A
Garden in the Sky
The
Story of
Barkers
of Kensington, 1870-1957
By
D.
W. PEEL
Introduction
by Hector Bolitho
W. H. ALLEN
LONDON
1960
Digital version
created 2016
Dust jacket notes:
A Garden in the Sky
The Story of Barkers of
Kensington
D. W. PEEL
Introduction by Hector
Bolitho
Since 1870, when
John Barker opened his first shop in the Royal Borough, the firm that bears his
name has become a household word, not merely in London, but all over the
British Isles; and the business has flourished into an empire that is known,
and respected, throughout the world of commerce.
This book is a story
of achievement – of the men who built that empire. The chief character is Mr.
Trevor Bowen, the bluff, genial tycoon from Monmouth who began as a craftsman –
a young confectioner – and became – in the words of a business rival – “a store
man of outstanding vision”.
He ruled his
commercial empire through the most exciting years of this century, and it was
part of his vision that led him to crown the roof of Derrys with the fabulous
garden that an American visitor described as “one of the wonders of
horticultural England.”
One hundred feet
above Kensington High Street this garden in the sky – the crown upon an
enterprise that has its feet very surely on the ground – is the symbol of
Trevor Bowen’s imagination and courage, and is therefore chosen as the title of
a book that must be an inspiration to any young man, and of outstanding
interest to anyone connected with commerce.
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The
charm of Royal Kensington; its fashionable walks and promenades … The roof-gardens
of Derry & Toms, ‘one of the wonders of horticultural England’ … Thackeray’s
medlar tree, and Nell Gwyn’s fig tree … The panorama of London … How the gardens
were made, and their use for charity … Royal visitors, and Queen Mary’s
patronage … The bombing of the gardens by the Nazis … Their creator, Trevor
Alfred Bowen.
The
beginning of Kensington’s commercial enterprise … Prince Albert, and the Great
Exhibition of 1851 … John Barker’s early years, and his first employment in
London … His success under William Whiteley, in Bayswater, and how he left him …
His marriage to Sarah Waspe … The ‘Kensington Improvement Scheme’ … John Barker’s
partnership with James Whitehead, his first shops in Kensington High Street,
and the rapid growth of his business … Charles Derry and Joseph Toms; how they prospered,
and their fortunate proximity to the new Electric Railway … The Ponting brothers;
how they also prospered, but eventually failed, and were bought up by John Barker
… A Chesterton letter … The continued expansion of Barkers into an empire of
shops … The marriage of Barker’s daughter to Tresham Gilbey, and the formation
of the company … Barker’s role as a country gentleman and benefactor … The ‘disastrous
fire’ of 1912 … John Barker’s baronetcy, and his political ambitions … His
first meeting with Trevor Bowen.
Trevor
Bowen’s birth, and his early years in Monmouth … His journey to London, and his
first engagement as a confectioner … His talents as a craftsman, and how he won
the Gold Challenge Cup ‘for the highest degree of excellence’ … His ambitions;
his meeting with Isidore Salmon, and his work with J. Lyons & Co. … The
Franco-British
Exhibition … Trevor Bowen’s marriage to Daisy Maud Donnelly … His decision to
join Barkers … Sir John Barker’s death, and Sydney Skinner’s accession as
chairman of the company … The Great War; the War Office contracts, and Trevor
Bowen’s skill as an administrator.
Trevor
Bowen’s first visit to the United States and Canada, in 1919 …His
impressions of the big stores in New York, and the lessons he learned … His journey
to Niagara Falls, and his meeting with Sir John Eaton … His visits to Chicago,
Toledo, Cleveland, Washington and Philadelphia … Return to England … His
enthusiasm for staff welfare, and his encouragement of sport … His dream to
create a ‘truly great building’ in Kensington.
Sydney
Skinner’s chairmanship of Barkers … His confidence in Trevor Bowen … His
realism in business; his creation of the Zeeta Cake Company, and his
acquisition of Derry & Toms … The company’s ever-increasing prosperity – ‘a
remarkable era in merchandising’ … Sydney Skinner’s knighthood; his
responsibility to the drapery trade,
and his generosity to its charities … His plan to transform John Barker’s Victorian
shops … The building of ‘Ladymere’; the development of Barker’s Furniture
Store, and Pontings … His courageous decision to rebuild Barkers and Derrys,
and to widen Kensington High Street … His ‘negotiations’ with the authorities,
and their ‘successful conclusion’ … An exchange of properties with the Crown.
Trevor
Bowen’s second visit to America, with Ralph Millbourn, in 1921 … Sir Harry
Lauder, and Sir John Eaton … The Princess Royal’s marriage, and Queen Mary’s
praise for Bowen’s splendid wedding cake ... The ‘Trevor Bowen Gold Medal’ … His
first promotion at Barkers … The Duke of York’s marriage to Lady Elizabeth
Bowes-Lyon … The British Empire Exhibition, in 1924, and Trevor Bowen’s
encouragement of Empire trade … He becomes a director of the company, and
visits the vineyards of Europe
... ‘Cash-on-Delivery’, and how Barkers took advantage of the new postal service
… Ralph Millbourn; his retirement from Barkers, and Trevor Bowen’s appointment
as vice-chairman of the company.
Sir
Sydney Skinner, and the creation of ‘Barker’s Second Empire’ … The closing of
Ball Street … Thackeray’s house in Young Street … Bernard George, and his
planning of the new Derrys with Trevor Bowen … How John Barker & Co. defied
the Depression of the early 1930’s … The rebuilding of Derry & Toms; its
official opening by Lady Skinner, and the acclaim of the Press … Bernard George’s
‘vision’ as an architect … The Derry Gardens, and their distinguished visitors …
The second stage of the great road-widening scheme, and the rebuilding of
Barkers … Sir Sydney Skinner’s warm tribute to his staff, and to Bernard George
for designing ‘a really fine building’ … Queen Mary’s visit to the ‘Peace’
exhibition … The Second World War.
The
first bomb that crashed on Derry & Toms, in June 1940 … Trevor Bowen
assumes chairmanship of Barkers; his ‘generalship’ during the war, and his
support of the ‘Barker Battery’ … The history of the ‘Barker Battery’; its
training in peace-time and its combat in war, to its disbandment in Kenya … Sir
Frederick Pile’s tribute to Trevor Bowen … Air-raid precautions at Barkers … Lieut.-Colonel
G. T. Dorrell, V.C. … The ‘Blitz’ in Kensington, and how Derrys was nearly
destroyed ... Trevor Bowen’s
narrow escape in Putney, and how he made his home in the air-raid shelter of
Derrys … Death of Sir Sydney Skinner, and Trevor Bowen’s affectionate tribute …
The mounting restrictions and controls; their effect on trading, and the
company’s policy of prudence … Victory, and the struggle to ‘win the peace’.
Trevor
Bowen’s denouncement of Government controls, and his fight against austerity … His
expansion of the Barker empire, to Richmond and Eastbourne, and his bid for
Selfridges … The quarrel over Kensington Square, and Trevor Bowen’s victory in the
long struggle to complete the High Street widening scheme … Lady Petrie’s
compliment to ‘Mr Kensington’ … The end of the ‘Bottleneck’… Miss Dorothy Bowen
dedicates a casket ‘to Posterity’.
The
vast network of administration that the customer does not see … The power
house, like the ‘engine-room of a gigantic ocean liner’ … The labyrinth of
underground passages and warehouses … The dispatch section, and how orders are
sent all over the world … The company’s fine transport fleet, and the annual ‘Safety
First’ awards The splendid kitchens and banqueting rooms at Derrys … A grand staff
reception to Trevor Bowen … The administrative offices, workrooms and display
section … The Barker wine vaults … Advertising, and how the first ‘Sales Trains’
came to Kensington … Store Security, and the ‘gentle art of shoplifting’ … Trevor
Bowen’s reward to ‘a brave little girl’.
Trevor
Bowen’s decision to ‘hand over’ control of the Barker group of stores ‘to a
younger man’ … His friendship with Hugh Fraser … The story of the Scottish
family of drapers; their astonishing growth, and how the House of Fraser came
south of the Border … ‘Britain’s Master Draper’ … The character of Hugh Fraser,
as a public figure, and as a family man … The House of Fraser’s offer to
acquire all the ordinary shares of John Barker & Co. … Trevor Bowen’s last
general meeting as chairman, and warm tributes from the shareholders … Hugh Fraser
invites him to become the first Honorary President of Barkers.
Return
to Monmouth … Charles Rolls and Trevor Bowen; and how the spirit of adventure
brought them fame and fortune ... The City Livery Companies; a short history of
the Bakers’ Company, and Trevor Bowen’s enduring interest in the welfare of the
trade … The Royal Borough of Kensington, and Trevor Bowen’s legacy of honourable
dealing in commerce.
ILLUSTRATIONS
[Jacket]
H.M. Queen Mary, walking in
the Derry Gardens with Trevor Bowen, D.L., J.P.
Sir John Barker, when he
was member of Parliament for Penryn and Falmouth, 1906-1910. From a cartoon in Vanity
Fair.
Coloured handbills from
1879 and 1909. Derry & Toms explain the advantages of travelling to their
shop by electric train, ‘under cover all the way’ and Barkers attract Victorian
children to their ‘Christmas Bazaar & Fancy Fair’.
A delivery tricycle used by
the Company about 1915.
The meat department at
Barkers in 1920.
Sir Sydney Skinner.
The wedding cake presented
to the Princess Royal by the National Association of Master Bakers.
‘The Largest Cheese in the
World’.
Recruiting for the ‘Barker
Battery’ in 1934.
The Derry Gardens. Above,
a visit by H.R.H. the Duchess of Kent in 1940. Below, Admiral Sir Edward
Evans (Lord Mountevans), the late King Haakon of Norway, Trevor Bowen and H.M.
King Olav, in 1945.
Kensington High Street from
the air, in September 1935, showing the modern Derry & Toms – without the
roof garden – and the bottleneck caused by the old Barker shops.
H.R.H. the Duchess of
Gloucester being welcomed by Trevor Bowen at the ‘Mistletoe Fair’ in aid of the
National Fund for Poliomyelitis Research, on December 10th, 1953. In the centre
is Mr Duncan Guthrie, Director of the Fund.
H.M. Queen Mary at an
exhibition of Peace Commemoration China, soon after the Munich crisis, in 1938.
Air Raid Precautions at
Barkers. Trevor Bowen at the Control Centre with Mr H. W. Wedlock, the Chief
Warden.
Trevor Bowen’s house in
Putney, bombed on February 20th, 1944.
‘Wings for Victory Week’ in
Monmouth. Trevor Bowen speaking at the opening ceremony in May 1945.
A ‘Sales Special’ excursion
from East Anglia, in the summer of 1956.
Trevor Bowen, in his
uniform as a Deputy Lieutenant for the County of London.
Hugh Fraser, D.L., J.P.
Miss Dorothy Bowen
dedicating ‘a casket to Posterity’, on December 3rd, 1956, in the foundations
of the new Barker building.
Trevor Bowen, in his robes
as Master of the Worshipful Company of Bakers, with Sir Noel Bowater, Lord
Mayor of London, at the Mansion House, November 1953.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I
am indebted to the members of the staff of John Barker & Company, both past
and present, who have helped me during the writing of this book; and also to the
many friends and business associates of Mr Trevor Bowen who have given me their
reminiscences of him. In particular, I wish to thank Mr C. H. Turner, Mr G. L.
Woodward, Mr H. W. Wedlock, Mr J. W. Laver, and Mr Bernard George, F.R.I.B.A. –
the architect of the modern Barkers and Derry & Toms.
I
am also grateful to Mr H. G. Massey, the Chief Librarian of Kensington, and Mr
C. G. Boxall, the Reference Librarian, for their help over the early history of
the Royal Borough; to Lieut.-Colonel F. M. Garnham, O.B.E., T.D., and
Lieut.-Colonel N. F. Godfrey, T.D., for information on the ‘Barker Battery’;
and to Mr C. J. Malim and Mr H. B. Collett
Smith, for reading the manuscript of this book.
I
especially wish to thank Miss Dorothy Bowen for her kind help and
encouragement. I hope that this story will remind her, always, of her father’s
splendid achievement in Kensington.
D. W. PEEL
Brighton, 1960.
INTRODUCTION
Names
on the Land
THE
romance of the Royal Borough of Kensington is traced in its street-names: we
can follow the history through more than nine hundred years, if we begin our walk
in Cheniston Gardens and end in Derry Street. We turn to the Domesday Book[1] for the first mention of Chenisit’,
the Saxon name from which Kensington is derived: then we look up to the bold
facade of Derry & Toms department store and are reminded of Charles Derry,
whose memory seems to depend entirely on the shop, and the street which bears
his name.
In
between these vastly different poles of history of the Royal Borough we may
have a delightful adventure, seeking out the story, from the rough age of
William I, to the genteel Kensington of the early twentieth century. We look at
the Domesday Book again, on page 150 B of that great volume, and read of
‘Aubrey De Ver’ who came over from Normandy with the Conqueror and whose descendants
possessed the lands in Chenisit’ until early in the sixteenth century. Half
a mile to the north of Cheniston Gardens, which are set in a world of boarding houses
and thirsty window boxes, we find Aubrey Walk and Road; about six hundred yards
to the east are De Vere Gardens.
From
Cheniston Gardens we may walk direct into Abingdon Villas and Abingdon Road,
named in memory of the Abbot of Abingdon, who cured Aubrey de Vere’s eldest son
‘of a sickness’. Then, into Earls Court Road, in the district of the same name.
Earls Court, like Barons Court in neighbouring Hammersmith, is a reminder of
the feudal system that allowed certain nobles to establish their courts of
justice, for the control of their tenants.
Then
we come to the romantic figure of Henry Rich, son of the Earl of Warwick. We
have Warwick Road, and Warwick Gardens in memory of his noble name. Henry Rich
was created Earl of Holland, a year before the death of James I. He was
described as a ‘very handsome man, of a lovely and winning presence, and
genteel conversation’; but he was also ‘wavering and irresolute’, and, after
siding with the Parliamentarians, he changed his fidelity to King Charles and
was beheaded. This ‘once gay, beautiful, gallant Earl’ gave his name to Holland
House, Holland Park Avenue and Holland Walk. And Holland House, famous as the
meeting place of the Whig leaders in the early nineteenth century, has
survived, in part, into our own time. It was savagely bombed during the war,
but its name will endure on the land for as long as there is a Kensington.
The
story of the names of the streets in the Royal Borough is told in Without
the City Wall[2]:
there we trace the origins of Addison Road, Edwardes Square, Ilchester Place,
Ladbroke Grove, Camelford and Methwold Roads, and the now notorious Notting
Hill – so alien to the Kensington tradition – which was Noding Hill in 1680.
From these arches of history we move nearer to our theme, with Queen’s Gate – named
after Queen Victoria, who was born in Kensington Palace – Prince Consort Road,
and Exhibition Road. The last of these begins our story, for it commemorates
the 1851 Exhibition that brought the spirit of commercial enterprise to the land
that had lived for so long under the spell of hamlets, little streets of shops
and houses, and stretches of beautiful countryside.
The
phrase ‘commercial enterprise’ brings us to the chief character in this book – Mr
Trevor Bowen, one of the great business men of Kensington, who also deserves to
have a street named after him. This is not merely because he helped to form an
empire of shops in the Royal Borough, but because of the flash of imagination that
led to his building a garden in the sky – the immense gardens on the roof of
Derry & Toms, which are one of the most delightful sights in crowded
London.
Men
of Ambition
Those
of us who were born without the persistent sting of ambition look at powerful
men as upon a distant mountain we have no wish to climb. We are proud of them,
but we do not envy them: we satisfy ourselves with the condemnation of
Trollope, that ‘power does corrupt’, or Belloc’s ‘accursed power which stands
on privilege’, and we prefer Goldsmith’s ‘man … to all the country dear … passing
rich with forty pounds a year …’
What
a pleasant being he is to read about, in the clamour of the mid-twentieth
century:
Remote
from towns he ran his godly race,
Nor
e’er had chang’d nor wished to change his place;
Unpractis’d
he to fawn, or seek for power,
By
doctrines fashion’d to the varying hour;
Far
other aims his heart had learned to prize,
More
skill’d to raise the wretched than to rise.
One might judge any man in
the light of these thoughts.
* *
*
When
I knew that I was to meet Mr Trevor Bowen, who built up the contemporary group
of Barkers, Derry & Toms and Pontings, I thought back over the powerful and
successful men I have known. I wrote the biographies of two – Alfred Mond, the
first Lord Melchett, and James Mackay, the first Lord Inchcape, but I knew them
only through their papers, and what I was told by those who remembered them.
The more I read of their private letters, written towards the end of their
lives, the more I was sorry for them. Their success isolated them from ordinary
human affection; they sought and knew people of equal power and lived in a
strange state of crowded loneliness. Yet they were both secretly kind. Five years
after Lord Inchcape died, I met his Hindu servant, in Bombay: he took my hand
and said, ‘I knew Lord Inchcape’s heart. He was hard only to those who could
defend themselves. He was never cruel to little people.’
On
the morning when I was to see Mr Trevor Bowen for the first time, I naturally
wondered how well he would fit into this pattern of success. I asked him to lunch
in my own house, believing that conquerors are more vulnerable when they are
away from their home ground.
He
wore what was expected: a black coat, striped trousers, and a gold watch chain,
and he soon leaned over to me and said, ‘You know, I have always liked power.’
I suddenly saw him with the others, on the remote mountain. When I answered
that I disliked both power and responsibility, he seemed shocked.
Since
then, I have seen him frequently over the period of a year and have become fond
of him, for simple reasons. We had little in common, on sight, but much to
discover in that nice adventure between men who have no wish to gain anything
material from each other’s company. Although he is twenty years older than I
am, I began to feel a protective instinct for him, in spite of all his apparent
rewards of success. I believe that it is because power has not corrupted him
and that there is more to like in him than to fear.
Trevor
Bowen began his life humbly, in Monmouth. His father’s shop was in Agincourt
Square, and one of the first objects he saw, beyond the walls of his house, was
the statue of Henry V, reminding the boys in the little town of the follies of
dalliance and the merits of action. Trevor Bowen pretends to scoff at visions
and dreams: he will say, ‘I’ve done nothing but work, my friend, all my life.’
But, like the hero of Agincourt, he has always been on fire with his own kind
of valour. This stern character was born in him: he did not meander along the
banks of the Wye, or doze over a salmon rod: he was compelled by different
forces, and, so soon as he had learned the trade of confectioner, he rebelled
against the quiet life and came to London.
Many
other young men, before and since, have come to London to seek their fortunes:
for Trevor Bowen, what was important was that he also brought his talent with
him, to condone for his worldliness. He was already a craftsman, and men who
are skilled with their hands – whether they are bookbinders, watchmakers, or
confectioners sculpting fabulous patterns in sugar – weave a philosophy of
their own, as they lean, in silence, over their benches.
It
is my notion that Trevor Bowen is only half as hard as he sounds; that even
though he does talk in terms of Kipling’s If, there is still a touch of
the craftsman’s tranquillity in his heart. Perhaps this is why this imposing merchant
who iced the Princess Royal’s wedding cake, in 1922 – a monument of sugar over
7 feet high – seems to have escaped the corruption of power that Trollope and Belloc,
and a host of others, have deplored.
Trevor
Bowen has not fallen for the anxious pretensions of the self-made rich, and he
is a delightful man to meet. He likes, at the beginning, to bombard you with
his own crisp phrases of philosophy. He will say, ‘Make your staff love you and
fear you in the same breath’, and ‘The best advertisement is a woman’s tongue.’
When he was asked what he loved most, he said, ‘Chess in real life.’ He will
boast that he is not a sentimentalist, yet he kept the tin hat he wore during
the air raids until he was eighty – a shabby little trophy among the mahogany grandeur
of his office. He remains sharp and careful of his pennies; but rather like a
boy cherishing his money box. His follies are so few and so transparent that
one cannot be angry with them. – He likes small victories as well as big ones –
and this is an endearing fault to watch when one has grown just that much
wiser.
Derek
Peel has gathered Trevor Bowen’s story together, but with many difficulties. To
make a man come alive within the pages of a book, when there are no diaries and
few letters to fix the pattern of the years, is not easy. And Trevor Bowen has
never kept his biographer in view: he has never been vain enough to write down
his history while he was making it.
I
confess that the story of vast commercial concerns has never interested me very
much. The fault is mine, for they demand imagination and devotion and cannot be
merely mercenary in their purpose. My interest in Trevor Bowen as a creator in
enterprise began when I opened the pages of Derek Peel’s manuscript and came on
the story of the feeding of 50,000 men of Kitchener’s army, and of the troops
guarding the railway lines, during the 1914-48 war. It seemed incredible that a
man sitting at his desk at an office in Kensington should dare to accept such a
challenging contract. Yet he did, and he talks of it now, calmly, with no boast
or sense that he did anything unusual. Such men work in another world, and they
think in another language. They do not seem terrified at the prospect of
selling, in a year, enough linen to put a bandage round the earth, and enough
cotton to weave a trellis to the moon. Yet Trevor Bowen has done these things,
and they suddenly seem romantic.
These
stories have been dragged out of Trevor Bowen’s tired memory and, rightly,
Derek Peel has made the record quiet rather than exciting. There is none of the
flashiness, the drama, and the ultimate tragedy of Gordon Selfridge in the
biographical sketch. Trevor Bowen has been governed by similar determination,
but with a difference I find hard to explain. Perhaps, while he has been
talking of power all his life, what he really meant was ‘achievement’. There is
a difference, and I think that this is revealed in Derek Peel’s modest narrative.
This
book tells the story, as far as it can be told, from the days when Trevor Bowen
iced his first cakes in Monmouth, to the days when millions of customers came into
the Barker shops in Kensington during the year. Part of his talent lies in his
singleness of purpose, that is strange to those of us who are pleased to be
diverted on the way through life. And it is interesting to trace this theme all
through his story. When Trevor Bowen went to New York, he spent his first
evening in looking at the stores; the vast emporia that were monuments of achievement
to him. He envied them; he studied them and brought their lessons home, to be
copied in Kensington. I suppose it is true to say that he has thought across the
Atlantic into the realistic examples of America, rather than into the old
shadows of Europe. I cannot see him pausing for long to enjoy the fountains of
Dresden, the gardens of Sans Souci, or the ancient hills of Rome. I imagine
him, in the quickest lift on earth, going up and down a skyscraper with one
hundred floors, wide-eyed with excitement on the way. His heaven is a new world,
not an old one.
There
is something heroic in the sight of this veteran of commerce, still clinging to
his throne room in Kensington although another dynasty has moved in, under the spell
of that strange victory described as a ‘take-over’. One opens the door on which
the grave announcement, Mr T. A. Bowen, D.L., J.P., appears in gold: one
goes in and watches him, still loving the kingdom of shops and enjoying his
personal relationship with old members of his multitude of staff, whom he now
finds it difficult to see, and must recognize only by their voices. I have walked
with him and have heard him speak to them: I noticed affection rather than fear
in their greeting. The answer to his apparently gruff rule regarding those who work
for him is in the fact that he has kept the same driver for more than forty
years. They still argue, and grumble, but they remain devoted. One admires such
a master, and such a man.
Like
most leaders in his prosperous world, Trevor Bowen patronizes charities, but
his kindness has always remained personal. The way in which he has used the roof-garden
of Derry & Toms to help good causes is a pleasant and sincere part of his
record. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of his character is his freedom from
affectation. This is an intimate and important theme in Trevor Bowen’s story.
One has watched so many men rise to riches and power, and the pattern of their
lives is almost a formality: they buy old mansions in the country, they collect
first editions that they do not read, and Picassos and Epsteins they do not
comprehend. And they seek a knighthood, which must have a hollow look if it has
been purchased.
Trevor
Bowen is not such a man. He has no country house and he has lived quietly, in
Barnes, and then Putney, with his wife and daughter, ever since his age of
prosperity began. He affects no culture beyond the simple talents with which he
was born: his speech still belongs to Monmouth. In neither accent nor
vocabulary has he lost the honesty which he brought to London as a young man.
Where
does his secret lie? Perhaps it is in his almost unnatural gift of optimism. At
the age of over eighty, he is still rather like a boy who has just won a race
and who cannot wait to run the next one.
HECTOR
BOLITHO
CHAPTER 1 A Garden in the Sky
THE
Royal Borough of Kensington has long enjoyed a reputation for its pleasant
green spaces and its wholesome air: in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
the gardens about Kensington Palace and the gravel paths around the Serpentine
were often crowded with the rank and fashion, come to ‘breathe in sunshine, and
see azure skies’ – as well as to rival the profusion of flowers with the fine
brocades and damasks of their extravagant clothes. Later, towards the end of
Queen Victoria’s reign, they could share this pleasant excursion with visiting
the ‘excellent shops’ in the High Street, before being driven back to their
mansions in the Town.
Such
leisurely privilege has almost disappeared in the bustle of the mid-twentieth
century: there is so little time to stop and stare, or even to pause and sniff
a flower; and the once graceful luxury of ‘going shopping’ has become an
exhausting necessity. But in this respect Royal Kensington is more fortunate
than the rest of the teeming metropolis, for her weary shoppers are able to enjoy
what an American writer[3] described as ‘one of the
wonders of horticultural England’.
A
hundred feet above the din of the High Street, on the roof of Derry & Toms
department store, is the garden which another writer[4] described as the kind ‘a child
would demand of its fairy godmother’.
The
enchantment begins when the, lift ascends and the doors open to reveal a
Spanish garden, with wrought iron balconies and an ‘authentic mission bell’, a
Moorish pergola, its twisted pillars hung with vines, a Court of Fountains
lined with waving palms, and a handsome octagonal pool faced with gaudy tiles.
This garden was designed ‘to recapture the warmth and colour of sunny Spain’;
and when the timid English sun is shining, the illusion is almost complete:
only the serenading caballero and his sloe-eyed señorita are missing; but the
hydrangeas, the scarlet cannas and the geraniums bloom as splendidly as any in
Seville, and the fountains play a tune as sweet and sentimental as those in the
Alhambra.
A
mullioned stone arch is all that separates the exotic make-believe of Spain
from the mellowness of sixteenth-century England. We pass under the arch into
another garden, and another world, of Hampton Court and St James’s Palace, of
lavender and heliotrope, hollyhocks and pinks; a garden to delight a Tudor poet
no less than the harassed citizen of today. Clematis and Virginia creeper cling
to the thick red brick walls; ivy-leafed geraniums and lobelias tumble from
stone urns, and there are stout oak benches within shaded recesses, inviting
the visitor to rest, and dream. The American writer thought it ‘a place that
monks might favour for their holy meditations’: certainly one Kensington
clergyman used to escape here from his Vicarage, year after year, to sit on a
bench and write his sermons.
How
many gardens can you cram on to a roof? The answer, at Derry & Toms, is
three. All are big, with wide, generous walks; big enough to explore and make journeys,
without feeling that one is merely looking at a handful of picture postcards.
The biggest is on the south side of the building – the English water garden, where
pigeons and sheldrakes waddle across a brilliant stretch of green lawn; where
carp and golden orfe, tench and a variety of rudd swim lazily in the flowing
stream which is fed by a splashing waterfall; where silver birches, chestnuts,
willows and laburnums rise up to thirty feet above the roof-top, and apples
ripen on the bough. There are peaches and medlars too – one of which is the ‘only
known descendant’ of a tree that grew in Thackeray’s garden, close by in Young
Street; and a fig tree whose forbear flourished in Whitehall Gardens, and under
which Nell Gwyn is supposed to have ‘captivated King Charles II’.
