Abroad with the Jimmies Part 24

With all this c.u.mulative experience, as Jimmie says, "of how to misbehave in shops," we got back to London, where I could bring it into play, and in a manner avenge myself for past slights.

I was so grateful to Jimmie for the King Arthur that he gave me at Innsbruck that I decided to surprise him by something really handsome on his birthday.

When we got to Paris, there seemed to be an epidemic of gun-metal ornaments set with tiny pearls, diamonds, or sapphires. Of these I noticed that Jimmie admired the pearl-studded cigar-cases and match-safes most, but for some reason I waited to make my purchase in London, which was one of the most foolish things I ever have done in all my foolish career, and right here let me say that there is nothing so unsatisfactory as to postpone a purchase, thinking either that you will come back to the same place or that you will see better further along, for in nine cases out of ten you never see it again.

When we got to London, Bee and I put on our best street clothes and started out to buy Jimmie his birthday present. We searched everywhere, but found that all gun-metal articles in London were either plain or studded with diamonds. We couldn't find a pearl. Finally in one shop I explained my search to a tall, heavy man, evidently the proprietor, who had small green eyes set quite closely together, a florid complexion, and hay-coloured side-whiskers. His whiskers irritated me quite as much as the fact that he hadn't what I wanted. Perhaps my hat vexed him, but at any rate he looked as though he were glad he didn't have the pearls, and he finally permitted his annoyance, or his general British rudeness, to voice itself in this way:

"Pardon me, madame," he said, "but you will never find cigar-cases of gun-metal studded with pearls, no matter how much you may desire it, for it is not good taste."

I was warm, irritated, and my dress was too tight in the belt, so I just leaned my two elbows on that show-case, and I said to him:

"Do you mean to have the impertinence, my good man, to tell two American ladies that what they are looking for is not in good taste, simply because you are so stupid and insular as not to keep it in stock? Do you presume to express your opinion on taste when you are wearing a green satin necktie with a pink s.h.i.+rt? If you had ever been off this little island, and had gone to a land where taste in dress, and particularly in jewels, is understood, you would realise the impertinence of criticising the taste of an American woman, who is trying to find something worth while buying in so hopelessly British a shop as this. Now, my good man,"

I added, taking up my parasol and purse, "I shall not report your rudeness to the proprietor, because doubtless you have a family to support, and I don't wish to make you lose your place, but let this be a warning to you never to be so insolent again," and with that, I simply swept out of his shop. I seldom sweep out. Bee says I generally crawl out, but this time I was so inflated with an unholy joy that I recklessly cabled to Paris for Jimmie's pearls, and to this day I rejoice at the way that man covered his green satin tie with his large hairy red hand, and at the ecstatic smiles on the faces of two clerks standing near, for I _knew_ he was the proprietor when I called him "My good man."

If you want to open an account in London, you have to be vouched for by another commercial house. They won't take your personal friends, no matter how wealthy, no matter if they are t.i.tled. Your bank's opinion of you is no good. Neither does it avail you how well and favourably you are known at your hotel for paying your bill promptly. This, and the custom in several large department stores of never returning your money if you take back goods, but making you spend it, not in the store, but in the department in which you have bought, makes shopping for dry goods excessively annoying to Americans.

I took back two silk blouses out of five that I bought at a large shop in Regent Street much frequented by Americans, which carries on a store near by under the same name, exclusively for mourning goods. To my astonishment, I discovered that I must buy three more blouses, or else lose all the money I paid for them. In my thirst for information, I asked the reason for this. In America, a lady would consider the reason they gave an insult. The shopwoman told me that ladies' maids are so expert at copying that many ladies have six or eight garments sent home, kept a few days, copied by their maids and returned, and that this became so much the custom that they were finally forced to make that obnoxious rule.

I have heard complaints made in America by proprietors of large importing houses that women who keep accounts frequently order a handsome gown, wrap, or hat sent home on approval, wear it, and return it the next day. If this is the custom among decent self-respecting American women, who masquerade in society in the guise of women of refinement and culture, no wonder that shopkeepers are obliged to protect themselves. There is nowhere that the saying, "the innocent must suffer with the guilty," obtains with so much force as in shopping, particularly in London.

It is a characteristic difference between the clever American and the insular British shopkeeper that in America, when a thing such as I have mentioned is suspected, the saleswoman or a private detective is sent to shadow the suspect, and ascertain if she really wore the garment in question. In such cases, the garment is returned to her with a note, saying that she was seen wearing it, when it is generally paid for without a word. If not, the shop is in danger of losing one otherwise valuable customer, as she is placed on what is known as the "blacklist,"

which means that a double scrutiny is placed on all her purchases, as she is suspected of trickery.

