A letter from "84 Charing Cross Road" to Helene Hanff from her friend Maxine.
"Dearheart-
It is the loveliest old shop straight out of Dickens, you would go absolutely out of your mind over it.
...It's dim inside, you smell the shop before you see it, it's a lovely smell, I can't articulate it easily, but it combines must and dust and age, the walls of wood and floors of wood. Toward the back of the shop at the left there's a desk with a work-lamp on it, a man sitting there, he was about fifty with a Hogarth nose, he looked up and said "Good afternoon!" in a North Country accent and I said I just wanted to browse and he said "please do."
The shelves go on forever. They go up to the ceiling and they're very old and kind of grey, like old oak that has absorbed so much dust over the years they no longer are their true color..."
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