CHAPTER XV: SHOPPING IN LONDON
When we moved into our new house there were many things to be bought. I spent a happy day with lists as fat as encyclopædias, but that seemed such an expensive way to shop that I finally went to London instead. Lists are so attractive. Everything looks desirable, and one remembers so much that one would otherwise forget that it seems wiser to go to the shop itself. One gets disillusioned there in no time before the actual things. It becomes delightful not to have them in one’s own house. Above all, one gets so weary of going “straight through on the left.” Nothing seems worth while at the cost of going straight through on the left. I went straight through on the left for hours at a time, and at last came to a large window looking out on to a fire-escape.
“Are you quite sure the poker departmentis straight through on the left?” I asked the shopwalker.
“Quite sure, Madam,” he replied.
“Then,” I said, “if you will hold my parasol and my hat and wait until I take off my skirt, I will go there. I see it is down the fire-escape.”
“Oh, no. Madam,” he said, “this way, please.”
It was not anywhere near the left: it was to the right, and down some stairs, and round two corners, and past the drapery. I bought the poker and tongs and then asked for a shovel. The man directed me to the ironmongery department.
“No, Madam,” I was told, “this is the furnishing. Kitchen department is in the ironmongery.”
“Thank you,” I said, “I know it is straight through on the left, but could you tell me, do you think, in other words, where that is?”
“Straight through on the left, Madam.”
“Very well,” I said. “I understand thatI climb over these wardrobes, cut my way through the carpets, and proceed straight through the wall.”
“Past the hosiery, Madam, straight through on——”
I took the young man’s arm and asked if he would mind coming with me. “Now, tell me,” I said confidentially, as we threaded our way to the right, and up and down the stairs, round the gallery and home by the gent.’s outfitting. “Just stop a moment and try to follow what I am saying. You see this ribbon counter on my right?”
“Yes, Madam.”
“And the silk remnants in front of me?”
“Yes, Madam.”
“And the stationery at the back?”
“Yes, Madam.”
“Very well then, how can all these points of the compass be straight through on the left?”
“It all depends which way you are standing, Madam.”
“I see; then when I want anything that ison the ground floor and you tell me to go straight through on the left, the best thing I can do is to lie down on my left side and try to remember which way you are facing?”
We were divided here by a stream of dishevelled women passing in different directions.
“Ribbons, forward!” said the young man, and he disappeared—I suppose straight through on the left.
Shop assistants are so invariably prepared to give advice on matters of dress and domestic management that I suppose there are people who go to shops not to buy but to have a heart-to-heart talk about what they shall buy. They must be the same amiable creatures who conduct their love affairs under “Aunt Lena’s” superintendence in the penny magazines. I refuse to believe that the shop assistant really cares for what purpose I want a quarter of a yard of green velvet cut on the cross.
“What is it for?” the girl asks wearily as she reaches up for the box. “Is it for a hat?”
If you are just silly you tell her, perhaps, that it is for a pair of boots, in which case she is as kind as before and replies, “Fancy dress, I suppose. In that case you had better bring the dress it is to go with and I’ll see you get it matched. What is the name of the character you are going as? because we have some special brocades for characters from Shakespeare. You will find them in the theatrical department, straight through on the left.” If you are polite and tell her that in fact you want it for the collar of your coat that Uncle Sam gave you at Christmas, because it got spoilt with the cork of the freckle lotion having come out in your box, she tells you that it is a pity to buy velvet at all: there is so little velvet worn now. The embroidered collars are far newer and, with your complexion, would be less trying than the velvet. “You’ve rather a high colour, haven’t you?” she adds (looking herself like an anæmic gooseberry). She probably aims this dart at you on a sultry day, when you have been apoplecticallyfollowing the straight path on the left for two hours in search of white cotton and a tooth-brush.
If I want pale green cotton flecked with ruby and just a soupçon of chenille mixed with the thread, I can get it at the first attempt. Every counter of every shop in the street will stock it in abundance; but things like white cotton and tape and safety-pins are not stocked within the four-mile radius. You have to spend an hour in the tube, with frequent changes, before you reach the suburbs where are the little post office linendrapers that keep the daily necessaries of every woman’s existence. “Pins! Oh, no, Madam, not pins like that we don’t keep. We have the fancy-headed ones, twelve inches long, and a very nice two-inch glass pin at two-three the pair. I fancy you might get the sort you want out in Bayswater. I couldn’t name any particular shop just for the moment, but I fancy you would find some there. If not, you will get them at some of the small establishments by the Crystal Palace.”
Another thing which adds to the burden of a day’s shopping is the difficulty of describing what you want in the jargon that will lead you to the right counter. What properly brought up person knows whether stockings are “drapery” or “outfitting”? It all depends on how you want to wear them, one would suppose. In fact, I believe they are “hosiery.” And yet, if I could force myself to say “hosiery” to the liftman, I should probably find that in addition to the hosiery being straight through on the left, and therefore in the next street but two, it meant gent.’s up-to-date footwear only, and that ladies’ stockings were in the haberdashery, second turning on the right and across the road as you leave Shaftesbury Avenue. I sometimes wonder whether there are people who in private life call their garments by the names used in shops, and if not, where is the use of annoying harmless decent people by these words? I asked James what a “singlet” was and he said he did not know.
“Well then,” I said, “do you suppose that the shopman who sold me these vests for you says to his wife: ‘My dear, why have you allowed the cat to sleep on my singlet?’ and if so, does she know what he means? and how can she bear to live with him?”
“If she really cared for him,” James answered, “she would not mind if he called it an antimacassar. The only thing that mattered would be that she should remove the cat and feel heartily ashamed of herself.”
“Do you know, it cost me an hour’s argument to get those vests for you because I refused to buy them as singlets and the man wouldn’t sell them as vests. I won in the end because he was getting tired and there were so many people waiting. I think he saw I was serious. But it wasted a fearful lot of time. And now, again, what do you call these?”
“Draws,” said James in one syllable.
“Quite so, that is how I was brought up; but do you realise that the young lady inthe shop would not give me anything but ‘knickers’? It made me feel so tweedy, and golfish, and detestable, that I would not buy any.”
“Very silly,” he commented. “Besides, no one plays golf in knickers. It is an impossible word. It sounds like ready-made Fauntleroys for young gentlemen.”
“Thank you a thousand times,” I said, “that is just the word I was looking for. I shall always call them Fauntleroys in future. And now about skirts.”
“What about skirts?” he asked.
“Do you call a skirt a thing that you put on over or under?”
“I call the top one a skirt and the under one a petticoat,” said James, after reflection.
“If you knew anything about haberdashery or outfitting or singlets, or going straight through on the left, you wouldn’t have any petticoats,” I explained. “You would have a skirt—unless you were dressed in tricot or gold-beaters’ skin, which, I believe, is newer—and the thing you wore on thetop would be a ‘robe’ or a ‘blouse suit,’ or a ‘costume’ or a ‘trotteuse’ or a ‘cache-corset’ or—oh dear! I am out of breath. I can’t disentangle terms any more.”
“I am afraid your shopping has gone to your head,” said James. “Did you buy anything useful? Did you remember the library carpet and the lawn-mower?”
“I am sorry,” I said; “they were straight through on the left and that brought me out at Covent Garden, so I bought some peaches for you, and when I began again it was too late—the shop was shutting.”
“Very well,” he said, “I will go to-morrow myself. It will do just as well and, I dare say, cost less in extras.”
He came home at seven and would answer no questions, but shut himself up with Harrods’ list. When he had written for what he wanted, I met him in the hall and opened the door with a polite bow.
“Pillar-box, straight through on the left,” I said.