remains
The Earl of Oxford Street.

‘The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.’
Samuel Johnson

I
n the mid-1920s, a leading business magazine,
Expressions
, wrote: ‘To the best of our knowledge, no one has ever dared to refer to Mr H. Gordon Selfridge as a shopkeeper. He must be given credit for teaching London and the rest of the country that serving the public is business of the highest order.’ As the growth in consumerism continued, the Drapers’ Chamber of Commerce inaugurated a summer school in Cambridge, offering courses in ‘new methods of merchandising, display and window dressing’. Their star speaker was Selfridge himself, whose talk centred on his favourite themes of in-store entertainment, customer service and value for money. ‘The first,’ he said ‘will get them in, while the second and third will keep them there.’ He concluded by giving the students the same mantra he always gave his own staff: ‘There are six useful things for notable success in business – judgement, energy, ambition, imagination, determination and nerve. But the greatest of these is judgement.’

In the context of business decisions and planning, his own judgement appeared to be as sound as ever, his critical faculties seemingly unimpaired by the frivolity of his after-hours escapades. At 69, he still arrived at work early. He still walked the store. He still controlled board meetings with a brisk ‘Any business? No? Well then, let’s move on, shall we?’ leaving his directors more often than
not merely nodding their agreement. The much more lively monthly meetings with buyers and senior sales staff continued as they had always done, with the Chief singling out individuals whose departments had exceeded their targets and making them blush with pleasure at his praise.

The potential of television had excited him. ‘This is not a toy,’ he said, ‘it is going to be a link between all peoples of the world.’ He was also convinced of the long-term future of the motor-car, commissioning the civil engineer Sir Harley Dalrymple-Hay to prepare a feasibility study on the logistics of building an underground car park in Portman Square and enlarging the store’s fleet of motorized delivery vans. Cars were beginning to clutter the streets. By the mid-1920s as many as 51,000 motor vehicles and 3,300 horse-drawn carriages were passing round Hyde Park Corner each day and one-way traffic systems were introduced to help traffic flow. Nothing was too much trouble for Selfridge. When an American friend complained about the quality of the coffee in the Palm Court Restaurant, Selfridge had the brand changed. Walking in St Marylebone, he observed the local fire brigade practising on a piece of waste land. He wrote to offer them practice facilities in the store, and in return got the smog-soiled façade cleaned for free. Of course, there were those who knew things were getting out of hand, not least A. J. Hensey, head of the Bought Ledger Department, whose job it was to draw up cheques to cover the Chief’s costs. The ever-discreet Mr Hensey who, in his own words, witnessed Selfridge ‘going gaga’ over various women, wasn’t merely in charge of payments: he drew up cheques for generous pay-offs when the affairs ended.

Selfridge excelled in blurring the lines between professional and personal entertainment, ensuring his guest lists included influential businessmen and, unusually for the era, businesswomen such as his friend Elizabeth Arden, whose range was by now the top selling line in the store. Since moving into Lansdowne House, he had already hosted some glamorous soirées, but during 1925 he upped the pace, dispensing largesse on a spectacular scale. The media were always
invited to cover such events, though they were allocated special tables rather than seated with the VIPs. Selfridge also shrewdly included the American media correspondents based in London, thereby guaranteeing coverage not just in New York and Chicago but coast to coast, courtesy of
Time
magazine who found his lifestyle irresistible. The store display department took charge of flowers and décor, the food halls delivered provisions, and restaurant staff were on hand to supplement his own domestic staff. The Stars and Stripes flew at an American-themed Rodeo Night where, after a supper of char-grilled hamburgers, fries and ketchup, washed down with a dozen different beers had been served in the Sculpture Court, enthusiastic guests were taught square dancing and watched Red Indians doing lasso demonstrations.

At another party, to honour the newly arrived Japanese Ambassador, the display team created a Japanese water-garden which ran down the centre of the vast dining-table. Checking the area in the afternoon, Selfridge noticed there were no goldfish. A series of frantic forays by taxi to the store’s pet department soon ensured that fifty fish were happily swimming among the water-lilies. Satisfied with the result, Selfridge went upstairs to change into his customary white tie. Then disaster struck. The paint on the sides of the artificial pond had poisoned the water and the fish started to die. Selfridge immediately sent to the store for a dozen bicycle pumps and ordered his staff to pump oxygen into the water to revive the survivors. It was a good idea, but it didn’t work. Happily, the Ambassador remained blissfully unaware of the drama and spent a delightful evening in the company of, among other dignitaries, the Home Secretary Sir William Joynson-Hicks, enjoying arias performed by an Italian soprano and watching Hawaiian ‘hula-hula’ dancers shimmy to a native band.

