London, like a dream, will always be like a dream in everyone's heart. How many travelers in a hurry to meet in London Charing Cross, Charing Cross Station, from this way to and fro, along the route of the old bookstore, ferry to the smoky Chinatown.
Those who have come to this mercurial place because of the original light and transcendent nature of the heart, but also began to have a hang-up.
Always can not help but fall in love with the leisurely old city sipping tea in the leisurely old city, fell in love with the afternoon sunshine snooze, fell in love with a book of joy, a shear flow of romance.
She showed up for her appointment after all, dusty, at 84 Charing Cross, the lovely store that sprang right out of a Dickens book.
She wanted to open her mouth and tell the owner that she had come, that she had kept her promise, but all she got was a cold wind in her face and bitter tears down her cheeks and into her bones.
Perhaps no one really knows which comes first, tomorrow or the accident.
Hélène Hanff used to think that she could always keep her mind on the future. Helene Hanff used to think that she could keep sending her letters to 84 Charing Cross, and that the people who received them would keep sending the books she wanted back to America.
They could always write to each other, occasionally talking about the weather in London and New York, occasionally revealing what they missed.
She also thought that one day she could let go of everything and run to that twenty-year engagement, carrying a ray of sunshine through the clouds and stopping at that old bookstore called 84 Charing Cross.
The most important thing would be to find a quiet place to order two coffees and a cream cheese with the man who is about fifty years old and has a Hejazi nose.
They might talk about their favorite book, or the shabby street they wrote about, or his lovely wife and children, or her upcoming play ......
Or they might say nothing at all, just sit in silence, not feel awkward, and enjoy the peace and quiet of the afternoon.
Maybe they don't say anything, but just sit quietly and enjoy the peaceful and quiet afternoon without feeling awkward.
But she did not have time to start preparing for that appointment, the person she agreed to meet, but the disease that the devil took away from the world.
Twenty years of correspondence, but in exchange for a meeting. This fate seems to be too ruthless, too cruel, too much to tear people's hearts and lungs.
It is said that habit is more terrible than deep love, in fact, we understand that between them, nothing about love, nothing about love, but more of each other's dependence and obsession.
The destiny between people may only take a moment. The bond between Miss Hanff and Mr. Frank started with a very simple business-like letter from New York to London.
Miss Hanff, who is thirty-three and unmarried, is a freelance writer who writes television and stage scripts for a living. She is poor and dropped out of college, but loves to read. She says she loves the glow of the years on books, but American books are too expensive for her to afford, so she writes to a small bookstore across the Channel, explaining the reason for her letter and the book she wants.
The bookstore's supervisor, Mr. Frank Derr, has been Hanff's correspondent for more than twenty years. He is a gentle, modest, considerate, slightly old-fashioned and polite English gentleman. It is because of his dedication to help Helene find books that Helene's dream of loving books comes true.
At first, their letters were more regular, Mr. Dell called her back in the first letter, "Ms.", Hanff second letter at the end of the footnote, "I hope that the meaning of 'Ms.' is not the same as this side of you. I hope 'Ms.' doesn't mean the same thing on your side as it does here." In his next letter, Mr. Derr is obediently referred to as "Ms.". After the fifth letter, Hanff had changed the honorific "Mr." or "Your Excellency" at the beginning of the letter to his first name.
They seem to be like old friends who have known each other for a long time, and there is an air of intimacy and affection.
Hanff is a warm and forthright person, and she is never shy about praising the books he finds for her, from the covers to the content, in her witty style of language.
But if a book comes in the mail that she doesn't like, she will criticize it and make suggestions without mercy. She loves books to the point of demanding perfection because she doesn't want the packaging and binding to fail the content of the book.
Hanff is even more kind-hearted, although she herself is living on a meager fee, not generous, but after she learned that post-war Britain is economically difficult, material scarcity, she will continue to send a steady stream of bookstores to the American food, there are hams, eggs, barbecue, canned goods, raisins ...... some of the things they feel precious and rare delicacies. rare delicacies.
Even more touching is that when she heard that Mr. Del's wife and daughter had no stockings to wear, she wrote to her best friend, who was traveling in England, to buy three stockings and send them directly to the bookstore.
Her generosity was so great that the rest of the bookstore staff, as well as Mr. Dell's family and neighbors, treated her like family and wrote to her to express their gratitude.
They have nothing to offer in return, so they give her a small Christmas gift of a piece of embroidery for Christmas. Miss Hanff is ecstatic to receive the gift, which she feels is the most precious gift in the world.
