NYMPHS OF THE COUNTER.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VI, Issue 33, 16 August 1890, Page 3

NYMPHS OF THE COUNTER.

*\WZ N one business in London / 1 all women are ‘ girls.’ No "® V I matter if hardship or years -j 1 have brought a line of JyJf j I silver in the neatly backJX'X. I drawn hair, she is still, in >< I name at least, endowed f tX\\ JjLk with youth, and she is K. X WwW\ 1 called, with her associates ' RvXk * n Re^'n K dry goods, a shop girl. No disrespect is meant by this. Stores are shops and women are —‘ girls ’ and men are ‘ fellows. ’ > The latter is just as much a trade term as any other expression, and a shop girl who talks of ‘ the X x fellows ’is using a correct expression from her point of view, which has a different meaning than when used in the slang of underbred conversation. She refers to the male clerks in the establishment. The dry goods stores of London range»from the elegant establishments of Regent-street and the West End through the cheaper establishments down to the little suburban places. In these expensive stores the girls, attractive, unassuming, well bred, have reasonably easy hours, as many of these places close at five in the afternoon, or at six at the latest; and some close-at two or three on Saturdays. In the smaller places the grind is dreadful, however, and the hours extend all the way from twelve to fourteen with perhaps sixteen on the last day of the week. The wages run about twelve to fifteen shillings a week, and with this sum in the larger establishments goes one or two meals. Often, usually indeed, the girls live above the store under the charge of a housekeeper. Their accommodations are Better than they would have at home, and they are well fed, half an hour being allowed for dinner, and a few minutes less for tea. Supper is served after the closing for the day at seven or eight perhaps, and after this the girls are allowed to go out. Woe betide the unhappy maiden, however, who is not back by 11 o’clock sharp. She is hailed before the powers that be and made to give an'account of herself, and is perhaps mulcted in a considerable fine. And not for tardy home coming alone are fines inflicted. Indeed, the list in many places is much larger than the decalogue, and the punishment for breaking a rule seems sometimes more serious, and is certainly more immediate than for violatingacommandment. Itcostssome pennies to be tardy in the morning or after meals. It is an extensive mistake to check an account wrongly or to give wrong change, or to leave one’s department without a sound reason.

What it costs to smile at a young gentleman over the counter or to lose your patience with a shopper who examines everything in and out of sight and buys nothing I was unable to learn; but an ingenious system exists that helps the girls to make up for the shilling lost through too long a morning nap or a dawdle over a cup of tea. By means of this spiff system certain articles a little behind the time are cabalistically marked with a mark that says to the initiated, ‘ Sell me and you get a commission. ’ The guileless lassie looks at yon straight in the eye, and, handing you a spiff article, assures you that though you were before unconscious of it, the article she shows you is the one thing for which you have been vainly yearning for an indefinite period. You buy it, of course. You are like the great majority of us women, and you don’t know what you want or—and this is really more important—what you don’t want. Sometimes a lucky girl works off an expensive antique moss-grown spiff on some poor woman ‘ up from the provinces,’ and then there’s joy behind that counter and a luxury or two added to the tea, for the commission on a good old time-worn spiff is commensurate with the ingenuity required in getting rid of the unsaleable article.

The larger places are preferred for their shorter hours and for the certainty of the duties required. But the strict discipline that must be maintained is irksome in the extreme to some, and they prefer smaller establishments, where they are permitted greater freedom. In these smaller places their duties are multifarious, and they may have in the comparatively early morning, when the world of shoppers is asleep, to transform themselves into maids of all work, dusting counters, sweeping floors and wiping glass. Then smiling Cinderellas, by 9or 9.30, they come up fresh and tidy, with never a hint in their manner of the housemaid’s work they’ve left behind them. In the larger stores it is the men who do the shop dusting and morning preparation, and to get through with this * squadding ’in time they must turn up by 7 o’clock. In the bright air of New Zealand this may seem no terrible hardship, but in the high latitude of London, where the sky is overcast peipetually, it makes indeed a long day. I fear the ‘ fellows ’ who, dusty and sleepy, watch at 8 o’clock the arrival of the ‘girls’ pink and smiling are not animated by those chivalrous feelings that are popularly supposed to dominate the hearts of man.

