I do quite want to go to Chelsea
Anna Goodall explores an area rich in literary history
I found myself heading to the (for me) hitherto uncharted territory of Sloane Square and the King’s Road one unnervingly warm September morning. John Sandoe (Books) Ltd wanted to take a few copies of Pen Pusher for their shelves, and so, aware of their reputation as one of the finest booksellers in the capital, I decided to give the beleaguered Royal Mail a break and deliver the copies myself.
Occupying a small Regency cottage on Blacklands Terrace (a side street just off the King’s Road), John Sandoe established the shop in 1957 when he was still in his twenties. This much-loved bookseller died in 2007, although he had retired from the shop and sold it to a devoted ‘trio of colleagues and customers’ in 1989.
Thousands of books are crammed, in an organised fashion, into the building’s limited square-footage. On the ground floor is an extensive selection of recommended new arrivals, as well as several shelves’ worth of autobiographies and historical biography. Downstairs you’ll find plays, poetry, film and theatre biography, an entire section dedicated to Shakespeare and associated works, and a brilliant selection of children’s books – including some Richard Scarry paperbacks, which I was seriously tempted by. There’s also room for some miscellaneous tomes down here, my favourite find being The Modern Toss Guide to Work, a book of cartoons rendered in a scratchy pencil-drawn style, yet with unmistakeable satirical intent: ‘Ideas Meeting’ shows one figure at a white board before several seated colleagues. ‘Don’t think it, just say it,’ he advises, to which one of the seated figures responds, ‘Fuck off’. On the opposite spread a flagrantly reclining figure presses the telephone to his ear: ‘Hello, is that the job centre? I want to speak to my agent.’ From there it’s a climb up to the first floor where there’s an enormous selection of fiction, more biography and a few shelves of carefully chosen travel books.
The shop is well known for its highly knowledgeable staff. Indeed, while browsing I overhear John de Falbe, one of the shop’s directors, advising several customers in great detail, guiding them unpushily towards the tomes that might suit them best. (A published author himself, de Falbe’s new novel, Dreaming Iris, has just been published by Cuckoo Press.)
There is an unexplained yet intuitive order to the shelving system. It’s designed for browsing and feels almost as if you’re looking through the shelves of a close (and frighteningly well-read) friend. It’s full of books you’ve read and enjoyed, ones you think you should have read by now, and books you half-imagine you’ve read, but then realise you haven’t. There’s inspiration at every glance and the mix is unpretentious, eclectic, witty and comforting.
I trot back out into the high blue sunshine very well pleased with my four vaguely random purchases: a lovely 1984 edition of The Victorian Chaise-Longue by Marghanita Laski; a collection of three Walter de la Mare short stories; a brief history of Isaac Newton by Peter Ackroyd; and a slim, pretty Methuen & Co volume, Selected Sonnets of William Shakespeare.
Back on the King’s Road, I’m disappointed to discover that, at least for the first 200 metres or so (which is all I explore) it is a boring chain-led high street populated by a steady stream of well-heeled, set-haired women, fine-suited men, and girls with long blonde highlighted hair and matchstick legs (such as you would expect). But really it could be any affluent southern English town. So, I take a swift dive into the back streets. Here, the tall Georgian houses and quiet leafy streets are silent and heavy with wealth.
There’s the odd old duffer walking there in richly coloured cords with a crumpled face, probably off to lunch at Peter Jones or some such, and huge silver and black Bentleys and Mercs ease sleekly out of side streets, humming confidently towards Chelsea Harbour or the City.
The first thing I stumble across is No.18 St Leonard’s Terrace – a lovely tall brick house set back from the street with a blue plaque that -announces that Bram Stoker was once resident here. I turn into Tedworth Square (where Mark Twain once lived), then left up Tite Street, and soon find myself in a quiet row of pretty terraced cottage-style houses, on Christchurch Street. The only person I see along this sun-soaked stretch is a disgruntled-looking blonde schoolgirl sitting on the front step of one of the cottages texting feverishly, presumably locked out or bunking off – or both. At the end of the street is a sweet early Gothic church designed by Edward Blore. I pop inside briefly and hear the distant sound of a radio somewhere in the back, and peruse a bookshelf at the back of the rows of pews with some good-looking old liturgical sort of texts. It’s all very peaceful, and very pleasantly English.
Round another couple of corners, and I soon hit the quite unexpected traffic and bluster of Cheyne Walk, the river and the Albert Bridge. You can see the towers of Battersea Power Station and the sleek grey-green line of the river leading to the City, which seems surprisingly close. Cheyne Walk is said to be the street with the most blue plaques in Britain and is described thus by Benedict le Vay in Eccentric London: ‘What a creative pantheon, what a cornucopia of talent is revealed by a blue plaque attack of measles-like proportions!’ He handily lists them for us, in rising door-number order. Here’s a selection: at No.4 George Eliot; 16 Dante Gabriel Rossetti; 93 Elizabeth Gaskell; 96 Whistler; 104 Hilaire Belloc; and at No.120 Sylvia Pankhurst. Backtrack just a little into Cheyne Row and you’ll find the former residences of Thomas Carlyle, Henry James, TS Eliot and Ian Fleming – keeping up with the Joneses certainly takes on a far more cerebral edge round these parts. My time in the civilised leafy streets of Chelsea is up, so I tramp back along the main road, all too quickly finding myself amidst the angry traffic-clogged noise of Victoria. And having forced my way through several unofficial battalions of tourists who loiter uncertainly outside the station, I head down to the Tube and back east.
John Sandoe (Books) Ltd
10 Blacklands Terrace
Chelsea, London SW3 2SR
T 020 7589 9473
www.johnsandoe.com
