Uncle George Remembers V

“I had been trying for some time to find a miniature dachshund, as we had no dog and our cook, Anna, of whom I will have more to say later, was an Austrian. On one of my visits to see Gordon Selfridge, I arrived half an hour early and went to the pets department to enquire whether they had one of these little German monsters on which we had set our hearts.

“We haven’t one.” “Can you procure one, then?” “Sorry, not much hope, waiting-list a mile long!” and so on.
Now, as you may have heard, Selfridge had the reputation of being able to procure for you within 24 hours anything under the sun you wanted, if they didn’t already have it in stock, be it a white elephant or a bag of fleas. So I told the great merchant about my quest and, dropping everything, he took me back to the pets department. On the way, walking briskly, he nodded affably to each of his many shop assistants, who are now I believe called sales executives, and they all smiled back at him. He seemed to know most of them by name – “Morning, Mabel,” “Morning, Violet,” “Morning Mr Pemberton.” When we got there, the embarrassed sales executive confirmed what I had said. “Leave it to me, Miss Bradwich,” said the Boss crisply and we returned to his office to continue planning his Jubilee decorations. On that occasion he also showed me his designs for a bigger and better Selfridges. They were very impressive. He spread them out on the floor and crawled about among them on all fours, the better to explain them to me. Anxious to be polite, I did the same, and I suppose his secretary, when she unexpectedly entered the room, thought we were playing leap-frog or something like that. As a matter of fact it was disturbing because I thought I saw in him the beginnings of megalomania.

I went back to the College and that afternoon he spoke to me on the telephone: “I’ve got it!!” he announced decisively, “a little beauty. Where would you like it sent? It’s £15.” I thanked him very much, and I claim to be the only Selfridge customer to have bought a dog unseen from the Boss himself. He, for his part, seemed to take a great deal of pleasure in handling this mini-transaction himself. We called the little beast Bismarck but he never took to us, preferring Anna, and later when she left us because of the war Bismarck went with her.

Some time after that I received a telegram from Gordon Selfridge inviting me to a dinner at Claridge’s which he was giving in honour of the Editor of the New York Times. I was never a close friend of Mr Selfridge and thought, “How kind of him to remember me.” I telegraphed him back, “Delighted”.

There were about 40 or 50 guests, all men, and we dined in the salon beyond the foyer. I found my place-card with “Mr George Bellew, Somerset Herald” correctly printed on it and sat down between Messrs Brendan Bracken and Beverley Baxter, both eminent English journalists at the time.

After a little polite conversation with them, during which I found I had absolutely nothing in common with either of them, I paused to look around and, apart from my host, Gordon Selfridge, and one or two newspaper proprietors whom I recognised but did not know, there was not a soul there I had ever seen before.

The awful truth dawned on me, which was that I had been invited by mistake. As I ate my way through the dinner party pretty well in silence whilst my two neighbours talked newspaper news across me, I began to see what must have happened: Mr Selfridge (crisply, incisively): “Miss Hautpenny” (or whatever his Social Secretary’s name may have been) – “invite 40/50 prominent newspapermen – dine Claridge’s Thursday 8.30 – in honour New York Times Editor – get it?” or something like that. And because I was evidently in her card index under “Somerset Herald”, which sounded to her like a respectable provincial newspaper, I was included in the invitations. Though the food and wine were excellent, the company and the speeches were beyond my comprehension. I was like a well-fed fish out of water.”