Highways and Byways in London Part 19

[Ill.u.s.tration: _A Sale at Christie's._]

CHAPTER XIII

LONDON SHOPS AND MARKETS

"The busy Mart of London."

"Gay shops, stately palaces, bustle and breeze, The whirring of wheels, and the murmur of trees; By night or by day, whether noisy or stilly, Whatever my mood is, I love Piccadilly."-- _Locker-Lampson, London Lyrics._

I am confident that if a million of women of all cla.s.ses could by any possibility be placed in a Palace of Truth, and interrogated straitly as to what they liked best in all London, the vast majority of them would answer, "The Shops." Indeed, you may easily, and without any undue inquisitiveness, find this out for yourself by simply taking (in May for choice) a morning or afternoon walk down Oxford Street or Regent Street. Every shop of note will have its quota of would-be buyers, trembling on the brink of irrevocable purchase: its treble, nay, quadruple row of admiring females, who appear to find this by far the most attractive mode of getting through the day. I would go further, and say that as regards the more persevering among them, it is difficult to imagine that they ever have any other occupation at all.

The shops of London have wonderfully improved in quite recent years; not perhaps, so much in actual quality, as in arrangement and taste.

Labels with "dropsical figures" of s.h.i.+llings and perfectly invisible pence have, as in d.i.c.kens's time, still their charm for us; but other things have changed. Everything could, to those who "knew," always be bought best in London; but everything was not always displayed to the best advantage. To dress a shop-front well was in old days hardly considered a British trait. But "nous avons change tout cela." Now, even the Paris boulevard, that Paradise of good Americans, has, except perhaps in the matter of trees and wide streets, little to teach us.

"The wealth of Ormus and of Ind" that the shops of Regent Street and Bond Street display, their gold embroideries and wonderfully woven silks, tending to make a kleptomaniac out of the very elect,--these it would be hard indeed to beat. Not Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these.

Even the critical American cousin is now beginning to forsake Paris, and to find out the real superiority of London shops. See how he--she, I mean--helps, in her numbers, to swell the shop-gazing crowds in Oxford Circus. Tramping from Bloomsbury boarding-houses,--or, more aristocratic, from Northumberland Avenue hotels,--the Americans have discovered, and are in a fair way to dominate, London; the London, that is, of July and August.

"The English," said a celebrated Frenchman once unkindly, "are a nation of shopkeepers." However that may be, it is certain that we are nothing if not business-like. Evidently, the love of bargaining is inherent in the soul of the average British female who comes up from the suburbs for a day's shopping. She has a long, neatly-written list of her wants and necessities, generally pinned to some part of her person, a list with startling variations of subject, thus: "Baby's food-warmer, Tom's cricket-bat, lay-figure for Sylvia, beetle-trap for the kitchen, Effie's long Suede gloves, registry office for new cook, dentist, evening wrap, chiffon boa, something neat in the blouse line for Mamie, Aunt Maria's birthday." Poor woman! That "something neat in the blouse line" takes her nearly forty minutes in the finding; and "Aunt Maria's birthday" walks sadly into the hour for lunch, already attenuated. Several shops, alas! have been ransacked vainly, and the horrid "Sign 'ere, Miss!" that so cruelly stigmatizes, in certain cheap shops, the recalcitrant buyer, has more than once mortified the poor lady's sensitive ears. "Mamie," who is a.s.sisting at the martyrdom, gets quite cross over Aunt Maria; she succeeds, however, in detaching herself from her inconvenient parent, and appears, for her part, to be preferring the claims of a protege of her own, a personage who is very particular, apparently, about his special brand of ties.

Finally, Aunt Maria's natal day is checked off by the purchase of an aggressive china pug, large as life, with staring eyes, which, for some occult reason, is supposed to be "the very thing" for that lady.

What are the special qualities that const.i.tute "a good shopper"? They would appear to be as follows: endurance, patience, strength, coolness, self-control, amiability, mental arithmetic, and, lastly, an eye to a bargain. All these cardinal virtues are, for the average shopper, considered as generally necessary to salvation: but yet there are other qualifications. For instance, the intense delight that most women (and a few men) feel in obtaining an article at 1_s._ 11-3/4_d._, that has once been marked with the magic 3_s._ 6-1/2_d._, is of distinct value in this connection. How many women have delightedly bought a thing that is not of the slightest value to themselves or to any one else, simply because it is thus reduced in price! Hence the supreme advantage of sales--but that is another story.

