Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge (34 page)

During the opening week of Jenny’s boutique, Gloria stayed at
her Paris town house and in a ‘girls together’ moment shared Jenny’s bedroom. Each morning, Selfridge would knock, and come in in his silk dressing-gown, carrying a breakfast tray. He’d then sit on the edge of Jenny’s bed, butter her toast, pour coffee and chat about the shop and plans for lunch as though none of them had a care in the world. Sometimes Jenny would smile. At other times she’d violently push away the tray, yelling at him to get out. Mario Gallati, the famous restaurateur who ran the Caprice and the Ivy, was fond of Selfridge, who had dined there for years, ‘dominating the table, erect and stern, looking every inch the formidable tycoon’. It was a different story when he was with Jenny, whose tantrums were well known at the Ivy. ‘Mr Selfridge would ring me up before bringing her to dine, ordering the most elaborate meals and the finest vintage wines. All Jenny’s favourites were prepared for her – then she’d decide to have a hamburger.’ According to Mario, ‘Selfridge was like a gauche schoolboy with her. When she made a scene, going off in a huff, he would sit there, eyes downcast …’

As the Depression took hold, Jenny’s de luxe lingerie shop haemorrhaged money. At Selfridge’s, things were little better. Selfridge, faced with a weekly wages bill of £155,000, refused to cut costs. The staff repaid him by offering to work until 7 p.m. without overtime – a gesture which thrilled Selfridge as much as it annoyed the hierarchy at the National Union of Shop Assistants. Defying the Depression, with his usual sangfroid he urged local and regional investment. ‘Let’s make Marble Arch the focal point of an avenue as magnificent as the Bois de Boulogne,’ he told the
Daily Chronicle
, while suggesting that councillors in Brighton should ‘dream a future’ for the town by opening cafés and restaurants and making it ‘more tourist friendly’. In the meantime, money was tight. Harry sold over 300 acres of Hengistbury Head to Bournemouth Council, with the proviso that they would never build on it, but retained 33 acres – complete with planning permission – for future use himself. Store profits were down. Trade suppliers, already used to slow payments from Selfridge’s, now had to wait longer and longer.

In 1931, the store celebrated the installation of ‘The Queen of Time’, a magnificent eleven-foot-high bronze statue flanked by winged figures symbolizing Progress and surmounted by a stupendous clock. Designed by the sculptor Gilbert Bayes and the store’s architect Albert Miller, ‘The Queen’ was hailed as a ‘horological masterpiece’.
Lilliput
magazine thought otherwise, printing a little ditty:

Hickory-dickory-dock, a mouse ran up Selfridges’ clock
It didn’t expect such a bizarre effect and it never got over the shock.

While the Chief’s watch was five minutes fast, it was always said that the store clocks were kept five minutes slow, though the management later denied it. On the wall near the Information Bureau was a row of accurate clocks, each showing the time in a capital city overseas and part of what was described as the store’s ‘time-honoured tradition of keeping customers informed on all things of interest’. Time had run out for many of Harry’s friends, however. Sir Thomas Lipton, the America’s Cup challenger who was only granted membership of the Royal Yacht Squadron in his old age, died without ever setting foot in the place. Harry’s old flame Anna Pavlova died of pleurisy in January 1931 at the untimely age of 45. Arnold Bennett was also dead. Harry missed him greatly. Ever since Bennett had written his early novel,
Hugo: A Fantasia on Modern Themes
, loosely based on a combination of Harrods and Whiteley’s, Selfridge had hoped he would write about the store. He wasn’t alone. Trevor Fenwick, of Fenwick’s of Newcastle, also lobbied Bennett in 1930. The author replied: ‘The idea of writing a novel about a department store has suggested itself to me many times during the past ten years. Mr Selfridge has offered to place the whole of his establishment at my disposal, and has urged me to do such a novel. But I do not think I shall ever write it … I have had enough of these vast subjects.’ There may not have been a book, but there would be a film, when the producer Victor Saville used the store as the live background for his film
Love on Wheels
, made in 1932.

