84 Charing Cross Road Read online

  Nora joins me in sending best wishes.

  Sincerely,

  Frank

  Helene Hanff 305 East 72nd Street, New York 21, N.Y.

  * * *

  May 8, 1960

  M. De Tocqueville’s compliments and he begs to announce his safe arrival in America. He sits around looking smug because everything he said was true, especially about lawyers running the country. i belong to a Democratic club, there were fourteen men over there the other night, eleven of them lawyers. came home and read a couple of newspaper stories about the presidential hopefuls—stevenson, humphrey, kennedy, stassen, nixon—all lawyers but humphrey.

  I enclose three bucks, it’s a beautiful book and you can’t even call it secondhand, the pages weren’t cut. Did I tell you I finally found the perfect page-cutter? It’s a pearl-handled fruit knife. My mother left me a dozen of them, I keep one in the pencil cup on my desk. Maybe I go with the wrong kind of people but i’m just not likely to have twelve guests all sitting around simultaneously eating fruit.

  cheers

  hh

  Helene Hanff 305 East 72nd Street, New York 21, N.Y.

  * * *

  February 2, 1961

  Frank?

  You still there?

  i swore i wouldn’t write till i got work.

  Sold a story to Harper’s Magazine, slaved over it for three weeks and they paid me $200 for it. Now they’ve got me writing the story of my life in a book. they’re “advancing” me $1,500 to write it and they figure it shouldn’t take me more than six months. I don’t mind for myself but the landlord worries.

  so I can’t buy any books but back in October somebody introduced me to Louis the Duke de Saint-Simon in a miserable abridgement, and I tore around to the Society Library where they let you roam the stacks and lug everything home, and got the real thing. Have been wallowing in Louis ever since. The edition I’m reading is in six volumes and halfway through Vol. VI last night I realized I could not supPORT the notion that when I take it back I will have NO louis in the house.

  The translation I’m reading is by Francis Arkwright and it’s delightful but I’ll settle for any edition you can find that you trust. DO NOT MAIL IT! just buy it and let me know what it costs and keep it there and I’ll buy it from you one volume at a time.

  Hope Nora and the girls are fine. And you. And anybody else who knows me.

  Helene

  Marks & Co., Booksellers

  84, Charing Cross Road

  London, W.C.2

  15 February, 1961

  Miss Helene Hanff

  305 East 72nd Street

  New York 21, N.Y.

  Dear Helene,

  You will be pleased to know that we have a copy of the Memoirs of the Duke de Saint-Simon in stock in the Arkwright translation, six volumes nicely bound and in very good condition. We are sending them off to you today and they should arrive within a week or two. The amount due on them is approximately $18.75 but please don’t worry about paying it all at once. Your credit will always be good at Marks & Co.

  It was very good to hear from you again. We are all well, and still hoping to see you in England one of these days.

  Love from us all,

  Frank

  Helene Hanff 305 East 72nd Street, New York 21, N.Y.

  * * *

  March 10, 1961

  Dear Frankie—

  Enclosed-please-God-please-find a $10 bill, it better get there, not many of those float in here these days but louis wanted me to get him paid off, he got so tired of the deadbeats at court he didn’t want to move in with one 270 years later.

  Thought of you last night, my editor from Harper’s was here for dinner, we were going over this story-of-my-life and we came to the story of how I dramatized Landor’s “Aesop and Rhodope” for the “Hallmark Hall of Fame.” Did I ever tell you that one? Sarah Churchill starred as Landor’s dewy-eyed Rhodope. The show was aired on a Sunday afternoon. Two hours before it went on the air, I opened the New York Times Sunday book review section and there on page 3 was a review of a book called A House Is Not a Home by Polly Adler, all about whorehouses, and under the title was the photo of a sculptured head of a Greek girl with a caption reading: “Rhodope, the most famous prostitute in Greece.” Landor had neglected to mention this. Any scholar would have known Landor’s Rhodope was the Rhodopis who took Sappho’s brother for every dime he had but I’m not a scholar, I memorized Greek endings one stoic winter but they didn’t stay with me.

  So we were going over this anecdote and Gene (my editor) said “Who is Landor?” and I plunged into an enthusiastic explanation—and Gene shook her head and cut in impatiently:

  “You and your Olde English books!”

  You see how it is, frankie, you’re the only soul alive who understands me.

  xx

  hh

  p.s. Gene’s Chinese.

  Marks & Co., Booksellers

  84, Charing Cross Road

  London, W.C.2

  14th October, 1963

  Miss Helene Hanff

  305 East 72nd Street

  New York 21, N.Y.

  U.S.A.

  Dear Helene,

  You will no doubt be surprised to learn that the two volumes of Virginia Woolf’s Common Reader are on their way to you. If you want anything else I can probably get it for you with the same efficiency and swiftness.