The
gardens of Spain and Tudor England are almost shielded from the rest of
Kensington, save for the graceful spire of St Mary Abbots across the High
Street, and a glimpse of the superstructure of Barkers, the big sister store on
the other side of Derry Street. But the water garden brings one nearer to
reality: there a modern restaurant, the Sun Pavilion, provides the more basic ‘inward
refreshments’; whilst beyond the garden wall, the panorama of London is
revealed – from the gigantic pyramid of Earl’s Court, to Westminster Abbey and
the distant bubble of St Paul’s; and southwards, over the Thames, the huge Eiffel
Tower-like television mast at Sydenham, high above the Surrey hills.
To
come down to earth, figuratively, is to discover how all this magic is achieved.
From the three under-gardeners, looking as rustic in their aprons as the besoms
with which they sweep the lawns or the raffia they use to tie the plants to
bamboo canes, you can learn little except that they come to work long before
the store is open, when the dew is still on the grass. But the head gardener[5] is less reticent: in his
narrow office, lined with spades and forks and tins of sterilizing compound, ‘slug
destroyer’ and fish food, this ‘gardener of the roof-top’ will explain how the
foundations had to be ‘specially constructed to bear the enormous weight’ of
the soil and its drainage bed of bricks and clinker – a load of one
hundredweight per square foot: he will tell how the sparkling water for the
stream and fountains is pumped up from the firm’s own artesian wells, 500 feet
below the level of the High Street; how the thousands of bedding-plants are
raised ‘here on the roof’, in his own greenhouse and nursery; and how as much
as 2 tons of leaf mould, 3 tons of potting compost, and 5 tons of peat for top
dressing have to be brought up each year, in the service lift. He will also
talk proudly of the millions of people whose millions of shillings in entrance
fees have been donated to various London hospitals and the British Red Cross,
and then, with especial pleasure, of the ‘royalties’ and ‘very important
persons’ who have come to admire these famous hanging gardens of Kensington.
They
were opened by the late Earl of Athlone, on May 9th, 1938: the first patron was
his wife, H.R.H. Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, who likes to work in her
own garden near her house in Kensington Palace, a quarter of a mile away. The
beginning of the roof-garden was therefore romantically associated with the royal
family; with the Princess who lives in the Palace where her grandmother, Queen
Victoria, was born, in May 1819.
After
Princess Alice, other members of the royal family came to see the gardens; the
Princess Royal, the Duchess of Kent, the Duchess of Gloucester, Princess Helena
Victoria, Princess Arthur of Connaught, Princess Marie Louise and Lady Patricia
Ramsay. But the most devoted royal visitor was Queen Mary: she also was born in
Kensington Palace, and she remained a Londoner at heart, and a gardener, all
her life. She went to see the display of flowers on the roof of Derry &
Toms several times, and enlivened it with her remarkable memory. No change,
improvement, or fault, escaped her, and her interest in the gardens helped to
bring them fame, all over the world.
* *
*
The
gardens were kept open all during the war – one man spent each day of his
fortnight’s holiday there in 1942 – and it is not easy to realize that they
ever suffered the bombing of the enemy. The only grim reminders are a glass
case filled with tail pieces of incendiaries and fragments of the 250-pounder
which wrecked part of the Spanish garden; and the big empty shell of a
1000-pounder, outside the Sun Pavilion, painted with the inscription, ‘This
Nazi bomb broke on the structure on the night of April 16, 1941, but
fortunately did not explode’.
If
the sinister bomb had succeeded in its mission, it would have destroyed more
than just the one and a quarter acres of garden: it would have destroyed also the
dream of their creator, Mr Trevor Alfred Bowen.
* *
*
From
the bright show of plants and shrubs on the roof, the lift attendant will take
one down seven floors, intoning the wares of each department, until you reach the
basement, or the ‘lower ground floor’ as it is more politely called. There,
until early in 1959, in a softly lit corridor, was the office of Mr Bowen, now
honorary President of John Barker
& Company – the huge business group comprised of Barkers, Derry & Toms,
Pontings and their subsidiaries, which he ruled for so long, and which recently
became part of the House of Fraser.
Trevor
Bowen is a Churchillian figure, both in appearance and achievement. He enjoys
the health and vigour of a man of sixty: only his failing eyesight reminds one
of his eighty years – forty-five of which have been spent in the service of
this same company. Two benign secretaries guarded the way to the inner office;
an unpretentious, club-like room, with solid mahogany furniture, a big
glass-topped desk, leather chairs and a red Turkey carpet. There was little
evidence in the room of any hidden qualities or refinements in this man’s character:
his books included such dull titles as The Stock Exchange Official Year Book,
Laurie’s Interest Tables and The Secretary’s Manual, and
prominent on the walls were a huge coloured architect’s drawing of the modern
Barkers, a ‘Vanity Fair’ cartoon of
the firm’s founder, Sir John Barker, in elegant Edwardian clothes, and a signed
photograph of Sir Sydney Skinner, Trevor Bowen’s predecessor in office as
Chairman of the Company. Also framed upon the wall, behind his desk, was Trevor
Bowen’s certificate of election to the Institute of Directors, his appointment
as Deputy Lieutenant for the County of London, and rather incongruously, an outdated
permit naming him as ‘licensee’ of the Rainbow Restaurant, on the fifth floor
of Derrys. When asked, Mr Bowen would explain, with a smile, “Oh, I gave that up
when I became a Justice of the Peace.’
The
only clue to Mr Bowen’s chief, and constant delight, were the many photographs,
some framed, some in tidy albums, of his beloved roof-gardens. Nowhere in the
world are others of such dimensions maintained at such a height. At an age when
most earthbound men are content to weed and doze in the little plots about their
homes, this ‘store man of outstanding vision’ can still revel in his ‘garden in
the sky’[6].
CHAPTER 2 John Barker & Co.
THE
imagination which lies behind many realistic industrial enterprises in Britain
– and behind the empire of stores founded by Sir John Barker in Kensington – can
be traced to the Great Exhibition of 1851. Under the patronage of Prince
Albert, the world was reminded that the lathe and the ploughshare could be as
mighty as the sword, and that peaceful competition in industry between nations
was preferable to the horrors of war. A Royal Commission was set up, and British
manufacturers were persuaded that they would be contributing to the ‘unity of
mankind’ by displaying their goods within the vast Crystal Palace in Hyde Park.
The very construction of this national shop-window was startling for its time,
both in size and originality: a third of the country’s annual glass production
was needed for the glittering building – the ‘blazing arch of lucid glass’, Thackeray
wrote, one thousand feet long and a hundred feet high, which leapt ‘like a
fountain from the grass’, to ‘meet the sun’. Two thousand men were employed on
building the Crystal Palace: there were eleven miles of tables and fifteen
thousand exhibitors, from all over the world, with wares valued at two million
pounds.
It
was the wonder of the age – a harvest festival of British trade, and an example
to this nation of small shop-keepers that, by such industry, they would not
merely be serving the ‘unity of mankind’ but might also grow rich themselves.
Among
the hundreds of thousands of visitors who came to London to gaze at the Crystal
Palace were, perhaps, the Barker family from the village of Loose, near
Maidstone, in Kent. Joseph Barker owned a small brewery: his son John was only
eleven – he was born on April 6th, 1840 – but already fired with the kind of
ambition that had spurred Dick Whittington to seek his fortune in the great
city where the streets, he supposed, were paved with gold. Just before his
thirteenth birthday, young John Barker was put to work: for three years he
served his apprenticeship with a draper in Maidstone, until he was old enough
to earn his own living. We are told that he ‘never troubled his parents for assistance’,[7] he was determined to make his
own way in the world, and he knew that he would succeed.
Because
legends are often more plausible than facts, many people in Kensington like to
believe that John Barker was the son of wealthy parents: a favourite story is
that the father, wondering how to start his schoolboy son in life, was driving
in his carriage along the High Street when he saw a shop for sale; that he
bought the shop, and set up his son in business. But the truth is more
romantic: at the age of sixteen, John Barker found work as a junior assistant
with a draper in Folkestone, and later with another at Dover. At eighteen, and
man enough to venture his own way, he came to London, with the few shillings he
had saved and perhaps the parental ‘tip’ of a golden sovereign. His first
employment in the capital was at Spencer, Turner & Boldero’s drapery shop
in Lisson Grove, St Marylebone; but he must have seen little future in their
service, for he soon afterwards ‘engaged himself’ to Mr William Whiteley, who
was ‘carrying on business in a small way’ in Westbourne Grove, Bayswater, a
street then known in the drapery trade as ‘Bankruptcy Row’. According to a
writer in The Times,[8] Mr Whiteley’s business soon made
rapid headway – "Mr Barker being the owner’s right-hand man. In a few
years the assistant was made manager’ – presumably of a department – ‘at a
salary of £500 a year. He soon wanted a further increase, and Mr Whiteley
agreed to double his salary if he doubled the business in the next year. The
business was doubled, and so was the manager’s salary’.
Six
hundred pounds a year was a great deal in those days, especially for a young
man in his twenties. But John Barker wanted more than money: he wanted authority,
a say in the running of the firm, and the opportunity to put his own ideas into
practice. As the business ‘continued to expand’, he asked to be taken into partnership.
Mr Whiteley ‘offered to increase his salary to £1000 a year, but could not see
his way to making him a partner, whereupon Mr Barker left him …’
This
was in 1870, the year of the Franco-Prussian War. John Barker was thirty; a
handsome, sturdy man, with keen eyes and a strong square jaw. He was married,[9] with a young son and
daughter; secure in his growing prosperity and confident of his ability. He
could now afford to dare to be his own master.
It
would have been easy for John Barker to open his own shop in Westbourne Grove,
and lure away the customers he had served at Mr Whiteley’s. Instead, he chose
new ground – the sedate and respectable district of Kensington, whose mansions
housed a very different class from those living in Bayswater; a quiet aristocracy,
which had grown up about the Palace since the days when King William III, to
suit his health, was ‘pleased to ennoble’ the parish ‘with his Court and Royal
Presence’; a genteel Victorian society, taking their example in modesty from
the sovereign who mourned at Windsor, and recalling, perhaps wistfully, the
great days at Holland House, and the brilliant gatherings of Count d’Orsay and ‘Gorgeous
Lady Blessington’, at Kensington Gore.
Until
the late 1860’s, Kensington High Street had been a narrow, shabby yet
picturesque thoroughfare, rather like those that still exist in some English
country towns, with an abundance of small, austere Georgian houses and shops
with wooden shutters. The High Street was part of the coaching road between
London and the West Country, and its twenty-one public houses were frequented
by weary travellers no less than by the shop-keepers who gathered each midday
to talk ‘Kensington’ to each other. But in 1867 the High Street began to acquire
a new face: the Metropolitan Board of Works thought up the ‘Kensington
Improvement Scheme’, an ambitious project to widen the road and create a ‘Handsome
Range of Shop Property’ on the south side. This affected most of the land on
which the modern Barkers and Derry & Toms
now stand, and the development is especially interesting when compared with the
tremendous task of rebuilding and road widening so recently completed by these
two stores.
By
1870, a ‘noble roadway’ had taken the place of ‘the inadequate and cramped
approach to Town’, and fifty-five ‘superior newly built houses and shops’ had
gone up in High Street, King Street (now Derry Street), Young Street, Bell
Street – which ran parallel to and south of the High Street – and Burden Mews.[10] John Barker saw his chance,
and promptly took the lease of Nos. 91 and 93 in the High Street, described in
the prospectus as ‘A Splendid Large Shop, with Plate Glass Front’ and ‘Three Floors
of Rooms’ with ‘Lofty Basement’; and in October 1870 he opened for business as
a general draper, in partnership with Mr (later Sir James) Whitehead, a wealthy
‘Bradford merchant’ in the City, who in 1889 became Lord Mayor of London. About
a dozen assistants were employed in the ‘establishment’, which, it is recorded,
was started on ‘the new system of supplying goods direct from the manufacturers
at a small rate of profit for cash payments, thus saving the profit of the middleman’.[11]
John
Barker’s new business grew even more rapidly than Mr Whiteley’s, and shop after
shop was soon added. Before the first year was out he had acquired Nos. 26 and
28 Ball Street, ‘for the development of the millinery, dressmaking and
under-clothing departments’; in 1871 he added No. 87 in the High Street, which
he ‘devoted to men’s mercery, tailoring and juvenile clothing branches’; in
1872 he purchased the stock of a retail draper, whose premises at 89 High
Street and 24 Ball Street ‘were taken with a view to the extension of the
drapery and other kindred departments’; and in 1875 he bought some vacant land
in Ball Street on which he built a ‘block … for enlarging the bookselling,
stationery and fancy-goods branches, and also giving increased facilities in
the mantle department’. By 1877, John Barker was able to publish, on his
Christmas calendar, the fine commendation of The Queen, that ‘For good
Drapery at a moderate price there is no better establishment in London than
Barkers’.
Forty
years later, when Sir John Barker died, an editorial in a local newspaper[12] described him as ‘one of those
leviathans of commerce whose meteoric careers furnish real life romances, which
the novelist would hesitate to imitate in fiction for fear of being charged with
overstepping the bounds of probability’. One of his employees recalled him as a
‘rugged, restless, ruthless individual who, while he did not spare others,
never spared himself’. But this was only half the secret of his success: to use
his own phrase, he had ‘never been above’ his business, and he never forgot
that his business was to serve, as well as to sell.
* *
*
It
is convenient to pause here for a moment in the story of John Barker and glance
at the two other famous drapery stores in Kensington’s High Street which later became
part of the Barker group – Messrs Derry & Toms, and Pontings. Their
beginnings are more obscure, and little is known about their founders. The
Chief Reference Librarian of
Kensington,[13]
who has devoted some forty years to
studying the history of the Royal Borough, admits to being quite baffled by the
lack of information on the early days of these firms; and the facts recorded by
the descendants of these Victorian shop-keepers are sadly scant. The London
Post Office Directory for 1854 lists Joseph Toms as the owner of a ‘toy
& fancy repository’ in the High Street: no number is given, but his shop
was probably near the present site of Pontings, at the corner of Wright’s Lane.
It is not known when Mr Toms entered into partnership with Mr Derry, but it is believed
that their joint enterprise was founded by Charles Derry in 1862.’[14] At all events they
prospered, and, like John Barker, they acquired adjoining properties until, in
the reign of King Edward VII, they owned twelve shops in the High Street, Nos.
99-119 and 121b, between King Street and the Metropolitan & District
Railway Station. A coloured handbill printed in 1909 described the store’s
great attraction in being ’So Handy for Shopping’, as the visitor could enjoy ‘Comfortable
and Rapid Travel by Electric Trains’ – ‘under cover all the way’ from
the main line stations – and emerge into the shelter of an arcade, dry and unruffled
on the wettest day, right on the doorstep of Derry & Toms.
Half
a century later, thousands of shoppers still take advantage of the Underground
to bring them, with rather less comfort than their grandparents enjoyed, direct
to Derrys, and to Pontings, which now extends westward from the station to the
corner of Wright’s Lane, and southwards for almost two hundred yards, over the
land once occupied by Scarsdale House and its gardens – the mansion of the
Curzons of Kedleston, who held the barony of Scarsdale.
Pontings
might be described as the second sister in the Barker family of stores. Their
story begins in 1873, when the Ponting brothers, William, Tom, John and Sydney,
‘came up from Gloucester to seek their fortunes in London’. William Ponting was
then twenty-nine and the eldest of the four. Tom – perhaps not pleased with playing
second fiddle to William – opened his own shop as a ‘fancy draper’ in
Westbourne Grove, and apparently ‘carried on a very successful business for
many years’; while his brothers settled in Kensington. They bought No. 125 in
the High Street, and opened a shop for drapery and millinery, where they made ‘slow
but steady progress’. Unfortunately, Sydney Ponting was ‘not a very strong man,
and after a serious illness he passed on, shortly after the business had
started’. But William and John continued,
and were so successful that, like Barker, and Derry & Toms, they sought to
expand their business by acquiring property on either side. By 1898, the year
William Ponting died, they had bought Nos. 123, 123a, and 127 in the High
Street, and also Scarsdale House, the rooms of which were at first ‘adapted and
co-ordinated with the shop premises’, before the mansion was finally pulled down
to make way for the modern store of today.
By
the turn of the century, Messrs Ponting Bros. Limited had reached the peak of
their fortune, with a profit of about £7000 a year – a figure which seems absurdly
small today. But then they declined: an ambitious scheme to provide a general
market for provisions ‘required a much greater working capital than the firm had
to play with’, and in December 1906 they went into liquidation. Their annual
profit had fallen to the dismal sum of £953 4s. 4d, and early in 1907 an offer from
John Barker & Co. to purchase ‘the whole of the assets’ for £84,000 was
accepted gladly.[15]
* *
*
We
return to the ‘leviathan of commerce’, John Barker, and come on two episodes
that brighten the task of the biographer. The first is a story of Queen Mary’s mother,
the Duchess of Teck, whose generosity and extravagance at Kensington Palace
kept her in debt to the local shop-keepers. Barker was one of her chief creditors:
he was present on the day when the Duchess opened a new church hall to which he
had ‘largely contributed’; when she ‘greatly startled the assembled company by
turning gracefully towards him on the platform and announcing with a bewitching
smile, “And now I must propose a special vote of thanks to Mr Barker, to whom
we all owe so much.”[16]
The
second leaf from the Victorian scrap-book is a business letter, dated September
21st, 1880, to the mother of G. K. Chesterton, then in his seventh year.[17]
Madam,
We
are in receipt of your instructions from Mr Edward Chesterton to wait upon you
for the purpose of offering for your selection a Bonnet of the latest Parisian
taste, of which we have a large assortment ready for your choice; or can, if
preferred, make you one to order.
Our
assistant will wait upon you at any time you may appoint, unless you would
prefer to pay a visit to our Millinery Department yourself.
Mr
Chesterton informs us that as soon as you have made your selection he will hand
us a cheque for the amount.
We
are given to understand that Mr Chesterton proposes this transaction as a
remembrance of the anniversary of what, he instructs us to say, he regards as a
happy and auspicious event. We have accordingly entered it in our books in that
respect.
In
conveying, as we are desired to do, Mr Chesterton’s best wishes for your health
and happiness for many future anniversaries, may we very respectfully join them
to our own, and add that during many years to come we trust to be permitted to
supply you with goods of the best description for cash, on the principle of the
lowest prices consistent with excellence of quality and workmanship.
We
have the honour to be Madam,
Your
obedient servants,
JOHN
BARKER & CO.,
KENSINGTON
It
was in this year, 1880, that John Barker began to broaden the scope of his business,
and to make it into one of the most comprehensive stores in London. He acquired
No. 77 in the High Street, and Nos. 12 and 14 Ball Street, ‘together with the
stock of a firm of ironmongers’, and thus ‘the first step was taken for the inauguration
of the furniture, carpets, glass, china and other household departments’ which
have been so important a part of the company ever since. He also took over the
shop and stock in trade of a grocer and provision merchant at 75 High Street,
and two more houses in Ball Street, which were pulled down and rebuilt ‘to afford
full accommodation for the grocery, provision, wine, spirit and cigar
departments’.
His
horizons and his ambitions were insatiable. By 1885, his stores had spread
westwards to the edge of King Street, by adding Nos. 95 and 97 in the High
Street ‘to provide additional space for the silk and dress goods department,
and also to increase the accommodation in the mantle and millinery sections,
and make room for boots and shoes, and portmanteau and trunk sale rooms’. In
1888, after ‘three years continuous progress’, the firm ‘made another important
advance by annexing the premises of the London and County Bank’ at 67 High Street,
‘and by this addition was laid the ground work of what was destined to become
one of the largest and most notable cabinet and general upholstery
establishments in the metropolis’. Also, in the same year, ‘an opportunity was
afforded of opening the drug and dispensing business’ by the purchase of Nos.
69 and 71 in High Street; and in the following year John Barker extended his
territory eastwards to Young Street, by the acquisition of Nos. 63 and 65 in
the High Street, together with Nos. 2, 4 and 6 Young Street and No. 6 Ball
Street, which were ‘immediately pulled down’ to make way for a ‘splendid pile’
that was soon needed as an ‘extension for the furniture, upholstery and carpet
departments’, which had ‘far outgrown the space set apart for them’.[18]
By
1893, within little more than a score of years, John Barker had changed the
whole character of Kensington’s High Street: his first shop had grown into an empire,
his first small staff of assistants had become a regiment. With very limited
capital, and buying mostly on mortgage, he had acquired twenty-eight shops,
embracing forty-two separate departments, and employing over a thousand hands. Eighty
horses were kept in his stables, to pull the carts and vans which made eight
deliveries daily within the radius of a mile; and no fewer than two thousand
parcels were posted each day, to every part of the kingdom. Barkers had truly
become a ‘household word’.
* *
*
On
April 29th, 1886, at St Jude’s Church in South Kensington John Barker’s only
daughter, Ann Sarah, had married Mr Tresham Gilbey, the third son of Sir Walter
Gilbey, Bart, of Elsenham Hall, near Bishop’s Stortford.[19] It was a happy, but also a
fortunate alliance, which was to ensure the continued prosperity of Barkers and
their founder. In 1893, seven years after the marriage, John Barker had a ‘disagreement’
with the wealthy James Whitehead. He very nearly lost the business altogether
when Whitehead – in accordance with the terms of their partnership – attempted
to buy out Barker for one hundred thousand pounds. Happily, the Gilbeys came to
the rescue and provided the money to buy out Whitehead, on the condition that ‘the
business was to be floated as a Public Limited Company’. This transformation
came in June 1894, when the capital of the new company was fixed at £250,000,
and John Barker became the first chairman.
The
friendship of John Barker with his son-in-law, and with Sir Walter Gilbey,
endured for the next twenty years, until his death in December 1914 – only a
month after that of Sir Walter. The relationship was strengthened when, in the
early 1890’s, Barker bought The Grange at Bishop’s Stortford, an estate of
three hundred acres, on which he raised the largest and best flock of Syrian
sheep in the land, and where he bred his champion polo ponies.
The
role of a country gentleman pleased his vanity, but one of his earliest
appearances as a fledgling squire surprised the die-hards of Hertfordshire, and
the story is told to this day. It was the first time he had taken a party of
friends out shooting. There wasn’t a pheasant to be seen and they made their way
home in grave disappointment. Then John Barker saw something moving, behind a
hedgerow: he took aim, fired, ran forward, and found that he had shot a cart
horse, in its traces.
Such
a story might have made him the laughing-stock of the county for all time, but
he was liked by his neighbours and he was happy in his country leisure. He once
said, ‘It has been a pleasant life, and I have always enjoyed my work, and.
found interest in its wide variety.’ But, although he devoted much time to his
farm and to local affairs – he was a generous patron of the cottage hospital his
love was still in Kensington High Street. He never allowed his country
diversions to interfere with his ambition, to build up Barkers – to make the
store wider, higher, and mightier.
John
Barker did not live to see Derry & Toms become part of his commonwealth of
stores; but he was able to acquire almost the entire High Street frontage
between Nos. 63 and 97, and to take over a large building on the opposite side
of the street, which became Barkers furniture store. And, best of all, he
scooped Pontings into his net, and revived it with his flair for salesmanship
and his sound business sense.
Nowadays,
shop sales at reduced prices are regular features of our lives, they come with
the seasons, and the damage to clothes and person is accepted as an occupational
hazard. Half a century ago, such scrimmages made the headlines: the Evening
News for April 30th, 1907, reported that ‘Remarkable scenes were witnessed
in High-street, Kensington, when hundreds of shoppers made a determined raid on
the shop lately occupied by Messrs Ponting Brothers, drapers’. The journal
stated that the business had been acquired ‘at a cost of more than £100,000’ – the
actual price was £84,000 – by Messrs John Barker & Co., who were ‘selling
the entire stock … at immense reductions’. The manager told a reporter that ‘many
thousands of ladies’ had gathered at the door ‘long before the opening at nine
o’clock’ in the morning, and that although the commissionaires ‘did their
utmost to stem the crowds’, they were ‘absolutely helpless before the onslaught’.
The doors were ‘forced open’, the shop was filled within ten minutes, and the five
hundred assistants were ‘simply swamped’ – ‘every window’ being cleared before
eleven o’clock. Policemen had to be called in ‘to aid … in holding the doors’
against the ladies who, let it be quite understood, were ‘not intent on any
wrecking expedition’, but ‘simply after bargains’. Royal Kensington sighed with
relief when it was all over: John Barker no doubt permitted himself one of his
rare smiles.
Towards
the end of Sir John Barker’s life – he was made a baronet in 1908 – he saw his
great creation almost burned to the ground, when, shortly after midnight on Sunday,
November 3rd, 1912, ‘the most disastrous fire occurred in the history of the
company’. Five resident members of the staff died in the flames, and the whole of
the eastern end of the store, on the corner of High Street and Young Street,
was ‘totally destroyed’. This was the block which then housed – as it does now –
the splendid Food Section, from which the inhabitants of Kensington and West
London could be supplied at their doors, not only with every kind of English
produce, but also exotic fruits from overseas, in time for any meal.
But
Sir John Barker was not dismayed. Mr Lloyd George once said of him, ‘My Budgets
must have hit Sir John Barker as hard as any man in the Kingdom, and yet you
never hear a single word of complaint from him.’[20] This was the spirit in which
he had built his business, and, though he was over seventy at the time of the
fire, he was quite prepared to begin again. He at once acquired a vacant place
on the other side of the street, where he fitted up a temporary wooden shelter,
and within two weeks his staff were busy serving their customers as usual. It
was late November then, and they were soon taking orders for Norfolk turkeys
and Aylesbury ducklings, in time for Christmas.
* *
*
Except
for his pretensions as a politician,[21] Sir John Barker’s life was a
huge success. As a breeder of ponies, and President of the Polo Pony Society,
he did a great deal to encourage and improve one of the noblest and exciting of
sports. As a shop-keeper, and astute businessman, he had few rivals. But almost
everyone who has written or spoken of him uses the word ‘ruthless’ – ‘He pushed
ahead ruthlessly, untiringly’ – ‘pushful methods, a policy even ruthless’. This
view is shared by Mr Trevor Bowen, who described his first interview with
Barker as ‘not very happy’.
They
met in the late summer of 1913, when the east wing of Barkers was rising from
the ashes towards its new magnificence of five storeys. Trevor Bowen, a boyish thirty-four,
was then an assistant manager in the bakery at Lyons, and he came to Barkers at
the invitation of a director of the company, Mr (later Sir Ralph) Millbourn, with
the prospect of becoming one of the managers in the Food Section. ‘You’re
taking a big chance’, his friends at Lyons told him; but Trevor Bowen had been cast
in the same mould as Sir John Barker. The meeting was to be in Millbourn’s
office in the furniture store, on the north side of the High Street, and Sir
John tried Bowen’s patience by keeping him waiting until he was on the point of
leaving. At last, when he was summoned before the stern old shop-keeper,
looking like a fiery sergeant-major with his waxed, pointed moustache, Barker
turned to Millbourn and said, ‘We want a man, not a boy, for this job.’
Trevor
Bowen retorted, ‘You won’t find a man who knows half as much about the job as
this boy! I won’t take up any more of your time. Good morning!’
It
was all part of a game – almost a ritual in the business world – which has been
played many times. Ralph Millbourn followed the young man out of the office and
begged him to ‘talk it over’. The next meeting with Sir John Barker was more
amiable: Trevor Bowen recalls the episode, of forty-five years ago, still with
a glow of victory as he says, ‘I got the job.’
