Taking advantage of the quiet midday lull, Dolly had already packaged all the promotional items to be sold that afternoon.
She carefully explained to Mary the differences between the seven types of packaged promotional goods and showed her various samples, asking her to mind the shop.
Then, Dolly lifted the curtain, walked to the stairwell, and called upstairs for Penny, who was idling at home munching on biscuits.
“Penny, come with me to restock!”
Penny immediately put down the secondhand novel she was holding, dawdled as she put on her skirt, fastened her hat, and hurried downstairs.
While waiting for her, Dolly had already taken stock of the inventory in the cabinets and noted down the items that needed replenishing on a piece of paper.
Once Penny was ready and came down, each of them picked up a woven rattan bag, put on a wide-brimmed hat, and took some budgeted money from the drawer, carefully hiding it on their persons.
Dolly planned to go to the market to restock some new goods, purchase a few things from the list, and take the opportunity to get to know the city of London more deeply.
Before leaving, Mary heard Dolly say that she not only intended to restock but also wanted to buy biscuit ingredients to process them herself upon returning.
Mary felt somewhat skeptical about this.
But seeing Dolly’s decisive manner in handling matters over the past two days and the tangible results before her eyes, something seemed different.
Mary swallowed her words and only said:
“Hurry back, and don’t stay out until dark.”
Dolly nodded in reply: “We’ll definitely be back before dark.”
With that, she led Penny out of the house and headed in the direction of Jude Road.
Penny was overjoyed—today she had eaten biscuits and could go out to play. She skipped ahead, forcing Dolly to tell her to slow down.
“Penny, today we’re not just going to Osborne Street.”
Penny turned back blankly and asked, “Then where else are we going?”
No sooner had she spoken than Penny saw Dolly stop and pull out several small paper scrolls from the woven rattan bag she was carrying—clippings from newspapers.
Her slender, onion-like hands unrolled one of the scrolls, her fingertips tracing an address—the location of London’s currently most bustling department store, situated on Oxford Street.
“Today, after restocking, we’re going to the West End.”
…
Half an hour later, the two arrived at the market near Whitechapel Road.
Dolly placed orders for all the goods that needed replenishing at several wholesale sundries shops familiar to their family, arranging for them to be delivered directly home.
This included tea leaves.
Afterward, she took Penny and boarded a public carriage on Whitechapel Road.
It was just past noon, and London’s weather was gloomy, with a biting cold wind. There weren’t many people outside, and those who were out walked hurriedly.
The public carriage, following a fixed route, had only a handful of passengers. After paying a penny each, they climbed to the top deck and sat down.
The double-decker carriage crept forward slowly, the streets of White Chapel receding behind them. Dolly buried her face in her scarf and gazed curiously at the roadside.
In late 19th-century London, most buildings and geographical locations were not vastly different from those of later eras.
However, compared to a hundred years later, London at this time could more aptly be called the industrial capital and the financial center of the world.
Under the overcast sky, classical London architecture flashed by, and the streets were lined with a dazzling array of shops of all kinds.
Traveling eastward along Whitechapel Road, she could observe increasingly noticeable changes on both sides of the street.
After passing through Aldgate, teeming with merchants, the carriage headed westward. Following a long journey, it entered the territory of the Financial City.
The carriage slowly came to a halt at a bustling intersection to let passengers off, with the next stop being St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Once the carriage stopped, Dolly’s eyes turned toward the main thoroughfare of the nearby financial district.
This intersection lay at the heart of Cornhill Street, Threadneedle Street, and Lombard Street.
It was almost the very hub of the entire Financial City.
She looked toward the Royal Exchange on Cornhill Street and the Loud Insurance Society.
Then, her gaze shifted to the crowds emerging from the Bank of England on Threadneedle Street.
The people here were vastly different from those in the East End—each wore a serious, weary expression. Regardless of gender, they strode in leather boots, moving briskly between financial institutions.
Wealthy men dressed in black tailcoats and top hats smoked while leaning on decorative canes, preparing to head to coffee shops.
Noblewomen, clad in satin-textured bustle skirts with fur stoles and ribbon-adorned warm hats, emerged from stockbrokers’ offices and quickly disappeared into private carriages.
Most young women were neatly dressed typists, entering and exiting various companies.
At a glance, Dolly estimated that nine out of ten female clerks in the area likely worked as typists in different firms.
The remaining one handled telegrams.
The dense crowds made the financial center resemble a massive beehive, with every individual here serving as a cornerstone of London’s prosperity.
The carriage then continued onward, passing St. Paul’s Cathedral and arriving at Covent Garden.
Here, the two sisters finally disembarked and headed to the fruit, vegetable, and flower market to procure the items on their shopping list.
Earlier, at a tea wholesaler on Whitechapel Road, Dolly had already purchased two types of Indian Black Tea.
Each type came in twenty-pound barrels. The wholesale price for a full barrel of Assam tea was eight pence.
Darjeeling tea cost twelve pence per pound, bringing the total cost to exactly four hundred pence.
Now, they needed to buy edible dried flowers from dried flower wholesalers or herbal shops in Covent Garden.
Dolly still remembered from her past life attending many world-class commodity tea expositions.
The most suitable flower to blend with Darjeeling was, first and foremost, the Damask rose.
As for Assam, it could be paired with osmanthus, lavender, or jasmine.
If suitable raisins, dried figs, dried apricots, and orange peel were available, they could also be added in moderation.
The Indian teas purchased from wholesalers in White Chapel were not of premium quality—lacking in aroma, with unattractive leaves and plenty of tea dust.
However, if the tea could be infused with floral scents, even these lower-grade teas could fetch a decent price.
