Shopping
A T this time of year one must think of shopping, must frequent -shops. - The streets* are thronged with people. They gaze into every window ; they crowd. at the counters. Are they happy ? Or do they feel torn by desires that cannot be satisfied, harassed by the multiplicity of things for sale and saddened by a sense of shabbiness that the gentle and courteous countryside never suggests ? I feel sure now that Aladdin hated his cave in half-an-hour. It was Saint Francis who, un- troubled by a purse, free of shops and merchandise, sang a canticle to the sun.
The Preacher, if he walked down Oxford Street or Regent Street, if he spent an-hour or so in one of the vast London shops, would write a scroll-of new- vanities. For we are happy enough without these things. The peaceful countryside with its kindness of colour, russet and amber, golden osier beds and purple hedgerows, tender winter skies, late sunrises and early sunsets, has pleasure enough to calm the spirit without suggesting the agonizing sense of want. But in town every shop implies that you want an infinity of things, new gloves, new shoes, silk stockings, an evening cloak, hats; coats, furs, dresses and other things books, antiques, pictures, china, hundreds of silly little trifles that would weary on possession but prick the spirit to a futile desire.
In the country this sense of yearning may come with bulb catalogues and seed lists, but it is a clean and whole- some yearning, and so few shillings will buy so many seeds: • The pain of shopping was often presented to me by a little girl, then in the sock period. She lived, not happily for her, in a London suburb full of alluring shops. Every Saturday she received a penny and went " pennying," as she called it.
But how harassing a business was this " pcnnying " Arrived at the toy shop, she stood uncertain and bewil- dered, torn in a thousand directions by desire. The thing she wanted most was sure to be tuppence or even sixpence, and she must go without or save her pennieS for six weeks. It was a tormented child who left the shop, always full of regrets for all the things she had not bought. Yet while I write down my abhorrence of shops I can think of one or two where I found real pleasure and that most cheaply. I know another little girl who also receives her weekly penny. But she is a collector and knows without hesitation how to spend it. I recall a hasty walk with her to the little corner shop she calls " the Farm shop." Here in miniature you may buy every animal, building, and farm implement, including the Farmer, his wife, his ploughman, herd, and milkmaid, all most charm- ingly made of tin- and cheerfully painted. This child has collected her farm for a period of years. A table is dedi- cated to her collection and there seems by now to 'be nothing that she has not got. '
" Is she a good customer ? " I asked the kindly shopman who waited with patience while Mary considered the merits of a feeding trough and a sheaf of corn.
" She is my best," he said.
A wonderful little shop it is, where, as the old legend said of Tir-na-n-oge, " You may buy happiness for a penny "—if you know what you want.
• And there is another shop I recall pleasantly. One stumbled into it from the dark of the winter country after tea-time. It was, of course, the village post office as well as the drapery and grocery and stationery empo- rium. It smelt of paraffin lamps, cheese, and dried herbs. There were jars of striped sugarstick and " Peggy's leg." It was exactly the sort of shop that you find in the exquisite world of Miss Beatrix Potter's books. Such a shop might have been kept by Ginger and Pickle?, and it never would have surprised me to meet Mrs. Ribliy or Tabitha Twitchett or Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle at the counter. I remember a delight that you could buy there fora a-. penny,..- a: little theatre with revolving pictures showing in gloriously crude colours all the tragedies of history—the murder of the Princes in the Tower, the execution of Ann Boleyn, the death of Charles I. and other woes, Never have. I felt a penny so well
spent.
And now I have spent five pounds .and feel torn by regrets.. - W. M. LErrs.
Previous page
