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Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky #1
The Midnight Bell
The Midnight Bell tells the story of Bob, a sailor turned bar waiter who falls in love with Jenny, a prostitute who visits the pub. Ella, the barmaid at the pub, is secretly in love with Bob.
307 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1929
6 people are currently reading
510 people want to read
About the author
Patrick Hamilton
89 books289 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
He was born Anthony Walter Patrick Hamilton in the Sussex village of Hassocks, near Brighton, to writer parents. Due to his father's alcoholism and financial ineptitude, the family spent much of Hamilton's childhood living in boarding houses in Chiswick and Hove. His education was patchy, and ended just after his fifteenth birthday when his mother withdrew him from Westminster School.
After a brief career as an actor, he became a novelist in his early twenties with the publication of Monday Morning (1925), written when he was nineteen. Craven House (1926) and Twopence Coloured (1928) followed, but his first real success was the play Rope (1929, known as Rope's End in America).
The Midnight Bell (1929) is based upon Hamilton's falling in love with a prostitute, and was later published along with The Siege of Pleasure (1932) and The Plains of Cement (1934) as the semi-autobiographical trilogy 20,000 Streets Under the Sky (1935).
Hamilton disliked many aspects of modern life. He was disfigured badly when he was run over by a car in the late 1920s: the end of his novel Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse (1953), with its vision of England smothered in metal beetles, reflects his loathing of the motor car. However, despite some distaste for the culture in which he operated, he was a popular contributor to it. His two most successful plays, Rope and Gas Light (1938, known as Angel Street in the US), made Hamilton wealthy and were also successful as films: the British-made Gaslight (1940) and the 1944 American remake, and Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948).
Hangover Square (1941) is often judged his most accomplished work and still sells well in paperback, and is regarded by contemporary authors such as Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd as an important part of the tradition of London novels. Set in Earls Court where Hamilton himself lived, it deals with both alcohol-drinking practices of the time and the underlying political context, such as the rise of fascism and responses to it. Hamilton became an avowed Marxist, though not a publicly declared member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. During the 1930s, like many other authors, Hamilton grew increasingly angry with capitalism and, again like others, felt that the violence and fascism of Europe during the period indicated that capitalism was reaching its end: this encouraged his Marxism and his novel Impromptu in Moribundia (1939) was a satirical attack of capitalist culture.
During his later life, Hamilton developed in his writing a misanthropic authorial voice which became more disillusioned, cynical and bleak as time passed. The Slaves of Solitude (1947), was his only work to deal directly with the Second World War, and he preferred to look back to the pre-war years. His Gorse Trilogy—three novels about a devious sexual predator and conman—are not generally well thought of critically, although Graham Greene said that the first was 'the best book written about Brighton' and the second (Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse) is regarded increasingly as a comic masterpiece. The hostility and negativity of the novels is also attributed to Hamilton's disenchantment with the utopianism of Marxism and depression. The trilogy comprises The West Pier (1952); Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse (1953), dramatized as The Charmer in 1987; and in 1955 Hamilton's last published work, Unknown Assailant, a short novel much of which was dictated while Hamilton was drunk. The Gorse Trilogy was first published in a single volume in 1992.
Hamilton had begun to consume alcohol excessively while still a relatively young man. After a declining career and melancholia, he died in 1962 of cirrhosis of the liver and kidney failure, in Sheringham, Norfolk.
He was born Anthony Walter Patrick Hamilton in the Sussex village of Hassocks, near Brighton, to writer parents. Due to his father's alcoholism and financial ineptitude, the family spent much of Hamilton's childhood living in boarding houses in Chiswick and Hove. His education was patchy, and ended just after his fifteenth birthday when his mother withdrew him from Westminster School.
After a brief career as an actor, he became a novelist in his early twenties with the publication of Monday Morning (1925), written when he was nineteen. Craven House (1926) and Twopence Coloured (1928) followed, but his first real success was the play Rope (1929, known as Rope's End in America).
The Midnight Bell (1929) is based upon Hamilton's falling in love with a prostitute, and was later published along with The Siege of Pleasure (1932) and The Plains of Cement (1934) as the semi-autobiographical trilogy 20,000 Streets Under the Sky (1935).
Hamilton disliked many aspects of modern life. He was disfigured badly when he was run over by a car in the late 1920s: the end of his novel Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse (1953), with its vision of England smothered in metal beetles, reflects his loathing of the motor car. However, despite some distaste for the culture in which he operated, he was a popular contributor to it. His two most successful plays, Rope and Gas Light (1938, known as Angel Street in the US), made Hamilton wealthy and were also successful as films: the British-made Gaslight (1940) and the 1944 American remake, and Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948).
Hangover Square (1941) is often judged his most accomplished work and still sells well in paperback, and is regarded by contemporary authors such as Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd as an important part of the tradition of London novels. Set in Earls Court where Hamilton himself lived, it deals with both alcohol-drinking practices of the time and the underlying political context, such as the rise of fascism and responses to it. Hamilton became an avowed Marxist, though not a publicly declared member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. During the 1930s, like many other authors, Hamilton grew increasingly angry with capitalism and, again like others, felt that the violence and fascism of Europe during the period indicated that capitalism was reaching its end: this encouraged his Marxism and his novel Impromptu in Moribundia (1939) was a satirical attack of capitalist culture.
During his later life, Hamilton developed in his writing a misanthropic authorial voice which became more disillusioned, cynical and bleak as time passed. The Slaves of Solitude (1947), was his only work to deal directly with the Second World War, and he preferred to look back to the pre-war years. His Gorse Trilogy—three novels about a devious sexual predator and conman—are not generally well thought of critically, although Graham Greene said that the first was 'the best book written about Brighton' and the second (Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse) is regarded increasingly as a comic masterpiece. The hostility and negativity of the novels is also attributed to Hamilton's disenchantment with the utopianism of Marxism and depression. The trilogy comprises The West Pier (1952); Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse (1953), dramatized as The Charmer in 1987; and in 1955 Hamilton's last published work, Unknown Assailant, a short novel much of which was dictated while Hamilton was drunk. The Gorse Trilogy was first published in a single volume in 1992.
Hamilton had begun to consume alcohol excessively while still a relatively young man. After a declining career and melancholia, he died in 1962 of cirrhosis of the liver and kidney failure, in Sheringham, Norfolk.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews
April 25, 2021
About a month ago I found myself beginning to read out this whole book to Selma, what a crazy idea. I didn't mean to, but you know how one thing leads to another. She is in Istanbul and I am not by the way. I started with just a few passages. And they were so delectable and moreish. I guess people say this usually about crack cocaine but here in Goodreads we say this about relatively obscure authors from the 1940s. Anyway it was such fun I ended up doing the whole thing. You should try it sometimes. But don't start with The Brothers Karamazov. So compelling was this one-man-audible experience that as I was reading the heartbreaking-but-funny final chapters I completely failed to hear the frantic ringing of the doorbell last night when the Sainsburys guy was trying to deliver my groceries. So now on Sunday morning I have nothing to eat except three dubious mushrooms and some out of date sausages. Thanks, Selma, and thanks, Patrick Hamilton.
Anyway over the month we were knocked out by Patrick Hamilton's dead-eyed humour, and cringe-inducing painful honesty about his characters and blah blah.
We recommend Patrick Hamilton heartily to everyone out there in Goodreadsland. He will make you laugh, cry, etc etc. And he made me really hungry.
Anyway over the month we were knocked out by Patrick Hamilton's dead-eyed humour, and cringe-inducing painful honesty about his characters and blah blah.
We recommend Patrick Hamilton heartily to everyone out there in Goodreadsland. He will make you laugh, cry, etc etc. And he made me really hungry.
February 10, 2024
4.25 stars
"The Saloon Bar was narrow and about thirty feet in length. On your right was the bar itself, in all its bottly glitter, and on your left was a row of tables set against a comfortable and continuous leather seat which went the whole length of the bar. At the far end the Saloon Bar opened out into the Saloon Lounge. This was a large, square room, filled with a dozen or so small, round, copper-covered tables. Around each table were three or four white wicker armchairs, and on each table there lay a large stone ash-tray supplied by a Whisky firm."
This is the first part of Patrick Hamilton’s Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky trilogy, published in 1929. The novel revolves around a public house called the Midnight Bell, in the Euston area. The first book concerns Bob a twenty-five year old sailor who is working at the bar in the pub. The other two main characters are Ella, who also works at the bar and Jenny, a prostitute and regular visitor to the pub. The second book in the trilogy focuses on Jenny and the third on Ella. Bob is infatuated with Jenny, Ella is very fond of Bob. Jenny is less fond of Bob than he is of her.
Bob has aspirations to become a writer. He has also been working hard and saving and has put aside eighty pounds in his bank account as part of his plans to write one day. Bob, however, is now obsessed with Jenny, who tolerates him and periodically encourages him a little and this is an exploration of obsession and doomed love. It’s also about the desire to possess, reform and “rescue” someone.
