The Slaves of Solitude

The Slaves of Solitude

Also by Patrick Hamilton

NOVELS

Monday Morning

Craven House

Twopence Coloured

Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky

Hangover Square

The West Pier

Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse

Unknown Assailant

PLAYS

Rope

Gaslight

The Duke in Darkness

RADIO PLAYS

Money with Menaces

To the Public Danger

Constable & Robinson Ltd
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London WC1B 4HP

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First published by Constable and Company Ltd 1947

This edition first published in the UK by Constable,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd 2006

Copyright © Patrick Hamilton 1947
Introduction © Doris Lessing 2006
Introduction to the 1999 edition © Michael Holroyd 1999

The right of Patrick Hamilton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in
Publication data is available from the British Library

ISBN-13: 978-1-84529-415-1
ISBN-10: 1-84529-415-7
eISBN: 978-1-47210-358-1

In The Slaves of Solitude, whose characters are entirely fictitious, Thames Lockdon bears a rough geographical and external resemblance to Henley-on-Thames. The Rosamund Tea Rooms, however, resembles no boarding-house in this town or any other, though it is hoped that it resembles in some features every small establishment of this sort all over the country.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION BY DORIS LESSING

INTRODUCTION TO THE 1999 EDITION BY MICHAEL HOLROYD

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

INTRODUCTION
BY DORIS LESSING

How wildly an author’s reputation may fluctuate can be shown no more dramatically than by the story of Patrick Hamilton. We know that an author’s repute sometimes falls to zero after their death, usually often to recover, but he remained ignored and even unknown for longer than usual. You would say, ‘Patrick Hamilton,’ and hear ‘Who?’ even from Literary Departments, but then his admirers and a natural uplift in the invisible cycle that determines renown caused some of his books to be reprinted, and so he is remembered again.

He was in his lifetime well known as a novelist and as a playwright, spoken of as the heir to Dickens, George Gissing, Defoe. He was not a major writer, but that is not why he was temporarily forgotten. Major writers may suffer the same fate – George Meredith, for instance, that most civilised and witty writer, is fathoms deep in a sea of oblivion. What Patrick Hamilton has is an immediacy of empathy that makes some of his characters, his scenes, as unforgettable as Dickens’s, as painful as Gissing’s.

He was being read by the young in the forties, because when I was in Southern Rhodesia, kept there unwillingly first by the Second World War, and then by the aftermath of war – no ships, and air travel for the common traveller still in the future – I longed for my origins (I had heard England referred to as Home all my life) and I wrote to a friend who had been in the RAF in what was then Salisbury (now Harare) for training, and asked him what London was like these days. ‘We can’t go on using Dickens as a guide for ever.’ He sent me the novels of Patrick Hamilton, which certainly did not depict a promise of plenty and good times, but chimed with the reports of England bombed, rationed, beleaguered. And when in 1949 I did at last come to London I found Hamilton’s pages coming to life in pubs, streets, cheap hotels. He was a much-spoken-of writer, popular and approved of by the then literary arbiters. His plays were running in the West End, Rope, for one, which was made into a film by Hitchcock, radio plays and later, television. Hangover Square was well known. Everyone read him who read at all, and people waited for his next book as they do now for our popular writers. He was known in left-wing circles because he was a communist, or reported to be. ‘The Party’ – which was how the Communist Party was referred to then – was proud of him in its contradictory way. They were pleased to boast of such a well-known writer, but were wary of writers and artists who so seldom were prepared to toe the Party Line. The gossip about him was far from malicious, though with the rumours about him, it could have been. He was drinking himself to death, and although attempts had been made to stop him, these had failed. He was known to fall unfortunately in love, even absurdly, once at least with a prostitute. On the other hand he was generous with his money, considerable for those days, helping young writers and people fallen on hard times.

He had been poor himself and his descriptions of poverty were far from academic. When he began writing he was not immediately successful, and in those days young writers did not expect to be instantly well off. He was kind, and approachable and lovable, and so said everyone, while also saying,  ‘What a tragedy, how very sad’. And he did die of drink and that was a tragedy. Three bottles of whisky a day? Is it possible?

The main reason it took so long for Hamilton to come back into view was that his London had gone in that transformation which took place in the second half of the fifties. The dirty, war-damaged, unpainted, grubby streets that greeted me on my arrival had given way to something new, and lively. Colour had returned, the bombed sites had gone. And the people had changed too.