CHAPTER 3 The Boy from Monmouth
JUST
before his eightieth birthday, Trevor Bowen made a remark which seems to be the
key to his whole story, from modest beginning to worldly success. He said, ‘Don’t
worry about money. Get power! If you have power, you can have everything else
you want.’
It
is a revealing confession of aim in a man who was instinctively a craftsman;
who grew up from the simple trade of bakery to become an expert in the art of
confectionery; whose imagination first led him from the daily round of making
pastries, into decorating beautiful wedding cakes, tall and splendid, iced with
an intricacy of designs. It is odd to think of a young baker, in white cap and
apron, forming the philosophy, ‘Get power!’ Yet the ambition stirred in him
even while his deft fingers were creating fantasies of lace and flowers out of
sugar, and it has been the driving force of his life.
Trevor
Bowen was born on November 6th, 1878, in Monmouth, the ancient town which was
also the birth-place of King Henry V. The royal castle is now in ruins, but the
King’s statue looks down on Agincourt Square from a niche in the Shire Hall,
right in front of the house in which the Bowens lived. There Arthur and Annie Bowen
had their pastry-shop, at No. 19. They were a conventional family, with eight
children, of whom Trevor was the eldest: they worked hard at their trade for
six days in the week, and spent the seventh in suitable black-edged observance
of the Sabbath, for Mr Arthur Bowen was ‘strongly religious’ – a fact to which
his son attributes his own contempt for those who wear a Sunday face. But behind
this prim exterior lay kindness: he recalls his parents as being ‘always very
good’ to him, even after he left home and went his own way.
It
has been said that John Barker ‘could never properly remember the actual site
of his original shop’. Like him, Trevor Bowen finds it difficult to recall his
own early years. For a boy, Monmouth would have many delights – swimming and
fishing in the Wye, climbing the hills which dominate and almost enclose the
picturesque town, and playing soldiers about the ruined castle, once a Saxon fortress,
and later a bastion in the border wars between the Welsh and English. But
Monmouth was no place for a young man fired with ambition and resenting the straight-laced,
chapel-going Puritanism of his elders; and in 1897, at the age of eighteen,
Trevor Bowen escaped over the hills to the cathedral city of Hereford. A few weeks
later he was on a train to London: he arrived in time for the Diamond Jubilee
of Queen Victoria, when the capital was teeming with visitors from every part
of Britain and the Empire, come to see the old lady who had reigned longer than
any sovereign in our history.
Trevor
Bowen shared in the excitement, but he did not see the Queen or the procession:
the city was ‘so big’, there were ‘such crowds’, and he ‘did not know’ his ‘way
about London’ then. His first thought was to earn his living; to ‘improve’
himself in the trade which he had learned from his father; and after a little
searching he found work with Mr Gates, a confectioner in Norwood. He was still
there in 1899, and saw his employer win the ‘One Hundred Guinea Gold Challenge
Cup" awarded at the International Confectioners Exhibition in London, ‘for
the Highest Degree of Excellence’. Five years later, this coveted blue riband of
the confectionery world was to be his own.
From
Norwood, Trevor Bowen went on to Spindlers at Maidenhead: in 1901 he gained the
Hassall Scholarship to study at the Borough Polytechnic in Southwark, and twelve
months later, still ‘improving’ himself, he went to Messrs Atkins Bros. &
Cox of Hastings. Among his papers is a cutting from a local journal, for
November 14th, 1902, with a photograph showing a case filled with a most beautiful
three-tier bride cake that he had made, delicately garlanded with flowers and
decorated with sugar cupids; also two smaller ‘bethrothal cakes’, sculpted and
faced with medallions like the jasper of Wedgwood and Adams. At Hastings, too,
Trevor Bowen was able to improve himself in a quite different way: from this time,
we can trace his great interest in championship swimming and water-polo, a
sport at which he has won several prizes, and which he has followed throughout
his life.
Trevor
Bowen’s next move was as a confectioner to his father’s cousin, ‘Uncle’ John Fisher,
who owned a prosperous business in Gloucester, and who held a ‘Special Royal
Warrant’ to H.M. King Edward VII. Trevor Bowen was then at the peak of his
artistic career: in April 1904, at the age of twenty-five, he gained the only
gold medal at the Cookery and Confectionery Exhibition at the Albert Hall, and
in September, at the Royal Agricultural Hall, he won the prized Gold Challenge Cup
and fourteen other medals and diplomas in the International Confectioners
Exhibition. The special award was given for a magnificent Golden Wedding Cake,
the embellishments of which were described as ‘very artistic sugar work
intertwined with gold paper, and also with floral decorations in gold, the top
being surmounted by a crown of sugar, and a bouquet of golden Wheat’.
The
little town of Monmouth is only twenty-five miles from Gloucester; but Trevor
Bowen had travelled a long way on the road to success in the seven years since
he left home to seek his fortune. A firm dealing in Icing and Piping Sugars was
proud to print his commendation that their products were the ‘best’ he had ‘ever
used’; and the editors of The British Baker claimed it as ‘a source of
gratification’ that they had previously recognized his ‘qualities … to reach
such a high position in the confectionery art’ by commissioning him to write
some articles for the magazine. They also ‘took pleasure in giving a photograph’
of him:[22] his neat clothes and high
starched collar were suitable for a young craftsman who won prizes for his
talent with sugar, but the strong, handsome face in the picture promises more.
He did not have the genteel look one might expect, he appears rather as an aggressive
rugger player who believed in his own ‘power’ the virtue that was to carry him
far beyond his confectioner’s bench.
* *
*
Trevor
Bowen stayed with his ‘uncle’ for five years, until the spring of 1908; all the
while adding more medals and diplomas to his prizes as a confectioner. Towards
the end of 1907, and for a few months afterwards, he wrote regular articles for
The Bakers Magazine on the making and decorating of ‘fancy cakes’ in ‘commercial
quantities’. In support of his simple recipes, he inserted in the magazine a
rather brash advertisement, of the kind we associate with the ‘You Too’ technique
of body-builders.
CONFECTIONERS
Your Opportunity.
Simplest Method Known-Guaranteed Results.
TREVOR A. BOWEN
(Late pupil of N.A. School; Atkins &
Cox, S. P. Borella, and E. Schur; also
winner of Hassall Scholarship, 1901-2; N.A.
Challenge Trophy for Messrs. Fisher & Sons, Gloucester, 1904 ; and winner
of over 60 Prize Medals for Confectionery)
is prepared to give Lessons in all kinds of
PIPING & ARTISTIC CONFECTIONERY.
LACE PIPING-A SPECIALITY.
PERSONAL OR POSTAL TUITION.
Specimens of work sent to every Postal
Student.
Special Series of TWELVE LESSONS in either
PIPING, LACE PIPING, CATEAUX
or ARTISTIC CONFECTIONERY
Write for terms and full particulars to
TREVOR A. BOWEN,
14, Westgate, Gloucester.
Mr
Bowen is now rather shy in recalling this youthful enterprise, but it marked an
important phase in his career, when he was no longer satisfied with being merely
a sculptor in sugar, conjuring up fantasies to delight the eyes of judges, with
prizes to award, at exhibitions. His latent talent for organization and management
was beginning to assert itself, over his creative ability. As a craftsman, he
had reached perfection: the time had come for him to teach, and lead, others.
During
the winter of 1907-08, Trevor Bowen paid several visits to Tilleys of
Newcastle, on special commissions: during the last of these he supervised the
decorating of a dummy cake, to be used as the centrepiece at a party for the
launching of the Japanese warship Kashima. It was a splendid sugar
seascape, four feet in height, and the Japanese officers were so pleased that
they took it away with them – ‘much to the annoyance of Mr Tilley’. This was
Trevor Bowen’s last employment outside London: in March 1908 he accepted the
offer of Mr Isidore Salmon to join J. Lyons & Co., at Cadby Hall, in his
first junior managerial position. He has said of this, ‘It is a decision I
never regret.’
* *
*
Within
two months of arriving in London, Trevor Bowen was given ‘a marvellous job’: he
took charge of Lyons model bakery at the Franco-British Exhibition – ‘The
temple of the Entente Cordiale’ – which opened at Shepherd’s Bush on May 14th,
1908. The gleaming white city of palaces and pavilions was devoted to every aspect
of art and industry; it covered two hundred acres – eight times the space of
the Great Exhibition of 1851; and was visited by many thousands of people,
including King Edward VII and President Fallières of France. Trevor
Bowen’s bakery formed part of the gallant display: it was open for the public
to gaze at and they could watch the continuous process. of making and baking
the millions of pastries and cakes supplied to the restaurants and a few of
which were no doubt fed to the playful Indian elephants that amused the crowds,
and themselves, by sliding down a huge chute into a pool of water.
The
Franco-British Exhibition closed on the last day of October 1908 with a great
blaze of fireworks in the evening, and Trevor Bowen returned to Cadby Hall, which
was then ‘making rapid strides’. He remained there five years, gaining
increased experience in the mysteries of managing a staff of human beings, and
in the handling of big quantities of orders, all experience learned in
peacetime, but which was to prove very valuable in the war that was so soon to
break over Europe. But he was still living in the safe and comfortable years: he
enjoyed the confidence of his directors, for whom, he recalls, he had ‘great
admiration’. Also, he began half a century of private domestic happiness by his
marriage, in October 1911, to Miss Daisy Maud Donnelly, whom he had first met
in Hastings When she was a clerk in the office of Atkins & Cox. They made
their home at Barnes; but afterwards moved to Putney, where they have lived ever
since, with their only daughter.
By
1915, Trevor Bowen had risen to become assistant manager of the bakery at Cadby
Hall, which catered for the vast network of Lyons tea-shops and restaurants
that spread throughout the country. But, as he recalls, he saw ‘no immediate prospect
of further promotion’ – he was then only thirty-four – so he looked for ‘fresh
fields to conquer’. Then came the invitation from Mr Ralph Millbourn of
Barkers, the first ‘not very happy’ meeting with Sir John Barker; and finally,
his decision to join the great empire of stores in Kensington. He began to
serve his new master on January 1st, 1914.
* *
*
The
Great War of 1914-18 brought Trevor Bowen his ‘first real opportunity’, by
allowing him to prove what he had learned, to reveal his talent for
administration. In this, he was encouraged by the two senior directors of Barkers
– Sydney Skinner and Ralph Millbourn, both of whom were subsequently knighted
for their public services. When Sir John Barker became seriously ill in the early
summer of 1914, his authority as chairman devolved upon Sydney Skinner, who had
joined the board in 1905. Skinner’s whole life had been spent in the drapery
trade, from the age of ten. His training had been harsh: when his day at school
ended, he sold goods outside a shop, from six o’clock until midnight, for which
he was ‘rewarded with a cup of cocoa and some cheese’;[23] then he slept beneath the
counter and, in the morning, ran home, washed his face, and hurried back to his
lessons.
Skinner’s
chairmanship of Barkers, which was to endure for twenty-six years, until he
died, in 1941, inspired a period of exciting achievement and expansion; but,
like Ralph Millbourn, he remained at heart a draper. It is fair to say that,
from 1914, the firm’s success as a ‘universal provider’ may be equally
attributed to the astute and experienced way in which Trevor Bowen managed and
developed the ‘food side’ of the business.
It
is not easy for those who smarted under the privations of the Second World War
to realize that their parents also suffered severe rationing, in the 1914-18 war.
The example in this sacrifice came from King George V and Queen Mary, who had
their own cards for food, and restricted even the hot water in Buckingham Palace
by having lines painted five inches up the sides of the baths. Rationing, and
care about every ounce of food on this vulnerable island, called also for
especial skill in providing for the soldiers engaged in its defence. The Army
Catering Corps did not then exist, the Army Service Corps was still a young
branch of the service – it was not elevated to ‘Royal’ status until 1918, and though
most of the victualling of the troops at home was controlled by army depots,
contracts were also given to merchants who had already learned the art of
feeding big numbers of civilians, in peacetime.
One
of these contracts was given to Barkers, and Trevor Bowen’s first
responsibility was to supply the rations for all troops guarding the railway
lines between London and Newhaven and Southampton. This was followed by further
contracts, to feed 50,000 of Kitchener’s army at the two huge depots at
Wendover and Seaford; and it was ‘a red-letter day’ in the story of Barkers
when Ralph Millbourn went to the War Office, at the end of 1914, to receive
their first cheque, for £60,000.
More
than two years passed before the Army Service Corps took over from all the
civilian contractors. Trevor Bowen not only had to be in constant touch with
his buyers, through whom he placed his orders, but he had also to spend two
days a week at each of the depots. He pays tribute to his chief lieutenants,
Walter Storbeck, Cecil Cooper and ‘Teddy’
Forman, and also to his small civilian staffs at Wendover and Seaford, who
managed the unloading, storage and distribution of the rations which arrived
each day, by special trains, from Marylebone and Victoria.
During
the last two years of the war, Trevor Bowen was able to turn more of his
attention to Barkers, and to learning about the drapery side of the store. Peace,
in November 1918, almost passed him by: he remembers the ‘shouting and singing
in the streets’, but he did not pause to share the rejoicing. ‘All our efforts’,
he says, ’were devoted to building up the civilian business: we hadn’t time to
bother with enjoying ourselves.’
This
cold, unromantic attitude to the facts of commerce is in keeping with the
character of the man who still wanted ‘power’. Within four years he was in
charge of all the catering departments at Barkers, and was already earning, on commission,
more money than his directors. Trevor Bowen had made the best use of his ‘first
real opportunity’: his second came early in 1919, when he was summoned to the
board room. The directors congratulated him on his success in handling the army
contracts, and Sydney Skinner said, ‘How would you like a trip to the States?’
Trevor Bowen ‘jumped’ at the suggestion: it was to be his first journey beyond
these islands, and to the country that was to inspire so much of his future.
CHAPTER 4 ‘A Store Man of Outstanding Vision’
A
FEW years ago, a phrenologist, John Clennell, made a ‘character reading’ of
Trevor Bowen. ‘Here is the face’, he wrote, ‘of a man who is Clearheaded,
Practical, Confident, Independent, Methodical, Persevering and Industrious,
with large Comprehension, Stability, Endurance and Latent Force.’ He dilated on
this flattering catalogue of virtues by explaining the significance of various
features – the ‘height of his head from the orifice of the ear’, the ‘fullness
across the eyebrows’, the ‘length of jaw’, the ‘closed set mouth’, and so on – and
concluded, ‘He could have been a success in the law, as a judge, a cool
reliable surgeon, a banker, engineer or statesman, indeed in any walk of life
which honourable men follow.’
This
was written at a time when Trevor Bowen had long enjoyed his authority as
chairman of John Barker & Co., and his dignity as a Deputy Lieutenant and Justice
of the Peace, but it is none the less true that he might have risen to the top
of any of these safe and respectable ladders. As it was, he had chosen a trade
in which he came to be recognized, by rivals and colleagues alike, as ‘a store
man of outstanding vision’.
Trevor
Bowen scorns the word ‘vision’. He would rather attribute his success to ‘damned
hard work’: he likes to tell younger men, ‘I’ve done nothing but work, my
friend, all my life.’ But he adds, with a boyish chuckle, ‘I’ve enjoyed every
minute of it’, and this is perhaps the real reason why he has been able to surmount
every obstacle, in making Barkers one of the most modern and progressive groups
of stores in Europe.
If
he had allowed himself to dream at all, he found the focus for these dreams
when he saw the magnificent skyline of Manhattan for the first time, on October
2nd, 1919. He went with Arthur Jennings, one of the head buyers, and they crossed
from Liverpool on the Carmania, which berthed in New York harbour
alongside the ship that had brought the King and Queen of the Belgians on a
state visit. Two days later, Trevor Bowen visited the gigantic Woolworth
Building which had been described, rather pompously, by Dr Cadman, the noted
divine, as ‘the Cathedral of Commerce’ – ‘the chosen habitation of that spirit
in man which, through means of change and barter, binds alien people into unity
and peace, and reduces the hazards of war and bloodshed’. It was then the
tallest building in the world, ‘rising 792 feet 1 inch above the sidewalk, its
summit piercing the heavens’; and ‘so wonderfully organized’, Bowen wrote to
Sydney Skinner, ‘that it is possible to live and subsist therein without going
outside’.
In
New York, Trevor Bowen and Arthur Jennings stayed, most suitably, at the
Waldorf. Their first evening, within the lofty canyons of the Manhattan streets
was a busman’s holiday: they walked past the lighted windows of the cake shops,
theatres and restaurants on Broadway, gazing at the clever displays in the big
stores, and at the ‘electric sky signs’, many of which, Bowen observed, were ‘much
higher than St Paul’s’. And on the Sunday they explored Chinatown and the
Bowery, ‘which was once the swell part of New York, but … now of a character very
different’; also the Jewish, Italian and Greek quarters. They also saw ‘the
wonderful hotel of New York for women only’, and Trevor Bowen, with his store man’s
eye, noted that the American women were ‘beautifully dressed’, and that they
quite lived up to their ‘reputation for style’.
The
purpose of their journey was to see all they could of the big stores, and also
to buy goods and machinery to improve their business back in Kensington. Trevor
Bowen was ‘impressed’ by Macy’s gigantic emporium, and there was something to
be learned from Altman’s ‘the best class of store in New York’ – especially because
of its staff management. They ‘appeared to do everything’ that was possible for
their employees in the way of ‘rest rooms, hospital, class rooms, free medical
advice’; and their staff school was ‘very finely organized’ – ‘a whole floor
being given up for this purpose, and each assistant when engaged being required
to put in so many hours for tuition, according to their age’. At Wanamaker’s
they were ‘initiated in the working’ of the ‘dispatch section’: they saw the
complicated pattern of conveyor belts carrying the goods from various departments
direct to a sorting table, whence they were transferred to enclosed lockers,
ready to be delivered to their destinations. Each factory and store had some
especial characteristic, some lesson for Trevor Bowen’s acquisitive mind to
absorb and bring home: when he came to Lord & Taylor’s he paused, and wrote
afterwards that their ‘most artistically arranged windows’ were ‘an education’.
He asked questions, and was told that this excellence and imagination were achieved
by hiring the best window dresser in New York, at a salary of about $20,000 a year
– a fabulous sum at that time.
They
left New York on October 8th and travelled north along the New England coast by
steamer, through the Cape Cod Canal, and to the old city of Boston. The usually
tranquil capital of Massachusetts was then under martial law: the local police
were on strike, and soldiers, some on horseback, were patrolling the streets,
armed with rifles and revolvers. But Bowen and Jennings were not deterred: they
were able to keep to their peaceful enterprises, and during two and a half days
in Boston they toured six of the famous and typically American establishments
of the time, including the Paine Furniture Company – ‘the largest purely
furnishing store in the United States’ – and the china store of Jones, McDuffy Stratton,
where they saw ‘a large exhibition tea party’; an elegant company of waxwork
figures, eating and drinking gracefully at a table in their window – all presented
by a Staffordshire potter whose business acumen must have been laced with a
nice sense of history, and a touch of humour.
From
Boston they took the Pullman to Rochester. Trevor Bowen was ‘surprised’ on the
way to find that the correct New Englanders – men and women – both ‘slept in
the same car’; and he had to practise the strange contortions necessary to go
to bed in this outlandish American idea of a ‘sleeper’. From Rochester he went on
to Buffalo, on the edge of Lake Erie; but he was not blindly impressed by all
these sights of foreign travel. He thought the town ‘made a poor show after
some of the others’; and when he saw the splendour of Niagara, he noted that
the conglomeration of factories built by the Americans, to exploit this lively
source of power, had ‘quite disfigured’ the landscape. He did all that the tourist
should: he observed that the Falls lived up to his ‘expectations of grandeur’,
and he put on the protective suit and hat in which he ventured along the
slender plank and rope bridge – then the only way of progress beneath the
roaring sheets of water.
The
Canadian side of the Niagara was more pleasing, with ‘fine buildings for power
stations’ and ‘no factories in sight’. They travelled through the apple farms
about Hamilton, and on to Toronto, where Trevor Bowen noted that ‘if the great
number of banks’ were ‘any guide’, then there was ‘no doubt of the town coming along’.
He and Arthur Jennings spent most of two days in a ‘preliminary inspection’ of
Eaton’s. Even forty years ago, this famous firm employed some 13,000 people in their
Toronto store and factories, which covered about 60 acres. In the provision
section alone, 30 telephone operators were ‘engaged exclusively in receiving
orders’, and 12,000 parcels of groceries were dispatched daily. The company had
their own laboratories, dye works, laundry, and factories for clothing,
furniture, textiles
and carpets; a fully equipped
hospital, a club with recreation and rest rooms for the junior members, and a permanent
suite of rooms at the King Edward Hotel for the special use of buyers and
managers. Trevor Bowen was also taken to the Eaton Memorial Church, where perhaps
recalling the strict chapel-going days of his youth in Monmouth – he was
pleased to find what he described as ‘practical Christianity’: the church which
Sir John Eaton had presented to the Methodists of Toronto was provided with ‘two
bowling alleys – one for junior, and the other for senior members of the
congregation’, as well as a bowling green and tennis courts.
* *
*
On
the evening of October 21st, Trevor Bowen and Arthur Jennings left Toronto, to
return to the United States. Early next morning they were awakened by the coloured
attendant shouting, ‘Grand Rapids in seven minutes’, and about twenty
passengers of both sexes ‘tumbled out of their berths in a frantic endeavour to
get dressed before the train pulled up’. They spent most of two days in the
town, looking at furniture and shop-fitting factories; and they also met
several English designers, one of whom told them that ‘whereas he was only able
to make a bare living from his work in his own country’, in Grand Rapids he was
‘able to have his own house and car’.
Then
to Chicago, which they reached after ‘a very pretty run’ on the morning of the
24th. Trevor Bowen thought it ‘a magnificent city’, and that its ‘general effect’
beat that of New York. They spent the whole of a day at Marshall Field’s – the
huge store which Gordon Selfridge had helped to build up before he came to London.
Even then, in 1919, the business was so vast that ninety-six lifts were in
operation, ‘separate ones being used for up and down’. They noted every aid to the
smooth and efficient running of the store: the ledger system, the ‘typewriter
adding machines’, the distinguishing colours used for the different charge
bills, the ‘special fitting rooms … wherein daylight could be absolutely
excluded, for colour effects’, the baling machine for waste paper and
cardboard, and the underground link with the Illinois tunnel system, by which
goods could be brought from the firm’s factory, eight miles away, or
transported direct to the docks beside Lake Michigan. They also visited the ‘recreation
room set apart for customers’ children’, and were ‘particularly amused by the
chute which seemed to be especially provided to wear out the boys’ trousers in
order that their parents would have to buy them new ones’.
Bowen
and Jennings remained five days in Chicago, visiting almost a score of departmental
stores and furnishing houses. They also saw the mail-order house of Sears Roebuck,
and the factory of Armour’s, the great meat-packing firm, where they watched
the progress of the animals from the time they were driven into the
slaughterhouse until they were ready for cold storage. Trevor Bowen wrote in
his report that the ‘whole operation’ took 16 minutes for a pig, 22 for a sheep
and 32 for an ox.
Toledo
was the next stop, but they were disappointed, as the ‘manufacturing and
business side of the town was very primitive’, owing to the ‘strength of the
labour unions … causing the proprietors to take their factories elsewhere’. The
‘only exception’ was the Libbey Glass Company, where they saw ‘several
wonderful machines … one in particular being certainly unique for the production
of electric light bulbs, which it handled in a most uncanny way, from the
molten glass to the complete article’, at the rate of several thousands an
hour.
Manufacturers
of today may smile indulgently at these achievements of the older generation.
But in 1919 such phrases as ‘mass production’ and ‘assembly line’ still had a
novel ring: they had come into use as a result of the techniques developed
during the Great War. Now, in the second half of the twentieth century, a
company may buy an electronic computer or machine capable of doing the work of
a thousand brains or hands: forty years ago, any labour-saving device commanded
admiration and a ready market. In Cleveland, at the composite store of May
& Co., Trevor Bowen was quick to make a sketch of ‘one of the most simple
and effective dispatch systems’ he had ever seen; and when he and Jennings
returned to New York and visited the Pancraze Company, they were ‘very much
impressed’ by the firm’s ‘speciality’ – a machine for wrapping sweets in wax
paper – because it had the ‘capacity for doing the work of ten people’.
After
leaving Toledo, they had spent two days in Cleveland, visiting several of the
chocolate and candy factories that had sprung up as a result of the prohibition
of liquor. Trevor Bowen was greatly impressed by the ‘general business activity’
in this cosmopolitan city; also by the many posters encouraging the
predominantly German and Bohemian population to ‘Speak English’. On the Friday
evening, October 31st, he and Jennings visited the Euclid Avenue Opera House,
where they saw Julia Anderson and Joseph
Cawthorn in the French musical comedy, The Canary; and the following
evening they travelled to New York. The last hundred miles or so of the journey
passed in bright sunlight, and Trevor Bowen thought the landscape the ‘most
picturesque’ he had seen in America: the railway track followed the course of
the Hudson for much of the way, and the countryside about the banks of the
river, which was alive with the varied tints of autumn, was ‘quite equal to any
of the finest Scottish scenery’.
In
New York, Bowen and Jennings were able to take a short holiday, and they
enjoyed themselves sightseeing and going to theatres. They saw The Passing
Show of 1919 at the Winter Garden, and Hello Alexander at the
44th Street Theatre – the ‘musical extravaganza’ in which Sophie Tucker sang
some of her earlier ‘big hits’. Then, having arranged for their return passage
to England, they took the train to Philadelphia, and thence to Washington,
which they agreed was the ‘most picturesque, cleanest, and beautiful city’ they
had ‘seen in the United States’. The day there was spent mostly in visiting the
National Soldiers’ Home, from which they had a magnificent view of the whole
city, spread below them, from the Capitol in the east to Arlington House and
the National Cemetery in the west, and southwards, six miles down the Potomac,
the beautiful Georgian town of Alexandria. They also visited several of the
monuments and public buildings in the city, but none impressed them more than
the Union Station, with its huge concourse – ‘said to be the largest room in
the world without a support’ – wherein, if so inclined, a general could assemble
an army of 50,000 men.
Then
back to Philadelphia. The next day, November 11th – Armistice Day – was spent
at the Electrical Exhibition, where Bowen and Jennings saw ‘many new uses to
which current had been applied’; and in the evening they visited the Sam S.
Schubert Theatre to see Al Jolson in the ‘joyful production’ of Sinbad.
On the 12th they were shown over John Wanamaker’s store: they saw the ‘great
organ built round the grand court … said to be the largest in the world’, also
the company’s own concert hall and theatre, and were surprised to learn that ‘three
complete orchestras’ had been formed by Mr Wanamaker’s ‘very musical staff’.
They returned to New York the same evening, and after ‘completing several
transactions’ they sailed for England, again on the Carmania, at noon on
November 15th – ‘feeling’, as Trevor Bowen concluded in his report to Sydney
Skinner, that he ‘would not have missed the experience’ of the visit to
America, but ‘glad’ that he would ‘soon be seeing old England’.
* *
*
Trevor
Bowen was to make no less than twelve visits to the United States – the last in
1950, when he was over seventy. But the first, in the autumn of 1919, was the most
important, and had the greatest influence in moulding his mind and his career.
He brought home two fundamental ideas which were to change not only his own outlook
on ‘store’ life, but also the lives of the thousands of men and women who were
soon to be in his charge, as a director, and later as chairman, of John Barker
& Co.
The
first idea concerned staff management and welfare. Trevor Bowen’s keen interest
and his own ability in sport made him turn to the younger members of the
company in an effort to create among them an ‘after hours’ atmosphere of
companionship and competition – a feeling that they were not merely employed to
work, but that they might join in a friendly association in which the hackneyed
phrase esprit de corps achieved its real meaning, of ‘a spirit of
jealous regard for the corporate honour and interests, and for those of each
member of the body as belonging to it’.
Soon
after his return to England, Trevor Bowen was made chairman of the company’s
sports section, and during the years that followed he devoted much of his spare
time to building up the Southfields sports ground at Wimbledon – which adjoins
the All England Tennis Club – into one of the finest of any business house or club
in the country. Under the somewhat cumbersome title of the Kensington Argyll
Amateur Athletic Association, the staffs of Barkers, Derry & Toms and
Pontings combined to produce first-rate teams in every branch of sport – cricket,
football, hockey, tennis, athletics, rowing, swimming and bowls – and they also
organized lively dances, whist drives, and other indoor recreations within their
splendid pavilion. Often, many thousands of people attend the annual gala, and
the members are able to bring their families and friends to share their leisure
in enjoyment and comfort.
One
of Trevor Bowen’s dictums to junior executives is, ‘Make your staff love you
and fear you in the same breath.’ But those who have served under him have
seldom gone in fear of him. Ever since his first visit to America, he has striven
to provide the best possible amenities for his staff: the company has its own
Welfare Secretary; a fully qualified nurse is on duty at one of the many
Georgian houses in Kensington Square that have been converted into hostels for
women assistants; and Trevor Bowen’s own interest in London hospitals, coupled
with the contributions from his ‘garden in the sky’, have enabled him to call
on expert medical advice and care in the event of serious illness or injury. It
is his boast that, during his long regime, the company has enjoyed an enviable reputation
for its relations between management and staff, and the five thousand or so
members of this big family have been able to employ their hours, both of work
and leisure, for their mutual happiness and prosperity.
The
second idea which Trevor Bowen brought back from America is expressed in this
sentence – ‘The man who proposes and the architect who designs a truly great building
confer a lasting favour on the race at large.’ These words were written by Dr
Cadman, in his Foreword to a souvenir booklet on the Woolworth Building the ‘Cathedral
of Commerce’ which Trevor Bowen visited during his first days in New York. He
has kept the booklet for almost forty years: it helped to inspire him, and his colleagues,
to transform the Victorian shops founded by John Barker into a splendid group
of stores that are the pride of Kensington High Street and the rival of any in the
metropolis.
CHAPTER 5 ‘Skinner’s Follies’
DURING
eighty-seven years and the reigns of six monarchs, between 1870 and 1957 – when
the House of Barker was bought by the House of Fraser – the firm had only three
chiefs, Sir John Barker was the first chairman, and Mr Trevor Bowen the last: in
between came Sir Sydney Skinner, who joined the staff as early as 1889, after
being sacked from a shop in Oxford Street because his employer thought him ‘impertinent’.
In spite of this, he had a friendly manner and appearance, free from the ‘ruthlessness’
that marked John Barker; and Trevor Bowen often talks with gratitude of the ‘tremendous
trust and confidence’ which Skinner and Ralph Millbourn, his first
vice-chairman, placed in him, and of how they unselfishly gave him ‘a helping
hand’. Bowen himself has been called ‘the man who made Barkers’, but he
protests against this, and refuses to accept the credit due to his predecessor
for the way in which he built up the company, not merely, as he once said, into
a ‘vast organization’, but ‘undoubtedly one of the happiest business families
in the country’.
Sydney
Skinner had imagination, and daring: he had been mainly responsible for adding
Pontings to the empire of shops in Kensington, in 1907. At first, his friends derided
the venture as ‘Skinner’s Folly’, but he had been right and it soon proved to
be a wise and lively purchase. Skinner was also responsible for taking over
Derry & Toms, thus giving the company an almost unbroken frontage of shops between
Young Street and Wright’s Lane.
The
1920’s, as a reporter wrote on the first morning of the new decade, were hailed
in London with ‘a rattle of jazz drums and frenzy of syncopation’.[24] They were, for some, the ‘gay twenties’, of
the Charleston and the Black Bottom, cloche hats and cocktails,
the naughty and neurotic years of the ‘bright young things’, for others, they were
the ‘hungry twenties’, of dole queues, strikes, poverty and renewed class
bitterness. But these were the extremes: for most people they were the years of
patient endeavour, to build anew after the horror and destruction of the war.
They were the ones who enjoyed the blessing of optimism, believing that it
would ‘never happen again’.
This
was the spirit in which Sydney Skinner and his colleagues faced their tasks at
Barkers. Their realism as businessmen was in tune with the times. Over 95 per cent
of their male employees who were eligible for service had joined one or other
of the forces during the 1914-18 war, and most – though not all – had survived
to resume their peaceful occupations, but their return created a serious
problem for the hundreds of female staff who, in common with thousands of their
sisters throughout the country, had left their homes to take over the jobs of the
men who had gone to war. The loyal service of these women who had ‘stepped into
the breach’ could not be ignored or neglected, any more easily than that of the
returning warriors, and the directors did their best to ensure that jobs should
be found, and if necessary created, for all who wished to stay with the
company.
The
only answer was expansion. In the summer of 1919, Skinner and Millbourn,
together with Harry Tilbury, another director who was then manager of Pontings,
and Trevor Bowen, had created a new concern, the Zeeta Cake Company, with the
purpose of opening a chain of high-class catering shops in Greater London. The
success of this novel venture was proved in simple figures: six years later,
the shareholders of Barkers approved the purchase of the Zeeta Company’s
business for £120,000.
Many
hundreds of men and women were given employment in the new shops; but the
biggest initial expansion came with the acquisition of Derry & Toms, early in
1920. This great store was then a conglomeration of Victorian drapery shops,
similar to those of Pontings, and unchanged, in their exterior, from the days
of the Kensington Improvement Scheme of half a century before. To buy the
business the directors had to find £600,000; but no one had any doubts that
this second of ‘Skinner’s Follies’ would prove any less successful than the first.
The chairman’s intention, as he said, was ‘not so much the buying of the actual
business’, because the firm, under its former owners, was ‘not so large as many
people imagined’; but ‘its possibilities’ were enormous. Skinner was right:
Within the first year the turnover was increased by 50 per cent; in two years
it was doubled; and the truth of his prophecy, that Derry & Toms would ‘ultimately
become a very valuable asset’, is easily realized when we look at the
magnificent building of today, and see it crowded with thousands of eager and
confident shoppers, who spend a fortune there every year.
* *
*
In
1920, there were about 175,000 people living in the Royal Borough of
Kensington; but at the last census, in 1955, the figure had fallen to under
170,000. This dwindling of population has not affected the trade of the big
stores, for they are no longer local in their appeal. It is as natural for Mrs
X, coming up from Camberley for the day, to say ‘Let us meet at Barkers’, as it
is for her sister who lives in Kensington Square. The group of stores long ago
achieved the dignity of being a national institution, and this is reflected in
the figures kept in the fat, prosperous-looking ledgers. When Sir John Barker died,
in the first months of the Great War, the capital value of his company was just
under one and three-quarter million pounds; at the end of 1920, it had swelled to
almost four millions; and in January 1958 – soon after Trevor Bowen, on behalf
of the shareholders, had sold out to the House of Fraser – the assets of the
company were valued at over sixteen millions.
Such
statistics are romantic, even for the layman who understands nothing of balance
sheets or consolidated profit and loss accounts. A more detailed picture of the
increasing prosperity can be gained from the figures which Sydney Skinner gave
in his report to shareholders on April 21st, 1921. Referring to ‘tremendous
deals in Government goods’, he said, ‘The purchases in this division of our
business have amounted to a very big total, indeed to some millions sterling … an
amount in turnover which, a generation ago, would have been voted a miracle. To
dispose of millions of yards of different fabrics in the space of a short
twelvemonth would have been deemed impossible. Indeed, the trade in many of our
general departments would, a very few years ago, have made up the total income
of a considerable business, and been the cause of much self-congratulation.’
Then, the exciting statement, ‘Our house … sold 3,000,000 yards of linen in a
period of six months, millions of yards of flannel and other Government fabrics
… a million pairs of gloves in a fortnight, nearly 100,000 women’s coat-frocks
in three months; nearly 25,000 men’s suits at a popular price; hundreds of
thousands of yards of French silks in a week; and about a million reels of
cotton in a couple of months … ’ The chairman had very little need to add, ‘These
are remarkable figures’, and that they spoke of a ‘remarkable era in
merchandising’.
Sydney
Skinner, like so many managing directors, fell into the slight sin of
wordiness. In his annual report of 1921 he explained, at length, the simple
miracle that the phrase, ‘off the peg’, had lost its stigma, because of the
extraordinary changes that had come to the making, and selling, of ready-made
clothes. Indeed, gentlemen who had never been measured outside the sanctuary of
Savile Row, would strike a stance in their clubs and say ‘What do you think of
it? Off the peg!’ with a proud note in their voice.
The
signs in the vast plate glass windows of the stores announced, ‘Men’s suits at
a popular price’. Mr Skinner described the sartorial revolution in fine
phrases: he spoke of the ‘reversal of all preconceived notions… a reversal of opinion in two ways’. Then he
explained, ‘First, the old reproach against ready-to-wear suits for men – as
for women – has vanished, or is rapidly vanishing. Today, men’s ready-to-wear
clothes … have all the distinction of garments made to measure by first class tailors.
This fact will perhaps explain the growing vogue of the ready-made, with its
many advantages in buying. It will also explain the second point – that a store
has now no terrors for the mere man. Notwithstanding all one’s familiarity with
shops and shopping, a departmental store, being largely concerned with apparel
and household goods, has hitherto been regarded by man, in his timidity, as a
place to be avoided. If we are to judge by the daily attendance in our men’s
shop, men have developed a sort of buying instinct the same as women. I am sure
… that in the extraordinary sale-time we had here in January, men were just as
keen in their buying as women are supposed to be, and everything specially in
the way of a bargain disappeared with quite amazing rapidity.’
Anyone
who has joined in the scramble of a sale at Barkers or Derrys or Pontings will
be surprised to hear that the male of a generation ago was afraid of shopping in
a department store: he accepted the ties his wife and daughters bought him
without demur. But, in some strange way, the years of the First World War quite
broke down this curious old tradition, that shopping was a woman’s task and
that men should suffer their taste in silence. Sydney Skinner was quick to
realize that the opportunity had come for making John Barker & Co. into a
shopping centre for every member of the family, for men and boys, no less than
their wives and sisters. Add to this the growing furniture and household
sections, and the provision section then in the imaginative control of Trevor
Bowen, and Barkers claim was justified: as the chairman said, their stores
existed ‘to supply everything – everything to wear, everything to use,
everything for the table, and the home’.
* *
*
It
is part of our English realism, as an island depending on commerce, that we
honour successful tradesmen who contribute to the tradition of imagination and
integrity in business life. We no longer see any wit in the story of the
Kaiser, who said, when the Prince of Wales made a friend of Sir Thomas Lipton, ‘I
hear that my uncle has been yachting with his grocer.’
In
June 1922, Sydney Skinner’s contribution to commerce was recognized when he was
honoured with a knighthood. By this time members of the royal family often did
their own shopping in Kensington – especially Queen Mary – and it was not at
all strange that Mr Skinner should drive splendidly to Buckingham Palace and
receive the accolade from King George V.
Sir
Sydney Skinner had been at Barkers for thirty-three years; seventeen of them as
a director, and nearly eight as chairman. He was President of the Drapers’ Chamber
of Trade, and was a kindly man: he devoted much of his time and his private
fortune to hospitals and trade charities. He was fifty-eight years old, and
kept himself fit with frequent rounds of golf; but most of his energy was
directed towards making Kensington, as he said, into ‘one of the most important
shopping centres in London’.
We
recall how Sir John Barker laid the foundation of the present business, and
that he surprised the residents of Kensington by creating an empire of shops in
the High Street, to pander to their every need and extravagance. But his
achievement belongs to the Victorian era. By the 1920’s, Barkers was rambling
and old fashioned. The company enjoyed a high reputation for the quality of their
goods – the word ‘shoddy’ was anathema to Sydney Skinner, for he loved the
phrase, ‘a satisfied customer’. And his staff lived up to his brisk conception
of efficiency. But the actual buildings of the stores had become too cramped
and awkward to cope with the increasing surge of customers. The only answer was
to modernize the company’s premises on the lines of those which Trevor Bowen
had visited in the United States, with huge departments where one could see all
the goods displayed, without the inconvenience of partition walls; quick lifts
for easy access from floor to floor, and restaurants and tea-rooms – not merely
to refresh the tired shopper, but pleasant and comfortable enough as places in
which to entertain one’s friends.
This
was all part of an important social change in England, borrowed, admittedly,
from America. Early in the century, restaurants were still rare: it was
romantic and daring to go to Romano’s or the Café Royal, and there were still
elderly ladies who could remember sitting in their carriages in Berkeley
Square, while their escorts went to Gunters to buy and bring them an ice cream,
which they ate in the open. In the 1920’s, all was changing: wives would meet
their friends and ‘spend the morning shopping’, lunching, or drinking tea under
the same roof where they made their purchases.
Sir
Sydney Skinner realized that he had to transform Barkers, or be outsmarted by
his competitors. He said, in April 1922, ‘Shopping today is a recreation as
well as a duty; the thousands of people who come to town in the mid-week,
mostly to see the shops, are a sure sign that it has become a part of our
modern life. We want higher buildings, more imposing buildings, buildings that
are spacious, with larger cubicle content and uninterrupted vistas, pleasing to
the sense, and large enough to cater for many of the simple pleasures that go
to make up the daily round.’ He soon proved that he could match himself against
any of the ambitious merchant princes who tried to lure away his business.
The
changes had to be made cautiously, against the background of the time, and Sir
Sydney Skinner had to subdue his vigour to circumstances. One turns from his plans for building and
development to the newspapers of the 1920’s and reads of the ‘deplorable state
of trade’, of strikes and the sullen moods they engender, of shortages, and
unemployment. There were other discouragements: the frontage of the Barker
shops in Kensington High Street was broken by one small, rival merchant who objected
to losing his independence. But he yielded in the end, and the site of his shop
became the splendid ‘Central Hall’, of imposing proportions, with, as a brochure
reminds us, ‘direct access to all floors’, by means of a ‘grand staircase’ for
those with time on their hands, and four ‘elevators’ that served those in a
hurry.
Pontings
and Derrys were also brought into the pattern of change: Sir Sydney Skinner
said that he wished to make all three stores into ‘a pleasant rendezvous for
the crowds which daily come to Kensington’. His aim was not all mercenary
ambition; he was something of a visionary also, with his own dreams of power.
The
word ‘crowds’ must not be passed over quickly: they numbered as many as fifty
thousand customers a day – twenty millions a year. For those of us who have read
of the ‘carriage trade’, and who liked the little shop with a bell that tinkled
as one opened the door, to summon an old woman from her sitting-room, Sir Sydney
Skinner’s creation was a new world. And the new world demanded organization,
control, apt buying and polite selling, to satisfy the millions of customers, that
make memories of ladies who could waste an afternoon inspecting bonnets, and
liveried servants with shopping lists, seem like old and pretty prints, framed on
a wall.
* *
*
Between
1922 and 1930 – the year in which Barkers celebrated their Diamond Jubilee – the
area of their property in Kensington had more than doubled. All this was done
out of profits, while they continued to pay a steady annual dividend of 20 per
cent on their ordinary shares. They completed the frontage on the south side of
the High Street, and also acquired the remaining buildings on the south side of
Ball Street, the freehold of Scarsdale House and Terrace, and a long lease of
Crown land next to the furniture block on the north side of the High Street.
Trevor Bowen remembers this last site when it was still a garden, divided into
allotments – part of the park that had surrounded Kensington Palace, back in
the days of William III. All this was buried beneath the big store later known
as Ladymere – not so grand an emporium as the modern Barkers or Derrys, but
considered in the ’twenties, when it was built, as a ‘fine addition to the
architecture of London’. It was the first of the many great building ventures
undertaken by Sydney Skinner, and, later, by Trevor Bowen: the store was eight
floors high – ‘seven being devoted to the public service’ – and was equipped ‘With
all the latest facilities for modern shopping’. A ‘battery of commodious lifts’
carried the customers with speed and comfort; and subways leading to the main
buildings of Barkers gave safe passage beneath the High Street. One special
feature, new to English department stores, was the mezzanine, which, with the
first floor, was fitted up as a ‘Man’s Shop’, to ‘satisfy the personal
requirements of every man – and his son’.
Passers-by
became used to the sight of cranes and builders, against the skyline above the
High Street. So soon as the new building was complete and open to the public,
the furniture store (most of which dates from 1902) was also developed into new
splendour. The word ‘display’ is part of our daily vocabulary; but it was still
an adventure in the ’twenties, and customers were delighted to be able to view
some forty ‘specimen rooms’ in which they could see the solution of their own
domestic problems in furnishing – sitting-rooms, kitchens, bedrooms and
bathrooms, each ‘charmingly and tastefully’ designed towards the goal of ‘gracious
living’.
On
the south side of Ball Street were antiquated properties that offered more
opportunity: the buildings were demolished, architects and contractors moved
in, and a new structure soon arose, to accommodate household departments and
administrative offices. Pontings was also extended, southwards along Wright’s
Lane, and another fine building was completed, with big open floors, and a
spacious restaurant in which six hundred people could eat, in comfort.
There
was an element of daring in the way Sir Sydney Skinner and his colleagues
played with the spaces in their control. To relieve the strain on Barkers and
Derrys, entire sections had to be transferred to the new buildings, almost
overnight. Barkers bargain department, a happy hunting ground that few could resist,
was moved to Pontings, and the floor was turned into a ‘Theatre of Fashion’. As
many as a thousand women could sit there, at ease, and see mannequins – or
models, as we know them now – walking slowly before them, in their tempting
clothes.
But
the company was like a child that was growing beyond all expectations and
parental control. John Barker & Co. had become a shopper’s paradise. The
population of Greater London had more than doubled since 1870, and in place of
the carriages and the early, furtive motor-cars of the 1900’s, traffic in and
out of the capital had developed into a menace. Kensington had to change its
face once again: the ‘Handsome Range of Shop Property’ put up in the late 1860’s
by the Metropolitan Board of Works had become hopelessly inadequate within half a century; the once ‘noble
roadway’ into Town, by way of Kensington High Street, was now so choked by
traffic especially within the curve that passed Barkers and Derrys – that shopping was
a hazard for their customers, and an alarming new problem for the directors.
The
vast shops that had absorbed so much planning and enterprise, and capital, had
to retreat to make room for the buses and motor-cars, they had to be
demolished, designed again and built up from the earth, back to the depth of an
average London house, so that Kensington High Street could be widened. There
had to be room, not only for a splendid highway, but also for wide pavements on
which shoppers could pause and gaze at the window displays, without fear of
being crushed by the crowds and the traffic.
This
was to be Sir Sydney Skinner’s last great plan: early in 1928 he told the
shareholders that ‘The urgency of widening the High Street’ had ‘rendered
possible negotiations with the London County Council, the Council of the Royal
Borough of Kensington, and – as the Crown were interested as the owners of a
large proportion of the freehold – with the Crown’. He was glad to say that ‘these
negotiations’ had at last ‘been brought to a successful conclusion’. As a
result, ‘certain agreements’ had been ‘entered into’ which ‘enabled the Company
to obtain Closing Orders for Ball Street and Burden Mews, and to arrange an
exchange of properties with the Crown, whereby the Company surrendered the
freeholds in the rear of Derry & Toms premises and acquired in lieu thereof
the freeholds of their main block [Barkers] premises, including the site of
Ball Street’. At the same time, the company was granted a 99-year lease of the whole
of the property occupied by Derry & Toms, including the freeholds given up
to the Crown.
Under
these agreements, the company undertook to rebuild Barkers and Derrys, and to
set back the building line by some 50 to 55 feet along the whole High Street frontage;
the land thus vacated to be ‘surrendered to the County Council by various dates
... and used for widening purposes’.
It
was hoped, and intended, that this widening of the thoroughfare, and the
rebuilding of the stores, should be finished by 1941. But the Second World War
was to intervene: on September 3rd, 1939, while the builders were still at work
– with Derrys completed and the new Barkers well on the way – Sir Sydney
Skinner, sitting beside his wireless, heard Mr Neville Chamberlain announce ‘ …
consequently this country is at war with Germany’. Sir Sydney did not live to
see the last of his ‘Follies’ become a triumph; but it was achieved – long after
his death – by his friend and successor, Trevor Bowen.
CHAPTER 6 The Company Director
WE
must go back in the story of Barkers to the more personal subject of Trevor
Bowen. During the ‘twenties, he added to his experience of the new world by
making six more journeys across the Atlantic, to the United States and Canada,
all the time increasing his horizon as a store man. He shared the first of
these, on the Aquitania, with Ralph Millbourn, the vice-chairman. They
sailed in the late summer of 1921, and they were especially pleased that among
their fellow passengers was Sir Harry Lauder, who entertained them with his
famous Scottish songs, including ‘Just a wee doch-an’ dorris’, and ‘0! it’s
nice to get up in the mornin’ ‘, in mid-ocean-and also Sir John Eaton, the head
of the huge Toronto enterprise which Trevor Bowen had visited on his first
trip, in 1919.
On
this second visit, Sir John Eaton invited Bowen and Millbourn for the weekend
to his mansion outside Toronto; he showed them over his beautiful gardens and conservatories,
his underground swimming bath and his private gymnasium; then he took them to
the railway station where he kept his personal saloon car, in which were three
bedrooms, a drawing-room, dining-room, kitchen and servants’ quarters. The
carriage was called the ‘Eatonia’, and it was Sir John’s home for three nights in
the week, as he travelled from one to the other of his great fortresses of
trade, spread over the spaces of the Dominion.
Trevor
Bowen returned to England in time to enjoy, and share in, a notable royal event
– the marriage of King George V’s only daughter, Princess Mary (now the
Princess Royal), to Viscount Lascelles, afterwards the Earl of Harewood. The
popularity of the monarchy in those difficult times was as marked as it is now:
the war had drawn sovereign and subject together, and united them in a bond of
sympathy and respect that was hard to define, yet so easy to recognize whenever
the King or his family appeared among his people. When Princess Mary was
betrothed, on November 22nd, 1921, the newspapers described the event as if it
were the highlight of a fairy tale: the Morning Post wrote that ‘Far
back in the dim past of our race … we English decided that the most entrancing
and romantic happening on earth was the betrothal of a Princess. And from that
time to this there is no English boy or girl but has shed tears of joy over the
happiest ending of the most delightful story; over the moment, in fact, when
the Princess is finally given in marriage to that happiest of men whom she has
chosen.’ And when that moment came, on February 28th, 1922, the same journal
wrote that each household in the land would celebrate the day as if there were
a wedding in their own family, for Princess Mary was ‘the Princess of us all’.
During
the three months between the royal betrothal and marriage, Trevor Bowen turned
back to his practised craftsmanship, as an artist in sugar. To him, and two fellow
confectioners, Mr Will Atkins – his former employer in Hastings – and Mr R. J.
Hollingham, was given the honour of designing and decorating the Royal Wedding
Cake to be presented to Princess Mary by the National Association of Master Bakers.
Trevor
Bowen showed that his hands had lost none of the talents which had won him his
laurels almost twenty years before. His splendid cake stood 7 ft. 6 in. high,
and its ‘exceedingly novel’ design created ‘quite a departure from the ordinary
wedding cakes of the past’. The contemporary description of it in the Bakers’
Review[25]
is worth reprinting, as it allows us to build up the image in our minds:
“The
bottom tier … consists of a cake with a diameter measurement of 30 in. and a
height of 16 in. At equi-distances around this tier there are four beautiful
Grecian temples, and a bold and pleasing effect is produced by steps leading up
to these temples, each of which contains a statuette, of the Goddess of the
Chase. Each temple is surmounted by an exquisitely chased Grecian vase. Between
the temples are panels bearing the combined Arms of the Royal pair, the
regimental crest … of the Grenadier Guards (Viscount Lascelles’s regiment), the
regimental crest of the Royal Scots (of which the Princess is
Colonel-in-Chief), and the crest of the V.A.D. These designs are painted on white
satin, and the general effect is very charming indeed …
The
centre tier is 10 in. high and 18 in. in diameter. On the side there is a
series of classical panels moulded in sugar in bas-relief, illustrating the Gathering
of Flowers and the Soul of Music. Above these panels are brackets with
bell-shaped openwork baskets holding small bouquets of flowers.
On
the sides of the third tier are four shields, two bearing the initial ‘M’ and
two the initial ‘L’. Round the top border are sixteen sugar bells, each hanging
on its own bracket, and these are interspaced with small white-moulded leaves
pointing downwards. At the bottom of this tier similar small leaves are placed
close together, pointing upwards.
The
top tier is surmounted with a drum having three oval-shaped openings in the
sides, each with a silver slipper appended. This drum is surmounted with a tall
and graceful figure of the goddess Flora, carrying an urn, from which a
magnificent bouquet of floral trails reaches down to the centre of the bottom
tier.
One
of the interesting features of the cake should appeal to the eight bridesmaids.
It consists of eight silk bannerettes, on each of which is painted the monogram
of the Royal couple.”
We
are told[26]
that the majestic cake ‘won the unstinted admiration of all who saw it’. It was
taken to Buckingham Palace and set up in the Blue Drawing-Room, where King
George and Princess Mary were ‘particularly attracted by it and expressed keen
appreciation both of the design and the execution of the work’. But it was
Queen Mary whose praise was ‘warmest’ and who captured Trevor Bowen’s heart. He
was standing beside his creation when she walked into the room, and when, with
her talent for making a craftsman proud, she began her kindness that was
continued in later years, during her many visits to the roof-garden Mr Bowen created.
He says, unpretentiously, ‘Oh, I got on with her from the word “go”.’
This
splendid celebration in sugar was Trevor Bowen’s last work as a confectioner;
at the trade he had learned in Monmouth, as a boy. The next thirty-five years
were to be occupied in managing and directing every aspect of business within a
general department store; but he never forgot his craftsman’s bench, and he
never parted with the tools he had used, in the beginning. And his links with
the trade endured: he is still a member of the National Association of Master
Bakers, and for many years he has been President of the British Confectioners’ Association.
There he will always be remembered, because a Trevor Bowen Gold Medal is
presented each year to the winner of their challenge cup. The medals will be a
perpetual tribute to his name, and an amiable link between him and the master
craftsmen of the future.
* *
*
By
1922, Trevor Bowen had been with John Barker & Co. for eight years, during
which he had built up the Food Section into one of the biggest and most
efficient retail organizations in the country. The experience gained at Cadby
Hall, and in the feeding of thousands of troops during the war, had been turned
to good account in the first years of peace; and Bowen’s customers now included
not only the regular shoppers in Kensington, but also many hotels, clubs and
schools throughout the country.
The
chairman, Sir Sydney Skinner, had often announced his intention ‘to bring into
the business younger men’ who had ‘proved themselves capable administrators in
the various departments over which they have had control’, and in April 1922 he
rewarded Trevor Bowen by making him a departmental director. As such, he had no
direct say in the policy of the company, but at least he was nearer to the
state of ‘power’ which had been his ambition for so long.
