THE YEAR 1921 was a special one for Harrods Emporium – but not solely because of that one particular delivery of Farnell teddy bears and a shopping expedition by young society mother. More importantly for Harrods, this was the year in which the freehold of their vast 34-acre site was finally acquired for £263,850. The impressively monumental building, with its famous terracotta brick façade, had become the largest departmental store in the capital. This was to be Pooh’s first home.
The ground floor alone covered four-and-a-half acres, and fifty lifts served twenty acres of the four shopping floors above. Thirty nine miles of underground tubes carried money to the cashiers and change back to customers.
With the grandiose telegraphic address of ‘Everything London’, its advertising claimed that ‘Harrods is winning ever increasing appreciation from thousands of country womenfolk who have never been nearer to Harrods than their nearest pillar box’.
That year, too, the store catalogue offered a Rhesus Monkey for £5, live cod from the fish department for 1/-d per pound and holiday transport in a Harrods luxurious car with a courteous chauffeur for £7 per one hundred miles. You could also hire the Harrods Royal Red Band and purchase Ashanti hammocks ‘suitable for gardens or exploring purposes’.
But most important were the teddy bears. They came in a number of sizes costing 10/6d for a 15-inch bear like Pooh, 8/11d for one of 13½ inches and 5/-d for babies of 11-inches. The size and price variations were important, since the appeal of teddies was universal and many of the Farnell bears would have been destined for smaller shops, serving less prosperous families.
Author Eric Newby described his own childhood memories of Harrods at this time in his book A Traveller’s Life. His mother had worked in the shop and was a regular visitor according to Eric, going from department to department like a combine harvester. To the young boy, Harrods was a world apart from any other he had experienced.
He was bemused by the wonderland of the great vaulted Food Hall decorated with medieval scenes of the chase, which remains a tourist attraction today. Fishmongers, purveyors of game and butchers assembled there, confronting each other across mountainous displays of crabs and scallops, Aberdeen smokies, turbot and halibut on one side and ‘hecatombs’ of Angus beef and South Downs lamb and mutton on the other. In the linen hall, tablecloths eight yards long could accommodate place settings for twenty four guests and were destined for the dining halls of the gentry in their moated mansions. You could buy christening robes or servants’ uniforms, and use Harrods services to arrange your wedding or funeral.
Even more exciting was Harrods Zoo, where the noise was deafening and macaws and polite parrots (who had passed a bad language test) lived alongside guinea pigs, tortoises and puppies.
Harrods, like Farnell, had started life as a modest one-man business. Tea-dealer, Charles Henry Harrod, was running a small grocery shop in Cable Street in the East End of London when Joseph Kirby Farnell was acting as an Agent for Servants in North Kensington.
In 1868 Charles Harrod moved his shop to a run-down, rat-infested area of South Kensington off the Brompton Road not long before Joseph Kirby Farnell established his fancy goods enterprise in Acton.
In 1879, Charles’ son, Charles Digby Harrod, launched a mammoth programme of slum clearance and rebuilding to create a larger shop, so that by the early 1880s the number of employees had risen from one hundred to nearly two hundred. In 1883, the separate departments included groceries, provisions, confectionery, wines and spirits, brushes and turnery, ironmongery, glass, china, earthenware, stationery, fancy goods, perfumery, drugs, etc.
By 1901, social change had transformed South Kensington. The top-floor front of Harrods was converted into flats and many of the nearby buildings which are now shops were leased as luxury apartments designed to appeal to the new class of residents. Harrods was their local store and the new advertising slogan ‘Twice the choice at Harrods. Supplying the needs of well-to-do people’. However, according to the Chelsea Herald, Harrods business ‘is now world-wide, offering free delivery and its clients – or customers – rank from the Peer to the Peasant.’
Among those who might be spotted among the crowds was the colourful Emir of Katsina in Nigeria on his way to Mecca, who bought ‘a watch, resisted a large plaice, bought grapes and two dozen lemons, non-alcoholic mouthwash from the drug department and clothes such as pilgrims require’. Crown Prince Carol ordered furniture and fittings to be delivered to his home in Romania.
By the 1920s, the new designs of Coco Chanel from France were all the rage – shorter skirts, clinging fabrics, cloche hats and short soft-bobbed hair, were seen everywhere as, increasingly, were trousers for ladies. Soon to come – the little black dress and even shorter flapper dresses. Chanel created her most famous perfume – Chanel No 5 – which was, of course, stocked by Harrods. It has been described as ‘the world’s most legendary fragrance’ and, even today, the company claims that a bottle is sold every fifty-five seconds.
Daphne Milne, wife of author A.A. Milne, a young society mother with plenty of money, was shopping at an exciting time for women. This was the period, after the deprivation of the war, when fashion went wild. It was also the hottest summer on record with soaring temperatures.
By the time that the Farnell bears arrived, Harrods was arguably the best-known store in the world, with a Royal Warrant from Queen Mary who was, on occasion, seen shopping there in person. It was a matter of chance that Pooh did not find himself in the nurseries of her grandchildren and disappear forever from history into Buckingham Palace.
The Toy Department was indeed a spectacular, carpeted, dream world, with its grand pillars and arches and ornately-carved ceilings from which teddy bears were suspended, gently circling and dancing in the breeze. There were rocking horses and bassinets, from which beautifully coiffured, perpetually smiling dolls greeted passing children with their nannies. Very popular then, although politically incorrect today, were rows of cheery golliwogs. There were dolls’ houses, toy soldiers, wind-up dogs, clockwork railway trains, toy theatres and even more teddy bears, everywhere, sitting in rows and waiting for some eager child or parent to fall in love.
As a boy, Eric Newby was not allowed by his mother to dally in ‘Toys’ where temptation was too great, so he never met Pooh.
That day in August, when Miss Moran the Manager of Toys welcomed the new consignment of Farnell teddy bears, seemed just like any other day. How was she to know that this was not at all like any other day!
The new lift carried Daphne Milne, an elegant young woman, to the ‘First floor, Madam’.
Daphne was now on one of her regular visits, probably to the Georgian Restaurant on the fourth floor (which, seating one thousand, was the largest in London), just beyond the Toy Department. It was a popular rendezvous of fashion and luxury for the ladies of Kensington, Knightsbridge and Chelsea with a recherché cuisine and a first class orchestra. A ‘dainty tea’ with a choice of toasted tea cakes, scones, toasted items and meringues and cream cost 1/-d, rump steak was 1/-d and sago pudding 4d.
On this occasion Daphne was looking for a special first birthday present for her son.
In his autobiography, The Enchanted Places, the grown-up Christopher Milne imagined his mother’s first meeting with the toy bear who was to become his constant friend and companion.
He visualised a row of teddy bears sitting in a toyshop, all one size and all one price. Yet, he wrote, how different each would appear from the next. Some were gay, some sad. Some looked stand-offish, some were loveable. ‘One in particular – that one over there – has a specially endearing expression. Yes, that is the one we would like please.’
So Bear, as he was then, was wrapped in Harrods’ brown paper with its name in smart green writing, ready for Daphne to take him home after lunch. The parcel could have been delivered in one of the firm’s smart green, Walker electric vans, of course, but Daphne was impatient to get her purchase back home to Chelsea.There, husband Alan was waiting with Nanny and the small boy whose life was about to be changed for ever.
Sebastian Wormell, Harrods Archivist says, with pride: “Of all the many thousands of things that Harrods has sold over the past century and a half, none was to achieve greater worldwide fame than this simple English teddy bear”.