Warming the Bench : Ojai Resident’s Tribute to London Garden Takes on a Life--and Club--of Its Own

The love affair spans three decades now, holding fast against the wash of time and distance. It is a passion that moves Mel Bloom as much today as when he first set foot in London’s Berkeley Square.

“It’s my favorite place in the whole world,” said Bloom, an Ojai resident, who was so enchanted by the storied English garden that he put his own bench there a few years ago so that others could sit and be smitten too.

He says it was the best investment of his life.

Friends and strangers worldwide have sought out his bench, at the center of the five-acre park dominated by towering maples and old-fashioned notions of courtship and romance.

Visitors let Bloom know that they have graced his seat, sending photos of themselves planted on its dark teak planks.

In fact, it was a deluge of photos and letters that prompted Bloom to launch the Berkeley Square Bench Club, an elite but nonexclusive collection of those who have made the pilgrimage over the years.

There are no dues, no obligations. Just sit on the bench, have your picture taken and send it to Bloom. So far, 166 people have done just that.

Members receive a club pin, designed by Bloom and his wife, Andi. And they receive an invitation to the club’s annual grand tea, scheduled for Sunday at the Ojai Center for the Arts. “It is, for me, one of the very few places where I don’t have any questions about who I am or where I’m supposed to be or what life is about,” said Bloom of the square immortalized in song during World War II.

“It’s like being lost in another world,” he said. “It really is magic.”

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If you pronounce it Berkeley, as in the Northern California college town, the Blooms will quickly but politely offer a correction. It’s pronounced BAR-klee, they admonish. Any good Anglophile knows that.

Berkeley Square is in the heart of London’s Mayfair district, a tranquil island amid the bustling metropolis in one of the tonier sections of the city.

Bloom, 69, discovered the area 30 years ago during his travels as a literary agent. On subsequent trips, he would spend hours on the benches there, thinking of everything or nothing at all.

Dozens of benches dot the square, many donated by overseas visitors equally enchanted by the English garden. Bloom often wondered aloud what it would take to get a bench of his own. Andi Bloom eventually grew tired of the question.

On a trip four years ago, she called around and learned that the benches could be purchased from the city of Westminster’s Department of Planning and Environment. The price was 600 pounds, or about $800 back then.

He thought it was too much. She bought it for him anyway.

A couple of months later, in August 1994, Bloom’s bench was installed with the following inscription: Presented by American Melvin Bloom, who hopes everyone who sits in this little enclave of heaven will hear the sound of the nightingale.

“For people our age, who remember that ballad, Berkeley Square is the ultimate romantic place,” said Bloom, who a few months after his bench was put in made a special trip just to see it. “We’ve had more fun with that bench than I have ever imagined possible.”

At first, he only collected photos of friends on the bench. But gradually the custom took on a life of its own.

Friends in England would tell others about it, and they would seek it out and send photos. And friends in Ojai would tell people they knew who were planning trips to England.

“People come in that I’ve never seen before and say, ‘I sat on your bench last week,’ ” said Andi Bloom at the English tearoom and gift shop she owns, tucked into a stretch of boutiques and antique stores along Ojai Avenue.

Prospective club members have braved downpours to have their pictures taken. One couple, after the square closed at sunset, even jumped the park fence to snap a shot.

Colleen Bard of Ojai, a native of Scotland who attended boarding schools in London, met up with a former classmate three years ago to hunt for the bench. It was a brilliant day, she recalls. They kept the taxi meter running.

“It just seemed to be a wild thing to do,” she laughs now. “I’m planning to return in the spring, and I will surely go to Berkeley Square and sit on that bench again.”

Kathy Reyes, vice principal at Balboa Middle School in Ventura, decided to join the bench club after reading about it in a local newspaper. She and her husband, Chuck, took turns posing for the camera.

“We love to go to London so much, this is just another little perk,” she said. “It’s just kind of special because there aren’t very many of us.”

There is a long tradition of donating benches to English parks and gardens. In fact, benches only began showing up in Berkeley Square in large numbers after the nearby Mount Street Gardens couldn’t take any more.

Many have been donated in memory of deceased loved ones. But in recent years, parks officials say, there has been an increase in benches like Bloom’s, bearing plaques that reflect the beauty and serenity of the square.

Philip Greswell, who heads Westminster’s Department of Planning and Environment, said that one or two people a month buy benches at Berkeley Square. He hasn’t heard of anyone else who has fashioned a club out of the experience.

“The trouble is, Berkeley Square might also become full of benches,” he said. “One day we may have to say, no more benches at Berkeley Square.”

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For as long as he can remember, Bloom has been enchanted by England. He is the consummate American Anglophile, a soul devoted to all things English.

And when he speaks of those things--of white gloves and high tea, of city squares and English gardens--it is as if he were in love. And really he is.

His love affair has endured through the decades, a long-distance relationship born in his youth and kept alive with English poetry and literature.

And it will be stoked come Sunday, when the Berkeley Square Bench Club comes together.

There will be finger sandwiches and scones, marmalade and champagne. And there will be a montage of all the photos of all the people who ever bothered to memorialize their time on his bench.

There will be music and entertainment. All members will receive the sheet music to the 1940s classic, “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” upon entry to the arts center.

But mostly, they will share stories about Bloom’s favorite place in the world. He considers it to be heaven. And as such, he already has plotted his final reward.

“When I die, and I have already made these arrangements, I am to be cremated and my ashes are to sprinkled over Berkeley Square,” he said. “I just hope they don’t have any trouble getting them through customs.”