One Pair of Feet

by Monica Dickens

As the effects of the war raging in Europe begin to be felt at home in London, Monica Dickens decides to do her bit and to pursue a new career, and so enrols as a student nurse at a hospital in rural Hertfordshire. By nature clever and spirited, she struggles to submit to the iron rule of the Matron and Sisters, and is alternately infuriated and charmed by her patients. That's not to mention the mountains of menial work that are a trainee's lot. But there are friends among the staff and patients, night-time escapades to dances with dashing army men, and her secret writing project to keep her going.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, World War II, History, Medical, Classics

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1942

About the author

From the publisher: MONICA DICKENS, born in 1915, was brought up in London and was the great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens. Her mother's German origins and her Catholicism gave her the detached eye of an outsider; at St Paul's Girls' School she was under occupied and rebellious. After drama school she was a debutante before working as a cook. One Pair of Hands (1939), her first book, described life in the kitchens of Kensington. It was the first of a group of semi autobiographies of which Mariana (1940), technically a novel, was one. 'My aim is to entertain rather than instruct,' she wrote. 'I want readers to recognise life in my books.' In 1951 Monica Dickens married a US naval officer, Roy Stratton, moved to America and adopted two daughters. An extremely popular writer, she involved herself in, and wrote about, good causes such as the Samaritans. After her husband died she lived in a cottage in rural Berkshire, dying there in 1992.
http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/page...

Reviews

[Fiona MacDonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderfully warm and witty memoir of what it was like to nurse in the 1940s. Dickens has such a delightful way of colouring her characters, she breathes such life into them you find yourself really there, watching her work. Numerous times I found myself laughing out loud at this account, I immediately rushed to the library and got out her earlier 'One Pair of Hands' - I so looking forward to reading more of her work.

[Chrissie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I do not like this book. I read it because I thoroughly enjoyed the author’s’ earlier memoir, One Pair Of Hands, which I gave four stars! That was well written and funny. This memoir is not. Although there are lines of humor, they fall flat, given the book’s setting, hospital wards during the Second World War. In One Pair of Feet, Monica Dickens describes her work as a trainee nurse while studying to become fully accredited. Working as a nurse trainee was Monica Dickens’ war effort. She realizes, at the books end, that nursing was not an appropriate career choice for her! Thank goodness!

If you’re wondering, Monica Dickens was related to Charles Dickens. She was the granddaughter of Charles Dickens’ eighth child.

Why have I given the book one star?

Monica has no empathy for the patients she treats. Her lack of compassion was difficult to swallow. She doesn’t seem to comprehend that her mistakes could have serious consequences. She simply shrugs them off. For example, she gives the wrong food to diabetics. Being a diabetic myself, her sloppy behavior annoyed me. This is merely one example of her flagrant nonchalance.

I don’t deny that nursing involves repetitive chores of drudgery, nor that dealing with ill, suffering and frightened patients requires an exceptionally large amount of patience. Monica was naïve to think otherwise. She was drawn to the nursing career because it was open to the totally inexperienced. They received a salary while they were educated and worked their way up to more important and responsible positions. Uniforms were given free of charge to the trainees. Isn’t this crass reasoning? One should be drawn to nursing by the wish to help other human beings.

Monica tells us that the dead are “gone, absent” and therefore one need not feel grief. She doesn’t seem to understand that the loved one’s absence is what causes grief. Her total lack of comprehension is strange!

I found myself getting terribly annoyed with Monica. I found myself criticizing both her reasoning and her actions. Her behavior seems self-centered and callous!

Finally, I lost my temper when grammatical errors began to appear in the text. She writes, “He was the goodest old man.” She uses adjectives rather than adverbs to modify verbs!

No, I do not like this book. What drew me to the book was the humorous prose of the first memoir I read by the author. Here, the book’s humor does not work.

I also disliked the audiobook narration. Katy Soby is the narrator. She reads out the text at an extremely fast clip. She ejaculates the lines. She doesn’t pause when she should have paused. A pause can be effectively used to emphasize a significant, important statement. I spent quite a lot of time trying to figure out if the narration was what was making me dislike the book. No, the bad narration is an additional irritant. I do not like the book’s content, and I dislike the writing. In addition, the audiobook narration annoyed me. Both the book and Katy Soby’s audio narration are getting one star from me.

At this point, I am not so sure I’ll be reading other books by the author. I’ve been burned.

