'84 Charing Cross Road'
October 5, 1959
Gentlemen:
Your ad in the Saturday Review of Literature says that you specialise in out-of-print books. The phrase 'antiquarian book-sellers' scares me somewhat, as I equate 'antique' with expensive. I am a poor write with an anteriquarian taste in books and all the things I want are impossible to get over here except in very expensive rare editions, or in Barnes & Noble's grimy, marked-up schoolboy copies.
I enclose a list of my most pressing problems. If you have clean secondhand copies of any of the books on the list, for no more than $5.00 each, will you consider this a purchase order and send them to me?
November 3, 1949
Gentlemen:
The books arrived safely, the Stevenson is so fine it embarrasses my orange-crate bookshelves, I'm almost afraid to handle such soft vellum and heavy cream-colored pages. Being used to the dead-white paper and stiff cardboardy covers of American books, I never knew a book could be such a joy to the touch.
November 18, 1949
WHAT KIND OF A BLACK PROTESTANT BIBLE IS THIS?
Kindly inform the Church of England they have loused up the most beautiful prose ever written, whoever told them to tinker with the Vulgate Latin? They'll burn for it, you mark my words.
It's nothing to me, I'm Jewish myself. But I have a Catholic sister-in-law, a Methodist sister-in-law, a whole raft of Presbyterian cousins (through my Great-Uncle Abraham who converted) and an aunt who's a Christian Science healer, and I like to think none of them would countenance this Anglican Latin Bible if they knew it existed. (As it happens, they don't know Latin existed.)
April 10, 1950
Dear Cecily
...
Please write and tell me about London, I live for the day when I step off the boat-train and feel its dirty sidewalks under my feet. I want to walk up Berkeley Square and down Wimpole Street and stand in St. Paul's where John Donne preached and sit on the step Elizabeth sat on when she refused to enter the Tower, and like that. A newspaper man I know, who was stationed in London during the war, says tourists go to England with preconceived notions, so they always find exactly what they go looking for. I told him I'd go looking for the England of English literature, and he said:
"Then it's there."
October 15, 1950
WELL!!
All I have to say to YOU, Frank Doel, is we live in depraved, destructive and degenerate times when a bookshop - a BOOKSHOP - starts tearing up beautiful old books to use as wrapping paper.
...
You tore that book up in the middle of a major battle and I don't even know which war it was.
...
I want the Q anthology,
...
Why don't you wrap it in pages LCXII and LCXIII so I can at least find out who won the battle and what war it was?
April 16, 1951
To All at 84 Charing Cross Road:
Thank you for the beautiful book. I've never owned a book before with pages edged all round in gold. Would you believe it arrived on my birthday?
I wish you hadn't been so over-courteous about putting the inscription on a card instead of the fly-leaf. It's the bookseller coming out in you all, you were afraid you'd decrease its value. You would have increased it for the present owner. (And possibly for the future owner. I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else has turned, and reading passages some one long gone has called my attention to.)
And why didn't you sign your names? I expect Frank wouldn't let you, he probably doesn't want me writing love letters to anybody but him.
September 10, 1951
Dearheart -
It is the loveliest old shop straight out of Dickens, you would go absolutely out of your mind over it.
...
It's dim inside, you smell the shop before you see it, it's a lovely smell, I can't articulate it easily, but it combines must and dust and age, and walls of wood and floors of wood.
...
The shelves go on forever. They go up to the ceiling and they're very old and kind of grey, like old oak that has absorbed so much dust over the years they no longer are their true color.
...
I stayed about half an hour hoping your Frank or one of the girls would turn up, but it was one-ish when I went in, I gather they were all out to lunch and I couldn't stay any longer.
...
Love, Maxine
March 3, 1952
you better watch out, i'm coming over there in 53 if ellery is renewed. i'm gonna climb up that victorian book-ladder and disturb the dust on the top shelves and everybody's decorum. Or didn't I ever tell you that I write arty murders for Ellery Queen on television? All my scripts have artistic backgrounds - ballet, concert hall, opera - and all the suspects and corpses are cultured, maybe I'll do one about the rare book business in your honor, you want to be the murderer or the corpse?
December 12, 1952
To 'her friends at 84, Charing Cross Road':
The Book-Lovers' Anthology stepped out of its wrappings, all gold-embossed leather and gold-tipped pages, easilythe most beautiful book I own including the Newman first edition.
...
I do think it's a very uneven exchange of Christmas presents. You'll eat yours up in a week and have nothing left to show for it by New Year's Day. I'll have mine till the day I die - and die happy in the knowledge that I'mleaving it behind for someone else to love. I shall sprinkle pale pencil marks through it pointing out the best passages to some book-lover yet unborn.
Thank you all. Happy New Year.
Postcard mailed from Stratford-upon-Avon, May 6, 1957
You might have warned us! We walked into your bookstore and said we were friends of yours and were nearly mobbed. Frank wanted to take us home for the weekend. Mr Marks came out from the back of the store just to shake hands with friends-of-Miss-Hanff, everybody in the place wanted to wine and dine us, we barely got out alive.
Love, Ginny and Ed
18th March, 1959
Dear Helene,
We are all sorry to hear that your television shows have moved to Hollywood and that one more summer will bring us every American tourist but the one we want to see. I can quite understand your refusal to leave New York for Southern California. We have our fingers crossed for you and hope that some sort of work will turn up soon.
Sincerely, Frank
March 10, 1961
Dear Frankie -
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".
...
we're going over this anecdote and Gene (my editor) asks "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.
14th October, 1963
Dear Helene,
We are all well and jogging along as usual. My eldest daughter Sheila (24) suddenly decided she wanted to be a teacher so threwup 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
4th October, 1965
Dear Helene,
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
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
'Duchess of Bloomsbury Street'
'Underfoot in Showbusiness'
'Apple of My Eye'
'Q's Legacy'
'Letter from New York'
(FURTHER QUOTES TO BE ADDED TO THIS PAGE SHORTLY...)