Sometimes it is worth taking time to look carefully at the shelf of books in the darkest corner of the second hand bookshop. You know the one I mean, the shelves of old 1940’s and 50’s hardbacks with no dustjacket and faded spines, the lettering on which can be hard to read. I love these shelves (and not all second hand shops have them) because for me it is here I am likely to find real unexpected gems. A few months ago on a day out to a National Trust property (I forget which one) I was looking around the second hand bookshop. There to the left of the doorway in a cramped little space with stone floor and little light – was my kind of bookcase. At first I didn’t think there was anything of interest – and then I pulled out Yeoman’s Hospital by Helen Ashton. I recognised the name of the author, her 1933 novel Bricks and Mortar is published by Persephone, I read it in August last year and really enjoyed it.
“It was a dumb dark winter’s morning, cold as death and quiet as the grave, with a fog rising from the river to choke the streets of Wilchester town. The young policeman on his beat could scarcely see across the Beastmarket. As he went past St. Blazey’s church he heard six o’clock strike, but he could not make out the face of the clock, or even see the top of the tower; only the gravestones looked white between the trunks of leafless dripping beech trees. When he crossed the road and peered through the railings of Yeoman’s Hospital, the central block with its pillared portico was invisible across the courtyard. There was no light in there except the red tail-lamp of an ambulance parked by the steps and a faint glow through the blind of the porter’s lodge, not bright enough for him to report.”
I seem to remember that Bricks and Mortar is a little slow to start, but that once it did I loved it. Yeoman’s Hospital is similarly slow to start, although I enjoyed the atmospheric first paragraph. For about forty pages or so I thought I was going to be severely disappointed in the novel, I feared it might turn out to be rather dull. The only rating of it on Goodreads I could find was a rather dispiriting 1 star rating – which I am very glad I ignored – maybe they only read the beginning. Soon enough I found myself caught up in the lives of the men, women and patients of Yeoman’s Hospital, Ashton faithfully recreates this world, so that its sights, sounds, smells and voices resonate still, even for the modern reader. In the end I rather loved it.
Yeoman’s Hospital is set in the fictional town of Wilchester (I couldn’t help but think of it as Winchester) at the old hospital of the title during one twenty four hour period in December 1943. As the day starts, a new probationer nurse; eighteen year old Joan Shepherd is beginning her nursing career. Over the course of the day, Joan will face much that terrifies her; there will be moments when the day feels like it will never end. The world of the hospital is endlessly confusing; everyone bustles busily with great purpose, while poor Joan is sometimes too frightened to speak. Around Joan, are staff nurses, sisters and matrons who are sometimes kind, but often sharp, harrying and impatient, there is so much to learn, so many things to remember, and the day is so very long.
There are a host of hospital staff who we meet along the way, and this old 1944 edition comes with a handy who’s who in the front. Dr Shoesmith senior physician has been at Yeoman’s his whole career; he is a thorough committed doctor, who has a difficult professional relationship with surgeon Richard Groom. The resident surgical officer is a Czech refugee doctor, whose name is deemed as unpronounceable and who no one seems to like much. Miss Sophia Dean is the house surgeon, an ambitious talented young woman, who is in the running for the Czech doctor’s job when he leaves shortly, her main competition Dick Groom, the son of Richard Groom snr. Dick Groom is a thoughtless young man, newly engaged to the daughter of a leading figure in the town; Dick’s ambitions appear more social than medical. Squirreled away in the pathology lab on the top floor is Neil Marriner, nephew to Dr Shoesmith, a famously brilliant and irascible young man, with whom Sophia has been having a secret relationship. Neil is ill; suffering from an ulcer he has so far refused to be treated for, Neil prefers the silence and isolation of his laboratory, working long hours in pain, so he can carry out his own research outside of his hospital duties.
On the wards of Yeoman’s Hospital on this particular day me meet, Burgess with his face swathed in bandages, a young boy with a broken leg, and a girl whose initial misdiagnosis results in a dramatic emergency. A shepherd; Mr Pedlar has stomach problems, the weight has been dropping off him and he can’t face his food. Mr Pedlar is waiting for Mr Groom to operate on him, and watches the clock anxiously, asking tremulously whether he can’t just go home. Later his terrified little wife of forty years comes to sit with him following the operation.
“She was like the sheep she had seen in the market place, utterly bewildered and terrified, taken away from the soft fields they knew and driven along unfamiliar roads, with blows and shouting, into a strange cold building which smelt of death. She twisted her bony hands together to stop them shaking, and a tear rolled out of each eye.”
At the end of the day, the day nurses trudge wearily back to the nurses’ home, as the night staff – survival kits of knitting, novels and chocolate stuffed into their bags – take over. Despite the length of their day already the third year nurses must yet sit through a lecture from Dr Shoesmith on pain, while their older more experienced colleagues don dressing gowns, share cups of tea and gossip. As day gives over to the dark and cold of a wartime, winter’s night, the night porter watches a young mid-wife on her way to a delivery, before being called to take a deceased patient to the mortuary. There’s a sense of time moving forward, day after day.
“There was no fog tonight to sting eyelids and noses, but it was a hard frost; the night sky was powdered with innumerable shuddering stars and there was ice on the puddle by the side door, where a leaky pipe had dripped all day on the asphalt. Somebody broke the ice with a delighted scrunch, another cried, ‘oh! Do look at that shooting star. Wish, everybody,’ and they all laughed like a pack of children.”
Helen Ashton tells the story of 24 hours in a 1940’s provincial hospital. There are patients to be cared for, medicine to be carried out, but among the staff there are love affairs, petty squabbles, ambitions and disappointments. Ultimately I found this extremely readable, several small story strands weave together to create the story of one hospital, and the people inside it.
