The young salesman from the menswear department who acted as his in-store valet would bring up several freshly laundered cream silk shirts and hang them in the cedarwood closets, where a second set of dress clothes was ready in case he wanted to change at work before going out for the evening. His high, Cuban-heeled, black patent boots—made to order by Alan McAfee of Duke Street, with in-built “lifts” to give him an extra half-inch—were rubbed with a chamois cloth and, finally, his black silk top hat was carefully brushed.
The restaurant supervisor delivered a pot of weak China tea and a bowl of fruit, pausing to discuss the menu for any guests due for lunch in his private dining room. A florist arrived from the flower department with a selection of roses and orchids from which Selfridge carefully selected a rose for the crystal vase on his desk and an orchid for his boutonnière. Three times a week, huge vases of flowers were carefully arranged in his inner and outer offices and the dining room. Selfridge adored highly scented flowers and was fastidious about their care, always checking the water to ensure it was topped up and pausing to snap off a dead bloom.
Refreshed, he would then deal with the early morning post, the first of five enormous batches that arrived daily from the Remittance Office, which handled all the store mail. He would go through important letters with Mr. Aubrey and then, at 9:15 A.M., run through the day’s engagement diary with his social secretary. At precisely 9:30 A.M. he would don his hat and walk the store’s six acres, the monarch of all he surveyed.
Department managers frantically telephoned ahead to alert staff, who would instinctively straighten up and smooth their clothes, trying not to look self-conscious. Harry would stop and have a word here, ask a question there. He never asked anyone how they were, loathing any mention of even the mildest ill health. “Tell me …” was always his opening question, “how is this selling?” or “has this gone well?” He knew exactly how it had been going, for the previous day’s sales reports were on his desk first thing each morning, but he wanted to hear it from them. On his instruction, staff always called him “Mr. Selfridge” to his face, never “Sir.” He actively disliked that formality. Any letters signed “I remain, sir, your most obedient servant,” in the manner of the time, made him wince. For the most part, his staff referred to him as “the Chief.”
As he made his rounds, he would scribble notes about things that annoyed him or queries to be followed up on his shirt cuff in pencil: not for nothing were there spares in the office. He never criticized anyone in public—and rarely praised them either—but he would nod and smile faintly when he heard good news. Then, looking at his watch—always set five minutes fast “so I’ve got five minutes longer to live”—he would move on to the next department. Nothing escaped his eagle eye, from a stain on the carpet to a blunt pencil. If he found dust he simply paused and wrote HGS with his fingertip, just as he had always done at Marshall Field. It wouldn’t be there for long.
His presence, however, lingered long after he’d left and the staff would talk about his “walk” for the rest of the day. Sometimes they would get a reminder, by way of a yellow telegram envelope that arrived at their work station. Originally, Selfridge had reasoned that they would jump to open the envelope thinking they had been sent a telegram. Once the staff had figured out the system they were even quicker to open it, never knowing if it was good news or bad but aware that it was a personal message from “the Chief” exclusively for them.
Harry’s tour took more than an hour. By the time he got back to his office he had seen over a thousand people. Within a decade that number had grown to well over three thousand and ultimately it would rise to over five. He engaged with them all. For a lot of them, it was the highlight of their day. The man himself—imbued with a glamour lacking in any other retailing chief—was why they worked at Selfridge’s. The store was a theater, with the curtain going up at nine o’clock every morning. Like every impresario before or since, Harry Selfridge was checking that his cast was in order, with the stage set for the next performance.
The rest of the morning was spent studying buyers’ reports and stock inventories, meeting the advertising department staff, planning window displays or on the telephone. The store had 120 lines to the Mayfair Exchange and six hundred internal extensions. Selfridge regarded all embryonic telecommunications systems as an essential business tool. He had offered the National Telephone Company the opportunity to open a branch exchange in the store, but they turned him down, instead giving the store the distinctive telephone number “Gerrard One” by way of compensation. As telephones spread through London, Selfridges was the first store to sell the equipment and also the first to advertise on the cover of the telephone directory—no one else had thought of it.
