SETTING UP.
The taking of a shop, whether to set up a new business or translate an old one, is always a matter of deep and anxious concernment. On such an occasion, one generally gets into a state of fidgetiness and perplexity, which is felt to be far from disagreeable. A sentiment of unwonted enterprise rises in his mind. He is going, he thinks, to do a great thing—at least something beyond the usual range of commercial existence. In the first place, he pays a few sly and solitary visits to the place—not that he goes in to look about him—no, no; he is not for some time up to that point. He tries first how the premises look when simply walked past as if by an unconcerned passenger. As he passes, he casts an affectedly careless glance at the door and windows, taking care, however, to receive as deep an impression as possible of the whole bearing and deportment of the place. After walking to a sufficient distance, he turns and walks back, and sees how it looks when approached from a different point of the compass. Then he takes a turn along the other side of the street, or perhaps, if afraid to excite observation (and if the place be in Edinburgh), goes up a common stair, and takes a deliberate and secure observation from a window. Hisfeeling is almost exactly the same as that of a lover making observations of a mistress, whose figure he wishes to ascertain before getting too deeply in love with her to put correct judgment out of the question. As, in the one case, stature is perhaps considered, complexion and outline of face duly weighed, and possibly some very modest inquiries instituted as to what Master Slender calls “possibilities,” so, in the other, does the shop-inspector consider all the particulars of the aspect and likelihood of the contemplated premises. Shops, it must be understood, have characters, exactly like human beings. Some have an open, generous, promising countenance, while others have a contracted, sinister, louring expression of phiz, according to the quantity of mason-work there may be in front. Some are of a far moreaccessiblecharacter than others, with a kind offacilis descensusin the entry that is in the highest degree favourable to custom. People can hardly avoid falling into such shops as they pass along the streets, for positively they gape like so many Scyllas for your reception, and goodwives, who, like Roderigo, have put money in their purses, are caught like so many rats without thinking of it. There are others, I grieve to say, with such a difficulty of entrance, either from a narrow door, a shut door, an elevation of the pavement, or a certain distance from the thoroughfare, that it requires an absolute determination to purchase such and such articles in such and such shops—a fullanimus emendi, as lawyers would say—to overcome the obstacle. Perhaps it does not matter for some businesses, which are not much overrun with competition, that they should be carried on in shops of this kind. If there be only one music-seller in the town, he might have his boutique in a twelfth story, and yet he would be sure to get all the natural custom of the place; but in the case of one out of some five hundred haberdashers, or some two thousand grocers, it is absolutely imperative that he should be established in some place with a fatal facility of access. In all cases, there is a combination of qualities in shops, aswell as in men and women. There is something indescribable about it; but an experienced eye, pretty well acquainted with the characters of the streets [this is another subject] and parts of streets, could almost in a moment decide upon the probabilities of any given shop in a large city. He would combine in an instant in his own mind the various qualities, and, counting them into each other after the manner of Lieutenant Drummond, but by a figureless kind of arithmetic, assign at once the exact value of the shop to any class of traders. And shops have characters, too, in another sense of the word—that is, they have reputations. Let a shop have all the apparent advantages in the world, yet, if it be a shop in which several persons have committedfaux pasin business, it is naught. We often see an excellent shop thus lose caste, as it were, and become of hardly any value to its proprietor. Suppose some one has failed in it between terms, and deserted it: then do all the bill-stickers come in the first place, and paste it over with huge placards from top to bottom, exactly as a man drowned in the sea, however fine a fellow he may have been, gets encased in a few days in barnacles and shell-fish, the conchological part of the world taking that opportunity to show their contempt for the human. Though the character of the shop is not yet, perhaps, at its worst, yet, as it happens to remain unleased over the next term, the despairing landlord, some time in September or October, begins to let it “by the month or week” to all kinds of nameless people, who die and make nosign, such as men that show orreries, or auctioneers selling off bankrupt stocks, till at last it is as hopeless to think of getting a good tenant into it, as for a man with a bad character to expect a good place in the Excise. The shop is marked for ever; and unless, like the man in the Vicar of Wakefield, it can get a thoroughly new face and form, it has no chance whatsoever of resuming its place in the first rank of shops.