Caveat Emptor! It is the object of the seller merely to sell; and in his behalf it may be urged, that there is no gauging the absurd vagaries of the public taste. I may add, with reference to "Aunt Maria's" china pug, that some shops (arguing, no doubt, from the oddly imitative ways of shoppers and their docile, sheep-like way of following one another's lead), have taken to the inauguration of strange fas.h.i.+ons. Lately a well-known West End emporium started that blue cat with pink eyes, wearing a yellow riband, tied in an enormous bow round its neck. It was an aesthetic, Burne-Jonesian cat; indeed, it was hardly like a cat at all; but, nevertheless, it sat in rows in that shop-window, and the line (I believe such things are called "lines") "took," and forthwith no home was complete without a cat.

Then some enterprising Tottenham Court Road firm evolved the idea that a life-sized negro, dressed in the latest fas.h.i.+on, and sprawling in a cane chair with a cigarette, was the "very thing" for the vestibule.

Personally, I should have preferred the chair empty, so that one could have sat in it one's self; the negro, however, enjoyed wide popularity. Then a little, muzzled, foolish-looking china puppy became the Regent Street rage, and was forthwith attached as an ornament to every suburban house-door. Whose is the great mind who set these fas.h.i.+ons, before whom every householder bows? It would be interesting to know.

There is great opportunity for the ever-interesting study of human nature, in observing the ways of shops and shoppers. The really able shopman or saleswoman can make you buy just anything he or she wishes; it is a mere question of degree in artistic persuasion. Indeed I have often almost wept with sheer pain to see some graceful, fairy-like shop-damsel (chosen mainly, be it remarked, for her figure), throw some elegant wrap on to her slim shoulders, and turning to a fat, middle-aged matron, say smilingly, "_Just_ the very thing for you, ma'am!" And the deluded matron will buy the wrap, not even suspecting the pitiful ludicrousness of the situation. Truly, few people have a sense of humour. A friend of mine, who delights in new experiences, and enjoys seeing into the "highways and byways" of London life, once prevailed on a fas.h.i.+onable West End milliner, with whom she was well acquainted, to let her play the part of saleswoman for just one day.

The results were afflicting to all concerned. The poor postulant nearly died of fatigue; every one's tempers were strained to the utmost; and several excellent customers were turned away. It was Kate Nickleby, Madam Mantalini, and Miss Knag, over again; especially Miss Knag. I learnt that, even before the arrival of the customers, a good day's work had to be "put in," in the decking and re-arranging of the shop-window. Every single hat and bonnet had to be taken from the stand, and carefully dusted, brushed, smartened up and replaced. And woe to the saleswoman who failed to effect a sale, more especially if that saleswoman happened to be unfortunate for two or three times in succession! My friend, after her sad experience of customers' ways, vowed ever to make it a point of religion to spend no more than ten minutes in the choosing of a hat, _and always to end by buying it_.

Nevertheless, so far as the big, well-managed shops are concerned, the employes are not really deserving of pity; they have good food and lodging, with comparatively short hours, and the situations they fill are, as a rule, much sought after. It is, rather, the owners of the smaller establishments, in the poorer districts, who "sweat" their unfortunate shop-girls. Here the poor white slaves are often kept hard at work from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and on Sat.u.r.day nights till 12, with short intervals for hurried and indifferent meals. Of course, it is the working cla.s.ses themselves who are the cause of this "sweating"; these do their shopping late, on Sat.u.r.day nights especially late; and shops, if they closed early in poor districts, would for this reason lose the greater part of their custom.

The shop-girl in a really good West End establishment is in very different case. She is often more or less gently bred, such breeding being an important factor in her engagement. Very often, indeed, her superior manners contrast, oddly enough, with the rudeness of the "lady" whom she happens to be serving.

Shop-girls and shop-men are always popular elements of London life.

There was, quite lately, a comic opera written in the shop-girl's honour. And, so far as shop-men are concerned, it is an eloquent fact that in the recent revival of the Gilbert-and-Sullivan opera _Patience_, the only noteworthy alterations in the text were the subst.i.tution of the "Twopenny Tube young man" for the "Threepenny 'Bus young man," and of the words "Tottenham House" for the departed "Waterloo House." For a London audience must, above all things, be kept up to date, and a small anachronism of the latter kind, a mistake about the shops, would be noticed by them much sooner than a more important one.