To be fair, here follows my favorable review of the author’s book One Pair Of Hands: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


***********************

*One Pair Of Hands 4 stars
*One Pair of Feet 1 star
*Mariana 3 stars
*Kate and Emma TBR
*The Winds of Heaven TBR
*The House at World's End TBR

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread 2023: Everything I thought 11(!) years ago still holds true, but this time I found new depths as someone who has regrettably spent the entirety of those 11 years in workplaces. This is a book about work, the drudgery of having a job (even when you enjoy it), the anguish of having to work alongside all the different types of people there are, the stupid things you say and do to get yourself through the day without losing your mind.

Dickens is catty and snide in the lighthearted self-aware style of the late 1930s, her observations cutting and rude, and yet it's not hard to imagine that they came from a place of a young woman wondering what her future's going to look like. She has entered a profession that sucks people in and drains them so that they never have the energy to leave (several of her colleagues threaten to quit on a weekly basis but it's understood that they never really will), and she has the 20th century girl's horror of ending an old maid with nothing more important than rules and checklists and control to give her life meaning. I'm not sure if I noticed this the first time and just didn't comment on it, or if I was young enough at 24 for all that to wash over me without leaving a trace.

What lingered this time was how genuine she could be, in amongst all the wit and chattiness and comedy - her love for the work, her genuine desire to get better and learn more and do something worthwhile, all of that shines through in spades to me now. There are so few books out there that are really about work and the daily tasks of a job, let alone ones that are so enjoyable as this one.

Finally, I had no memory of the most unpleasant part of this book: the fairly frequent use of the n-word, particularly in the first third, and other racial and ethnic commentary that seemed to come from a place of total ignorance of the concept of offending people. Certainly it was a product of its time, but not all books written in this era are like this. Apparently newer editions have edited this out - we read it for our book club and one member had gotten an ebook version that had none of that language in there. It's confronting to read, but I think it's a good foil to my earlier statements about how chatty and pleasant the writing was; you certainly could sit down to tea with someone like Dickens, but you'd be forced to accept that this is how she and a large percentage of her peers spoke and thought. C'est la vie!

Original review, 2012:
I just loved it!

I actually don't see why a lot of people have called it 'semi-autobiographical'... As far as I know, that is a term usually applied to works of fiction with a strong basis in the author's life, much like most of Hemingway's work. This is not presented as a work of fiction, it is presented as a first person narration of the author's time working as a trainee nurse during World War 2. If Monica Dickens embellished the characters or the scenarios a little, who are we to say that isn't how she interpreted them herself? Isn't that why we read an autobiography, anyway?

Dickens writes with glee, as if she's sitting down to tea with a good friend and venting her frustrations at her repetitive, tiresome and ultimately rewarding job. She makes no bones about how she felt about nursing as she experienced it, and the book is a constant swing from 'it's impossible drudgery' to 'it's actually completely worthwhile, sometimes'. Her whole experience might be summed up by her first day, where she 'could do nothing right, and everything wrong. I was always either in the way or not there when I was wanted... By the end of the day, my mind and body were in such a chaos of fatigue that I couldn't think of anything but my bed, black iron or not. I just had the strength to stagger to a phone box... and tell my family: "I love it." Because I did. That was the one thing that emerged clearly.' (pp.24-26) Her enthusiasm is infectious, and the entire book was an absolute joy to read. She is by turns witty, self-deprecating, sharp, and wise. I laughed out loud constantly, and read bits out to Toby when he was there.

Although Dickens said her books were meant 'to entertain, not to instruct', I found the honest account of people and life during wartime to be fascinating. Instructing, perhaps in a different sense. First-hand accounts are invaluable now, when public opinion tends to gloss over any but the most glorious and self-sacrificing stories of wartime deprivation. Many of the people she came across in her work were either using the war to garner sympathy or admiration for themselves, or to intimate that others were unpatriotic because they used up too much jam. It was clearly just another excuse for the unsavoury people to be unsavoury, for the selfish people to be selfish, and for the regular everyday people to be mildly put out. This is refreshing to know, I find; that we are not, in fact, wildly inferior to our grandparents and their parents who lived through war with a saintliness not seen before or since in the human race. In fact, people then dealt with the situation much as people now probably would, with a mixture of resignation, good (or bad) humour, and a very decent pinch of nastiness to each other.

