To read "84 Charing Cross Road", click here
To read its sequel "The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street", click here
I could've written the above quote, except I didn't - Helene Hanff did! Of course, you know her: she of the book "84 Charing Cross Road" which was also made into a charming film starring Anthony Hopkins as Frank Doel, chief buyer of Marks & Co, antiquarian booksellers, located at the eponymous address in London.
It's an epistolary novel and perhaps not to your liking , so why not go straight to its sequel "The Duchess of Bloomsbury", after which, I am sure, you will be hooked and continue with "Q's Legacy", in which Helene Hanff recalls her serendipitous discovery of a volume of lectures by a Cambridge don, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. She devoured Q’s book, and, wanting to read all the books he recommended, began to order them from a small store in London, at 84 Charing Cross Road.
She first contacted the shop in 1949 and it fell to Frank Doel to fulfil her requests. In time, a long-distance friendship developed between the two and between Helene Hanff and other staff members as well, with an exchange of Christmas packages, birthday gifts and food parcels to help with the post-World War II food shortages in Britain. Their letters included discussions about topics as diverse as the sermons of John Donne, how to make Yorkshire Pudding, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the coronation of Elizabeth II. Helene Hanff postponed visiting her English friends until too late; Frank Doel died in December 1968 from peritonitis from a burst appendix, and the bookshop eventually closed in December 1970. Helene Hanff did finally visit Charing Cross Road and the empty shop in the summer of 1971, a trip recorded in her 1973 book "The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street".
Having already dedicated her first book "84 Charing Cross Road" to "F.P.D. In Memoriam" (in which F.P.D., of course, stands for Frank Percy Doel), Helene Hanff wrote "Q's Legacy" "In grateful memory of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch - Not to pay a debt but to acknowledge it".
While I don't necessarily share Helene Hanff's antiquarian taste in books - of the many books she ordered from Marks & Co, I only read "The Wind in the Willows" - I do share her passion for books. They are the only enduring reality I can be certain of till the day I die.
P.S. Regular readers of this blog will by now have joined the Internet Archive which stores some 28 million books and texts, 14 million audio recordings, and 6 million videos. If you haven't done so yet, do it now! It's easy, and it's FREE! Click here.