Everything can be got in London, if (and the "if" is a comprehensive one) you know where to go for it. Old timber, for instance, can be bought not only at the Westminster wharves, but also in the Euston Road (where Messrs. Maple's vast timber-yards are in themselves an insight into the "highways and byways" of London); old silver may be had in the now spoiled Hanway Street, and Holborn; old furniture and antiques in Wardour Street and its neighbourhood; new furniture in Tottenham Court Road; livestock in and about Seven Dials; artists'

materials in Soho, and so on.... The best stationers' shops are in the City: the City shops, however, make a "speciality" of solid worth rather than of outside attractiveness, a quality in which the Regent Street and Oxford Street marts bear the palm. It is not really of much importance where you shop; it is, however, important to remember that, unless your money happens to be more valuable than your time, you had better not frequent cheap marts or crowded stores.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Dog Fancier!!!_]

Book-shops are very inadequate in London; so few are they indeed, that one is tempted to wonder what the "five millions, in the richest city in the world" read? In most foreign towns book-shops are to be found, in twos and threes, in every important street; in English provincial towns, if you want a book, you are usually directed to "a stationer's"; and even in London, book-shops must diligently be sought for, though, when found, they are, it must be confessed, usually very good.

Second-hand book-shops are more plentiful than new book shops; and these are mostly strangely dark, dingy, and rambling places, where the depressed proprietor rarely seems to wish to part with any of his dusty stock-in-trade, but sits apart in dusky recesses, moody and abstracted like Eugene Aram, annotating a catalogue. He is the unique tradesman who does not appear to want to sell his goods. After he has got over his annoyance at being disturbed,--and if you do happen to come to terms with him,--he will, as likely as not, heave a deep sigh as he turns to search for some very second-hand sheets of brown paper to enwrap the second-hand treasure. These old book-shops, with their outlying "twopenny" and "fourpenny" boxes, are generally to be found on busy city thoroughfares, as if by intent to entrap the unwary and impecunious scholar on his way home from his office desk to his little suburban home. In such spiders' webs of temptation he has been known to spend, in one fatal half-hour, all the money destined for the butcher's bill, or for the gas rate!

[Ill.u.s.tration: _In the Charing Cross Road._]

But, while impoverished scholars have a weakness for second-hand literature, the big circulating libraries, on the other hand, are the great weakness of their wives and daughters, cousins and aunts. About these vast emporiums ladies of all ages flit all day like bees around a hive. Ladies would appear but seldom to buy books; they always hire.

A morning spent at Smith's or Mudie's is curiously instructive as to the methods pursued by them in the search for light literature. The library counters then usually exhibit a double or treble row of women, with a very faint sprinkling of elderly men, all waiting, in varying degrees of patience, for their turn. Several of the ladies have considerately brought pet dogs, which they hold by the chain, the dear little animals being meanwhile thoughtfully engaged in entangling themselves round all the other customers' legs.

"Have you some nice, new, _good_ novels?" asks a plaintive materfamilias, with a stolid-faced bevy of half-grown up daughters behind her, just out of the schoolroom. "Something, you know, that is quite fit for young girls; no problems, or pasts, or anything of that kind."

The young man looks nonplussed. "We have Miss Yonge's latest," he suggests: "or Maeterlinck's _Life of the Bee_, just out--"

"Oh! Maeterlinck is so very Maeterlincky, you know. And do you think that he's always quite _safe_?"

"I a.s.sure you, madam, you will find him so in this instance," urges the young man.

"Well, bees are, of course, interesting; and very nice and proper too, I'm sure; but I myself prefer the lives of celebrated people. Mr.

Gladstone's Life, for instance? Oh, it's not _written_ yet, is it?

What a bore! Well, I suppose it's no use our waiting.... And Miss Yonge, no, thank you.... You see, she died last year, and then she's so very Early-Victorian!"

The man, seeing that it is to be a long business, gives up the problem for the moment, and moves in despair to the next customer.

Now it is the turn of a little old lady, with a deprecating manner: "I want something nice, and not too clever," she murmured: "something I can _knit_ over, you know, after breakfast. No, _not_ religious, I somehow find that's too depressing. How would this do?" as she picked up a volume that was flaunting itself on the counter, "_Sir Richard Calmady_. I think I'd like that, if it's at all like _Sir George Tressady_."

"No, madam, not at all the sort of thing for you," the young man hastened to say with an air of authority. "Allow _me_: Try _this_; this is a very safe book, Miss Edna Lyall's latest, _In Spite of All_. This (confidentially) is an author we always recommend."

Now there bustled up a young-old lady with fuzzy hair and a sailor hat: "I want all the most go-ahead novels you have," she cried: "somethin' really startling, somethin' that'll keep you awake and excited all through."

