Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky
About the Book
With an introduction by Michael Holroyd
The Midnight Bell, a pub on the Euston Road, is the pulse of this brilliant and compassionate trilogy. It is here where the barman, Bob, falls in love with Jenny, a West End prostitute who comes in off the streets for a gin and pep. Around his obsessions, and Ella the barmaid’s secret love for him, swirls the sleazy life of London in the 1930s. This is a world where people emerge from cheap lodgings in Pimlico to pour out their passions, hopes and despair in pubs and bars – a world of twenty thousand streets full of cruelty and kindness, comedy and pathos, wasted dreams and lost desires.
See Also: The Secret Agent
About the Author
Born in Hassocks, Sussex in 1904, Patrick Hamilton was the youngest of three children. At the age of seventeen he began to train as an actor before realising that his talents lay in literature. In 1925, at the age of nineteen, he published his first novel Monday Morning, two more followed in quick succession, and he began to be admired and widely read. His first theatrical success was Rope (1929) on which Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the same name was based. His play Gaslight was also adapted for the big screen starring Ingrid Bergman. His novels include The Midnight Bell, The Siege of Pleasure, The Plains of Cement (a trilogy later published together under the title Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky), Hangover Square and The Slaves of Solitude.
Hamilton died on 23 September, 1962.
ALSO BY PATRICK HAMILTON
Fiction
Monday Morning
Craven House
Impromptu in Moribundia
Hangover Square
The Slaves of Solitude
The West Pier
Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse
Unknown Assailant
Plays
Rope
John Brown’s Body
Gas Light
Money with Menaces
The Duke in Darkness
Angel Street
The Man Upstairs
Praise
‘No other English writer has written so acutely about sexual infatuation, embarrassment and self-delusion’ Time Out
‘Bleak and brilliant . . . an authentic lost classic’ Guardian
PATRICK HAMILTON
Twenty Thousand
Streets Under
the Sky
A London Trilogy
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
Michael Holroyd
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781446426500
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Published by Vintage 2010
13 15 17 19 20 18 16 14 12
Copyright © The Estate of the late Patrick Hamilton 1987
Introduction copyright © Michael Holroyd 1987
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent 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
First published in Great Britain in 1935 by Constable and Co. Ltd
Hogarth Edition published in Great Britain in 1987
First published by Vintage in 1998
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ISBN 9780099479161
CONTENTS
Dedication
Introduction by Michael Holroyd
The Midnight Bell
Bob
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XL
Chapter XLI
Chapter XLII
Chapter XLIII
Chapter XLIV
Chapter XLV
Chapter XLVI
Chapter XLVII
Chapter XLVIII
Chapter XLIX
Chapter L
Chapter LI
Chapter LII
Chapter LIII
Chapter LIV
Chapter LV
Chapter LVI
The Siege of Pleasure
Jenny
Prologue
I The Treasure
II A Glass of Port
III The Morning After
IV The Marion and Bella
Conclusion
The Plains of Cement
Ella
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
To
D.H.
L. M. H.
M. S.
and
C. R. M.
INTRODUCTION
PATRICK HAMILTON WROTE this London trilogy when in his middle and late twenties. The Midnight Bell, The Siege of Pleasure and The Plains of Cement are each self-contained and were first published separately before being collected in 1935 under the title Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky. The Midnight Bell, which appeared in 1929 when the author was still twenty-four, is by far the most autobiographical of the three books. The tension of the narrative rises and in the last pages breaks through the structure of the novel, involving us in the emotional wreckage of Patrick Hamilton’s life.
The controlling figure in his life was his father. Bernard Hamilton had been given little affection as a child and grew up without much self-esteem or self-knowledge. ‘What a low comedian you would have made!’ Henry Irving had complimented him after he had been speaking at great length on the principles of religion. But Bernard Hamilton could never get his act together. He was a comedian equipped with a monocle but no sense of humour, a chameleon-like figure given to self-dramatization who nevertheless drank to be rid of himself. His children found it impossible to form a consistent or friendly relationship with him and would await with trepidation his return from various trips abroad. From Italy he came back a conscript father with a dash of Mussolini; from France he returned with an ineffable Gallic accent; Spain gave him an air of grave courtesy and a grandee’s dignity; alighting at Euston Station very Scotch and drunk after a journey north, he told Patrick, ‘My boy, if ever it comes to war between England and Scotland, you and I will cross the border.’
Though often absent from home, and despite violent scenes with his wife, Bernard took a solemn view of his parental duties and, having been granted a commission in the Royal Horse Artillery, would address his children in parade-ground language and have them up for military-style inspections.
Patrick grew up a silent, observant child, fretted by anxieties, and longing for some creed of certainty – which he was eventually to find in Marxism.
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