The pub itself is the vibrant heart of the novel and this is a great evocation of 1920s London and pub life. This is certainly not the Bright Young Things and the Flappers. It is partially autobiographical and there is subtlety in the portrayal of both characters. The reader is taken through Bob’s gradual whittling down of his savings as he attempts to buy his way into Jenny’s heart. Jenny is not a caricature, not evil or heartless.
Hamilton is most definitely not a writer who does “happy”, but the writing is immersive. The ending is not a surprise, but this is more about the journey: the reader knows all along that Bob is fooling himself.
There is a three part adaptation by the BBC from about twenty years ago, which I haven’t seen. This is a good start to the trilogy.
"The Saloon Bar was narrow and about thirty feet in length. On your right was the bar itself, in all its bottly glitter, and on your left was a row of tables set against a comfortable and continuous leather seat which went the whole length of the bar. At the far end the Saloon Bar opened out into the Saloon Lounge. This was a large, square room, filled with a dozen or so small, round, copper-covered tables. Around each table were three or four white wicker armchairs, and on each table there lay a large stone ash-tray supplied by a Whisky firm."
This is the first part of Patrick Hamilton’s Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky trilogy, published in 1929. The novel revolves around a public house called the Midnight Bell, in the Euston area. The first book concerns Bob a twenty-five year old sailor who is working at the bar in the pub. The other two main characters are Ella, who also works at the bar and Jenny, a prostitute and regular visitor to the pub. The second book in the trilogy focuses on Jenny and the third on Ella. Bob is infatuated with Jenny, Ella is very fond of Bob. Jenny is less fond of Bob than he is of her.
Bob has aspirations to become a writer. He has also been working hard and saving and has put aside eighty pounds in his bank account as part of his plans to write one day. Bob, however, is now obsessed with Jenny, who tolerates him and periodically encourages him a little and this is an exploration of obsession and doomed love. It’s also about the desire to possess, reform and “rescue” someone.
The pub itself is the vibrant heart of the novel and this is a great evocation of 1920s London and pub life. This is certainly not the Bright Young Things and the Flappers. It is partially autobiographical and there is subtlety in the portrayal of both characters. The reader is taken through Bob’s gradual whittling down of his savings as he attempts to buy his way into Jenny’s heart. Jenny is not a caricature, not evil or heartless.
Hamilton is most definitely not a writer who does “happy”, but the writing is immersive. The ending is not a surprise, but this is more about the journey: the reader knows all along that Bob is fooling himself.
There is a three part adaptation by the BBC from about twenty years ago, which I haven’t seen. This is a good start to the trilogy.
June 30, 2024
A brilliantly written but incredibly frustrating story of a young man's ill-fated love affair with an even younger prostitute.
January 4, 2024
The Midnight Bell (1929) is the first book of the Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky trilogy - the other two are The Siege of Pleasure (1932) and The Plains of Cement (1934).
Around a year before first reading the book in 2013 I watched a DVD of the BBC4 adaptation screened in 2005 - three one hour episodes (one per book) which I wish I hadn't watched before I read the book. Now that memory has faded.
I have read all of Patrick Hamilton's work and adore it all. Hangover Square (1941) is probably my favourite novel of all time. The Slaves of Solitude (1947) runs it a close second.
Whilst Hangover Square may be Patrick Hamilton's best-known London novel, The Midnight Bell (1929) is a key book in understanding his world view and the way he used his own life to inform his fiction. The story is akin to watching a slow motion car crash, the knowledge that this story is strongly autobiographical makes that feeling even more pronounced.
Patrick Hamilton's protagonist Bob, the waiter at a Euston pub called The Midnight Bell, has saved £80 (worth several thousands of pounds in today's money) in the bank through prudence and maximising his tips. Following a chance encounter with Jenny, a prostitute, and with whom he becomes obsessed, and believing he can change her, he becomes ever more reckless and desperate. Towards the end, Bob, realising the folly of his misadventure, concludes "that it had all come from him, and only the hysteria and obsession of his pursuit had given a weak semblance of reciprocation". Basically he'd been played.
As with all the best books by Patrick Hamilton, in addition to a riveting drama, The Midnight Bell also provides a powerfully evocation of London - 1920s London in this instance. The character of Euston, the West End, Soho, and Hampstead, still recognisable to the modern Londoner are beautifully captured, especially the various pubs and cafes which feature so heavily in the story. Patrick Hamilton must surely be the best chronicler of London pubs (if you know different please comment below).
The other aspect that rings true so authentically is the dialogue: whether this be the conversations between the regulars at The Midnight Bell, or the somewhat stilted and love lorn conversations between Bob and Jenny, or most powerfully a dreadful scene when Bob visits Jenny in the room she shares with two other prostitutes. The true horror of his situation dawns on Bob, who remains powerless to escape. Frequently these experiences are accompanied by boozing, and then appalling hangovers and self-loathing: clearly something which Patrick Hamilton had already gained a thorough knowledge.
The Midnight Bell is a great stand alone novel right up there with Patrick Hamilton's best work however read in conjunction with the other two parts of the trilogy (The Siege of Pleasure (1932) and The Plains of Cement (1934)) it's unbeatable. The trilogy's power lies in how all the stories interlink. All three books are contained in one single volume as Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky.
4/5
Around a year before first reading the book in 2013 I watched a DVD of the BBC4 adaptation screened in 2005 - three one hour episodes (one per book) which I wish I hadn't watched before I read the book. Now that memory has faded.
I have read all of Patrick Hamilton's work and adore it all. Hangover Square (1941) is probably my favourite novel of all time. The Slaves of Solitude (1947) runs it a close second.
Whilst Hangover Square may be Patrick Hamilton's best-known London novel, The Midnight Bell (1929) is a key book in understanding his world view and the way he used his own life to inform his fiction. The story is akin to watching a slow motion car crash, the knowledge that this story is strongly autobiographical makes that feeling even more pronounced.
Patrick Hamilton's protagonist Bob, the waiter at a Euston pub called The Midnight Bell, has saved £80 (worth several thousands of pounds in today's money) in the bank through prudence and maximising his tips. Following a chance encounter with Jenny, a prostitute, and with whom he becomes obsessed, and believing he can change her, he becomes ever more reckless and desperate. Towards the end, Bob, realising the folly of his misadventure, concludes "that it had all come from him, and only the hysteria and obsession of his pursuit had given a weak semblance of reciprocation". Basically he'd been played.
As with all the best books by Patrick Hamilton, in addition to a riveting drama, The Midnight Bell also provides a powerfully evocation of London - 1920s London in this instance. The character of Euston, the West End, Soho, and Hampstead, still recognisable to the modern Londoner are beautifully captured, especially the various pubs and cafes which feature so heavily in the story. Patrick Hamilton must surely be the best chronicler of London pubs (if you know different please comment below).
The other aspect that rings true so authentically is the dialogue: whether this be the conversations between the regulars at The Midnight Bell, or the somewhat stilted and love lorn conversations between Bob and Jenny, or most powerfully a dreadful scene when Bob visits Jenny in the room she shares with two other prostitutes. The true horror of his situation dawns on Bob, who remains powerless to escape. Frequently these experiences are accompanied by boozing, and then appalling hangovers and self-loathing: clearly something which Patrick Hamilton had already gained a thorough knowledge.
The Midnight Bell is a great stand alone novel right up there with Patrick Hamilton's best work however read in conjunction with the other two parts of the trilogy (The Siege of Pleasure (1932) and The Plains of Cement (1934)) it's unbeatable. The trilogy's power lies in how all the stories interlink. All three books are contained in one single volume as Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky.
4/5
December 28, 2020
First novel in the trilogy which makes up the collected ‘Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky.’
A barman in 1930s London hopelessly falls for a prostitute.
Hamilton sets the scene perfectly in the opening pages by vividly introducing ‘The Midnight Bell’ pub, its culture, and its characters. It’s a typically seedy Hamilton set-up, with the main character of Bob becoming torturously lost and cringingly out of control after meeting the pretty Jenny, a hard-up prostitute, whom he knows is not a good match for him, but is powerless to do anything but spend his dwindling £80 savings on, and dream of better days in an idealistic future. Jenny’s life is obviously rooted in a harsher present; it's a present that doesn’t encourage idealistic ambitions, and results in an attitude towards Bob which differs with each day. All this happens under the watchful eye of Bob’s co-worker, Ella, who cares more for him, but is romantically ignored for her perceived plainness.
There are not many novels which I can say grabbed me on the first page and held me riveted through every single following page - with not a waiver of concentration. I chortled away at the many observances of character, routine and setting; and cringed with every further shovelful of earth that Bob digs his ever-deepening hole with.
Hamilton’s love of Dickens is very evident. Each working shift of ‘The Midnight Bell’ begins:-
The Governor had now reached the door. He slid back the upper bolt; and he slid back the middle bolt. He was now faced by the lower bolt – a different matter. A breath was taken; and he stood a little further away. Then, with infinite precaution, the world-shape was let slowly down. A sharp click, a grunt of achievement, and ‘The Midnight Bell’ was open. The Governor came waddling back, again lifted the flap, passed through without a word, and disappeared.