These are the main reasons I found the book so enjoyable, then. Dickens wrote wonderfully, with a joyfully irreverent and occasionally completely invented use of language, oftentimes so engaged in the subject that the narrative became almost Hemingway-esque:

After she left, she had Summers and me to dinner and filled us with food and drink, and Summers, who turned out to be called Yvonne, quite blossomed forth in a green silk dress with her hair tonged up, and revealed an unsuspected talent for the piano. She played, and we sat in deep chairs on a sort of loggia and watched twilight deepen into dusk until the midges drove us indoors. There was a son on leave from the Army, who was clever and shy, and after a bit he sang one or two of the things that Yvonne played, and her hair looked clean and fluffy with the light on it, and her strong nurse's hands moving over the keys were full of grace. (p.146)

Her voice was so delightful and her portrayal of herself so real that I feel as though I would have loved to have known her personally, or worked with her. I can't wait to get my hands on her other autobiographical books (One Pair Of Hands and My Turn To Make The Tea), and to read some of her novels that I already have. What a treasure to have discovered!

[Austen to Zafón · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got about 120 pages in and lost interest. I didn't find this as funny or engaging as One Pair of Hands. I think it was easier to laugh about maid service; healing the sick isn't quite the same fodder for humor. Also, by page 80, she'd already used the N word twice; once as a nickname of a soldier who has frizzy hair and once to describe how a burn-victim's face looked (I didn't really even get how that related). While I understand that older books were written in different times, I find racial slurs, whether about Jews or Africans or Asians or whatever, to be very hard to take.

[Cynthia Dunn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as One Pair of Hands.

[Camelama · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved reading this book, I wanted to keep reading and would get annoyed at interruptions such as work or meals! I am interested in the British nursing system from the 20s-80s and WWII in general so this was a perfect fit. At first some of her descriptions of other people seemed mean or selfish, but then I realized she is as hard on herself most times as she is on others - freely confessing her mistakes and nursing sins and her personal habits that annoy others. I came across this book accidently and now can't wait to read all her other works.

[Come Musica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Monica Dickens ha il dono dell'ironia, ereditato dal prozio Charles.
È buffa quando racconta le sue disavventure lavorative.
E come in "Su e giù per le scale", anche in "Su e giù per le corsie" non nasconde il suo esser goffa, pur mettendocela tutta.
Narra le sue disavventure, ma anche le sue prodezze e alla fine mostra che la sua strada non è né in cucina né in corsia ma con una penna a scrivere.

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

The introduction to Virago’s reprint of Monica Dickens’ spirited One Pair of Feet has been written by acclaimed author Monica Lewycka, who states that the book ‘is a fascinating glimpse into a time and a culture so recent and yet so utterly changed’. Because Dickens was ‘just twenty seven’ when she wrote this volume of her memoirs, Lewycka is of the opinion that she was ‘more interested in observing the personal habits, fashions and love-lives of her colleagues than in discussing the big political issues of the day’. The introduction is marvellous at describing both Dickens and the social conditions in which she lived and worked. As she does within her fiction, Lewycka writes so well.

Dickens was a prolific author who wrote over fifty books, including a beautiful novel, Mariana, which makes up part of the Persephone list. One Pair of Feet, which was first published in 1942, is Dickens’ third book and second volume of memoirs. It follows One Pair of Hands, which recounts her experiences as a cook and ‘general servant’. The praise for her work is widespread. John Betjeman hailed her as ‘one of the most affectionate and humorous observers of the English scene’. Her wartime memoirs echo this sentiment rather wonderfully.

Lewycka describes Dickens’ tone marvellously when she says that she speaks as ‘a confiding and funny older sister letting us into her secrets; the scenes of ward life, gruesome medical procedures, snatched cigarettes… and ghastly food are horribly evocative’. Dickens’ writing style is amusing from the very first page. Indeed, One Pair of Feet begins in rather an endearing manner: ‘One had got to be something; that was obvious. But what? It seemed that women, having been surplus for twenty years, were suddenly wanted in a hundred different places at once’. She chose to become a nurse after watching the film ‘Vigil in the Night’, explaining her romantic notions about what she envisaged nursing to be: ‘I was going to be a nurse in a pure white halo cap, and glide swiftly about with oxygen cylinders and, if necessary, give my life for a patient and have my name on a bronze plaque in the hospital corridor’.

The reality of nursing, she soon finds, is much different. She is very shrewd about those she meets, both on duty and in the care of the medical staff, and her anecdotes are so sharply described that it often feels as though the reader is right beside her as she goes through the long list of daily duties expected of her. When speaking about the outbreak of the Second World War and its effect upon women, she says, ‘The Suffragettes could have saved themselves a lot of trouble if they had seen this coming’, and in writing about the thought of joining the services, her comments go no further than, ‘I didn’t think my hips would stand the cut of the skirt and I wasn’t too sure about my legs in wool stockings’.