After getting off the carriage, Dolly and Penny, hand in hand, entered the flower, fruit, and vegetable market of Covent Garden.
In truth, it wasn’t just fruits, vegetables, and flowers—agricultural products from all over London were gathered and traded here. Small vendors were scattered like blossoms across every corner of the market.
Walking through the market, the first thing to watch out for were the Gypsy women.
But Dolly and Penny didn’t need to worry about this.
With their heads of red hair, their slightly worn dresses, and their accents, it was clear at a glance that they were descendants of Irish immigrants.
Their parents were likely textile workers, with a father who drank all day, and the entire family probably couldn’t scrape together five pounds sterling.
Not even the most desperate Gypsy would bother picking their pockets.
Thus, they safely arrived at a rather inconspicuous dried flower specialty shop in the market.
In present-day London, the market for edible dried flowers had already reached a certain scale.
Most were sold to French patisseries and pharmacies, as well as wealthy individuals who enjoyed bathing with dried flowers.
It wasn’t as if no tea merchants had tried blending dried flowers with black tea.
However, those who drank floral tea were either a small, fashionable segment of high society,
or the poorest, who could only afford tea dust and needed a hint of floral aroma to make it palatable.
Most of the time, both types of floral tea were adulterated by merchants with artificial flavorings of questionable safety—a gray area in the development of the chemical industry.
Moreover, when dried flowers and tea leaves were mixed together and steeped for too long, the resulting brew turned bitter, and the quality was inconsistent.
In most cases, they haphazardly blended based on personal taste, resulting in unstable flavors, with no systematic study of floral tea ever undertaken.
And this was precisely where Dolly’s selling point for her tea lay.
She wanted to sell a tea that was affordable for ordinary people in the East End, yet still offered professional flavor without compromising health.
Dolly entered the crowded shop and inquired with the clerk about the price of dried Damask roses.
What she wanted to buy was crushed rose petals.
The clerk opened several tin canisters on the counter and said, “Crushed petals are seven pence per pound. These two types are both five pence.”
“May I smell them?”
“Go ahead.”
Dolly leaned over the counter and chose the more fragrant variety, purchasing two pounds. She didn’t forget to ask the clerk for a business card.
Next, she wandered around the flower market and, after considerable effort, managed to find edible dried osmanthus flowers.
The osmanthus available in London was all imported from the Qing Court. It was somewhat niche and not cheap, costing two Shillings per pound.
After smelling the fragrance, Dolly calculated the blending ratio and bought ten ounces of dried osmanthus.
The market also sold preserved fruits, so she casually bought some and packed them together with the dried flowers in her bag.
Of course, to get Penny to help carry the bag, she had to buy her some cheap raisins.
With still plenty of time left, she decided to walk with Penny to the busiest commercial street on Oxford Street to visit the famous department stores there.
Specifically, the first one she had cut out from the newspaper and saved for investigation and research: Gardlow’s Department Store.
Oxford Street was only a ten-minute walk from Covent Garden.
Along the way, she realized she had entered the late-nineteenth-century consumer district of London’s middle class.
In this area, all the shops were different from the cramped, crowded, and damp establishments of the East End.
Even the streets were swept exceptionally clean, with gas street lamps installed at regular intervals.
Mounted police in uniform patrolled the area back and forth.
In the restaurants along the street, waiters wore short tailcoats, while the people coming and going from the coffee shops were mostly waiting for the nearby theaters and circuses to open.
On this street, most shops specialized in a single category, unlike the large, all-in-one department stores of later eras.
A small number were large department stores with limited variety.
The middle class in London at the time loved a sense of ceremony.
They loved buying fashionable hats from the unique handmade millinery shops on Bond Street, purchasing French delicacies from Regent Street, and acquiring daily necessities from Oxford Street.
Even belts and shoes had to be chosen from different shops, all for the sake of that unique sense of ceremony.
If one could wear tailor-made shirts, they would never settle for factory-produced common goods.
As for the more famous department stores here, their product variety was not as extensive as in later times.
Dolly took Penny for a stroll inside Gardlow Department Store. Although the shop assistants and attendants passing by always regarded the two of them with some wariness, fortunately, because they were dressed in full skirts and wore hats, looking like maids from some household, the attendants did not drive them out.
Dolly paid no attention to these glances. After briefly observing the sales model and merchandise here, she left with a clear plan in mind.
Gardlow Department Store occupied an entire building, with a very spacious interior. Each floor was large enough to accommodate dozens of people browsing.
The first floor was for daily groceries, the second for kitchenware, and the third for furniture and home textiles.
Each floor was filled with numerous counters, where Shopping Guides helped customers pack their goods. The checkout counters were located at the entrance, similar to supermarkets.
Each section neatly displayed high-quality household items, but they were not the very best.
The very best goods had to be sought in the luxury shops on Bond Street and Regent Street.
Those who shopped on Oxford Street were either maids and housekeepers from wealthy households or members of the middle class.
For example, the families of large shop owners and small managers—people with an annual income of over six hundred Pound Sterling.
Those slightly poorer would not choose to shop here.
Here, a pound of Assam black tea cost one Pound Sterling, while better-quality teas ranged in price from several pounds.
Dolly and Penny left this place and went to various nearby brand specialty stores that sold specific categories of goods.
As they passed a street corner, Dolly noticed a prominent sign at the intersection.
“Helconza Liquor Store”
Dolly remembered that she had seen social news about this liquor merchant in the newspaper.
It was connected to the fraud case that led to the lawsuit between Chablais Bank and Ute Shipping Company.
…
Author’s Note: