Shopping in Camford
A LMOST everyone buys in the cheapest market, what- 11 ever the cost, though the " market " be ever so ugly and the cost be the " character " of a beautiful old city. Still even very good people cannot stand against the temptation, even the sort of people a little behind these bad times, who live among lovely surroundings in the ancient university town of Camford. Indeed, we may go further and say that even those who " count " among the Camford people, and they arc about as one is to twelve among the no-accounts, are to be met in the great multiple shops which disfigure (at least figuratively speaking) the picturesque confusion of the Camford streets. These great commercial " branches " which have no root in the place, not content with overshadowing time- honoured shops on each side of them, are destroying the sunny gardens at the back and making it possible to walk in the secret shelter of their luxuriance from one part of the town to another ; to go in from a curling lane (which one feels must sonic (lay burst from the congestion of the traffic) and come out in the comparative peace of the market-space—.which at least on Saturdays, by threading in and out the stalls, can be crossed almost without danger.
All these great " branches " have, of course, their " place," and, theoretirally, we feel they ought to keep to it. Are there not hundreds and hundreds of ugly towns for them to make millions in that they must come to Camford ! Dreadful ! say the " counters " and their echoers with one voice, but all the same they contribute their mite to these fortunes. In vain we are begged on hill-heads to " deal with the private grocer " ; we say " its pathetic,'' and we don't, unless we are rich, and riches are not so common in Camford. It's true we did hear a doctor say, "I make my living out of the Camford people, and I'll surely let them make theirs out of Inc " ; but there is a nobility about doctors ! Hard though they work, few are able to live (as a " bcdmaker " lately said) ' upon the fat of the Iamb."
Now Camford is a land of dreams. It has not, so out- siders say, a very good climate ; it is more or less in the fens, and it is not so very dry. Atmosphere, however, is never altogether a matter of air in the scientific sense. The streets and the strips-of guarded woodland, glistening water, and gleaming gardens which lie so close to them, are full of the dreams of youth, dreams which come in " keauty sleep " before the first awakening. These dreams have a champagne-like quality ; they go to the whitest heads ; it is easy to be light-hearted and difficult not to be sometimes rather silly in Camford. Everything is a
little transformed by this atmosphere, rendered a little unreal, even the multiple shops. They are not what they arc in Margate. Surely they cannot be !
Take Woolworths now, that ubiquitous institution whose name it were idle to alter. The Camford " Wool- worths " is a wonderful place ! Look at the company ! What variety ! What gaiety ! What extremes ! Elegance and eccentricity, scholastic pride and rustic simplicity, old age supported by grandchildren, infancy screaming in prams, while music harmonizes all discordant hubbub ! Yes, it is a palace of dreams, where dwells the " Fairy Queen for sixpence." It is one of the few places where dreams come true, for there is nothing you see that you cannot have, whether it is a beautiful tall wineglass looking as though it came out of an ancient Dutch interior and fit for the table of a don, beads and silk stocking; to match the girls' new frocks, tin trumpets to keep the children cheery, and ices to stop their mouths for a few minutes while their mothers advise their neigh- bours what to buy. Everyone gives advice even tc strangers in the Camford "Woolworths." We are all friends. there. " You won't find that lampshade will do on gas," "this sort of hosepipe lasts far longer than that," "you should pick out the plants with " this, that or the other " about them if you are stocking a new garden." Did the young lady say she hadn't got it ? " If I was you I should ask the shopwalker. It was here Monday."
Of course, there are " better to be had," for a better price, of all these things, but the spirit of youth takes hold of us ; we " want what we sec," and for once we can get it,
" The old eternal question, The everlasting why, There's somebody got something, Why the devil haven't I t "
(we quote from memory) is silent at Woolworths !
When we get home, landing from out the 'bus and leaving behind us the sea of traffic, we shall probably find some more dreams inside the penny " carrier " in which we have brought home our spoil. How pleasant to be a millionaire ! All shops are Woolworths to them, we suppose. What would one buy if one were really rich ? Probably one would seldom enter a shop ; one would be thinking of doing, not buying. This is what the present writer would do. He would be a publisher ; he would give huge salaries to all the big literary men and make them his " readers," and offer large prices for new books and set up great multiple shops where every book would be ls. and none would be bound, and they would sell like hot cakes ! And he would make the " readers " pick out many old books for reprints, and they would sell like ices. He would call himself " Bookworth," and no town would be without " a branch." That would be his work. For a hobby he would have a picture shop, all modern pictures, all one price, say £5. Hobbies don't pay ; one would not expect it. One might call the venture " the Easel," and have one large " Easel " in London and a little one at Camford. No, it wouldn't pay ; but it would be fun, and satisfy the human longing to squander which in the complicated make-up of the average man runs side by side with the wish to buy cheap. (Is it this strange combination and not the simple love of cheapness which explains the charm of Woolworths ?)
Our dreams arc becoming ridiculous. It is time we conic hack to reality. What is it that that undergraduate next door is thumping out on that dreadful piano ? IIe has got hold of a collection of old comic songs " Up and down the City Road, In and out the ' Easel,'
That's the way the money goes,
Pop ! goes the weasel."
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