Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge by Lindy Woodhead

Author:Lindy Woodhead
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Biography, History
ISBN: 9780812985054
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Published: 2007-10-01T07:00:00+00:00

10.

Castles in the Air

“Business carried on as usual during

alterations on the map of Europe.”

—WINSTON CHURCHILL

THE STORE PUBLISHED RECORD YEAR-END FIGURES FOR 1917, with profits of £258,000 (over £10 million today) mainly achieved, said Selfridge on announcing the results, “by an increase in household goods and cheaper clothing while luxury goods and expensive women’s wear has fallen off.” A year earlier, Condé Nast, the owner of American Vogue, had taken the view that even if women weren’t buying luxuries, they would still enjoy looking at them. He launched a British edition at the price of one shilling a copy, perhaps not understanding that the women with the most disposable income were working in munitions and reading Tit-Bits. With the upper classes showing their customary thrift and the middle classes strapped for cash, launching the glossy magazine hadn’t been easy. Vogue’s fashion editors responded with features explaining “how it is possible to have a smart wardrobe even with the handicap of a limited income.” Shortages meant higher prices everywhere—the cost of food had risen by 65 percent and clothing by 55 percent. The Government Food Controller had imposed fixed prices on basics such as bread and jam, which Selfridge delighted in undercutting, using his “Callisthenes” column to hammer the point home. There were, however, no discernible cuts in his own household budget—he was living in customary style at 30 Portman Square and spending prodigiously on renovating Highcliffe Castle.

The Highcliffe estate had originally been acquired by King George III’s young prime minister, the Earl of Bute, who, having the advantage of a very rich wife and a taste for beautiful buildings, commissioned Robert Adam to design several for him. These included Luton Hoo, Lansdowne House, and Kenwood in London, and a seaside mansion, then called High Cliff, where in 1773 he laid out exotic botanical gardens. High Cliff was left to Lord Bute’s youngest and favorite son, General Sir Charles Stuart, but sadly for Sir Charles, without the money to maintain it. He sold the contents, demolished the property, and also parted with most of the land.

His son in turn, also named Charles and a distinguished diplomat, vigorously set about restoring his inheritance, gradually re-acquiring the land his father had sold. While en poste in St. Petersburg he ordered timber; in Spain he commissioned bricks; as British Minister in Lisbon during the Peninsular War he sent instructions about the purchase of the remnants of the original mansion, by now a notorious smuggler’s den. When he was dispatched to Paris to choose a house for Lord Wellington’s anticipated sojourn as ambassador, his unerring eye settled on Princess Pauline Borghese’s hôtel in the rue du Faubourg St. Honoré—still the British embassy today. On his own subsequent appointment as ambassador, he delighted in attending the auctions taking place in the capital after the fall of Napoleon’s regime. Among other treasures, he bought furniture and carpets from the estate of the gallant Marshal Ney, stonework from the Norman Benedictine abbey of St. Peter at Jumièges, and a complete window of sixteenth-century stained glass from the church of St.

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