The prospect of war with Germany hung in the air. The media was full of disturbing stories. Sir Maxwell Aitken, the thrusting Canadian-born British MP who was energetically buying his way into the Pearson-owned Daily Express, regularly lunched with Ralph Blumenfeld and Selfridge. They talked of the growing threat in Europe, the terrible, unresolved violence in the Balkans, the bitter unrest in Ireland and, to Aitken’s mind, the inadequacies of the prime minister, H. H. Asquith. Harry’s increasing prominence came in part from the store’s huge advertising budget, but also from his willingness to air his opinions on life as he saw it at a growing number of civic, charitable, and educational conferences and dinners. He particularly admired the Rotarians, traveling on their behalf to Glasgow, Liverpool, and Dublin, where he delivered his talks in a soft American accent, regaling the audiences with anecdotal observations based on topics often covered in “Callisthenes.”
Invariably, he was asked about America and the mood in mighty Chicago. Selfridge kept in touch with his Chicago contacts, proudly sending his annual accounts to Harry Pratt Judson, president of the university, who wrote back saying: “Your Chicago friends are following your English career with great interest.” Rosalie had made her debut there at the end of 1913, and the city’s press was full of stories of the balls, receptions, and teas held in her honor during her stay, all complimenting her on her “American patriotism” in making her debut in her home city and not in London. It might have been expected that Rosalie would, at this point, have taken a job, if not in her father’s own store—that being exclusively reserved for Gordon Jr., now a pupil at Winchester—then perhaps in journalism. As a teenager, she had followed the family tradition by writing and producing her own edition of Will o’ the Wisp, modeled on the newspaper once produced by her father. She even sent a copy to President Theodore Roosevelt, receiving a charming note on a picture of the White House in return. But none of the three Selfridge daughters ever took a paid job during their father’s lifetime.
Early in 1914, Selfridge’s hosted an enormously popular “Dominions” exhibition featuring Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. So many people crowded into the Palm Court Restaurant that the press office calculated they would have made a single file stretching for twenty miles. Visitors saw at firsthand the delights of life in these far-flung countries, and more than a few admitted they were thinking of emigrating to them. Rudyard Kipling used the exhibition as his theme for a lecture at the Royal Geographical Society, saying that in the not-too-distant future it would take only four days to fly to Australia. The topic of aviation was rarely far away: exhibition-flying at Doncaster aerodrome was all the rage; industrialists were busy planning the building of aircraft; and England’s first acclaimed aviator, Claude Grahame-White, who ran the Hendon Flying Club, could hardly keep up with demand for lessons.
In March 1914, Selfridge’s raised three hundred thousand pounds with an issue of 6 percent cumulative preference shares. The offer was so oversubscribed that it closed by midday. A delighted Selfridge told the Evening News that his wholly owned ordinary shares were “not for sale at any price.” He was busy planning the opening of his first Food Hall at premises acquired on the opposite side of Oxford Street, and also devising yet more charts and graphs showing growth, stock turnover, and depreciation. He even had a card index for every staff member, showing his or her personal capacity and performance.
The staff had become used to his exacting standards. As well as obligatory morning staff-training sessions for the whole workforce, anyone under the age of eighteen—and many were—had to attend compulsory evening classes four nights a week. They were given lectures, slide shows, and demonstrations, and when they had “qualified” in the sense of completing the course, certificates and prizes—usually a signed book—were handed out at a strawberries-and-cream garden party on the roof terrace. Proud parents were invited to witness the passing-out parade at which their young son or daughter received a ribbon-tied certificate from Mr. Selfridge himself.
Interviewed about his staff-training methods, Selfridge said: “I consider it good policy, as well as good principle, to take your assistants as far as possible into mental partnership with you. Make them feel a real interest in the business. Pay a premium for good ideas and good suggestions from assistants. They should realize that they are part and parcel of a going concern, and sharers—definite sharers—in the success of that concern.” Warming to his theme he continued: “Make their life as happy as possible. Feed and pay them well. Make them contented. To grind the life and soul out of a miserable white slave is sheer bad business policy.”
