Excellence in Scholarship and Learning
‘For us it was Heaven’
The Passion, Grief and Fortitude of Patience Darton
From the Spanish Civil War to Mao’s China
Angela Jackson recorded her first interview with Patience for her book British Women and the Spanish Civil War (Routledge 2002, Warren & Pell 2009). In 1996 she returned to Madrid with Patience and was with her when she died there. Angela now lives in Spain and has written several history books about the civil war, and a novel, Warm Earth. As president of the Catalan cultural association, No Jubilem la Memòria, she is involved in research for publications, film documentaries and exhibitions, and in the organisation of commemorative events and conferences.
“This is a biography of many facets offering a wealth of insight and textual content of particular relevance in the context of gender studies. It tells us much of the status of nurses in Britain in the 1930s. It is also an important contribution to the history of the International Brigades and the Republican medical services in the Spanish civil war and adds nuance to our knowledge of foreigners in China in a turbulent period of its history. The story of Patience will surely appeal to many general readers as well as to specialists in those fields.” From the Preface by Series Editor Paul Preston
Published in association with the Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies
Hardback ISBN: | 978-1-84519-514-4 |
Hardback Price: | £55.00/$74.95 |
Release Date: | February 2012 |
Paperback ISBN: | 978-1-84519-515-1 |
Paperback Price: | £22.50/$34.95 |
Release Date: | February 2012 |
Page Extent / Format: | 264 pp. / 229 x 152 mm |
Illustrated: | Yes |
List of Illustrations
Preface by Paul Preston
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 Portraying Patience
Chapter 2 Sniffing at Socialism
Chapter 3 The Road to Spain
Chapter 4 Patients and Politics in Valencia
Chapter 5 A Modern Woman Making Waves
Chapter 6 Blossoming Spring to Bitter Winter
Chapter 7 Retreat and Recovery
Chapter 8 Head and Heart
Chapter 9 The Ebro
Chapter 10 Leaving Spain
Chapter 11 A Different Life
Chapter 12 Bombs on Britain
Chapter 13 Opening the Chinese Puzzle Box
Chapter 14 Falling in Love Again
Chapter 15 Clouds over the Peking Picnic
Chapter 16 Reprise
Chapter 17 ‘Patience on a monument, smiling at grief?’
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
Helen Graham, Professor of Spanish History at Royal Holloway,
University of London
The Volunteer June 2012
‘This is a subtle, moving story – exquisitely told.’
Patience Darton’s life spanned the turbulent 20th century
across two continents. Not only was she a witness, but she
also left a remarkable eloquent and original written record
in the form of correspondence, the heart of this extraordinary
biography by historian Angela Jackson.
... Jackson charts, in a vivid and engaging manner, Patience Darton’s
extraordinary ‘outward’ journey, from her battles against
London hospital bureaucracy – themselves revealing of the
sever limitations of British ‘democracy’ in the pre-1945 world
– and her midwife’s view of the struggle for survival among
the urban poor of East End London to a memorable encounter
with the exiled Ethiopian ruler, Haile Selassie, on the doorstep
of her Bloomsbury church, and reaches the story’s heart in
civil war-torn Spain. The story of ‘Spain’, i.e., of a deeply
felt personal commitment to the same cause of social justice
that had first fixed Patience’s resolve among London’s poor,
is told in a fresh way that draws in the reader immediately.
In particular, the picture she paints of front-line nursing
in Republican Spain is vividly rendered, and the telling of
its traumatic toll on the medical personnel recalls those
edgy truths later brought to us by productions such as M.A.S.H.
But even more than all of this, Jackson gives us, again in
hugely evocative – but always precise – prose, the story of
Patience’s remarkably inner journey:
‘You are quite right in saying that it is only in struggling and fighting, not only outside things but things inside ourselves, that make a person. […] Anyway I made a person out of myself, and became an individual with a life and work of my own.’
This is what makes the book stand out as
a real gem. Patience’s story is extraordinary – inner struggle,
existential becoming, self-fulfillment, tragedy, gritty survival,
mental fortitude and undying love-in-memory. But the power
lies in the telling, in the way in which Patience herself
was supremely capable of revealing her experiences in luminous
prose. Patience’s words, her wit, and her arresting, often
heartbreaking, style, are the secret weapons in this story…
... Patience Darton’s life is an encapsulation of some of the
20th century’s most critical moments. Without an ounce of
didacticism, her life shows the reader the abiding truth of
‘the personal is political’. No didacticism then, just a truth
rendered with grace and melancholy (wrenching understatement
is Patience’s forte) and delivered in a way that speaks directly
to the sensibilities of the contemporary reader… Patience’s
is a unique voice that locks into a rich seam of memory, illuminating
the big historical picture while never losing sight of the
particularity of heartbreaking loss. This is a subtle, moving
story, exquisitely told.
Fiona Flores Watson, Books4Spain, B4S
Reviews, June 2012 http://books4spain.com/book/detail/for-us-it-was-heaven-1
‘A moving and illuminating book.’