* *
*
Before
Trevor Bowen’s next promotion, there were two more important national events in
which Barkers were partly concerned. The first was another royal marriage that
of the parents of our present sovereign. On April 26th, 1923, when the Duke of
York married Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at Westminster Abbey, Barkers celebrated
the occasion by organizing a ‘Royal Wedding Week’: the store was brilliantly
illuminated and decorated, and customers to the restaurant were presented,
free, with a souvenir menu, printed in silver, and illustrated with photographs
of the bride and bridegroom, sentimentally entwined with cupids and little
silver bells. The ‘Royal Wedding Luncheon’ at Barkers began with ‘Glamis Castle
Cocktail’, and continued through ‘Consommé à la Prince Albert’, ‘Fillet of Sole
à la Duke of York’ and ‘Lamb Sweetbreads Strathmore’, to a choice of ‘Peaches Ã
la Royale’ or ‘Meringue Elizabeth’ all served, including coffee, for the modest
price of three shillings and Sixpence!
The
second national event was the British Empire Exhibition, at Wembley, which was
opened by King George V on April 23rd, 1924 – when, by touching a button, he
flashed the gallant message around the globe in the incredible time of 1 minute
20 seconds. The Exhibition, as the King said, revealed ‘the whole Empire in
little’: within the 220 acres of ground on the outskirts of London was
represented ‘a vivid model of the architecture, art, and industry’ of all the
races then under the British flag. During two years, over twenty-seven million
people visited this vast festival of Imperialism; to gaze at the domes and
minarets of the Indian pavilion, modelled on the Taj Mahal, the pagodas of the
Burmese pavilion, and all the wonderful variety of life and labour in the four
corners of the world, from Zanzibar to Newfoundland, Jamaica to Hong Kong. They
could visit the rodeo, complete with bucking bronchos, or listen to a choir of
10,000 voices, reading from 20 tons of sheet music; they could see
sheep-shearing from Australia, the Prince of Wales, sculpted life-size, in
butter, from Canada, or the biggest cheeses in the world, from New Zealand.
The
British Empire is now a commonwealth, and all that remains of the Exhibition at
Wembley is the vast concrete stadium, built to hold more than 100,000 people,
into which the crowds surge to see the Cup Final and other big sporting events.
Pessimists might think over the fact that many of the countries which were content,
a generation ago, to be included in the British net – India, Ceylon and Burma –
are now caught up in the illusion of national freedom. But what King George V said
was wise, in its time: he said that he hoped the Exhibition would ‘enable us to
take stock of the resources, actual and potential, of the Empire as a whole’;
that we should consider where these resources existed, and how they could ‘best
be developed and utilized’. Those were the tranquil years between wars and
there was wisdom in his hope, that the countries of his Empire would ‘take
counsel together’ as to how ‘the peoples’ might ‘co-operate to supply one
another’s needs’.
The
Great Exhibition of 1851 had been an appeal to Europe, and America, to settle
some of the world’s differences in peaceful trade and husbandry. The 1924 Exhibition
was designed as a purely British celebration, each country bringing its
produce, its manufacturers, and its separate character, within its own
pavilion. It marked an important new phase in commerce between the British
family of nations, and enlightened merchants were quick to realize the virtues
of trading within the Empire, especially with Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Trevor Bowen was among the first of these: he bought up stocks of 'all the
choice foods the public had seen at Wembley; and later, in May 1929, he
organized his own exhibition of produce from the dominions and colonies, in the
Display Hall at Barkers.
It
is a pity that Trevor Bowen has never kept diaries to help his biographer; but
he has a fortunate interest in collecting photographs, many of which have been
preserved. One of these indicates that he has been a good showman, as well as a
good shop-keeper: it is of the two great monoliths of New Zealand cheese – each
weighing one ton – which he bought at Wembley, and transported on a
flag-bedecked open van (maximum speed 12 m.p.h.) through the ten miles of
street to Kensington; to Barkers, where they were set up, and eventually cut,
to make thousands of British families aware of the merits of ‘buying Empire’.
* *
*
On
April 17th, 1925, at the annual general meeting in Kensington Town Hall,
Opposite Barkers, Sir Sydney Skinner recommended to the shareholders that
Trevor Bowen should become a director of the company. Only three years had
passed since he was appointed a departmental director: now, at last, the door
of the board room was to be opened to him, he was to be admitted into the sanctum
of the policy-makers; to enjoy the comfort of thick carpets and deep leather
chairs, and the amiable midday habit of a glass of sherry, which he still likes
to share with his visitors and friends.
Sir
Sydney Skinner said that Trevor Bowen possessed ‘exceptional qualifications’ – especially
for the running of the Zeeta Company’s business, which Barkers were then
proposing to acquire. When his appointment to the Board was approved, Bowen
thanked the shareholders for their ‘confidence and trust’ in him, and then he
made his pledge: he said, ‘I have a great belief in the future, and, in my
opinion, we have not yet anywhere reached the height of prosperity which I
hope, as a young member of the board, to have some share in making.’
As
a director, Trevor Bowen was able to enjoy himself a little more. Soon after
his appointment, in the summer of 1925, he made a pleasant motor journey to the
vineyards of France, Spain and Portugal, with the wine buyer of Barkers. Among his
papers is an album of photographs taken on the tour: we see him standing before
the elegant portico at Château Margaux … in the bull ring at Seville … on the
steps at Bom Jesus de Braga, which the pilgrims climb on their knees; but more
often than not we see him, glass in hand, in one or another of the famous
cellars, going through the mysterious ritual of wine-tasting.
Those
who have had the pleasure of dining with Trevor Bowen, in later years, well
appreciate his love and knowledge of good wine. Indeed, it is one of the few indulgences
he still affords – a luxury now, with prices several times what they were in
the ‘twenties, when Barkers were able to provide their customers with the best
vintage claret and burgundy at three or four shillings a bottle, and rare
brandy for half a guinea.
* *
*
Before
we resume the story of Trevor Bowen’s rise to power in the hierarchy of John
Barker & Co., it is interesting to turn over the pages of their catalogues
for these years and come on a surprising innovation –the Government’s new ‘Cash-on-Delivery’
service, through the General Post Office, and the brave way the company took
advantage of this. It was in May 1926, when Britain was almost paralysed by the
General Strike, but Barkers were undaunted: they produced an elegant ‘Post List’
and sent out a million copies, to distant householders, from John o’ Groats to
Land’s End, offering them goods at the same prices as the shopper who called
and made his purchases over the counter. Barkers paid the postage on all orders
of £1 or more.
The
‘Post List’, which now has a period look, is interesting because of the
fashions it reveals, and the prices, which have an economical charm compared with
what we pay today. Mother could order a ‘useful Shantung silk dressing-gown’ at
a cost of 23s. 9d., or the latest ‘matron’s hat’ of ‘georgette, with small cloche
brim, trimmed with osprey strands’, for 21s. 9d; father could buy one of the ‘famous
Barker lounge suits’ for 63s., or a box of 100 cigarettes for only 3s. 10d; junior
could be made thoroughly presentable in a sober three-piece suit, for 30s., and
his baby sister could be kept snug against the chills of winter in the
one-piece twill ‘Kenbar sleeping suit’, for 5s. 9d.
The
customer in some remote village could order a grand piano, for as little as 35
guineas; the best box calf shoes cost 19s. 6d., expanding all-leather suitcases
were priced at 32d. 6d., and a solid oak double-bedstead was only 42s. It seems
incredible that a 78-piece hand-painted dinner service could be bought for 59s.
6d., an electric iron for 12s. 3d, and bead shades – ‘suitable for electric pendants’
– for 2s. 11d. And you could buy five pounds of coffee for 12s. 1d., or a
bottle of Scotch whisky and a bottle of champagne, vintage 1911, for
only 20s.
Nowadays,
most people use the C.O.D. service when shopping by post: few of us care to
part with our money until the goods are actually delivered to our door; and, for
modest orders, it is a needless extravagance to go to the extra expense of
cheques and stamps. So it is easier to pay the postman, and save ourselves all
the trouble. But behind this lies a vast organization, in the General Post
Office and in the big firms. When Barkers began the service, in 1926, their
mail orders increased tenfold: a huge space, ‘as big as a town hall’, was
prepared in the basement, and an ‘army of workers’ engaged to select, pack and
dispatch the goods. It is part of the business which the customer never sees,
but it forms the very foundations of prosperity on which Barkers, Derry & Toms
and Pontings have flourished, during the past quarter of a century.
* *
*
Trevor
Bowen’s next, and penultimate, promotion came in January 1927, when he became
vice-chairman of John Barker & Co. But his ascendancy was also a somewhat
sad occasion, for he took the place of Ralph Millbourn, who had been his friend
and adviser for thirteen years.
Ralph
Millbourn was then sixty-four: he had been with Barkers for over forty years,
and he enjoyed the respect, and the affection, of all who knew him. Sir Sydney Skinner
said that he possessed ‘one of the most delightful dispositions’ he had ever
known; one of his secretaries called him ‘a perfect dear’. He was a fairly
wealthy man, yet most charitable: in 1925, he had become chairman of what is
now the Ex-Services Mental Welfare Society, and it was due both to his sound
business knowledge and his personal generosity that the Society flourished and
was able to do so much to help those, who, perhaps outwardly unhurt by the war,
had suffered strange and tormenting injuries to their minds.
In
June 1934, seven years after he had retired from Barkers to become a member of
the Stock Exchange, King George V recognized Millbourn’s public service by conferring
a knighthood upon him; and he made a brief, but very welcome return to his old
friends in the company, who gave him a banquet in the splendid new restaurant
at Derry & Toms. Though then in his seventies, he continued to lead an
active life in the City until he died on August 27th, 1942, exactly one month before
his eightieth birthday.
* *
*
Within
five years, Trevor Bowen had risen from being manager of the Food Section at
Barkers to become second-in-command of the empire which included the five big
stores in Kensington High Street, and the ever-growing chain of Zeeta shops,
scattered throughout Greater London. His appointment as vice-chairman in 1927
was at a time when great changes were coming to the world – the first
radio-telephone communication between London and New York, the first
demonstrations of television, the first ‘talking pictures’, the first non-stop solo
flight across the Atlantic … It was a new age, the age we recognize as our own;
it dawned at the very time when Trevor Bowen had become sufficiently powerful to
make his dreams into realities.
CHAPTER 7 The Years of Achievement
SIR
SYDNEY SKINNER once remarked that ‘the man who makes a fine business is nearly always
an optimist’. As he was a shining optimist himself, he began the task of
creating what might be called ‘Barkers Second Empire’ with a healthy advantage
over the pessimists who prophesied the failure of his extravagant plans. Nor,
for all his private amiability, would he tolerate those who barred his
progress, with lengthy argument or faint-hearted indecision. The story is told
of how, in 1920, during the final negotiations for the purchase of Derry & Toms,
he looked the rival lawyers in a room and refused to let them out until the
documents were signed. And in 1928, when a group of local residents assembled
to resist the closing of Ball Street, through which they had formerly enjoyed a
right of way, Sir Sydney Skinner called Trevor Bowen and, together with half a
dozen labourers, they sealed off the road with barricades. Bowen says of the
incident, ‘In spite of the row the local people made, Ball Street was closed:
it belonged to us.’
It
took three and a half years to build the new Derry & Toms, from the autumn
day in 1929, when Skinner and Bowen sat up till the early hours of the morning
drafting their first ideas on paper, to the moment, in the afternoon of March
30th, 1933, when Lady Skinner cut the broad green and gold ribbon stretched
across the main entrance, and ‘declared’ the store ‘open’.
The
architect of this splendid building, and of the modern Barkers after it, was Mr
Bernard George, F.R.I.B.A., who later became a director of the company, and who
still practises, as consultant architect to the House of Fraser, at his offices
in what was once Thackeray’s charming house in Young Street.
Barkers
have not been so ruthless as it might seem with the character of old
Kensington, and they must be thanked for caring for the lovely old brick villa,
with its robust bay windows. It was there that Thackeray went to live, in 1846,
when he was thirty-five – the year in which he established his reputation with The
Book of Snobs. In the same year he published the first of the twenty-four
numbers of Vanity Fair; and later, while he was still living in Young
Street, he wrote Pendennis and Esmond. It was there that
Charlotte Bronte went, to meet Thackeray, to whom she had dedicated the second edition
of Jane Eyre.
We
may believe that the tranquil old house exerts a quiet influence over Mr George’s
designs for his great mansions of commerce. He and Trevor Bowen planned the new
Derry & Toms ‘inch by inch’: it is their pride that, after more than a
quarter of a century, during which our ‘taste’ in' architecture has changed
considerably, the store still stands, in its class, as one of the finest in the
country.
* *
*
It
was a mystery to the cautious merchants in the City, and to the competitors of
Barkers, that they were able to spend such enormous sums of money in putting up
the new buildings in Kensington High Street – when the country was poor and
afraid, and the whole world numbed by the ‘Depression’ of the early 1930’s. The
older generation will remember the grave political crisis in the summer of 1931,
when Ramsay MacDonald went to King George V on August 22nd, to resign from the Premiership;
when he was answered with the simple, wise words, ‘I want you to stay as
trustee for the poor. You are overwrought now. Go home and go to bed. Come here
tomorrow morning ... ’ Out of that ‘Go
to bed’, and the reason that came with the morning, grew the coalition between
Ramsay MacDonald and Stanley Baldwin that saved the country.
Three
reigns, and the Second World War, have moved these events into the shadows of history;
but it is still interesting that, at a time of alarm and threat of national bankruptcy,
Barkers should have had the courage to go ahead with their building.
The
simple answer to the ‘mystery’ that baffled the City merchants was that Sir
Sydney Skinner and his colleagues on the board of directors were never dazzled by
the sunshine of prosperity: they had always kept something for the inevitable
rainy day. Their imagination had been laced with caution and, each year, since
the end of the 1914-18 war, they had set aside a considerable part of their
profits in reserve. The happy result of this prudent policy was that they were
able to finance their very ambitious plans for Derrys and Barkers entirely out
of their own resources, without having to seek any new capital.
By
the end of 1931, when the crisis had reached its peak, the new Derry & Toms
was already beginning to take its place as a landmark in the High Street. The
old slums, a picturesque but disused candle factory, and a printing works in
Burden Mews had gone, and out of the rubble of their modest history was rising
the gigantic store, eight floors high. Although trading was severely curtailed
by the progressive closing of various departments – beginning at the western
end of the store Derrys actually remained open for business throughout all but
the last two months of its construction. Then, in this incredibly short time,
the building was entirely re-equipped with new fittings and fixtures, and
stocked with the latest merchandise, before being unveiled to the public.
Another
sign of the ability of John Barker & Co. to stand on their own financial
feet was the fact that, as Sir Sydney Skinner said, ‘the work of the building
and equipping’ of Derrys was ‘carried out almost entirely’ by their ‘own organization’;
thus ‘not only effecting a considerable saving in the cost’, but allowing them ‘to
incorporate in the design and planning’ all the best features which they had
learned to appreciate from ‘personal research and past experience’.
Barkers
employed their own army of workers on the construction of the new building and,
except for the eight handsome panelled lifts, which were brought from America,
and some of the more specialized items, such as lighting, mirrors, lavatory
basins, kitchen equipment and floor coverings, practically the whole of the new
fixtures and fittings were designed by the company and produced at their own
factory in Slough. Every display counter and piece of store furniture was of
walnut, and, because of their design and quality, they have lost none of their
value with the passing of almost thirty years.
One
of Trevor Bowen’s maxims is, ‘When things are bad, push the business harder
than ever.’ Throughout the building of Derrys, Barkers kept up a strong
advertising campaign, when most other companies were pruning their expenses to
the utmost.[27]
In January 1933, when the finishing touches were being made to the main
structure, whole-page advertisements appeared in the national press, inviting
the public to Derry’s ‘Great Re-Organization Sale’. Everything had to be
cleared, before the formidable task of refitting the interior could begin. On
Wednesday, February 1st, customers were advised that there were ‘Only Three and
a Half Days More’ before the store would close:
“On
Saturday next, February 4th, at one o’clock the beautiful doors of Derrys will
close just for a short time so that the final work of creating the New Derrys
can begin within.
So
the day has come when we must say to you,
‘Please,
for a while, stay away from Derrys.’
Then
soon … the doors will open again and reveal
the
New Derrys ... a New Derrys and a new beauty.
While
we have been building we have carried on, we trust, without bringing undue
inconvenience to you. There was little interruption of that service which had developed
through 71 years.
But
now tremendous tasks are before us … An army of experts comes in with one o’clock
on Saturday … artists to do amazing things with modern lights … people to lay
miles and miles of deep-piled carpets … workers with wood and glass and metal. Many
things there are to be done, but there are many to do them – so it won’t be
long.
When
the work is done we shall say to you, ‘Come back again’ – to this most
beautiful, most modern of stores … to six palatial and expansive floors furnished
with lavish care a Store Restaurant, most interesting, most inviting of
its kind in Europe … a Store that will be at once a shopping place and a
meeting place for those who, in London, carefully seek out the best.
There
will be vast new stocks of merchandise. These have been planned to be the most
complete and the most interesting that anyone concerned with Fashion could ask
of the great new Store of London.
We
make bold to say the New Derrys will be the most fascinating Store in
London. We shall wait expectantly to say to you in March, ‘Come inside’,
so that you may judge yourself how successful we have been.”
It
was a bold stroke to close the store – possibly unprecedented in shop-keeping. Few
businesses can afford even the loss of a day or two of trading, and Derrys was
to be closed for almost eight weeks. But the promotion campaign continued,
relentlessly, while the workers toiled behind locked doors.
Then,
at last, the opening date was announced, with a flourish of headlines in the
newspapers. The whole of the front page of the Daily Mail for March 25th
was taken up with an impressive drawing of the main entrance and the notice
that the new Derry & Toms ‘A Beautiful Store to Sell Beautiful Things’ – would
re-open the following Thursday, March 30th, at half past two in the afternoon.
It
was a splendid occasion; an early spring day, with confidence in the air.
Exactly two months before, Adolf Hitler had become Chancellor of Germany, but
there was no notion that the time would come when his bombs would fall on
Kensington. The High Street had a gala look and shoppers came in thousands, to
stare at the most modern store in Europe.
Within
the building, some two hundred and fifty guests sat down to a banquet of Scotch
salmon and crown roast of lamb, with all the trimmings, in the magnificent Rainbow
Restaurant on the fifth floor. There were the rival store chiefs, come to
appraise – perhaps with envy. They included Gordon Selfridge, Sir Woodman
Burbidge, Austin Reed and Eric Gamage. At the top table were the V.I.P.s who
represented the success of their time. One reads through the list and comes on
the names of Sir Gomer Berry (now Viscount Kemsley), Viscount Astor, Lord
Hollenden and Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett. There was also Sir William Davison (the
late Lord Broughshane), who was then Member of Parliament for Kensington
(South), and who rose at the end of luncheon to propose the toast – ‘The
Directors of Derry & Toms’.
Then,
after amiable exchanges of congratulation – in which Sir Sydney Skinner paid
especial tribute to Trevor Bowen and Bernard George, for their ‘untiring spirit
of energy throughout the whole of the operations’ – the distinguished company
descended to the main entrance, which was banked with white heather, to watch
Lady Skinner perform the opening ceremony. The crowds in the High Street were
so big that the police had difficulty in controlling them; and when the great
doors were opened, the thousands of shoppers and sightseers surged all over the
building, causing such a jam on the ground floor that it was almost impossible
to move.
But
the trouble and confusion were signs of success. Five days before, the
advertisements had said, ‘Now the task is done. With confidence we wait
expectantly for a great reward.’ The reward came quickly, in the trust of the
public and the enthusiasm of the daily press and trade journals. The Times
remarked on the ‘spacious and beautiful building … the result of a dignified
meeting of modern and traditional ideas’, which had opened ‘under the happiest
auspices’; the Daily Telegraph praised the craftsmen, ‘who may be justly
proud of their work’; the Daily Mail thought it a ‘dream palace’; and
the Daily Mirror observed that, ‘while the premises are luxurious’, the
prices were graded ‘to come within the reach of depleted purses’. The Drapers’
Record wrote that ‘The new Derrys’ would ‘rank among the show places of the
metropolis’; the Hairdressers’ Weekly Journal praised the ‘perfect
craftsmanship’ and ‘modern precision of the hairdressing and manicure
departments, and also the ‘staff of smiling girls’ who attended upon the
customers; and the New York Women’s Wear Daily considered that the store
was ‘the best conceived retail establishment in London’, and that it was ‘attracting
much attention’ in the United States because of its ‘layout’ and the ‘avowed trading
policy behind it’.
Another,
more thoughtful article appeared in The Architect & Building News.[28] The writer began, ‘The planning
of store buildings in London is governed both by stringent regulations
and by certain agreed formulae to which architects should, and in some
cases must, conform. Most of these regulations and formulae are concerned with
the numbers and relative positions of entrances, lifts and stairs, floor
heights and spans. Beyond these matters it remains with the architect to
make either a good or mediocre building.
‘From
a first glance at the elevations of Derry & Toms new store, one is led to
expect a building of distinction. Further examination only confirms that
impression. The planning is efficient, the elevations appropriate and tasteful,
the interior finish very well detailed, restrained and coherent. The building
possesses a very definite character …’
Mr
Bernard George had every reason to be pleased with the results of his work. He
had set a new standard of design which was soon followed by other West End department
stores. He had been trained in a newer and more enlightened school of
architecture than either his predecessor or those who had been responsible for
the other big ‘emporia’ in London: he had fought against the ‘stringent
regulations’ which hitherto demanded that stores should be divided by thick
partition walls; and he rebelled against the neo-Victorian embellishments which
characterized even Ladymere, built but seven years previously on the north of
Kensington High Street. The new Derrys had to be modern-ultra-modern: Sir
Sydney Skinner said that it must appeal to ‘the coming generation’, and that it
must therefore be designed for them.
It
is the measure of Mr George’s vision as an architect, and of his patient
argument with the local planning authorities, that the present generation of shoppers
are just as delighted with Derrys as their parents. His plans were bold, and
simple: the building was divided vertically by the battery of lifts between the
public and service portions of the store; customers were able to move freely along
the wide avenues between the counters, and to enjoy on each floor an
uninterrupted view of all the goods displayed; and the decoration, which was ‘concentrated
round the focal points, such as the main entrances, staircases and lifts’, was
expressed in clean lines of marble and metal, enhanced by the ‘excellent bronze
panels’ of Walter Gilbert. The lighting also attracted particular notice: the
writer in The Architect & Building News thought that ‘the use of
coloured neon tubes’ in the Rainbow Restaurant was one of the ‘best examples of
indirect lighting’ he had seen – making the ceiling ‘float overhead as though
one were inside a balloon’; and the often critical magazine was so impressed
that the editor even reproduced photographs of the men’s and ladies’ lavatories,
and asked his readers to ‘note’ the ‘excellent artificial lighting’ and the ‘special
fittings’.
Thirteen
years had passed since Trevor Bowen returned from his first visit to America,
and brought back with him the brochure on the fabulous Woolworth Building, with
the dictum of Dr Cadman that ‘The man who proposes and the architect who
designs a truly great building confer a lasting favour on the race at large.’
The new Derry & Toms could not pretend to compare with the ‘Cathedral of
Commerce’ in Manhattan; but Mr Bowen and Mr George had certainly conferred ‘a
lasting favour’ on the citizens of the Royal Borough. It was, Lord Hollenden
said, ‘a worthy neighhour to Kensington Palace’.
The
famous Derry Gardens[29] – Trevor Bowen’s favourite
brain-child – were not begun until the summer of 1936. It was a formidable and
expensive task to transform the one and a quarter acres of barren roof-top into
one of the most enchanting gardens in London. The total cost was about £25,000:
more than 500 varieties of trees and shrubs were planted, and the late Ralph Hancock,
the landscape architect, even brought some special stone, for the alpine
plants, from the mountains of Pennsylvania, because it was considered the ‘best
suited to withstand the London atmosphere’.
The
gardens reveal Trevor Bowen’s character and talents perhaps more than any other
feature of his realistic enterprise. He loves the gardens: he watched them
being built; he suggested, and criticized, and today, after twenty years, he
likes to walk there, high in the sun, with the satisfied smile of a creator. He
is also a shrewd businessman, and he saw the possibilities of attracting thousands
of people to ascend, to the Spanish Garden, the Tudor Garden, and the English
Water Garden: they could not very well make the pilgrimage without pausing, at
one of the floors, to buy something on the way. But his purpose was not
entirely mercenary, and the money from the tickets has gone to charities.
Though the gardens are open only in the summer months, from May to September,
Trevor Bowen is able to say, with pride, that his idea has produced more than
£120,000 for London’s hospitals.
It
became Trevor Bowen’s pleasure to show distinguished visitors over his ‘garden
in the sky’. He recently presented to Kensington’s Central Library two handsomely
bound volumes which would be the envy of the most persistent autograph hunter:
in them are inscribed the names of hundreds of celebrities who have come either
to see the wonderful display of flowers, or to preside over the various ‘hospital
weeks’. The list would indeed satisfy Thackeray, who wrote his Book of Snobs
so near by. After Queen Mary and the members of our royal family, whom we have
already mentioned, in the first chapter, came a stream of foreign princes,
noble ladies, and artists – King Haakon and Prince Olaf of Norway, Queen Marie
of Yugoslavia, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, the Duchesses of
Marlborough, Devonshire and Richmond; and a, host of great actors and
actresses, including Dame Marie Tempest, Dame Irene Vanbrugh, Sir John Gielgud,
Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Leslie Howard, Ruth Draper, Sir George Robey, Elizabeth
Bergner, Alice Delysia and Ivor Novello. Many of them came during the war, when
the gardens were also used to entertain parties of our allies from overseas;
when they made a pleasant retreat from the clamour and destruction which
menaced London in the dangerous years.
* *
*
While
the Derry Gardens were being made, Trevor Bowen busied himself with the second
half of the great road-widening scheme – the rebuilding of Barkers. Once again,
Mr Bernard George was the architect, and together they made their plans to
transform John Barker’s Victorian shops into another splendid store that would
change both the map and the skyline of Kensington.
An
aerial photograph[30] taken in September 1935
shows how the new Derrys had been set back in line with Pontings, leaving
Barkers to create a bottleneck in the High Street. Two bridges – like the
covered gangways to ships – can also be seen, linking the old shops with the
new household and administrative block that had replaced the antiquated
properties on the south side of Ball Street. This block now forms an integral
part of the main Barker building: on to it was built the magnificent frontage
that we know today, with the twin towers that rise 150 feet above the pavement;
and on each of which stands a huge flagstaff, 50 feet high, surmounted by a lighted
beacon.
The
rebuilding was planned in three stages, beginning at the western end, by King
Street – which we know now as Derry Street. By April 1936, Sir Sydney Skinner
was able to report to the shareholders that all was going well. He began his
annual speech by referring to the ‘irreparable loss’ of King George V, whose
death in January had plunged half the world into mourning. Then, turning to the
‘purpose of the meeting’, he spoke of his ‘feelings’ in ‘witnessing the
demolition of the first section of the Barker block of buildings’: their
disappearance ‘marked an epoch in the company’s history’, and in his own
career, for he had worked in them for almost half a century. But he was ‘happy’
to say that the work was proceeding ‘without any setback, and in accordance
with the well-thought-out plans and provisions for the scheme’.
At
first, the facade of the old shop-fronts was left standing, and the windows
kept dressed to attract the public eye, while the work of construction was
carried on behind; but at last, on August 1st, 1937, they too began to crash to
the ground, which was then cleared back to the building line. By October 25th,
the ground floor of the new western section was open for business; and during
the Saturday afternoons and Sundays of the next five week-ends, ‘the whole
organization’ of the centre section was moved by the staff, so that the
builders could begin immediately on the second stage of the plan.