Time had also run out for Ramsay MacDonald. Faced with a tidal wave of unemployment – two and a half million by the end of 1930 – and having reached a deadlock over the financial crisis engulfing Britain, MacDonald was persuaded to form a National Government. With the Conservatives pressing for a public mandate and MacDonald himself being expelled from the Labour Party, the only solution was a General Election. In October 1931, the country headed for the polls again, and Selfridge’s, true to form, put on a party. Jenny Dolly flew in to be at Harry’s side when he received over 3,000 guests in the store. The store’s Sales Director Mr Williams recalled that ‘Jenny wore bracelets on both arms from wrist to elbow. As she moved, they flashed prismatic lights from emeralds, rubies, sapphires and diamonds.’ Winston Churchill, C. B. Cochran, Emerald Cunard, Prince and Princess Galitzine, the Rajah of Sarawak, Noël Coward, Prince and Princess von Bismarck and a rather sozzled Rosa Lewis escorted by Charlie Cavendish were among the crowd who danced to Jack Hylton’s orchestra and were entertained by Cossack dancers, Jimmy Nervo and Teddy Knox of the Crazy Gang, and the Australian jugglers and gymnasts, the Rigoletto Brothers.

When the votes were counted, the Conservatives had 470 seats, Labour 52 and the Liberals 33. As the National Government’s Prime Minister, MacDonald spent the next four years isolated from his colleagues and at the beck and call of the Conservatives. Among a rash of new, independent political parties that had put up candidates at the election, Sir Oswald Mosley’s New Party failed to win a single seat. Undeterred, the Mosleys were among the guests at the election-night party, where Lady Cynthia – as with all Levi Leiter’s granddaughters – was always assured of a warm welcome. Sir Oswald seemed to have an unerring attraction for the Curzon women, marrying one, sleeping with both her sisters and rumoured to have had an affair with their step-mother. In troubled times, Sir Oswald attracted support from some who responded to his rabble-rousing speeches. Selfridge himself, grumbling at an American Chamber of Commerce luncheon about trade tariffs, government intervention
and red tape, declared: ‘What the country needs is a strong leader, an inspirer.’

Puzzling contradictions were a Selfridge trait. In support of a massive ‘Buy British’ campaign launched by the Prince of Wales, he invited the Mayor and Master Cutler of Sheffield to exhibit in London, giving them 6,000 square feet to display the city’s steel products. At the same time, however, he filled the store’s front windows with a million pounds’ worth of diamonds, presented in burglar-proof showcases. Quite what prompted Selfridge to promote himself as the ‘King of Bling’ when unemployment was rife is hard to fathom. People were looking – 27,000 crowded into the store to watch the American Bridge champion Ely Culbertson’s team play the British champion ‘Pops’ Beasley in a sound-proofed room and nearly as many watched the ‘Miss England’ contest staged at Selfridge’s – but they weren’t buying much. Figures were down. There were murmurings in the City as well as rumours of Selfridge’s excessive losses at the gaming tables in France.

By now Jenny Dolly’s foray into fashion had failed. The closure of her shop also marked the end of her relationship with Harry Selfridge. On a misty morning in March 1933, she crashed her car near Bordeaux, fracturing her skull and badly disfiguring her face. Her career as a femme fatale was finished and her famous jewels went up for auction that autumn to raise money for, among things, major plastic surgery. They only fetched $300,000, with Jenny tearfully acknowledging that ‘people got beautiful things for next to nothing’. Among the treasures that went were the black pearls once worn by Gaby Deslys and the ‘ice cube’ 51.75 carat diamond bought for Jenny by Harry Selfridge in 1928.

In London, Harry’s own financial affairs made waves when, at a troubled annual general meeting, an irate shareholder asked about the ‘Chairman’s Account’ which owed £154,791 to the company. Selfridge stood up and said: ‘I will reduce the matter as soon as possible. I admit I have been wrong.’ The trouble was he couldn’t reduce it. He also owed money to the Greek Syndicate, where even
Nicolas Zographos wasn’t immune to the Depression. A lot of Zographos’s high rollers had faded away. Major Jack Coats had committed suicide in his Park Lane apartment and others no longer travelled to gamble. With casino earnings throughout France down 75 per cent, the Syndicate sold on their debts. For Selfridge, this was a situation fraught with danger. Whatever he owed – and it’s rumoured to have been over £100,000 – was now being chased by extremely hard men. Liquidating assets, he sold his remaining parcel of land on Hengistbury Head and, in a move that alarmed his Board of Directors, he claimed thousands of pounds in arrears of salary for his titular role as Chairman of Whiteley’s, a store he rarely even visited. His daughter Rosalie, who had hoped he would cover their heavy mortgage on Wimbledon Park House, was destined to be disappointed. The bank foreclosed on the Wiasemskys, forcing their return to Carlton House Terrace. Gordon Jr meanwhile continued to live the high life, his photograph appearing in
Tatler
either alongside his plane or alongside a beautiful woman, such as the actress Anne Codrington. Staff would shake their heads, murmuring ‘like father, like son’.

