Helen Hanff Trivia

1. On June 17, 1971, Helene Hanff boarded a BOAC flight at Kennedy Airport, and was finally on her way to London. Which well-known publication gave her the money that paid for her trip?

From Quiz The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

Answer: Reader's Digest

Helene had been planning to go to London for years, but always had to cancel her plans because of her finances. She used to go to English movies just to look at the houses and the streets, and likened her desire to visit London to a gnawing hunger. As Helene put it so eloquently in her book, she "wanted to see London the way old people want to see home before they die". In 1970, Helene published "84, Charing Cross Road", which chronicled her twenty-year relationship with the firm of antiquarian booksellers that stood at that address in London. Ironically, she finally realized her dream of going to London when she was asked to publicize the release of her book in England. This time, money wasn't an issue - thanks to the runaway success of "84", she had written an article about her fan mail which had been purchased for publication by "Reader's Digest". The paycheck paid for some expensive surgery, some new clothes, and Helene's plane ticket.

From Quiz '84, Charing Cross Road'

Answer: Marks and Co.

'Marks and Co.', by the way, did not stand for 'and company', but for 'Marks and Cohen', the partners who owned the store.

From Quiz The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

Answer: The shower

Helene arrived in London in the evening when it was too dark to see anything, so she didn't get the sense that she was in England at all. That all changed the next morning when she drew back the curtains in her hotel room and was greeted by "a neat row of narrow brick houses with white front steps" looking up at her, which imbued her with a new-found sense of urgency to get out of her hotel and start her vacation proper. Unfortunately, her excitement was literally dampened by the shower in her hotel room, which had to be turned to full blast before the water was hot enough for a bath. Helene's hairdo was drenched when she accidentally dropped the soap, and she spent fifteen minutes mopping up the flooded bathroom when she was done with her shower. She even remarked that it was a good thing she shut the bathroom door, or her suitcase would have been washed away!

From Quiz '84, Charing Cross Road'

Answer: London, England

The title of the book referred to the London street where the shop was.

From Quiz '84, Charing Cross Road'

Answer: Frank Doel

For two decades she and Doel wrote letters to each other.

From Quiz The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

Answer: Their ghost had gone.

The two sisters lived in a Queen Anne style house with a rose garden in the back. When they purchased the house twenty years ago, a ghost was already living in it. The ghost kept to himself and didn't cause any trouble most of the time, but whenever the sisters prepared to leave for a trip and tried to close the house, the ghost went berserk and caused a commotion up to the time that they left - apparently, the ghost wanted the house to be lived in, and disliked it when the house was unoccupied. This ritual repeated itself every time the sisters left the house for an extended period of time, until the last time they made plans to go away, when the house remained silent and its contents undisturbed. The sisters were sad, because they realized that the ghost had gone, and they had grown quite fond of him.

From Quiz '84, Charing Cross Road'

Answer: Hazlitt and Stevenson

They were the 'Selected Essays' of essayist William Hazlitt and 'Virginibus Puerisque' by Stevenson.

From Quiz The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

Answer: The entire village came in to have a look at them.

The Colonel was a fan of Helene's working at Heathrow Airport, and was the first person to meet her off the plane "before [her] dainty feet touched British soil". When he heard Helene's story about Great Tew, he insisted on finding it for her. Someone had sent Helene a postcard of Great Tew years ago, and she used to stare at it for hours because it represented the idealized version of rural England that she had in her mind - "five thatched cottages falling down a hillside". The pair located the village without much difficulty, and made a stop at the general store for some refreshments. Before long, the store started to fill up with "men in country caps and women in print dresses". The adults purchased cigarettes and newspapers, while the children who came in were promptly chased out of the store. Once they had left Great Tew, the Colonel asked Helene, "Did you notice how the entire village came in to see the people from Outer Space?" He reckoned that they had come running when they saw the London plates on his car, and that they would be talking about their visit for a month. "They won't see travelers here from one year's end to the next," the Colonel explained, "And from New York? Not in a lifetime!"

From Quiz The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

Answer: A martini

Helene was famous for her affinity to cigarettes and martinis, and she tried to order a martini in the bar of her hotel, with hilarious results. After the first attempt by Bob the bartender produced a cocktail that Helene found undrinkable because of the amount of vermouth he put in it, she prevailed upon him to use her recipe instead. Helene was more like Winston Churchill in the martini-appreciation department - he was apparently famous for measuring out the amount of vermouth in his martini by looking at the bottle from across the room as he poured the gin. Bob looked on in disbelief as she instructed him to add a second, followed by a third, jigger of gin in the shaker. ("More gin?" Bob asked. "Yes, and lower your voice," Helene replied.) Helene also insisted on pouring the vermouth herself, and added just a few drops to the drink before declaring that it was perfect. From then on, Bob made the drink without any supervision, but he always reduced the amount of gin. Helene thought that he was fearful that she would end up "sprawled face down on a table sodden drunk".

