Raining Rainy Day|我和我的一二三四天

14 East 95th St.
New York City

December 8, 1949

Sir:

(It feels witless to keep writing “Gentlemen” when the same solitary soul is obviously taking care of everything for me.)

Savage Landor arrived safely and promptly fell open to a Roman dialogue where two cities had just been destroyed by war and everybody was being crucified and begging passing Roman soldiers to run them through and end the agony. It’ll be a relief to turn to Aesop and Rhodope where all you have to worry about is a famine. I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest. The day Hazlitt came he opened to “I hate to read new books,” and hollered “Comrade!” to whoever owned it before me.

I enclose a dollar which Brian (British boy friend of Kay upstairs) say will cover the /8/ I owe you, you forgot to translate it.

Now then. Brian tole me you are all rationed to 2 ounces of meat per family per week and one egg per person per month and I am simply appalled. He has a catalogue from a British firm here which flies food from Denmark to his mother, so I am sending a small Christmas present to Marks & Co. I hope there will be enough to go round, he says the Charing Cross Road bookshops are “all quite small”.

I’m sending it c/o you, FPD, whoever you are.

Noel

Helene Hanff 

Noel：法语的Christmas吧。

c/o：care of 转交

今天发现电影终于下好了，忍不住看。还是很忠于原著的。
电骡下载|BT下载A B

MARKS & CO., Booksellers
84,  Charing Cross Road
London, W.C. 2

26th November, 1949

Miss Helene Hanff
14 East 95ht Street
New York 28, New York
U.S.A.

Dear Miss Hanff,

Your four dollars arrived safely and we have credited the 12 cents to your account.

We happen to have in stock Volume II of the Works & life of Walter Savage Landor which contains the Greek dialogues including the one mentioned in your letter, as well as the Roman dialogues. It is an old edition published in 1876, not very handsome but well bound and a good clean copy, and we are sending it off to you today with invoice enclosed.

I am sorry we made the mistake with the Latin Bible and will try to find a Vulgate for you. Not forgetting Leigh Hunt.

Yours faithfully,   
FPD                            
For MARKS & CO.

14 East 95th St.

November 18, 1949

WHAT KIND OF A BLACK PROTSTANT BIBLE IS THIS?

Kindly inform the Church of England they have loused up the most beautiful prose ever written, whoever told them to tinker with the Vulgate Latin? They’ll burn for it, you mark my words.

It’s nothing to me, I’m Jewish myself. But I have a Catholic sister-in-law, a Methodist sister-in-law, a whole raft of Presbyterian cousins (through my Great-Uncle Abraham who converted) and an aunt who’s a Christian Science healer, and I like to think none of them would countenance this Anglican Latin Bible if they knew it existed. (As it happens, they don’t know Latin existed.)

Well, the hell with it. I’ve been using my Latin teacher’s Vulgate, what I imagine I’ll do is just not give it back till you find me one of my own.

I enclose $4 to cover the $3.88 due you, buy yourself a cup of coffee with the 12¢. There’s no post office near here and I am not running all the way down to Rockefeller Plaza to stand in line for a $3.88 money order. If I wait till I get down there for something else, I won’t have the $3.88 any more. I have implicit faith in the U.S. Airmail and His Majesty’s Postal Service.

Have you got a copy of Landor’s Imaginary Conversations? I think there are several volumes, the one I want is the one with the Greek conversations. If it contains a dialogue between Aesop and Rhodope, that’ll be the volume I want.

