Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge (32 page)

His own beautiful building in Oxford Street was completed in 1928, when the huge cantilevered canopy of bronze and glass, supported by two free-standing Ionic columns set in a vast canopy of Portland stone, was unveiled to an admiring public. An enormous three-ton bell, cast by Gillett & Johnston, was installed high above the parapet, while Sir William Reid’s impressive bronze frieze of sculptured panels bordering the rear wall of the loggia won him a silver medal from the Royal Society of British Sculptors.
Architectural Design & Construction
called it ‘the most imperial building in London’. For Selfridge, it represented a lifetime’s achievement.

Adding to his racing stable, Harry bought the much-fancied Ruddyman (Misconduct, having fallen badly in the Grand National, had had to be destroyed), placing him with Captain Powell’s stables at Aldbourne in Wiltshire. Powell also trained Rex Cohen’s horses. Cohen, the owner of Lewis’s of Liverpool, would meet up with Selfridge at the races and exchange friendly nods and tips. There was always a camaraderie amongst the drapers, although Selfridge was virtually alone in attending John Lewis’s funeral in June. The reclusive, miserly old retailer was 93 when he died and left strict instructions that he was to be buried in his wife’s unmarked grave, that his staff should not mourn him and that the store should stay open as usual.

John Lewis’s death marked the passing of the last of the original London store owners. The men now in charge were younger, more ambitious, more in tune with the rise of consumer society. Most of them took business seriously, and many of them had learned their craft working for Harry Gordon Selfridge. The trouble was, Harry himself was now spending his time playing.

‘There is nothing so enthralling as the conduct of a great business. It is the most fascinating game in the world – and it brings no sorrow with it.’
Harry Gordon Selfridge

H
arry Selfridge’s favourite time of day was the quiet hour or so spent with Mr Miller, the store’s resident architect, poring over plans and elevations. Since the early 1920s, bit by bit he had begun to acquire parcels of land fronting on to both Orchard Street and Duke Street. The latter area was used as warehousing and workshop space and was connected to the main store by a tunnel running under Somerset Street. By 1928, with enough property in place to create an enormous rear extension, Mr Miller was preparing detailed applications for planning permission. Wherever possible, Selfridge bought plots stretching back to Wigmore Street, always believing that one day he would realize his dream of an entire ‘double island’ site. By 1930, as his jigsaw puzzle of prime property pieces increased – finally taking in St Thomas’s Church and the old Somerset Hotel for £100,000 – the Marylebone Works Committee recommended that the Council accept Selfridge’s application for an initial £3 million scheme to extend fully on the Duke Street side. As ever with Harry’s hopes and dreams, however, there were strange anomalies. Sometimes he let valuable options lapse. Quite often, he invested thousands in buying a plot, despite knowing that it was useless unless he could get space to the left or right and that such an acquisition might be problematic – one grumpy hairdresser held
out for over twenty years. At other times, he seemed content simply to gaze at the drawings.

It might have been expected that, having become rich, Harry would finally build the castle on Hengistbury Head. Philip Tilden, who by now had completed hundreds of drawings, waited for the call. It never came. Distracted by the Dollies, his yacht, his horses – and his dreams of a triumphant palace in Oxford Street – he let the plans gather dust, leaving seabirds to circle undisturbed over the peaceful cliff top. Each week, flowers were placed on Rose and Lois’s graves in the equally peaceful churchyard at St Mark’s, and each quarter, the costs of the sexton who tended the plots were paid from the Selfridge family account.

In bustling Oxford Street, where the magnificent front entrance was now installed, Selfridge turned his attention to developing the roof-top space, already used as an exhibition ground and containing the ice-rink. Now it was announced that Selfridge’s was creating ‘the biggest roof garden in the world’, its construction to be masterminded by the urban garden expert Richard Suddell. When it opened over Whitsun in 1929, the beautiful displays stretched the entire length of the roof on Oxford Street, and the heady scent of roses, lavender, thyme and hyacinths filled the air. For the next decade, 30,000 bulbs would be planted each autumn, ensuring a spring flowering of snowdrops, crocuses, tulips and daffodils. The roof housed ornamental ponds, a water garden, a winter garden, a paved vine walk, a cherry tree walk and clematis-covered gazebos. The technical achievement in constructing such beauty was impressive: the earth, rock, stone, turf, fountains and plants required together weighed over 1,800 tons. Plants and bulbs came from the company nursery, installed at the Preston Road staff sports ground, where greenhouses and flower beds were lovingly cultivated by eight gardeners. The roof-top oasis was crowded all day, with restaurant service available for morning coffee, lunch and afternoon tea.