She writes to them, "What I send you you will be eaten up in a week at the most, and you will not expect to keep it for New Year's Eve; whereas the gift you give me will last with me to the end of my days; and I may even be able to bequeath it to the world with a smile on my face."
These words on the surface seems to be the treasure of that gift, but more is the preciousness of the friendship between them, although they did not meet, but that feeling, has long become the most irreplaceable memories of them with each other.
In twenty years of correspondence, Mr. Dell and Miss Hannaford have always maintained a sacred and pure feelings, there has never been a "love" word. Mr. Dell has always been a gentleman, he is a good man, a good husband, and the only reward for Hanff is to work hard to help her find a good book.
Later, his wife makes an appearance and writes a letter to Hanff to thank her for the gifts of the years. His wife is so virtuous and understanding that she doesn't maliciously speculate about their feelings, let alone unreasonably demand that they not correspond anymore.
It wasn't until after Mr. Dell's death that his wife wrote to Hanff to express her jealousy of her husband's confidante, saying, "I'm not going to lie, I used to be jealous of you because Dell loved to read your letters so much when he was alive, and you two seemed to have a lot of **** in common, whereas he and I were like two extremes! ......"
The reason why his wife was so frank with him was that Miss Hanff and Mr. Del had never been gentlemen, and had never had any feelings overstepped their bounds; they had never even seen each other once.
There is a kind of feeling in this world called seeing is better than missing, missing is better than not seeing.
But it's not that they don't want to see each other. He has said many times that he is looking forward to her arrival, and she has been saving up to go to London to have a look, because there are old books and English literature that she loves.
She has long longed to set foot on that land ...... She used to watch a lot of British movies just to see the streets of London.
She said a friend of hers once told her that when people go to England, they always see what they want to see. She said she was going after English literature, and he told her: it's there!
Years like water, always in a hurry. The sudden warmth and coldness of the red dust, always need beautiful and bleak stories to decorate.
It was not easy for her to have her own savings, and the Queen's accession to the throne made the cost of going to the United Kingdom discounted. It seemed possible to make the trip, but her teeth forced her to stay in New York. She had to write to Del: "I stayed with my teeth while the dentist was on his honeymoon, and I paid for his wedding. ......"
It's not unusual for the world to come together and go apart, and some of it is forever, and it's an accident. You see how many old things are still there, just change the new man.
Miss Hanff finally waited for a reply to her letter after three long months of waiting, but God played a joke on her, because she was told that Mr. Dell had died, and even the funeral was over.
It is hard to imagine the way Hanff's heart was beating when she received that letter, the fact that she would never again be able to buy her favorite book from England, never again would she be able to have a letter across the Atlantic to play her tricks and listen to her troubles.
What saddens her most is that she owes him an appointment after all, an appointment to see him in London, England.
Some memories, submerged by time, handed back to the years. The first time I saw this, I was in the middle of a long journey, and I was in the middle of a long journey. But the only confidant on the road of the red dust, but forever to be buried in her heart, can no longer forget, she also dare not forget.
Perhaps some people find it hard to imagine that such a book in the form of an epistle can make people so in love with it, and even make that originally bleak Charing Cross become world-famous.
Because of Hannaford's book, many book lovers came to London, stepped onto the street, stood in front of the long-gone bookstore, and paid tribute to this moving friendship that stretched across the Atlantic for twenty years.
The relationship that evolved from the book is enviable. Not everyone in this world can find that one person, fuller than a lover, more solid than a friend.
You never have to be afraid that you will lose, even if the world betrayed you, he will stand behind you and betray the world.
Maybe you don't need too much commitment between you, too many oaths of the sea, while you know that no matter what, he or she will always stand by your side, accompanied by your upheaval, but also silently accompany you to the end of the world.
The arrival of the electronic message era seems to make us have long lost the patience to wait for a letter to arrive, do you still remember the last letter you received when it?
Sometimes I would like to write my heart into a letter, put it in an envelope, address it, put a stamp on it, and send it to a faraway place, but I don't know where to send it, and I don't know if the place I send it to is happy to have it, so I stop.
For some reason, I always feel that the letter can interpret "distance" and "waiting" into a kind of unknown beauty.
As Chen Jianming said, "The time difference caused by the delay between this and the other is comparable only to the subtle difference in the fermentation time of natural yeast."
Maybe we can't find a sincere and beautiful friendship like Miss Hanff and Mr. Dell in this world, but I hope that if there is such a person in our world, we can cherish him.
As Mr. Zhang Lixian said: When love is displayed in another way, it is not torn away, but translated into a better language. The translator sent by God is called Chance, Responsibility, Embodiment, and Silence.
There is another, named Nostalgia.