for something. I’m only teasing, but I know he’ll take me seriously. I keep trying to puncture that proper British reserve, if he gets ulcers I did it.
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.”
Regards—
Helene Hanff
----
Marks & Co., Booksellers
84, Charing Cross Road
London, W.C.2
20 September 1950
Miss Helene Hanff
14 East 95th Street
New York 28, New York
U.S.A.
Dear Miss Hanff,
It is such a long time since we wrote to you I hope you do not think we have forgotten all about your wants.
Anyway, we now have in stock the Oxford Book of English Verse , printed on India paper, original blue cloth binding, 1905, inscription in ink on the flyleaf but a good secondhand copy, price $2.00. We thought we had better quote before sending, in case you have already purchased a copy.
Some time ago you asked us for Newman’s Idea of a University. Would you be interested in a copy of the first edition? We have just purchased one, particulars as follows:
NEWMAN (JOHN HENRY, D.D.) Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education, Addressed to the Catholics of Dublin. First edition, 8 vo. calf, Dublin, 1852. A few pages a little age-stained and spotted but a good copy in a sound binding. Price—$6.00
In case you would like them, we will put both books on one side until you have time to reply.
With kind regards,
Yours faithfully,
Frank Doel
For MARKS & CO.
----
14 East 95th St.
September 25 1950
he has a first edition of Newman’s University for six bucks, do I want it, he asks innocently.
Dear Frank,
Yes, I want it. I won’t be fit to live with myself. I’ve never cared about first editions per se, but a first edition of THAT book—!
oh my.
i can just see it.
Send the Oxford Verse, too, please. Never wonder if I’ve found something somewhere else, I don’t look anywhere else any more. Why should I run all the way down to 17th St. to buy dirty, badly made books when I can buy clean, beautiful ones from you without leaving the typewriter? From where I sit, London’s a lot closer than 17th Street.
Enclosed please God please find $8. Did I tell you about Brian’s lawsuit? He buys physics tomes from a technical bookshop in London, he’s not sloppy and haphazard like me, he bought an expensive set and went down to Rockefeller Plaza and stood in line and got a money order and cabled it or whatever you do with it, he’s a businessman, he does things right.
the money order got lost in transit.
Up His Majesty’s Postal Service!
HH
am sending very small parcel to celebrate first edition, Overseas Associates finally sent me my own catalogue.
----
Marks & Co., Booksellers
84, Charing Cross Road
London, W.C.2
2nd October, 1950
Dear Helene,
I brought the enclosed snapshots to the shop with me weeks ago, but we’ve been frightfully busy so have had no chance to send them on to you. They were taken in Norfolk where Doug (my husband) is stationed with the RAF. None of them very flattering of me, but they are the best we have of the children and the one of Doug alone is very good.
My dear, I do hope you get your wish to come to England. Why not save your pennies and come next summer? Mummy and Daddy have a house in Middlesex and would be delighted to put you up.
Megan Wells (secretary to the bosses) and I are going on a week’s holiday to Jersey (Channel Islands) in July. Why don’t you come with us and then you could
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.”
Regards—
Helene Hanff
----
Marks & Co., Booksellers
84, Charing Cross Road
London, W.C.2
20 September 1950
Miss Helene Hanff
14 East 95th Street
New York 28, New York
U.S.A.
Dear Miss Hanff,
It is such a long time since we wrote to you I hope you do not think we have forgotten all about your wants.
Anyway, we now have in stock the Oxford Book of English Verse , printed on India paper, original blue cloth binding, 1905, inscription in ink on the flyleaf but a good secondhand copy, price $2.00. We thought we had better quote before sending, in case you have already purchased a copy.
Some time ago you asked us for Newman’s Idea of a University. Would you be interested in a copy of the first edition? We have just purchased one, particulars as follows:
NEWMAN (JOHN HENRY, D.D.) Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education, Addressed to the Catholics of Dublin. First edition, 8 vo. calf, Dublin, 1852. A few pages a little age-stained and spotted but a good copy in a sound binding. Price—$6.00
In case you would like them, we will put both books on one side until you have time to reply.
With kind regards,
Yours faithfully,
Frank Doel
For MARKS & CO.
----
14 East 95th St.
September 25 1950
he has a first edition of Newman’s University for six bucks, do I want it, he asks innocently.
Dear Frank,
Yes, I want it. I won’t be fit to live with myself. I’ve never cared about first editions per se, but a first edition of THAT book—!
oh my.
i can just see it.
Send the Oxford Verse, too, please. Never wonder if I’ve found something somewhere else, I don’t look anywhere else any more. Why should I run all the way down to 17th St. to buy dirty, badly made books when I can buy clean, beautiful ones from you without leaving the typewriter? From where I sit, London’s a lot closer than 17th Street.
Enclosed please God please find $8. Did I tell you about Brian’s lawsuit? He buys physics tomes from a technical bookshop in London, he’s not sloppy and haphazard like me, he bought an expensive set and went down to Rockefeller Plaza and stood in line and got a money order and cabled it or whatever you do with it, he’s a businessman, he does things right.
the money order got lost in transit.
Up His Majesty’s Postal Service!
HH
am sending very small parcel to celebrate first edition, Overseas Associates finally sent me my own catalogue.
----
Marks & Co., Booksellers
84, Charing Cross Road
London, W.C.2
2nd October, 1950
Dear Helene,
I brought the enclosed snapshots to the shop with me weeks ago, but we’ve been frightfully busy so have had no chance to send them on to you. They were taken in Norfolk where Doug (my husband) is stationed with the RAF. None of them very flattering of me, but they are the best we have of the children and the one of Doug alone is very good.
My dear, I do hope you get your wish to come to England. Why not save your pennies and come next summer? Mummy and Daddy have a house in Middlesex and would be delighted to put you up.
Megan Wells (secretary to the bosses) and I are going on a week’s holiday to Jersey (Channel Islands) in July. Why don’t you come with us and then you could
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