Becoming Madeleine L'Engle
Page 2
Madeleine, circa 1924
Madeleine, circa 1924
Trouble at School
Madeleine enjoyed school in the early grades, but things changed in the fourth grade, when she switched schools, and going to class started to become a painful, diminishing experience. With one leg slightly shorter than the other, she didn’t have the same athletic prowess as her classmates and so was always picked last for any team. She quickly gained a reputation for being both clumsy and stupid, for she was shy and reticent. Her peers treated her badly, and her teachers graded her to their own expectations instead of Madeleine’s actual performance. Thus Madeleine learned that making an effort for the teacher simply wasn’t worth it. When she went home, instead of doing homework, she turned to her own reading and writing. Grandfather Bion sent her books and magazines, and she wrote stories. After all, that’s what her father did. She also wrote poetry.
One day that first year at her new school, Madeleine’s French teacher refused to let her go to the bathroom even though she asked repeatedly to be excused. And so she wet her pants. When questioned by Mado and the headmistress, the teacher defended herself by lying, saying that Madeleine had never asked to be excused. But Mado believed Madeleine, and that was a comfort, although watching an adult lie and get away with it was devastating to Madeleine.
The next year, in fifth grade, there was a poetry contest that was open to the entire school and judged blindly. Madeleine entered one of her poems. When it won and she was revealed as the writer, her teacher insisted that Madeleine couldn’t possibly have written such a good poem and accused her of plagiarism. Outraged and indignant, Mado took samples of Madeleine’s poetry to the school and showed them to both the headmistress and the teacher, who was forced to concede that Madeleine was a good enough writer to have written that poem after all.
Madeleine’s prize poem, published in the school literary magazine, May 1929
Madeleine, circa 1926
When Madeleine wasn’t reading and writing after school, she was taking art and piano lessons. She was also forced to take dance lessons, which she detested so much that her instructors proclaimed she was “unteachable.” It was a pretty miserable—as well as formative—few years: from then on, Madeleine carried with her the feeling that she was awkward, inadequate, unattractive, and stupid, feelings that made her acutely grateful for any acts of kindness and affection that she did receive from others.
Madeleine did have one friend with whom she played occasionally. April Warburg, the daughter of a wealthy banker, was as much of an outcast at school as Madeleine was, and just as dreamy. Sometimes Madeleine would go over to April’s house, a mansion on Fifth Avenue. April’s parents weren’t around, but there were multiple servants—butlers, ladies’ maids, governesses—and Madeleine was struck by the different kind of isolation April endured: one in which she was not alone, but lonely. She saw how removed her friend was from her parents and from affection of any kind, and she was thankful for her own relatively close relationship with her mother and father.
Then Madeleine’s father’s health started to fail. When he was in the army, his unit had been gassed by enemy forces during the war, and the effects of the mustard gas had left him prone to severe and life-threatening bouts of pneumonia. He also smoked and drank heavily, which exacerbated his fits of coughing and his headaches. Mado was worried about Charles’s health, but he seemed more concerned with the fact that his writing work was drying up—it was difficult to support a family as a freelance journalist, and his fiction wasn’t selling as it had before the war. He caught pneumonia and was warned that he should find a more healthy place to live: the dirty, smoggy air of New York City might kill him. Could they possibly leave the city? Their life was there. If it was difficult getting writing assignments in New York, how much harder would it be elsewhere?
And then the stock market crashed in October 1929, and a great many people were in financial trouble, including Madeleine’s parents. They decided they had no other choice: the summer after Madeleine finished sixth grade, they packed their clothes; put their furniture, piano, dishes, and silver into storage; and moved to the French Alps, where there was clean mountain air and where, at that time, it would be less expensive to live.
Madeleine, circa 1931
Switzerland
Madeleine, unaware of her parents’ perilous circumstances, was thrilled with the move. Fresh air! Freedom from school! Parents not distracted by social events! And there were more opportunities to see Grandfather Bion and Gaga as well as her uncle Bion (Mado’s brother) and his children, her cousins. Uncle Bion was an artist who had married a Frenchwoman, and they lived in Corsica. The summer of 1930 was filled with whimsy for the eleven-year-old Madeleine: she roamed around on her own in the French countryside and read Emily of New Moon by Lucy Maud Montgomery, along with the other books in the Emily series. She felt Emily was just like her because she wanted to be a writer, too. And, like Emily, she began to keep a journal that she wrote and doodled in occasionally.
Although Madeleine may have hoped that she wouldn’t have to go to school anymore, her parents agreed that her education was important, even if they once again disagreed about what that meant. Out of Madeleine’s hearing they argued bitterly. Her mother wanted to send her to the local school, while her father wanted to send her to a boarding school where teachers and students spoke English and where she would get a more formal education. Charles prevailed, as usual.
