84, Charing Cross Road
38 pages • 1-hour read
Helene Hanff84, Charing Cross Road
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Pages 74-97Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
Pages 74-97 Summary
Early in 1960, Hanff writes to Frank in comedic despair after receiving a massive Giant Modern Library volume as a Christmas gift. The hefty book awkwardly pairs The Complete Poetry & Selected Prose of John Donne with The Complete Poetry of William Blake. Frustrated by the pairing and Blake’s mystical visions, Hanff declares that she dislikes Blake and finds Donne equally overwhelming. She begs “Frankie” for help, claiming the book is driving her “clear up the wall” before giving up and heading to bed to avoid “hideous nightmares” involving Donne’s sermons (75). On March 5, 1960, Frank writes to Hanff, addressing her request for more Donne and warning that the Complete Sermons run to more than 40 volumes and would be very expensive.
In a letter dated May 8, 1960, Hanff describes a chaotic evening at her home in New York. While she was trying to enjoy a peaceful moment with the radio, the arrival notice for De Tocqueville’s book sent her thoughts spiraling into American politics and the Democratic presidential hopefuls Kennedy, Stevenson, and Humphrey.
On February 2, 1961, Hanff writes to Frank announcing that she sold a story to Harper’s Magazine for $200, which helped pay off debts. She explains that she has been devouring books at the Society Library, including an abridged Francis Parkman volume and the memoirs of the Duke de Saint-Simon, and says that she wants her own copy of the latter. Frank replies warmly on February 15, 1961, confirming that he is sending a nicely bound set of the Duke de Saint-Simon memoirs. He signs off affectionately, hoping to hear from her soon and still dreaming of hosting her in England one day.
In a letter dated March 10, 1961, Hanff sends Frank $10 as partial payment and playfully begs for help finding an inexpensive edition of a book tied to the dramatized story of her “last night” with Louis, referring to a Hallmark Hall of Fame production involving Sarah Churchill. She adds a cheeky postscript, declaring that Frank is the only soul alive who understands her.
On October 14, 1963, Frank writes to Hanff to say that Virginia Woolf’s The Common Reader is on its way to her. He also shares a personal update: His eldest daughter, Sheila, now 24, is training to become a teacher. A few weeks later, on November 9, 1963, Frank sends a follow-up letter announcing that he has found a modern version of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and will be sending it. Hanff’s reply opens, “All right, that’s enough Chaucer-made-easy” (86). She complains that the edition has “the schoolroom smell of Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare” and wonders what it would have been like to live in the time of Oliver Cromwell (86).
In March 1964, Hanff inquires about Cecily and Megan, asking how they are doing, and requests several books on behalf of a friend. Frank replies that he will send the volumes for her friend and adds that he has not heard from Cecily in years. However, he reports that Megan Wells spent some time in South Africa before moving on to Australia.
On October 4, 1965, Frank writes a cheerful letter telling Hanff that he had a pleasant summer and revealing that he has become a Beatles fan.
Hanff writes on September 30, 1968, with the wry opening, “Still alive, are we?” (90). She explains that she has been writing American history books for children for the past four or five years. She asks whether Frank is a grandfather yet and requests more Jane Austen titles. Frank responds on October 16, 1968, confirming that everyone is still alive. He describes a hectic summer filled with American tourists and says that they are currently short on Jane Austen but hope to have stock by Christmas. He adds that Sheila is now teaching and that Mary is engaged.
On January 8, 1969, Hanff receives a letter from Jane Todd, the secretary at Marks & Co., informing her that Frank died in December after a ruptured appendix led to peritonitis. The next letter comes from Nora, Frank’s widow. She thanks Hanff for her kind letter of condolence and expresses regret that Hanff and Frank never met in person. Nora admits that she was “always a little jealous” of the exchanges between her husband and Hanff (93), praising Hanff’s sense of humor and writing ability. She once again invites Hanff to come to London to meet her and her daughters, Sheila and Mary.
In a letter to her friend Katherine, Hanff reflects sadly on never having made the long-dreamed-of trip to London: “The blessed man who sold me all the books died a few months ago. And Mr. Marks who owned the shop is dead. But Marks & Co. is still there. If you happen to pass 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much” (94).
The book closes with an epilogue: a letter dated October 1969 from Sheila to Hanff. Sheila says that she is pleased to hear about Hanff’s book and willingly gives permission for Frank’s letters to be published. She notes, “Although my father was never a wealthy or powerful man, he was a happy and contented one. And we’re happy that this is so” (97). Sheila adds that the family will always look forward to hearing from Hanff.
Pages 74-97 Analysis
These final pages become a meditation on friendship across distance and on what is lost when distance is never closed. The Transformative Power of Books and Reading continues to structure the correspondence, but it is no longer the driving force behind it. Hanff’s requests (Donne, Blake, de Tocqueville, Francis Parkman, the Duke de Saint-Simon, Virginia Woolf) show her range widening even as her letters thin. She is now reading at the Society Library and writing American history books for children, hinting that her literary life has become fuller and more self-sustaining: She no longer needs Marks & Co. as her primary channel to the world of books in the way she once did. The friendship that began because Hanff could not find the books she wanted in New York survives into a period when she no longer needs the shop at all, which means the later letters, though less numerous, are held together by affection.
The humor of the earlier years persists throughout most of the letters in this section, but there is a widening gap between the tone of those letters and the implied metatext, particularly regarding the long-promised trip to England. The tragedy of the deferred visit is heightened by the fact that it was always possible. Several of Hanff’s acquaintances manage to visit London, and even the bookshop, yet for Hanff, “next summer” becomes a refrain repeated across nearly two decades. Even when Sheila offers, in the epilogue, to host her in London, Hanff still does not go. Though Hanff would make the journey in 1971, the collection ends on an unresolved note, creating a disjunction between Hanff the correspondent, who is generous and exuberant, and Hanff the traveler, who never arrives.
The effect of Frank’s death is similarly dissonant. Hanff’s last letter to Frank, dated September 30, 1968, opens with a joke about the long silence: “Still alive, are we?” (90). He dies within three months, but for readers encountering the letters sequentially, the timeframe is even more compressed and the tonal shift more marked. Moreover, news of Frank’s death arrives not from Nora or from one of the staff members the collection has spotlighted, but from Joan Todd, a secretary the reader has never met, in a note of administrative brevity. It is unclear whether Hanff herself had ever corresponded with Joan Todd before, but the effect is to collapse the chorus of voices into a stranger’s typed notice. This suggests that the intimacy that the letters had built was held together in large part by Frank. Nora’s confession that she felt some jealousy of Hanff underscores the depth of that intimacy, recasting Hanff as someone whose presence in Frank’s inner life was real enough to register as a kind of rival.
Given Frank’s implied centrality to the transatlantic relationships Hanff established, the deepest irony of the book is that it exists only because Frank died. Published in 1970, a year after his death, the collection was possible only once the correspondence had ended. Had Frank lived, the letters would have continued, and there would have been no reason to gather them. The object in the reader’s hands is therefore a kind of monument: the trip Hanff never took, built out of paper instead of travel. The tragedy at the heart of the book is not simply that Frank died or that Hanff never went to London during his lifetime. It is that the book itself is the evidence of both losses, transformed into the only form of presence either of them could finally achieve.
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