It
was Sir Sydney Skinner’s custom, year after year, to pay a formal tribute to
his staff. But this time, in reviewing the events of 1937, his praise was
particularly generous. He referred to the ‘happy touch of esprit de corps’
and the ‘willing spirit of service’ that had prevailed – ‘in many cases, at
personal sacrifice’ – amongst their thousands of employees during the constant
disruption of the company’s business. Many of them had given up their leisure
and stayed on, after the doors were closed, to help move the stock and
furnishings and executive offices from one section to the other, and it was a ‘remarkable
achievement’ that all this was managed ‘without closing a single department
during trading hours, and without the loss of one hour of the usual trading
times’.
Sir
Sydney Skinner also paid a further tribute to Bernard George, for designing ‘an
outstanding and really fine building’. Once again, after long and patient argument
with the planning authorities, Mr George had been able to gain their reluctant
approval for many innovations. To overcome the need in the public half of the
vast building for heavy supporting walls, which would obviously spoil his plans
for an uninterrupted view from end to end of each floor, he placed his ‘dividing’
wall as far forward as possible. At street level, the space between this wall
and the front of the building was used for a splendid shop-window arcade which
runs the length of the store and which is comfortably warmed in winter, and
above, on either side of the centre section, twin staircases rise to the full
height of the building. These staircases are required, by regulation, in case
of emergency: otherwise, they are seldom used by customers, who are provided
with a ‘battery of lifts’, between the public and service portions of the
store, and also by a very efficient two-way escalator system, placed in the
middle of the centre section. This was an especial triumph for Mr George, who
resisted the ‘official’ Opinion that the escalators should be enclosed, as they
are at underground stations: the shoppers at Barkers are able to ascend or descend,
with ease and safety, from one floor to the next, and at the same time to enjoy
a panoramic view of all the departments – which is good salesmanship just as
much as good service.
* *
*
On
October 27th, 1938, Queen Mary paid a private visit to the completed part of
the new Barkers, to see an exhibition of ‘Peace Commemoration China’. Trevor Bowen
showed her round, and she bought several pieces, each of which had a signed
photograph of Mr Neville Chamberlain incorporated in the design.
Only
four weeks before, the Prime Minister had completed his talks with Hitler in
Munich and returned to No. 10 Downing Street, where an almost delirious crowd cheered
as he waved the piece of paper which he hoped would guarantee ‘peace for our
time’.
Queen
Mary’s gesture, in buying the ‘Peace’ china, symbolized the enormous sense of
relief which was felt by the whole nation, that war had apparently been averted.
But the dark clouds came back again, and wiser Britons soon realized that it
was little use trying to shield themselves beneath Mr Chamberlain’s umbrella. In
April 1939 – two months after the builders had pulled down the old shop-fronts
in the centre of Barkers – Sir Sydney Skinner warned the shareholders that the coming
year was ‘likely to be as difficult’ as any they had faced in the company’s
history. There were still, he said, ‘so many people about’ who were ‘promising
better times’; but he gave his ‘judgment nevertheless’.
The
chairman’s ‘judgment’ proved to be right. The tragic events in the summer of 1939
moved quickly towards their climax, on September 3rd. For Sir Sydney Skinner
and Trevor Bowen, this meant an abrupt halt to their grand scheme for Barkers:
two-thirds of the modern store were finished; but the eastern section, which
had been put up after the 1912 fire, was to wait sixteen years before the
builders were allowed to return and finish their job. In the meantime, the vast
organizatlon of the company had to be switched over, suddenly, to meet the
strict economies and security regulations imposed by Whitehall, and to
withstand almost six years of war.
CHAPTER 8 Barkers at War
IN
October 1870, when John Barker opened his first drapery shops in Kensington
High Street, the Franco-Prussian War was already over: in less than three
months, the French had been defeated and their Emperor humiliated. But the
conflict had no more than a remote effect upon the British people, who began to
realize that they need no longer fear their traditional enemy across the
Channel, but rather that they should beware of the growing might of the new
Germany. Otherwise, they went peacefully about their business: the hansom cabs
and horse-buses bowled amiably along the gas-lit streets, the shops were
crammed with good food and fine clothes, and nothing disturbed the insular conviction
that, however much foreigners might fight among themselves, no harm would ever
come to the island kingdom.
Seventy
years later, the first German bomb fell on the Barker group of stores. During
an air-raid on the night of June 15th, 1940, a 250-pounder crashed on to the
roof-garden of Derry & Toms, fell down one of the main front staircases,
and burst on the fourth floor. John Barker’s old shops would undoubtedly have
been smashed into pieces by such an explosion; but the sturdy new building
withstood the blast, though the stock and fittings were badly damaged.
The
day before the bomb fell, the Germans had entered Paris; eleven days before,
the weary Allied army had made its heroic escape from Dunkirk; the ‘Battle of Britain’
was still to come, and the threat of invasion hung over the land like a cloud
of impending evil. But Mr Churchill was Prime Minister, and Britain thrived on the
example of his courage and on his brave challenge ‘We shall fight on the
beaches, in the fields, in the streets and in the hills. We shall never
surrender.’
* *
*
It
seems hard to realize that there is already a generation, grown to manhood, to
whom ‘Hitler’s war’ is a remote adventure, told in the pages of history books.
For those who are older, the Second World War is still all too real: many, like
Trevor Bowen, saw their houses razed to the ground, and their possessions
devastated; and all who lived in London endured countless nights of anxious wakefulness,
as German bombers roared overhead.
The
great campaigns of 1939-45 have been described many times, and war stories have
come into favour, as historical dramas on the cinema screen. But the less spectacular,
though no less valiant, epic of the civilian population during those years is
seldom told, and, indeed, is almost forgotten. By size alone, the staff of an
organization like Barkers amounted to the strength of a brigade, and the
commanders of this small army of civilians had to exercise just as much ‘generalship’
as those, in uniform, who were responsible for supplying and feeding the fighting
soldier.
In
June 1940, Trevor Bowen’s ‘generalship’ was recognized by his appointment as a
Deputy Lieutenant for the County of London. From then, also, he assumed command
of the Barker empire, as illness forced Sir Sydney Skinner to retire to his
home in Sussex. At the same time Trevor Bowen was made a Justice of the Peace; and
he combined these varied duties with his responsibilities as governor of two
London hospitals, and of the Borough Polytechnic – his ‘old school’ in
Southwark. Lastly, he was active in his support of the 162nd (City of London)
Anti-Aircraft Battery – better known as the ‘Barker Battery’.
Within
the chronology of this book, the story of the ‘Barker Battery’ might have been
mentioned earlier, since it was raised in 1925. But it belongs, in spirit and importance,
to this chapter, as part of the bigger story of the nation at war.
Today,
when our minds dwell so perilously near the brink of war, the Territorial Army
commands the energetic support of all patriotic citizens: it is highly trained
and disciplined, and ready to fight in an emergency. But in 1925, when most
people were confident that war could ‘never happen again’, there was little public
or parliamentary enthusiasm for maintaining a reserve of part-time soldiers. It
is therefore remarkable that Barkers should have encouraged the formation of a battery
of artillery, almost entirely from their own employees.
Sir
Sydney Skinner and Trevor Bowen share the credit for this imaginative
enterprise: Mr Bowen, especially, saw the Battery not merely as part of the
nation’s defences, but also as an organized way of encouraging amiable
comradeship among the male members of the staff, in rivalry with other
Territorial units, and in the robust sporting and social life that soldiers
enjoy. The training included a fortnight in camp at the seaside – ‘a holiday in
itself’, as the recruiting posters proclaimed and a certain number of drills
throughout the year. The firm gave full pay for three weeks holiday to their
draper-gunners, married men were paid an additional allowance, and all regular
members of the Battery received an annual bounty.
One
of the founders of the Battery, Lieut.-Colonel F. M. Garnham, O.B.E., T.D.,
then a young subaltern, has recalled the circumstances of their formation, as
part of the 54th Anti-Aircraft Brigade (later Regiment). At seven o’clock in
the evening of April 8th, 1925, he went with two fellow Territorial officers,
Major G. J. Freshwater, and Captain J. W. Perring (who later commanded the
Regiment), to the famous old Drill Hall in Lytton Grove, Putney, where they
opened a special recruiting station for the new Battery. By midnight, five
hours later, forty-eight volunteers from the staff of John Barker & Co. had
been sworn in, and N.C.O.s were chosen from those who had served in the Great
War.
An
amusing story is told of the early days, when a sergeant-instructor was heard
to address a gunner he was teaching as ‘Sir’. After the parade, an officer
asked the instructor to explain this most unmilitary deference, and was told
that the humble gunner was head of a department at Barkers, whereas the
sergeant merely served behind a counter.
The
‘Barker Battery’ grew in strength, slowly but surely. During the first summer,
they took a gun down to the firm’s annual sports at Southfields, where Trevor Bowen
made one of his ‘stirring recruiting speeches’ that did so much to foster pride
in their private army. This esprit de corps was especially marked at the
time of the General Strike, in May 1926, when many more of the staff at Barkers
and Derrys and Pontings joined their friends in the Battery, which was then
employed as part of the Civil Constabulary Reserve. They were billeted in the
Drill Hall at Lytton Grove, and they spent their leisure playing 100-a-side
rugger on Wimbledon Common; but their purpose was resolutely demonstrated by
the sturdy truncheons they carried on parade, and by their energetic training
as ‘shock troops’ in the case of serious riots.
Happily,
the Battery was soon able to return to its proper task, as part of the
Territorial Army. Many of their former members recall, with pleasure, the
annual summer camps by the sea: their cookhouse, under the gastronomic
leadership of Sgt. Hodge, the head baker at Barkers, was the envy of all other
units; and during the years before the Second World War, they gained many honours,
both on the firing range and the sports field, winning the Brigade Shooting Cup
four times, and the Sports Shield six times. They were particularly fortunate in
having an ‘outstanding track athlete’ in B.S.M. Middleton, and their officers
must have been made of stern stuff too, for in the All-Ranks Medley Race they were
never beaten.
In
June 1938, the firm was praised by the Minister of War, Mr Leslie Hore-Belisha,
for their ‘exceptionally fine and successful work’ in maintaining the Battery
and raising it to its maximum strength, of some 200 officers, N.C.O.s and men.
Most of them were employees of the company, or their friends, and they enjoyed
equal opportunity to rise to commissioned rank within the Battery. Indeed, on
the outbreak of war, many of them were immediately advanced in rank and posted to
responsible positions in other units, to help train the hastily mobilized
civilian army; and some were decorated for their leadership and their valour.
In
August 1938, when they were commanded by Major (later Lieut.-Colonel) R. A.
Sparks, a team from the 162nd and its sister-batteries in the 54th
Anti-Aircraft Regiment ‘created military history’ by shooting down the first
towed target, three miles away, with one of the new 3.7-inch guns. The team, in
camp at Weybourne on the Norfolk coast, had
been given only two hours’ instruction on the new gun, and they delighted the
distinguished group of observers, which included the G.O.C.-in-C., by hitting
the target with four of the first five rounds, and then with the sixth, which
cut the tow line and sent the target crashing into the sea.
The
‘Barker Battery’ was proud to be considered as the ‘Guards’ of the
anti-aircraft units in the Territorial Army. They were often chosen to try out
new equipment, and their success with the 3.7-inch gun proved that men could become
quickly proficient in its use. Today, their good shooting may look pale beside
the electronic accuracy of guided missiles; but the newspapers of twenty-odd
years ago praised them for their ‘feat’ and their ‘triumph’.
At the
time of the Munich crisis, in September 1938, the Battery took its guns to the
sports ground at Eltham, in readiness against a surprise German onslaught; but while
the statesmen bargained over the fate of Europe, the only attack on London came
from the storm clouds which rained so heavily and for so long that the medical officer
ordered a special rum ration to be ‘dispensed’ to all ranks.
But
the long years of training were not wasted: in September 1939, when the uneasy
peace that had smouldered since Munich burst into war, the ‘Barker Battery’ was
ready to meet the challenge of the enemy. At first, they were employed on
various gun-sites about London – Bostall Heath, Woolwich, Mitcham and Wormwood Scrubs,
among others. In May 1940, under the command of Major Garnham, they were
mobilized to join the British Expeditionary Force; but with the collapse of
France they were sent instead to Coventry, where they remained until July. Then
back to London, to Wormwood Scrubs again, and Richmond Park. It was at
Richmond, on August 27th, 1940, that they got their first ‘kill’ – a Heinkel
III – which was also the first enemy plane to be destroyed by anti-aircraft
fire at night. Eleven days later they shot down a Junkers 88. The Germans retaliated
by strafing their gun-sites with high explosive and oil bombs, one of which – when
they had moved to Hayes Common – fell only a few yards from the command post;
and on a ‘bad April night’ in 1941, the Battery was ‘treated’ to a torrent of
about a thousand incendiaries (they picked up 400 next morning) and thirty high
explosive bombs; but no one was killed in these raids and the only casualty was
an N.C.O., who was hit in the leg.
In
July 1941, the ‘Barker Battery’ left the 54th Regiment to become part of the
newly formed 127th Regiment. They were then commanded by Major (later Lieut.-Colonel)
N. F. Godfrey, T.D., who had originally joined them as a gunner. The Battery
was stationed first near Weybridge, then at Windsor, and finally at Chatham, where
they received orders to ‘proceed overseas’. They mobilized at Ramillies
Barracks, Aldershot – ‘the first gunner unit to do so’ – where they were issued
with tropical kit, and embarked for service in Kenya. They arrived at Mombasa
early in June 1942, where they were inspected a few days later by the Duke of
Gloucester.
Up
to this time, they were still ‘very much’ the ‘Barker Battery’. A member of the
firm who served with them recalls that new recruits were ‘given the gen’ on the
‘Barker tradition’, and that they continued to enjoy the friendly patronage of
the directors and staff of the company. Even after they went to Kenya, the
parcels of ‘comforts’ still came out regularly from the stores in Kensington;
but by the end of the war in the Middle East, few of the Barker gunners
remained together. By then, the Battery had been Africanized, split in two, and
re-designated, as the 151st and 152nd Anti-Aircraft Batteries of the East
African Artillery; and they had moved to Madagascar. They stayed there,
defending the anchorage at Diego Suarez, long enough to take part in a victory parade
to celebrate the relief of Paris, in August 1944, and to see the island handed
back to the Free French, before returning to Mombasa.
The
subsequent history of these African batteries has no place in our story. By the
end of the European war, the original members of the ‘Barker Battery’ were
widely scattered. Some liked Kenya so much that they settled there; some
soldiered on with other regiments in other parts of the world; and some
returned to their peaceful occupations behind their desks and counters in
Kensington High Street. But all must regret the passing of what was surely a
unique military formation. Before leaving England, in 1942, they had received a
nice compliment from their Brigade Commander, who said to Major Godfrey, ‘I
have been told that I am losing my most efficient battery. I believe it.’ Major
Godfrey believed it also: he has said, ‘I have no doubt that there was a spirit
of loyalty and tradition in the Battery that made it far superior to any other
unit in the Command. I am sure that they were determined not to be beaten. I
was very proud of them.’
For
one last compliment to the ‘Barker Battery’, we might turn to that
distinguished gunner, General Sir Frederick Pile, who was G.O.C.-in-C. of
Anti-Aircraft Command during the war. He wrote to Trevor Bowen, on November 30th,
1944:
“My
mind goes back to the days before the war, when we were having the greatest
difficulty in persuading anybody that a war was likely, and that, in any case,
we needed to ensure that our A.A. Defence was good. We were, as you know, short
of equipment, but much more short of personnel.
It
therefore gives me great pleasure to remind you of how your firm came to the
rescue and produced the personnel to man an A.A. Battery; personnel of such
high class that the great majority are today among the commissioned ranks. I am
sure it is a record of which you and your colleagues will be proud.”
* *
*
Almost
six hundred employees of John Barker & Co. enlisted in the armed forces
during the war. Those that remained had to carry on the business under very difficult
conditions; and nearly all of them undertook some work of national service in
addition to fulfilling their duties to the company.
Few
records have been kept for the war years, and at this distance of time memories
have become rather dim as to exactly how the staff was organized to cope with
the constant danger of attacks by enemy bombers. But it is certain that
sixty-six men and women were on duty as fire-watchers each night; and that
during the daytime, when there was the greater risk of thousands of shoppers being
killed or injured by a direct hit, some two hundred of the staff were always
ready, in the five big stores, to assume their special duties, as air-raid
wardens, firemen, first-aid and rescue squads, while others were trained as decontamination
squads, in case the enemy used poison gas.
Happily,
this last evil was never dared, but air-raids became a common peril, especially
during the blitz in the autumn of 1940 and the spring of 1941, and in
the last year of the war, when Hitler’s ‘secret weapons’, the flying bombs,
were launched against London. As soon as the sirens wailed their dismal
warnings, the shoppers within Barkers, Derrys and Pontings, and in the two
stores across the High Street, became the care of the company. What had been a
busy shop one minute, became an alert fortress the next: the front doors of the
buildings were closed, the first-aid and fire-fighting squads put on their uniforms
or distinguishing armlets and reported to their posts, while the wardens
shepherded the customers and assistants down the staircases into the basements,
which had been converted into blast-proof shelters. The lifts were closed; all
steam and heat was turned off, the boilers were shut down, and all lights on
the upper floors were extinguished, to lessen the risk of fire. A team of Red Cross
nurses stood by in case there were serious casualties, and a number of the
company’s vans were kept ready, to be used as ambulances, to take injured
persons to hospital.
At
first, when one lone, unidentified plane was enough to startle the defenders of
London into action, the air-raid alerts often lasted only a few minutes, and
the wardens and fire-watchers hardly had time to take up their positions before
the ‘All Clear’ sounded. But experience prepared Londoners for the real horror
when it came: they had become used to the prospect of sudden death when the
Battle of Britain began, in August 1940. On some days, the men and women on
duty spent most of the time at their posts, while the others remained in the
shelters; and once, when the enemy attacks were unusually savage, the stores
were open for only three-quarters of an hour during all the working day.
The
company was fortunate to include on its staff several ‘old soldiers’ whose
valour had been proved in the First World War. Among them was Lieut.-Colonel George
Thomas Dorrell, who, when a battery sergeant-major with the famous ‘L’ Battery,
Royal Horse Artillery, had been one of the first soldiers to be awarded the Victoria Cross in 1914: at
Nery, on September 1st, when all his officers had been killed or wounded, and
in spite of concentrated enemy fire, he continued to serve the only active gun
until the last round of ammunition had been used. At Barkers, in 1939, Colonel
Dorrell was in charge of the roof-spotters who scanned the skies for possible
German bombers. There was also Mr A. W. Whitlock, who gained the Military Cross
with the Royal Fusiliers, and who, after the Munich crisis, had planned the
detailed defensive precautions for the five stores; and Mr H. W. Wedlock, who
won the Distinguished Conduct Medal as a company sergeant-major with the Royal
Warwickshire Regiment, and who was appointed Chief Warden of John Barker &
Co. on the outbreak of war.
Mr
Wedlock – described by Trevor Bowen as a ‘damn fine chap who did a magnificent
job’ – recalls many of the raids on Kensington: the ‘complete loss’ of the staff
canteen in the rear of No. 2 Kensington Square, and the destruction of the
company’s new fleet of electric-powered vans – bought in anticipation of the
petrol shortage, the direct hit on the furniture depository in Adam & Eve
Mews, which burned so fiercely that bundles of spoons and forks melted and
fused together into solid lumps of metal, and the ‘constant annoyance’ of the
windows being blown in. Once, on a Sunday morning, after a bomb had fallen in
Hornton Street near by, the fire-watchers coming on duty at Barkers found several
windows smashed and ‘so much mess around’ that they spent most of the day
clearing up the glass and making temporary wooden shutters – ‘only for another bomb
to fall in the vicinity that Sunday night and blow the shutters in again’.
The
‘worst night of all’ was April 16th, 1941, when a stick of four bombs fell
across the High Street and Kensington Square. One of them, a 1000-pounder,
crashed through the roof of Derry & Toms – in almost the same position as
the 250-pounder of the year before – and broke in half on the fourth floor.
Five hundred German bombers were over London that night: more than two thousand
people were killed and over three thousand seriously injured. Vast stone
buildings staggered and cracked under the impact of the bombs, while little
dwellings crumbled into ruins, and the sky glowed scarlet from countless fires.
The
bomb that fell on Derry & Toms mercifully failed to explode, otherwise the
whole store would have been destroyed; but it caused a dangerous blaze on the
fourth floor. The company’s own team of fire-fighters managed to save the splendid
building, but much of the department was badly damaged and had to remain closed
until the end of the war.
The
raid in April 1941 also holds an amusing memory for Mr Wedlock: it was the
first time he saw Trevor Bowen ‘ordered’ into the shelters. With the stubborn independence
of his native Monmouthshire, Trevor Bowen was watching the disposal squad
remove the third bomb of the stick, which had fallen in the garden of No. 32
Kensington Square, and which, like the others, had failed to explode. But, suddenly,
it began to tick, and the command was shouted – ‘Take cover!’ Moments later,
another voice was heard – ‘Come along Mr Bowen, that means even you!’
Mr
Wedlock says of this incident, ‘I suppose this was one of the very few
occasions when the chief had to take orders – the others being when, with
bombers overhead and anti-aircraft guns blazing, he had to be told, “Come in
off that roof!”, or, “Come in out of Derry Street!”
At
one time, nearly a thousand people were sleeping in the shelters under the various
Barker buildings. The numbers, set down quietly in an old record, seem incredible
now: of the thousand, no less than three hundred and twenty were members of the
staff and their families, whose homes had been destroyed. Trevor Bowen was
among them, with his wife and daughter: their house on Putney Hill had been
almost demolished by a bomb on the night of February 20th, 1944, and it was a
miracle that they escaped. They were taking cover in the reinforced billiards
room – the only part of the house that withstood the terrible explosion – when
the bomb crashed upon them.
It
is a virtue of the British that, in retrospect, they can make light of the
drudgery and unpleasantness of those years, and yet remember, with exaggerated
nostalgia, the trivial moments of pleasure. Mr Wedlock recalls how ‘happy’ they
were in the shelters with, as he says, ‘everyone talking to each other as one
does when there’s a war on’. From four o’clock in the evening, ‘when the first
arrivals took up their allotted positions’, until lights-out at eleven, the
hours were spent ‘like in one large family’: the piano was ‘always in use’, and
sometimes leading singers came to take part in organized concerts. The
fire-watchers also had their share of the fun – ‘when things were quiet’. At
their own club in Kensington Square, competitions in snooker ‘caused so much
excitement’ that ‘personnel stayed behind of an evening to watch the games,
although they were not on duty’.
Trevor
Bowen lived in the basement shelter of Derry & Toms for several months: it
became his home, his office, and his headquarters. Even after the war, he
continued to work there – for fourteen years, until early in 1959, when he
moved to his present offices on the fourth floor. He had almost an affection
for the place, with its solid, managing director’s mahogany furniture, its comfortable
leather chairs, and red Turkey carpets. Those rooms, in the deep earth of
Kensington, on which the light of day never shone, have now made way for the
staircase which has opened up the basement from the centre of the ground floor
of Derrys. And with them has gone the last souvenir of wartime – a shabby,
dusty old ‘tin hat’, which used to sit on the top of a high wardrobe in Trevor
Bowen’s office. He had worn it, night after night, during the raids, as he
commanded his army of shop-assistants, in serving a cause far beyond their ordinary
daily tasks.
* *
*
It
was a proud realization, to Trevor Bowen and his colleagues, when the war was
over, that not one customer was even injured on the company’s premises. The one
and only casualty was a fire-watcher, who was killed when the furniture
depository was destroyed. A more personal loss for Trevor Bowen was the death
of Sir Sydney Skinner, at the age of seventy-six. He had been ill for many
months at his home in Forest Row, where Trevor Bowen often visited him in the
lulls between the bombing. He died in hospital at East Grinstead, on March 3rd,
1941.
To
his staff, Sir Sydney Skinner had become in later years a somewhat remote and
austere being. To Trevor Bowen, he was a ‘devoted and lovable personal friend’.
He wrote of him, a few days after his death, ‘I have been in close daily touch
with Sir Sydney for twenty years … In my business relationship I owe him a debt
I can never repay. He was an outstanding figure in the distributive retail
trade of the country. His knowledge of the trade itself was, I might say,
encyclopaedic; there were few things he did not know; and this knowledge, this
experience, he was ever ready to share with me. I never went to him on any
subject, small or large, but he was at once at my service, not simply as a
teacher, but as a guide, philosopher and friend. It is as a friend, too, that I
shall ever remember him. Socially, he was a great character; a good companion;
a stout friend in all things and at all times …’
As
a draper, Sir Sydney Skinner always had the good sense to give his subordinates
a free hand in those other sections of the business in which they were experts.
But he had a remarkable vision of the whole field of retail trading. As early
as 1932 he had said,[31] ‘As I see customers of the
future, perhaps only a little later than our own day, they will land in
Kensington by air, both in public and private airplanes. You may ask where they
will park. Possibly on the great roof of these premises, as they will be then.
It may be that we, or those who come after us in the control of this firm, will
have to build our own air-plane park. You may smile, but Kensington, more than any
other part of London, is continually transforming – all the time improving.’
In
1932, aircraft were still enough of a curiosity to make us stare into the skies
at the sound of their engines; in 1941, when Sir Sydney Skinner died, we hid in
fear of German bombers, or watched cautiously as the Spitfires and Hurricanes
fought their brave combats. Today, we have ceased to wonder as jet planes split
the silence among the clouds, and helicopters whirl their way between airport
and terminal. Sir Sydney’s prophecy is very near fulfilment, and it may be that
Mr Hugh Fraser, the present head of the empire of stores in Kensington, will be
the first to build the Barker ‘airplane park’, where customers will be able to
land, not only from other parts of this country, but on private shopping
expeditions and ‘sales excursions’ from the towns and cities of Western Europe.
* *
*
At
the annual general meeting on April 9th, 1941, Trevor Bowen made his first
speech as chairman of John Barker & Co. Then, and during the succeeding war
years, he had to remind the shareholders of the ‘many difficulties and trading
problems’ which faced the company – the ‘curtailment of shopping hours
resulting from “black-out” conditions’ … the burdens of ‘clothes rationing by
the coupon 'system’ and of ‘points rationing for foods’ … the ‘complicated
classification of utility goods, with prices fixed at a level’ which barely
covered expenses. He had to speak of the ‘constant flow of control orders from
the various Ministries’, of ‘drastic packing and transport restrictions’, and
of the ‘increasing shortage of staff by reason of war service’, and he also had
to remind them that eight acres of valuable floor space had been requisitioned
as Government offices. All these problems imposed almost a ‘breaking strain’
upon their efforts to manage the business.
For
all the mounting restrictions and regulations, the long extra hours of civil
defence duty, and the ever-present fear of disaster from the air, the ‘breaking’
point never came – as far as the business was concerned. In the language of
dull figures, trading was ‘satisfactory’, and the average annual net profit for
the years 1939-44 was maintained at about a third of a million pounds. This was
due to two reasons – complimentary to each other: big stocks had been acquired
in the months immediately before the war, and Barkers were able to pay for
everything ‘on the nail’. As Sir Sydney Skinner once said, ‘ “Barkers always
pay cash” is a slogan that has brought hundreds of manufacturers to their
service.’ This had been their policy since the beginning; and because they were
able to order huge quantities, and pay for them, whether it was 50 miles of
cloth or 5000 electric fires – they could obtain goods quickly and cheaply, and
pass the benefit on to their customers.
