I got home and saw the package was lying in the mailbox, opened the wrapping paper and there they were, two second hand books " 84 Charing Cross Road" and "The Duchess of the Bloomsbury Street". I ordered those right after watched the same titled movie 84 CRD, used book, just fit.
The little book of 84 CRD is 20 years correspondence between author and an old English book seller Frank. Helene's sarcastic and witty letters are responded to by the stodgy and proper Frank Doel of 84, Charing Cross Road . While reading the letters I felt as if the characters were right with me, breathing over the typewriter and typing these letters at their desks.....the lost art of letter writing.
We all had that moment when we suddenly feel something, something new, something soft and yet revolutionary. This must be how Helene felt when she first received the letter from Frank. Over the years she guarded these memories like a shrine. He had been a hero, a guardian angel, a divine emissary, who had guided her through the loneliness time with the books she appreciated. Years later in another era, it exists yet for us the readers, as it was for her.
The Duchess of Bloomsbury street is a diary during the course when Helene stayed in London. She detailed every place that she visited there, full of history and culture, behind those buildings, parks, streets and gardens. She wanted to see literature there, and she surely found it and much more.
Behind all those structures were the people who adored her, treated her as..... well a royalty, a Duchess. She found the friendship in her 20 years correspondence with Frank, his family and the staffs at Marks & Co. Now up close and personal, she once again found the same affection from the people in London.
As a New Yorker, she walked the history of London as alive and well and living, and subconsciously compared two cities from time to time. "Sidewalk superintendents , in London you shoo them away by talking to them. In NYC talking to them would just get you their life stories." Not sure if it's still true 40 years later as of today.
"I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: 'It's there.'" What will I find when I go to a strange yet familiar place? The stories I heard, the histories I read, the pictures I drooled over, all became part of the experience saturated within me. And then one day when I get there, I will see "It's there".