84, Charing Cross Road

84, Charing Cross Road Summary | Letters, 1949 - 1950 Summary

84, Charing Cross Road is Helene Hanff's collection of correspondence chronicling her long-distance friendships with the employees of a secondhand bookstore. The letters from Helene in New York City to the bookstore in London, England, span the time period of twenty years, October 1949 through October 1969.

Helene Hanff writes to the proprietors of the Marks & Co. bookstore in London, England, on October 5, 1949, in response to their advertisement in a literature review publication. The bookstore has advertised their services as "antiquarian booksellers," a term which slightly frightens Helene, but she presses on with her requests for secondhand books.

Helene receives her first letter from Marks & Co. The writer signs off only with the initials FPD and informs Helene that they have sent a few of the books she requested and will keep searching for the others. Helene responds a few weeks later that the books have arrived, and one in particular is too beautifully bound to sit on her orange-crate bookshelves. Helene asks the booksellers to please translate the invoices into American dollars although there is a girl in Helene's apartment building who has helped her convert the British pounds to American dollars up to this point.

The bookseller replies that Helene's money is received, but the bookseller prefers her to send money orders instead of cash. The next books on their way to Helene are the New Testaments, which Helene does not appreciate upon their arrival. The translation by the Church of England from the Vulgate Latin has destroyed the lyricism of the original manuscript.

Although Helene is Jewish, she does have friends and relatives who would not at all appreciate this translation. In an act of rebellion, Helene requests another book and sends cash once more in spite of being asked not to use cash. The bookseller apologizes for the New Testament and credits Helene's account. In reply, Helene would like to know the name of the person who is tending to her requests so that she may address him or her personally instead of just having the initials at the bottom of the letters coming from Marks & Co.

Helene mentions the British boyfriend of her upstairs neighbor and inquires about the state of rations in London, limiting families to two ounces of meat per week and only one egg per person per month. Helene has access to a catalog of fresh foods that can be shipped into England from Denmark and promises to send a gift package to Marks & Co. for the upcoming Christmas holiday.

In mid-December, a reply comes from Frank Doel, who is the person with the initials FPD who has been corresponding with Helene. Frank thanks Helene for her gift package, the items of which have been divided among the six employees in the store. Helene does not receive any other response from Frank until March of 1950, and she sends a letter chastising him for his silence. Since Frank has not sent any books, Helene has been forced to borrow from the library, and she knows that they will not appreciate her scribbles in the margins, although Helene secretly delights in knowing that some unknown person will one day open that book and see her notes.

Helene makes arrangements to send an Easter gift with eggs and adds that she hopes the Easter Bunny does not arrive to find out that the shop employees have died of inertia. Helene requests a book of love poems for the upcoming spring and ends by wondering how the bookshop stays in business if they are so inactive with their other patrons. The Easter package arrives and is acknowledged by Frank, who also tells Helene that he does not have any books of love poems per her request. He says that he will send one as soon as it becomes available.

As a little twist in the correspondence, Helene receives a letter from a young woman named Cecily Farr, a bookstore employee. Cecily asks Helene not to disclose to Frank that she has written to Helene because Frank seems to think of Helene as his own personal customer. Cecily and the rest of the bookstore employees are intrigued by what Helene must look like and have determined that she must be very young and chic.

Others think Helene must be very studious with a wicked sense of humor, and they request a photograph of Helene so that they can fix her image in their minds. Cecily also describes Frank as a man in his late thirties married to an Irish woman who is his second wife. Cecily thanks Helene for the Easter package, especially the raisins and egg with which she could make a cake for her two children. Cecily closes and includes her home address in the event that Helene should ever want to write to her at home.

Helene replies to Cecily's letter with a more accurate description of herself as "about as smart-looking as a Broadway panhandler," who lives in moth-eaten sweaters and wool pants. Helene works in her brownstone apartment as a script reader and writer, and the landlord turns off the heat during the day since Helene is the only one in the building. This accounts for her wooly attire. Helene shares that she has never attended college but that she acquired her obsession with books after running into a Cambridge professor named Quiller-Couch or Q in a library one day.

Helene apologizes for her sometimes abrasive manner with Frank and hopes that his British reserve will not give him ulcers one day. Helene also asks Cecily to write to her about London as Helene has always dreamed of visiting England one day.

Several months pass before Helene receives her next letter from Frank. He apologizes for not writing sooner, but the bookstore has just now received some more of the books in which she is interested. Frank has put the books aside until Helene notifies him of her desire to purchase them.

Helene immediately replies that she does indeed want the two books mentioned in Frank's last letter. Helene assures Frank that Marks & Co. is her only source of secondhand books and asks him to still look for the books still remaining from her original request. Helene has also returned to the habit of sending cash. When she attempted to send a money order, it was lost in transit, and she does not want the aggravation of that process again.

The next letter is one from Cecily in which she encloses some photographs of her, her children and her husband, Doug, who is in the Royal Air Force. Cecily extends an invitation to Helene to stay at her parents' home if she can visit England soon.

Helene's next letter to Frank chastises him for using crumpled book pages as packing material. A book that Helene especially cherishes has arrived, and she leaves it out on a table to just touch and look at all day long. The book with its fine paper and gold-edged pages seems a bit out of place in Helene's tiny apartment, when it should be sitting in the library of some fine estate home. Helene closes and adds a P.S. requesting Sam Pepys' diary in the hopes that it will arrive before winter comes.

Frank's response reassures Helene that he is not ripping up books for packing material. Instead, he uses the pages of those books with missing covers that will never be sold. Frank promises to be on the look out for the Pepys diary.