  We are all well and jogging along as usual. My eldest daughter Sheila (24) suddenly decided she wanted to be a teacher so threw up her secretarial job two years ago to go to college. She has another year to go so it looks as though it will be a long time before our children will be able to keep us in luxury.

  Love from all here,

  Frank

  Marks & Co., Booksellers

  84, Charing Cross Road

  London, W.C.2

  9th November, 1963

  Miss Helene Hanff

  305 East 72nd Street

  New York 21, New York

  U.S.A.

  Dear Helene,

  Some time ago you asked me for a modern version of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. I came across a little volume the other day which I thought you would like. It is not complete by any means, but as it is quite a cheap book and seems to be a fairly scholarly job, I am sending it along by Book Post today, price $1.35. If this whets your appetite for Chaucer and you would like something more complete later on, let me know and I will see what I can find.

  Sincerely,

  Frank

  saturday

  All right, that’s enough Chaucer-made-easy, it has the schoolroom smell of Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare.

  I’m glad I read it. i liked reading about the nun who ate so dainty with her fingers she never dripped any grease on herself. I’ve never been able to make that claim and I use a fork. Wasn’t anything else that intrigued me much, it’s just stories, I don’t like stories. Now if Geoffrey had kept a diary and told me what it was like to be a little clerk in the palace of richard III—THAT I’d learn Olde English for. I just threw out a book somebody gave me, it was some slob’s version of what it was like to live in the time of Oliver Cromwell—only the slob didn’t live in the time of Oliver Cromwell so how the hell does he know what it was like? Anybody wants to know what it was like to live in the time of Oliver Cromwell can flop on the sofa with Milton on his pro side and Walton on his con, and they’ll not only tell him what it was like, they’ll take him there.

  “The reader will not credit that such things could be,” Walton says somewhere or other, “but I was there and I saw it.”

  that’s for me, I’m a great lover of I-was-there books.

  I enclose two bucks for the chaucer, that leaves me a credit with you of 65c which is a larger credit than I have anywhere else.

  xx

  h

  Helene Hanff 305 East 72nd Street, New York 21, N.Y.

  * * *

  March 30, 1964

  Dear Frank—

  l take time out from a
children’s history book (my fourth, would you believe?) to ask if you can help a friend. He has an incomplete set of Shaw in what he insists is just called the Standard Edition. It’s bound in rust-colored cloth, he says, if that helps. I enclose a list of what he has, he wants all the others in the set but if you have more than a few, don’t send them all at once. He’ll buy them piecemeal, like me he’s a pauper. Send them to him direct, to the address on the list. That’s 32nd Avenue in case you can’t read it.

  Do you ever hear anything of Cecily or Megan?

  best

  helene

  Marks & Co., Booksellers

  84, Charing Cross Road

  London, W.C.2

  14th April, 1964

  Miss Helene Hanff

  305 East 72nd Street

  New York 21, New York.

  U.S.A.

  Dear Helene,

  About the Shaw for your friend, the Standard Edition is still available from the publishers, it is bound in the rust-coloured cloth as he describes and I think there are about 30 volumes in the complete set. Used copies seldom come along but if he would like us to send him new copies we shall be glad to do so and could send him three or four volumes a month.

  We have not heard from Cecily Farr in some years now. Megan Wells had enough of South Africa in a very short time and did stop in to give us a chance to say I-told-you-so, before going out to try her luck in Australia. We had a Christmas card from her a few years ago but nothing recently.

  Nora and the girls join me in sending love,

  Frank

  Marks & Co., Booksellers

  84, Charing Cross Road

  London, W.C.2

  4th October, 1965

  Miss Helene Hanff

  305 East 72nd Street

  New York 21, New York

  U.S.A.

  Dear Helene,

  It was good to hear from you again. Yes, we’re still here, getting older and busier but no richer.

  We have just managed to obtain a copy of E. M. Delafield’s Diary of a Provincial Lady, in an edition published by Macmillan in 1942, a good clean copy, price $2.00. We are sending it off to you today by Book Post with invoice enclosed.

  We had a very pleasant summer with more than the usual number of tourists, including hordes of young people making the pilgrimage to Carnaby Street. We watch it all from a safe distance, though I must say I rather like the Beatles. If the fans just wouldn’t scream so.

  Nora and the girls send their love,

  Frank

  Helene Hanff 305 East 72nd Street, New York 21, N.Y.

  * * *

  September 30, 1968

  Still alive, are we?

  I’ve been writing American history books for children for four or five years. Got hung up on the stuff and have been buying American history books—in ugly, cardboardy American editions, but somehow I just didn’t think the stately homes of England would yield nice English editions of James Madison’s stenographic record of the Constitutional Convention or T. Jefferson’s letters to J. Adams or like that.

  Are you a grandfather yet? Tell Sheila and Mary their children are entitled to presentation copies of my Collected Juvenile Works, THAT should make them rush off and reproduce.

