Harry Selfridge found Highcliffe’s history irresistible, but for the Stuart Wortleys the castle was an expensive headache. Never rich, they were delighted with the offer of five thousand pounds a year in rent, and even more pleased when Selfridge set about fitting modern bathrooms, installing steam central heating, and building and equipping a decent kitchen. Rosa Lewis, the eccentric owner of the Cavendish Hotel and one of London’s most sought-after private caterers, wouldn’t have recognized the place. When she was in charge of catering for the Kaiser’s three-week stay with the Stuart Wortleys in 1907, she had had to bring in portable cookers.
All in all, it is thought that Harry spent twenty-five thousand pounds (one million pounds today) on improvements at Highcliffe in the six years he rented the property, during which time the Stuart Wortleys decamped to a modern Edwardian villa they owned nearby called Cliff House. The Selfridges adored living at Highcliffe where, poignantly for Harry, Mary Leiter Curzon had recuperated from a bout of pneumonia before making her last trip to India. Rose and her elder daughters Rosalie and Violette joined the Red Cross, working initially at Christchurch Hospital. When America joined the war in the spring of 1917, Rose opened a tented retreat, the “Mrs. Gordon Selfridge Convalescent Camp for American Soldiers,” in the castle grounds. Beatrice meanwhile was sent to St. Mary’s Wantage, and Gordon Jr., now in his final year at Winchester, applied to read Economics at Cambridge. When the family traveled to Highcliffe, they did so by train from Waterloo, alighting at Hinton Admiral, a tiny station nearby built on the wealthy landowner Sir George Meyrick’s estate, from which he had the right to flag down any passing train to board or disembark his guests. Selfridge usually motored down on Friday evenings, his chauffeur Arthur Gardener drawing increasingly scarce petrol from the store supplies before loading the car with provisions.
The bracing sea air was a tonic for Rose, who herself was subject to bouts of pneumonia. But while she grew her favorite Liberty roses at Highcliffe, her husband was seen squiring Gaby Deslys around town, where it was rumored that he intended to fund the lease of her own theater. Gaby was helping to raise money for the French Relief Fund and inviting wounded soldiers to tea at her Kensington Gore house, with Fleet Street in attendance. True to form, Gaby wasn’t Harry’s sole companion. Teddy Gerard was wowing audiences at the Vaudeville Theatre in a show called Cheep, in which she sang a little ditty that went:
Everybody calls me Teddy
T, E, doubleD, Y
Yankee, Swanky, full of hanky-panky,
With the RSVP eye.
All day long my telephone keeps repeating hard,
“Are you there? Little Teddy Bear?”
Naughty, naughty, ONE GERRARD!
The use of the store’s famous telephone number was not lost on some of the audience, who were aware she was being seen arm in arm with Selfridge. Not that Miss Gerard herself came cheap—she had a great fondness for furs and, regrettably, an even greater one for opium, which ultimately played havoc with her career. One scene in the show was called “Good-bye Madame Fashion,” with the chorus kitted out in wartime work-wear. Ironically, the shortage of textiles helped launch the career of the woman who would come to dominate fashion for decades to come, when Coco Chanel introduced her simple dresses made up in jersey material sourced from Rodier at her shop in Biarritz in 1915.
Events in Russia, where the Tsar had abdicated, were much in the news and watched by the Selfridge family more keenly than most. Rosalie had become close to a Russian named Serge de Bolotoff, whose family had moved to Paris before the war. Calling himself an “aviation engineer,” Bolotoff had been something of a pioneer when in 1908 he designed a large triplane, built at the Les Frères Voisin factory. Serge knew all the players in aviation’s tight-knit world, being advised by Blériot and backed by a consortium of rich individuals, including Admiral Lord Charles Beresford. Before the war, the de Bolotoffs had moved to England, where Serge’s mother (there being no mention of a Mr. de Bolotoff) now called herself Princess Marie Wiasemsky and set up home in a series of grand, rented houses, first Kingswood House in Dulwich and later Kippington Court in Sevenoaks. Serge continued with efforts to get his plane off the ground. Trials were held at Brooklands, but the monumental triplane collapsed when the undercarriage disintegrated on takeoff. Bolotoff’s machine was moved to a nearby shed where it languished until the start of the war, subsequently vanishing when the army commandeered Brooklands.
