XII

ITOLD Lady Torquilin that the expression struck me as profane.

'How ridiculous you are, child! It's a good old English word. Nobody

will understand you if you talk about your "rubbers" in this country.

"Goloshes," certainly. G-o-l-o-s-h-e-s, "goloshes." Now, go directly

and put them on, and don't be impertinent about the English language in

England, whatever you may be out of it!'

I went away murmuring, '"G-o-l-o-s-h-e-s, goloshes"! What a perfectly

awful--literally unutterable word! No, I love Lady Torquilin, and I like

her England, but I'll never, never, never say "goloshes"! I'd almost

rather swear!' And as I slipped on the light, thin, flexible articles

manufactured, I believe, in Rochester, N.Y., and privately compared them

with the remarkable objects worn by the British nation for the purpose

of keeping its feet dry, the difference in the descriptive terms gave me

a certain satisfaction.

Lady Torquilin and I were going shopping. I had been longing to shop in

London ever since I arrived, but, as Lady Torquilin remarked, my trunks

seemed to make it almost unreasonable. So up to this time I had been

obliged to content myself with looking at the things in the windows,

until Lady Torquilin said she really couldn't spend so much time in

front of shop-windows--we had better go inside. Besides, she argued, of

course there was this to be said--if you bought a good thing, there

it was--always a good thing! I And it isn't as if you were obliged to

pinch, my dear. I would be the last one to counsel extravagance,' said

Lady Torquilin. 'Therefore we'll go to the cheapest place first'--and

we got an omnibus. It seemed full of people who were all going to the

cheapest place, and had already come, some of them a long way, to go

to it, judging by their fares. They were not poor people, nor

respectably-darned people, nor shabby-genteel people. Some of them

looked like people with incomes that would have enabled them to avoid

the cheapest place, and some gave you the idea that, if it were not

for the cheapest place, they would not look so well. But they had

an invariable expression of content with the cheapest place, or

appreciation of it, that made me quite certain they would all get out

when we stopped there; and they did.

We went in with a throng that divided and hurried hither and thither

through long 'departments,' upstairs and down, past counters heaped with

cheapnesses, and under billowing clouds and streaming banners of various

colours, marked 1s. 1d. and 11d. in very black letters on a very white

ground. The whole place spoke of its cheapness, invited you to approach

and have your every want supplied at the lowest possible scale of

profit--for cash. Even the clerks--as we say in America, incorrectly,

I believe--the people behind the counter suggested the sweet

reasonableness of the tariff; not that I mean anything invidious, but

they seemed to be drawn from an unpretending, inexpensive class of

humanity. The tickets claimed your attention everywhere, and held it,

the prices on them were so remarkably low; and it was to me at first

a matter of regret that they were all attached to articles I could not

want under any circumstances. For, the moment I went in. I succumbed to

the cheapest place; I desired to avail myself of it to any extent--to

get the benefit of those fascinating figures personally and immediately.

I followed Lady Torquilin with eagerness, exclaiming: but nothing would

induce her to stop anywhere; she went straight for the trifles she

wanted, and I perforce after her. 'There are some things, my dear,' she

said, when we reached the right counter, 'that one must come here for,

but beyond those few odds and ends--well, I leave you to judge for

yourself.'

This was calculated to dash a person's enthusiasm, and mine was dashed

at once. There is nothing, in shopping, like a friend's firm and

outspoken opinion, to change your views. I began to think unfavourably

of the cheapest place immediately, and during the twenty-five minutes

of valuable time which Lady Torquilin spent, in addition to some small

silver, upon a box of pink paper trimmings for pudding-dishes, I had

arrived at a state of objection to the cheapest place, which intensified

as we climbed more stairs, shared more air with the British Public

of the cheapest place, and were jostled at more counters. 'For,' Lady

Torquilin said, 'now that we are here, though I loathe coming, except

that it's something you ought to do, we really might as well see what

there is!'--and she found that there were quite a number of little

things at about a shilling and a ha'penny that she absolutely needed,

and would have to pay 'just double for, my dear, anywhere else.' By that

time my objection became active, and embraced the cheapest place and

everything connected with it, quite unreasonably. For there was no doubt

about the genuineness of the values offered all over its counters, or

about the fact that the clerks were doing the best they could to

sell seven separate shillings'-worth at the same moment to different

individuals, or of the respectability of the seven people who were

spending the seven shillings. It would have been a relief, indeed, to

have detected something fraudulent among the bargains, or some very

great adventuress among the customers. It was the deadly monotony of

goodishness and cheapishness in everything and everybody that oppressed

you. There were no heights of excellence and no contrasting depths--all

one level of quality wherever you looked--so that the things they sold

at the cheapest place--sold with mechanical respect, and as fast as

they could tie them up--seemed to lack all individuality, and to have

no reason for being, except to become parcels. There was none of the

exultation of bargain-getting; the bargains were on a regular system of

fixed laws--the poetic delight of an unexpected 'reduction' was wholly

absent. The cheapest place resolved itself into a vast, well-organised

Opportunity, and inside you saw the British Public and the Opportunity

together.

'Ere is your chainge, madam,' said the hollow-eyed young woman who had

been waiting upon Lady Torquilin in the matter of a letter-weight and a

Japanese umbrella. 'Thank you,' said Lady Torquilin. 'I'm afraid you

get very tired, don't you, before the day is over?' my friend asked the

young woman, with as sweet a smile as she could have given anybody. The

young woman smiled back again, and said, 'Very, madame'; but that was

all, for three other people wanted her. I put this in because it is

one of the little things she often says that show the niceness of Lady

Torquilin.

'Now, what do you think of the cheapest place?' asked Lady Torquilin as

we walked together in the Edgware Road. I told her as I have told you.