With its richness of character and relationships; both restrained and uncontrolled emotions; the darkness and dinginess of the settings; and the air of expectancy that builds before and during scenes, this is easily one of my favourite books of the year. Hamilton manages to create a world which appears dreadful and unwelcoming, but with our inherent need to know, and a tickle of our curiosities, he skilfully entices us in. He is a master craftsman whose prose is crystal clear and his storytelling never dull.
I have started the second in the series, ‘The Siege Of Pleasure,’ which tells Jenny’s story.
A barman in 1930s London hopelessly falls for a prostitute.
Hamilton sets the scene perfectly in the opening pages by vividly introducing ‘The Midnight Bell’ pub, its culture, and its characters. It’s a typically seedy Hamilton set-up, with the main character of Bob becoming torturously lost and cringingly out of control after meeting the pretty Jenny, a hard-up prostitute, whom he knows is not a good match for him, but is powerless to do anything but spend his dwindling £80 savings on, and dream of better days in an idealistic future. Jenny’s life is obviously rooted in a harsher present; it's a present that doesn’t encourage idealistic ambitions, and results in an attitude towards Bob which differs with each day. All this happens under the watchful eye of Bob’s co-worker, Ella, who cares more for him, but is romantically ignored for her perceived plainness.
There are not many novels which I can say grabbed me on the first page and held me riveted through every single following page - with not a waiver of concentration. I chortled away at the many observances of character, routine and setting; and cringed with every further shovelful of earth that Bob digs his ever-deepening hole with.
Hamilton’s love of Dickens is very evident. Each working shift of ‘The Midnight Bell’ begins:-
The Governor had now reached the door. He slid back the upper bolt; and he slid back the middle bolt. He was now faced by the lower bolt – a different matter. A breath was taken; and he stood a little further away. Then, with infinite precaution, the world-shape was let slowly down. A sharp click, a grunt of achievement, and ‘The Midnight Bell’ was open. The Governor came waddling back, again lifted the flap, passed through without a word, and disappeared.
With its richness of character and relationships; both restrained and uncontrolled emotions; the darkness and dinginess of the settings; and the air of expectancy that builds before and during scenes, this is easily one of my favourite books of the year. Hamilton manages to create a world which appears dreadful and unwelcoming, but with our inherent need to know, and a tickle of our curiosities, he skilfully entices us in. He is a master craftsman whose prose is crystal clear and his storytelling never dull.
I have started the second in the series, ‘The Siege Of Pleasure,’ which tells Jenny’s story.
March 5, 2015
“The approach of love is something as stealthy and imperceptible as the catching of a cold. A man of spirit never knows he has it until the last moment.”
A genius character-driven story of obsessivelove infatuation.
It’s amazing to me that The Midnight Bell was published when Patrick Hamilton was only 25 years old. Its masterfully controlled narrative and adept language-play feels like the product of a more mature author.
The first of a trilogy of novels later re-published in one volume as Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, The Midnight Bell is not quite as solid as The Slaves of Solitude, but, for me, it’s close. It’s also interesting to read it as a precursor to TSOS and to see some of the ideas that Hamilton develops more fully therein 18 years later.
Highly recommended!
A genius character-driven story of obsessive
It’s amazing to me that The Midnight Bell was published when Patrick Hamilton was only 25 years old. Its masterfully controlled narrative and adept language-play feels like the product of a more mature author.
The first of a trilogy of novels later re-published in one volume as Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, The Midnight Bell is not quite as solid as The Slaves of Solitude, but, for me, it’s close. It’s also interesting to read it as a precursor to TSOS and to see some of the ideas that Hamilton develops more fully therein 18 years later.
Highly recommended!
August 7, 2021
Setting: London; 1930's. This is Book One in what came to be known as the 20,000 Streets Under the Sky trilogy. In a London pub called The Midnight Bell, Bob is the waiter - leading a fairly humdrum existence, adored by barmaid Ella who he doesn't really notice and building up a nice little nest-egg in savings (£85 in the bank - not bad in the time for a working man, I would suggest). Then, one night, two prostitutes come into the pub for a drink and he becomes infatuated with the younger one, Jenny, and sets out to spend time with her and to make her his. There is nothing particularly sexual about his pursuit - this doesn't really come into it at all - but he can picture making a life with her. But Jenny is self-obsessed and ignorant of other people's feelings, merely using them to her benefit. Bob gives Jenny money but has nothing to show for it as she repeatedly stands him up if she gets a better offer or just can't be bothered. Bob soon finds his savings dwindling but thinks that Jenny is going to go to Brighton with him as a prelude to their marriage - poor misguided fool!...
This is the second book I have read by this author - curiously, in the first I read (Hangover Square), the main character was also obsessed with a woman (Netta) who used him. I was very interested to read in the introduction to the trilogy (which fortunately I read AFTER reading the books, which I generally do now to avoid spoilers!) that this book was quite autobiographical as the author himself had fallen for a prostitute in his youth. This was a dark and grim tale, with Bob a gullible fool and Jenny a manipulative and thoughtless girl - although there is far more about her in the second book. Great characters and setting, very evocative of this relatively unwritten-about period between the wars and in the aftermath of a time of industrial unrest (General Strike 1926) and financial collapse (Wall Street Crash 1929). Really enjoyed the writing although it was a bit bleak for ALL the characters - 9/10.
This is the second book I have read by this author - curiously, in the first I read (Hangover Square), the main character was also obsessed with a woman (Netta) who used him. I was very interested to read in the introduction to the trilogy (which fortunately I read AFTER reading the books, which I generally do now to avoid spoilers!) that this book was quite autobiographical as the author himself had fallen for a prostitute in his youth. This was a dark and grim tale, with Bob a gullible fool and Jenny a manipulative and thoughtless girl - although there is far more about her in the second book. Great characters and setting, very evocative of this relatively unwritten-about period between the wars and in the aftermath of a time of industrial unrest (General Strike 1926) and financial collapse (Wall Street Crash 1929). Really enjoyed the writing although it was a bit bleak for ALL the characters - 9/10.
September 3, 2013
This was apparently strongly autobiographical, which could be guessed from a very early stage - Hamilton writes in the third person, but gets inside his hapless protagonist Bob's head from the start. A 25-year-old waiter in a Euston pub called The Midnight Bell, he lives above the shop, is single (he has a close but clearly platonic friendship with his colleague Ella), enjoys his job as much as he can do (he has ambitions to write, his room littered with copies of John O'London's Weekly) and has squirrelled away £80 in the bank - which I was startled to discover would be worth over four grand today. In other words, his life could be a lot worse - and Hamilton goes on to demonstrate this all too graphically when he meets Jenny, a prostitute whom he finds inexplicably alluring.
It's not so much a romance as a study of helpless addiction. Alarm bells begin jangling inside Bob's head from the moment she first stands him up on a date (she does this a lot), but he rationalises this and every subsequent discovery that he makes away - and as he repeatedly visits his bank to withdraw first a fiver, then a tenner and finally a fair bit more, the narrative takes on an air of helpless inevitability, made all the more tragic thanks to the fact that Bob is fully aware that what he's doing might be, to quote Sergeant Wilson, not altogether wise.
The central story is queasily gripping enough already, but where the book really shines is in its powerfully Dickensian evocation of late 1920s London, both geographically (it spans roughly Hampstead down to Piccadilly, catching the character of every square mile along the way) and socially. Nearly a decade before the Mass-Observation movement, Hamilton was pinning down assorted watering-hole habitués as though collecting butterflies - the pretentious would-be aesthete Mr Sounder whose main literary achievement is getting the occasional letter printed in a newspaper, the archetypal pub bore Mr Wall, who thinks it hilarious to link two only vaguely homophonic words with all the (lack of) comic élan of a latterday Mr Pooter. The almost first-person accounts of Bob's ill-advised boozing and monstrous hangovers also have the feel of deeply lived-in experience. Fellow writers as diverse as Graham Greene and Iain Sinclair were both fans, and it's easy enough to see why.
It's not so much a romance as a study of helpless addiction. Alarm bells begin jangling inside Bob's head from the moment she first stands him up on a date (she does this a lot), but he rationalises this and every subsequent discovery that he makes away - and as he repeatedly visits his bank to withdraw first a fiver, then a tenner and finally a fair bit more, the narrative takes on an air of helpless inevitability, made all the more tragic thanks to the fact that Bob is fully aware that what he's doing might be, to quote Sergeant Wilson, not altogether wise.
The central story is queasily gripping enough already, but where the book really shines is in its powerfully Dickensian evocation of late 1920s London, both geographically (it spans roughly Hampstead down to Piccadilly, catching the character of every square mile along the way) and socially. Nearly a decade before the Mass-Observation movement, Hamilton was pinning down assorted watering-hole habitués as though collecting butterflies - the pretentious would-be aesthete Mr Sounder whose main literary achievement is getting the occasional letter printed in a newspaper, the archetypal pub bore Mr Wall, who thinks it hilarious to link two only vaguely homophonic words with all the (lack of) comic élan of a latterday Mr Pooter. The almost first-person accounts of Bob's ill-advised boozing and monstrous hangovers also have the feel of deeply lived-in experience. Fellow writers as diverse as Graham Greene and Iain Sinclair were both fans, and it's easy enough to see why.