Whatever happened at home was usually a spin-off from an event that had taken place in the store. A dinner hosted to honour the tennis player Suzanne Lenglen followed the launch of her book,
Lawn Tennis: The Game of Nations
. Suzanne was still playing at her usual fast and furious pace, fortified by her customary brandy rather than
barley water between sets, and Selfridge and his daughter Rosalie had been in their Centre Court seats to watch her win the Wimbledon Women’s Singles for the fifth time. Suzanne’s teaching manual had been eagerly awaited by her fans who swamped both the store’s book department and the sports department, where the very latest in short tennis skirts and her signature salmon-coloured jersey
sportif
turbans flew off the rails.

Personal appearances by sports stars were promoted in the London newspapers, and Selfridge continued to advertise heavily in the national press, though not in
Vogue
– the store’s regular pages having been cancelled after a tiff with the management. Harry Yoxall,
Vogue
’s business manager, recalled the incident in his memoirs. Towards the end of 1924, when the magazine’s page rate was increased from £36 to £40, he was summoned to Oxford Street. Yoxall, finding Selfridge ‘wearing his hat in the afternoon, always a bad sign’, braced himself for battle. ‘I am an old man now,’ said Selfridge, ‘and have few pleasures left in my life, other than that of buying space at a lower price than anyone else enjoys. Now, if you will let me have my advertisements at £37 10 shillings, I’ll give you an order for twenty-six pages.’ Rather courageously, given that the magazine was losing around £25,000 a year, Yoxall refused to compromise, with the result that
Vogue
lost a client. They pretty soon lost an editor too when Dorothy Todd, the sapphic ‘thinking woman’s heroine’, was fired for her overly artistic and intellectual approach. Her replacement was the much more fashion-orientated Mrs Alison Settle of
Eve
magazine, who, along with her senior fashion editor, Dorothy Todd’s most intimate friend Madge Garland, between them secured British
Vogue
’s role as the arbiter of fashion.

Selfridge was uninterested in the comings and goings of the growing band of influential women who wrote about fashion, leaving such things to his public relations department. What Mrs Wish of the
Daily Express
thought of the store’s latest season’s dresses was of little concern to him – he felt more at ease in conversation with the paper’s editor Ralph Blumenfeld or its owner Lord Beaverbrook. In
any event, fashion editors in those days did as they were told, and one way or the other, the store was constantly making news. The press were never short of a story. Sophie Tucker sang at a Dance Week which featured the young and beautiful Jacob Epstein model, Oriel Ross, who melted hearts playing the piano. Ivor Novello, the actress Evelyn Laye and the diva Marie Tempest launched the spring sale. An electronic scoreboard delivered the results of that year’s Test Match at the front of the store, once again bringing Oxford Street to a standstill, while the American golf professional Walter Hagen gave advice to fans on their swing, and the pilot Alan Cobham’s plane – in which he had flown to Africa and back – was put on display.

Returning from an adventurous trip to Russia with Rosalie and Serge, Selfridge demanded that Mr Yoxall pay him another visit. Selfridge had scoured the station bookstalls in Constantinople before boarding the Orient Express and discovered only one English title. ‘Which one do you think it was?’ he asked Yoxall. Magazine circulation
circa
1925 being a haphazard affair, Yoxall hadn’t the faintest idea but replied hopefully, ‘
Vogue
?’ ‘You’re right,’ said Selfridge, ‘and I don’t think my great store should be out of such a magazine.’ He promptly reinstated his order for twenty-six pages, failing to notice that in the meantime
Vogue
had upped the price per page to £48. Mrs Settle and Miss Garland were soon commissioning the young and struggling photographer Cecil Beaton to take celebrity pictures. Beaton took his film to the patient Mr Barnes in the store’s photographic department, noting in his diary: ‘I’ve been giving Selfridge’s nearly all the developing. This morning I traipsed for the fifty millionth time to get the results of Edith Sitwell.’

Vogue
also commissioned illustrations and text from Beaton, who quickly turned his attention to the most glamorous pastime of the period – gambling. Before long, Beaton’s witty little drawings of the chic set who frequented Deauville, Le Touquet, Biarritz and Cannes were a regular feature in
Vogue
, with titles such as ‘The Season at Le Touquet – An Exotic World of Sophisticated Elegance’. Anyone who was anyone relentlessly played the tables. Being seen playing
the right game at the right casino was as important as being seen in the right nightclubs. In the French casinos throughout the 1920s, no one yearned to show off and be seen more than Jenny and Rosie Dolly, and their passion for gaming infected Selfridge. He had spent decades hiding the extent of his habit, but when his mother died, the final restraint was lifted. In Jenny and Rosie he found his soul mates. With them he crossed the line between habit and addiction. It wasn’t just about sex. It was about dealing a six and a three – or any other numbers that made the magic nine of the winning hand at baccarat.