While I was in London, I met up with someone I knew there for an afternoon beer. We got to talking about books, of course, and about buying used books and lucking into wonderful books you'd never heard of before. My friend asked if I had ever heard of 84 Charing Cross Road. I hadn't. He said he would mail me a copy. He was true to his word: the book showed up in my mailbox last Friday. It's a book of (real!) correspondence between an American writer living in New York and an antiquarian bookseller in London (and some of his associates and relations), spanning a 20 year period beginning in 1949. Given the subject matter, it seems especially appropriate to have received this book in the mail from London.
The book is delightful. Helene Hanff is a hilarious writer -- one could only wish for a correspondent like her today. But she is also clearly so caring: in the first few years of her correspondence with the bookshop, London is still straitened with post-war rations. She sends care packages for the staff for every holiday and has a friend hand deliver stockings for the women. Her status as a distant friend and benefactor earns her real affection, not just of the bookstore staff, but of their families and others as well.
Published along with 84 Charing Cross Road in the edition I received is its sequel, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, which is a journal of Helene Hanff's 1971 visit to London to do publicity after the former book is published, and this was a delight as well. Her observations on London and New York are keen and fantastically entertaining. Her awe at finally seeing the places she knows about only from books is so charming. (And I found it particularly fun to read about her visiting places I went to myself just a few weeks ago. I really identified with Hanff's interest in places, with her desire to visit places where people she admired had spent time. I do this a lot when I travel. This is why I particularly like house museums.) Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street is witnessing Hanff finally getting the celebrity you, as her reader, feel she deserves. 84 Charing Cross Road was a hit in the U.K. and her time in London is filled with invitations to dinner from fans (including some celebrities) and interviews with local media, and even a request to sit for a portrait. You get the sense that Hanff was chugging along as a writer, just making a living, but that she was meant for so much more, and her time in London finally offered the reward and recognition she was due.
I half wish I had read 84 Charing Cross Road and its sequel before my visit to London. It would have added so many must-see places to my list! (In fact, I hardly had time to see all my must-see places as it was, so perhaps it's best I didn't read it ahead.)