Harry’s office door was—in theory—always open for people who wanted to see him. In reality, Thomas Aubrey carefully guarded the inner sanctum. Generally affable, Selfridge could at times be tetchy. Executives called to meetings would get a signal from Mr. Aubrey, who used a coded system—“North Wind,” “North East Wind” or “Gale Force Wind”—so that they knew what to expect. They also soon learned that he hated, absolutely hated, long meetings. In a move designed as much to unnerve people as to structure his time, he would place a large hourglass upside down the minute someone entered his office. Turning toward them with his vivid blue eyes fixed in a penetrating gaze, he would ask “What can I do for you?” Fifteen minutes, he reasoned, was long enough for most issues. It wasn’t so much that “time is money,” more that “time is precious.” He was fixated by it. He was fifty-three. He wanted to be thirty again.
Given the froideur with which London’s established retail businesses had reacted to Selfridge’s grand opening, it is curious how many of them swiftly recalled anniversaries of their own to celebrate that year. Peter Robinson, D. H. Evans, John Barker, Swan & Edgar, and Maples all staged events that enabled them to send out elaborate cards and entertain their customers. Even the mighty Harrods succumbed, deciding they couldn’t wait a minute longer to celebrate their 75th Jubilee by hosting a series of grand concerts led by the London Symphony Orchestra. Selfridge was hugely amused at their arithmetic, for though their founder Henry Harrod had opened his original small shop in Stepney in 1835, he hadn’t acquired ownership of the Knightsbridge site until 1853. Sir Alfred Newton, the chairman of Harrods, visited Selfridge to pay his compliments. Their meeting, seemingly friendly, ended with Sir Alfred saying: “You’ll lose your money.”
Selfridge may have remembered that remark some weeks later when the store was deserted for days at a time and takings were meager. A reporter from the Evening News, who found himself virtually alone on an upper floor, bumped into Selfridge himself who, full of bravura, simply said: “We’ve not provided half enough lifts—it doesn’t do to keep people waiting.” While the Evening News remarked on “his unconquerable optimism,” there were other, less appealing, press notices. The Anglo-Continental Magazine puritanically observed: “Selfridges employs every art to lure the feminine element into those extravagances which work ruin and misery at home.”
In some respects the magazine had a point. In an era when the average household rarely had access to credit, many families still only bought what they could afford. Selfridge’s, more than any other store in England, spearheaded the revolution that changed people’s perception of shopping, perhaps most significantly by involving his customers less in “ruin and misery” than in the real pleasure of purchasing something, however modest, and being made to feel special while doing it. When the store opened, all visitors (as he preferred to call customers) received miniature silver keys as a gift “so they would feel at home.” “I want to serve the public courteously, efficiently, expeditiously, and with absolute fairness,” he told the respected American journalist, Edward Price Bell. As a consequence, his customers lacked for nothing. Lord Beaverbrook, not an easy man to impress, would later remark that “Gordon Selfridge pioneered the art of pampering.” He was right. People went to Selfridge’s to b
uy something they wanted rather than something they needed.
What Harry Selfridge himself needed at this point was money. He had an annual payroll bill of over £120,000 to meet, interest to pay on his £350,000 loan from John Musker, an annual ground rent of £10,000 and increasing National Insurance costs, not to mention a huge promotional budget to underwrite. It was hardly surprising that his finances were precarious. Discussions were under way with interested parties about a stock issue, but it was proving hard to finalize. Frank Woolworth, the American “dime store” multimillionaire, was in London at the time, exploring his own planned expansion in England. He wrote to colleagues back in America:
Stores here are too small and shallow. Customers do most of their shopping from the windows. The moment you go in, you are expected to buy and to have made your choice from the window. They give you an icy stare if you follow the American custom of just going in to look around. Selfridge’s is the only department store that looks like an American establishment. He has spent an enormous amount of money and may make a success in time. He has been trying to float some stock in his corporation but without much success. Most Englishmen think he will fail. There seems to be a prejudice against him—in fact against all foreigners invading this territory. We will have no walkover here.