In One Pair of Feet, Dickens takes us from her frightened beginnings as a junior, to the moment at which she receives the first red felt star to adorn her apron. Her frivolity and the little jokes which she throws in here and there are marvellous, and make the entirety so very entertaining, particularly to the modern reader.

One Pair of Feet is absorbing from the start, and is filled with Dickens’ own brand of acerbic wit. When losing her way in the hospital before her initial interview, for example, she says, ‘I was beginning to wish I had pretended to be a cripple and made the porter take me up in the lift’. In this way, her memoirs are very of their time, but to echo Lewycka’s sentiments in the introduction, it is this very detail which fills Dickens’ writing with such charm and warmth.

[Pedro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Monica Dickens era una joven de una familia acomodada, que voluntariamente se desempeñó como enfermera durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, y en este libro, "Un par de pies", narra sus experiencias durante ese período. Así como en su libro anterior, "Un par de manos: Doncella y cocinera en la Inglaterra de los años 30", resalta el papel de los manos en la profesión de cocinera, en éste pone el énfasis en los pies, en la actitud vigilante, de caminar y caminar entre las camas de los enfermos internados, propia de la profesión de enfermería.
Un libro muy agradable, con anécdotas muy interesantes, y reflexiones muy atinadas, basadas en la observación y el sentido común sobre como ser un buen enfermero.

En su momento, en algún momento de la década del '70, llegué por azar a este libro, que estaba en la biblioteca familiar. Un azar gratificante, que me aportó un visión más comprensiva cuando unos años después, comencé a desempeñar mi labor como médico.

[Roberta · Rating 4 out of 5]

One Pair of Feet inizia quando Monica decide di diventare infermiera all'inizio della seconda guerra mondiale, spinta dai costanti inviti governativi ad aiutare lo sforzo bellico inglese in ogni modo. Nonostante affermi di amare molto il lavoro e di trovarlo molto gratificante, in realtà l'autrice smonta l'immagine romantica dell'infermiera e svela un mondo fatto di duro e incessante lavoro e irritante struttura gerarchica. Glissando sui momenti dolorosi ed eroici, affronta le avventure di una novella infermiera e le storie delle infermiere, dei medici e dei pazienti con inesauribile brio ed ironia.

http://robertabookshelf.blogspot.it/2...

In realtà ho letto questa edizione:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16...

[E · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting period piece. Privileged girl trains as a nurse in wartime England and lives to tell the tale. Class and racial bias abounds, but the writer of this memoir is so human and so generally decent and likeable, it is almost forgivable. In the end, the writer moves on and the reader is left believing she will continue to make her contributions to the war and to the lives of those she encounters along the way.

[Gillian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a wonderful book -- touching and funny. I remember reading this while waiting for a bus and laughing to myself and some guy asked about the book. I wanted him to stop talking to me so I tried to keep quiet. I think he got the message because he said, "You might as well laugh out loud because you're shaking the bench." Great, great book.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting and often funny book. The author, Charles Dickens great-granddaughter, tells of her experiences as a student nurse during WW2. It is amazing some of the things they had to do, cooking, cleaning etc. The discipline was horrendous. Decorum often came before common sense.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished One Pair of Feet by Monica Dickens. It's semi autobiographical of Ms. Dickens' time as a nurse in England during World War II. I loved this book and give it an A! I thought it was a little dated now, but still very good.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is somewhat dated in style, but despite that, I could see many similarities between nurse training in the second world war, and my own nurse training in the 1980's.
An interesting book, well worth reading.

[Lina · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting look at the life of nursing students in days gone by. You can tell that Monica Dickens inherited some of her illustrious ancestor's ability with putting things in an entertaining and humorous way!

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who has ever aspired to the nursing profession, only to discover that you and the nursing profession would be better off if you chose something else, will appreciate this book. If you enjoy comedy, you will enjoy this book.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow - it is so nice to see the cover of a book - that you had in your hands, maybe 35 years ago. It gives you a kick. I read as a follow on from One Pair of Hands. This one not so funny as the first.

[Lydia Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ah great read- old fashioned but stands the test of time & much funnier than I remembered.

[Farah Mendlesohn · Rating 4 out of 5]

rather fun

Compared to One Pair of hands there is less impression of 'playing at'. Dickens went into nursing intending to stay. But it's a fascinating story of a world well lost.

Heads up for some horrible anti semitism.