After having completely made up his mind to take a particularshop, he goes and asks advice. His confessor[7]readily consents to take a walk with him in that direction, and give his candid opinion upon the subject. The two walk arm in arm past the premises, the confessor alone looking, lest, in endeavouring to observe, they should themselves be observed. “I’ll tell you what,” says the confessor, “I like that shop very much. If the rent be at all suitable, I think you might do very well in it.” It is then proposed that the confessor should step in to inquire the rent; for though there be equal reasons why each should not expose himself as being on the outlook for a shop, the person not actually concerned has always least reluctance to submit to that disadvantage, being borne up, it would appear, by a conscious absence of design, while the guilt of the other would be betrayed by his first question. If the confessor reports favourably, then the individual who wants the premises ventures in himself, inspects the accommodations, and makes farther inquiries. The two afterwards retire together, and have a deep and serious consultation upon the subject.
In the deliberations of a person about to enter life in this way, there is always much that is extravagant, and much that is vague. I never yet knew it fail, that, if there was success at all, it arose from different sources from those which had been most securely calculated upon as likely to produce it. Suppose it is a business for the supply of some ordinary necessary of life: the novice reckons up almost all the people he knows in different parts of the town, as sure to become his customers; he expects, indeed, hardly any other kind of support. It is found, however, when he commences, that one friend is engaged in one way, and another in another, so that, with the exception, perhaps, of some benevolent old lady, who sends occasionally to buy a few trifles from himupon principle, all is waste and barren where he expected to reap a plentiful harvest. Hefinds, however, on the other hand, that he gets customers where he did not expect them. People seem to rise out of the earth, like the men of Cadmus, to buy from him. The truth is, he is resorted to by those who are disengaged at the time, and to whom his shop is convenient; and all the good-will of all the friends in the world will not get over, for his sake, the difficulty of some engagement elsewhere, or the inconvenience of distance.
It is also a very remarkable thing of people about to enter upon such an enterprise as we are now describing, that they often overlook the most important considerations of all and pay a very minute attention to trifles and things by the by. They perhaps fail to observe that there is not nearly enough of population around them to justify their setting up a particular business; but they fully appreciate and lay great stress upon the circumstance of having a water-pipe in the back room, by which they may be enabled to wash their hands at any time of the day. They may neither have capital nor range of intellect for the business; but they are top-sure that the woman who sells small wares in the area will supply them with a light for the fire every morning. The shop may be unsuitable in many important respects; but nothing could be better in its way than the place for a sign above the door. Even where every matter of real consequence is well weighed and found answerable, there is generally a fussy and festering anxiety about details, accompanied, in the sensations of the principal party, by peculiar dryness of mouth and excoriation of thought-chewed lip. Matters may be such that a confessor, with all the evil-foreboding qualities of a stormy-peterel, could not see a single flaw in the prospect; yet it is amusing in such cases to hear the intending trader laying as much stress upon the peculiar situation of a fire-place in the back room, or the willingness of the landlord to supply a padlock to the door, as if in these things, and in nothing else, lay all his hopes of profit and eventual respectability in life.