'H'mph!' said she. 'It's not a shop I like myself, but that's what I

call being too picksome! You get what you want, and if you don't want it

you leave it, and why should you care! Now, by way of variety, we'll go

to the dearest place;' and the omnibus we got into rattled off in the

direction of Bond Street. It struck me then, and often since, how oddly

different London is from an American city to go shopping in. At home the

large, important stores are pretty much together, in the business part

of the city, and anybody can tell from the mere buildings what to expect

in the way of style and price. In London you can't tell at all, and the

well-known shops are scattered over square miles of streets, by twos and

threes, in little individual towns, each with its own congregation

of smaller shops, and its own butchers and bakers and newsstands, and

post-office and squares and 'places,' and blind alleys and strolling

cats and hand organs; and to get from one to another of the little towns

it is necessary to make a journey in an omnibus. Of course, I know there

are a few places preeminent in reputation and 'form' and price--above

all in price--which gather in a few well-known streets; but life in

all these little centres which make up London would be quite complete

without them. They seem to exist for the benefit of that extravagant

element here that has nothing to do with the small respectable houses

and the little domestic squares, but hovers over the city during the

time of year when the sun shines and the fogs are not, living during

that time in notable localities, under the special inspection of the

'Morning Post.' The people who really live in London--the people of

the little centres--can quite well ignore these places; they have their

special shop in Uxbridge Road or St. Paul's Churchyard, and if they

tire of their own particular local cut, they can make morning trips

from Uxbridge Road to the High Street, Kensington, or from either to

Westboume Grove. To Americans this is very novel and amusing, and we get

a great deal of extra pleasure out of shopping in London in sampling, so

to speak, the different submunicipalities.

While I was thinking these things, Lady Torquilin poked me with her

parasol from the other end of the omnibus. 'Tell him to stop!' she said,

and I did; at least, the gentleman in the corner made the request for

me. That gentleman in the corner is a feature of your omnibus system, I

think. His arm, or his stick, or his umbrella, is always at the service

of any lady who wants the bell rung. It seems to be a duty that goes

with the corner seat, cheerfully accepted by every man that sits there.

We had arrived in Bond Street, at the dearest place. From what Lady

Torquilin told me, I gathered that Bond Street was a regular haunt for

dearest places; but it would be impossible for any stranger to suppose

so from walking through it--it is so narrow and crooked and irregular,

and the shops are so comparatively insignificant after the grand sweep

of Regent Street and the wide variety of the circuses. For one, I should

have thought circuses would be the best possible places for business

in London, not only because the address is so easily remembered, but

because once you get into them they are so extremely difficult to get

out of. However, a stranger never can tell.

Inside, the dearest place was a stronger contrast to the cheapest

place than I could describe by any antithesis. There was an exclusive

emptiness about it that seemed to suggest a certain temerity in coming

in, and explained, considered commercially, why the rare visitors

should have such an expensive time of it. One or two tailor-made ladies

discussed something in low tones with an assistant, and beside these

there was nobody but a couple of serious-minded shopwalkers, some

very elegant young ladies-in-waiting, and the dummies that called

your attention to the fashions they were exhibiting. The dummies were

headless, but probably by the variety of their clothes they struck you

as being really the only personalities in the shop. We looked at some

of them before advancing far into the august precincts of the dearest

place, and Lady Torquilin had a sweeping opinion of them. 'Hideous! I

call them,' she said; but she said it in rather a hushed tone, quite

different from the one she would have used in the cheapest place, and I

am sure the shopwalker did not overhear. 'Bulgarian atrocities! How in

the world people imagine such things! And as to setting to work to make

them----'

I can't say I agreed with Lady Torquilin, for there was a distinct idea

in all the dresses, and a person always respects an idea, whether it is

pretty or not; but neither can I profess an admiration for the fashions

of the dearest place. They were rather hard and unsympathetic; they

seemed to sacrifice everything to be in some degree striking; their

motto seemed to be, 'Let us achieve a difference'--presumably from the

fashions of places that were only dear in the comparative degree. While

we were looking at them, one of the pale young women strolled languidly

up and remarked, with an absent expression, that one of them was

'considered a smart little gown, moddam!' 'Smart enough, I daresay,'

said Lady Torquilin, with a slightly invidious emphasis on the

adjective; whereat the young woman said nothing, but looked volumes of

repressed astonishment at the ignorance implied. Lady Torquilin went on

to describe the kind of dress I thought of buying.

Original 'Certainly, moddam! Will you take a seat, moddam? Something quite simple I think you said, moddam, and in muslin. I'll be with you in one moment, moddam.' And the young woman crawled away with the negligence that became the dearest place. After an appreciable time she returned with her arms full of what they used to call, so very correctly, 'furbelows,' in spotted and flowered muslins.

'Dearie me!' said Lady Torquilin. 'That's precisely what I wore when I

was a girl!'

'Yes, moddam!' said the young woman, condescending to the ghost of

a smile. 'The old styles are all comin' in again'--at which burst of

responsiveness she suddenly brought herself up sharply, and assumed a

manner which forbade you to presume upon it.

I picked up one of the garlanded muslins and asked the price of it. It

had three frills round the bottom and various irrelevant ribbon-bows.

'Certainly, moddam! One moment, moddam!' as she looked at the ticket

attached.

'This one is seventeen guineas, moddam. Silk foundation. A Paris model,

moddam, but I dare say we could copy it for you for less.'

Lady Torquilin and I made a simultaneous movement, and looked at each

other in the expressive way that all ladies understand who go shopping

with each other.

'Thanks!' I said. 'It is much too expensive for me.'

'We have nothing of this style under fifteen guineas, moddam,' replied

the young woman, with a climax of weary frigidity. 'Then, shall we go?'