Lord Leverhulme is a bold man. He has opened a fish shop in Old Bond Street, London.
That conservative thoroughfare sniffed delicately, and in its own aristocratic way said very rude things about the outrage, but the fish shop is still there, and Old Bond Street has re-smoothed its feathers.
For this is no ordinary fish shop. It is just a chunk of marble fallen from some Utopian dream. For all the casual passer-by could tell, Lord Leverhulme might be selling jewellery, so elegant, so discreet, is the establishment. It is lined with grey and white marble with the arms of the establishment (four herrings rampant round the Cross of St. Andrew).
The ceiling is decorated by what at first glance appear to be Della Robbia wreaths, but are. actually garlands of seaweed, with here and there a shrimp or other decorative denizen of the deep.
Decorously the fish are ranged on all the marble shelves. You would not be at all surprised if they were labelled "chic" ov Paris model," so decorative they are—the first 1920 rod-caught salmon from Ireland, the fearsome langouste, the ruby-eyed herrings.
Oxford and Cambridge graduates rule the affairs of the Futurist fish shop, and if my lady, after feasting her eyes on the bits of jade, the pearls and laces, and faience of Old Bond Street, is finally captivated by one of Lord Leverhulme's soles, and wants to take it home to lunch, it will be handed to her in a pale blue carton, which suggests a few cornelias or a new boudoir cap rather than mere fish.
Lord Leverhulme should be carefully watched, otherwise we shall have him establishing the peasoup barrow in Park Lane, and attracting duchesses to winkle salons—gold pins supplied gratis.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.