I LOVE those bookshelves and it is on those neglected shelves I have found some of the most wonderful works! Great review Ali! I have never read Ashton, but she seems my kind…I will try and find her in this part of the world!
Oh I hope can. Some of those second hand book sites can be great for finding old books.
I loved Doctor Serocold, which was also the day in the life of a medic, so I must order this one up from my library’s reserve stock. That this was a little slow to start encourages me, because I’m feeling the same way about another of Helen Ashton’s books – ‘Mackerel Sky’ – which is the story of the early years of a marriage. It’s very good, the characterisation is pitch perfect, but I’m waiting for that spark ….
Oh will be very interested in hearing what that’s like Jane. There probably wasn’t any spark exactly with this one it began to grow on me without my noticing and I suddenly realised I was really enjoying it.
Could Jane read and review her copy of BACKGROUND FOR CAROLINE by Ashton please?
Love those bookshelves and this does sound amazing. I’m always incredibly moved by books written and published during the war, when the author didn’t know what was going to happen.
The war is very in the background of this book. There are references to people maybe going abroad to serve as nurses or waiting to be called up, and mention of rations and blackouts but largely the war takes a back seat.
Great review Ali – those are the best sort of bookshelves, definitely!
They are, the excitement is never knowing what you might find.
What a great find. There’s nothing better than having some good luck at a used book store. So much more rewarding than a new one.
Oh yes it’s like hunting for treasure as much as it is buying books.
I’m interested in what you say about the slow opening. I can think of a number of novels from that period which suffer in the same way. I wonder if that is why so many modern novels go for the blockbuster beginning? Have they been warned by their creative writing teachers that they have to grab the reader before the end of the first page?
Well yes perhaps. Though I do read quite a lot of novels from this period, many of which do have good engaging beginning, though it’s probably true that writers of that period were less concerned with that instant hook which modern novels often have.
only a few of the charity shops around here have a book shelf and sadly they don’t offer much beyond the big crime writers. they certainly don’t have any wonderful dark corners where all sorts of hidden treasure might lie. sigh
I find charity shops don’t tend to have those kind of shelves unfortunately. NT shops however are brilliant for those kinds of shelves I always have to visit the book shop at a NT property.
Right, my next challenge is to find a NT property nearby…..and one that has a shop selling more than lavender pouches and overpriced biscuits
Many NT properties have the second hand bookshop in an old stables or something. I don’t know where you are – but my family and I tend to go to ones within an hour of Birmingham, those in Herefordshire we visit when staying at my sister’s caravan and those in South Devon where I go on holiday.
Ohhh this sounds amazing! I’m going to keep an eye out for her!
I hope you’re able to find some Helen Ashton books, I’ll be looking out for more myself.
I got my copy for 50p in a church sale.
I would be ultra impressed if you had got the rare and expensive TADPOLE HALL.
Oh well done.
On “AMAZON”there are 1p copies of HALF CROWN HOUSE and YEOMANS HOSPITAL.Postage is £2.80 as we all know.Nothing beats finding a book in the “paper” though.
Thanks Tina. Wonder what Half Crown House is like.
“Half Crown House” is about a group of people who are opening their grand house to the public.All the action is in one day.I think there is an eccentric old lady who lives in one room in this house.I would give it 3 stars and Dr Serocold 4 stars.”Yeomans” i would give 3 stars as well.That is the sum of my limited reading of Ashton.To be honest i would not strain myself to read H.C. HOUSE urgently.
Thank you for that.
THE HALF CROWN HOUSE by Helen Ashton
THE HALF CROWN HOUSE
By Helen Ashton
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KIRKUS REVIEW
The story of one day in the history of Fountain Court, a day in which departed glory had its last showing when the house was opened- at a half crown fee- for the last of the tourists that season. With the tourists, the reader is given glimpses of a vanished way of life- of rooms still proudly wearing their shabby remnants of one time glory- of members of the household acting as guides, and recalling, with nostalgic clinging to the past, memories of days when the manor house entertained royalty with lavish splendour. And throughout that day, successive events build up the links with the family story as well, as a kindly and more prosperous neighbor brings her niece and grandniece to visit the house and stay to tea – and pay court again to the restive invalid grandmother upstairs, who, too, is living in the past. That day also brings to Fountain Court the young heir, whose father had been killed at Arnheim, and whose Aunt Henrietta is gallantly striving to hold the place together. That day she learns from her grandmother that the jewels she sports are paste, and the portraits they hoped held security were copies- the originals long since sold for the extravagances of the past. A romance comes to final rejection — an American plane crashes and results in the holocaust which is Fountain Court’s fiery finish. And Henrietta and her cousin Charles discover that the future holds hope for them, together….This isn’t everyone’s meat, but for those of us who grew up on novels of England’s county living and enjoy recapturing the essence of past days, this is an appealing recreation. The Literary Guild selection for August insures introduction to a wider market. There is something here of the special charm of the play, The Chalk Garden.
“THE CHALK GARDEN “play was on RADIO FOUR EXTRA about a year ago.I enjoyed it.They may well repeat it.
Finally there are 2 Helen Ashton novels free to read online at THE HATHI TRUST.”MARSHDIKES” and “HORNETS NEST”.I will read both despite being a technophobe.
Hope you enjoy them.
I found two more Helen Ashton novels at the weekend–BACKGROUND FOR CAROLINE and FAMILY CRUISE.
I know exactly what you mean about those bookshelves! I often find little gems, and this sounds like one of them. Always wonderful to find one of those Persephone authors. We need more pre-’60s bookshelves.
We certainly do!
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