Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge (37 page)

On a business trip to America, Andrew Holmes was entertained by the new men in power at Marshall Field, by now also a business losing money. Asking about ‘mile-a-minute Harry’, Holmes was told: ‘He was the greatest sales promoter and publicity man the store ever had. Quite the perfect showman.’ To Mr Holmes, who didn’t believe in showmanship, this merely confirmed his belief that ‘Selfridge’s greatest illusion is that he was a merchant, which possibly explains many of his mistakes.’ On holiday early that fateful summer, Mr Holmes met the owner of an important carpet company, whose main topic of conversation was their long overdue account. Faced with what he described as ‘a withering blast’, Holmes went back to London and examined the books, discovering that many suppliers, used to waiting patiently for six months to be paid, were now expected to extend credit for over a year. A lot of them couldn’t afford it. Worse, some were threatening legal action.

At some point that summer, Harry had a serious argument with his son, their uneasy relationship collapsing into acrimony. Playing politics, Gordon Jr said: ‘Something has got to be done about my father.’ In August, the Group Finance Director and latterly Company Secretary, Arthur Youngman, always devotedly loyal to the Chief, retired after thirty-one years in the job. His departure signalled a Board reshuffle and the appointment of a Holmes protégé, Arthur Deakin.

The store had spent the summer preparing for war. The Civil Defence Unit ordered 5,000 sandbags, tons of sand and timber, hundreds of rubber boots, respirators and steel helmets, waterproof overalls, gas masks and two and a half tons of bleach powder, to be used to extinguish fires. Staff underwent training under the direction of the indefatigable director Mr H. J. Clarke, who energetically put his ‘emergency squad’ through their paces on the roof and at the Preston Road sports ground. On 2 September the Wehrmacht marched into Poland. At 11.15 a.m. on 3 September the Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain announced that the country was at war. Sandbags were piled around the Chief’s private entrance at the rear of the store, and he was photographed going to work with a gas mask slung over his shoulder, smiling broadly for waiting photographers and saying it was ‘business as usual’. Rapid adjustments were made to stock inventory. Vast quantities of blankets were ordered and Nellie Elt astutely bought in quantities of lipsticks and boxed soaps. Handbags ‘designed to carry gas masks’ were hastily put on sale and, for the lucky few, there was an exciting addition to the hosiery department – imported nylon stockings.

In a portent of things to come, the ‘Callisthenes’ column ceased publication on 2 September. For the past fifteen years, the column had been written by the journalist Eisdale MacGregor, but the last article, called ‘A Final Word’, was written by Selfridge himself:

Their spirit of happy enthusiasm and of good cheer is hardly consistent with the sterner atmosphere of war. The articles have endeavoured to dignify that fine thing called business and surround it with strong and unbreakable bands of integrity. With this, then final word – final for the moment – we conclude this long, interesting and, we hope, character-building series.

In reality, the column’s closure was due to a massive cost-cutting exercise being orchestrated by Mr Holmes, who was now poised to get rid of the most extravagant expense of all – Mr Selfridge. Gordon Jr vanished on an extended trip to America, staying away for over a month. Senior staff, curious about his absence, gossiped among themselves. When the blow came, most of Selfridge’s inner circle had been expecting it for weeks – everyone, that is, except the Chief. Miss Mepham greeted Mr Holmes with professional politeness when he appeared at the door to the inner office on 18 October. She wasn’t invited to take notes. At the meeting that followed, Holmes pointed out some salient facts. Selfridge owed the store in excess of £118,000. He owed the Inland Revenue in excess of £250,000 in back taxes. In
addition, he had personal, undisclosed debts to the Midland Bank. All this was secured against his shareholdings in the company. He owned no freehold property, the store paid his costs at Brook House, and he had no company pension. Selfridge was given an ultimatum. Either he retire, relinquishing all form of executive control, or the company would demand immediate repayment of his debt. He was offered a pension of £6,000 a year free of tax on condition he gave his shares back to the business. He had no choice but to accept.

Selfridge sat silently as Andrew Holmes on behalf of the Prudential Insurance Company stripped him of his life’s work, ending everything he had held dear by handing him the draft of a resignation letter which he was asked to approve on the spot. Always dignified, with that same remote quality that for decades his colleagues had yearned to penetrate, Harry Gordon Selfridge initialled his life away. Miss Mepham sat outside, knowing – as all good secretaries always do – exactly what was going on.

