I’d known it was a mistake the moment I’d agreed to it months earlier. I only had myself to blame. I’d allowed myself to be persuaded by Kenneth. He’d said how difficult he now found reading and perhaps I’d like to take over leading the Boxing Day book club. Then I’d found myself under pressure to choose a book so as to give the others time to read it. Of course, I’d just snatched an old favourite from the shelves. Now I only had a few days left to work out the case for possibly the unlikeliest bestseller of all time when it was first published over fifty years ago. I comforted myself with the thought that it was short. I’d read the author’s other works, knew a lot of biographical detail, but all the same. The only thing clear, was that the title needed explanation, I decided to start with that.
‘I suppose you’ll be expecting another Aunt Elisabeth tea?’ Said Charlie, breaking in on my thoughts.
‘It’s not me, it’s the others.’
‘Yeah, yeah. You just don’t have the will to refuse them.’
Melisa was kind enough to deliver Kenneth, and surprised me by accepting his invitation to sit in. He began by introducing me; ‘Tony’s choice today is, blessedly, a very short book and unusually for us biographical in nature, a book of selected correspondence. But I know it’s a book lover’s book, I read it first, oh, longer ago than I care to remember. Tony.’
‘Thank you, Kenneth. I think what caused me to reach for this volume was the sense that the author would have felt entirely at home in the modern world of the Internet and social media. She’d undoubtedly have been an influencer. Her lack of formality, her brevity, despite being a professional writer, is of course in sharp contrast to the recipient of her letters. Even her choice of typefaces is redolent of today. I think I can best be of service by saying something of the historic context of the book. 84, Charing Cross Road was just a small bookshop in a sea of bookshops, large and small, in nineteen forty-nine. Even more than twenty years later, when Helene Hanff finally got her wish to visit London, the Charing Cross Road was where everyone went, when in search of books that could not be found on a WH Smith bookstall. If a book was still in print then the giant Foyles had it, or at least they could get it for you. If out of print, then you could trawl the street for a good, clean copy. I regret to report that today, 84, Charing Cross Road is a McDonalds. Although it rates a blue plaque on the wall. The average time spent in that fast-food chain was once calculated as seven minutes! I imagine all of us have spent longer browsing in a bookshop. Now, who’d like to start the discussion?’
‘She implies she was more or less starving in her New York garret, is that true?’
‘Yes, but there was an element of choice to it, her first love was Broadway. She was for decades determined to be a playwright. And was singularly unsuccessful. 84, was her second book. The first was Underfoot In Showbusiness, an autobiographical account of her struggles.’
‘It’s often portrayed as a love story. Do you think she was in love with Frank Doel, despite them never meeting?’
‘No, I think they were pen pals, her love was for the England of English literature, he facilitated that. I think you need to understand how much of an autodidact Helene was. As a result of educating herself via the public libraries of Philadelphia and New York, she stumbled on the work of Arthur Quiller-Couch and allowed herself to be led by him.’
‘Quiller-Couch was a professor of English Literature at Cambridge.’ Said the lady who used to work at the library. ‘He was a Cornishman of course, but partly educated in our county. Everyone called him Q.’
‘He was keen that everyone should approach literature through the language used, how it was grounded in the real world around them, so great emphasis on biography and historical context.’ I commented.
At this point the ex-librarian opened her copy of 84 at a page she’d marked and said; ‘February 9th 1952, she’s talking of Walton’s Lives, I quote; “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.” End quote. Bit of a challenge to our little group, don’t you think Tony?’
‘Indeed. There’s another letter somewhere, in which she confides she feels she ought to know about Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and asks for a modern English version. Later she comments something like, if he’d written about what it was like to be a lowly clerk at the court of Richard III, she’d have learnt old English for that!’
‘Nobody writes letters anymore.’ Someone said. ‘I mean a letter is private, and you hardly know what you think until you start writing, its personal, you know the person you’re writing to.’
‘I guess that’s what really dates my choice. If most of you have read the edition which includes The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, the diary of her first visit to London after the publication of 84, you’ll know that Joyce Grenfell, one of the great letter writers of the twentieth century, rapidly contacts Andre Deutsch in the hope of contriving an introduction to Helene. My bookshelves heave with Joyce, one volume contains almost daily letters, from childhood onwards, written to her mother, younger sister of Nancy Astor, another volume of lifelong letters to her childhood friend Virginia Graham.’
‘Nobody even writes emails, if they can help it. Instant opinions offered online, where do our reflections go? Sorry, I must be sounding like a terrible old bore.’ Offered Kenneth.
‘Did you approve of the play and the film, Tony?’ Said another.
‘Well, by the standards of the modern theatre and Hollywood, absolutely! Both faithfully reproduced in the script as many of the letters as they could. Just a two-hander really. A split stage and a split screen. Bookshop, interior. Small New York apartment, interior. Rather jolly and intimate.’
Then suddenly my reverie was interrupted by the sound of an approaching tea trolley. Melisa jumped up to help Charlie serve all us oldies. Aunt Elisabeth’s best china tea service, decorated Christmas paper napkins, side plates for sandwiches, followed by a fork for the consumption of gateau. Later a desert bowl and spoon for trifle. Conversation switched to the decline of letter writing in general, whilst I thought of all that washing up. Someone spoke of postcards and airmail letters from afar. Soon we were on to the decline of the Royal Mail. Four deliveries a day in London once upon a time someone claimed. Had anyone preserved a travelling post office I was asked. I had to concede I wasn’t that much of an expert on railways.
After a while I thought to myself, this room is beginning to take on the atmosphere of a Victorian tea, in a very upmarket care home, contrived with the sole purpose of facilitating reminiscence therapy. Was I becoming fascinated by just the past now, back with the History I'd started with as an undergraduate? Enough, no more dying from a severe attack of nostalgia. Get me out of here, no get these people out of here.