Patrick Hamilton lived, on and off, on the North Norfolk Coast from the 1930’s until 1962 when he died aged 58 from liver cirrhosis while living in Sheringham. John Betjeman called him one of the best English novelists’ but he is probably better known as the author of the plays Rope (1929) and Gaslight (1939) both of which were adapted for the screen by Alfred Hitchcock. In 1998 Julian Earwaker and Kathleen Becker in their fascinating book Literary Norfolk wrote that Hamilton’s novels ‘await discovery’. It didn’t take long. Hangover Square this month’s Book Club choice was republished in Penguin Classics in 2001. Readers may have recently seen the BBC adaptation of Hamilton’s trilogy Twenty Thousand Streets under the Sky which Random House republished in 2004.
Hamilton’s novels often describe pub life, which was something he knew all too well, and the effects on ordinary people of alcohol. Reviews of his work are scattered with mentions of ‘betrayed lives…self delusion…sexual infatuation… despair…obsession…. solitude and anonymity.’ Hangover Square, which is set in Earls Court in 1939, is no exception to the rule. In it George Harvey Bone is hopelessly infatuated with Netta Longdon. She and her drinking friends are contemptuous of him. We first meet him walking along the cliffs at Hunstanton, having had Christmas dinner with his aunt and we are immediately introduced to his schizophrenia, his ‘dead moods’ during which he plans to kill Netta and her friends.
Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
Hangover Square is a grim tale about hopelessness and alcoholism. The main character, George Harvey Bone is struggling with his ‘dead’ moods, moments when he loses all rational sense and contemplates murder, he lurches from moments of miraculous hope when anything seems possible, to dreadful, despairing lows when there seems nothing left for him in this world. Ultimately he cannot rise above the terrible place he has sunk to.
George is a weak man, tortured by inner demons. He is gullible, easily led, perhaps even naïve, too gentle and generous for the dark netherworld he has drifted into. Part of the problem are his strange ‘dead’ moods. In these ‘dead’ moments, George acts out his subconscious desires, he plots the demise of two of his supposed friends Netta and Peter who, in many ways, are not undeserving of this final fate. Detached from reality during these strange phases, George dreams of a way to free himself from the rot of Earls Court and to return to a place he was once happy. In these moments he almost believes such a thing is possible.
Waking from these ‘dead’ moods he cannot remember what he thought or did during these lapses of his mind. Sometimes he loses a day, though more often it is a few hours. Disturbed, he comforts himself with the knowledge that he can’t have done anything wrong else the police would be after him, little knowing that during those forgotten spells he is in fact contemplating a terrible crime.
But then that is what Hangover Square is about; facades. George has the outward appearance of being benign and gentle, whilst beneath his kind face and gullible sensibilities stirs an inner desire to kill. This is the ultimate façade because George himself is not aware of this internal inclination. Yet there are many other facades littered throughout the story. Netta who so torments George, originally beguiled him, pretending she was not a spoilt, self-centred and nasty woman who was only interested in poor George for his money, which in itself was a façade as George’s money was a fleeting windfall he won. Then there is Peter who wants to be wealthy and upper class, but in fact has no money and little prospects and, extending out from George’s circle of ‘friends’ there is the hotel manageress where he lives, who is all smiles to his face but behind his back wishes he would leave. London even bears a façade, though this one could be said to have been partially George’s own creation. He dreamt of doing well in London, but then he found the seedy pubs of Earls Court and the beautiful Netta, and he was lost for good.
The only character in the book who does not bear a façade is the nameless white cat George befriends. In the end, this is the only other being he thinks of as he contemplates his own demise. For there is no happy ending to this story, though by the time you are halfway through the book you are not expecting one. The words seem to echo what perhaps the author was thinking about his own life because there is an almost angry tendency to ensure that George never rises from where he’s sunk to, shall never be whole again and in the end, despite an almost hopeful future appearing to be just round the corner, George destroys himself through murder and suicide. It seems Hamilton could not let George have his final victory.
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