From Quiz '84, Charing Cross Road'

Answer: food

For some time after World War Two Britain was still on food rationing, so Helene's shipping of eggs, meat and other foodstuffs was very welcome.

From Quiz The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

Answer: A dozen roses

On their last outing together, Helene had surmised that Pat Buckley missed having a garden. Living in London, Pat and his neighbors did their gardening in little pots on the roof of their building. When Helene was at Harrods, she visited the florist's shop on the ground floor, and selected twelve roses to have delivered to Pat Buckley to brighten his flat - she couldn't think of any other way to thank him for the kindness he had shown her during her trip. After he received the flowers, Pat Buckley wrote to thank Helene for her thoughtful gesture, and when Helene extended her trip, he had enough time to give her something in return - a custom-made gold lapel pin with the crest of the City of London on it.

From Quiz '84, Charing Cross Road'

Answer: Yorkshire Pudding

The 'pudding' is really a light, hollow pastry.

From Quiz The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

Answer: She wanted Helene to sit for a portrait.

Leo Marks was the son of one of the co-founders of the bookshop that stood on 84, Charing Cross Road. He wrote to her care of her publisher because he wanted to meet the lady who had such an impact on the lives of the people working in his father's shop all those years ago. Like Helene, Leo Marks was a writer, and was best known for having written the screenplays for the films "Peeping Tom" and "Twisted Nerve" during the 1960s. His wife also worked in the creative arts - she was a portrait painter who painted under her maiden name, Ena Gaussen. When Ena told Helene that she wanted to paint her portrait, Helene was taken aback, and wondered why anyone would want to paint "a plain, ordinary middle-aged face". Ena assured Helene that she had an interesting face which "change[d] all the time". Helene eventually relented, but insisted that she conduct her sittings in Russell Square, a park situated near her hotel. The sittings attracted the attention of the ticket taker in charge of renting out the deck chairs in the park, who wanted to know if Helene was someone famous because (in his words) "painters do not paint portraits of Just Anyone".

From Quiz '84, Charing Cross Road'

Answer: Samuel Pepys

Pepys' diary is a window into the world of seventeenth century England.

From Quiz '84, Charing Cross Road'

Answer: Ellery Queen

Before the 70's version with Jim Hutton in the title role, there was the 50's version.

From Quiz The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

Answer: She gave the name to herself.

Helene christened herself "The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street" after a particularly decadent dinner party hosted by her publisher, Andre Deutsch. The evening started when a car came round to the Kenilworth Hotel to deliver Helene to Victor's, an elegant Hungarian restaurant. Upon her arrival, the proprietor bowed and kissed Helene's hand, and called her "Queen of London for a month", before adjourning to the private dining room on the second floor of the restaurant. The meal was accompanied with flowers and candles, and ended with an extravagant cake decorated with pink icing. Upon her return to the Kenilworth at the end of the evening, Helene swept into the lobby and informed the manager of the hotel that she was "hereafter to be known as the Duchess of Bloomsbury. Or Bloomsbury Street, at least".

From Quiz '84, Charing Cross Road'

Answer: A tablecloth

It was a hand-embroidered linen tablecloth made by a next-door neighbor of the shop.

From Quiz '84, Charing Cross Road'

Answer: Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch

Best known as 'Q', Quiller-Couch wrote volumes on literature that Helene read in the Depression when she couldn't attend college.

From Quiz '84, Charing Cross Road'

Answer: Izaak Walton

It was the classic 'The Compleat Angler'. She also got Walton's 'Lives', biographies on many of Walton's contemporaries.

From Quiz '84, Charing Cross Road'

Answer: Jane Austen

She went gaga over 'Pride and Prejudice'.

From Quiz '84, Charing Cross Road'

Answer: W. Somerset Maugham

She was interested only in the older English authors.

From Quiz '84, Charing Cross Road'

Answer: she was evicted

She was evicted from her old apartment.

From Quiz '84, Charing Cross Road'

Answer: dental bills

The cost of dental surgery was a big block to her visiting Marks and Co.

From Quiz '84, Charing Cross Road'

Answer: no & n

She was a diehard lover of old hardcover books.

From Quiz '84, Charing Cross Road'

Answer: Frank Doel died

The death of her longtime correspondent on December 22, 1968 was a great blow to her.

From Quiz '84, Charing Cross Road'

Answer: yes & y

Thanks to the sales of her book, Helene finally visited England and though the shop had closed for good, she finally saw the bookshop that was a part of her life all those years.

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