Selfridge himself was saddened by what he felt was “a certain hostility, originating with our competitors.” It was said that several senior staff had specifically applied for jobs at the behest of rivals and were reporting back on new systems and turnover figures. Certainly, some members of staff were fired abruptly within a matter of months. Selfridge hotly denied that this was due to commercial espionage, explaining that those let go hadn’t “responded to our training methods or house rules.” These were carved in stone: no gratuities or suppliers’ kickbacks were to be taken, punctuality and presentation were of paramount importance, and staff were expected to adhere to a strict dress code.
There were no second chances at Selfridge’s. One mistake meant instant dismissal. The staff didn’t seem to mind. There were five applicants for every available job, wages were a little higher than elsewhere, staff facilities were unique for the time and—significantly—there were no fines. An early employee, who worked there for over thirty years, recalled: “There was a feeling of kindness pervading the store right from the start—it was always a happy place.”
Selfridge may have upset a lot of people in London, but he genuinely wanted to make Oxford Street the preeminent shopping street in the world. It was proving harder than he had thought and he admitted his ideal would be to have “Harrods on one side of us, Whiteley’s on the other, and Swan & Edgar facing us. Then we should all do better.”
There were daily discussions about how to increase footfall. Determined to attract men into the store—either accompanying their wives and girlfriends or shopping themselves—Selfridge opened a rifle range on the roof terrace. Paintings that had failed to be selected for the Royal Academy’s Summer Show were exhibited in the store. “Artists have a hard enough time making a living,” said Selfridge, “and anyway, there might be some undiscovered treasures amongst them.” As it happened, there weren’t, but he was always keen to explore new ideas. Even his children weren’t allowed to leave the breakfast table until they had each made at least three suggestions. Rosalie, Violette, Harry Gordon (always called Gordon Jr.) and Beatrice were now fifteen, twelve, nine and eight, respectively. Their upbringing was unusual to say the least. Their contemporaries didn’t breakfast with their parents, let alone discuss business ideas, nor did their fathers own stores that provided the unheard-of treat of ice-cream sodas for tea.
Grace Lovat Fraser, a friend of Rosalie’s, spent a lot of time at Arlington Street. The atmosphere was “lively and informal, with the house always full of young people, of whom gentle Mrs. Selfridge was very fond.” Grace became very close to the children, often joining them on trips to matinées organized by their grandmother, whom she described as “unobtrusively formidable” and “unquestionably the head of the household.” Rose Selfridge didn’t share her husband’s passion for London or its nightlife. Neither did she care for the rigid formality of the era. Even Jennie Jerome, Winston Churchill’s mother and an early “dollar princess” who was a member of Edward VII’s set, wrote in her 1908 diary: “In England, the American woman is looked upon as a strange and abnormal creature with habits and manner something between a red Indian and a Gaiety Girl.” Admittedly, Jennie had a snake tattooed around her wrist and a penchant for lovers younger than her own son, whereas Rose Selfridge wasn’t in the least flashy and loved nothing better than being at home with her family. Rose missed Chicago, traveling back there three, or sometimes four times a year to see her sister.
The children had very different personalities. According to Grace, “Rosalie was quiet and gentle, like her mother, while Violette was outgoing, pretty, and given to improvising unexpected amusements which were indulgently regarded by the rest of the family.” Violette, the “wild child” of the family, once famously bluffed her way into her father’s office, disguised in a blond wig, and solicited a fairly generous check from him for a fake charity.
The girls went to Miss Douglas’s school in Queen’s Gate, had dancing classes at Mrs. Wordsworth’s, and learned to curtsey and to speak “very pretty French.” Young Gordon meanwhile was sent away to prep school. Groomed from an early age to join the business, his holidays filled with private tuition, even as a child he often appeared at his father’s side for photo opportunities. The store was the children’s playground. The three girls were treated like little princesses in the toy department, the pet department, the girls’ clothes department, and especially the confectionery department. Gordon Jr. and his friends probably preferred the vast lower basement, where men stoked the coal furnaces that heated the steam radiators throughout the store, or Irongate Wharf in Paddington, where the delivery vans, carts, and horses were kept.