Financial catastrophe was claiming more and more victims. Ivar Kreuger, the store’s original construction engineer who had subsequently become an industrialist known ‘as the richest man in the world’, killed himself rather than face accusations of fraud to manipulate the markets. Yet few outsiders observing the apparently seamless operations at Selfridge’s would have guessed there was trouble. For the architects and builders who had been working on the new Duke Street extension it was another matter. The extension had originally been planned to have four storeys above ground and two below. Now, because of financial constraints, it stopped at the first floor, albeit reinforced to allow for higher storeys that came later. Work on site being too slow to satisfy Selfridge, he came up with the original idea of using explosives. Half a pound stick of gelignite did the trick nicely, blasting ten tons of clay effortlessly out of the way.

The extension, which used 5,000 tons of Middlesbrough steel to create three and a half acres of extra floor space, finally opened
in March 1933. It was nicknamed the SWOD by staff because it encompassed Somerset, Wigmore, Orchard and Duke Streets. The low flat roof was put to good use: Lord Clydesdale’s Westland PV-3, which he had triumphantly flown over Mount Everest, went on show, and Suzanne Lenglen arrived in town to demonstrate her skills on the newly fitted
En-Tout-Cas
court. Suzanne and Selfridge’s relationship was as tempestuous as her tennis. The Chief’s personal store messenger, the teenage Ernest Winn, recalled having to deliver a letter from Selfridge to Miss Lenglen’s rented flat nearby. ‘She finished reading and started to scream and scream … I didn’t know what to do … so I just stood there, watching and waiting. I was pleased I was so small the way she was swinging her arms about, I might otherwise have been decapitated.’

Selfridge continued to ‘put on a show’. He spent excessively on advertising. He became a financial patron of the new Business School at Harvard University. He chartered an Imperial Airways four-engined plane for an aerial VIP New Year’s Eve party with a live in-flight fashion show. He stabled horses that didn’t win races and, very charmingly – given he couldn’t afford it – he paid Messrs Gillett & Johnston to replace the fabled Great Bell of Bow, which, having rusted beyond repair, had been silent since 1928.

The store celebrated its Silver Jubilee in 1934.
Draper’s Record
wrote: ‘He has not merely transformed Oxford Street into one of the world’s finest shopping centres, he gave a lead to the entire store trade.’ At a banquet hosted in his honour by fellow-traders in the borough of St Marylebone, held at the Grosvenor House Hotel, Harry was presented with a beautifully illuminated ‘Book of Signatures’ containing a heartfelt message: ‘From the first you have been a pioneer, and, even in difficult and disheartening times, have had the courage to go forward. Your energy and enterprise have brought fame to your firm, and have added to the prosperity of the community.’ Behind his glasses, Harry Selfridge’s eyes filled with emotion.

The year 1935 marked another Silver Jubilee, that of King George V and Queen Mary. Selfridge busied himself planning another set of
majestic external decorations, much as he had done so for their Coronation. They were utterly magnificent and they cost a fortune. Created by the noted architect and graphic designer William Walcot and the store’s own resident design expert, Albert Miller, their theme was ‘Empire’. A huge statue of Britannia towered 80 feet above the roof top, attended by two golden lions, flags flew and trumpeters blew.

In one of his many interviews with the
Daily Express
Selfridge had said: ‘It isn’t the making of money that’s the chief motive with me. It’s the great game that’s the thing. There is nothing so enthralling as the conduct of a great business – it’s the most fascinating game in the world – and it brings no sorrow with it.’

Unfortunately, the making of money
was
the chief motive of one of the company’s major shareholders – the Prudential Assurance Company. To them, retailing wasn’t a game, it was a business. Disturbed not merely by falling profits but by the profligate extravagance of Mr Selfridge, the ‘men from the Pru’ decided they had to put a man on the Board. They found him in Mr H. A. Holmes, who for many years had laboured diligently at the Midland Bank before becoming the finance director of the India Tyre and Rubber Company. Little did Selfridge know just how much sorrow he would bring.

‘’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’
Alfred, Lord Tennyson