And so, without Madeleine’s knowledge, the decision was made: she was deposited at Châtelard in Montreux, Switzerland, arriving three weeks late, after the “old” girls had reacquainted themselves with each other and the “new” girls had formed their protective cliques. It was torture. Madeleine didn’t get along with the other girls or her teachers. She sat alone for her meals in the dining hall, and the first time she took a bath she got in trouble because she stayed in too long and didn’t keep her underclothes on—she had never imagined a school could be filled with such strict and extreme rules.
It’s no wonder that it took some time for Madeleine to make the best of things during her three years at Châtelard. All the girls were referred to by their number and not their name (which gave Madeleine a lifelong antipathy to bureaucracy and automation), and the school was so poorly heated that the ink in the pens and inkwells froze. Madeleine was also constantly being scolded for being clumsy and forgetful.
Still, she found some things of beauty. In her third year, the window in her room faced Lake Geneva and had an inspiring view of the water and the mountains behind it. Madeleine wrote about it in her journal:
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The lake is very lovely just now. The mountains are a purply grey haze, and though the sun is hidden by the grey clouds, there are patches of dull blue sky, and the gold reflection of the sun is on the lake, so bright that it fairly dazzles one to look at.
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In New York, she had been unhappy at school but had had her blissful solitary hours of reading and writing in her room at home. At Châtelard, there was no privacy, no chance to be alone, not even in the bathroom, which was monitored by matrons in case anyone took too long. Realizing that she was happiest when she was writing stories, Madeleine learned to retreat into her own world and imagination in the midst of all the noise and distractions. Eventually, she could write anywhere, whether it was her dormitory room or even the classroom, taking her away from her assigned work. Another bright spot was that the girls were allowed to cultivate a small garden plot. She planted poppy seeds, and when they grew she put the flowers under her pillow. She had heard that poppies gave you wonderful dreams.
Whether the poppies were responsible or not, years later she remembered several recurring dreams she had as a young girl. In one, she was an Elizabethan sea captain lying on the deck of her ship, ready to blow it up rather than be taken by the Spaniards. In another, she was a woman during World War I, watching her fiancé fly his plane across the horizon. And there were recurring ni
ghtmares of war, something she was plagued with her whole life and attributed to her father’s war stories.
Madeleine, circa 1933
Eventually, she began to get along better with the other girls. Some became close friends: Pam, Rosy, and Eleanor all corresponded with her through her college years. She found that she loved to ski, that she wasn’t as awkward and uncomfortable speeding solo down a mountain as she was playing team sports.
But she remained disorganized, always losing her school tunic or misplacing a book or homework.
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Oh diary dear, just must cry to you today. I am so miserable. I can’t go skiing because I can’t find my things.
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And she was not a particularly good student, especially in French and Latin.
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I had a vile time in lessons today. In Latin. I hadn’t heard something Holmes said, and made a guess at the answers. She blew up and busted, then, and said she had never known anybody take in as little as Hazel and me etc. etc. Then I lost my temper too because I will not be called stupid, and stuck out my jaw and scowled at my book for the rest of the lesson.
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Madeleine was also beginning to have trouble with her eyes. She was nearsighted and it was getting worse, and she had flare-ups of iritis, or inflammation of the iris. There was no real cause or cure, but she had to lie in bed and rest, not allowed to read or write. She spent a great deal of time in the infirmary, which the girls called “the kennel.”
Madeleine’s progress reports
She worried about Uncle Bion’s children, whom she called “Bébé” and “Poupon”: they were often ill, too, and she made paper dolls for them.
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Poor little Poupon has been desperately ill with pneumonia. I got a card from mother today saying that she is better and they are much encouraged. I do hope that she will be all right.
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By the time Madeleine was in ninth grade, the political climate in Europe was getting more intense—the stock market crash of 1929 had had economic repercussions all over the world, and people were suffering. Totalitarian regimes were on the rise. Adolf Hitler’s plans for revitalizing Germany included frightening ideas about racial purity and a climate of political violence created by his Nazi party. He took power in January 1933 and most of Europe was stunned. All of this worried Madeleine’s parents, but maybe not as much as the fact that her father hadn’t been able to complete a book during the three years they had lived in France. So when Mado’s mother became ill, it was the perfect excuse to return home. Home for Madeleine was New York City, but the family would be returning to Jacksonville, Florida: a place she loved to visit, but where she knew she didn’t fit in at all.
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I must learn how to dance before I go back. Everybody dances down there. I dance quite a lot with Pam now, but I am not much good yet. I ought to learn to play bridge too, because I believe they play quite a lot down there. But I don't care a darn about playing bridge, I don't want to learn at all.
