'Book Friendships'

When I was about thirteen (so ... about ten years ago!), I read a book called 'Beautiful Girlhood'. It's a Victorian girls' book, full of advice on anything and everything to do with girlhood 100+ years ago. I don't agree with everything the books says or its preoccupation with roses (!), but I've always appreciated what it says about books ...

"It is said that a person becomes like his friends. This is a very truthful saying, for association makes a great difference in the life of anyone ... what is true of personal friendships is also true of book friendships ...when a girl chooses her friends she should as much as possible select those who will be a help to her. If she chooses the quiet, modest, sincere, earnest girls for her friends, she will become like them .... so it is with books. If a girl will choose her books from those who ideals are high and whose language is pure and clean, unconsciously she will mold her life like those portrayed in the books she reads ..."

Now ... I know this advice is old fashioned and somewhat prosy, but I think it has something important to say to everybody ... man or woman, young or old. We are what we read. Or conversely, what we read is mirrored in what we feel, think, speak, do ... are! I know this from personal experience. You see, I learned to read when I was four and I guess I've been reading more-or-less constantly every since! There are some old favourites I re-visit from time-to-time, ageless classics that I'll never grow out of ... and new favorites that I discover almost every week! I love books and I'm proud to be a book worm. (Incidentally, have you ever noticed how many 'favourite' books a book worm has?!?) Anyway ...

About ten years ago, when I first read that I might "unconsciously ... mold [my] life like those portrayed in the books [I] read ..." I was duely impressed and decided to be very careful what I read, even though I didn't really understand how I would "mold [my] life like those portrayed in ... books". At that time, I had on loan from my great aunt (who was born and brought up in England before WWII) a set of books about 'The Abbey Girls'. The books are actually collectible and valuable, but my great aunt had a set and she let me borrow them and read them over and over again.

The books are set in England, between WWI and WWII. The five main girls - Joan, Joy, Jen, Rosamond and Maidlin - all live in or near an abbey, once a thriving monastery destroyed by King Henry VIII in the 1500s and now (1920s!) a ruin. Joan and Joy (identical cousins with copper-red hair) live there with their mother/aunt, looking after the Abbey and showing visitors around. Later Joy inherits the Hall (the 'big house' nearby) and takes Joan and her aunt to live there, where they are later joined by the other girls. It's from the Abbey and the Hall that all of the girls help others, marry and have huge families (complete with multiple sets of twins).

The books are full of adventures ... finding the abbey treasure that was lost when King Henry VIII destroyed the monastery, finding secret tunnels leading from the Abbey to the Hall, getting involved with school activities ... especially the school's country dancing club - The Hamlet Club - and May Queen tradition. (Joan, Joy, Jen, Rosamond and Maidlin are all May Queen in their turn!) Although each book in the series is different, each books has one common theme ... that of girls 'playing the game' and doing 'the right thing', being strong and capable and self-controlled ... but womanly and feminine and lady-like.

And you know what? Well ... I definitely have moments when I don't 'play the game' and I don't 'do the right thing' (everybody does, right?). And I definitely am not always strong and capable and self-controlled or womanly and feminine and lady-like (nobody is, right?!?). Anyway ... I'm not suggesting that I've learned everything I need to 'succeed in life' from 'The Abbey Girls' or that I've got it all right ... I haven't done either of those things!

But ... more than a decade after I read the first book in the series - and six years since I last read the books (before returning them to my great aunt) - I still find myself "unconsciously ... mold[ing] [my] life like those portrayed in the books ..." Sometimes - especially when I need to be strong and womanly or self-controlled and lady-like (and don't want to be!) - I'll remember when Joan did such-and-such ... or Jen did this ... or Rosamond did that. The books set before me a model - albeit an old-fashioned model - for honest, upright and noble (not to mention realistic, because the girls did make mistakes and fail from time-to-time) womanhood. For that I am - and always will be - grateful.

But ... thinking back to 'Beautiful Girlhood' and the way its ideas about books have proved true in my own life, I shudder to think about what I might have read and been influenced by - to the extent of "unconsciously ... mold[ing] [my] life like those portrayed in the books ...". When I browse a bookshop or Amazon, I'm reminded of 'The Abbey Girls' and think when looking at books, 'Do I want to be influenced by this book and these characters ... not just now, but in ten or twenty years time?'

'Tis true ... "association makes a great difference in the life of anyone ... what is true of personal friendships is also true of book friendships ..."