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Dunhill: Difference between revisions
→Alfred Henry Dunhill
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<blockquote><q>During World War J. Mr. Dunhill entered the army as a private and ended as a captain with the Military Cross. Once, in the Second World War when a bomb wrecked the company's offices in 1941, the chairman sat among the debris selling the remnants of the pipe stock to passers‐by.</q> The New York Times - July 9, 1971, Page 34. See more about it here [[WWII Phase]].</blockquote> | <blockquote><q>During World War J. Mr. Dunhill entered the army as a private and ended as a captain with the Military Cross. Once, in the Second World War when a bomb wrecked the company's offices in 1941, the chairman sat among the debris selling the remnants of the pipe stock to passers‐by.</q> The New York Times - July 9, 1971, Page 34. See more about it here [[WWII Phase]].</blockquote> | ||
In 1st February 1941 in the edition of Tobacco, Arthur E. Todd wrote in his column, "Tobacco Notables" Interview No. 6: "The Story of the Dunhill Family". | |||
<blockquote><q>'''Business That Grew from a Chance Idea in the Days of Draughty Motoring - Alfred Henry Dunhill in the Shop That is Their pride - 400 Prisoners Won Him the M.C. - Lamentable Case of Madame Le Brun.''' | |||
Alfred Henry Dunhill puts me in mind of a young priest in charge of a temple full of things he treasures, and would like you, also, to enjoy. I know he will forgive me for saying this; for this tall slim man with the bushy nearly-black beard has a sense of quiet humor somewhere behind his wide: apart dark eyes. He could, I think, he grand company, if you got him away from “shop,” not in the way of noisy bonhomie, but in the way of stimulating conversation that would be full of thought. The chairman of Dunhills‘ smiles only occasionally, a wide smile that shows between curling mustache and curling beard - not, often when he is talking of the firm, the family, his father and his grandfather. | |||
'''Through Those Hitler Countries''' | |||
His surroundings are extremely different from theirs. You feel when you go into the large low-ceilinged shop in Duke-street (it has two separate floor-levels, with a step down, being on the slope of that brief but aristocratic West End thoroughfare) that if you were to give five minutes, on the average, to examining, appreciatively, all the articles there are in it, it would take you about a fortnight working eight hours a day. It has hosts of glass cases such as jewellers affect; the walls are all glass-cases; and displayed - say rather, disposed - in the cases, and on them, and all about, are what, tobacconists call fancy goods chosen, evidently, with meticulous care. That is small wonder. For wherever Hitler is now, in Europe, there (and, as the Yankees say, many places else) Mr. Dunhill has been, collecting, choosing, for customer - say, rather, clients - such little possessions as men like to have by them all their lives. | |||
I should call the carpet of the shop, a plain carpet, light bronze. The whole effect of the place is light brown. It has delicately-ornate wood-work. How much plate-glass there is in it altogether I hesitate (in these explosive days) to think. The commissionaire at the Jermyn-street door-way is in a dark reddish-brown uniform, gold braided, with a woven gilt “A.D." on his lapels. No one would dare to just pop into Dunhills’. You are ushered in. Let all be done (the shop seems to say) decorously and in a proper manner: there is no hurry; you have come not to buy so much as to select; and of course you have the money to pay. Whereupon you wish you had - to pay for everything you can see. | |||
It is important to place Mr. Dunhill in his shop; for I fancy the shop is his whole life - it, and the providing of it with pleasant things to sell. Not for him - again I am guessing - the dull business routine or the storm of quickfire buying and dealing. Keeping shop is to him a fine art. And who shall say that it is not?</q></blockquote> | |||
The company's growing exponentially as an international tobacco and pipe‐making under his administration. In recognition of its export achievements, he won the Queen's Award to Industry. Alfred Henry was a scholar and sequenced his father's work, as we can see here: | The company's growing exponentially as an international tobacco and pipe‐making under his administration. In recognition of its export achievements, he won the Queen's Award to Industry. Alfred Henry was a scholar and sequenced his father's work, as we can see here: | ||