Flowers were an important part of the Chief’s persona. He loved giving them and he loved receiving them. Each year, on his birthday
in January, the staff would contribute towards vast floral baskets and bouquets, presented with full ceremony to their beaming boss. Not everyone enthused about the whip-round for the ritual, one irate member scrawling ‘Balls to Gordon Selfridge’ across the message on the staff notice board. Lord Woolton, the Chairman of Lewis’s of Liverpool, was not impressed by such excess: ‘His room was filled with flowers, as though they had been placed on an altar. He asked me whether my staff in Lewis’s paid such testimony to me, and when I said “never a daisy”, he said “you ought to give them a hint”.’ Lord Woolton, whose firm would subsequently acquire Selfridge’s in the 1950s, wrote presciently about Selfridge: ‘He had commercial vision and courage of a high order, combined alas with personal vanity and pride in being a public figure, which has ruined so many men who have lost a sense of proportion in the exaltation that comes from surrounding themselves with yes-men.’

He was right of course. Tucked away in an archive file is a record of a conversation between Selfridge and a close business friend, John Robertson, the advertising manager of the
Daily Express
. The two men were long-time poker partners, and Robertson had become used to watching Selfridge settle a business deal by flipping a coin. Soon after the group’s acquisition of Whiteley’s, the normally ebullient Selfridge seemed particularly low, admitting to Robertson that they had uncovered some serious problems ranging from missing inventory to merchandise too old or damaged to sell. Asked if he had made the deal ‘subject to contract following a valuer’s survey’, Selfridge admitted he hadn’t done any due diligence: the deal had gone through at speed and on trust. When Robertson suggested Selfridge sue Whiteley’s bankers for misrepresentation, the response was: ‘No. I cannot do that. It would not make me look very smart to have bought a business without safeguards.’ He tackled the problem by asking his old colleague Alfred Cowper – the store’s first systems manager – to run Whiteley’s and he set up a new joint supply company. But the cracks in the empire were beginning to show.

Early in 1929, Selfridge staged an exhibition of ‘English Decorative
Art’ at Lansdowne House, opening the event with a charity viewing attended by Queen Mary. A month later the property was sold. One by one, the stately homes of London were being turned into apartment blocks or hotels – the Duke of Westminster’s Grosvenor House, the Duke of Devonshire’s Devonshire House, the Duchess of Rutland’s Arlington House and, most recently, the Earl of Morley’s beautiful Dorchester House on Park Lane, which was sold to the McAlpine family for £500,000. It was, as the press remarked, the end of an era. Lord Lansdowne had already sold a vast tract of the garden to the developers of the Mayfair Hotel. Now, tempted by escalating property prices, he sold the house to American developers for £750,000. Selfridge had to move. Addicted to grandeur, he leased the Earl of Caledon’s residence, 9 Carlton House Terrace, taking it fully furnished, along with the Earl’s staff of fourteen. The society hostess Emerald Cunard had recently moved on to Grosvenor Square, but illustrious neighbours still included the young Prince Aly Khan, the Earl of Lonsdale, the Duke of Marlborough, Lady Curzon and Loel Guinness MP. Selfridge was also treading the hallowed turf of the late Mrs Potter Palmer, who had once lived in the street.

In Carlton House Terrace, Selfridge hosted large post-theatre suppers, served in the newly fashionable buffet style. Each week, a horse-drawn van would arrive from the store with prodigious quantities of food and drink. Store porter Fred Birss was 14 when he was on the Carlton House run, and he later recalled a typical delivery: ‘six cases of champagne, a dozen cases of whisky, six turkeys, four hams, 24 lbs of butter, a dozen loaves of bread, two boxes of cigars and several soda siphons’. This was the Monday order. The larder was replenished on Thursday, with smaller deliveries often made daily. Motorized vans also drove down to the Hampshire coast to provision the
Conqueror.
The cost of maintaining the yacht was enormous. In 1928 Selfridge spent nearly £17,000 on her (wages and victualling alone cost £8,264 3s 6d). The yacht was used to ferry the family to Deauville and Le Touquet in the spring and summer, calling in at the Isle of Wight en route, where Selfridge once famously annoyed the
Royal Yacht Squadron by tying up at the Royal buoy. But when he was going to Cannes or Nice, he continued to use
le train bleu
, only occasionally taking a Mediterranean cruise.

Harry’s addiction to the Dollies continued. It has been said that he wanted to marry Jenny, although his daughter Rosalie always denied it. But whatever his intentions, he lost his head, possibly his heart and certainly his wallet. They played at Le Touquet, a resort long favoured by the British smart set where by 1929 the casino was reported to be the most profitable in the world. They played at Deauville, a more international, café society sort of place, where Selfridge rented a ‘cottage’, as the large houses were always called, furnishing it beautifully and indulging the twins’ whims by throwing raucous parties which even he sometimes found overwhelming. One guest, present at what he described as ‘a pretty riotous affair’, later recalled that ‘The only restful thing in the place was the furniture and that white-haired old man, sitting all alone on the sofa.’

Above all, the trio gambled at Cannes, where stories of their gaming became the stuff of legend.
Time
reported Rosie winning £32,000 in a single afternoon. On the same day, however, Jenny lost. Down by £4,000, she stayed at the table until she hit a winning streak and finished £45,000 up. But two hours later she apparently lost the lot. The Dollies attracted attention wherever they went. From Cannes,
Vogue
reported: ‘When one is tired of dancing, there is the gambling: in the baccarat rooms the Dolly sisters cause the greatest stir, with crowds six deep standing to watch them play. They wear the most
wonderful
diamonds, both with their little jumper suits by day and their sequin capes and feathered helmet hats by night. The sisters shout over the table, inhale a hundred cigarettes and win or lose hundreds of thousands of pounds … spectators stand dumb with admiration.’

Jenny adored being known for her gambling almost as much as she had enjoyed being known for her dancing. ‘If I don’t know anything else,’ she said gaily to a reporter, having pocketed £5,000 at Biarritz, ‘I know
huit
and
neuf
.’ The arrangement she had with Selfridge was
simple. If she won, she kept the money. If she lost, he covered her debts. The film producer Victor Saville recalled boarding
le train bleu
at Cannes when the Dollies were on the platform waiting to greet Harry, who had boarded at San Remo. Selfridge alighted, hugged the girls, handed them a diamond necklace each, and got back on board. In the dining-car later that evening, he overheard a fellow passenger exclaiming: ‘You should have
seen
the Dolly sisters last night. They lost £25,000 in two sessions. I wonder who the silly old fool is who’s protecting them? There must be someone, mustn’t there?’ Saville and Selfridge, heads down, quietly immersed themselves in their dinner.

Very little of this activity ever hit the British press. Given that Selfridge was chairman of a public company, the famous and fashionable chronicler Lord Castlerosse could – maybe even should – have covered the story in his
Sunday Express
gossip column ‘Londoner’s Log’. But Castlerosse was astute enough never to expose Lord Beaverbrook’s friends, who included the Prince of Wales. Not that the Prince wasn’t in the press. He was probably the most photographed person in the world at the time, and his every move made news. The British media, however, were loyally discreet about his penchant for married women. By now the Prince’s affair with Freda Dudley Ward had ended and he was deeply involved with Thelma Furness.

Frighteningly sophisticated at just 24, the American Thelma and her sisters Gloria (married to Reggie Vanderbilt) and Consuelo (married to Benjamin Thaw, First Secretary at the American Embassy in London) were just the sort of women the Prince of Wales liked – funny, fearless, just a touch fast and charmingly devoid of deference. The Prince liked to dance, to sing along to the latest records, to talk about fashion – a topic that absorbed him almost as much as collecting stamps absorbed his father – but by now he had become disenchanted with touring the world and being on show. While the brusque shipping magnate Viscount ‘Duke’ Furness spent his days hunting and shooting in Melton Mowbray, his wife Thelma and the Prince of Wales spent their nights out on the town. They dined at
the Ritz and danced at the newly fashionable hot-spot, the Café de Paris, where to avoid any hint of scandal they were rarely alone, their innermost circle of friends including the Duff Coopers, the Mountbattens, Prince George, and Major ‘Fruity’ Metcalfe and his wife, Mary Leiter Curzon’s daughter Alexandra.