The opening of a large new centre for West End shopping,
particularly feminine shopping, suggests the reflection, Do women
ever really shop? Of course, it is a well-attested fact that they
go forth shopping as assiduously as a bee goes flower-visiting, but
do they shop in the practical sense of the word? Granted the money,
time, and energy, a resolute course of shopping transactions would
naturally result in having one's ordinary domestic needs unfailingly
supplied, whereas it is notorious that women servants (and
housewives of all classes) make it almost a point of honour not to
be supplied with everyday necessities. "We shall be out of starch
by Thursday," they say with fatalistic foreboding, and by Thursday
they are out of starch. They have predicted almost to a minute the
moment when their supply would give out and if Thursday happens to
be early closing day their triumph is complete. A shop where starch
is stored for retail purposes possibly stands at their very door,
but the feminine mind has rejected such an obvious source for
replenishing a dwindling stock. "We don't deal there" places it at
once beyond the pale of human resort. And it is noteworthy that,
just as a sheep-worrying dog seldom molests the flocks in his near
neighbourhood, so a woman rarely deals with shops in her immediate
vicinity. The more remote the source of supply the more fixed seems
to be the resolve to run short of the commodity. The Ark had
probably not quitted its last moorings five minutes before some
feminine voice gloatingly recorded a shortage of bird-seed. A few
days ago two lady acquaintances of mine were confessing to some
mental uneasiness because a friend had called just before lunch-
time, and they had been unable to ask her to stop and share their
meal, as (with a touch of legitimate pride) "there was nothing in
the house." I pointed out that they lived in a street that bristled
with provision shops and that it would have been easy to mobilise a
very passable luncheon in less than five minutes. "That," they said
with quiet dignity, "would not have occurred to us," and I felt that
I had suggested something bordering on the indecent.
But it is in catering for her literary wants that a woman's shopping
capacity breaks down most completely. If you have perchance
produced a book which has met with some little measure of success,
you are certain to get a letter from some lady whom you scarcely
known to bow to, asking you "how it can be got." She knows the name
of the book, its author, and who published it, but how to get into
actual contact with it is still an unsolved problem to her. You
write back pointing out that to have recourse to an ironmonger or a
corn-dealer will only entail delay and disappointment, and suggest
an application to a bookseller as the most hopeful thing you can
think of. In a day or two she writes again: "It is all right; I
have borrowed it from your aunt." Here, of course, we have an
example of the Beyond-Shopper, one who has learned the Better Way,
but the helplessness exists even when such bypaths of relief are
closed. A lady who lives in the West End was expressing to me the
other day her interest in West Highland terriers, and her desire to
know more about the breed, so when, a few days later, I came across
an exhaustive article on that subject in the current number of one
of our best known outdoor-life weeklies, I mentioned that
circumstance in a letter, giving the date of that number. "I cannot
get the paper," was her telephoned response. And she couldn't. She
lived in a city where newsagents are numbered, I suppose, by the
thousand, and she must have passed dozens of such shops in her daily
shopping excursions, but as far as she was concerned that article on
West Highland terriers might as well have been written in a missal
stored away in some Buddhist monastery in Eastern Thibet.
The brutal directness of the masculine shopper arouses a certain
combative derision in the feminine onlooker. A cat that spreads one
shrew-mouse over the greater part of a long summer afternoon, and
then possibly loses him, doubtless feels the same contempt for the
terrier who compresses his rat into ten seconds of the strenuous
life. I was finishing off a short list of purchases a few
afternoons ago when I was discovered by a lady of my acquaintance
whom, swerving aside from the lead given us by her godparents thirty
years ago, we will call Agatha.
"You're surely not buying blotting-paper HERE?" she exclaimed in an
agitated whisper, and she seemed so genuinely concerned that I
stayed my hand.
"Let me take you to Winks and Pinks," she said as soon as we were
out of the building: "they've got such lovely shades of blotting-
paper--pearl and heliotrope and momie and crushed--"
"But I want ordinary white blotting-paper," I said.
"Never mind. They know me at Winks and Pinks," she replied
inconsequently. Agatha apparently has an idea that blotting-paper
is only sold in small quantities to persons of known reputation, who
may be trusted not to put it to dangerous or improper uses. After
walking some two hundred yards she began to feel that her tea was of
more immediate importance than my blotting-paper.
"What do you want blotting-paper for?" she asked suddenly. I
explained patiently.
"I use it to dry up the ink of wet manuscript without smudging the
writing. Probably a Chinese invention of the second century before
Christ, but I'm not sure. The only other use for it that I can
think of is to roll it into a ball for a kitten to play with."
"But you haven't got a kitten," said Agatha, with a feminine desire for stating the entire truth on most occasions.
"A stray one might come in at any moment," I replied.
Anyway, I didn't get the blotting-paper.
_________
-THE END-
[Hector Hugh Munro] Saki's short story: The Sex That Doesn't Shop
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