16
THE CHINA MAIL CHRISTMAS SUPPLEMENT, DECEMBER 20, 1939
A WALK PAST THE SHOPS
even
more
AS each Christmas approaches our
shopkeepers arc keenly engaged upon a glittering rivalry of display. Not only do the Neon tubes Increasingly paint blues and the town with their
but the oranges,
shopwindows their in- themselves blaze with vitations to expenditure. The Toy Departments are turned into thea- tres and magic cities. Even when the long hours of ralesmanship are over there are windows still illu- mined to advertise their content, so that "a welk past the shops" may be as helpful to custom at mid- night as at midday.
The Shop Magnificent is a com- paratively modern device for part- ing men from money. Three hun- dred years ago the city shops de- pended for advertisement not on lamps but on lungs. They had "a barker," crying the wares like the market pedlar of all time. At the beginning of "The Fortunes of Nigel" Scott described the shop of David Ramsay, maker of watches and horologes to his Sacred Majesty King James I. The shop stood "within Temple Bar, a few yards to the eastward of Saint Dunstan's Church."
The goods were exposed to sale the in cases, only defended from weather by a covering of canvas, and the whole resembled the stalls and booths now erected for the temporary accommodation of deal- ers at a country fair rather than the established emporium of a res- pectable citizen. But most of the David shopkeepers of note, and Ramsay amongst others, had their small with booth connected
opened back- apartment which ward from it, and bore the same front shop resemblance to the that Robinson Crusoe's cavern did to the tent which he erected be- fore it.
While he himself was working watches, in at his clocks and whose improvement he
was
1
scientific pioneer, two apprentices
kept up a brisk vocal appeal
to
or
the passers-by, in which exercise . there was a natural temptation for youth to be pert at the expense of odd-looking
unfortunate passers-by who were unlikely to have money to spend. Shops in those days added to the liveliness of the town, but not to the look or the peace of it. The appren- tices were a pugnacious crowd, and their uproarious witticisms often led to scuffles and riots.
Now, when a chemist is one who sells you everything that is not in the pharmacopoeia as well as everything that is, and does so with a lavish touch in spangled and resplendent window-dressing, it is queer to read of that Man- tuan apothecary, the cash chemist who did pretty well for himself at may even Romeo's expense and
coat of have given his shop paint and some new candles with the forty ducats which he got for The chemist u dose of poison. was seen
#
with over-
In tatter'd weeds,
whelming brows, Culling of simples; meagre were
his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to
the bones;
And in his needy shop a tortoise
hung,
An alligator stuft, and
skins
other
Of ill-shaped fishes; and about
his shelves
A beggarly account of empty
boxes,
Green earthen pots,
bladders,
and musty seeds, Remnants of packthread,
and
old cakes of roses, Were thinly scatter'd, to make
up a show.
That description, with its curious and precise detall, must surely be a direct picture of some shop occasionally where Shakespeare called when he needed a morning antidote for last night's sherris- purge for sack or some other melancholy: Well, we have alter-
ed all that. The modern apothe- cary, housed in a crystal palace, sells everything from literature to lipstick, and Instead of wear- ing tattered weeds he is likely to be a good deal better dressed than his customer. It always puzzles me how malę shop assistants, on the wages they earn, contrive to look so well laundered and well dressed, while the young ladies of the craft must surely spend much on hair, skin, hands, and nails as they can earn in a week's hard labour.
as
While the brisker types of mod- ern salesmanship illumine a town, they remove the intimacy and the confidences of the old type of re- tail trade. In the multiple store the shop assistant is often just an automaton. The customer makes his choice from goods displayed on a counter without a word said; the shop assistant acts as an invigila- tor and a recipient of cash. This is the total abolition of selling as a craft; there is nothing left but a routine exchange of pence and package. The old shopkeeper lik- ed to be, and often was, a genuine consultant. You discussed your needs, your "case," with him and kind of he prescribed. That
been hard shopkeeper, who has pressed by the glossier, more im- mediate appeal of the Neon-light- on in ed salesmanship, lingers bookshops or in the commerce of "bespoke" articles, of sporting gear, fishing rods, and so forth. In his old style of shop front, dark, serene, gracious, bow-windowed, the note was that of a snug se- of blatant ex- crecy rather than hibition. This was a man's house not a firm's bazaar, and it plainly to invitation offered its modest
You were to come in for a chat.
was meet a skilled adviser who concerned to sell you only what you needed instead of to folst off some "new line" which offered a particularly large retailer's profit.
be unduly People are apt to
unofficial sentimental about the
-By IVOR BROWN
mous.
reason
shops, the street-markets and their raucously barrows and the men bellowing their bargains and ex- pounding the merits of their junk. My sympathies are with the shop- keepers who have to pay heavy rates and rents and then put up with this undercutting just outside their windows. While street-mar- kets may keep prices down for the very poor, they are really causing a nuisance at the same time by the ensuing blockage of traffic and
of the. by the mess they make streets. The amount of garbage to be swept up, at common costs, after a market-day can be enor-
I see no
to sob with emotion over pedlars and gip- sies, although our romantics have always made special pets of them. The man who needs our compas- sion to-day quite as much as any- - body else is the man who takes responsibility, the man who hires looks after or builds premises, them, fights the competition of the heavily capitalised multiple store, pays his wages, his rates, and his rent, keeps the shutters up, and confronts, as best he may, the tax- gatherer. What was it that ani- to attitude mated the Victorian retail trade and started among 50- called "gentlefolk" the jeers about "shopocracy"? Was it jealously of the wealth? Whatever it was, it "gentle- was foolish enough. A man" could have an office and a warehouse; only cads had shops." that Which is it, office or shop, gives an air and an aroma, a glit- At ter and a colour to the town? Christmas, most especially, we are given the answer. The shopkeeper is our lamplighter, and even, too, Of course he is our entertainer.
of our not doing it all for love bright eyes. But we are the bene- that he Aclaries of the beacon kindles for purposes of gain; never to despise a by-product is elemen- tary tact and prudence.
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ONE OF
THESE TWO
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