Business & Finance: Fortnum & Mason Abroad

Three stores within a stone's throw of each other are likely to be visited by the American in London. For smoker's articles he would go to Dunhill's, regardless of the fact that control of Dunhill's has long since passed to David Albert Schulte. For shirts he might go to Hawes & Curtis. For jams, pickles & preserves, for shoes and perhaps even for tweeds, he might go to venerable Fortnum & Mason.

The founder of Fortnum & Mason was one Cornelius Fortnum, faithful servitor of Queen Anne. For years he held the unique monopoly of being allowed to take and sell the Court's old candles, for Queen Anne would never allow the same candle to be lit twice. In 1710 he opened his shop and began dealing in delicacies. Later Fortnum & Mason added shoes to its food department, then clothes. Swiftly grew its prestige. Gladstone and Disraeli were steady customers. From Fortnum & Mason Queen Victoria ordered 250 Ib. of beef tea to be shipped to Florence Nightingale in the Crimea. Queen Mary shops there regularly.

Last week Fortnum & Mason did what few great London shops have done: opened a store in Manhattan. The building is seven stories of pink brick with a blue-green base. Its façade and ground floor are a copy of the London shop. Walls and counters are of pale waxed pine, lined with long rows of bottles and preserved goods from all over the world, many painted in pastel shades. Smooth salesmen in morning coats and striped trousers greet the visitors. Much has been done to preserve the British tradition. On exhibit at last week's opening was a tremendous woodcock pie around whose crest were the skulls of 20 woodcocks, a replica of the pie which every year the Irish Free State sends to the King of England. Near the lift is a British coat-of-arms.

In charge of the store is Frederick Page, small, bone-spectacled, filled with anecdotes of such famed gourmets as Brillat. Savarin and Edward VII, who would have no paté de foie gras after he saw geese being stuffed with food the better to fatten their livers. To visitors of untrained appetites Mr. Page explains such delicacies as East Indian poppadums, cheeses-marmalades, honeys from Syria, Portugal, Greece, England; Bombay duck; cox-combs in jelly; grouse pie; vintage marmalades; sole farcie en champagne. He explains that Fortnum & Mason anxiously awaits the Department of Agriculture's permission to sell rare soups, including those made from shark fins and kangaroo tails.