The wages paid seem ridiculously low. A sixteen-year-old in the cash department earned only five shillings a week. But if that same youngster’s figures weren’t off by more than a ha’penny for a month at a time, he or she would get a ten-shilling bonus. If the figures were still accurate after three months, that amount rose to thirty shillings—a huge sum at the time and one which certainly concentrated the mind. Junior sales staff averaged one pound a week before the First World War, with three pence in the pound on top in sales commission. Paid overtime was rare, there was no pension scheme, and sick pay was at the discretion of the management. But all staff had the opportunity to rise up the hierarchy. Selfridge left notes on the staff-room bulletin boards: “Merit will win”; “We want intelligent, loyal, happy, progressive employees”; “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”; and his favorite “Do it now!” They usually did.
Meanwhile, the affair between the retail prince Selfridge and the showgirl Gaby Deslys was intensifying. He had always had a curiously juvenile attitude toward stage stars. A showman by instinct, he responded sensitively and sensually to the atmosphere of the theater, where the women who performed sang him a siren’s song.
Gaby Deslys was thirty-one when she met Selfridge, and already famous for a string of love affairs with rich admirers including the young (but by now deposed) King Manuel of Portugal, Prince Wilhelm of Germany, and the original Wall Street Robber Baron Jay Gould’s son, Frank J. Gould. She was a sensation both on and off the stage. Born in Marseilles in 1881, she had moved to Paris where she worked her way up the musical revue ladder until, at the time she met Selfridge, she was probably the most famous personality in show business—in today’s terms hovering somewhere between Marilyn Monroe and Madonna. Gaby was adored by shopgirls, chambermaids, secretaries, lords, ladies—and Harry Gordon Selfridge. Her dancing wasn’t bad. Her singing was pretty mediocre. Her comedy acting was adequate. But somehow the whole added up to utter magic.
Deslys had first come into Harry’s orbit when she launched the winter season of 1912 at Alfred Butt’s Palace Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. Her review, entitled Mademoiselle Chic, involved her playing a demimondaine trying to choose between love and money, in one scene stripping down to her underwear. London’s theatergoers hadn’t had as much excitement since Maude Allan last took to the stage. Gaby was a material girl. Money mattered to her. She once famously said she would only dine with a man “if they paid fifty pounds for the pleasure of her company at supper”—sex not included. Rich men showered her with jewelry. Yet while she took a lot from them, she also earned a lot herself and was a tough negotiator. On one American tour she was paid three thousand dollars a week, and when she signed with Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players Company to make a film in Paris, she was paid a fee of fifteen thousand dollars plus 5 percent of the gross. Not a bad deal for a fortnight’s work.
Gaby Deslys was at the forefront of fashion, and her clothes made headlines. She wore Poiret’s hobble dresses and Doucet’s soft lace robes. Her extravagant show costumes were designed by Etienne Drian and lovingly made in Paquin’s workshops. Drawn by Erté, photographed by Jacques-Henri Lartigue, endlessly written up by Tatler, Gaby was a celebrity before the word was invented. A youthful Cecil Beaton recalled being enchanted by her: “She was a successor to the grand Parisian cocottes of the nineties on the one hand and, since she was such a famous
theatrical figure, the precursor of a whole school of glamour that was to be exemplified twenty years later by Marlene Dietrich.”
Gaby’s signature was her hats. She did big hats to such extremes—huge feathered and ribboned cartwheel confections—that she needed a second cabin on Atlantic crossings just for her millinery. The more outlandish the hats, the more the public loved them. Gaby’s hats—indeed Gaby herself—so influenced Beaton that years later, when he was working on My Fair Lady, Audrey Hepburn’s memorable millinery and the entire black-and-white Ascot scene were inspired by Gaby’s hats.
Gaby’s stage partner was the slick-haired and handsome Harry Pilcer. A superb dancer, Pilcer worked tirelessly on developing Gaby’s skills. Their specialist routine, known as “the Gaby Glide,” was so athletic that on one memorable occasion her legs were wrapped around Harry’s waist.