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A poem from Madeleine’s journal
Still more troubling was that Charles’s health hadn’t improved, even in the mountain air. He would be leaving France for humid, sea-level Jacksonville, which was perhaps only marginally better than smoggy, sea-level New York. Charles and Mado’s financial situation must have been very precarious for them to decide to depart for Florida and live with Dearma. Still, Madeleine was happy to leave Europe, for rumbles of unrest were beginning. But she also worried about leaving Grandfather Bion, Gaga, Uncle Bion, and her cousins behind with so much talk of war.
More Journal Entries from Châtelard
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This morning when we woke up we were all so sleepy that we stayed in bed nearly to the first gong. Pam went out to get her tunic, and I yelled at her to get mine. She brought it in, and then Eleanor found out that she had lost hers. She made an awful fuss, because she didn’t know what to do, and when I put on the tunic Pam had brought me, I found out that it was Eleanor’s! Then I didn’t know what to do. I ran to my closet, and grabbed a tunic and put it on, and I found out that it was Vivian’s. I grabbed another tunic just as the second gong went, and luckily that one was mine.
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I am getting awfully nearsighted. When I get back to America and have to have my eyes examined I guess that I will have to wear glasses.
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It seems with all the banks closing in America that we have been hit pretty badly. That is why I can’t go to Montreux for lunch. We can’t afford it.
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Peggy and I are writing a novel. We don’t know the title of it yet, but we know the idea of it, and have started writing it. That is, I have.
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I have made a sort of promise to myself saying that I will not read trash books.
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Ugh! Exams started today. We had Latin and French. I know that I failed Latin and I have a hunch that I failed French.
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Châtelard
Madeleine and Sputzi, Dearma’s dog, circa 1935
From Child to Teen
Mado’s family had been the center of a scandal when her father, Bion, had left her mother, Caroline, for Gaga some years earlier, because divorce was frowned upon in those days. But Caroline (Madeleine’s Dearma) had risen to the occasion, continuing to hold her place in Jacksonville society, splitting her time between a house in the city and an old, rambling beach cottage called Red Gables, which had been built by Dearma’s mother, the first Madeleine L’Engle, just a trolley ride away from downtown Jacksonville.
Dearma’s beach cottage, Red Gables
When Madeleine and her parents arrived in Florida in the summer of 1933, they found Dearma bedridden at Red Gables, and although it was difficult to see her like that, Madeleine was happy to be at the beach cottage rather than at the house in town. When the cottage had first been built, there was nothing around it for miles. Now it was a last holdout in the midst of a growing amusement park and multiple boardwalks.
Red Gables and the ocean were the two things Madeleine loved about being in Florida. She found the sound of the waves soothing and the swimming enjoyable, especially once she got past the breaking waves to where the Atlantic was smooth and calm. Her morning routine included an early swim, far out to sea. She would let herself float and observe the sky and its changing clouds. Red Gables and the beach had always been important to Madeleine. Her first memory was of being woken up and taken out to look at the stars there, and she would later call that memory her first glimpse of the vastness of the universe—the expanse of the ocean and the star-filled sky.
That fall, when Madeleine was almost fifteen years old, she was sent away to school again, this time to Ashley Hall, a girls’ school in Charleston, South Carolina. With glasses. She was nervous. It had taken such a long time for her to become comfortable at Châtelard.
Fortunately, she quickly settled in and found she loved Ashley Hall. She still did miserably in French and Latin, but she adored the principal, Mary Vardrine McBee, who was gifted in bringing out the best in people. Madeleine longed to be in the drama club her first year and was over the moon when she finally got the part of the “second shepherd” in the Christmas play. She went on to get bigger roles—her best one was Sir Andrew Aguecheek in a production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. She was also encouraged to write original comedies for the club to perform.
Ashley Hall
The school joined with a local boys’ school to hold formal dances, which Madeleine chose to skip.
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The first citadel dance is tonight. I did not go. Neither did Polly or Bee. Polly and I ordered some vanilla ice cream and used up our caramel sauce on it. It was grand. We are allowed to stay up until the girls come back from the dance, but I guess I’ll go to bed around twelve. T
hey will not be back until one thirty. Hane came in with us and listened to Carol’s radio.
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Madeleine applied to Ashley Hall’s student council, a student group that advised the faculty on disciplinary matters, and on academic and school spirit awards. She was very excited when she learned she had been accepted.
The playbill from the Ashley Hall production of Twelfth Night
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Tomorrow I am going to be installed. O, diary, I am so happy. I am so thankful that I have been received on student council. Now that I am on the council, I must work hard and try and get on the board.
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