Serge went on to advise the German Albatross Biplane Company and in 1912 became their British sales agent, struggling to make headway against the homegrown De Havillands. On the outbreak of war, he hastily resigned, offering his services to Russia instead. The Albatross meanwhile became the airplane beloved by Baron von Richthofen and his famous traveling circus. The Red Baron’s planes, manned by his star pilots, were sent to fly across various parts of the line to boost the morale of German troops, who watched in awe from the trenches as their heroes looped the loop in fragile “birds” made of canvas and wood that could barely fly at one hundred miles per hour. It was a breathtakingly exciting time to be working in aviation. Developments seemed to happen daily. Initially, planes were used only for observation, but when the French pilot Roland Garros bolted steel deflectors to his propellers, enabling guns to be fired, and the German-employed Dutchman Tony Fokker improved the interrupter gear that made firing even more reliable, the airplane became an offensive weapon, with dashing pilots delighting in notching up aerial “kills.”
By the time Serge met Rosalie, the Imperial Russian government that he had signed up to serve no longer existed. Whether he actually still drew a salary from his desk job at the Russian government’s Naval Aviation Department in London is impossible to say, but it seems unlikely. Rosalie, a rich man’s daughter, did not worry about the future prospects of the man she loved, but her father was more pragmatic. Clearly keen to put some distance between the young couple and thinking his family would benefit from some travel, in 1917 Selfridge planned an extraordinary journey for them in the middle of a world war. Their intended escort was to be the equally extraordinary man, Joseph Emile Dillon.
Dillon, by now a regular weekend visitor to Highcliffe, was a highly regarded foreign correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. He spoke over a dozen languages fluently, had witnessed epic events from the 1900 Boxer Rebellion in China to the 1905 Russo-Japanese War, and was consulted by Allied governments around the world. His particular specialty was Russia, where at one point he had been confidential adviser to the Tsar’s prime minister, Count Witte.
By 1917, Selfridge was pushing Dillon to accept payment to take his family traveling: “I am extremely anxious if possible to complete plans—a trip to America, say anywhere from the 15th of August. A fortnight or more spent in that country, then sailing from San Francisco for the Hawaiian Islands, a day or two at Honolulu and further sailing to Japan, then to China, then perhaps Singapore and arrival at Calcutta about the 1st January would be roughly what I would like to see done.” Dillon politely declined the offer, explaining that the situation in Russia made it impossible for him to be out of touch for long. Selfridge tried again. “I very much hope that in a week or so you will see your way clear to changing your mind. We are most anxious that you and Mrs. Dillon should be the leaders of the party.” In the event, the trip never materialized. Rose busied herself with her hospital, Rosalie continued her courtship, and Selfridge himself went shopping.
A lover of sculpture, he was an eager bidder against the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst at Christie’s “sale of the century” when artifacts, jewels, and books belonging to the impoverished aristocrat Lord Francis Pelham Clinton Hope were sold. Lord Hope, the Duke of Newcastle’s brother, had become bankrupt in 1894 and had steadily been selling off his possessions ever since. First to go was a clutch of Dutch old masters, then in 1902 the famous—and famously cursed—blue Hope diamond, which netted him £120,000. Finally, in July 1917, the contents of his property, Deepdene in Surrey, we
re put up for sale. They included items from the family’s extensive collection of porcelain and books, and quantities of ancient Greek and Egyptian sculpture and pottery.
All the notable collectors attended the sale. Lord Cowdray acquired a prized statue of Athena for 7,140 guineas. The international dealer Joseph Duveen bought anything he could get his hands on. Sir Alfred Mond, chairman of Imperial Chemicals, bought four pieces, while Lord Leverhulme bought in bulk, picking up no less than fourteen pieces. Selfridge bid energetically against Henry Wellcome for a Roman statue of Asclepius that was said (probably erroneously) to have come from Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli. Wellcome’s agent withdrew at 1,400 guineas and Selfridge got his prize for 1,700 guineas. In a pleasing tussle against the obsessive collector Mr. Hearst (via his London agent), he also bought a statue of Zeus for 650 guineas, while a statue of Apollo Hyacinthus, long thought a favorite of the sculptor Canova, rounded off his shopping list at a cost of £1,000.