Another
example of this prudent policy, and one for which Mr Bernard George was mainly
responsible, was the purchase of practically all the plate glass in London. At
one time or another, most of the acres of glass in the display windows of the
stores were shattered by the blast of high explosive and flying bombs. It
became necessary, therefore, to introduce light sections of sheet glass inside
the window frames, as these would yield to blast, and, even if broken, could be
easily and cheaply replaced. Meanwhile, the valuable stock of plate glass was
stored in safety, in the country, waiting until the war was over. Then Barkers
were able to steal a long march over their rivals by completely refitting their
windows with permanent glazing, at a time when these big sheets of plate glass
were otherwise unobtainable.
By
April 1945, when the end of the European war was in sight, the trading
community were able to look more hopefully towards their future. The position
of John Barker & Co. was undoubtedly better than that of many other stores,
which had been destroyed; but their stocks by then had become dangerously low,
and the ‘main problem’, as Trevor Bowen said, would centre ‘not around the
question of selling goods, but that of the grave difficulty of replacing
dwindling supplies’. The manufacturers were hamstrung by ‘reason of shortage of
labour and raw materials’, and it was essential that the restrictions should be
lifted as soon as possible, both for the economy of the country and the morale
of the nation. After five and a half years of ‘make do and mend’, the British
people needed to have ‘a good conceit of themselves’, and this could only be
achieved by the ‘stimulus and satisfaction’ of being able to buy new clothes.
Mr
Bowen added, ‘Clearly the authorities owe a duty to the trading community, and
should expedite the release of raw materials and essential labour, if the needs
of the home market are to be met and the hoped-for recovery of our export trade
set going.’
The
British public, even those too young to have experienced the terrors of ‘Hitler’s
war’, well know how long it was before they were allowed to enjoy that ‘good conceit
of themselves’, by buying what they wished, without the shackles of rationing.
But, at first, the privations were forgotten in the celebrations of May 8th,
1945. As the bells rang out over London, the vast, happy crowds swarmed into
the centre of the capital: they moved towards St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey,
to give thanks for peace; towards No. 10 Downing Street, in the hope of seeing
the architect of their victory; and towards Buckingham Palace, where they
called for the King and Queen who had shared the long, weary years of fear.
On
that same day, Trevor Bowen put ‘Thanksgiving’ notices in the national
newspapers, to express, on behalf of his colleagues and staff in the Barker
empire, their tribute – ‘To all those gallant people in London and throughout
the Realm, to whom we have been proud to render service during the dark days
now behind us: our praise for their steadfastness: our thanks for their loyalty
… and our hopes that we may play our part with them in furthering the greater
happiness of mankind.’
The
war was won: the black-out curtains were ripped down from the windows, and the
shop lights shone out again, towards a tranquil sky. But there was another, different
battle still to be fought; the long struggle against austerity, controls and
shabbiness, in an effort to ‘win the peace’.
CHAPTER 9 ‘Operation Bottleneck’
WHEN
the First World War ended, in 1918, the merchants and shop-keepers of Britain
were free to build up their trade by their own initiative and endeavour. In 1945,
and for long after the Second World War, they were obliged to squander much of
their time and energy in trying to break free from the strangle-hold of bureaucracy.
The industrious fared no better than the indolent, and all were bogged down in
the morass that the civil servant loves; the official orders, counter orders,
and amendments to orders, which flowed from Whitehall. In August 1945, Sir
Winston Churchill had told the new Government, ‘What we desire is freedom: what
we need is abundance’; but, as he reminded us recently,[32] ‘It took more than six years
before the country could be persuaded to reject the fallacies of Socialist doctrine,
and to try instead the method of setting the people free.’
The
fortunes of John Barker & Co. had to suffer during these six years – with
constant protests from Trevor Bowen – just as much as any other big private
enterprise. It was true that the sales in 1945 made a net profit of nearly a
million pounds – ‘a record in the history of the company’ – and in the next
year they made almost a million and a quarter, but this was mainly due to the ‘long
pent-up spending desire of the public’ at the end of the war. Then followed a
dull season of frustration, during which restrictions and difficulties
continued to multiply.
At
the company’s fifty-fourth annual general meeting, in April 1947, Trevor Bowen
displayed to the shareholders a big bundle of Government forms and orders,
which he denounced as a ‘brake on the nation’. Then he said, of the continued
imposition of price controls, ‘Organizations like our own, which have by
competitive trading been largely responsible for the increase in salaries and
wages, have also by keen competition succeeded in lowering prices and
maintaining them at the lowest possible level. Yet it appears that the
authorities continue to be doubtful of the safeguard of competition. Price
control operates inequitably in that it authorizes a common price for merchandise,
irrespective of the quality of the goods and the cost of production. The better
organized factory and distributor, able to sell in the cheaper market, find
themselves controlled by the producer and distributor whose costs are much
higher.’
Then,
this bitter complaint. Trevor Bowen said, ‘It is not inappropriate to refer, at
a time when the Government watchword is “production”, to the distinctly unproductive
character of the work which falls to a considerable number of our staff. The
expense involved in the collection of various Government duties, such as
pay-as-you-earn taxation, purchase tax, rationing, National Health and
Unemployment Insurance, the cutting, collecting and counting of coupons – all
this is paid for by your company. Not only is it an activity which should be shouldered
by the State, but it affords an example of diversion of manpower to duties
which are utterly unprofitable to your company.’
One
small, cheerful piece of news for the shareholders was that Barkers had
acquired, by share control, the century-old drapery business of Gosling &
Sons, in the centre of Richmond – a venture which, like the Zeeta shops, was to
become a valuable trading asset to the company. But Trevor Bowen was still
thwarted in his great design for Kensington High Street: he said, ‘I have longed
to see the magnificent sweep of our Barker shops completed, but judging by the
present conditions, there is no prospect in the near future of this being done.’
Meanwhile, the costs 'of labour and building materials were increasing out of
all proportion to the original estimates. The completion of the eastern wing of
Barkers was now likely to cost about a million pounds – almost as much as had
been spent before the war on both the new Derrys and the western and central
sections of Barkers – and the company was obliged to provide for this vast sum
by setting aside a considerable part of their annual profits as a ‘building and
modernization reserve’.
Under
the signature of ‘Observer’, a writer in The Financial Times[33] urged other company
directors to follow Trevor Bowen’s example ‘and speak out with equal firmness
against the hampering and wasteful effects of Socialist form-filling and
Crippsian controls’. It was to be a long crusade; and even when the Socialists
went out of office, in October 1951, the trading community was still well out
of reach of the ‘freedom’ and ‘abundance’ of which Sir Winston Churchill had
spoken six years before. One step in the right direction had been the abolition
of clothing coupons, in 1948, which led to the release of a large number of
workers into more productive employment, and the chance, for the first time in
almost ten years, for the housewife to ‘replenish her sadly depleted stock of
household linen without detriment to her wardrobe’. But rationing, by coupons,
was not the only restraint on spending. The enormous rise in the cost of raw
materials, and thus in consumer prices, obliged the careful shopper to search
her purse and wonder if she could afford to buy the tempting clothes and
household goods, released from control. After years of discipline forced on her
by the Government, she now had to practise economy through private necessity
rather than because of the law. In April 1951, Trevor Bowen complained that the
‘wholesale prices of basic materials’ had ‘risen by 83 per cent in eight months’,
and even such simple items as paper and string – big quantities of which were
used for the packing of parcels – had doubled in cost since the end of the war.
In
spite of the dismal prospect, of rising prices, and crippling taxation, which
took almost 60 per cent of the company’s net profit, Trevor Bowen remained an
optimist, and he kept his eyes open for any chance to expand the great Barker
empire. In July 1951 he almost acquired control of the huge Selfridge emporium
in Oxford Street, but he was ‘pipped at the post’ by his friendly rival, Lord Woolton,
the head of Lewis’s Trust.[34] So he looked further afield,
and during his annual summer holiday at Eastbourne he noticed a bombed site at
the corner of Terminus Road and Seaside Road which seemed perfect for an
immense new store. Bowen had always liked Eastbourne, he thought it ‘a very
progressive town’, and was impressed because it was kept ‘so clean and tidy’.
Also, in view of the Socialist Government’s shaky financial policy, he thought
it ‘preferable to invest some of the company’s money in property rather than in
market securities’. So the site was bought, and within two years the splendid new
store, with thirty departments, was rising out of the rubble of the war.
Barkers
of Eastbourne cost nearly a quarter of a million pounds to build and equip. The
store was opened on September 10th, 1953, by Mrs Bowen, in a pleasant little
ceremony – one of the few occasions on which she publicly shared her husband’s
enthusiasm for the vast enterprise he ruled so long. There was a reception,
then a ‘grand luncheon’ in the restaurant, attended by a hundred and seventy
guests, while outside a large crowd of shoppers waited for the doors to open.
The Mayor laughingly said that he had heard that ‘Barkers were coming to
Eastbourne’, but it seemed that ‘Eastbourne had come to Barkers’. It was, as
Trevor Bowen recalled, ‘a remarkable day’ and ‘a happy augury of things to come’.
* *
*
While
the sun shone on Eastbourne, the gloomy clouds still hung over Kensington. In
April 1954, Trevor Bowen told the shareholders, ‘The position as regards the
completion of our rebuilding scheme remains unchanged. Application has been made
on a number of occasions for the necessary licences to enable us to complete,
but without success. This, to my mind, is frustration of the first order,
especially so in view of the fact that the dangerous road block in Kensington
High Street, and the need to widen the street, made the whole of our rebuilding
scheme so vitally necessary some thirty years ago. The road block still
remains; traffic has increased, and the block is surely much more dangerous now
than then. I may add that I believe the police authorities definitely hold this
view, but the Ministry remains unmoved …’
The
fight to remove the bottleneck in the High Street had become Trevor Bowen’s
private war. In 1951 he had advertised his irritation, and his rebellious
spirit, by displaying on the remains of the old Barker building a giant poster,
52 feet deep, with the warning, SAFETY FIRST. Until the Barker
Widening Scheme is completed, this crossing is DANGEROUS; and beneath, a
simple map explaining how the road would be improved when the last of the old
shop-fronts were removed and rebuilt in line with the completed parts of
Barkers, and when the broad pavement could safely be set back along the entire length
of the store.
‘Operation
Bottleneck’, as the long campaign came to be called, also involved some
protracted legal arguments over Kensington Square. The greater part of the
Square is owned by Barkers, and for several years Trevor Bowen tried to induce
the Town Planning Authority to approve of first one scheme, then another, to
construct a courtyard, either through their property on the north side of the
Square, or off Young Street. This would not only relieve the traffic
Congestion, but would also allow the familiar Barker vans to have their own
separate receiving dock, without adding to the confusion in Derry Street.
There
are some people who like to say that ‘Barkers ruined Kensington Square’. This
is far from true, and without the prosperity that these big stores have
brought, this neighbourhood would doubtless have deteriorated, as other
graceful squares and terraces in the Royal Borough have done. It is sometimes
forgotten that Barkers pay most of the cost of maintaining the beautiful Square
gardens; yet their staff who live in the various houses are not allowed to
enjoy them.
The
rights and wrongs of the problem will probably be argued for many years to
come: Trevor Bowen, at least, ‘never lost any sleep over it’. Nor was he
perturbed at the outcry in the more sentimental journals when the Minister of
Town and Country Planning eventually approved a plan to demolish a stabling
annexe in Young Street, in the rear of Thackeray’s house, so that the Barker
receiving dock could be built. He regarded the verdict merely as a minor
conquest: the main objective, the treacherous bottleneck, was still held by the
forces of bureaucracy.
At
last, as in most battles fought by fearless commanders, the day of victory
came. And with a touch of chivalry that dispelled all rancour, Trevor Bowen invited
his Opponents to share the celebration of peace. On April 15th, 1955 – more
than fifteen years after the builders had been obliged to quit when their work
was only two-thirds finished – a new Minister of Transport, Mr John
Boyd-Carpenter, swung a ceremonial pick-axe and ‘dislodged’ the first brick of
the last of Sir John Barker’s old shops.
The
sun did indeed shine on Kensington High Street that morning. For Trevor Bowen,
the presence of the Minister with his pick-axe, standing on a specially erected
platform on the roof of the building, was the symbol of his own victory, the
symbol of the ambitious dream he had cherished for half his lifetime, ever
since he first saw the mighty skyline of Manhattan. He was so excited that when
he prepared to follow Mr Boyd-Carpenter’s example, with a sledge-hammer, he
swung it in a wide arc, so violently, that he almost hit Lady Petrie, the Mayor
of Kensington, on the head. Lady Petrie stepped back just in time to avoid a
hefty blow from the seventy-six-year-old chairman, who then sent several bricks
crashing on to the platform.
It
was a happy, if anxious moment; and when all the ‘brick dropping’ was done, the
company of dignitaries, and the gentlemen of the Press, toasted the launching
of the million-pound building scheme, within a marquee which had been rigged on
the roof. The Minister, who had once ‘lived round the corner’, and had suffered
like other citizens of Kensington from the ‘crowded traffic’, said that he was ‘very
glad’ to be present and to ‘see work started in a spot’ which would ‘help to
ease traffic congestion in London’, and Lady Petrie paid Trevor Bowen a
particular compliment by christening him ‘Mr Kensington’.
Trevor
Bowen reckoned that it would take two and a half years to complete the
extension to the modern Barkers, and to see the end of what The Times admitted
was ‘one of the worst bottlenecks in London’. He was not far off the mark, for
the building was actually finished and the entire store open for business on
September 29th, 1958, by which time he had handed over control of the company
to Mr Hugh Fraser. Before this, however, there was one more important event,
which Trevor Bowen described as ‘a tribute to all those responsible for the success
of the Barker organization’.
At
eleven in the morning of Monday, December 3rd, 1956, a distinguished company
met in the sub-basement of Barkers, to watch the chairman’s daughter, Miss Dorothy
Bowen, dedicate a steel casket ‘to Posterity’. Inside the casket were scrolls,
plans of the building, coin of the realm, newspapers and magazines, film of the
Derry Gardens and various records connected with the firm’s long history of
achievement. A cavity had been prepared in the foundations of the new building,
and into this the casket, hermetically sealed, was placed, after which the
sealing stone was raised by a special crane, and Miss Bowen spread the mortar
with her ceremonial trowel and tapped the stone into position with her ceremonial
mallet.
It
is hoped that the casket will not be disturbed for many hundreds of years.
Whether Barkers, or even ‘Posterity’, will survive until, say, the year 2500,
none can prophesy, but perhaps one day, a few centuries hence, the casket will
be opened by another adventurous young man, come south to conquer London. If
so, he may be amused to read the ancient mid-twentieth-century records and
newspapers; but he will surely be especially impressed by one object in the
steel casket – a photograph of Trevor Bowen, taken in his seventy-ninth year,
which shows his sturdy square jaw, sticking out as defiantly as it did when he
first set out over the hills of his native Monmouth, as a young confectioner in
search of power.
One
gossip columnist described Trevor Bowen as ‘a bit of a Napoleon’. He would not
deny this, for he admits that he ‘loves battling’. And even now, he still
enjoys a brief skirmish. Without this tenacity, and will to have his own way,
he might still be decorating cakes in some small county town: as it is, he has
helped to make John Barker & Co. into one of the biggest and most powerful
groups of department stores in the world.
CHAPTER 10 Behind the Scenes
IN
some ways, the organization of a big department store is like that of a
military service – even in peace time: only a proportion of its members are
visibly engaged in action; while behind extends a vast administrative network,
responsible for the operational efficiency of those in the front line.
Outside
the store, we look at the attractive window displays: they have been designed
and dressed by skilled teams of artists, who are already thinking up new ideas for
tomorrow. We enter the departments: they have been swept and polished by a
platoon of charladies, long before most of us were awake; and the lighting, and
the pleasant air that we breathe, are controlled by a squad of engineers and
electricians, from the depths of the building. We make a small purchase, by
cash: at Barkers and Pontings, our money is paid direct to a cashier, within
her enclosed desk, or into a cash register; but at Derrys it is sealed, with
the bill, into a little cylinder, and then whisked away through steel pipes to
the ‘tube room’, where the sale is recorded by hidden cashiers who send the
receipt and our change hurtling back through the pipes on their return journey.
We make a bigger purchase, perhaps by cheque – something to be delivered to our
door: again, both bill and cheque are first cleared by cashiers; then the goods
are sent to the dispatch section in the basement of Derrys, where a company of
men and women are busy sorting, packing and labelling parcels, ready either to
be loaded on one of the fleet of vans, for delivery in London and the Home
Counties, or to be sent by post or carrier to any part of the kingdom and overseas.
The
public sees almost nothing of this side of the business; but the organization
that they take for granted is fascinating in its details. It is part of the
talent of great store men such as Trevor Bowen and Hugh Fraser that they can provide
millions of customers with the same personal service as ‘the little shop around
the corner’, and yet offer the widest range of goods, within comfortable
surroundings. It is shopping made easy; and the fact that Barkers have never
needed to join in the cut-price war with the big chain stores is proved by the
figures of their enormous annual turnover.
One
of Trevor Bowen’s favourite dictums to his staff is, ‘The customer is not an
interruption of our work: he is the purpose of it.’ Serving this ‘purpose’,
some four thousand men and women are employed in the Barker group of stores in
Kensington; and of these, about fifteen hundred are behind the scenes.
It
is a pity that Barkers do not organize ‘conducted tours’ of their stores. Other
people’s jobs are always interesting, and it would help the customer –
especially the tiresome one – to appreciate the very complicated machinery
behind the simple act of buying something over the shop counter. Those who have
enjoyed the rather exhausting privilege of being shown round the shops will
have realized the vastness of their ramifications. If Trevor Bowen has been
their guide, the experience was certainly enlivened by his personal knowledge
of every change and improvement during almost half a century. The stores have
been his kingdom for so long that, even in retirement, he seems lost when he is
away from them. The touch of dedication in his belief in Barkers has led to
mutual respect, and often affection, between himself and those who helped to
build up the fortunes of the company. Even now, with his failing eyesight,
Trevor Bowen walks about the miles of sub-terranean passages, sure of each
obstacle or hazard in the way; and although he may not instantly identify a
face, he seldom hesitates to recognize a voice, and he responds to all the
smiling greetings with, ‘Well, young man …’ or ‘Hullo, little girl, how are you
getting on?’
We
might begin our conducted tour with a visit to the power house, tunnelled
beneath what were once the little domestic gardens of Ball Street. It seems as
if we are in the engine-room of a gigantic ocean liner, with a maze of steel
companion-ways, huge oil-fired boilers glowing almost white hot, and great
throbbing turbines. This is the source of all the heat and much of the light
for the five big stores; and water too, for here are the deep artesian wells
which give life to the beautiful Derry gardens, high up in the sky. About 2500
tons of fuel oil are devoured by the boilers each year – enough to take a
fair-sized ship all the way to Japan and back again; and the total consumption
of electricity would be sufficient for a town about the size of Lewes, or
Berwick-upon-Tweed.
The
chief engineer, Mr J. W. Laver, and his assistant, have spent many years of
their lives at sea; they still talk like sailors, and their responsibilities in
this land-locked engine-room are similar to those they learned when they were
afloat. Their ‘passengers’ are the customers, for whom they must provide a
comfortable, smooth-running service – lifts, escalators, lighting, ventilation;
their ‘cargo’ is the perishable food – meat, fish, vegetables, fruit and so on
– which must be kept at the right temperatures, so that it will reach the
customer in prime condition. It is a constant, watchful task, day and night, as
any failure in the machinery might end in the loss of thousands of pounds to
the company.
From
the depths of the power house, we walk through the labyrinth of underground
passages that are still reinforced to give shelter against the wickedness of
any future enemy, as they were against the bombs of the Luftwaffe. We pass a
huge refrigerating plant that serves the cold storage chambers of the Barker
Food Hall, then into the air-conditioned warehouses in which are stored the
reserves of the groceries required to feed between ten and fifteen thousand
families each week, as well as to provide for the staff canteens and the three public
restaurants, in Barkers, Derrys and Pontings. Close by are the service lifts,
with easy access to the receiving dock in the rear of Barkers, off Young
Street, where early in the morning, the vans bring their loads of meat, fish
and fresh produce direct from the great markets of Smithfield, Billingsgate and
Covent Garden.
In one
direction, the tunnels lead us north, beneath the rumbling traffic of the High
Street, into the Barker furniture store and thence to Ladymere. Westwards, we come
into the rear of Derrys basement, and the warren of big caged storerooms that
make up the general dispatch section – the central clearing house for almost
all the merchandise sold by the Barker shops. Whether we have ordered a watch
or a refrigerator, a pair of shoes or a lawn-mower – all come here, to be
packed and labelled, before being sent to their destinations. Some of the
crates bear stencilled names of places as far away as Leningrad, Teheran,
Karachi and Colombo. We glance at the alien addresses and realize that the
Barker stores belong to all the world.
During
the hours when most people like to do their shopping, the dispatch section is
fairly tranquil, and the packers seem able to go about their work at a measured
pace. But this is merely the calm after the storm, which begins each morning at
eight o’clock. Then, and for the next two hours, there is feverish activity as
masses of foodstuffs arrive to be sorted, and then loaded, with the parcels of
the previous day, into the ‘skips’ – larger wicker baskets – which are taken up
by porters in service lifts to the waiting vans in the Derry loading dock. At
the same time, a staff of women in the records office are busy entering the
last items on the delivery sheets – the names and addresses of customers,
whether the goods have been paid for, or are C.O.D., and so on; and when all is
ready, the drivers check their respective sheets against the parcels to be
stacked in their vans, and set off on their rounds.
The
transport manager of Barkers, Mr C. H. Turner, is proud of his big fleet of
smart vans. Some of these cover a hundred miles a day, and deliver up to two
hundred parcels to different addresses. The drivers have a well-earned
reputation for getting the job done, whatever the weather. During the heavy
snows of February 1947, a customer in the Maidenhead area wrote to Trevor Bowen
to say that ‘for two weeks the Barkers man’ had been ‘the only one to get
through’. In isolated parts of the country, the ‘Barkers man’ is a friend to be
welcomed on each visit: he is a diplomat as well as a driver, and he helps to maintain
the personal relationship between customer and store.
Before
the First World War, the company’s vans were drawn by some of the finest horses
in London, many of which won prizes at the annual Easter show in Regent’s Park.
But these proud animals had to make way for the solid-tyred motor van, and for
the electric-powered vehicle – the use of which was pioneered by Barkers and by
1920, the last horses had been put out to grass.
Today,
the company possesses about 100 vans, and they have their own garage and
maintenance workshops in Pembroke Road, Earls Court – adjoining the Barker Removal
Depositories – about a mile from the stores. The vehicles return there, at the
end of each run, to be serviced for the next day, and a team of skilled mechanics
is always ready to cope with faults and repairs.
The
high standard which Barkers demand of their transport fleet is reflected in
their record for safe driving. Several of the carmen have been with the firm
for more than a quarter of a century, and all take pride in the smart
appearance of their vehicles, and in guarding their reputation on the roads. To
encourage them in this, there is an annual ceremony at which the chairman
presents ‘Safety First’ awards to those who have driven ‘throughout the year
without an accident due to their own negligence’. In Trevor Bowen’s time, and
since, the presentation has always been followed by a jolly party; and the
relationship that has endured between management, men, and union, is one that
other big private firms might envy.
* *
*
For
the second stage of our conducted tour behind the scenes, we might take a ride
in one of the service lifts of Derrys, up to the fifth floor, and into the vast
kitchens which serve the Rainbow Restaurant. Though they are hidden from the
customer’s view, they are kept as spotless and shining as on the day when the
new Derrys was opened, more than twenty years ago; and the staff of chefs in
their high starched hats, and the waitresses in their crisp white aprons, all
help to underline the fact as in the restaurants at Barkers and Pontings – that
the company insists on the highest standards of cleanliness. Much of the
cooking is by steam-heat, piped up from the boilers in the basement; and the
food, which is freshly prepared each morning, must pass the critical test of being
eaten by the managers and directors, most of whom take their lunch in the
public room.
At
Derrys alone, about 10,000 meals are served to customers each week, and the
splendid restaurant and adjoining banqueting rooms are frequently used for special
functions and parties. It was here, early in 1959, that Trevor Bowen was given
a grand reception by the staff of all the Barker stores, soon after his
eightieth birthday, and presented with a handsome gold hunter watch, with a
chiming device which enables him to hear the time, without needing to see the
hands – a sensitive gesture to a man who was losing the use of his eyes.
Continuing
our journey, we go down to the fourth floor. Here, behind the big furniture
department, is the administrative heart of Derrys – the post and correspondence
rooms, the remittance office and the counting house – all dealing with the
various aspects of customers’ accounts and orders. Here too are the workrooms
where skilled needlewomen are busy making alterations to coats and skirts and
dresses. This is still an important side of the business, for though the
size-ranges nowadays are so comprehensive that most women can expect to buy clothes
that fit perfectly, any minor adjustments can be made on the premises.
At
Pontings and Barkers, the pattern of administration is very like that of
Derrys, so that there is little point in tracing similar journeys behind the
scenes in these other two great stores. But there is one more adventure to be
made – across Young Street, into the cool vaults of the Barker wine cellars.
For a moment, we can forget the hustle of the High Street, and imagine that we
are in a lodge at Oporto, or beneath one of the great châteaux of Burgundy. Fat
casks of wine, shipped direct from the sunny vineyards of Europe, lie waiting
to be drawn and bottled, and then put down to sleep again in the huge honeycomb
of racks, until the day when they will be decanted into shining glass, sniffed,
raised to the light, savoured and enjoyed.
The
cellars at Barkers can hold about sixty thousand bottles – not perhaps so large
a stock as that carried by many merchants who trade solely in wines and spirits;
but certainly a very valuable asset as one of the departments of a general
store whose main business is drapery! As Barkers not only ship most of their
wine themselves, and bottle it on the premises, they are able to save the high
costs of the middleman, and so pass on the benefit to their customers.
The
thoughtful connoisseur can discover every wine to grace his table – rare claret
and burgundy, fine hock and port of the great pre-war vintages. But this
amiable indulgence is no longer confined to the rich, and there is a wide
selection of pleasing wines to suit the modest purse; from Italy, Spain,
Portugal and Yugoslavia, as well as from the better-known vineyards of France
and Germany. All find a place in the cellars off Young Street, waiting for our
delight.
* *
*
Another
elaborate and expensive backroom activity, of which we are reminded every day,
is advertising, for which each of the Barker stores has its own responsibility,
though they are co-ordinated by a central policy.
Trevor
Bowen said that ‘the best advertisement is a woman’s tongue’. There is a lot of
truth in this, as the growth of any business, however worthy, largely depends upon
the free publicity of satisfied Customers. But paid, space advertising, in the
newspapers, is still the usual medium of sales promotion, and the only
effective way of reaching potential customers in distant parts of the country.
The
technique of advertising differs little from store to store: the purpose is to
encourage shoppers – to inspect the latest collection of an international
fashion designer, to see a new stock of carpets, just arrived from Persia, an
exhibition of Chinese tableware, a display of exclusive furnishing fabrics, or
to invite them to sample the dishes at a Commonwealth food fair. Once we have
been induced to step inside the store, there are few of us who do not stay to
buy something, though it may be a different article from what we came to see.
