The first and greatest is to Professor John Lucas for introducing me to Hamilton’s work in the first place back in the mid-1970s; for encouraging me to write an earlier piece on it; for suggesting that I might edit this ‘Trent Edition’ of Impromptu; and for help and advice along the way. The publishers and I are also indebted to Arnold Rattenbury for the loan of his copy of the rare first edition of the novel from which the present volume has been produced, and for being an early and stalwart Hamiltonian. Many thanks, too, to Mervyn S. Gould for supplying the information on Mary Brough, which is incorporated in Note 28 to the text, and to Alan Offiler (bass-player with the City Syncopaters, who can be heard live on the third Thursday of every month at the Red Lion, Market Bosworth) for providing everything one needs to know about the song ‘Sweet Adeline’ in Note 25.
Peter Widdowson
Notes
1. Parts of the present introduction were first published in my essay, ‘The Saloon-Bar Society: Patrick Hamilton’s Fiction in the 1930s’, Renaissance and Modern Studies, Special Number: The 1930s, XX, 1976, 81–101; and then in John Lucas (ed.), The 1930s: A Challenge to Othodoxy, Hassocks: The Harvester Press, 1978, pp. 117–37.
2. Nigel Jones, Through a Glass Darkly: The Life of Patrick Hamilton, London: Scribners, 1991, p. 215.
3. Gaslight became The Murder in Thornton Square (MGM; 1943), directed by George Cukor, and starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten and Angela Lansbury; Rope (Warner Brothers; 1948) was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starred James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Cedric Hardwicke and Constance Collier. For further discussion of these films, see Jones, op. cit., chapter 24, ‘Hollywood and Hitchcock’.
4. Also made into a film (and mutilated) by 20th-Century-Fox in 1944. See Jones, op. cit., p.285.
5. The three novels, all published by Constable (as was the rest of Hamilton’s work), are: The Midnight Bell (1929); The Siege of Pleasure (1932); and The Plains of Cement (1934). They were published in one volume as Twenty Thousand Streets…, with a Preface by J.B. Priestley, in 1935.
6. The series was made by LWT and broadcast on ITV from 18/10/87 to 22/11/87. The script was by Allan Prior and the producer was Philip Hinchcliffe.
7. In his Foreword to Edward Upward’s (‘Allen Chalmers’) The Railway Accident, first published in New Directions in Prose and Poetry: Number Eleven (1949), and reprinted in Edward Upward, The Railway Accident and Other Stories, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972, pp.33–5.
8. Isherwood again, in his ‘autobiography’, Lions and Shadows (1938), London: Four Square Books, 1963, p.107.
9. For a fuller discussion of this idea, see my essay, ‘Between the Acts? English Fiction in the Thirties’ in Jon Clarke et al. (eds), Culture and Crisis in Britain in the Thirties, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1979, pp. 133–64.
10. Op. cit., p.214.
IMPROMPTU IN MORIBUNDIA*
…‘the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder in the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter….’ sir james jeans, The Mysterious Universe.
There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night—
Ten to make and the match to win—
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote—
‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’
SIR HENRY NEWBOLT#
Notes
* Title
Literally: an improvised composition in a civilization near death or terminal collapse.
# Epigraphs
For the first of these, see Note 27 below; for the second, see Introduction, p.xi, and Note 6. Both quotations are used to represent dominant components of ‘Moribundian’ ideology.
It is now generally known that, after the general controversy and outburst attendant upon John Sadler’s initial heroic journey to another planet, and later the partially fruitless attempt of the Gosling brothers, it had been decided by Crowmarsh to keep my departure hidden from the press and unknown to the general public. This was as much for Crowmarsh’s own personal safety as for reasons of scientific detachment. Only five weeks ago he had been assaulted savagely in the street by three prejudiced and self-righteous gentlemen, who escaped with nothing worse than a small fine, and it was generally felt that if the actual whereabouts of his Asteradio1 had been known widely, it would have been smashed to small pieces by his enemies in a few days’ time. Not that that would have seriously damaged Abel Crowmarsh. It is now well known that the wonder and terror of his epoch-making instrument is only equalled by its extreme comparative simplicity of construction. The only expedient left would have been to smash Abel Crowmarsh himself to small pieces along with his machine, and even that would have been of little avail. His assistants and associates, armed with a fanatical zeal greater even than that of their opponents, now have the knowledge, skill and means to gain the day against the destroyers even if they have the whole opinion of the world on their side. The Asteradio is with us now, and that is the end of the matter.
It was, then, only Crowmarsh himself, a few of his assistants, and one or two personal friends of my own, who knew of my departure at all, and so I was deprived of any of the glory and embarrassment of a public ‘send-off.’ A little dinner was given to me the night before by those few friends, and that was all. Offers were indeed made to come round and accompany me to what was facetiously called my ‘execution’ in the morning, but I firmly declined them. I never could stand anything in the nature of ‘seeing-off—a prejudice originally acquired from hideous experiences on Victoria Station in the war of 1914.
I returned that night to my rooms in New Cavendish Street, a little drunk, I think, and with a well-nourished sense of high adventure just holding its own against a lurking feeling of sheer panic which urged me to back out gracefully, or, if that was impossible, to run away. I slept well. When I awoke, at half-past seven, I need hardly say that all that sense of high adventure had departed. On the other hand, the feeling of sheer panic had not, as yet at any rate, seized the territory evacuated by the other emotion. I should say my sensations were those of fright, certainly—but of a sort of numbed fright, not of panic.
1 comment