January 12, 2024
Before reading this as part of a Buddy read I had not heard of Patrick Hamilton. I now look forward to the second and third parts of the trilogy.
January 30, 2023
Hamilton has such a skill for presenting locations and characters that entice and maintain your attention. This is no picture perfect view of London, nor are the characters people you would particularly want to be around but that being said they are not unlikable. The novel presents an insightful view into 1940s London with the autobiographical elements of this novel adding a further layer of both questions and revelations to this.
March 23, 2015
Patrick Hamilton, who died in 1962, is one of the hidden jewels of English novel-writing. He's an accomplished author whose work is inexplicably and quite unfairly neglected these days. His most famous book is 'Hangover Square', which is very good indeed. 'The Midnight Bell', which appeared in 1929 and is the first of a trilogy of novels that was collected and published in the mid-1930s under the title 'Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky', is every bit as good as 'Hangover Square'. Indeed, I think it's possibly better. Set in an area of London that is today known as Fitzrovia, it's a simple, poignant, atmospheric and ultimately bleak tale of infatuation, exploitation and thwarted love. It builds to a conclusion that any perceptive reader will foresee well before the end of the story. But despite such signposting, it is a riveting novel that packs a powerful emotional punch. It deserves to be much better known than it is.
The plot is straightforward. Bob is a young working-class man in his mid-20s. His mother is dead and he has never known his father. An aspiring author, he works as a barman/waiter at 'The Midnight Bell', a pub in central London. He saves the gratuities he receives from customers. His careful attitude to money and his receipt of a small inheritance have enabled him to build up a modest nest-egg of around £80. His slightly mundane life changes completely one day when he serves Jenny, a very pretty young prostitute. Bob becomes infatuated with Jenny and falls in love with her. Jenny is an unreliable, exploitative soul-mate. She fails to keep appointments with Bob and manages to wheedle him into 'lending' her money with worrying ease. The story depicts the ups and downs of their increasingly tortuous and ill-judged liaison. It is also a portrait of the variety of customers who frequent 'The Midnight Bell' and of the staff who work there. The former include Mr Sounder, a man who spends his time writing letters to newspapers and sponging drinks off fellow regulars. The latter include Ella, a young barmaid who harbours feelings for Bob and who has the knack of correctly guessing what is going on in his life. 'The Midnight Bell' is a novel that is mildly Dickensian in its undertone.
As ever, Hamilton's prose and characterisation are excellent. The story element is wafer thin. But that doesn't really matter. It's the feelings and emotions of the leading characters that provide the real interest. In essence, Hamilton is a compassionate writer. The reader subconsciously feels as much sympathy for the manipulative Jenny in her desperate circumstances as for the innocent, hapless, naive Bob. Hamilton writes in a very readable style. The only jarring note - and it's a very minor one - is his frequent use of the word "commence" instead of "start". It seems stilted to me - but, of course, that may not have been the case at the time Hamilton was writing. 'The Midnight Bell' is an excellent novel. It's so good that I certainly want to read the remaining two books in the trilogy. I urge you to read it and to try some of Patrick Hamilton's other work. I don't think you'll be disappointed. 9/10.
The plot is straightforward. Bob is a young working-class man in his mid-20s. His mother is dead and he has never known his father. An aspiring author, he works as a barman/waiter at 'The Midnight Bell', a pub in central London. He saves the gratuities he receives from customers. His careful attitude to money and his receipt of a small inheritance have enabled him to build up a modest nest-egg of around £80. His slightly mundane life changes completely one day when he serves Jenny, a very pretty young prostitute. Bob becomes infatuated with Jenny and falls in love with her. Jenny is an unreliable, exploitative soul-mate. She fails to keep appointments with Bob and manages to wheedle him into 'lending' her money with worrying ease. The story depicts the ups and downs of their increasingly tortuous and ill-judged liaison. It is also a portrait of the variety of customers who frequent 'The Midnight Bell' and of the staff who work there. The former include Mr Sounder, a man who spends his time writing letters to newspapers and sponging drinks off fellow regulars. The latter include Ella, a young barmaid who harbours feelings for Bob and who has the knack of correctly guessing what is going on in his life. 'The Midnight Bell' is a novel that is mildly Dickensian in its undertone.
As ever, Hamilton's prose and characterisation are excellent. The story element is wafer thin. But that doesn't really matter. It's the feelings and emotions of the leading characters that provide the real interest. In essence, Hamilton is a compassionate writer. The reader subconsciously feels as much sympathy for the manipulative Jenny in her desperate circumstances as for the innocent, hapless, naive Bob. Hamilton writes in a very readable style. The only jarring note - and it's a very minor one - is his frequent use of the word "commence" instead of "start". It seems stilted to me - but, of course, that may not have been the case at the time Hamilton was writing. 'The Midnight Bell' is an excellent novel. It's so good that I certainly want to read the remaining two books in the trilogy. I urge you to read it and to try some of Patrick Hamilton's other work. I don't think you'll be disappointed. 9/10.
October 2, 2017
I decided to read this because it struck me as the perfect book to read in October, full of dark nights spent huddled in the corner of foetid pubs drinking dark beers. I was not disappointed.
Hamilton knew pubs. He spent a lot of time in them and he has a completely accurate understanding of pub dynamics. The description of the regulars, who all talk too much, none of whom listen at all - is perfect. Their dynamic, where none really like any of the others but being stuck in a room together with drink, they bond despite themselves. He is also able to evoke the ways a mood in a pub evolves throughout the night, from quiet, to noisy, to jolly, to a kind of desperation. Hamilton also understands how working in a pub is a little like a performance and stepping behind the bar is similar to stepping on stage.
Hamilton also can describe the personal stages of drunkenness. His characters behave differently depending on their different amounts of inebriation, with a mother of all benders being described in a chiaroscuro chapter where the details are discovered later through a hangover.
Hamilton also creates a real London. Aside from the building at the streets being the same, I’ve strolled down those same Soho streets and been to the same pubs and dance halls frequented by the characters. What’s more, he manages to nail perfectly the feeling of wondering around these places in the winter, the rush of warmth as you go into a pub, the looking out the dark window that reflects you back - it may be 80-odd years ago, but his London and mine still feel very much the same place. The biggest changes are the fogs (which no longer exist), the phone system and the money - money is very important in this book and it is worth working out how the pre-decimal currency worked.
As for the characters: Bob is likeable, he does have a massive ego (which turns out to be his superpower) and he does try to play the white knight - but ultimately, he’s not a bad guy. He is so blind though. It’s clear Jenny isn’t really interested in him, he realises she doesn’t really like him, but he can’t stop himself getting sucked deeper and deeper into her world, and his money deeper into her pockets. I can’t understand how dumb he is, how little encouragement Jenny needs to give him to make him destitute himself for her - maybe I haven’t been in love.
As for Jenny, I can’t work out whether she is deliberately manipulative or instinctively so. I found her frustrating, and Bob’s helplessness before her had me reading the book almost between my fingers. I look forward to reading the next book int he trilogy to find out exactly what she is thinking all this time, and what has shaped her attitudes to men and Bob in particular.
Hamilton knew pubs. He spent a lot of time in them and he has a completely accurate understanding of pub dynamics. The description of the regulars, who all talk too much, none of whom listen at all - is perfect. Their dynamic, where none really like any of the others but being stuck in a room together with drink, they bond despite themselves. He is also able to evoke the ways a mood in a pub evolves throughout the night, from quiet, to noisy, to jolly, to a kind of desperation. Hamilton also understands how working in a pub is a little like a performance and stepping behind the bar is similar to stepping on stage.
Hamilton also can describe the personal stages of drunkenness. His characters behave differently depending on their different amounts of inebriation, with a mother of all benders being described in a chiaroscuro chapter where the details are discovered later through a hangover.
Hamilton also creates a real London. Aside from the building at the streets being the same, I’ve strolled down those same Soho streets and been to the same pubs and dance halls frequented by the characters. What’s more, he manages to nail perfectly the feeling of wondering around these places in the winter, the rush of warmth as you go into a pub, the looking out the dark window that reflects you back - it may be 80-odd years ago, but his London and mine still feel very much the same place. The biggest changes are the fogs (which no longer exist), the phone system and the money - money is very important in this book and it is worth working out how the pre-decimal currency worked.
As for the characters: Bob is likeable, he does have a massive ego (which turns out to be his superpower) and he does try to play the white knight - but ultimately, he’s not a bad guy. He is so blind though. It’s clear Jenny isn’t really interested in him, he realises she doesn’t really like him, but he can’t stop himself getting sucked deeper and deeper into her world, and his money deeper into her pockets. I can’t understand how dumb he is, how little encouragement Jenny needs to give him to make him destitute himself for her - maybe I haven’t been in love.