The children led a very international life compared to many of their classmates. Summers were spent in Chicago, while in winter they went to St. Moritz to ski and skate. In London, they cycled around town, played tennis, and took judo classes, activities for which they were dressed by the store where sports clothes and equipment were stocked in depth.
While sportsmen now wore lighter clothes, women were still covered from chin to ankle, or from chin to knee in the case of swimwear. In 1909, Mrs. Charlotte Cooper Sterry, who had previously won the Wimbledon Ladies’ Championship five times, said: “To my idea nothing looks smarter or more in keeping with the game than a nice white skirt—about two inches off the ground—white blouse, white band and a pale colored silk tie and white collar.” What she didn’t say was that she was—as all women were—still wearing a corset, although the newly introduced “sports corset” was a smaller affair, made in cotton, shaped like a waist-cincher and much more lightly boned. It took what had originally been introduced as a child’s garment—the ribbed cotton liberty bodice—to liberate sportswomen from corsets when an enterprising manufacturer made them in adult sizes, marketing them as a lighter-weight cover-up.
Women who played golf fared little better. The struggle between the new woman’s enthusiasm for golf and her clothes became so acute that special golf courses were laid out with short holes as they couldn’t hit a long drive wearing a tightly cut jacket. At this point, Burberry—having made their name with special weatherproofed motoring clothes—came to the rescue with their “Ladies’ Free-stroke Coat with patent Pivot Sleeve and adjustable skirt.”
There’s little evidence to suggest that the Selfridge girls enjoyed country pursuits—understandably, given that their father didn’t even own tweeds, once famously annoying his hostess by turning up for a weekend in the country still wearing his usual formal coat and striped trousers.
Above all, the family talked together, with Madam Selfridge marking up interesting passages in the morning and evening newspapers for daily discussion around the dining table. Selfridge was a
fond father, indulgent toward his children and himself indulged by his devoted wife and mother. Edward Price Bell, who knew them in both Chicago and London, observed that his home and family “provided [Selfridge] with emotional riches of astonishing affluence.” Despite all this, it wasn’t enough. Selfridge had a compulsion for conquest—whether in work or with women.
Financial security came three months after the opening of the store when, despite some skepticism in the City, Selfridge succeeded in raising money through the company’s share offering. The originating £900,000 capital was split into £400,000 worth of 6 percent cumulative preference shares at £1 each, and £500,000 worth of ordinary shares at £1. Selfridge himself owned well over 200,000 preference and 300,000 ordinary shares. There was a further offer of £400,000 worth of 5 percent first mortgage debentures at £100 each. Selfridge, having alerted investors “not to expect dividends for a year or two,” immediately went out and bought sixteen adjoining buildings, increased his advertising budget and hired 200 new members of staff.
Though the store was too new to have earned a place in London’s fashion hierarchy, customers were drawn by the depth of accessories beautifully displayed in individual departments: parasols, coq feather boas, trimmed millinery, handkerchiefs, gloves, and lace. Selfridge’s also specialized in shoes, sold the most mouthwatering tea gowns and had some of the best-stocked children’s wear and corsetry departments in town. Servants’ liveries, nurses’ uniforms, even clothes and dog collars for the clergy—Selfridge’s sold them all.
It was a good beginning, but it wasn’t enough. Existing stores already had an established customer base. Harrods served “society” and the classier end of the artistic world—Oscar Wilde, Lillie Langtry, and Ellen Terry had been among the first to sign up for monthly credit accounts when Harrods launched them as early as 1884. Swan & Edgar was the store of choice for actresses, dancers, and the demimonde, all of whom ordered delicious clothes made in their workshops under the supervision of the talented Ann Cheriton. Swan’s real claim to fame came when W. Somerset Maugham used it as a model for his fictional “Lynn & Sedley” in Of Human Bondage, paying the floorwalker Gilbert Clarke thirty guineas to give him a blow-by-blow description of the rigors of retailing, right down to the depressing and dirty staff hostels.
Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge Page 11