Helene Hanff

methodist: 基督教卫理公会派。卫理公会（The Methodist Church），是基督教新教卫斯理宗的美以美会、坚理会和美普会合并而成的基督教教会。现传布于英国、美国、中国，和世界各地。英国约翰·卫斯理（John Wesley 1703年-1791年)创立了基督新教卫斯理宗(Wesleyans)。教会主张圣洁生活和改善社会，注重在群众中进行传教活动。在美国独立後，美国卫斯理宗脱离圣公会而组成独立的教会。其后教会分裂为美以美会、监理会、美普会、循理会和圣教会等。1939年，美以美会、监理会和美普会合并成现今的卫理公会。

Presbyterian: 长老派教徒。英国清教徒中的一派。16世纪中叶，在英国国教会内部掀起一场要求国教加尔文华的改革，主张取消教阶制，设立长老制，使更多信徒能管理教会。其中的温和派后来发展成为长老派。在17世纪的英国革命中，该派主张与国王妥协，在长期国会中曾与基金的独立派对立。

Christian Science healing is a method of spiritual healing based on the beliefs of the Christian Science, or Church of Christ, Scientist, church. The church’s healing practices are based on the divine healing work of Jesus. Adherents hold that the material world is a false reality and that health is a condition of mind, God, and truth. Thus, Christian scientists believe that ill health can be cured by spiritual education, understanding of the truth, and prayer.

Imaginary Conversations, by Walter Savage Landor

沃尔特·萨维奇·兰多《臆想对话》（又译《假想对话录》），古代和现代名人间的对话。兰多是位英国诗人。 电子书下载

这位同学75岁时写的小诗，还挺经典。我找到了两个译本，一个是杨绛先生的，一个是一位名叫老哈的网友译的:

I strove with none for none was worth my strife Nature I loved and Next to Nature, Art I warm’d both hands before the fire of life It sinks, and I am ready to depart

（杨绛先生译） 我和谁都不争 和谁争我都不屑 我爱大自然 其次就是艺术 我双手烤着 生命之火取暖 火萎了 我也准备走了

（老哈译） 我与世无争，何事值我嗔？ 深爱艺术美，更爱自然真； 生命之火旺，早暖我心身； 焰势渐微时，我当离凡尘。

 “Laodamei死了；Helen死了；Leda，Jupiter亲爱的人，也早早地走了。最好早点在地下长眠，也不在地上坐着；最好早点在地下长眠，也不愿赖到我们脚下的土地坍塌的那一天，我们那么赖着，也不会延迟那最后不可避免的崩溃。在我们还没有感到塌陷和腐朽之前，我们或许应该享受现在：但现在，就像一首乐曲中的一个音符，如果没有过去和下一个音符的连接的话，什么都不是。在坟墓前，是不会有开不败的遍地鲜花：那里没有声音， 啊，Rhodepe，不管曾经多么会歌唱，不久只剩下沉默：无论曾经是怎么热烈表白的爱，最终都没有了名字，连一丝回音都没有。”

——选自Landor的《Aesop 与Rhodope》

米有找到Rhodope的介绍。

MARKS & CO. Booksellers
84, Charing Cross Road
London, W.C.2

9th November, 1949

Miss Helene Hanff
14 East 95th Street
New York 28, New York
U.S.A.

Dear Miss Hanff,

Your six dollars arrived safely, but we should feel very much easier if you would send your remittances by postal money order in future, as this would be quite a bit safer for you than entrusting dollar bills to the mails.

We are very happy you liked the Stevenson so much. We have sent off the New Testaments, with an invoice listing the amount due in both pounds and dollars, and we hope you will be pleased with them.

Yours faithfully
FPD
For MARKS & Co.

FPD先生至今都没有写过全称；他的笔触是非常经典的商务信函，这些信也曾经被收录进一些商务写作书里面。委婉、明了地阐释意图，又绝对彬彬有理。比起Hanff大大咧咧的美国风来，FPD这边英伦绅士的形象更加强烈。

14 East 95th St.
New York City

November 3, 1949

Marks & Co.
84, Charing Cross Road
London, W.C.2
England

Gentlemen:

The books arrived safely, the Stevenson is so fine it embarrasses my orange-crate bookshelves, I’m almost afraid to handle such soft vellum and heavy cream-colored pages. Being used to the dead-white paper and stiff cardboardy covers of American books, I never knew a book could be such a joy to the touch.

A Britisher whose girl lives upstairs translated the £1/17/6 for me and says I owe you $5.30 for the two books. I hope he got it right. I enclose a $5 bill and a single, please use the 70¢ toward the price of the New Testament, both of which I want.

