The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff

Author:Helene Hanff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-05-24T04:00:00+00:00

Friday, July 2

I saw Trinity College and walked the Yard John Donne walked; I saw Oriel and sat in John Henry’s chapel. And what I went through to see them, you purely will not credit. I think I finally had a temper tantrum. I hope I did.

We reached Oxford a little before noon and found the Davidsons’ house on a typical tree-shaded, college-town street. Laura was there waiting for us. She said the Professor was working and son David was in school counting the hours till he could join us for tea.

She has a throaty voice and a lovely, odd accent; she was born in Vienna and grew up in England. She and her husband were both refugee children from Hitler’s Germany.

She was vastly amused by the Colonel, she called him “the Commahnder” and said he reminded her of Winnie the Pooh. My problem was that by this time the Colonel and I had already had thirty straight hours of Togetherness and I’m not equipped for it, not even with the best friend I have on earth, which he isn’t. Over lunch in a campus pub, he announced (à propos of nothing, I think he was just carried away by Oxford):

“The British Empire will be brought back by popular demand! An Egyptian said to me recently: ‘Why do you English sit modestly at home when you’re needed all over the world?’”

For some reason this aggravated me and I said something rude, and we had at it for a couple of minutes till Laura tactfully inserted herself between us like a housemother, and restored harmony.

After lunch, my troubles started. I said Could we please go see Trinity and Oriel Colleges? and Laura said First we must visit the Bodleian Reading Room, it was a magnificent Wren building and her husband was working there and wanted to meet me. We went there and I met the Professor and saw the Reading Room, vaulted ceiling, towering shelves and staircases, all spectacular.

We came out, and I said Now could we go see Trinity and Oriel? and Laura said Did I know the Bodleian library stacks ran for a mile under the pavements? and showed me which pavements. And the Colonel said he had studied one summer at Wadham College and I must see Wadham Yard. And he and Laura agreed they must take me down the main street to Blackwell’s Bookshop, very famous bookshop and they both knew how interested I was in bookshops. (I despair of ever getting it through anybody’s head I am not interested in bookshops, I am interested in what’s written in the books. I don’t browse in bookshops, I browse in libraries, where you can take a book home and read it, and if you like it you go to a bookshop and buy it.)

So, on the one shining day of my life when I was actually in Oxford, I’m dragged down the main street, I’m having every monument and every church pointed out to me, they’re all by

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