Roundabout
Notes from Knightsbridge
By KATHARINE WHITEHORN * * *
Miss Rose Lewis, who was put out of her erstwhile premises by the Hyde Park Corner road scheme, is down at street level now and doing a brisk trade in corsetry. Miss Lewis is a well- stacked Hungarian who wears a tight black dress and seven charms dangling from a crescent moon in the middle of it; she puts the position like this: 'I have always had a good clientele—Eleanor Smith and the Countess of Birkenhead, I made corsets for them; but till now I was always stuck away on the first floor. Now I have Bobo Sigrist and Lady Hulton coming in and telling me what a lovely stuff I have.'
She has a small though increasing trade with the new office staff, and has great hopes of her own patent invention : 'a little open brassiere, great success with small bosom.' And there is a gold bathing dress in the window to lure them in. The right place to spend a penny in Knights- bridge is upstairs in one of the stores: the Lyons doesn't have one, the tube doesn't have one, the demolished Public Convenience has never been replaced. However, if you go as far as Beauchamp Place there is a priceless Ladies in a new basement restaurant that goes in for woodland realism in the decor. A butterfly-strewn wallpaper adorns the lavatory and real preserved butterflies are fixed to an enormous plant which burgeons beside the basin : open the door, and their wings flutter in the draught. The place has only been open three weeks, but already one neurotic has come down the stairs shrieking, 'The butterflies are alive!'
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Some of the biggest changes are in Harrods, whose bony frame now twinkles with fairy lights for Christmas. Above one counter, WOOLLEN HOSE IS still painted on wood; but a stand nearby says GAY TIGHTS. A few months ago they held a fashion show for the new office secretaries, who ate their lunch from specially provided boxes, asked in audible whispers how many shillings went to the guinea, and 'didn't drop the papers on the floor or anything.'
Harrods' hairdressing is one of the few places left where you can look privately frightful in your curlers, each woman whorled like a winkle in her own particular cubicle; now girls are to be shampooed in rows in an open salon, though for the traditionally-minded some cubicles will re- main. The same in the record department : there's a row of asbestos-hooded alcoves for the new jazz crowd, but sound-proof boxes for the classical music people. The display counters are getting out a more open look everywhere; but the face-lift policy has its difficulties.
One of the difficulties—age about sixty, a small, wiry woman from the country, looked with disgust at a cheerful cascade of coloured bubbles in the gift fair. 'It's just not Harrods,' she said.
None of this, I am told, has anything to do with the takeover : Hugh Fraser loves his Harrods like a man who has been longing all his life to marry a peeress, and wouldn't change one of her funny aristocratic ways.
* * *
Harrods is so vast that at least one female executive puts on gloves and furs to go from her office to the restaurant; and what appears above is nothing to the miles of tunnelling, two layers deep in some places, that goes on underneath : it is almost as wide as their delivery area, and you can wander for days among subterranean alleys labelled for the streets they run under, or for the commodity dealt with there, like China- town. The smells change as you Move past silver- works.; sweet-factories and the endless coat-rooms of the 5,300 employees.
Even in the store itself, smell is important : while I was there a man rushed into the display manager's office and said, 'The waterfall in the seal pool stinks, and the Queen's in the toy depart- ment.' Frantic steps taken to eliminate smell. Lights, too, vary : the fur department lighting is deliberately designed to make you feel cold, blue and in need of mink. `Go on, you look at the light- ing,' said one of the assistants kindly. 'It's one of the very few things Harrods lets you have for nothing.' One of the things they let the employees have for free is the services of a chaplain—ever since an executive listened to the gospel accord- ing to Billy Graham. And at Christmas staff and customers sing carols in the Banking Hall.
* * *
Half the people one meets seem to have a Harrods story and an ancient mariner's compul- sion to tell it : 'And then they sent me two bills for the first lot, and put the chair down on my brother's account. . . .' The accounts department (130,000 accounts) is something, it is rumoured, that Hugh Fraser is looking into. Even adored peeresses mustn't be unreliable about money. Harrods are apt to be ineffable when things go wrong. One family, describing itself as 'sick of dealing with deb rejects who couldn't tell whether a jug held a pint or a gallon,' withdrew a wedding present list in a huff. 'We feel,' said Harrods, 'that none the less many of your friends will want to use our services, so we are keeping your list avail- able.'
There is only one effective—if drastic—way .)f getting your own back. Harrods will on request embalm and/or inter their customers; they con- struct coffins, maintain a chapel and a cold room. 'Friend of mine in the Foreign Office,' said some- one I met the other day, 'was having an aunt of his buried there, and he was called abroad. Didn't get back for six months; didn't like to show his face there by then: Years ago this was; often wondered what happened to her.'
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