This is a moving and illuminating book – a wonderful, if extremely
sad, love story, infused with selfless political dedication,
it also provides a fascinating insight into English involvement
with two key periods in countries which experienced major
political upheaval and conflict during the 20th century: Spain,
with its Civil War, and the International Brigades’ involvement;
and newly-Communist China, with its idealistic foreign ‘revolutionaries’.
Richard Baxell, International Brigade
Memorial Trust Newsletter, May 2012
‘An extraordinary life and an engaging biography...
genuinely moving.’
A nurse’s life in war-torn Spain was not an easy one and this
biography presents a clear picture of the impossible conditions
under which the nurses were forced to operate, with hospitals
and ambulances deliberately targeted by Franco’s forces…
In the 1950s, Patience turned her efforts towards Mao’s China,
carrying on the work she had begun in Spain. While there are
accounts by other Spanish veterans who went on to work in
China, this is not an area that has been widely written about
so this section is particularly interesting.
Michael Eaude, Catalonia Today,
April 2012
‘A fine, fluent writer who structures her books particularly
well.’
This biography of a British nurse who spent 18 months in Catalonia
is full of rich drama – nursing the terrible wounded in infernal
conditions, a tragic love affair, a noble and flawed heroine
and a deeply moving climax. Angela Jackson tells Patience’s
story with both sympathy and historical rigour. Her style
is fluid; she does not shrink from controversies and she succeeds
in portraying Patience in her several contradictions and writing
about her times ... She is careful to give the work of nurses
its due value, yet not set them on a pedestal as ‘angels of
mercy.’
Dr Nick Coni, The Royal Society
of Medicine Newsletter, March 2012
A ‘very fine and well-written biography.’
Through interviews and letters, Angela Jackson paints an unforgettable
picture of an intrepid, stubborn, indomitable character, a
woman of great ability who might not have made a very comfortable
friend or lover, but whose concern for others was a driving
force throughout her life.
Lucia Graves, author of A Woman Unknown and The Memory House, Books4Spain, October 2012
‘Angela’s account of Patience Darton’s life is, without
doubt, an indispensable testimony of the 20th century!’
This is an extraordinary book, and not just because it will
by now have become an important piece of source material.
Angela has tirelessly researched, selected and organised facts
in such a way that light shines on them from many different
angles. But more than that, her fine narrative, always clearly
set within its historical framework (I was so interested in
the later China episodes!) has all the pace and engagement
of an unputdownable novel, while small details bring Patience’s
story to life – the condensed milk tins used as lamps; the
Spanish refugee whose child was killed – ‘machine-gunning
refugees is terrible, terrible’; the moving last scene of
Patience’s return to Spain … Angela’s account of Patience
Darton’s life is, without doubt, an indispensable testimony
of the 20th century!
Christine E. Hallett, The Bulletin of the UK History of
Nursing Association, Volume 1, Issue 2, November 2012
‘A remarkable and moving piece of work. Reading it
is an emotional as well as an intellectual experience ...’
Part of the art of history writing is the ability to offer
insight into a subject matter that may be highly emotional,
whilst taking several steps back and giving a purely dispassionate
account. Angela Jackson perhaps deliberately takes fewer steps
back than most. Her book is rawer, more personal and more
immediate than many biographies.
... Jackson’s determination to capture not just the actions
of this most remarkable nurse, but also the ‘passion, grief
and fortitude’ with which they were infused, make this book
a remarkable and moving piece of work. Reading it is an emotional
as well as an intellectual experience, and this makes it a
unique and impressive achievement. I am pleased to recommend
this beautifully-written biography of an extraordinary woman,
to nurses, historians and lay readers alike, all of whom will
find it an enriching experience.
Anne Logan, University of Kent
Women’s History Magazine, Issue 70, Autumn 2012
‘...an immensely satisfying biography...’
Patience is not always the most sympathetic of subjects (she
comes over at times as an imperious, opinionated and as a
somewhat inappropriately named individual) but Jackson treats
her words and views with care and contextualises them, as
well as allowing Patience to speak for herself in lengthy
quotations from the interviews and her letters. As such, the
book is a revealing and meticulous study of a member of a
generation largely now no longer with us, whose cadences and
slang, together with their political commitments and reactions
to momentous world events, are here preserved in the written
word... The poignant tale of her relationship with a young,
German Jewish International Brigader is told by Jackson with
great sensitivity and may well linger in the reader’s mind
long after details of Darton’s nursing assignments are forgotten...
It is, however, the blend of ‘personal and political’, and
the way in which Patience was both an individual and a representative
of so many in her generation that make this biography particularly
special. It deserves to be read by anyone with an interest
in the seismic international events of the mid-twentieth century.
Tom Buchanan, Director of Studies in Modern History and Politics,
Kellogg College, University
of Oxford, writing in Labour History Review, December 2013
Jackson tells the story
of [Patience Darton’s] life with great skill and balance…
In all, this book is a fine tribute to a complex woman of
incredible resolve, whose unusual career took her to the
heart of two of the greatest social and political upheavals
of the mid-twentieth century.
Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Volume XCI, Number 3, 2014
‘A
fine, sensitive and moving study of a British nurse ...
We gain an insight into Darton as a moral being forging
her own values.’
Angela Jackson’s fine, sensitive and moving study of a British nurse who offered her services in the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939 helps us understand volunteers to Spain in a different light. It does so both by directing our attention away from male political and military volunteers and through the interweaving of Patience Darton’s personal and political life. In this way, Jackson moves the field of view from the power of Moscow to order cadres to Spain and to shackle them to the cause with stultifying fear. Equally, rather than seeing individuals as dupes of malign powers, in Jackson’s study we gain an insight into Darton as a moral being forging her own values. Peter Anderson University of Leeds
Footsteps, by the author
The path that led
me to live in this beautiful area of Catalonia – the Priorat – was without doubt,
an unusual and fortuitous one. The story began in Cambridge
when I was at university for the first time as a mature student.
The degree course on Spanish history included the civil war
in the 1930s, a subject I found fascinating. I had the chance
to submit an individual project and decided to make a documentary
about the British volunteers in the International Brigades
who had gone to Spain to support the Republican government.
I found out that some of the veterans, despite being over
eighty years old, were still very active, continuing to ‘fight
fascism’ in the group they had formed when they returned home,
‘The International Brigade Association’. When I contacted
them to ask for interviews, they agreed to help. This was
how I first met Patience, an English nurse who had worked
close to the front lines during the civil war. What an unforgettable
character she was; very determined in nature, with a sharp
sense of humour. She was more than willing to help a student
like myself, but certainly not inclined to live up to her
name if things were not to her liking! We became good friends.
When I realised that nobody had written much about the involvement
of British women in the war, I thought it would make a wonderful
subject for a doctoral thesis. This was later published as
British Women and the Spanish Civil War. During the process
of research, Patience often spoke to me of a provisional hospital
set up in a large cave, close to the village of La Bisbal
de Falset in the mountains of the Priorat. She described how
hard the work had been there, nursing under terrible conditions
with shortages of almost everything except lice, trying to
save the lives of soldiers wounded during the Battle of the
Ebro. She recalled with anguish the death of so many young
men there and the tragedy of the defeat of the Republic.
But she also had clear recollections of the beauty of the countryside
and the bravery of the Spanish people in the fight against
Franco. She never spoke of a German Brigader, Robert, nor
of his death at the front during the Battle of the Ebro.
... In 1996, the veterans of the International Brigades
received an invitation from the Spanish government to return
to Spain and be awarded honorary Spanish citizenship. I was
in Madrid with Patience and the group of British Brigaders.
It was the first time she had returned to Spain in the six
decades since the war. She explained that she had never gone
back before because it was in Spain that she had lost the
love of her life, a German International Brigader called
Robert. As we travelled around the city, the Brigaders were applauded
in the streets and a huge cheering crowd filled the stadium
where a concert was held to welcome them. The next day I was
with her when she died in hospital.
... In the year 2000, while spending a holiday in Catalonia
with my husband, I remembered the vivid stories that Patience
had told me about the time she had spent in the cave hospital.
It seemed an ideal opportunity to go to look for it and see
for myself exactly what it was like. With the help of local
people from the nearby village, I finally found it. The cave
was the same, but the atmosphere was very different from those
war-time days. Now all was peaceful, the wounded and dying
long gone. It had become a perfect site for fiestas and picnics
with no clue as to what had happened there in the past. The
villagers began telling me their memories of the war; stories
that had never been told to the outside world. Clearly, it
was a subject for further research. I went back to carry out
interviews that eventually featured in a book, Beyond the
Battlefield, telling what happened in the cave during the
war by drawing on the memories of locals and the foreign
staff of the medical services in International Brigades, Patience
included.
... When my husband retired, we decided to try to find
somewhere to live in Spain. We spent months looking all over
for the ideal place, without finding anywhere as perfect as
the Priorat. Ten years ago, we came to live here. With the
intention of writing a short article about Patience, I contacted
her son to ask if he had kept his mother’s papers. He eventually
found them. When he showed me the piles of fragile, yellowed
documents and the old albums of photographs for the first
time, it was an unforgettable moment for me. The collection
contained not only the letters that Robert had written to
Patience during the civil war, but also, astonishingly, the
letters that Patience had written to him. The correspondence
is full of vitality: their ideals and their love for each
other, occasional arguments and grumbles, their hopes for
the future and the almost overwhelming sadness at being separated
by war. With these letters and other material from her collection,
I was able to write Patience’s biography, entitled For us
it was Heaven.
... Now, within that cave there
is a plaque bearing the image of Patience to commemorate the
work carried out by the medical services during the civil
war. As I look out of my window at the distant mountains where
the Battle of the Ebro was fought, I realise how fortunate
I was to meet Patience, not only because she was such a remarkable
woman but also because tracing her footsteps led me to live
in the Priorat.
Reviewed in Italian, Spagna contemporanea (2014).
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