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 fashions. 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 æsthetic, 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 fashion, 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 fashions, 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 fashionable 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 employés 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 Saturday nights till 12, with short intervals for hurried and indifferent meals. Of course, it is the working classes themselves who are the cause of this "sweating"; these do their shopping late, on Saturday 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 substitution 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.
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.