Most of us yield easily to the temptation to spend, and it is the advertising manager’s
art that he should direct the spending, to our mutual benefit.
With
the advent of the sales, the advertising campaign is intensified, to attract
not only the millions of people who live in or near London, but also those for whom
the journey may be tiring and expensive. In this, Barkers have been especially
enterprising, for they were the first big ‘West End’ store to arrange for sales
excursions, by train, to the capital. The credit for this bright innovation is
shared by Trevor Bowen, and the story is worth recording.
The
first suggestion came early in 1955, not from Barkers, but from the Assistant
District Commercial Manager at Ipswich station, Mr S. Benson Beevers, who was
responsible for the development of passenger travel in Essex and Suffolk. He had
brought a large party of visitors to the Ideal Homes Exhibition at Olympia,
and, as he had already seen the Exhibition himself, he wandered off towards the
Kensington Central Library, to pursue his private passion for clocks and
watches. It was then that he saw that the High Street Underground station lay
in the centre of the Barker group of stores. So, he thought, why not run
special excursions direct to the shops, particularly at sale time?
Mr
Benson Beevers ‘met with little success in talking to various members of the
staff at Barkers’: he was told that the only person who could give a decision
was the chairman, who was probably ‘far too busy’ to see him. But he
persevered: he discovered Trevor Bowen’s office in the basement of Derrys, and
then bearded him as he returned from lunch. Mr Bowen at once ‘grasped the idea’
of the sales trains, but asked what extra concessions should be made to ensure
that the passengers would stay to buy the goods in his shops. ‘How about a free
tea voucher, worth say two shillings and sixpence?’ suggested Mr Benson
Beevers. ‘We’ll make it four bob,’ answered Trevor Bowen, ‘then they can have a
free lunch.’
So
the ‘Sales Specials’ were born, beginning with trains from Mr Benson Beevers’s
own district of East Anglia, and then extending to other regions of the
country. The parties are accompanied by Barkers representatives, who present
each visitor with a large envelope containing a selection of sales catalogues
and the free meal voucher, which may be used at any of the main restaurants, in
Derrys, Barkers or Pontings. The idea was startling at first, it took a little
while to catch on, but it is now a popular and well-established part of the
Kensington scene, as the ladies – and even some husbands – swarm up the steps
of the Underground and into the big stores, in search of ‘bargains’. And it is
good business too, for they usually come again.
* *
*
There
is one office behind the scenes at Barkers that few customers would wish to
enter – except out of curiosity. It is known by the sinister initials, ‘S.S.’,
which stands for Store Security, and its work is mainly concerned with those
who indulge in the gentle art of shop-lifting.
Every
large store employs a few private detectives, but we must remember that all the
floor managers and their assistants also keep their eyes open for any attempt
at stealing. The few detectives usually concentrate on a particular department
where losses have been reported, or on a suspected shop-lifter, but they can be
summoned immediately to any other part of Barkers, Derrys or Pontings, by a
calling system of coloured lights.
In
practice, shop-lifters are not ‘apprehended’ on the premises: they are not
stopped until they have actually left the store, so that there can be less
doubt of the intention to steal. The offender is then ‘asked to accompany’ the
store detective to the security office, and to explain the misdeed. It is the
law that a shop-lifter, like any other thief, should be brought to court; but
the decision to prosecute is left to the discretion of the owner of the stolen
goods, or the servant of the owner – in this case the chief security officer – and
at Barkers they ‘treat each case on its merits’.
Men
will not be surprised to hear that women are the more subtle at shop-lifting;
and better equipped too, as it is fairly easy to slip some small object into a
large holdall, or carrier bag, or into the sleeve of a loose-fitting coat. This
is the commonest method used by amateurs – the furtive, often clumsy, ‘snitching’
of Some trifle while the assistant’s back is turned. The professional
shop-lifter generally works as part of a team, and their well-planned thieving
is usually contrived so openly that no one realizes what is happening.
When
caught, many amateurs will excuse themselves by saying ‘I don’t know what came
over me’, or something similar. We read of such cases every day, in the newspapers.
Some are genuinely ill, but most are merely greedy. Few of those who steal from
shops are in need, and even fewer are kleptomaniacs: it is a curious side to such
people that they often intend to give away what they take, as presents to
others – especially at Christmas – and so balance their crime by the virtue of
being generous. And all seem to derive physical satisfaction from the act: the
aged, as they approach their second childhood, enjoy the same pleasure as they
once did by taking sixpence from their mother’s purse, to buy some sweets, the
adolescents experience the thrill of adventure, and usually take the adult trappings
– such as cigarettes for boys, and make-up for girls – which will make them look
big in the eyes of their companions. It is a theme for the psychiatrist to
explore, and make into a book.
Barkers
seem to be pestered less by shop-lifters than other large London stores – perhaps
because of the innate respectability of Kensington, but there is still plenty
of work for the ‘S.S.’ to do, and they must always be on the alert, for their
first purpose is to prevent theft, not merely to catch the thieves. This
applies to staff just as much as to customers, though Barkers have been
fortunate in the fact that the majority of their employees have given loyal and
honest service over many years. And it is to Trevor Bowen’s credit that he
usually gave offenders a second chance.
The
chief security officer at Barkers is naturally reluctant to discuss the cases
of shop-lifters who have been punished, and perhaps imprisoned, for their
misdeeds. But there is one story that may be told, of a little girl, aged nine,
who went with her mother to Barkers radio department, then on the fourth floor.
While they were listening to some records, the little girl-noticed a man pick
up a portable wireless set, drop it hastily into a carrier bag, and then hurry
off towards the escalator. She ran after him, jumping down the moving stairs in
her effort not to lose sight of him, and reached the ground floor just as the
man was leaving the store. Luckily, she saw an official who knew her, and she
whispered, ‘That man has just stolen a wireless set.’ The official joined in the
chase and stopped the man, who dropped the radio and then fled into the crowd,
but was caught a few minutes later. For her bright and brave act, the little
girl was then taken to the chairman’s office, where Trevor Bowen rewarded her
with a crisp five-pound note.
CHAPTER 11 The House of Fraser
BY
the spring of 1957, Trevor Bowen’s proud design was almost complete: he was
able to see the last section of the new Barkers building rising above the busy
streets of Kensington. He was then seventy-eight years old, and he felt that it
would soon be time for him to hand over to a younger man, to someone who would
keep faith with the Barker tradition, in the best interests of both customers
and shareholders.
Other
merchant princes had anticipated Trevor Bowen’s retirement, and were already
casting covetous glances at his group of stores; and when it was suspected that
he intended to withdraw from the commercial world he loved so much, there were
several offers from rivals who wished to take over the business. Of these, he
liked best the proposition of his friend, Mr Hugh Fraser, the Scottish draper
whose imagination and vigour had already exalted him in the hierarchy of the
trade.
It
has been said that the English would never have prospered if the Scots had not
come south to lead them into realistic enterprise. True or not, Hugh Fraser deserves
the compliment. He is the third of his line and name; equally proud of the
modest beginning of his firm, which was founded by his grandfather in 1849, and
of the splendid empire which he hopes will be controlled, one day, by his son,
Hugh Fraser IV, who became a director in 1957 on his twenty-first birthday.
Perhaps
‘empire’ is the wrong word, and ‘commonwealth’ the right one, to describe his
achievement; for although there are seventy-odd stores now united within the
House of Fraser, each of them has been encouraged to keep its own name, its
identity and its traditions. Barkers is still Barkers, Derrys still Derrys and
Pontings still Pontings. This willingness to allow each store to keep its
separate character is part of Hugh Fraser’s talent, just as it was part of the
policy of Trevor Bowen.
The
tree of the Fraser fortune was planted in Glasgow: in 1837, at the time of
Queen Victoria’s accession, the founder of this dynasty of drapers was a boy of
fifteen, serving his apprenticeship with the wholesale firm of Stewart &
McDonald, in Buchanan Street. The first Hugh Fraser’s early story is rather
like that of Sir John Barker: he rose, through successive promotions, to the position
of manager; but the pace was too slow for his ambitions, and when he was
refused a partnership, in 1849, he decided to leave and start his own business.
Unlike John Barker, he did not move to another district, but opened up premises
exactly opposite Stewart & McDonald, with a friend, James Arthur, a young
draper from Paisley, as his partner. The bold challenge might easily have
failed, but there is a record that the ‘popularity of young Mr Fraser’, was
Such that he ‘attracted many customers from his former firm to support him in
his new venture’.
As
the firm of Arthur & Fraser prospered, the two partners ‘reversed their
original interests’: Hugh Fraser devoted his talents to the retail drapery
trade, while James Arthur concentrated on the wholesale side of the business.
They worked thus for ten years, and then decided to part, so that each of them
could ‘pursue his special bent’. James Arthur moved to Queen Street, and Fraser
continued at No. 12 Buchanan Street, in the building that was to become, and
which remains, the head offices of the vast company of today. The shop is still
called ‘Fraser Sons’, to remind us that it is essentially a family business.
The
first Hugh Fraser died in 1877, at the early age of fifty-five, leaving the
shop to his son, a lad of sixteen. But the boy had been well trained by his
father, and he was able to widen the scope of his business to cater for a new ‘class’
of customer. For Glasgow was a prosperous place even in those days, and her industries
were capable of rapid recovery from the occasional bouts of economic depression:
the wives of the Clyde Shipwrights and dock workers who crowded the city on a
Saturday afternoon usually had plenty of money to spend on ribbons and bonnets,
just as the wives of the merchants and gentry could afford the more costly
Paris silk and Brussels lace that Mr Fraser also kept in his shop.
But
the second Hugh Fraser was not restless with ambition: he was content to enjoy
the modest rewards of being a good draper and remaining in Glasgow. Nor did he
dream that his son would one day control a vast network of stores, stretching
from the north of Scotland to the south of England. He wished only to preserve
the respectable, middle-class foundations of his family and his business; and
when he died, in 1926, Fraser Sons in Buchanan Street was still the
unpretentious shop it had been for over half a century.
Then
came dramatic changes. The third Hugh Fraser a young man of twenty-three when
he succeeded his father – was endowed with the same qualities and temperament
that had inspired his grandfather, and he immediately set about improving his
inheritance. He shares with Trevor Bowen the belief that ‘when things are bad’ one should ‘push
the business harder than ever’, and during the world-wide depression of the
early 1930’s he astonished his rivals by enlarging the shop in Buchanan Street
and occupying the adjoining and newly constructed premises on the corner of
Argyle Street. This was the beginning of his fortune, and of his power: in 1936
he took over two adjacent drapery shops in Jamaica Street – Arnott & Company,
and Robert Simpson & Sons – since merged under the name of Arnott-Simpson,
and in 1940 he acquired another business in Glasgow, known as Kings Fashions, and
also the firm of Peter Allan, his first store in Edinburgh. In the following
year, he asserted his confidence in himself and his future by naming his growing
organization ‘House of Fraser’.
In
1948, when Hugh Fraser floated his business as a public company, with an
authorized capital of one million pounds, he owned sixteen individual firms, in
Glasgow, Edinburgh, Ayr, Greenock, Perth and Stirling. His annual trading
profit, a mere £50,000 ten years before, had grown to more than £250,000. But
the House of Fraser had room for many
more adopted children under its roof, and the head of the family was especially
anxious to include some from south of the Border. He did not have to wait for
long: in 1951, he secured McDonalds – the successors to the firm where the
first Hugh Fraser had served his apprenticeship – and their branch store in Harrogate,
thus giving him his first foothold in England.
For
the next few months Hugh Fraser had to be content to expand in his native land
– in 1952 he took over control of the big Scottish Drapery Corporation, but in 1953
he became securely established in the north of England by purchasing the
ordinary shares of Binns Ltd, the famous old drapery and household firm that
had been founded in Sunderland as far back as 1783. Within the Binns group were
branches at Darlington, Middlesbrough, West Hartlepool, South Shields,
Newcastle and Carlisle – as well as two in Scotland, at Edinburgh and Dumfries.
Their acquisition brought the number of stores in the House. of Fraser up to a
grand total of forty, but their chairman’s appetite for business was still far from
satisfied. Like many an adventurous Scot before him, Hugh Fraser had set his
heart on the English capital.
The
brief, official history of the House of Fraser states that, after the purchase
of Binns Ltd, ‘a period of consolidation was then followed, during which there were
only minor additions to the group’ – a mere three stores in 1955, and only one
in 1956, all of them in Scotland. But the ‘period of consolidation’ was marked by
a substantial rise in the company’s annual trading profit, from £595,000 in 1953,
to £1,714,000 in 1956, and ever-increasing dividends for the shareholders who had
been prudent enough to put their money on Hugh Fraser. For the shrewd, energetic
Scot was no longer an outsider in the race to win the title of ‘Britain’s
Master Draper’: he had already taken many of the minor prizes, and was showing
that he had all the qualities necessary to compete with the champions.
Today,
whatever Hugh Fraser says or does is headline news. If the shares of a
particular drapery company suddenly jump up several shillings, the Press
conclude that ‘Mr Fraser must be buying’. Like Trevor Bowen, he loves power and
is prepared to battle for it: he lives up to the motto of his old school, Nil
desperandum, and is fond of remarking that ‘All is fair in love and war.’
The newspapers – not always friendly – refer to his ‘chain-smoking nervousness’
and his ‘fighting moods’, but this is merely one view, distorted by the fierce
glare of publicity, of a man who, for all his private ambitions, is devoted to
the general welfare of the drapery trade and extremely generous to its
charities. He has been President of the Scottish Drapery Association and
National President of the Buyers’ Benevolent Association, as well as three times
Appeal President of the Cottage Homes, and his sense of civic responsibility
has been recognized by his appointment as a Deputy Lieutenant and a Magistrate of
the City of Glasgow.
At
his charming house in the hills near Glasgow, Hugh Fraser likes to escape into
the quiet pleasure of family life, with his wife Katie, the daughter of Sir
Andrew Lewis, a former Lord Provost of Aberdeen, and their two children, Ann
and Hugh. There, far away from the hard world of high finance and ‘take-over
bids’, he is able to indulge his passion for gardening, and he delights in showing
off his splendid collection of orchids.
Trevor
Bowen has been a welcome guest within this domestic pattern of the Fraser
family. It is due to the friendship between these two men, just as much as to their
individual talents as tycoons of the drapery trade, that the control of the
John Barker group of stores changed hands so amicably, and to the enduring
advantage of its customers and shareholders.
The
offer by the House of Fraser to the ordinary share-holders of John Barker &
Co., ‘to acquire all the Issued Ordinary Shares of your Company’ – 1,659,495 of
them was a well-kept secret. It was released on July 17th, 1957, in a circular
letter from Barkers, and its terms were a cash payment of ten shillings and
four Fraser ‘A’ 5s. ordinary shares in exchange for each Barker £1 ordinary share
– an immediate gain to the Barker shareholders, at the current market
quotation, of five shillings a share. In passing on the offer, Trevor Bowen and
his co-directors stated that they had ‘come to the conclusion that acceptance …
would be advantageous’, even allowing for ‘the restricted voting rights’ then ‘attaching
to the House of Fraser ‘A’ Ordinary Shares’: they themselves had ‘decided to
accept the offer’ in respect of their own holdings, and they recommended other
shareholders ‘to do likewise’.
The
Fraser offer closed on August 8th, with sufficient acceptances from the Barker
shareholders for it to become unconditional. Eight days later there occurred
what was described as ‘one of the most remarkable company meetings that have
ever taken place’.[35] At noon on the 16th, the
ordinary shareholders of John Barker & Co. gathered on the fifth floor of
Derry & Toms, for the purpose of approving a resolution to pay compensation
to their directors – a sum of £50,000, which Mr Fraser had offered them for
loss of office. But there was little sign of the customary formality, for most
of those present had come to take their affectionate farewell of Trevor Bowen
and his colleagues. One of the shareholders asked if he might have the ‘privilege
of moving the resolution’, another seconded it, and several spoke of their ‘gratitude’
for the way in which Trevor Bowen, during almost forty-four years, had built up
the fortunes of the company.
A
reporter who covered the meeting wrote that it was ‘an occasion which those who
were privileged to be present will never forget’. The ‘feelings’ of them all were
simply expressed by Miss S. Clair Henderson, a shareholder of many years’
standing, who said, ‘I have come here today … to say goodbye to Mr Bowen. It
has been a pleasure to come to this meeting every year and to hear Mr Bowen’s
address, as well as to find out how splendidly the store has been run. I say
goodbye to Mr Bowen with the greatest regret. I am sorry that we shall not see
him again, because he has been the inspiration in this store for all of us. I
wish him a very happy retirement.’
But
the somewhat sad occasion had a cheerful ending. After the meeting was over, it
was announced that Hugh Fraser had asked Trevor Bowen to continue his long association
with Barkers by becoming the first Honorary President of the Company.
It
was a gallant gesture, for Trevor Bowen would not have taken kindly to idle
retirement. And Kensington would not be quite the same without him. His shrewd advice,
the wisdom of long experience, is eagerly sought by his new colleagues in the
House of Fraser, and he still reigns over his beloved garden in the sky.
Outwardly, the pattern of his life has changed little: though over eighty, he
still arrives at his office each morning, punctually at the same hour, wearing
the conventional black coat and striped trousers and his familiar black
Homburg, and he often stays until after the doors have been closed to the
public. The only change is that he no longer bears the burdens of
responsibility for the Barker empire of stores; but the fun of being alive
remains, and for him, as well as his friends, this is a constant pleasure.
CHAPTER 12 ‘Mr Kensington’
IN
the autumn of their lives, most successful men like to return to the scenes of
their youth. The wish to be respected in one’s native town is a simple emotion;
to be recognized, by those who have remained behind, as the ‘local boy’ who has
‘made good’, is far more satisfying than any honour one may have gained in a
bigger world. The wish to be remembered after we die is also a simple emotion,
and most rich men like to patronize their birthplace by some significant act of
generosity that will perpetuate their name.
Trevor
Bowen is no exception to this rule of human failing: his visits to Monmouth – the
town from which he virtually ran away as a boy – became much more frequent
after he succeeded as chairman of Barkers and was distinguished as a Deputy
Lieutenant and a Justice of the Peace. He likes to stand beneath the arches of
the Shire Hall and look across Agincourt Square, to the narrow little
shop, which once bore the single word BOWEN over the door. Most of his boyhood
friends lie buried in the parish churchyard; but their sons treat him with
respect, and a touch of awe – they recently elected him an honorary life member
of the famous Monmouth Agricultural Show – and many of them still send their daughters
up to Kensington, in the hope that he will arrange to employ them at Barkers.
It
is fascinating to wonder what would have happened to Trevor Bowen if he had
never left Monmouth. He could have inherited his father’s modest business and
remained a confectioner – no doubt the best in the town – slowly rising through
the ranks of public esteem to become councillor, alderman and probably mayor,
and taking his part in the show of civic pageantry. He might have built his
house overlooking the tranquil Wye, and then withdrawn into comfortable
retirement, with neighbours calling to admire his roses.
But
it is fortunate for Monmouth that Trevor Bowen has never had the patience to
fish for hours from a river bank, or to spend his leisure tending gentle blooms:
he would rather buy his salmon from a shop, and he prefers the well-ordered
array of a municipal garden to any casual bunch gathered from an herbaceous
border. He has something of the vigorous qualities that endowed his fellow townsman,
the Hon. Charles Rolls, the pioneer of motoring and aviation, whose statue
stands in Agincourt Square; the same spirit of adventure that made him restless
with the conventional, humdrum pattern of his surroundings. Charles Rolls added
to Monmouth’s fame: Trevor Bowen has added to her fortune. He has shared his prosperity
with the charities and institutions of his birthplace; and, in return, Monmouth
has rewarded him with her affection.
* *
*
Monmouth
may rightly claim Trevor Bowen as one of her ‘favourite sons’, but London, the
city of his adoption, has also been pleased to include him among her honoured citizens.
He has always taken a particular interest in every aspect of his business, and
he is proud to belong to the Livery Companies, the Bakers and the Haberdashers,
which are most closely identified with his two trades – the one he practised as
a young man, and the other he learned when he came to Kensington. His
association with the Bakers has been especially long and happy: he joined them
in 1926, the year in which he also became a Freeman of the City of London, and
his term of office as their Master was enlivened by his energy and his hospitality.
Few
people outside the City realize the age and history of the Livery Companies or
appreciate their purpose. The Worshipful Company of Bakers is one of the
oldest: their records go back to the twelfth century, to the time when
merchants and craftsmen of London had begun to band themselves together into
guilds, for the protection of their trades. Even in those days, the prices of
staple foods were sternly fixed by laws against which the individual was
helpless, but as the guilds became stronger, they were able to act very much as
the trades unions of today, and the Bakers’ Company would often negotiate with
the magistrates or the mayor and aldermen of the City in regard to the weight
and price of bread. By 1486, when King Henry VII granted them their first royal
charter, the Bakers had become so powerful that no one could practise the trade
in London unless he was a liveryman of the Company, and they held their own courts
with the power to punish any baker who cheated or misbehaved.
The
Bakers’ Company gradually assumed authority over all the baking industry in the
capital: they controlled the ethics and standards of their own tradesmen; they
watched the interests of the public, and they served the Government in
administering the complicated Act which regulated the price of bread by public
assize. Later when the assize laws were repealed, and as the ‘single-oven men’
in their little shops were gradually replaced by the big mechanized bakeries,
the Company slowly relinquished its role as guardian of the trade. But they had
built up a tradition which even progress could not kill, and it remains lively to
this day. Nor could the bombing of their old City Hall discourage them, for
they still hold their banquets, with their glorious silver on the tables; the
best oysters, fish and birds to eat, and the best wine from their cellars to
drink. Every now and then, in a flash of old-fashioned elegance, the Bakers who
do not bake put on their White ties, their tail coats, and their decorations,
to dine at the long tables by candlelight perhaps enjoying, as they nibble the
little slice of bread beside each lordly dish, a fleeting recollection that all
this is in memory of the realistic part their predecessors played in the
business life of the City.
Like
most other Livery Companies, the Bakers no longer have any voice in the
management of their trade, but they are closely linked with the National
Association of Master Bakers, and the National Federation of Bakery Students’
Societies, in providing scholarships and awards, and in their concern for the
education, training and welfare of all who bake our daily bread. This is Trevor
Bowen’s especial interest: during more than half a century, since he gained the
Gold Challenge Cup ‘for the highest degree of excellence’ as a confectioner, he
has encouraged and helped those who have followed in his footsteps; and for
this, far more than the enjoyment of ceremony and good dinners, he will be
remembered by his fellow liverymen in the City of London.
* *
*
In
Monmouth, Trevor Bowen is inclined to become sentimental over the
half-forgotten scenes and incidents of his boyhood; in the City of London, he
is pleased to be accorded the dignity that has come after a lifetime of achievement;
but in Kensington, he still acts and is regarded as an astute businessman.
We
recall that Lady Petrie christened him ‘Mr Kensington’, as a tribute to all that
he has done to transform the Royal Borough into one of the most prosperous
shopping centres in the metropolis. Trevor Bowen is not too happy about this
high-flown but well-meaning compliment: he would like to have improved far more
of Kensington than the High Street. He knows that time has beaten him; yet
within his span of useful life, he has certainly shown that he is a store man ‘of
outstanding vision’. He once said that ‘every great business has had its
beginning in the mind of an individual’, and the monument to his own particular
mind will surely be – and continue for many years to come – the splendid
citadel of trade which he has now abdicated to Hugh Fraser. And, more than the
actual buildings of stone and glass, he has bequeathed to Kensington – and to
the House of Fraser – a tradition of amiable relations between management and
employee.
Lord
Donegall once asked Trevor Bowen what was his ‘favourite hobby’. Mr Bowen
replied, ‘Chess in real life.’ He loves challenge; the cautious manoeuvres of
argument which will gain him the position of advantage over a resolute
opponent. But he chooses only equal opponents, for only they can give him
worthy victories. To most of his former staff – and many of them are still at
Barkers and Derrys and Pontings – he remains ‘the Chief’: he recognizes the
sheep from the goats, and he knows, as he says, the ones who have been ‘loyal’
to him. They can always count on his moral support and, if they are in need, his
practical help.
Perhaps
the truest compliment ever paid to Trevor Bowen came from his chauffeur, who
has been with him for more than forty years. Their relationship is amusing to
watch, for they are both strong-willed. Austin has driven his master back and
forth, between Monmouth and London, at least one hundred times, so he knows him
in both settings – of his humble beginnings, and his kingdom of power in
Kensington. He has seen Trevor Bowen in moments of petulance, sudden parsimony,
and intolerance; yet his verdict, after almost half a century, is, ‘You can’t
help loving a man like that.’
[1] Kept in the Public Record Office, Chancery
Lane, London.
[2]
Published by
John Murray, 1952.
[3]
T. H.
Everett, in The Garden Journal of the New York Botanical Gardens, January-February
1952.
[4]
David
Green, in The Manchester Guardian, October 1st, 1947.
[5]
Mr Jack
Tarvin, who took charge of the gardens in 1941.
[6]
See A. H.
Williams, No Name on the Door (W.
H. Allen, 1956), p. 103.
[7]
The
Daily Chronicle, September 3rd, 1914.
[8]
December 17th,
1914.
[9]
To
Sarah Waspe, on November 1st, 1864. Their son, about whom little is recorded,
‘lost his life at an early age as a result of an accident while riding in
Kensington’ (The Times, December 17th, 1914.).
[10] Bell Street has since disappeared beneath
the modern Barkers, and Burden Mews beneath Derry & Toms.
[11]
Progress
Commerce,
1893.
[12]
The
Kensington News and West London Times, December 18th, 1914.
[13]
Mr C. G.
Boxall.
[14] It is a coincidence that the names Derry and
Toms are both found in the West Country, especially in Plymouth.
[15]
This
information on the early history of Pontings is taken from the typescript of a
speech, which is unsigned, given in 1938, probably by Sir Sydney Skinner, then
chairman of John Barker & Co.
[16]
James
Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary (George Allen & Unwin, 1959), p. 60.
[17]
Maisie Ward, Gilbert
Keith Chesterton (Sheed & Ward, 1944.), pp. 18-19
[18]
The
foregoing facts on the growth of ' Barkers are taken from Progress Commerce,
1893.
[19]
John
Barker’s address was then 10 West Kensington Gardens; it is now covered by the
Empire Hall, Olympia.
[20]
The
Kensington News and West London Times, December 18th, 1914.
[21]
In
1888 he stood as candidate for Parliament in the Liberal interest at a
by-election at Maidstone, but was unsuccessful. He was again defeated in 1898;
and although returned at the General Election of 1900 - with a majority of
thirty-eight - he was unseated on petition by the Conservatives. In 1906 he was
elected for Penryn and Falmouth, but lost his seat in 1910.
[22]
The British
Baker,
September 16th, 1904, p. 227.
[23]
The Times, August 22nd, 1929.
[24]
Evening
Standard,
January 1st, 1920.
[25]
February 24th,
1922.
[26]
The
National Association Review, March 3rd, 1922.
[27] During the 1930’s, the Barker group of
stores sent out almost two million catalogues, weighing approximately 250 tons,
for the summer and winter sales - apart from the regular mail order catalogues
and those for special sales.
[28]
April 14th, 1933.
[29]
See Chapter I.
[30]
See illustration.
[31]
Evening
Standard,
November 15th, 1932.
[32]
Speech at
Woodford, Essex, April 20th, 1959.
[33]
April
14th, 1947.
[34]
See Evening
Standard, August 3rd, 1951.
[35]
The City
Press,
August 23rd, 1957.