In those heady months before the war, young people were dancing as though their lives depended on it. Whether at smart supper clubs in New York, in steamy nightclubs in Paris, or at tea dances at Lyons’ Corner House, couples were perfecting their fox-trot. The American vaudeville actor Harry Fox had invented what was originally called “Fox’s Trot,” although it never made him any money. Poor Harry Fox drifted in and out of stage revues demonstrating his dashing steps, was briefly married to the dancer Jenny Dolly and then stood by while the celebrated international dancers Vernon and Irene Castle made his dance their own.
The Castles were the forerunners of all modern ballroom dancing. The idols of Fred and Adele Astaire, they had an immense influence on fashion. Irene was the first famous woman to bob her hair, wearing Lucile’s floating dresses sans corsette as she whirled around the floor. The famous artists’ agent Bessie Marbury had discovered the pair in Paris in 1914 and moved them to New York that year, establishing the elegant Castle House dancing school where society ladies learned to shed their inhibitions. The couple danced divinely to the new syncopated music that was sweeping New York, where everyone seemed to be humming the young composer Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.”
Back in London, the band in Selfridge’s Palm Court Restaurant had to work hard to keep up with the pace, and the phonograph department could hardly meet demand. The store’s latest gadget, their external “electric moving news strip,” flashed out details about the latest hits available in the store to the awed public watching from the pavement outside. The news strip also relayed everything from the weather forecast to the latest sports results, while ticker-tape machines inside punched out information on stock-market moves. Meanwhile, boys of all ages hovered around the newly installed seismograph in the hope that an earthquake would strike in some remote part of the world.
Tatler eagerly reported that Selfridge’s had recruited some aristocratic new staff—albeit just for the day. Lady Sheffield, Lady Albemarle, Viscountess Maidstone, and the Duchess of Rutland—helped by her daughter Diana—took up duty behind the sales counters, with all profits from their efforts going to benefit an educational charity for young mothers in Stepney. The “divine Diana” Manners, having sold ribbons all morning, moved to silk stockings in the afternoon, demonstrating how fine they were by pulling them up over her arms, a sight of such fatal charm that one male customer bought a dozen pairs on the spot.
Education of a different sort was on offer when the store presented the latest state-of-the-art technology in what was called “A Scientific and Electrical Exhibition—admission free.” Among the wonders on show were an automatic telephone exchange, a vacuum ice machine, an X-ray machine and newly invented electric cookers. A complete installation of wireless telegraphy allowed messages to be sent to and received from Paris. Most thrilling of all, the young and eccentric inventor Archibald Low set up his latest gadgetry. Low had already demonstrated his “Televista” at the Institute of Automobile Engineers in May that year, where an enthralled Harry Selfridge had been in the audience. Low’s machinery was crude and underdeveloped, but it was the first demonstration of what would eventually become television. The Times reported that “if all goes well with this invention, we shall soon be able, it seems, to see people at a distance.” Low never continued his experiments with television. John Logie Baird would have that distinction, and in 1925 the results of his pioneering work were also demonstrated at Selfridge’s.
On August 1, 1914, Germany declared war on Russia and, two days later, on France. On August 4, Great Britain declared war on Germany and so the long-anticipated war finally began. The British Army, with a reported strength of just over 700,000 trained men, was overwhelmed with new recruits. By the end of September, 750,000 men had joined up. At Selfridge’s, where 1,000 of the 3,500 staff were men, over half enlisted at once. Selfridge guaranteed that any male employee “serving his country” would have his job back when he returned.
Those remaining formed a House Corps, drilling with rifles on the roof. Rifle practice was offered to all female staff and they were encouraged to enroll in self-defense classes. The whole store hummed with patriotic activity. The Palm Court Orchestra played “Rule Britannia” twice a day, and war-work charities were given space and offered discounts on knitting wools for blankets, with free afternoon tea provided for the “sewing circles.”
Just as elsewhere in the country, the shortfall in staff at Selfridge’s was made up by recruiting women. Over half a million in England fled the servants’ quarters and sweatshops to work in munitions factories, man buses, and drive ambulances. Their newfound freedom put money in their pockets. A young female munitions worker earning three pounds a week (one hundred twenty pounds today) and often still living at home had serious spending power.
By the autumn, people flocking to the cinema each week were being informed of what was happening on the front by newsreels. The newsreels were no more accurate than the “War Windows” at Selfridge’s, in which maps of various campaigns were given pride of place. War reporting quickly fell victim to propaganda, and proud mothers had little or no idea what was actually happening to their young sons. They just kept sending food parcels.
Selfridge’s futuristic white marble Food Hall had opened in its own dedicated building opposite the store some months earlier. It looked more like a science laboratory than a grocery supplier and focused heavily on hygiene. Only very limited—albeit artistic—displays of fresh food were on show, the rest being kept in refrigerated rooms. Customers ordered from individual booths, marking up printed sheets listing all stocked provisions. Displays of tinned food, as well as the newly popular processed items such as Marmite, Heinz Tomato Ketchup, and Fry’s Cocoa, were for show purposes only. Customers carried nothing away—all orders were delivered the same day from warehouse space off-site.
The Food Hall had a consulting service to help hostesses plan menus. There were daily demonstrations on the art of laying a table and arranging flowers. While wives were engrossed in etiquette, their husbands could browse in the wine room or the temperature-controlled cigar room. W. W. Astor’s Observer declared it to be “yet another achievement of the ceaseless energy and genius which is part of the enterprise of Selfridge’s.” But the concept was so ahead of its time as to be frankly terrifying and the place was practically deserted. Reluctantly accepting defeat, Selfridge installed a more familiar, food-friendly layout, which thereafter worked commercially.
Like the “Callisthenes” columns, most of the Chief’s speeches were written for him. He would then amend the copy, often to the despair of his writers, who grumbled that he was too ponderous. But when one of his staff, Herbert Morgan, came up with the phrase “Business as Usual,” nothing was changed. It summed up exactly how Selfridge felt about his business during the war. He used the slogan so often that it became a catchphrase, famously adopted by Winston Churchill, who in November 1914 declared: “The maxim of the British people is business as usual.” Selfridge, a great fan of his fellow Freemason, was delighted.
It might have been expected that Selfridge would have been given a job during the war. Though an A
merican and therefore, until America entered the war in 1917, a neutral, he longed to do something useful. But the British government never asked him. The French government were more astute. They invited him to act as their purchasing agent in equipping the army with underwear—a contract said to have been worth over a million pounds—which he did gladly, waiving all commission. In an interview with the Westminster Gazette he said: “War requires two forces; one of men who fight, another to carry on the work of making and providing. The order of the day must also be advertising as usual.” Fleet Street applauded him, none more so than Horace Imber, in charge of advertising at Lord Northcliffe’s Evening News, when Selfridge signed the biggest order ever placed with a British newspaper to run 150 daily half-page advertisements. Imber, a larger-than-life character who sported white spats and a monocle, was called “Lord Imber” by Northcliffe because, he said, “he’s better at business than most of us real members of the House of Lords.” Mr. Imber already drove a Rolls-Royce, otherwise Northcliffe might have given him one in gratitude for the Selfridge coup. There was a rumor he had won the pages throwing dice with Harry: the deal was certainly a huge gamble and not one in which his store managers had much faith.
They needn’t have worried. Business at the store was, in real terms, rather good. A particular effort was made to dress the windows, which dazzled during the day. At night, thanks to the Defence of the Realm Act, they went dark. DORA had been passed in 1914, creating emergency powers for all sorts of measures that the government felt necessary in a time of war. The Act allowed for the requisition of property, applied censorship, controlled labor, commandeered economic resources “for the war effort,” shut off street lighting, darkened shop windows at night—and closed public houses for all but five and a half hours a day. The workingman, reasoned the prime minister, if he wasn’t already fighting for king and country, should be working on the factory floor, and preferably be sober at the time.
Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge Page 15