[Camille · Rating 3 out of 5]

One Pair of Feet is not as good as One Pair of Hands, but it is still entertaining to read and quite funny at times.

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nursing as it used to be, with senior nurses and matrons and wards and routines... but, as always with Monica Dickens' books, there's no sappy nostalgia here: she presents the life of a trainee nurse, as experienced from the inside, warts and all.

[L Parks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read the whole thing between when the post came and dinner. Absolutely delightful, I would love to sit next to the author at a dinner party and hear all her gossip. My only complaint is that the book was rather short.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me laugh until I hurt! Yummy stuff!

[Sarah Leong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written by Charles Dicken's great grand daughter - about her brief stint as a nurse in a London hospital.

[Alexis Lloyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great stories from the wonderful Monica Dickens. Very amusing and heart-warming. Although somewhat dated now, these are gentle and uplifting books.

[Reena · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting and somewhat humorous tale set in wartime England.

[Belinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the racial names she mentions are wildly inappropriate now, but once I got over the shock of the N word being dropped casually, I was okay. Just a product of her time.

Otherwise, I loved it!

[Sam Still Reading · Rating 4 out of 5]

One Pair of Feet is a witty, warts and all look at nursing at an English hospital during World War II. It goes to show that technology might change, but some things in jobs are timeless.

Monica Dickens relays her experiences as a trainee nurse outside London and it’s equal parts hilarious, touching and sad. The other staff and hospital are all fictionalised, but they are still memorable. Wanting to do her bit for the war, she tosses up her options to be a Land Girl (messy), work in jobs involving uniforms (not flattering) or in other roles. Nursing sounds caring, and will utilise her skills at cooking too. She then writes to a hospital asking for a place and entertains the thought of what the matron will be like based on her name. Sadly, it’s not as warming and welcome as she expects and she’s thrown into the ward to start training. There are mistakes, great achievements, friends and foes – and in between it all are the patients. Monica also discusses the rules and regulations of the hospital and the hospital hierarchy, which she’s not overly fond of. But she does get paid while training, has a roof over her head and the opportunity to go to Air Force dances, so it’s not all bad.

This book did take me a little to get into as it’s quite conversational in tone at the start (good), but didn’t seem to be getting anywhere fast. Once Monica arrives at the hospital, the story is more focused and becomes a commentary on all things hospital, from the emphasis on cleaning (important, but the level beyond what’s needed to disinfect and keep furniture clean is odd to the modern reader) to the uniform (cuffs must be worn outside the ward, even if it’s a life threatening emergency). I found the leaps in medicine quite quaint at times. Attaching a patient to an intravenous fluid bag is routine these days (having a cannula put in is one of the first stops on most hospital admissions), but to Monica and her colleagues, it’s an Event. In contrast, administering patients morphine seems to have a lot less red tape – and it’s left to one nurse overnight for the whole hospital. The management of the ‘gastrics’ (presumably patients with gastric or duodenal ulcers) is practically prehistoric in the post-Warren/Marshall era. (They discovered that most ulcers were due to bacteria, Helicobacter pylori, rather than stress, diet or disposition). They need a special (read: bland) diet and are often operated on to cut out the ulcers. They seem to take up a lot of beds and time for treatment that sadly wasn’t very effective! Other attitudes and ideas are occasionally dated at times.

I was sad when this book was over, because I’d enjoyed getting the raw, unfiltered version of Monica’s nursing life. Her comments are wry, sometimes cynical and others remain relevant to hospital life today. It’s a witty, conversational read that is good fun.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the awkwardness, which helped emphasise that this really happened (athough I'm sure some parts may have been fictionalised). I mean things like not being able to find the way into a building. Someone intent on telling a story just wouldn't bother with that kind of thing unless they wanted to stress the central character's clumsiness - probably then to have it improve throughout the book. With this writer, it just sets up how difficult to navigate is this world she had decided to enter. As things go along, she becomes used to the weirdness, but in the end it gets too much for her.

Similarly to One Pair of Hands, it's difficult not to have in your mind that this person could have fled at any time back to a comfortable home, and to wonder if that had been her plan all along. It's a kind of dare to herself to see how long she can stick a difficult situation. And similarly to that earlier book, Dickens does fairly well and must have learned a lot that would help her later in life. Nursing just wasn't her calling, it seemed. The one triumph of a case that she and a friend were involved with, didn't seem to be enough to outweigh the restrictions of the life of a trainee.

[There is a lot of outdated language in this book which may offend. I take it as par for the times, but just a warning.]