The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff

miserable Northumberlands who tried to make Jane Grey queen and sided with Mary of Scotland against Elizabeth. The rose gardens there are beyond anything I’ve seen: acres of roses in a spectacular rainbow of colors. PB told me he spent the weekend with friends in the country who had a double rose garden and didn’t offer him so much as a bud to take home. Londoners miss their gardens, he and the other tenants in his building do a little gardening in pots on the roof.
    We went from Syon House to Osterly Park, another ancestral home, I forget whose. I’m learning a little about Nash houses and Wren churches; today at Osterly Park it was Adam walls: polished wood panels covered with intricate marquetry. You can examine a single wall for hours and not see all the details in the carving. In a century dominated by watches, cars, planes, schedules, it’s hard to imagine an age in which men had the endless time and patience needed for such work.
    Driving home, PB told me he worked in Hollywood off and on for years as a consultant on films with English locales. The notion of PB in Hollywood in its heyday, when it was a synonym for everything tasteless and overdone, was grotesque at first, but then I realized he’s one of those originals who would be at home in almost any setting; nothing rubs off on him. He’s been everywhere and knows everybody, he’s very social—there are always a dozen invitations propped up on the mantel—but he seems always a little apart from those around him.
    He told me he once spent months hauling an American architect all over England for the Essex House in New York. The Essex House was doing over its cocktail lounge and wanted to re-create an English pub.
    â€œThey sent a chap over here to see me and I drove him round the country to see all the best of the old pubs. He went back to New York and drew up the plans and sent them to me. I’ll show them to you when we get home.”
    We got back to Rutland Gate and he showed me the drawings and they were marvelous: a pub with wood-paneled walls, antiqued wooden tables and benches and a high, old-fashioned wooden bar with kegs above it. The pub looked warm and mellow and the woods burnished in the glow of old-fashioned lamps that swung from the ceiling.
    â€œIs the pub still there?” I asked.
    â€œI think so,” he said.
    â€œI’ll go see it when I get home,” I said. “Did he write and tell you how it looks?”
    â€œOh, yes”—in that light, noncommittal voice—“the Essex House did the pub in lucite, chrome and black leather.”
    He goes to Wales for a week on Saturday. I’ll be gone when he gets back.

Thursday, July 8
    Mary Scott took me on a walking tour of Knightsbridge and Kensington, we went to Harrods first because I’d never seen it. It’s an incredible store, you can buy anything from a diamond necklace to a live tiger, they have a zoo. I thought of Chester, the sheep dog who lives in my building, he came from Harrods.
    On the ground floor there’s a florist’s shop, and if you want to buy a dozen roses you can choose twelve roses individually. You can pick all buds or all open blooms or half and half, and you can buy one of every color in stock. I ran amok rounding up twelve to send to PB to brighten his flat before he leaves for Wales. Didn’t know any other way to thank him.
    We wandered the mewses and closes and poked into hidden gardens and alleys. Chelsea, Kensington and Knightsbridge all seem to me self-consciously charming, compared with Regent’s Park. The Scotts live out that way and I told Mrs. Scott if I were able to take a flat in London it’s out Regent’s Park way I’d want to live. She said it’s not called Regent’s Park, it’s called Marylebone.
    They have a spacious flat on Gloucester Place and she’d made a beautiful salmon mousse for dinner, loaded with cream. Salmon is a great