West End Nurse

By Lucy Agnes Hancock, ©1943 

She loved it all—loved going among the poor derelicts of “The Patch” helping where she could, scolding, encouraging, heartening and often healing. ‘Yes, these were the people that need help, Mary Bradford believed with all the young strength of her convictions. That was the reason she had decided to become a Public Health Nurse, and that was the faith that enabled her to stand day after day the arduous work, the disappointments, the failures, the opposition of selfishness and greed. Her heart was torn by the suffering, her faith shaken by the cold, scientific attitude of young Doctor Timothy Rutledge, who had been put in charge of the district. He scoffed at her “sentimentality,” the help she brought to her patient beyond the routine of her duty. She hated his impersonal attitude and she thought she hated him. Their daily contacts produced antagonisms and disputes. She would not give up her conviction that a nurse was more than just a person to minister to physical needs. But Tim Rutledge had to admit she was a good nurse, and when high drama brought her into danger, he followed grimly until, together, they fought an incipient epidemic, stamped it out and with it, the festering civic sore oft eh slums. Then even Tim got “sentimental.”

GRADE: B-

BEST QUOTES:
“Sit tall, act tall and somehow you’ll be tall.”

“Sassy redheads are my dish. Watch out you don’t share the fate of Red Riding Hood’s grandmother.”

“Even a nurse has her uses.”

“You’re only interested in men from a purely scientific angle.”

“’Tis no disgrace to be poor, sez I, though ’tis mighty inconvenient I’m a-tellin’ you.”

“’Twould be hard t’ live with perfect folks.”

“Don’t you want a finger in the world’s pie? I do—I adore minding other people’s business. Life’s exciting.”

“It isn’t always those who live the most dangerously who accomplish the greatest good, you know. I believe there are real heroes among those who keep on doing the little things—performing cheerfully and well the monotonous round of daily tasks, unnoticed and unsung perhaps, but none the less living grand, heroic lives.”

“There are days when I hate it all—when I want to chuck it and get into something easier and—well—less smelly.”

“I’m going uptown to get some mushrooms, Mary.”

REVIEW:
It’s a setup as old as, well, vintage nurse romance novels, but here we find it again: District Nurse Mary Bradford is a passionate believer in holistic medicine, helping her impoverished patients in spirit as well as in body. But her boss, Dr. Timothy Rutledge, “a machine without a heart,” has little understanding for the defeated attitudes of the population, no matter how rooted in generations of poverty they might be. “How she disliked that man!” we learn early on—and well we guess how that is going to turn out. At the same time, “she could not put a finger on one single act of his that was either unprofessional or unethical. But the man was cold—unfeeling. ‘Bloodless!’ she said aloud.” It’s not just Tim Rutledge, though, it’s doctors—maybe even men—in general. “I couldn’t become interested in a doctor no matter how handsome—especially if he were handsome. I despise handsome men—conceited things!” she declares. Um, sure! 

One of Mary’s roommates, Bea, has attracted young wealthy cad Sam Austen, son of the owner of the slum apartments, but Bea has no interest in the louche, insufferable young man. As the roommates discuss Sam’s unwelcome attentions, the third roommate, Gert, tells Mary, “You’re pretty enough, in a quiet, mousy way. I doubt if he even knows you’re alive.” She then segues into a lecture about how young women should date around before they’re married, or “she’s darned certain to want to do it afterward.” When Bea points out that Gert never sticks to any man long enough to get to the marriage stage, Gert stomps off.

In the meantime, Dr. Know-it-all, as she calls him, starts to warm to Mary’s charm and skill, and comes to see her emotional involvement with the slum denizens as a positive. “You’ve got something that does for them what medicine and surgery can’t,” he tells her. “You give them courage and add a bit of joy and beauty to their drab existence. It’s because you really care—you give yourself and that’s what reaches them.” But she remains angry with him for his condescension, and angry with her roommates for insulting her vanity, so when Sam Austen gets nowhere with Bea, Mary takes him out for a tour of the rundown buildings in an attempt to cure his apathy. She thinks the object lesson is lost on him—but her charm is not, and after a few more casual dates, he proposes to her. She turns him down, telling him he’s not good enough for her. Well!

As the book progresses, we follow Bea and Gert’s social lives—though Mary’s is given short shrift, even her dates with Sam—who, like Dr. Rutledge, seems to be improving under her influence; one of the apartments she had taken him to see has been quietly repaired. In the meantime there are about a million patients to visit and treat and have tea or sour wine with, and—this book being written in 1945 at the height of World War II—there are spies and sabotage to overcome in a superficial and convenient fashion. When a gang of overly imaginative children report Mary kidnapped by thugs with machine guns (she’d actually gone to deliver a baby), Dr. Rutledge gives her the ubiquitous kiss in haste when he finally finds her—“That’s something that would never happen again if she had anything to do about it,” we are told, and we laugh in knowing disbelief.

Overall I do enjoy author Lucy Agnes Hancock’s books (except for the horrid Student Nurse, which was a lousy D+ book); four of the six books I’ve read received B+ or A- grades. This book, however, feels perfunctory. We mostly just trot along behind Mary on her daily rounds, and the fun of following her and her friends’ social lives that I’ve enjoyed so much in other books is largely absent. Lucy began writing novels when she was 60, in 1936, and died just 16 years later in 1952, but cranked out about two novels a year in that timeframe, penning almost 20 nurse novels and another eight non-nurse romances.  So I’ve got a ways to go before I’ve finished all her books, and with luck this one is the aberration.