I find it very difficult to walk slowly down Bond Street as one
ought to do; I always feel so guilty. Most of the people there look
scornfully at me as if I belonged to Whitechapel, and the rest look
suspiciously at me as if I belonged to Bond Street. My clothes are
neither good enough nor bad enough. So I hurry through with the tense
expression of a man who is merely using Bond Street as a thoroughfare,
because it is the way to his dentist--as indeed in my case it is.
But recently I _did_ saunter in the proper way, and I took a most
thrilling inventory of the principal classes of shops, the results of
which have now been tabulated by my statistical department.
For instance, do you know how many shops in the street sell things for
ladies to wear (not including boots, jewellery or shoes)? No? Well,
there are thirty-three. Not many, is it? But then there are twenty-one
jewellers (including pearl shops) and eight boot and/or shoe shops; so
that, with two sort of linen places, which may fairly be reckoned
as female, the ladies' total is sixty-four. I only counted a
hundred-and-fifty shops altogether. Of that total, nine are places
where men can buy things to wear, and ten are places where they can
buy things to smoke; I have charitably debited all the cigarette-shops
to the men, even the ones where the cigarettes are tipped with
rose-leaves and violet-petals. But even if I do that and give the men
the two places where you can buy guns and throw in the one garden-seat
shop, we are left with the result:--
Feminine Shops. Masculine Shops.
Dress 33 Dress 9
Jewellers 21 Tobacco 10
Boots and Shoes 8 Motors 9
Sort of Linen Places 2 Guns 2
Dog Bureau 1 Garden Seats 1
-- --
65 31
From these figures a firm of Manchester actuaries has drawn the
startling conclusion that Bond Street is more used by women than by
men. It may be so. But a more interesting question is, how do all
these duplicates manage to carry on, considering the very reasonable
prices they charge? At one point there are three jewellers in a row,
with another one opposite. Not far off there are three cigarette-shops
together, madly defying each other with gold-tips and silver-tips,
cork-tips and velvet-tips, rose-tips and lily-tips. There is only one
book-shop, of course, but there are about nine picture-places. How do
they all exist? It is mysterious.
Especially when you consider how much trouble they take to avoid
attracting attention. There are still one or two window-dressers
who lower the whole tone of the street by adhering to the
gaudy-overcrowded style; but the majority, in a violent reaction
from that, seem to have rushed to the wildest extremes of the
simple-unobtrusive. They are delightful, I think, those reverent
little windows with the chaste curtains and floors of polished walnut,
in the middle of which reposes delicately a single toque, a single
chocolate or a single pearl. Some of the picture-places are among
the most modest. There is one window which suggests nothing but the
obscure branch of a highly-decayed bank in the dimmest cathedral town.
On the dingy screen which entirely fills the window is written simply
in letters which time has almost erased, "---- ---- PICTURES." Nothing
could be less enticing. Yet inside, I daresay, fortunes are made
daily. I noticed no trace of this method at the Advertisers'
Exhibition; they might give it a trial.
Now no doubt you fondly think that Bond Street is wholly devoted to
luxuries; perhaps you have abandoned your dream of actually buying
something in Bond Street? You are wrong. To begin with, there are
about ten places where you can buy food, and, though there is no pub.
now, there is a café (with a licence). There are two grocers and a
poulterer. There is even a fish-shop--you didn't know that, did you? I
am bound to say it seemed to have only the very largest fish, but they
were obviously fish.
Anyone can go shopping in Bond Street. I knew a clergyman once who
went in and asked for a back-stud. He was afterwards unfrocked for
riotous living, but the stud was produced. You can buy a cauliflower
in Bond Street--if you know the ropes. There is a shop which merely
looks like a very beautiful florist's. There are potatoes in the
window, it is true, but they are "hot-house" ones; inside there is
no trace of a common vegetable. But if you ask facetiously for a
cauliflower (as I did) the young lady will disappear below ground and
actually return with a real cauliflower (_de luxe_, of course). I
remember few more embarrassing episodes.
And if you like to inquire at the magnificent provision-merchant's he
too will conjure up from the magic cellars boot-cream and metal-polish
and all those vulgar groceries which make life possible. That is the
secret of Bond Street. Beneath that glittering display of luxurious
trivialities there are vast reserves of solid prosaic necessaries,
only waiting to be asked for. A man could live exclusively on Bond
Street. I don't know where you would buy your butchers' meat, but I
have a proud fancy that, if you went in and said something to one of
those sleek and sorrowful jewellers, he too would vanish underground
and blandly return to you with a jewelled steak or a plush chop.
Many years ago, they tell me, there _was_ a butcher in Bond Street.
Perhaps you dealt there. For my part I was not eating much meat in
those days. But I can imagine his window--a perfect little grotto of
jasper and onyx, with stalactites of pure gold, and in the middle,
resting on a genuine block of Arctic ice, an exquisite beef-sausage. I
wish he would come back.
It is difficult to realise that there is anything but shop-windows in
Bond Street, but I like to think that, up there in those upper storeys
which one never sees, there does dwell a self-contained little
community to whom Bond Street is merely the village street, down which
the housewives pass gossiping each morning to the greengrocer's or the
fishmonger's and never purchase any pearls at all.
When the butcher comes back I think I shall join them.