The Board issued an abrupt and clumsily worded announcement to staff and the press:

The time has come when Mr Selfridge feels that he should relieve himself from the duties of detail [
sic
] management and he has therefore asked his colleagues to accept his resignation. Advancing years and their accompanying penalties have been bringing the wisdom of this step to Mr Selfridge for quite a long time … his resignation has been received with the greatest possible regret and at the same time, in view of his unique association with the company since its foundation [the Board] have invited him to accept the title of President of the Company.

Harry spent a day or so composing his own leaving letter, which was circulated to the staff on 21 October:

The time has come when I must relinquish the management of this great and beautiful business … which I created and founded over
thirty years ago. My proverbial three score years and ten have long since been passed, and I have concluded, with much thought and great regret, to resign my several posts of Chairman and Managing Director and retire from the Boards of this Company and its subsidiary and associated companies … I have assumed the somewhat nominal title of President. This will not carry with it a controlling voice, but will put me in the position of an adviser when desirable … And now, my friends, I am taking a bit of a holiday. It is not that, but let us call it so. Another of my regrets is that if one of these raids occurs while I am away, I shall not be here to share it with you. During the last war I was in London continually and declined to allow the German bombs to interfere with my usual routine … wish me then, a good trip and a safe return to you all, and, as the man in the movies says – ‘I’ll be seeing you’. We can then again shake hands and talk about the yesterdays and the tomorrows.

And, as long as I live, my great love for this business and my deep feelings of friendship for the members of the staff will remain undimmed by time.

By the time the letter was circulated, he was gone. He couldn’t bear to say goodbye. Two weeks later he boarded the SS
Washington
for his last trip to America.

The great building in Oxford Street was no longer the store of H. G. Selfridge. The name plates were swiftly put back up outside the building, and advertisements no longer showed the apostrophe in the title. Having pensioned off the father, Mr Holmes turned his attention to the son. If Gordon Jr had been under the impression there would be an enhanced role for him, he was wrong. There was no place in the business for the man whom
Time
relentlessly referred to as ‘a playboy’. Mr Holmes restructured his job brief, obliging him to step down from his directorships of Whiteley’s and the Gordon Selfridge Trust, leaving him as titular head of the provincial stores. Three months later, the provincial stores were sold to John Lewis of Oxford Street. Gordon Jr left the business, reportedly furious at the
rapid dismantling of the empire. Within a matter of months he moved with his wife and children to America where he took a job at Sears Roebuck in Chicago.

Back in London, Selfridge found that not everyone had written him off, particularly the media. Newspaper proprietors gathered together to host a New Year’s luncheon in his honour, where he sat with Ralph Blumenfeld, by now known as ‘the father of Fleet Street’, and Lord Ashfield, who spoke glowingly of his friend’s ‘transformation of Oxford Street’, adding that perhaps he should after all have agreed to name Bond Street tube station ‘Selfridges’. A powerful group of retailers applauded the post-lunch talk: Sir Montague Burton, Trevor Fenwick, Frederick Fenwick, Sir Woodman Burbidge of Harrods and L. H. Bentall. Everyone said Selfridge looked well. He wasn’t. But he knew how to put on a show.

Surprising as it may seem, he still went into the store on most days, taking the lift once exclusively reserved for him but now designated for all directors and stubbornly sitting in his office, where he and Miss Mepham went through the ritual of ‘let’s pretend’. They pretended there were letters, memos, invitations or meetings. In reality there were none. He would still don his top hat and walk the store where staff, though pleased to see him, were also embarrassed. They didn’t know what to say. What
could
they say? He was said to be ‘making plans’. Why, no one could really fathom, but word went out that he had dreams of starting a new enterprise, and Mr Holmes struck again with a letter:

It was clearly the intention of the Directors and especially in the minds of their advisers that for practical and psychological reasons, you would vacate the Managing Director’s accommodation so as to give complete freedom to the new Management … I am instructed by the Board to ask you to be good enough to arrange for such personal possessions as you would wish to be removed before the 26th April … one other matter which the Directors view with some concern is that you are contemplating commencing independent business
activities … they do object and deprecate very seriously that such negotiations should be conducted from the store address.