As for Jenny, I can’t work out whether she is deliberately manipulative or instinctively so. I found her frustrating, and Bob’s helplessness before her had me reading the book almost between my fingers. I look forward to reading the next book int he trilogy to find out exactly what she is thinking all this time, and what has shaped her attitudes to men and Bob in particular.
June 22, 2015
Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of ready Andy Miller’s ‘A Year of Dangerous Reading’ (second mention of this book already, but he is responsible for at least my next two books that I’ve completed). Like seemingly all humans, I’m pre-disposed to enjoy lists of any sort; as a reader and writer, a list about books is nirvana-esque in nature. These were all books that had Miller had lied to people about reading, both in general and in his previous incarnation as a worker in a bookshop.
I couldn’t have timed reading this book more wrongly if I tried. Miller even warns people that this book shouldn’t be conceived as a list of books people should try and attempt, match or complete; rather, it just a cross section of books he felt like he had to read. In the week I bought this book, I had bought around ten others. Stupidly, I chose to read this first. Before I knew it, I was adding to my collection – every book that he wrote about and enjoyed, I wanted to experience the same feeling as him, so infectious was his delivery.
Read the rest at: https://thatdifficultfirstnovel.wordp...
I couldn’t have timed reading this book more wrongly if I tried. Miller even warns people that this book shouldn’t be conceived as a list of books people should try and attempt, match or complete; rather, it just a cross section of books he felt like he had to read. In the week I bought this book, I had bought around ten others. Stupidly, I chose to read this first. Before I knew it, I was adding to my collection – every book that he wrote about and enjoyed, I wanted to experience the same feeling as him, so infectious was his delivery.
Read the rest at: https://thatdifficultfirstnovel.wordp...
January 13, 2013
A pub in the Euston Road, a barman with savings and a working girl who happily takes him for a ride. The descriptions of the drinkers who frequent the bar are still familiar today. The London that Hamilton describes is still there too. It's never going to end well this tale of mis placed love and the air of gaiety that descends on Soho and the West End is brittle and cheap and only serves to reinforce the superficial nature of what he thinks of as love and she sees as a meal ticket.
April 18, 2015
A terrific insight into 1930s London life through the eyes of a barman, who is an autobiographical projection of the novel's author, Hamilton. Well-controlled narrative with characters who are brightly and realistically painted. There are many fine passages in the novel and it is surprising that the trilogy of which this is the first part, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, is not better known...
November 1, 2021
Bob, a waiter at a London saloon called The Midnight Bell, leads a relatively simple life. He works the lunch shift from 11 to 3 and the evening shift from 5 till 10. In between, he reads in his room, wanders the streets, goes to movies. The son of an American man and an Irish woman, he has no living family, no clear path ahead, and only the vaguest of dreams.
The time is 1929 or thereabouts. After years of working at sea, Bob, now twenty-six, has landed in this saloon that serves an odd assortment of down-and-out regulars.
The saloon’s rotund proprietor, known as The Governor, wears a waistcoat “the same shape as the world, but a little smaller. The Governor, as he walked about, was a kind of original Atlas. He took the burden not on the shoulders, like the mythological figure, but in the middle. You could positively find yourself trying to find the continents on the Governor’s waistcoat.”
The regulars include the insufferable, self-important bore, Mr. Sounder, who imagines himself a major literary figure, though his only published pieces are letters to newspaper editors lamenting the current state of women’s hairstyles.
Sounder’s nemesis, Mr. Wall, is another regular whose childish, lowbrow puns are funny precisely because they’re so irritating to the pretentious Sounder.
The Dickensian cast also includes Mr. Loame:
Rounding out the regulars is The Illegal Operation.
The affable Bob is a favorite among his clientele. They compete to buy him drinks during and after his shifts. When we first meet him in his bare room above the bar, he’s shaking off the effects of lunchtime gin, readying himself for the evening shift.
With a good heart and an idealistic imagination, his dream is to be a writer. He keeps this to himself, fearful that others will mock him. A man without an education who has to work six days a week just to keep himself clothed and fed has no business imagining himself in the immortal ranks of Dickens and Shakespeare.
But he’s been quietly preparing himself for the life he wants, reading anything and everything he can, saving every penny he can scrape from his meagre earnings. When the story opens, he’s amassed eighty pounds through disciplined thrift and frugality, the equivalent of about five thousand pounds in today’s money. That was quite a sum for a struggling young man in interwar London.
Bob’s coworker, the barmaid Ella, seems to be in love with him. She’s intelligent, perceptive, and thoughtful. They have a natural, easy rapport. “From love and kindness her good soul was constructed.” But to Bob, she’s plain, “sexless.” He isn’t interested.
He is interested in Jenny, the pretty young prostitute who stops in for a drink one winter afternoon. Why?
Having endured a life of hardship, Bob is deeply empathetic toward the suffering of others. He is accepting and understanding rather than judgemental, even to a fault. His reaction upon meeting Jenny’s friend, Prunella, is typical:
The barflies are drawn to Bob because of his nearly unconditional acceptance, but this is also his fatal flaw.
Though the sensible Ella warns him not to get involved with Jenny, the prostitute has fired the young author’s imagination. She has potential, just like me, he thinks. She was dealt a bad hand in life, just like me. No education, no money, no family, not a single break. She’s so far down, she can’t see her way up. But I can. Someday, I’m going to be somebody, and I’m going to bring her with me.
So his thinking goes.
Like Ella watching from the sidelines, the reader can see the trainwreck coming. Bob is in love with a woman who has given up on love. He wants to save the soul of a human being who has no interest in salvation. All Jenny wants is to earn enough to pay her rent and get drunk.
Jenny is elusive, sometimes appearing for their dates, sometimes not. Bob often walks the streets to find her. When he catches up with her, she’s evasive. He asks where she was, why she missed their date, she says, “I was busy, that’s all.”
Does she love him? “Sure, if you like.”
Though he can’t see it, Bob is as infatuated with the narrative of their love–the airy romance spun entirely from imagination–as he is with Jenny herself.
She lies, she stands him up, she takes his money. He can’t deal with the anger he feels, the sense of betrayal, so he makes up stories to justify her behavior, stories that inevitably lead to him think, My God, what horrors she must have endured to make her behave in such a way! She needs saving, and I must save her!
His self-deception makes him a co-conspirator in his long, spiraling descent.
At one point, when he’s hunted her down among the crowd of West End prostitutes, he takes her to a bar, buys her a drink, and asks why she didn’t meet him the other day, as she promised.
To her credit, Jenny warns him repeatedly to stay away. You can’t love me, she says, I’m a prostitute. She’s telling him clearly that she’s not capable of reciprocating his feelings, but what he hears is that she’s internalized society’s judgment of her as worthless, and he wants to show her otherwise. He’s going to be the hero who makes her see own beauty. They’re speaking two different languages.
One evening while visiting her house, Bob listens to another prostitute tell the story of a high school boy she picked up on the street. The boy did not want to have sex. He bought her a drink, said he felt sorry for “her lot” and wanted to help her. She berated him for wasting her time, took all his money, returning just enough for his train fare back to school, and sent him off with a warning not to try to save prostitutes' souls because “we haven’t got any.”
Bob sees the parallel right away. He is the idealistic boy.
In Jenny, the hope and idealism that have seen Bob through years of hardship come up at last against a reality that will not yield. For all his love and earnestness, the brightness of his dreams cannot illuminate a soul that has given up on itself, “this dreadful flower of the underworld.”
The strength of The Midnight Bell lies in Hamilton’s sharp, darkly comic writing, and in his extraordinary ability to describe the psychological tricks we play on ourselves to avoid feelings we don’t want to accept.
For all his altruism, Bob’s love is not entirely selfless. He wants to be the hero of a long-shot romance. He needs to see himself as the rescuer and redeemer, the one who bravely descended into the depths to pull a fellow sufferer, someone worse off than himself, back to safety. He wants to bask forever after in her gratitude.
The episodes that most upset Bob are the ones that threaten his internal narrative of himself as rescuer. He understands that Jenny is with other men. That’s her job, and he excuses it with the fantasy that, once they are together, she will be faithful. But he rages internally when he hears she’s with “a gentleman,” who can take her on vacation, put her up in hotels, educate her, and provide her with things Bob can’t give.
He thinks and feels what every person who’s ever been in love thinks and feels, but as the story progresses, the reader sees what Jenny implicitly understood from the beginning, and what Bob can’t bring himself to admit: that this love is more about him than about her. He can’t break it off because too much of his identity, too much of who he wants to be, how he wants to perceive himself, is wrapped up in his dream of restoring this fallen angel to her former brightness. As the affair becomes more desperate, Bob’s rationalizations for continuing it become more convoluted, tortured, and cringeworthy.
Ultimately, he must come to a reckoning in his own heart, and ultimately, he does. But, like any true idealist, he has to learn the hard way.
Hamilton’s writing rings true because it’s so close to his own life. At Bob’s age, he too was a poor waiter in London, a drifting, empathetic outcast hopelessly in love with a dissolute prostitute.
