“A Guiding Life” is an autobiography by Nesta Maude Ashworth which shares her memories of life as an early Girl Guide and her service on the English home front in the First and Second World Wars. In 1975, at the age of 81 and after a stay in the hospital, Nesta was encouraged by her Guiding community to write down her story. Her writings were later collected, edited, and organized by her daughters, Mary Ashworth and Margent Spencer, and then published by FriesenPress in 2015.
Nesta was a key member in the formation of early Guiding and attended the Crystal Palace Rally as a Girl Scout. She was the first English Guide to be awarded the Silver Fish. Throughout her childhood, she met with Lord and Lady Baden-Powell and spoke with Agnes Baden-Powell about what the youth members really wanted out of the movement. She helped create Lone Guides for individual Guides who lived far away from a company and pushed for the creation of a Girl Guide Magazine to help connect members across England. Throughout her adult life and after her move to Canada, she would continue to be involved with Guiding until she passed away in 1982.
‘A Guiding Life’ is very well organized, with each chapter focusing on memories that take place within a certain time period of Nesta’s life. Each chapter begins with a short introduction written by Mary Ashworth, daughter of Nesta and former professor at the University of British Columbia, which summarizes that period of Nesta’s life in a clear and informative manner so that the rest of the chapter can focus on Nesta’s memories without the intrusion of additional facts or footnotes. Throughout the book, there are photos of Nesta in her early Guiding career and war service. Typically the photos appear after she introduces the related memory so the image already feels familiar to the reader when they come across it. I got really excited when we first got to see a photo of Nesta’s dog Czar on page 43 after being introduced to him on page 9. After hearing so many stories about him, it really felt nostalgic finally seeing a photo of the happy puppy. I immensely enjoyed reading through Nesta’s memories and it very much felt like meeting her for tea and spending the afternoon flipping through photo albums while listening to her stories.
One area I wish Nesta went into more detail was her feelings about the name change from ‘Girl Scouts’ to ‘Girl Guides’. Baden-Powell changed the name because he feared boys would resent girls using the word ‘scout’. He also felt that the word ‘guide' had a more traditionally feminine meaning as it was the girl’s role to guide society towards the better. Nesta says on page 26 that “we accepted the new name but not that fact that the chief was no longer our chief, for he had handed leadership of the infant movement to his sister”. It’s clear that she was frustrated by the change but it was overshadowed by Anges taking over leadership. Throughout the book, she’s very much about women empowerment and promotes the capability of girls in all fields of life. Having the name change and the Baden-Powell was taken away must have been demeaning in some regards. I know that the name change wasn’t a popular choice from Kristian Alendaner’s book, who says that many early youth members were disappointed and angered by the forced name change as they had been attracted to Girl Scouts because of their access to experience what normally they’d be unable to because of their gender. While still being able to do the camp programming they loved, this name change came with the promise of shifting the organization to more domestic and childcare skills. I feel like these are voices generally left out of the modern Girl Guide narrative. We tend to focus on the victory of the Girl Scouts standing up to Baden-Powell at the Crystal Palace rally in the fight for their place in the movement but we don’t recognize the disappointment of those same members for losing the title of Scouts.
In the acknowledgments, Margaret Spencer describes her mother as a strong woman who has led a full life and that statement really sums up ‘A Guiding Life’. Nesta’s writing is warm and her strong personality comes across through her words. It is clear that she cared a lot about the movement and the youth she interacted with. On page 126, when asked if she felt that Guiding had lost the adventure it had in her childhood she replied that if it had it was only because of lack of imagination in units. I think this book was well done and clearly a passion project for both Margaret and Mary so I wasn’t overly critical about this book when I read through it as it was the memories of their late mother. There are times in this blog I want to be more academic and really pull things apart but I just felt this wasn’t the time. I would recommend this book for anyone interested in early Guiding history and I think I could have read this book in late Guides or in Pathfinders and really enjoyed it. I think this book could be paired nicely with “How the Girl Guides Won the War” by Janie Hampton for a fuller context of early English Guiding. This book has a lot of value for those outside of Guiding and interested in women in England in the First and Second World Wars as Nesta although not in Guiding throughout the wars goes into great detail about her service on the home front.
Thanks for Reading!
EM