Promotion is painfully slow. Assistants and chief assistants in departments earn their places by years of drudgery behind the counter, and by care, cuteness and physical strength. They have seen in the meantime more fortunate girls, blessed with stately bearing, or a good figure, or high mounting shoulders, pass them swiftly by in the race for life, and bound into the comparative ease and dignity of the showroom. A clever girl in such a position, who understands how to humour the whims of Lady A., to meet • he wishes of Mrs 8., and to flatter the vanity of

Countess C. has an opportunity to make fi iends and patrons who will extend a helping hand should she desire to start for herself in business. Her opportunities are now limited somewhat by the fashion that rules of high born dames themselves going into the ‘ trade.’ In this cynical London society a lady with a good position and a reasonably good reputation may do many things without imperilling that position, and oneof these is to start shopkeeping. Shecalls herself Mme. Celeste or Mme. Elsie or some such name and trades under it, thus preserving a strict line between herself in her Mayfair an<l Belgravia house and her business parlours on Regentstreet or Piccadilly. She may meet at the most elegant of dinner tables high-born dames deep in her books, but she breathes no hint of business outside of business hours. If she sometimes sighs over the elegant flock that adorns her vis-a-vis and wishes she could collect the money for it, the world around her knows naught of her inward perturbations. As for the vis-a-vis, she’s not troubled. She’s been in debt ever since she could remember, and has got over anxiety on that score, unless, indeed, the grim spectre should approach so closethat she is actually obliged to deny herself something she wants. Then she feels the pinch indeed. To return, however, from the swell shopkeeper to the shop girl. As is always true in life, the gentlewoman makes the best labour mistress, and a shop girl would prefer infinitely to work for a ‘ real lady ’ than for one who has risen from the ranks. The infinite pettinesses of a poor Madame Mantalini, may not exist in the well-bred woman, who could not, for instance, be jealous of one of her employes. The girls are usually irreproachable as to character, and the utmost strictness is maintained in this respect by the employers. The shop girl usually marries a ‘ fellow.’ Notwithstand-

ing they see so much of one another and notwithstanding the jealousy always existing between the sexes when employed together, they seem to fall in love. I do not myself exactly see how any of the idealism that is popularly supposed to be the accompaniment of love could throw a halo round the head of him who sells gloves and laces at the next counter and comes and checks the sale list for one. But love is a passion that, like turnips, can grow sometimes in singularly stony giound ; while convenience and popinquity often develop a lukewaim sentiment that does duty in place of the real thing. It is a deal cheaper for a ‘ fellow ’ and a ‘ girl ’ to maintain one establishment with a double income than two,-and so they marry. And thus there is bred up an hereditary race of counter-folk, for their children find openings in the same line of business. If you are interested in morbid pathology and heredity you can speculate on whether a shop-girl—the descendant of generations of shopkeepers—would be any the better saleswoman or any the more rapid in casting up her accounts. The shop-girl, weary of the black uniform of business hours, is prone to colour in her outing times, but all her association with elegant things cannot imbue her with that natural taste that is part of the French girl behind the counter. Yet she is not uncomely, and when she sits in the pit at the theatre with the young man she is ‘walking out with’ she is attractive-looking in the animation that the evening’s pleasure brings. The theatre she delights in, but cannot frequently afford it. Her favourite amusements that are quite within her income are those that she devises with her associates at the home that is provided for them over the store. Private theatricals are part of the week’s fun, but there is a sameness in it all, for outsiders are not

admitted, and the ‘fellows’ may not be present ; ami these, however tiresome they may become during the day, are yet strangely indispensable for a complete evening's amusement. As every woman, however, is at heart an actress, considerable dramatic ability is develop'd, and these simpleevenings have sometimes been the primary school where have been learned the first lessons of the dramatic art anil the modest shop girl has bloomed into a successful actress. < >n Sundays she goes to chape), not to church, for she is a dissenter and prefers the simple ritual of the Methodists or the Baptists to the more elaliorate ceremonial of the Church of England. And after the sermon she visits friends and relatives, and has the sturdy early roast lieef dinner. Then she goes for a walk with her young man, sauntering toward Hampstead Heath or the nearest large spot of green ; but always turning her face homeward by tea time. Flirtation she does understand, ice-cream is to her a delight uncared for and oysters are no luxury ; but she is fond of shrimps for tea. Her time for reading is not much, but the parlour of her home contains some magazines and a library of fiction. The favourite American author herein is Howells, and oddly enough Cooper conies next. Of the English authors Rhoda Broughton stands first in popularity, and then comes at the present moment Rider Haggard. Janies I’ayn is a great favourite. Take her for all in all, the shop-girl earns her money, every penny of it, spends it easily, works hard, lives a simple, laborious life until she marries, when she exchanges the servitude of the counter for the slavery to a rapidly filling nursery.