The Midnight Bell is the first in Hamilton’s trilogy, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky. Book two picks up the story from Jenny’s perspective, which I look forward to reading because in The Midnight Bell, we never truly know what she thinks or how she perceives the world. We have only her evasive words and an outward description of her actions distorted by Bob’s idealism and desire.
The third and final book shows us London from Ella’s perspective. She’s the most sensible of the lot: plain, kind, and overlooked–like the bulk of humanity. My guess is, if she’s not the most tragic of the three, she’ll be the most enduring.
I’ll review the other titles as I read them.
The time is 1929 or thereabouts. After years of working at sea, Bob, now twenty-six, has landed in this saloon that serves an odd assortment of down-and-out regulars.
The saloon’s rotund proprietor, known as The Governor, wears a waistcoat “the same shape as the world, but a little smaller. The Governor, as he walked about, was a kind of original Atlas. He took the burden not on the shoulders, like the mythological figure, but in the middle. You could positively find yourself trying to find the continents on the Governor’s waistcoat.”
The regulars include the insufferable, self-important bore, Mr. Sounder, who imagines himself a major literary figure, though his only published pieces are letters to newspaper editors lamenting the current state of women’s hairstyles.
Sounder’s nemesis, Mr. Wall, is another regular whose childish, lowbrow puns are funny precisely because they’re so irritating to the pretentious Sounder.
The Dickensian cast also includes Mr. Loame:
He was tall, with a bowler hat and yellow gloves, and a silver-knobbed black stick. He wore an expensive shapely grey overcoat–rather too shapely; and he had large, handsome features–rather too large and handsome. His eyes were blue and fine. His voice was rich, deep, patrician–authentically beautiful. With all this, there was an elusive shabbiness and meretriciousness about the man. In a word–an actor.
Rounding out the regulars is The Illegal Operation.
The young man’s actual name was MacDonald. But this was transcended by his reputation. As an Illegal Operation (and as nothing else) he drank his whiskies, leered across his bar, and inhaled endless cigarettes before the world. For he never told you his name, but when he had had more whiskey than was good for him he invariably began to swagger confidentially about his Illegal Operation. By performing one of these (successfully), it appeared, he had abruptly terminated his career as a medical student, and served six months in prison. This was his tragedy, and he was famous for it in The Midnight Bell. He was now about thirty-two, and wore old grey flannel trousers, a sports coat, rather dirty shirts and knitted ties. He had sandy hair, rather closely cropped… and grey eyes. He had enormous ears, and a long nose with a rather bashed-in appearance–an illegal nose, in fact–and a full mouth and large chin. Every now and again he tried to commit suicide, but could never manage to bring it off.
The affable Bob is a favorite among his clientele. They compete to buy him drinks during and after his shifts. When we first meet him in his bare room above the bar, he’s shaking off the effects of lunchtime gin, readying himself for the evening shift.
With a good heart and an idealistic imagination, his dream is to be a writer. He keeps this to himself, fearful that others will mock him. A man without an education who has to work six days a week just to keep himself clothed and fed has no business imagining himself in the immortal ranks of Dickens and Shakespeare.
But he’s been quietly preparing himself for the life he wants, reading anything and everything he can, saving every penny he can scrape from his meagre earnings. When the story opens, he’s amassed eighty pounds through disciplined thrift and frugality, the equivalent of about five thousand pounds in today’s money. That was quite a sum for a struggling young man in interwar London.
Bob’s coworker, the barmaid Ella, seems to be in love with him. She’s intelligent, perceptive, and thoughtful. They have a natural, easy rapport. “From love and kindness her good soul was constructed.” But to Bob, she’s plain, “sexless.” He isn’t interested.
He is interested in Jenny, the pretty young prostitute who stops in for a drink one winter afternoon. Why?
Having endured a life of hardship, Bob is deeply empathetic toward the suffering of others. He is accepting and understanding rather than judgemental, even to a fault. His reaction upon meeting Jenny’s friend, Prunella, is typical:
Prunella was a dark, handsome, flashy girl, who looked as though she had seen the inside of jails. And, indeed, had. Bob rather liked her.
The barflies are drawn to Bob because of his nearly unconditional acceptance, but this is also his fatal flaw.
Though the sensible Ella warns him not to get involved with Jenny, the prostitute has fired the young author’s imagination. She has potential, just like me, he thinks. She was dealt a bad hand in life, just like me. No education, no money, no family, not a single break. She’s so far down, she can’t see her way up. But I can. Someday, I’m going to be somebody, and I’m going to bring her with me.
So his thinking goes.
Like Ella watching from the sidelines, the reader can see the trainwreck coming. Bob is in love with a woman who has given up on love. He wants to save the soul of a human being who has no interest in salvation. All Jenny wants is to earn enough to pay her rent and get drunk.
Jenny is elusive, sometimes appearing for their dates, sometimes not. Bob often walks the streets to find her. When he catches up with her, she’s evasive. He asks where she was, why she missed their date, she says, “I was busy, that’s all.”
Does she love him? “Sure, if you like.”
Though he can’t see it, Bob is as infatuated with the narrative of their love–the airy romance spun entirely from imagination–as he is with Jenny herself.
She lies, she stands him up, she takes his money. He can’t deal with the anger he feels, the sense of betrayal, so he makes up stories to justify her behavior, stories that inevitably lead to him think, My God, what horrors she must have endured to make her behave in such a way! She needs saving, and I must save her!
His self-deception makes him a co-conspirator in his long, spiraling descent.
At one point, when he’s hunted her down among the crowd of West End prostitutes, he takes her to a bar, buys her a drink, and asks why she didn’t meet him the other day, as she promised.
“Didn’t want to, I suppose, dear,” she said, and took another sip.
In the infinite perversity of human nature, his dejection was immediate. He loved her. He looked at her and her beauty and knew he could not bear her disfavor.
To her credit, Jenny warns him repeatedly to stay away. You can’t love me, she says, I’m a prostitute. She’s telling him clearly that she’s not capable of reciprocating his feelings, but what he hears is that she’s internalized society’s judgment of her as worthless, and he wants to show her otherwise. He’s going to be the hero who makes her see own beauty. They’re speaking two different languages.
One evening while visiting her house, Bob listens to another prostitute tell the story of a high school boy she picked up on the street. The boy did not want to have sex. He bought her a drink, said he felt sorry for “her lot” and wanted to help her. She berated him for wasting her time, took all his money, returning just enough for his train fare back to school, and sent him off with a warning not to try to save prostitutes' souls because “we haven’t got any.”
Bob sees the parallel right away. He is the idealistic boy.
Why had he pitted himself against all the perceived facts? Any fledgeling could have told him from the first what he was now learning with such cost and pain–that women of the streets were of and for the streets, and that love of such was inconceivable–unnegotiable–mere despair and degredation. She had even told him so herself when he first knew her. And yet, like a child of eighteen, he had thought that in his own case it would be different.
In Jenny, the hope and idealism that have seen Bob through years of hardship come up at last against a reality that will not yield. For all his love and earnestness, the brightness of his dreams cannot illuminate a soul that has given up on itself, “this dreadful flower of the underworld.”
The strength of The Midnight Bell lies in Hamilton’s sharp, darkly comic writing, and in his extraordinary ability to describe the psychological tricks we play on ourselves to avoid feelings we don’t want to accept.
For all his altruism, Bob’s love is not entirely selfless. He wants to be the hero of a long-shot romance. He needs to see himself as the rescuer and redeemer, the one who bravely descended into the depths to pull a fellow sufferer, someone worse off than himself, back to safety. He wants to bask forever after in her gratitude.
The episodes that most upset Bob are the ones that threaten his internal narrative of himself as rescuer. He understands that Jenny is with other men. That’s her job, and he excuses it with the fantasy that, once they are together, she will be faithful. But he rages internally when he hears she’s with “a gentleman,” who can take her on vacation, put her up in hotels, educate her, and provide her with things Bob can’t give.
He thinks and feels what every person who’s ever been in love thinks and feels, but as the story progresses, the reader sees what Jenny implicitly understood from the beginning, and what Bob can’t bring himself to admit: that this love is more about him than about her. He can’t break it off because too much of his identity, too much of who he wants to be, how he wants to perceive himself, is wrapped up in his dream of restoring this fallen angel to her former brightness. As the affair becomes more desperate, Bob’s rationalizations for continuing it become more convoluted, tortured, and cringeworthy.
Ultimately, he must come to a reckoning in his own heart, and ultimately, he does. But, like any true idealist, he has to learn the hard way.
Hamilton’s writing rings true because it’s so close to his own life. At Bob’s age, he too was a poor waiter in London, a drifting, empathetic outcast hopelessly in love with a dissolute prostitute.
The Midnight Bell is the first in Hamilton’s trilogy, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky. Book two picks up the story from Jenny’s perspective, which I look forward to reading because in The Midnight Bell, we never truly know what she thinks or how she perceives the world. We have only her evasive words and an outward description of her actions distorted by Bob’s idealism and desire.
The third and final book shows us London from Ella’s perspective. She’s the most sensible of the lot: plain, kind, and overlooked–like the bulk of humanity. My guess is, if she’s not the most tragic of the three, she’ll be the most enduring.
