84, Charing Cross Road Read Online Free PDF
Author: Helene Hanff
England and browse around my bookshop myself. If I have the nerve. I write them the most outrageous letters from a safe 3,000 miles away. i’ll probably walk in there one day and walk right out again without telling them who I am.
I fail to see why you did not understand that groceryman, he did not call it “ground ground nuts,” he called it “ground ground-nuts” which is the only really SENsible thing to call it. Peanuts grow in the GROUND and are therefore GROUND-nuts, and after you take them out of the ground you grind them up and you have ground ground-nuts, which is a much more accurate name than peanut butter, you just don’t understand English.
XXX
h. hanff
girl etymologist
P. S. Your mother is setting out bravely this morning to look at an apartment for you on 8th Avenue in the 50’s because you told her to look in the theatre district. Maxine you know perfectly well your mother is not equipped to look at ANYTHING on 8th Avenue.
----
14 East 95th St.
February 9, 1952
SLOTH,
i could ROT over here before you’d send me anything to read. i oughta run straight down to brentano’s which i would if anything i wanted was in print.
You may add Walton’s Lives to the list of books you aren’t sending me. It’s against my principles to buy a book I haven’t read, it’s like buying a dress you haven’t tried on, but you can’t even get Walton’s Lives in a library over here.
You can look at it. They have it down at the 42nd street branch. But not to take home! the lady said to me, shocked. eat it here, just sit right down in room 315 and read the whole book without a cup of coffee, a cigarette or air.
Doesn’t matter, Q quoted enough of it so I know I’ll like it. anything he liked i’ll like except if it’s fiction. i never can get interested in things that didn’t happen to people who never lived.
what do you do with yourself all day, sit in the back of the store and read? why don’t you try selling a book to somebody?
MISS Hanff to you.
(I’m Helene only to my FRIENDS)
P.S. tell the girls and nora if all goes well they’re getting nylons for Lent.
----
Marks & Co., Booksellers
84, Charing Cross Road
London, W.C.2
14th February, 1952
Miss Helene Hanff
14 East 95th Street
New York 28, New York
U.S.A.
Dear Helene,
I quite agree it is time we dropped the “Miss” when writing to you. I am not really so stand-offish as you may have been led to believe, but as copies of letters I have written to you go into the office files the formal address seemed more appropriate. But as this letter has nothing to do with books, there will be no copy.
We are quite at a loss to know how you managed the nylons which appeared this noon as if by magic. All I can tell you is that when I came back from lunch they were on my desk with a note reading: “From Helene Hanff.” No one seems to know how or when they arrived. The girls are very thrilled and I believe they are planning to write to you themselves.
I am sorry to say that our friend Mr. George Martin who has been so ill for some time passed away in hospital last week. He was with the firm a great number of years, so with that loss and the King dying so suddenly as well, we are rather a mournful crowd at the moment.
I don’t see how we can ever repay you for your many kind gifts. All I can say is, if you ever decide to make the trip to England, there will be a bed for you at 37 Oakfield Court for as long as you care to stay.
With best wishes from us all,
Frank Doel
----
14 East 95th St.
New York City
March 3, 1952
Oh my, i do bless you for that Walton’s Lives. It’s incredible that a book published in 1840 can be in such perfect condition more than a hundred years later. Such beautiful, mellow roughcut pages they are, I do feel for poor William T. Gordon who wrote his name in it in 1841, what a crummy lot of descendants he must have—to sell it to you casually for nothing. Boy, I’d like to have run barefoot through
I fail to see why you did not understand that groceryman, he did not call it “ground ground nuts,” he called it “ground ground-nuts” which is the only really SENsible thing to call it. Peanuts grow in the GROUND and are therefore GROUND-nuts, and after you take them out of the ground you grind them up and you have ground ground-nuts, which is a much more accurate name than peanut butter, you just don’t understand English.
XXX
h. hanff
girl etymologist
P. S. Your mother is setting out bravely this morning to look at an apartment for you on 8th Avenue in the 50’s because you told her to look in the theatre district. Maxine you know perfectly well your mother is not equipped to look at ANYTHING on 8th Avenue.
----
14 East 95th St.
February 9, 1952
SLOTH,
i could ROT over here before you’d send me anything to read. i oughta run straight down to brentano’s which i would if anything i wanted was in print.
You may add Walton’s Lives to the list of books you aren’t sending me. It’s against my principles to buy a book I haven’t read, it’s like buying a dress you haven’t tried on, but you can’t even get Walton’s Lives in a library over here.
You can look at it. They have it down at the 42nd street branch. But not to take home! the lady said to me, shocked. eat it here, just sit right down in room 315 and read the whole book without a cup of coffee, a cigarette or air.
Doesn’t matter, Q quoted enough of it so I know I’ll like it. anything he liked i’ll like except if it’s fiction. i never can get interested in things that didn’t happen to people who never lived.
what do you do with yourself all day, sit in the back of the store and read? why don’t you try selling a book to somebody?
MISS Hanff to you.
(I’m Helene only to my FRIENDS)
P.S. tell the girls and nora if all goes well they’re getting nylons for Lent.
----
Marks & Co., Booksellers
84, Charing Cross Road
London, W.C.2
14th February, 1952
Miss Helene Hanff
14 East 95th Street
New York 28, New York
U.S.A.
Dear Helene,
I quite agree it is time we dropped the “Miss” when writing to you. I am not really so stand-offish as you may have been led to believe, but as copies of letters I have written to you go into the office files the formal address seemed more appropriate. But as this letter has nothing to do with books, there will be no copy.
We are quite at a loss to know how you managed the nylons which appeared this noon as if by magic. All I can tell you is that when I came back from lunch they were on my desk with a note reading: “From Helene Hanff.” No one seems to know how or when they arrived. The girls are very thrilled and I believe they are planning to write to you themselves.
I am sorry to say that our friend Mr. George Martin who has been so ill for some time passed away in hospital last week. He was with the firm a great number of years, so with that loss and the King dying so suddenly as well, we are rather a mournful crowd at the moment.
I don’t see how we can ever repay you for your many kind gifts. All I can say is, if you ever decide to make the trip to England, there will be a bed for you at 37 Oakfield Court for as long as you care to stay.
With best wishes from us all,
Frank Doel
----
14 East 95th St.
New York City
March 3, 1952
Oh my, i do bless you for that Walton’s Lives. It’s incredible that a book published in 1840 can be in such perfect condition more than a hundred years later. Such beautiful, mellow roughcut pages they are, I do feel for poor William T. Gordon who wrote his name in it in 1841, what a crummy lot of descendants he must have—to sell it to you casually for nothing. Boy, I’d like to have run barefoot through
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