Hanff - The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

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84, Charing Cross Road

Apple of My Eye

Letter from New York

Qs Legacy

Underfoot in Show Business

A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1973 by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

THE DUCHESS OF BLOOMSBURY STREET. Copyright 1973 Helene Hanff. Introduction 2016 Plum Sykes. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hanff, Helene.

The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street / Helene Hanff

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-06-244218-5

EPub Edition July 2016 ISBN 9780062442048

1. Hanff, Helene--Journeys--England. 2. Women Authors, American--20th Century--Biography. 3. Booksellers and bookselling--England. 4. England--Description and travel. 5. American--Travel--England.

I. Title. 1995

PS3515.A4853Z464

16 17 18 19 20 RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To the people of London

If you find Nora Ephron hilarious, if you love the work of Nancy Mitford, and if Bridget Joness Diary makes you scream with laughter, you will adore Helene Hanff. She had style. She had a voice. She had the inimitable attitude of those smart twentieth-century New York dames who didnt give a damn.

This slim little volume, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, is the sequel to Helene Hanffs first book, 84, CharingCross Road, which was published in 1970. The Duchess is such a zippy read that I devoured it in one go on a recent forty-five-minute flight from London to Paris.

Despite her deft comic touch, Ms. Hanff was never afraid of unleashing an opinion. She would often capitalize a phrase When She Really Meant It. In this spirit, I am going to say something my publisher might wish I hadnt. (But, as Helene would have probably said, To Hell with Publishers.) Anyway, the thing Im going to say, which I probably shouldnt, is that you will enjoy this book a squillion times more if you read 84, Charing Cross Road first. Only it has as different publisher, which is probably why Im not supposed to go on about it.

But go on about it I must. The first book, 84, Charing Cross Road is a collection of correspondence between Hanff and the staff at a rare books dealer, Marks & Co., whose London address was 84, Charing Cross Road. The letters span the years 1949 to 1969. You cant truly enjoy The Duchess without having gone down The Road first because its such a marvelous introduction to the phenomenon that was Helene Hanff.

Born in Philadelphia in 1916, Helene Hanff was a script reader and writer who lived alone on New Yorks Upper East Side. A devoted Anglophile, she started corresponding with Frank Doel, the manager of the Marks & Co. bookstore, to acquire British books that were hard to come by in Manhattan. Her letters contain orders for obscure, by then long out-of-print, authors such as Walter Savage Landor, Leigh Hunt, and John Newman.

Helenes notes to Frank Doel reveal an extraordinarily well-read woman of great wit and character. Over time, her letters to Doel evolve from rather formal, polite notes to hilariously familiar ones. My favorite is dated September 18, 1952, and reads, Now listen, Frankie, its going to be a long cold winter and I babysit in the evenings AND I NEED READING MATTER, NOW DONT START SITTING AROUND, GO FIND ME SOME BOOKS. Hanff soon started receiving letters from other staff in the shop, and eventually from their various wives and daughters, who were intrigued by these missives from the outspoken New Yorker.

The letters are a bittersweet record of Britains struggle to rebuild itself after World War II. Even five years after the war ended, Helene soon realized, her correspondents in London sadly lacked many of the things most Americans took for granted. She was by no means a rich womanshe couldnt afford to visit London in personbut she started sending the staff Christmas and Easter baskets, which included such delicacies as tins of tongue, dried eggs, and whole hamsit was still a rarity to see a piece of meat in one large portion in Britain well into the early 1950s.

Over this twenty-year period, Helene built an extraordinary friendship with these people whom she had never met. Facebook friends, with their videos, photographs, and constant updates have nothing on these guys, believe me.

Frank Doel died in 1969. To everyones surprise, most of all Helenes, 84, Charing Cross Road became a hit when it was published in 1970. Helene gained worldwide attention, and the legendary British publisher Andre Deutsch decided to bring the book out in England. Crucially for Helene, Deutsch wanted her there for the publication. This made a visit to London just about affordable, and finally, at the age of fifty-five, Helene got to visit her beloved England. The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street is her diary of that trip.

I couldnt put this book down for two reasons. One: It is the charming story of a midlife dream realized. Two: Helene Hanff was a completely and utterly neurotic New Yorkermy favorite kind of heroine. Although she eloquently writes that she would go to England looking for the England of English literature, the day before she leaves for London she also admits that she is terrified of going abroad by myself (I am terrified of going to Queens or Brooklyn by myself; I get lost). That evening, she confesses, I got out of bed, had hysterics, a martini and two cigarettes, got back in bed, and whiled away the rest of the night composing cables saying I wasnt coming.

Helene does make it onto the plane, on June 17, 1971. The American publication of her book had brought with it avalanches of letters from adoring English fans, as well as offers from various correspondents to take care of her if she ever came to London. A former colonel, who had gone to work at Heathrow Airport after retiring from the army, volunteers to escort her through Customs and Immigration; Nora Doel, Franks widow, and his daughter, Sheila, insist on meeting her after Customs. A glamorous-sounding Old Etonian called Pat Buckley even offers to show her literary London. (Its a very sweet idea, isnt it, that you publish a book and various strangers offer to take you on jaunts in a foreign country. Nowadays, such offers would be met with a jail term for stalking.)