Will you please translate your prices hereafter? I don’t add too well in plain American, I haven’t a prayer of ever mastering bilingual arithmetic.

Yours,
Helene Hanff

I hope “madam” doesn’t mean over here what it does here.

今天的这封信没什么好写，我只是在打这封信的时候想起来我床底下那一月饼盒的信件，都是大学期间和朋友们来往的证明。突然想写信了。最近一直在写日记，好多字都想不起来具体要怎么写，这个可真可怕。不过写日记的时间也是我觉得心底最安静的时候。我需要这样写字的时候，每天，都要挑出一段时间专门面对自己。

MARKS & CO., Booksellers
84, Charing Cross Road
London, W.C.2

25th October, 1949

Miss Helene Hanff
14 East 95th Street
New York 28, New York
U.S.A

Dear Madam,

In reply to your letter of October 5th, we have managed to clear up two thirds of your problem. The three Hazlitt essays you want are contained in the Nonesuch Press edition of his Selected Essays and the Stevenson is found in Virginibus Puerisque. We are sending nice copies of both these by Book Post and we trust they will arrive safely in due course and that you will be pleased with them. Our invoice is enclosed with the books.

The Leigh Hunt essays are not going to be so easy but we will see if we can find an attractive volume with them all in. We haven’t the Latin Bible you describe but we have a Latin New Testament, also a Greek New Testament, ordinary modern editions in clothing binding. Would you like these?

Yours faithfully,

FPD
For MARKS & CO.

Virginibus Puerisque, by Robert Louis Stevenson

《给青少男女》（Virginibus Puerisque，拉丁语）

电子书：点击下载

“书是人生的没有血肉的代替者。”

William Hazlitt

“to question history as to the movements of the human heart; to seek for truth; to plead the cause of humanity”

质疑历史如同：启迪人类的心智、寻求真理的方向、思辩人性的源头。

Leigh Hunt 李希亨特，1784-1859 ，英国浪漫主义时期的批评家、诗人和著名编辑。

代表作：《珍妮吻了我》

Jenny kiss’d me when we met,
我们相遇时，珍妮吻了我，
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
当时她一下子从椅子里跳起；
Time, you thief, who love to get
时光，这个窃贼，喜欢一路
Sweets into your list, put that in!
把甜蜜收集，将这也带上！
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
说我疲倦吧，说我忧伤，
Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,
说健康与财富都已将我冷落，
Say I’m growing old, but add,
说我已经衰老，不过要加上，
Jenny kiss’d me.
珍妮吻了我。

前两本比较感兴趣，诗集就算了。《给青少男女》，我怎么没有看到过中文译本呢？

14 East 95th St.
New York City
October 5, 1949

Marks & Co.
84, Charing Cross Road
London, W.C.2
England

Gentlemen:

Your ad in the Saturday Review of Literature says that you specialize in out-of-print books. The phrase “antiquarian booksellers” scares me somewhat, as I equate “antique” with expensive. I am a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books and all the things I want are impossible to get over here except in very expensive rare editions, or in Barnes & Noble’s grimy, marked-up schoolboy copies.

I enclose a list of my most pressing problems. If you have clean secondhand copies of any of the books on the list, for no more than $5.00 each, will you consider this a purchase order and send them to me?

Very truly yours,

Helene Hanff
(Miss) Helene Hanff

这本译名为《查令十字街84号》的书信集是我收到的第一本漂流书，我觉得作为“第一本”它真是太合适了，漂流书本来就是爱书人的活动。我无法标榜自己爱书，我常常挣扎在没有时间读书或者读不下去书的痛苦中，也没有读过许多书。不过收到这本书之后我还是一口气读到深夜，读罢难以释怀。这些漂洋过海的信件在恬淡的书香中给人一种振奋的力量。如果你爱书，你也能感受得到。

找不到文字电子版，我决定一个字一个字敲，顺便做读书笔记。

注释：
Barnes & Noble：美国最大的图书发行零售商