J’ai déniché cette jolie édition publiée par Virago, qui se donne pour mission de « soutenir les voix féminines »1, entre deux piles de catalogues typographiques au fond d’une étagère de l’antiquaire Van de Wiele. Que voulez-vous, je n’ai jamais su rentrer de vacances sans remplir une valise de livres. Quarante-cinq ans avant la fondation d’Amazon, Helene Hanff préférait les commander de l’autre côté de l’Atlantique depuis le confort de son appartement new-yorkais, en trouvant le moyen de se plaindre lorsque Frank Doel n’était pas capable de trouver une édition rarissime en quelques semaines et pour un montant dérisoire dans le Royaume-Uni d’après-guerre.
Sans rancune, la cliente drôlement exigeante est aussi une bienfaitrice sacrément généreuse, qui envoie des œufs en poudre et des bas nylon aux salariés de la librairie Marks & Co., personnages secondaires à l’importance primordiale dans les échanges transatlantiques. Le formalisme tout britannique et la pointe de condescendance tout américaine s’effacent pour doucement laisser place à des missives truculentes et facétieuses. Les livres britanniques arrivent sans coup férir à New York, mais l’autrice américaine doit sans cesse reporter son envol pour Londres.
Hanff n’a pas visité le no 84 de la Charing Cross Road avant la fermeture de Marks & Co. en 1970, deux ans après la mort soudaine de Doel et quelques mois après la parution de leur correspondance. The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street reprend le récit, cette fois à la première personne, cette fois depuis Londres, avec le même entrain enthousiasmant. La lectrice de Chaucer, Donne, Sterne, Austen, Hazlitt, Woolf et (surtout) Quiller-Couch découvre enfin la patrie de ses héro(ïne)s littéraires. Son carnet de voyage n’échappe pas aux écueils du voyeurisme touristique, mais sa tendresse envers l’Angleterre littéraire et son amour de la littérature anglaise sont contagieux.
Notes
De la pratique du désherbage :
I houseclean my books every spring and throw out those I’m never going to read again like I throw out clothes I’m never going to wear again. It shocks everybody. My friends are peculiar about books. They read all the best sellers, they get through them as fast as possible, I think they skip a lot. And they NEVER read anything a second time so they don’t remember a word of it a year later. But they are profoundly shocked to see me drop a book in the wastebasket or give it away. The way they look at it, you buy a book, you read it, you put it on the shelf, you never open it again for the rest of your life but YOU DON’T THROW IT OUT! NOT IF IT HAS A HARD COVER ON IT! Why not? I personally can’t think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book.
La ville fantasmée des héros littéraires, la ville réelle des héroïnes de guerre :
All my life I’ve wanted to see London. I used to go to English movies just to look at streets with houses like those. Staring at the screen in a dark theatre, I wanted to walk down those streets so badly it gnawed at me like hunger. Sometimes, at home in the evening, reading a casual description of London by Hazlitt or Leigh Hunt, I’d put the book down suddenly, engulfed by a wave of longing that was like homesickness. I wanted to see London the way old people want to see home before they die. I used to tell myself this was natural in a writer and boo born to the language of Shakespeare. But sitting on a bench in Bedford Square it wasn’t Shakespeare I was thinking of; it was Mary Bailey.
Découvrir en bibliothèque, conserver en librairie :
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.
Encore une excellente recette de martini (mais je ne bois plus) :
The next time I came in it was dinner time, the bar was empty and the bartender and I got chummy; he said Wasn’t I the writer?? and told me his name was Bob. I said Did he mind if this time we used my recipe instead of his and he said Right-o, just tell him exactly what I wanted.
I said First could we start with four ice cubes in the shaker. He thought I was crazy but he put three cubes in (he was short on ice). He poured a jigger of gin in the shaker, and I said:
‘Okay, now another jigger of gin?.’
He stared at me, shook his head in disbelief and added a second jigger of gin.
‘Okay, now one more,’ I said.
‘MORE gin?’ he said, and I said:
‘Yes, and lower your voice.’
He poured the third jigger, still shaking his head. He reached for the vermouth bottle, and I said:
‘I’ll pour that.’
I added a few drops of vermouth, stirred vigorously, let him pour it out for me and told him it was perfect.
Now he makes it by himself but he never can bring himself to add that third jigger of gin, he thinks he’ll look up later and see me sprawled face down on a bar table sodden drunk.
L’habitude de lire… cinquante fois le même livre :
She gave me a biography of Florence Nightingale she thinks I’ll like. She sets her alarm for six every morning and reads in bed till seven; she said if she hadn’t formed that habit, she never find time to read anything. As it is, it seems to me she read everything.
I’m always so ashamed when I discover how well-read other people are and how ignorant I am in comparison. If you saw the long list of famous books and authors I’ve never read you wouldn’t believe it. My problem is that while other people are reading fifty books I’m reading one book fifty times. I only stop when at the bottom of page 20, say, I realize I can recite pages 21 and 22 from memory. Then I put the book away for a few years.
Une virago est une « femme d’allure masculine », selon le dictionnaire Antidote. ↩︎