Books by and for independent women

In Praise Of: Monica Dickens

There are few writers from teenage years I return to over and over again but Monica Dickens is one: I was introduced to her by my lovely nan, and can still open the shabby paperbacks to any page and start reading.

The great-grand-daughter of some other writer called Dickens, she has been languishing out of print, bar a recent rejacketing by Persephone Books, but I would urge any fan of mid-century writers such as Dodie Smith, or Virago Modern Classics aficionados, to keep an eye out for her.

First of all, Dickens is funny. Properly, snort-out-loud funny. Her memoirs of her stint as a war-time nurse (One Pair of Feet), a cook (One Pair of Hands), and  a local reporter (My Turn to Make the Tea) are as witty and contemporary as that other singleton, Bridget Jones.

She has no qualms about relaying tales of ineptitude and laziness, from making lobster cocktail for a smart dinner party “thinned down with a little of my life-blood” after a tin-opener incident, to juggling nursing shifts around dates, trips to the pub and cheeky fag breaks.

She was undoubtedly posh, but also rebellious – she was expelled from school and pursued the aforementioned jobs to escape her life as a privileged débutante.

And the compassion that lead her to help found the Samaritans in America and to work for the RSPCA and NSPCC shines through in novels like The Heart of London, where a young boy finds hope amid the urban sprawl through a caring young teacher: an observation of poverty akin to that other famous Dickens.

It must be said that there is occasionally a tinge of not-exactly-racism in her writing, but the sort of linguistic clumsiness that would have been considered normal in Windrush-era Britain.

Re-reading her novel No More Meadows, I was shocked at the opinions about “coloured” porters and nurses bandied around by her characters in 1960s New York.

While a modern drama such as Mad Men includes such casual prejudice in order to malign it for what it was, Dickens’ comments are like those of an embarrassing older relative- a product of an anachronistic world view.

Despite my discomforts, No More Meadows is easily my favourite of her novels. It is the story of Christine, a successful bookseller known as “the estimable Miss Cope”, who finds she cannot after the death of her beloved aunt.

She accepts the marriage proposal of a handsome American Navy captain and is whisked to a new life over the pond – but soon finds that her need for liberty, fun and even a sarcastic sense of humour jars with the careful life a 1950s housewife must lead if her husband is to get a promotion.

It is funny and touching, and the characters are true: “she trailed up to the canteen and ate what they called Vienna steak, and listened to the futile complaints of the people who were always saying they were going to tell the management and never did.” Who hasn’t had a working lunch like that?

Dickens’ writing is also a glimpse into mid-century Britain, when bombs were an everyday inconvenience, and as much fun as possible had to be squeezed out of a situation when dancing frocks had to be shared, petrol ran out and sandwiches were sold with butter only on one side because of the rationing. Austerity measures indeed.

It would be a shame if Dickens’ writing faded into obscurity: she is one of the few people (unlike the likes of Katie Price) who merit more than one memoir, and who have the temerity to be funny with it too.

Guest post by Katie Allen, editor of the fabulous Fat Quarter magazine