A trip to Sheffield’s John Lewis was the most intense childhood treat. I’ll mourn its passing | Rachel Cooke
Imperilled by Covid and online shopping, the store’s demise marks the end of an epoch
In Penelope Fitzgerald’s 1990 novel The Gate of Angels, a mother and her daughter go “up west” to visit Selfridges soon after its opening in 1909. Both are determined to play it cool on this grand day out. Mrs Saunders, for one, is unwilling to let on that she might be impressed by its 100 departments (“freely compared in the store’s advertisements to the bazaars of the farthest orient”). But such nonchalance involves no little effort. What to make of an establishment where a bugle is blown at the hour of its closing “as though every day spent in shopping was an epoch of history”? Back at home, the women talk with quiet amazement of their dreamlike excursion. “How long do you think it’ll last?” Mrs Saunders asks. “Floor after floor of stuff… And all laid out for everyone to stare at, it didn’t seem quite decent.”
How long do you think it will last? What a mournful thought that an answer to this question may now be in sight. Yes, the department store was in trouble long before the pandemic hit – and we all knew it, too. We’d seen the headlines (“Family-run business to close after 200 years”). We had begun buying even our fripperies via our laptops. Somehow, though, we resisted the reality. Debenhams was a mess; its demise could not be taken as a sign of anything. The great liners of retail – the smart ones, the creative ones – would sail on, whether the water was choppy or calm.