I’ll review the other titles as I read them.
September 27, 2012
A London put waiter falls for a prostitute who stops into the pub one night. She and her lady friend are discussing her small, but immediate need of this week's rent money. The waiter gives her the sum and she promises to come back the following night to repay the debt. He thinks very highly of himself for gifting money to someone whom most people would not even talk to. Of course, she does not return so on his next evening off work he "casually" strolls the neighborhood where folks of her calling frequent but only to show he is a better person than she imagined and to tell her to never come back and to keep the money. Well, he does find her on the street and she is apologetic and promises to return to repay the money very soon. The book continues in this vein as he is continually put off and stood up, promising after each slight to never see her again but one more time to "put things right". She warms up on occassion just enough to keep him coming as he repeats his generosity to greater and greater lengths. The book ends in a crescendo, she promising to go away for a week with him, he draining his savings account to pay for the week and being stood up one last time. He loses his last money to thieves in a drunken stupor and goes "off to sea" rather than face his friends back at the pub, having not gone away on his vacation at all and ending up broke.
The first story in a trilogy, the remaining two are the same story, first told by the prostitute and lastly by the pub's barmaid who is too plain for Bob but in love with Bob.
The first story in a trilogy, the remaining two are the same story, first told by the prostitute and lastly by the pub's barmaid who is too plain for Bob but in love with Bob.
May 11, 2024
Poor Bob . Bar waiter in a central London pub he becomes a hostage to his passion for Jenny , a stunning prostitute with a hefty drink problem . Bob's addiction to Jenny , his resolute determination to drop her each time she' s a no show or has worked him over to bail her out , is on full view while her addiction has to be guessed at by her erratic behaviour , her debts and precarious living.
But Jenny is a complex person .She is indifferent to Bob's passion but also fascinated by it and is far from the cold calculating stereotype. She has and is fun .Their dialogue sparkles with misunderstanding and banter . She is unashamed and bold. Bob's lonely life is full and predictable , living like a monk in his garret , and Jenny offers escape and a version of himself he is loathe to give up .
Behind this tale of destructive obsession lies a wider critique of the economic of work . Bob earns his money legitimately but his savings , carefully accrued , bring no pleasure . Spending them on Jenny brings fleeting joy without material change . Jenny is able to earn more than her peers only by corrupting herself . Her expensive clothes and baubles acquired on trips with gentleman friends representing the days when she was a more coveted trophy .
Back in the bar honest but less attractive Ella moons over Bob , unnoticed . And the days pass .
But Jenny is a complex person .She is indifferent to Bob's passion but also fascinated by it and is far from the cold calculating stereotype. She has and is fun .Their dialogue sparkles with misunderstanding and banter . She is unashamed and bold. Bob's lonely life is full and predictable , living like a monk in his garret , and Jenny offers escape and a version of himself he is loathe to give up .
Behind this tale of destructive obsession lies a wider critique of the economic of work . Bob earns his money legitimately but his savings , carefully accrued , bring no pleasure . Spending them on Jenny brings fleeting joy without material change . Jenny is able to earn more than her peers only by corrupting herself . Her expensive clothes and baubles acquired on trips with gentleman friends representing the days when she was a more coveted trophy .
Back in the bar honest but less attractive Ella moons over Bob , unnoticed . And the days pass .
March 2, 2012
Part of a trilogy, where the book had to be returned as it had been ordered. So there are two of us out there reading hamilton.
This is a straight forward story on similar ground to HS that probably proves too things... 1) Hamilton has a emotionally juvenile understanding of women 2) the dialogue becomes repetitive but is saved by some stunning observations and sweet sentance construction.
Bob works in the Midnight Bell and has saved £80. Ella also works there and is in love with Bob, but Bob strikes a fancy to a 19 year old prostitute called Jenny.
Jenny quickly elimates Bob of all his money. There is a sticky middle part of the book where the dialogue is repetitive and too much "i love you" reciprocated between the two. Hamilton portrays most women as money grabbing harlots.
Some exceptional sections - such as the opening of the pub as theatre, the characters within it and a very good ending where Bob gets blind drunk, wakes in the doss house and then you are not sure if he commits suicide as he plans to "return to the sea".
I think the closing line about the working classes where hamilton says "You can never make them, under any provocation, say die".
This is a straight forward story on similar ground to HS that probably proves too things... 1) Hamilton has a emotionally juvenile understanding of women 2) the dialogue becomes repetitive but is saved by some stunning observations and sweet sentance construction.
Bob works in the Midnight Bell and has saved £80. Ella also works there and is in love with Bob, but Bob strikes a fancy to a 19 year old prostitute called Jenny.
Jenny quickly elimates Bob of all his money. There is a sticky middle part of the book where the dialogue is repetitive and too much "i love you" reciprocated between the two. Hamilton portrays most women as money grabbing harlots.
Some exceptional sections - such as the opening of the pub as theatre, the characters within it and a very good ending where Bob gets blind drunk, wakes in the doss house and then you are not sure if he commits suicide as he plans to "return to the sea".
I think the closing line about the working classes where hamilton says "You can never make them, under any provocation, say die".
March 20, 2016
I was interested enough to get to the end of this but I was unceasingly annoyed by the author's capitalisation of words that wouldn't normally require it, always in speech.
Examples:
1. Mr. Wall had just one thing to say on the matter, and one only, and one continuously: – it was only Science what was Keeping Him Alive.
2. The Governor had got it into his head that the Prince of Wales would Never Come to the Throne, but that the Duke of York would be Elected instead.
There is no consistent clear reason for the capitalisation, though much of the time it seems to be done for the purpose of showing words emphasised by either the speaker or (in his own mind) the hearer. I Tolerated it but My Goodness how it Irritated me.
It was an engaging novel most of the time, helped by its successful characterisation, but it was let down by its ending: a weak account of a drunken evening followed by the protagonist abruptly going to sea.
I'm in no hurry to read any more by Patrick Hamilton.
Examples:
1. Mr. Wall had just one thing to say on the matter, and one only, and one continuously: – it was only Science what was Keeping Him Alive.
2. The Governor had got it into his head that the Prince of Wales would Never Come to the Throne, but that the Duke of York would be Elected instead.
There is no consistent clear reason for the capitalisation, though much of the time it seems to be done for the purpose of showing words emphasised by either the speaker or (in his own mind) the hearer. I Tolerated it but My Goodness how it Irritated me.
It was an engaging novel most of the time, helped by its successful characterisation, but it was let down by its ending: a weak account of a drunken evening followed by the protagonist abruptly going to sea.
I'm in no hurry to read any more by Patrick Hamilton.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 27, 2013
I liked this book, quite a lot in fact but the protagonist really did infuriate me immensely. Hamilton manages to capture something quite unique in the pages of this book: real life, by that I mean actually what life is like, the torment, the indecision, the difficulty, the highs and the lows. I found the ending a little bit weird but I am assuming because it is a trilogy that Bob will pop up again. Hamilton is descriptive but that's part of the sheer brilliance of it, it does take a long time for anything much to happen but that's exactly like life. If you like Hollywood movie style books where the plot races along and there is next to no character development this book is most definitely not for you. However, if you appreciate the art of writing and you have patience I would suggest you give it a try.
June 26, 2021
You don’t read Patrick Hamilton in the hope that it’s going to give you a warm glow of well-being. Like The Slaves of Solitude and Hangover Square, The Midnight Bell is a novel soaked in drink and with the stale atmosphere of old pub ashtrays. Largely autobiographical, it’s the story of Bob, a barman at the titular pub and his infatuation with Jenny, a West End prostitute, who is nearly the ruin of him. Hamilton paints a bleak picture of lonely, unfulfilled lives in a cold wintry pre-war London, but what he excels in above everything is the creation of the most appalling pub bores; we’ve all met people like Mr Sounder and Mr Wall, and it’s depressing to think they’ve been propping up bars since The Midnight Bell was first published in 1929.
June 15, 2015
The cringing pain of watching a friend idiotically fall in love with someone uninterested and particularly cruel, combined with slowly watching your finances drip away as you slip into poverty. Eli Roth has nothing on this torture porn.
April 21, 2014
Incredibly well observed writing. At times it made me feel claustrophobic as the nuances of every interaction are detailed in real-time. Over the course of the trilogy I developed a real fondness for 2 of the 3 key characters, and a real sense of what it took to survive London in that era.
March 2, 2016
A gripping and thoroughly entertaining jaunt through London in the early 1900s... The writer draws you into a beautiful and achingly familiar narrative to all men... A love story for boys! First of a trilogy... Bring on the rest!
April 19, 2014
Tales from the dark streets of Fitzrovia and Soho in the '30's. Beautifully atmospheric... The Midnight Bell is a fabulous book.
