The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

If you have time to correspond with me, could you answer several questions? Three, in fact. Why did a roast pig dinner have to be kept a secret? How could a pig cause you to begin a literary society? And, most pressing of all, what is a potato peel pie—and why is it included in your society’s name?

I have sub-let a flat at 23 Glebe Place, Chelsea, London S.W.3. My Oakley Street flat was bombed in 1945 and I still miss it. Oakley Street was wonderful—I could see the Thames out of three of my windows. I know that I am fortunate to have any place at all to live in London, but I much prefer whining to counting my blessings. I am glad you thought of me to do your Elia hunting.

Yours sincerely,

Juliet Ashton

P.S. I never could make up my mind about Moses—it still bothers me.

From Juliet to Sidney

18th January, 1946

Dear Sidney,

This isn’t a letter: it’s an apology. Please forgive my moaning about the teas and luncheons you set up for Izzy. Did I call you a tyrant? I take it all back—I love Stephens & Stark for sending me out of London.

Bath is a glorious town: lovely crescents of white, upstanding houses instead of London’s black, gloomy buildings or—worse still—piles of rubble that were once buildings. It is bliss to breathe in clean, fresh air with no coal smoke and no dust. The weather is cold, but it isn’t London’s dank chill. Even the people on the street look different—upstanding, like their houses, not grey and hunched like Londoners.

Susan said the guests at Abbot’s book tea enjoyed themselves immensely—and I know I did. I was able to un-stick my tongue from the roof of my mouth after the first two minutes and began to have quite a good time.

Susan and I are off tomorrow for bookshops in Colchester, Norwich, King’s Lynn, Bradford, and Leeds.

Love and thanks,

Juliet

From Juliet to Sidney

21st January, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Night-time train travel is wonderful again! No standing in the corridors for hours, no being shunted off for a troop train to pass, and above all, no black-out curtains. All the windows we passed were lighted, and I could snoop once more. I missed it so terribly during the war. I felt as if we had all turned into moles scuttling along in our separate tunnels. I don’t consider myself a real peeper—they go in for bedrooms, but it’s families in sitting rooms or kitchens that thrill me. I can imagine their entire lives from a glimpse of bookshelves, or desks, or lit candles, or bright sofa cushions.

There was a nasty, condescending man in Tillman’s bookshop today. After my talk about Izzy, I asked if anyone had questions. He literally leapt from his seat to go nose-to-nose with me—how was it, he demanded, that I, a mere woman, dared to bastardize the name of Isaac Bickerstaff ? “The true Isaac Bickerstaff, noted journalist, nay the sacred heart and soul of eighteenth-century literature: dead now and his name desecrated by you.”

Before I could muster a word, a woman in the back row jumped to her feet. “Oh, sit down! You can’t desecrate a person who never was! He’s not dead because he was never alive! Isaac Bickerstaff was a pseudonym for Joseph Addison’s Spectator columns! Miss Ashton can take up any pretend name she wants to—so shut up!” What a valiant defender—he left the store in a hurry.

Sidney, do you know a man named Markham V. Reynolds, Jr.? If you don’t, will you look him up for me— Who’s Who, the Domesday Book, Scotland Yard? Failing those, he may simply be in the Telephone Directory. He sent a beautiful bunch of mixed spring flowers to me at the hotel in Bath, a dozen white roses to my train, and a pile of red roses to Norwich—all with no message, only his engraved card.

Come to that, how does he know where Susan and I are staying? What trains we are taking? All his flowers have met me upon my arrival. I don’t know whether to feel flattered or hunted.

Love,

Juliet

From Juliet to Sidney

23rd January, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Susan just gave me the sales figures for Izzy—I can scarcely believe them. I honestly thought everyone would be so weary of the war that no one would want a remembrance of it—and certainly not in a book. Happily, and once again, you were right and I was wrong (it half-kills me to admit this).

Traveling, talking before a captive audience, signing books, and meeting strangers is exhilarating. The women I’ve met have told me such war stories of their own, I almost wish I had my column back. Yesterday, I had a lovely, gossipy chat with a Norwich lady. She has four daughters in their teens, and just last week, the eldest was invited to tea at the cadet school in town. Arrayed in her finest frock and spotless white gloves, the girl made her way to the school, stepped over the threshold, took one look at the sea of shining cadet faces before her—and fainted dead away! The poor child had never seen so many males in one place in her life. Think of it—a whole generation grown up without dances or teas or flirting.

I love seeing the bookshops and meeting the booksellers—booksellers really are a special breed. No one in their right mind would take up clerking in a bookstore for the salary, and no one in his right mind would want to own one—the margin of profit is too small. So, it has to be a love of readers and reading that makes them do it—along with first dibs on the new books.

Do you remember the first job your sister and I had in London? In crabby Mr. Hawke’s secondhand bookshop? How I loved him—he’d simply unpack a box of books, hand one or two to us and say, “No cigarette ashes, clean hands—and for God’s sake, Juliet, none of your margin notes! Sophie, dear, don’t let her drink coffee while she reads.” And off we’d go with new books to read.

It was amazing to me then, and still is, that so many people who wander into bookshops don’t really know what they’re after—they only want to look around and hope to see a book that will strike their fancy. And then, being bright enough not to trust the publisher’s blurb, they will ask the book clerk the three questions: (1) What is it about? (2) Have you read it? (3) Was it any good?

Real dyed-in-the-wool booksellers—like Sophie and me—can’t lie. Our faces are always a dead giveaway. A lifted brow or curled lip reveals that it’s a poor excuse for a book, and the clever customers ask for a recommendation instead, whereupon we frog-march them over to a particular volume and command them to read it. If they read it and despise it, they’ll never come back. But if they like it, they’re customers for life.

Are you taking notes? You should—a publisher should send not just one reader’s copy to a bookshop, but several, so that all the staff can read it, too.

Mr. Seton told me today that Izzy Bickerstaff makes an ideal present for both someone you like and someone you don’t like but have to give a present to anyway. He also claimed that 30 percent of all books bought are bought as gifts. Thirty percent??? Did he lie?

Has Susan told you what else she has managed besides our tour? Me. I hadn’t known her half an hour before she told me my make-up, my clothes, my hair, and my shoes were drab, all drab. The war was over, hadn’t I heard?

She took me to Madame Helena’s for a haircut; it is now short and curly instead of long and lank. I had a light rinse, too—Susan and Madame said it would bring out the golden highlights in my “beautiful chestnut curls.” But I know better; it’s meant to cover any grey hairs (four, by my count) that have begun to creep in. I also bought a jar of face cream, a lovely scented hand lotion, a new lipstick, and an eye-lash curler—which makes my eyes cross whenever I use it.