In this same shop in Regent Street, of which I have been speaking, we submitted to several petty annoyances of this description without complaint, the last and pettiest of which was when Mrs. Jimmie, being captivated by an exquisite hundred-guinea gown of pale gray, embroidered in pink silk roses, and veiled with black Chantilly lace, bought it and ordered it altered to her figure. For this they charged her two pounds ten in addition to that frightful price for about an hour's work about the collar. Mrs. Jimmie seldom resents anything, and in her gentleness is easily governed, so this time I persuaded her to protest, and dictated a furious letter of remonstrance to the proprietor, citing only this one case of extortion. Jimmie sat by, smoking and encouraging me, as I paced up and down the room with my hands behind my back, giving vent to sentences which, when copied down in Mrs. Jimmie's ladylike handwriting, made Jimmie scream with joy. I think Mrs. Jimmie never had any intention of sending the letter, having written it down as a safety-valve for my rather explosive nature, but Jimmie was so carried away by the artistic incongruities of the situation that he whipped a stamp on it and mailed it before his wife could wink.

To his delight, Mrs. Jimmie received, three days later, a letter from the astonished proprietor, which showed in every line of it the jolt that my letter must have been to his stolid British nerveless system. He began by thanking her for having reported the matter to him, apologised humbly, as a British tradesman always does apologise to the bloated power of wealth, and said that her letter had been sent to all the various heads of departments for their perusal. He declared that for five years he had been endeavouring to bring the directors to see that, if they were to possess the coveted American patronage for which they always strove, they must accommodate themselves to certain American prejudices, one of which was the unalterable distaste Americans displayed in paying for refitting handsome gowns. He was delighted to say that her letter had been couched in such firm, decisive, and righteously indignant language, such as he himself never would have been capable of commanding, had carried such weight, and had been productive of such definite results with the directors that he was pleased to announce that henceforward a radical change would appear in the government of their house, and that never again would an extra charge be made for refitting any garment costing over ten pounds. He thanked her again for her letter, but could not resist saying at the close that it was the most astonis.h.i.+ng letter he had ever received in his life, and he begged to enclose the two pounds ten overcharge.

Jimmie fairly howled for joy as he read this letter aloud; Bee looked very much mortified; Mrs. Jimmie exceedingly perplexed, as if uncertain what to think, but I confess that all my irritation against British shopkeepers fell away from me as a cast-off garment. I blush to say that I shared Jimmie's delight, and when he solemnly made me a present of the two pounds ten I had so heroically earned, I soothed my ladylike sister's refined resentment by inviting all three to have broiled lobster with me at Scott's.

I imagine, however, that one woman's experience with dressmakers is like all others. I have noticed that to introduce the subject of my personal woes in the matter is to make the conversation general, in fact I might say composite, no matter how formal the gathering of women. Like the subject of servants, it is as provocative of conversation as cla.s.sical music.

Far be it from me, however, to cla.s.s all shopping in London under the head of dry goods, or the rage one gets into with every dressmaker. In most of the shops, in fact, I may say, in all of them (for the one unfortunate experience I have related in the jeweller's shop was the only one of the kind I ever had in London), the clerks are universally polite, interested, and obliging, no matter how smart the shop may be.

Take for instance, Jay's, or Lewis and Allenby's. The instant you stop before the smallest object a saleswoman approaches and says, "Good morning." You say, "What a very pretty parasol!" and she replies, "It _is_ pretty, isn't it, modom?" She wears a skin-tight black cashmere gown with a little tail to it. Her beautiful broad shoulders, flat back, tiny waist, bun at the back of her head, and the invisible net over the fringe, all proclaim her to be an Englishwoman, but her p.r.o.nunciation of the simplest words, and the way her voice goes up and down two or three times in a single sentence, sometimes twice in a single word, might sometimes lead you to think she spoke a foreign tongue.

The English call all our voices monotonous, but it was several weeks after I reached London for the first time before I could catch the significance of a sentence the first time it was p.r.o.nounced. All over Europe our watchword with the Russians, Turks, Egyptians, Arabs, French, Germans, and Italians was always "Do you speak English?" and in London it is Jimmie's crowning act of revenge to ask the railway guards and cab-drivers the same insulting question. Imagine asking London cabbies the question, "Do you speak English?" It puts him in a purple rage directly.

But shopkeepers all over Europe are quick to antic.i.p.ate all your wants, to suggest tempting things which have not occurred to you to buy, and to offer to have things made, if nothing in stock suits you. I suppose I am naturally slow and stupid. Bee says I am, but having been brought up in America, in the South, where nothing is ever made, and where we had to send to New York for everything, and where even New York has to depend on Europe for many of its staples, my surprise overpowered me so that it mortified Bee, when they offered to have silk stockings made for me in Paris.

Like most Americans, I am in the habit of turning away disappointed, and preparing to go without things if I cannot find what I want in the shops, but in London and Paris they will offer of their own accord to make for you anything you may describe to them, from a pair of gloves to a pattern of brocade. This is one and perhaps the only glory of being an American in Europe, for, as my friend in Naples, of the firm of Ananias, Barabbas, and Company, said to me:

"Behold! you are an American, and by Americans do we not live?"