This lady being fortunately in a hurry, was quickly got rid of with a judicious mixture of Hall Caine, Guy Boothby, and Marie Corelli, in equal quant.i.ties.

Finally there came a nondescript, pudding-faced young woman, who said, vaguely, as if fulfilling a painful duty: "I want a novel. What is being read now?" She, however, proved very amenable, and went off dutifully with _Elizabeth's Visits_, _The Love-letters of Anonyma_, and the _Transvaal War_.

What vast knowledge of human nature must, one thinks, these young men at the libraries possess! They seem to enact the part of general literary adviser to the enormous feminine public. They know their types well, too: they rarely mistake. They may almost be said to form the minds of their customers; and they may, they possibly do, rule over a large proportion of human opinion.

Ladies, as I said, seldom buy new books; they seem to prefer reading novels that others have well thumbed. New book-shops, therefore, are few and far between; they mostly congregate about St. Paul's, and in the neighbourhood of what used to be Holywell Street; for trades in London, as is well known, tend to have their own special districts. In the poorer quarters, however, and in the near suburbs, everything is, on the contrary, placed in the queerest juxtaposition; thus, you may see a house labelled "Embalming done here," between two others respectively inscribed: "Hot Dinners served here," and "Cheap Mangling done;" while the big shopping palaces in Westbourne Grove and elsewhere advertise themselves, modestly, to provide everything, from a coffin to a hired guest. Some of our shops and ways must indeed puzzle the unsophisticated foreigner. Mr. Samuel Butler has told an amusing story of how a poor Ticinese peasant woman was one day found on her knees in prayer before an elaborate dentist's "show case" in Soho,--imagining it, doubtless, to contain the relics of a saint!

Shops, in some of the poor districts, afford remarkable insight into c.o.c.kney character. There is, for instance, the old plant-hawker who sells you rotten roots with a sweet smile: there is the no less charming bird-fancier who gets rid of a songless hen-canary at the modest price of 10/-, a.s.suring you, meanwhile, that "no better singer ever lived"; there is the lady-greengrocer who lets you have plums at a penny a pound dearer than the market-price--"though it's a robbin'

me and my poor innercent childern, that's what it is!"

It is not, however, always the shopman whose ways are most open to criticism. For, not only in the poorer districts, customers exist whose ideas of integrity are not of the finest. In Somers, Camden, or Kentish Towns, where the trader must, of necessity and from custom, spread out his goods in the street, to catch the eye, on projecting booths, that articles should occasionally be missed is, perhaps, hardly wonderful; and yet, curiously enough, it is rather in the big West End emporiums that shop-lifting is most common. Sales especially are most dangerous in this respect. Managers, notably of big drapery emporiums, say that they expect to lose a certain percentage regularly in this way: it is regarded as part of the business.

"Oh, no! we don't prosecute now," a pleasant shop-walker said in answer to my inquiries on the subject: "It is too risky altogether; the thing isn't worth it. And we lost 500, one year, by getting hold of the wrong person ... it's so easy to mistake, in the crowd. No, we just place detectives here and there, where the biggest crushes are ... they are dressed like ordinary customers, and carry parcels; so that no one could discover their business.... Then, if a detective happens to see a suspicious-looking individual, he marks her or him--(it is generally her), and follows, from one counter to another, to see if he is right. He doesn't speak until he is perfectly sure; but, when he is, he just goes up to the person and says politely, 'Please, would you kindly follow me for a moment into the office?'

Once in the office, the shop-lifter is made very quietly to disgorge.... It's nearly always a lady--very well connected some of them are, too.... She's never one of our reg'lar customers--sale-folks seem a kind of cla.s.s by themselves, and we see nothing of them from one sale-day to another. Some of them make hay then, and no mistake.... Why, madam," said the shop-walker, warming to his narrative, "why, I've seen ladies go into that office, quite stout persons, and come out of it so thin, you'd hardly know 'em again....

They just wear cloaks with deep inside pockets all round."

"And don't they ever object, or make a commotion in the shop?" I inquired.

"No, they go as quiet as lambs mostly ... and other customers don't notice anything.... You see, they know there's no help for 'em, no use for 'em to brazen it out, lined with silks, and laces and stuffs as they are. Afterwards, we just warn 'em kindly, and let 'em go. They rarely do it twice in the same shop."

"What sort of things do they generally take?" I asked.

"Why, lace, and bits o' ribbon, put up in odd lots for sale, things lying about loose on the counter, like they are at sale times.