Florida Pier : writings and about / jmcvey.net
Castilian Shopping, Etc.
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (August 27, 1910) : 21
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It having long been accepted that shopping is the national pastime for American women, there is a most inspiriting thrill experienced when shopping in Great Britain, which awes and abases them, until they wonder whether they are worthy so much as to enter the portals of a “warehouse.” The process is so Castilian in its courtesy and ceremony that, ashamed of their gaucherie, they are tempted to postpone even the buying of essentials until they return to America, where shopping is open war between the customer and the saleswoman, with a floor-walker as referee. Proceedings are opened with grave bows on either side, and are stopped just this side of a court courtesy. The adaptable American knee begins the bend, and straightens only on seeing that the better- informed duchess, momentarily deigning to play saleswoman, has contented herself with a gracious inclination of the head.
On going into a shop the epitome of suavity comes forward in a frock-coat with a gallant deference that leads you to believe it is the prime minister mistaking you for a visiting foreign power. He asks you what he can do for you and calls you madam. Not perfunctorily, or as though madam were a term applicable to every one! His “madam” has an unction and an emphasis that augur it a title but recently conferred on you, and now, for the first time, used.
You smile gratefully in reply to his question and remain silent in hopes that he will talk some more. You are sure the elegance and refinement of his accent cannot but have some educational value, but he only bows, so a little shyly you confess what it is you are in search of; he conducts you down an aisle, a slightly less impressive frock-coat receives you, and with more bows and dulcet remarks you are waved into a chair, bells are rung, and a sylph trails forward in a black gown that is somehow better bred for fitting so much sooner in the front than in the back, and it is just nothing but pure luck that prevents your rising and shaking hands.
The shop is empty — that is, if it is a very good shop, and this gives a very superior tone to things. They have somehow risen above mere trade and the vulgar need of customers. Their business is not run, their reputation is established, and, having once been established, they are enabled to exist in this exclusive, lonely solidity. The clothes and clothes draped about are ugly but good, and in the high-ceilinged gloom of the place a churchly feeling descends upon one, and the old maxim is remembered that it is better to be good than to be pretty. There is no cheap appeal to your vanity; it is far more moral than that. It is a question of right and wrong, and the austere atmosphere of the place makes wrong too inharmonious to be contemplated. You are never told that a thing is cheap or new. They mention with a sad reluctance that one article is more moderate than another, as though it grieved them to think any one even contemplated buying anything but the best, and they hold it up before you, remarking that the other is greatly superior, their manner implying that they put you on your honor and trust you not to prove unworthy of the high opinion they have formed of your antecedents. There is no cheap appeal to your vanity; it is far more moral than that. It is a question of right and wrong, and the austere atmosphere of the place makes wrong too inharmonious to be contemplated.
To an accomplished British person there may be means of coping with this exalted formality to the extent of getting what one wants, but the American is handicapped. Anything but one’s best behavior would verge on treachery. Treasonable as it seems to breathe it, these soft-voiced maidens who remark so genteelly and so inevitably on the weather — the purchase of a package of pins without a brace of amiable remarks on the weather would seem positively surly — are quite as stupid and irritating as our brazen, harsh-voiced American saleswomen. They refuse to understand what it is one wants, repeat endlessly that something “is never done,” and are altogether doubly trying for the very unquestionableness of their good intentions. But one’s hands are tied. >They refuse to understand what it is one wants, repeat endlessly that something “is never done,” and are altogether doubly trying for the very unquestionableness of their good intentions. But one’s hands are tied. One cannot speak in any but the soothing tones they employ, and when they coo that you really wouldn’t like what you know you really would, to contradict them is an unforgivable solecism. In America we feel wholly vexed and belligerent in all shops, and there is no doubt but that the cause and the result justify our showing it. In Great Britain self-control and a general high tone are the first two requisites of seemly shopping, and when, on the purchase of a tu”penny ha’penny object which you carry away with you, they tender you a receipt, you leave inflated with the knowledge that the transaction was of no small moment.
It must be confessed that British people accept what appeals to us as homage with the most impervious calm. They let these dignified personages put themselves out just as though it did not in the least matter, while all the time our humility and honesty are surging about inside us, and though we permit what we feel we do not deserve while we are in the shop, it comes upon us with a sudden rush at the end that before we leave we ought to tell them they have been laboring under a delusion. We are not very great people; we are, in fact, hardly great people at all; indeed, to be quite frank — and frankness we feel we owe them in return for the elaborate civility shown us — we are just common folk, almost nobodies. Yet such was the reverence tendered us for the way in which that ha’penny of change was returned to us no other word will do but reverent that it would perhaps be cruel to rob them of their belief in us, to deprive them at a blow of their ideals. We must go away bowed down by our iniquity in obtaining what could never have belonged to us, in order that they may retain an idea that was surely very precious.
It is not that one is afraid of animals, it is just that we are at such a disadvantage in dealing with them, for we have no earthly means of telling what is going on in their heads. It is only our respect for a horse that makes us — well — respectful in our treatment of him. It is only our respect for a horse that makes us — well — respectful in our treatment of him. It seems so unlikely that the day will not eventually come when horses will realize that they are much stronger than we are and rightly enough should dictate to us instead of permitting us to dictate to them. And what more likely than that the change should take place while one is on a horse’s back? No one can say the idea is unreasonable. When a horse is trotting smartly along one is not afraid of what he is doing, that stands to reason; one is only absorbingly interested in what he may be thinking of doing. A change in plans on the part of any one is upsetting if the plans concern you, but a horse, having no way of warning you, even if he was kindly intentioned enough to think it necessary, is apt to act so suddenly, and it is at such moments that actions speak with such jarring loudness. He may feel his actions to be beyond criticism, but as we lack all the deductions which led up to his sudden decision we cannot help disagreeing with him and feeling a little chagrined that we were so much slower than he in coming to what he must feel to have been a simple conclusion.
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