Suppose, however, that, after all kinds of fond and dreamy calculations, the shop has been taken and opened. I think there can hardly, for some time, be a more interesting sight to a benevolent on-looker, than the young and anxious trader. The shop almost throws itself out at the windows to attract the observation of the passer by. The youth himself stands prompt and alert behind his counter, never idling for a moment, nor permitting his shopboy to idle, but both busy, cutting, and brushing, and bustling about, whether there be any thing to do or not. If but an old lady be seen looking up at the window, or glancing in through the avenue of cheap prints that forms the doorway, what an angler-like eagerness in the mind of the trader that she would butwalk in!—nothing more required—were she once within the shop, no fear but she is well done for. And when any body does go in to buy any thing, what a readiness to fly upon the article wanted—with what serviceable rapidity of finger is the parcel unbound—how polite andimpresséthe manner in which the object is presented and laid out for inspection—what intense gratitude for the money wherewith it is paid! With what a solicitous air is a card finally put into your hand as a memorandum of the place!—a proceeding only the more eloquent when not accompanied by an actual request for your farther custom.
In a large city, advertising is necessarily resorted to as one of the modes, if not almost the only mode, of forming a business. Here it is obvious that a mere modest statement of the case will not do. Something must be said, to make the setting up of the new shop appear in the character of anevent. The public attention must be arrested to the circumstance, as if it were a matter of public concernment. It must appear as if the interest of the community, and the interest of the shopman, were identified. No good bargains, no certainty of good articles, no safety of any kind, any where else. Such is the strain of his advertisements, which, though they make the judicious grieve, make a vast number of other people, and even some of thejudicious, buy. The secret is this: A warm and highly coloured style is necessary with a new shopkeeper, to meet and counteract the indifference of the public towards his concerns. If he put forth a cool schedule of his goods and chattels, it does nothing for him, because it does not single him out from the great herd. But if he uses a striking and emphatic phraseology, and even mixes a little extravagance in the composition, it is apt to fix attention to him and his shop; and the people, being so warmly solicited, go to try. Again (and here, perhaps, lies the better part of the thing), the frequency and fervour of his advertisements at least convey the impression that he is anxious for business, and ready and willing to execute it; and as people like to deal with such persons, he is apt to be resorted to on that account, if upon no other. Frequent advertising is, upon the whole, a mark rather of a want of business, than of that kind of respectability which consists in the enjoyment of a concern already in full operation and productiveness; but with beginners, it is quite indispensable.
The difficulty of establishing a new business is fortunately got over in a small degree by a certain benevolent principle in human nature—a disposition to encourage the efforts of the young. Some people act so much under this sentiment, or have such an appetite for the sincere thanks of the needy, that they go to hardly any shops but those of new beginners. The sight of a haberdasher’s shop, in its first and many-coloured dawn, with prints, and ribands, and shop-bills, flying in all directions—or of a provision shop, where hams project their noses into the very teeth, almost, of the passer by, and cheeses lie gaping with a quarter cut out, as if ready to eat rather than to be eaten—or of a bookseller’s shop, where every fresh and trig volume upon the counter seems as if it would take the slightest hint of your will, and, starting up, pack itself off, without any human intervention whatsoever, to your lodgings—is irresistible to these people. They must go in, whetherthey want any thing or not, and, after buying some trifle as an earnest of future custom, get themselves delighted with a full recital of all the young trader’s feelings, and prospects, and capabilities, which he is ready to disclose to any one that will lay out sixpence, and appear to take an interest in his undertaking. If the customer be an old lady, she is interested in his youth, and inquires whether he be married or not. If not, then she wants him to get on well, so that he may soon be able to have a wife; if he be, and have children, then she sympathises but the more keenly; she thinks how much human happiness depends upon the success or failure of his undertaking—how one fond soul will watch with intense anxiety the daily progress of the business, taking an interest in almost every penny that comes in, and how many little mouths unconsciously depend upon what is donehere, for the fare which childhood so much requires and so truly enjoys. She goes away, resolved to speak of the shop to all she knows, and perhaps in two or three days she is able to bring in a flock of young ladies who want various articles, and who, recommending the new beginner to others, aid materially in making up the steady business, which, with economy, perseverance, and suitable personal qualities, he at length acquires.
FOOTNOTES:[7]Bosom friend.
[7]Bosom friend.
[7]Bosom friend.