December 30, 2023
The Midnight Bell was first published in 1929 and is better known as the first book in the trilogy, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky. For those who know anything about Patrick Hamilton, it will be obvious that this novel is partly autobiographical. Set largely in Soho and Fitzrovia, centred around the public house of the title, our main character is Bob, the barman. Bob is a young man with plans. He assiduously saves his money and has eighty pounds in the bank (in current times, we are talking somewhere between four and seven thousand pounds). In addition, he has plans and dreams. He wishes to be a writer and, although he has not, as yet, done much about this, he enjoys daydreaming about the future and his possible success. Bob rooms next door to barmaid, Ella, who is described as plain, but who is in love with Bob.
There is, possibly, something I should say about Patrick Hamilton and that is that he is not a writer who enjoys happy, feel good books. Undoubtedly, this is more realistic, so, if you like romantic comedies, go off and read/watch one. This, although something of a romance (although somewhat one-sided) is definitely not a comedy. Nor, frankly, will it make you feel good. That said, you will feel immersed in the world and characters that Hamilton creates.
Wandering into The Midnight Bell one night are two ladies of the night, to put it politely. One is Jenny, a pretty little thing who gives Bob a hard luck story which results in him giving her some money for her rent. Before he knows where he is, Bob's life is derailed. He finds himself thinking more about Jenny, until this becomes obsessive. Rather than holding his dreams close on his nights out, he goes wandering, trying to find her and convincing himself that he is in love with her and she with him. If you are an adult, you will realise that this will not end well. Bob enjoys his romantic gestures, he feels honourable, generous, charitable. He convinces himself he can change her, that she will be changed by his love.
I did say this is realistic isn't it? People rarely change and, to be fair to Jenny, she does not lie about who, or what she is. Hamilton, who was himself once in love with a prostitute, who spent much time in London pubs, who was cynical and who wrote brilliantly about London, tells this story as though - if not excusing his own behaviour - understanding it. Who has not, when in love, waited longer than they should for a person to turn up? Who has not excused behaviour or done things they are later ashamed of? It is called being human and Hamilton understood humanity, with all its flaws.
There is, possibly, something I should say about Patrick Hamilton and that is that he is not a writer who enjoys happy, feel good books. Undoubtedly, this is more realistic, so, if you like romantic comedies, go off and read/watch one. This, although something of a romance (although somewhat one-sided) is definitely not a comedy. Nor, frankly, will it make you feel good. That said, you will feel immersed in the world and characters that Hamilton creates.
Wandering into The Midnight Bell one night are two ladies of the night, to put it politely. One is Jenny, a pretty little thing who gives Bob a hard luck story which results in him giving her some money for her rent. Before he knows where he is, Bob's life is derailed. He finds himself thinking more about Jenny, until this becomes obsessive. Rather than holding his dreams close on his nights out, he goes wandering, trying to find her and convincing himself that he is in love with her and she with him. If you are an adult, you will realise that this will not end well. Bob enjoys his romantic gestures, he feels honourable, generous, charitable. He convinces himself he can change her, that she will be changed by his love.
I did say this is realistic isn't it? People rarely change and, to be fair to Jenny, she does not lie about who, or what she is. Hamilton, who was himself once in love with a prostitute, who spent much time in London pubs, who was cynical and who wrote brilliantly about London, tells this story as though - if not excusing his own behaviour - understanding it. Who has not, when in love, waited longer than they should for a person to turn up? Who has not excused behaviour or done things they are later ashamed of? It is called being human and Hamilton understood humanity, with all its flaws.
March 31, 2021
What stands out for me in "Midnight Bell" is how rarely one reads about anything but the "beautiful people," those born to privilege or seeking it, of the 1920's. That Hamilton does this is enough to make this book memorable. The action here is a step or two above squalid, for the most part, and is about the intersection of blue collar London with those people even lower in the social hierarchy.
Hamilton tells a story pretty well, and sometimes even wittily, but things move slowly nevertheless. I enjoyed the city of London, to some extent a main character in the story, and mentally walking down streets I came to know decades later. I also found interesting the economics of daily living for those who were not well to do. One instance especially sticks in my memory. Bob is taking Ella out for the evening and they are running late. Bob proposes taking a bus, but Ella protests at the extravagance. And these are not London's poorest folk, either.
One can make a case that Hamilton's characterization of Bob (whose family name we never learn) is a deft study of obsession. I have trouble getting there, and was frequently irritated by his making choices I found it hard to believe anyone would make. That, and an ending which did not work for me, keep me from liking the book as much as others have.
I was also put off by a number of examples of anti-Semitism, and one of racism. To be sure, this is an accurate description of Britain in the first half of the Twentieth Century, and it appears in many other novels of the period. Nevertheless, it interrupted my reading pleasure, though I understand why it was a choice Hamilton made in the interest if social accuracy.
Certainly a book worth reading, and other reviewers have convinced me to read the rest of the trilogy, which comes as a surprise to me since I had not thought to experience more of Hamilton's writing before I read those comments.
Hamilton tells a story pretty well, and sometimes even wittily, but things move slowly nevertheless. I enjoyed the city of London, to some extent a main character in the story, and mentally walking down streets I came to know decades later. I also found interesting the economics of daily living for those who were not well to do. One instance especially sticks in my memory. Bob is taking Ella out for the evening and they are running late. Bob proposes taking a bus, but Ella protests at the extravagance. And these are not London's poorest folk, either.
One can make a case that Hamilton's characterization of Bob (whose family name we never learn) is a deft study of obsession. I have trouble getting there, and was frequently irritated by his making choices I found it hard to believe anyone would make. That, and an ending which did not work for me, keep me from liking the book as much as others have.
I was also put off by a number of examples of anti-Semitism, and one of racism. To be sure, this is an accurate description of Britain in the first half of the Twentieth Century, and it appears in many other novels of the period. Nevertheless, it interrupted my reading pleasure, though I understand why it was a choice Hamilton made in the interest if social accuracy.
Certainly a book worth reading, and other reviewers have convinced me to read the rest of the trilogy, which comes as a surprise to me since I had not thought to experience more of Hamilton's writing before I read those comments.
June 16, 2023
3.75, rounded up.
Well written tale (partly autobiographical) from an author who seems to really know his subject - unrequited love, or if that's putting it a bit too dramatically, an infatuation for someone that is not returned.
Bob is a 26 year-old waiter who works at the Midnight Bell pub. (One of his co-workers, Ella has a big crush on him, or may be fully in love, bit it's a love that is not noticed or returned. Another case of unrequited love.)
Bob is obsessed with another girl, Jenny a prostitute who arrives one night at the pub with her friend.
From the time he first sets eyes on her, he becomes obsessed, there's something about her that drives him crazy with desire, he has to know her better, be with her, and have her as his girl.
He knows her profession, a small part of his mind knows that she is unworthy of his time (and money) but he can't help himself; he has to have her, at any cost relating to his dignity - and bank account.
She stands him up; is late or doesn't turn up for dates, but Bob will always forgive and trust her one more time.... but will he always be let down? Will he foolishly end up in ruin one day?
An entertaining book, and frustrating as well - Bob to some readers will seem to be a fool, and in some ways his own worst enemy. The book may not get full points from me, probably due to the story showing its age. I feel this theme has been told many times before.
Whilst reading the book, I kept thinking about Philip Carey and Mildred from Maugham's OF HUMAN BONDAGE, the foolish man pursuing the "unworthy" woman.
I like Hamilton's writing style, ( though a bit wordy sometimes), and don't mind too much his habit of using capital letters for words that didn't really require them. Apparently J. B. Priestley called them Komic Kapitals.
This one still gets the thumbs up from me, I'll read its follow-up, THE SEIGE OF PLEASURE next.
Well written tale (partly autobiographical) from an author who seems to really know his subject - unrequited love, or if that's putting it a bit too dramatically, an infatuation for someone that is not returned.
Bob is a 26 year-old waiter who works at the Midnight Bell pub. (One of his co-workers, Ella has a big crush on him, or may be fully in love, bit it's a love that is not noticed or returned. Another case of unrequited love.)
Bob is obsessed with another girl, Jenny a prostitute who arrives one night at the pub with her friend.
From the time he first sets eyes on her, he becomes obsessed, there's something about her that drives him crazy with desire, he has to know her better, be with her, and have her as his girl.
He knows her profession, a small part of his mind knows that she is unworthy of his time (and money) but he can't help himself; he has to have her, at any cost relating to his dignity - and bank account.
She stands him up; is late or doesn't turn up for dates, but Bob will always forgive and trust her one more time.... but will he always be let down? Will he foolishly end up in ruin one day?
An entertaining book, and frustrating as well - Bob to some readers will seem to be a fool, and in some ways his own worst enemy. The book may not get full points from me, probably due to the story showing its age. I feel this theme has been told many times before.
Whilst reading the book, I kept thinking about Philip Carey and Mildred from Maugham's OF HUMAN BONDAGE, the foolish man pursuing the "unworthy" woman.
I like Hamilton's writing style, ( though a bit wordy sometimes), and don't mind too much his habit of using capital letters for words that didn't really require them. Apparently J. B. Priestley called them Komic Kapitals.
This one still gets the thumbs up from me, I'll read its follow-up, THE SEIGE OF PLEASURE next.
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