Mr Selfridge season 1 ends

The series on the creation of the Selfridge Store in Oxford Street is more rooted in fact although it also follows in the tradition of Upstairs and Downstairs and Downton Abbey. I previously introduced this ten week series recounting my own experience of the store and of departmental stores in Croydon where I was born and spent my childhood close by.

 

According to Wikipedia the creator of the enterprise started work at 14 he made his way to become a partner in the department store of Marshal Field in Chicago where he is said to have originated the Christmas Sale and x shopping days left to Christmas as well as the customer is always right. He married well and indeed it is argued that his wife was his backbone with his life rapidly deteriorated after her death. He grew up without a father which is an important factor and his mother lived with him for the greater part of his life until her death.

 

Coming to London on holiday with his wife he realised there was a great opportunity for an American style store. He purchased the buildings in Oxford Street before demolition and having the store purpose built to meet his purpose. His reported to have spent £400000 of his money. However in the TV series he is dependent on a financial backer who pulls out and on another backer introduced to him by an aristocratic married women socialite with a young lover and lots of good connections.

 

In the BBC production his wife was first portrayed as the responsible mother of his four children rather than a force behind the business. She is concerned at the business risks he takes and appears to accept that he takes up with young women but discretely and always returns to her and the family. In this instance he becomes infatuated with an actress who he employs to give publicity to the store and sets up with a property in St John’s Wood. She sees herself as the second Mrs Selfridge and when he decides to drop her she confronts his wife at the family home and attempts to commit suicide. She sets on a new course to become a serious actress with the help of Frank, the former editor of a newspaper drinking and gambling companion of Selfridge who when he loses his job turns to Selfridge for help unfortunately on a bad day and is turned away. Frank who always fancied the actress provides help in the rewriting of the play.

 

However Mrs Selfridge is also not the selfless woman initially presented when she meets an artist painter on a visit to a gallery and agrees to sit for him to create a portrait for her husband.  He is unaware who she is and becomes infatuated with her. She is attracted and considers responding to his advances but her upbringing makes her hold back. He retaliates by becoming acquainted with their eighteen year old daughter who with the help of Lady May comes out to London Society.  Selfridges realises that his wife and developed strong feelings and remains attracted and tempted. She considers taking her family including the eldest daughter back to America and Chicago.

 

Through the help of Lady May, King George decides to make his first visit to a store and comes for an evening shop complete with cash. He meets Mrs Selfridge and invites the couple to spend a weekend with him at Sandringham and we have seen what this could mean in the interpretation of the King by Poliakoff. Lady May then passes on the request of the King that that the Selfridges, his mother and eldest daughter should attend the opening of the new play, a satire, in which Selfridge’s mistress is the star. The play is a great attack on Selfridge his way of life and that of Lady, whose husband lives in the country while she lives in town. It is a great humiliation which result in their daughter realising what had been going on. It is he last straw for Mrs Selfridge who takes the children back to America shortly afterwards leaving Selfridge alone in London with his mother. In real life Mrs Selfridge died prematurely and Selfridge went on to become a man about town with several mistresses although he never remarried.

 

Playing Don Juan is not the only flaw in the man. He has dismissed one of the 1300 staff who stole medicines for her sick mother who dies. She is met by one of the other staff, a gentle hearted young woman while taking tea in a cafe adjacent to the store. She appeals to the head of staff to give the woman a reference but when approaches Selfridges he is refused and the woman then throws herself in front of a tube train leaving a letter to Selfridge not blaming him and saying that she is going to join her mother. The suicide which led to a number of store staff arriving late took place on the day Shackleton gives a talk at the store. His theme was about team work and he importance of acting and not putting the lives of others before ambition and this appears to have a positive affect on Selfridge, a man who intends well but lacks self control and relies on others. 

 

One of these is the stuffy disciplinarian head of staff but who also leads a double life. His wife has been an invalid for a number of years and at least once a week he stayed over with one of the departmental heads at the store and who he has been with for many years before this. When his wife dies she has the expectation they will marry but his first reaction is to insist on a temporary break. He then is taken with the young woman who appealed to him to give the sacked woman a reference. He asks her to marry keeping the engagement secret until he has opportunity to tell his former mistress. When she learns she is devastated and is even more shocked when he suggests that they should continue their previously illicit relationship. She has already agreed to attend a meeting of the suffragettes and consoles herself with this new involvement.

 

She has been invited to join the suffragettes by another head of department who shares the front of store one with perfume and cosmetics, a feature with Selfridge introduced from Paris and is now a common feature of all stores along with accessories. This brings me a senior assistant working for accessories. I previously reported that Selfridge on visiting another store in London had noted that the goods were not on display but kept in cupboards and drawers to prevent theft. He had persuaded a young assistant to show him all the gloves which led her to be sacked and following the announcement of staffing for his new store she had successfully approached him for a job, visiting his home.

 

She lives with her brother a rather weak young man who allows himself to be bullied by their father who becomes violent when drunk. They have moved away in secret to get away from him and she gets him a job in the store and packaging department. When the father returns and persuades her left him stay and then returns to his old ways, gets drunk and visits the store it is Selfridge who intervenes and buys him off to stay away.

 

She is courted by a waiter with ambition to own his own restaurant. He is sidetracked by being required to provide personal services for Lady May and who offers to fund his restaurant if he continues to meet her needs. She is a woman partial to young men but has grown tired of her previous attachment and his gambling debts.

 

Meanwhile the senior assistant has also developed her own love interest. She has caught the eye professionally of the window designer and close friend of Selfridge, a Frenchman who in turn has failed to capture the attention of a close friend and another creative designer who moves to New York. It was inevitable that the senior assistant and window designer should have an affair which continues until the head of the Perfume department finds out about the relationship and warns the senior assistant that they cannot afford to have relationships and remain employed as the store had a policy of not hiring married women, a custom which most enterprises also followed.

 

When the French woman returns and persuades him to go to New York the assistant and the waiter get back together as he has broken off with Lady May when he finds out she has no intention of financing the restaurant. It is the waiter who also prevents her brother being arrested and sack as eh unwittingly has become part of scam where goods ordered for the firm and resold elsewhere by staff, he takes a shine to a female assistant who eventually agrees to go out with him to the pictures. The series ends at Selfridge now alone finds the young man still working late at night and encourages him by saying that he started out in the same way. The young man comments that Selfridge has everything including his fine family laving Selfridge to rue his fate.

 

The last word is not for Selfridge but for the great Lady May. A suffrage sponsor, a collector of adorable young men, she has advanced the cause of Selfridge, his wife and his daughter. She is also the butt of the new satirical play but we suspect she will survive better then Selfridge. No doubt we shall find out more when the series returns.