In case Selfridge didn’t get the point, he was given the use of a small office in Keysign House, a company property across the road, his pension was cut by a third and the services of Miss Mepham were withdrawn.

In May 1940, Selfridge was honoured by the dedication of a bronze plaque and illuminated scroll, to which the owners of forty-one stores subscribed and which was unveiled at a luncheon given in the store’s Palm Court Restaurant. In thanking those present, Harry said: ‘I realize my generation has pretty nearly lived out its life.’ Conspicuous by his absence was Mr Holmes.

When the Blitz began, London braced itself. During one raid the store roof was hit by bombs that started a fierce fire. Most of the upper windows were shattered, including the Chief’s much-loved signature window. When he went to inspect the damage, the old man broke down. It was the first time anyone had seen him cry. He continued to spend several hours a day sitting alone in his empty room on the opposite side of the street, writing letters to various acquaintances in authority, offering his services ‘for the war effort’ and hoping – in vain – that he might be given some useful work. Eventually he stopped coming.

In January 1941, just a few days before his eighty-fifth birthday, the Board stripped Harry Selfridge of his title of President and, with year-end net profits at an all-time low of only £21,093, slashed his pension yet again. Now living on a meagre £2,000 a year, Harry, Serge and Rosalie vacated Brook House and moved to a two-bedroom flat in Ross Court, Putney. In June that year, isolated and alone in Hollywood, Jenny Dolly committed suicide, hanging herself with the sash of her dressing-gown.

In August, Harry’s cherished collection of rare French and English books was auctioned at Sotheby’s. The family were struggling to make ends meet. While Serge spent his mornings drinking in the Green
Man, Rosalie could be found from time to time visiting a rather dubious antiques shop in the Lower Richmond Road, where she was forced to sell their valuables for hard cash. Her father spent his days reading correspondence, sifting through archives and playing the odd game of poker with the ever-cheerful Mr Robertson of the
Evening News.

As Oxford Street was pounded by bombs, the store continued to be hit. The ground-floor windows were bricked up, the roof garden was left in ruins and the Palm Court Restaurant, the scene of so much excitement over the years, was decimated by fire and closed for ever. In 1942, the store’s ex-star model Gloria once again made headlines when she was found dead in her Maida Vale flat, apparently having suffered a heart attack from an overdose of slimming pills.

Putting on a cheerful front, most of the family reunited at the King’s Chapel in the Savoy in June 1943 to celebrate Tatiana Wiasemsky’s marriage to Lieutenant Craig Wheaton-Smith. The wedding was followed by a small reception at Claridge’s, the hotel where once Harry Selfridge had always had the best table. Later that summer, his 21-year-old grandson Blaise de Sibour, a pilot with the French Normandy Squadron flying sorties against the Germans, was shot down and killed in Russia. Violette de Sibour subsequently settled in America where she went to work for Elizabeth Arden. Conscious of his own mortality, Harry became reconciled with his son and grandchildren in America. He was increasingly frail and would sit by the fire in Ross Court, shuffling papers and burning his private letters while Rosalie looked on in despair.

On some days he would stand at his local bus stop on Putney High Street, his rheumy blue eyes searching the road for the arrival of a No. 22. Virtually deaf, his mind rambling, he hardly spoke. Harry Gordon Selfridge had retreated into his own private world, full of memories no one could share. Still wearing curiously old-fashioned formal, shabby-genteel clothes, his patent leather boots cracked and down-at-heel, his untidy white hair falling over a frayed shirt collar, his by now battered trilby pulled low, he moved stiffly, aided by a
Malacca cane. On the bus, he would carefully count out the pennies for his fare, buying a ticket to Hyde Park Corner, where he got off to wait for a No. 137 bus, quietly telling the conductor ‘Selfridge’s please.’ Seemingly lost in memories of past glories, unrecognized by anybody, the old man shuffled the length of the majestic building before crossing the road to the corner of Duke Street. Stopping there, leaning heavily on his cane, he would look up to the roof of the store and along to the far right upper corner window, as though searching for something. Miss Mepham met him one day when he was suffering from a virulent attack of shingles and was in great pain. She fled back to her office, so distressed that she wept. Sometimes, when he was standing on the street, a hurrying pedestrian would bump into him. Once he fell heavily. On one pitiful occasion the police arrested him, suspecting he was a vagrant.