Glad Shopping
Eleanor was a shopgirl, too.
This edition of the The Beacon was inspired by the Pollyanna Glad Shop at 91 Main Street in Eleanor Porter’s birthplace of Littleton, New Hampshire. We visit it later in this story.
In the late 1890s, before Eleanor Porter became a writer, the newlywed Littleton woman lived in Springfield Vermont where her husband, John Lyman Porter, was “president” of the Porter and Angell Company. Eleanor’s occupation was teaching piano and performing, but when John’s mother got sick in December of 1898, Eleanor worked at the furniture store while John stayed with his parents in Corinth, VT.
A future edition of The Beldingsville Beacon will tell how that worked out. (Eleanor wrote to John frequently, and those letters are in a collection at Dartmouth.) The experience informed her fiction, including the story of Pollyanna.
Pollyanna goes shopping only once. In Chapter Seven of Pollyanna Aunt Polly takes her to buy clothes:
At half-past one o'clock Timothy drove Miss Polly and her niece to the four or five principal dry goods stores, which were about half a mile from the homestead.
The various clerks who had waited upon the pair came out of it with very red faces, and enough amusing stories of Pollyanna to keep their friends in gales of laughter the rest of the week.
In the sequel, Pollyanna Grows Up, Eleanor considers these “various clerks” or shopgirls with more sympathy.
Shopgirls
Eleanor Porter’s life (1868-1920) spanned an era known as the Second Industrial Revolution (1870-1914). It changed shopping forever. The biggest change was product standardization. Factories made uniform merchandise that was easy to sort, stock and price. This development led to mail order catalogues and department stores. It also led to shopgirls.
“In 1880, fewer than 8,000 women worked as sales clerks. By 1890, that number had grown to over 58,000.” (New-York Historical Society)
Until Eleanor’s generation, American women had a limited role in retail sales. Stores stocked bulk commodities in barrels and crates. The job of waiting on customers required measuring, weighing and preparing merchandise for sale, maybe even manufacturing a product, as with clothing. Retail sales often depended on negotiating a price, and men were presumed to be better “hagglers.”
When mass-production produced standardized merchandise, fewer skills were required of retail attendants. All the measuring and pricing was already done. The process of selling was easy, and labor was very cheap. The new economy generated a need for low-skill workers that was met by refugees from farm country where mechanization of agriculture eliminated jobs.
The Second Industrial Revolution saw a great migration to cities as the nation outgrew its agricultural economy. But, workplace conditions were often deplorable, which Eleanor illuminates in Pollyanna Grows Up (1915) through the character of Sadie Dean.
Sadie Dean (Pollyanna Grows Up)
We recall that, in this novel, young Pollyanna takes her Glad Game to Boston when she was still a child. In Chapter Five, she meets a pretty girl in the Boston Public Garden.
An adult man had accosted the girl, but Pollyanna’s chatter innocently foils his sinister intent, and he goes away. Pollyanna asks if the girl (Sadie Dean) lives in Boston.
"Oh, yes, I live here now," sighed the girl; "that is, if you can call it living—what I do."
"What do you do?" asked Pollyanna interestedly.
"Do? I'll tell you what I do," cried the other, with sudden bitterness. "From morning till night I sell fluffy laces and perky bows to girls that laugh and talk and KNOW each other. Then I go home to a little back room up three flights just big enough to hold a lumpy cot-bed, a washstand with a nicked pitcher, one rickety chair, and me. It's like a furnace in the summer and an ice box in the winter; but it's all the place I've got, and I'm supposed to stay in it—when I ain't workin'.
The social conscience of Eleanor Porter was piqued by the plight of shopgirls. She sets the character of Sadie Dean to making a home for innocent shopgirls in moral peril — along the lines of the “Annex” shelter in the Miss Billy stories. EHP also mentions shopgirls in Oh, Money! Money! when the heroine, Maggie, is solicited “for a contribution to the Pension Fund Fair in behalf of the underpaid shopgirls in Daly's…”
Daly's was a Hillerton department Store, notorious for its unfair treatment of its employees.
Miss Maggie seemed interested, and asked many questions. The eager- eyed young woman became even more eager-eyed, and told Miss Maggie all about the long hours, the nerve-wearing labor, the low wages—wages upon which it was impossible for any girl to live decently—wages whose meagerness sent many a girl to her ruin.
Eleanor Porter did not begin to write until her thirties. By then, she had been a musician, a teacher and a shopgirl — roles that she portrays with insight and empathy.
Veronica Francis
The Glad Shop is a cheerful place to stop while visiting Eleanor Hodgman Porter’s home town. It is at 91 Main Street, directly across from the 2002 Emile Birch Pollyanna of Littleton Statue.
Veronica Francis, a Pollyanna Signature Awardee, tends the shop that she opened in 2020 under the auspices of Greg Eastman, owner of the venerable storefront — one that Eleanor would recognize as neighbor to her father’s 1860s apothecary shop. While offering an array of Pollyanna keepsakes, collectables and souvenirs (“fun gifts for the optimist” ) the shop has become a welcome center in Eleanor Porter’s former neighborhood.
91 Main Street, Littleton, NH
603-444-0700
GoLittletonShop.com
“Many people wonder if Pollyanna is a real person. Who is Pollyanna and why is it promoted in Littleton?” Veronica tells the Beldingsville Beacon. She advises visitors that Eleanor Porter, the author, was born and raised in Littleton and how the town has adopted the positive attitude that Mrs. Porter embodied in the little girl, Pollyanna.
Veronica is known for Notchnet, her long-established internet and website company and for Golittleton.com, an online hub for Littleton area’s many attractions. Her Pollyanna projects are found at The Glad Shop website. She is on the board of Pollyanna of Littleton which promotes all-things-Pollyanna with special events and awards.
The shop came about when she was seeking office space, Veronica relates:
Greg Eastman owns the space that we rent for the Glad Shop. His family has owned this building for over 90 years. When we first looked at this space to rent, it was going to be an office for GoLittleton, but Greg pointed out how it was right near the Pollyanna sculpture and many visitors do not know why that is there.
So Greg said a shop with some Pollyanna mementos may be a good addition to downtown. I liked the idea and started buying some souvenirs and it was very small and quiet for first year – but visitors kept coming in and saying how great it was to visit the Glad Shop and to keep at it!
Most visitors come from the New England states, but Pollyanna draws her fans from all over the world. Veronica reports visitors from as far as Australia, who made a point of coming to see Eleanor Porter’s Littleton when they toured the USA. Nazli Ermut of Ankara, Turkey reached out to the GoLittleton Glad Shop to share her Pollyanna story Pollyanna Mutlu Muydu? Which translates in English to “Was Pollyanna Happy?" Veronica interviewed Nazli to learn more about her findings and tips for staying happy in tough times.
Mindful of her enduring significance, the board of Pollyanna of Littleton has submitted a nomination to put a NH Historical Marker at the Library to honor Eleanor Hodgman Porter.
Illustrations: Library of Congress, Hathi Trust, GoLittleton.com, EHP correspondence.
Copyright © Jim McIntosh 2024
Jim McIntosh writes history that should not be forgotten in the blather of our current anti-American revisionists. Those who were skilled in words (and education emphasized literacy, grammar, poetry and oration in schools) strove to right injustices through newspapers and novels.