At the store, there was an ambitious event to mount a sale of War Bonds, with cash prizes offered to winners whose tickets were entered into a special draw. Selfridge’s “Bonds” were printed, permission from the postmaster-general obtained, posters designed, advertisements booked and Mrs. Lloyd George herself invited to pick the winning tickets. By the day of the draw, December 20, 1917, the response had been so overwhelming that the store had to hire an extra forty cashiers to cope. The promotion, which cost Selfridge around £11,000 to mount, raised the astonishing sum of £3.5 million pounds for the war effort.
Next came a book launch. Craving gravitas for “trade and traders,” Selfridge had long planned a book of his own on the topic. Ghostwritten by his old friend Edward Price Bell and published by John Lane, it was entitled The Romance of Commerce and covered the history of trading giants from the Fuggers of Augsburg to the Mitsuis of Japan. The book was launched in December at a dinner hosted by John Lane, but it presented Fleet Street with a dilemma. Newspapers were anxious not to offend the country’s most valuable retail advertiser, but it was clear that the book was both wordy and worthy, and getting reviews was going to be tricky. Ralph Blumenfeld, Selfridge’s old friend and ally at the Daily Express, having opted out of the dinner on the grounds of ill health, solved the problem by cleverly inviting Sir Woodman Burbidge, the chairman of Harrods, to review Harry’s beloved book.
Burbidge had recently inherited both his title and his job on the death of his father, the equally highly regarded Sir Richard, about whom Selfridge had written a glowing obituary. He reviewed the book cautiously, tactfully saying that in it he found “something of the vision splendid.” Meanwhile Selfridge’s press office worked overtime organizing interviews with “the Chief,” which he gave in his office surrounded by no less than seventy-seven leather-bound ledgers and accounts books from the Medici family archives in Florence, some of which dated back to Cosimo de’ Medici himself and which he had bought at Christie’s. Those on the store “gift list” were usually sent food hampers, perfume, or cigars at Christmas, but in 1917, whether they liked it or not, they received a copy of The Romance of Commerce painstakingly inscribed by Selfridge.
Early in 1918, at the behest of Lord Northcliffe, head of the British War Mission to the United States, Selfridge crossed the Atlantic. Northcliffe announced that “Mr. Selfridge has gone, at the urgent request of American business leaders, to explain our problems of supply.” Northcliffe’s reward for his role was a viscountcy. Selfridge, who had to pay his own expenses, received no reward other than the realization that, as he rather sadly observed on his return, “in America, the captains of business constitute a greater factor in the life of the nation than is the case here.” Still, he continued to do his best for his newly adopted country, offering to pay “for all war shrines erected within a mile of us” and putting up £500 in prize money for a competition run by the store for “ploughmen showing the best results using the new farming technology.” The top prizes were won by Titan tractors, made by his old friend Deering’s International Harvester Company, who obligingly lent models to display in the store.
The war was going badly and desperation was in the air. By now there was hardly a family in Britain who had not lost someone they knew or loved, and in May, tragedy struck at Highcliffe. Rose Selfridge contracted pneumonia and died just one week later. Grief-stricken, Harry sought comfort in organizing her funeral at the simple parish church of St. Mark’s with military precision. The store’s seamstresses traveled to Highcliffe to sew a blanket of fresh red roses to cover the simple oak coffin, while American soldiers from the convalescent camp formed a guard of honor, their leader carrying a Stars and Stripes flag woven from red carnations, white narcissi, and bluebells from the Highcliffe woods.
Less than three months later, Rosalie quietly married Serge de Bolotoff in the chapel of the Russian embassy in Welbeck Street. Since the family were still in mourning, the wedding was a small affair. The bridegroom, however, showing his own flair for publicity, ensured that he and his mother were given ample coverage by handing a note out to the press explaining that they were “direct descendants of Prince Rurik, who had founded Russia in the ninth century.” Not that anyone had actually heard of Rurik, but a prince—any prince—had tangible glamour in the wake of the Russian Revolution.
Serge’s mother attracted more attention than the bride. Madame Marie de Bolotoff—to call her correctly by her married name—was a petite, blond bombshell with extravagant tastes. Already a beneficiary of the legendary Selfridge generosity, she was delighted by the marriage. She had separated from her husband some years earlier and, with four children to support, had decided that life would be much easier if she had a title. She hadn’t entirely made it up. Instead, in about 1908, she persuaded the Tsar to allow her to use the title Princess Wiasemsky, claiming descent through maternal relatives.
Serge and Rosalie’s grandson, the guardian of a mass of family documents, tactfully admits that “there was a substantial argument about her claim to the title” but points out that Marie had some powerful friends ready to back her claim, among them Lady Tyrrell, the wife of the Foreign Office undersecretary, who took an oath that she had seen the Tsar’s decree. Another supporter was Marie’s friend Sofia, the estranged wife of Admiral Kolchak, whose evidence also played a part. Harry, satisfied that his beloved eldest daughter would ultimately inherit a title, gave his blessing along with a lavish thirty-six setting Crown Derby dinner service for their use while living with him at Portman Square. A flat of their own might have been more useful. But he liked his family around him and, given he paid, that’s where they stayed.
In October 1918, Joseph Dillon finally went to America, without the Selfridge family but armed with letters of introduction to several of Harry’s powerful Chicago friends. “Over here,” wrote Selfridge, “we feel he is the best informed man in the world of European politics.” Selfridge himself went to France, making a tour of the battlefields at the invitation of General “Black Jack” Pershing. As the year drew to its end, the huge job of clearing the battlefields began and soldiers started to return home. At Selfridge’s, the store kept its promise to take back its own serving men. By the time the Armistice was signed, nearly a thousand had returned.
In the wake of Rose’s death, Selfridge kept himself busy. As early as 1915, he had announced that a new extension would be designed by the architect Sir John Burnet, whose brief was to incorporate a majestic tower. The concept of a tower had always formed part of Harry’s grand plan for Oxford Street. After five years or so of lobbying, the Portman Estates and St. Marylebone Council finally consented, at the same time agreeing to a plan drawn up by the engineer Sir Harley Dalrymple-Hay for a tunnel running under Oxford Street.
Sir John Burnet, who had designed the King Edward VII Galleries at the British Museum (completed just before the war), found that he and his team were part of an extended group. Selfridge’s policy was always to hire several people to do the same job in the hope that one of them would get it right. Among the
architects was Albert Miller, who at this point moved to London from Chicago to work full-time at the store.
Selfridge relished the new project, giving a mischievous speech to the London Society in which he declared that “All around us in Oxford Street are numerous little shops that should be burned because they are so ugly.” Warming to his theme, he went on to tell the Evening Standard, “I shall try to build something that is good. A store used every day should be as ennobling a thing as a church or a museum. I love to look at a beautiful building.”
He bought on board yet another architect, the fashionable Philip Tilden, who was putting the finishing touches to Port Lympne, Philip Sassoon’s house overlooking Romney Marsh. Tilden executed various drawings for the Oxford Street tower, none of which came to fruition. No more did Sir John Burnet’s elegant efforts. “Forget it. Forget it,” snapped Selfridge when a journalist asked him about the future of the much-publicized 450-foot tower. The difficulty of bringing his scheme to fruition was clearly irking him.
At the same time, however, Tilden was set to work on a project dear to Harry’s heart. Having acquired Hengistbury Head, a tract of land of outstanding beauty with a glorious view of the Isle of Wight, from his Highcliffe neighbor Sir George Meyrick, Harry planned to build his own castle. The project created unease in the local community. Hengistbury Head was recognized as one of the most important Bronze Age archaeological sites in Europe, and any plan to build on it was bound to be controversial, especially since Selfridge grandly announced that it was going to be “the largest castle in the world.”
Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge Page 17