  I introduced a young friend of mine to Pride & Prejudice one rainy Sunday and she has gone out of her mind for Jane Austen. She has a birthday round about Hallowe’en, can you find me some Austen for her? If you’ve got a complete set let me know the price, if it’s expensive I’ll make her husband give her half and I’ll give her half.

  Best to Nora and anybody else around.

  Helene

  Marks & Co., Booksellers

  84, Charing Cross Road

  London, W.C.2

  16th October, 1968

  Miss Helene Hanff

  305 East 72nd Street

  New York City, N.Y 10021.

  U.S.A.

  Dear Helene,

  Yes, we are all very much alive and kicking, though rather exhausted from a hectic summer, with hordes of tourists from U.S.A., France, Scandinavia, etc., all buying our nice leather-bound books. Consequently our stock at the moment is a sorry sight, and with the shortage of books and high prices there is little hope of finding any Jane Austen for you in time for your friend’s birthday. Perhaps we will be able to find them for her for Christmas.

  Nora and the girls are fine. Sheila is teaching, Mary is engaged to a very nice boy but there is little hope of them getting married for some time as neither has any money! So Nora’s hopes of being a glamorous grandmother are receding fast.

  Love,

  Frank

  Marks & Co., Booksellers

  84, Charing Cross Road

  London, W.C.2

  8th January, 1969

  Miss Helene Hanff

  305 E. 72nd Street

  N.Y. 10021

  U.S.A.

  Dear Miss,

  I have just come across the letter you wrote to Mr. Doel on the 30th of September last, and it is with great regret that I have to tell you that he passed away on Sunday the 22nd of December, the funeral took place last week on Wednesday the 1st of January.

  He was rushed to hospital on the 15th of December and operated on at once for a ruptured appendix, unfortunately peritonitis set in and he died seven days later.

  He had been with the firm for over forty years and naturally it has come as a very great shock to Mr. Cohen, particularly coming so soon after the death of Mr. Marks.

  Do you still wish us to try and obtain the Austens for you?

  Yours faithfully,

  p.p. MARKS & CO.

  Joan Todd (Mrs.)

  Secretary

  (UNDATED. POSTMARKED JANUARY 29, 1969. NO ADDRESS ON LETTER.)

  Dear Helene,

  Thank you for your very kind letter, nothing about it at all offends me. I only wish that you had met Frank and known him personally, he was the most well-adjusted person with a marvelous sense of humour, and now I realize such a modest person, as I have had letters from all over to pay him tribute and so many people in the book trade say he was so knowledgeable and imparted his knowledge with kindness to all and sundry. If you wish it I could send them to you.

  At times I don’t mind telling you I was very jealous of you, as Frank so enjoyed your letters and they or some were so like his sense of humour. Also I envied your writing ability. Frank and I were so very much opposites, he so kind and gentle and me with my Irish background always fighting for my rights. I miss him so, life was so interesting, he always explaining and trying to teach me something of books. My girls are wonderful and in this I am lucky. I suppose so many like me are all alone. Please excuse my scrawl.

  With love,

  Nora

  I hope some day you will come and visit us, the girls would love to meet you.

  April 11, 1969

  Dear Katherine—

  I take time out from housecleaning my bookshelves and sitting on the rug surrounded by books in every direction to scrawl you a Bon Voyage. I hope you and Brian have a ball in London. He said to me on the phone: “Would you go with us if you had the fare?” and I nearly wept.

  But I don’t know, maybe it’s just as well I never got there. I dreamed about it for so many years. I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I’d go looking for the England of English literature, and he nodded and said: “It’s there.”

  Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. Looking around the rug one thing’s for sure: it’s here.

  The blessed man who sold me all my books died a few months ago. And Mr. Marks who owned the shop is dead. But Marks & Co. is still there. If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much.

  Helene

  Winton Avenue

  London, N.11

  October, 1969

  Dear Helene,

  This is correspondent No. 3 of
the Doel family speaking! First, may I apologize for the long silence. Believe me, you were often in our thoughts, we just never seemed to get around to committing those thoughts to paper. And then today we got your second letter, and were so ashamed of ourselves that we’re writing immediately.

  We’re pleased to hear about your book and very willingly give permission to publish the letters.

  We are now in our lovely new home. But although we love the house, and are very happy we moved, we often think of how much my father would have enjoyed it.

  It’s futile to have regrets. Although my father was never a wealthy or powerful man, he was a happy and contented one. And we’re happy that this was so.

  We all lead busy lives—perhaps it’s better so. Mary works hard at the University library, and for relaxation goes on car rallies which last all night. I’m studying part time for a degree as well as teaching full time, and Mum—she never stops! So I’m afraid we’re very bad correspondents—though delighted, of course, to receive letters. Nevertheless, we will try to write when we can if you would like this, and look forward to hearing from you.

  Yours truly,

  Sheila

  Photographs

  Marks & Co. circa 1969

  Frank Doel