Becoming Madeleine L'Engle

by Charlotte Jones Voiklis

* * *

  Madeleine and Mado had a good time in London, but at the end of July, when Madeleine found out that she had been accepted to Smith, she started to have a wonderful time. Smith wouldn’t start until the end of September. Mado selflessly insisted that she attend. Madeleine knew it would be difficult to leave her mother and live in faraway Massachusetts, but her experience at boarding schools had made her independent. She knew she was ready.

  Madeleine, circa 1939

  She liked Smith. Her friend Cavada Humphrey from Ashley Hall was also there, and during her first year she made new friends and enjoyed her classes. As at Ashley Hall, Madeleine and all her friends had nicknames for each other. For her time at Smith, Madeleine was referred to as “Tony.”

  There was sadness, too, not only at being so much farther away from her mother than she had been at Ashley Hall, but also at missing her father, especially on her birthday.

  * * *

  Today I am nineteen. I feel very, very old, and also very immature and adolescent … There was nothing from Father. Last year at my birthday I was still numb—I didn’t quite realize things yet—and I was with mother and there were so many things from everybody that I didn’t really miss him so much on this particular day—Oh, Father—

  * * *

  Her journal writing slowed down considerably in college, but she wrote daily postcards to her mother.

  Madeleine’s postcards to her mother

  February 2, 1938

  Mum darling,

  The English exam is tomorrow and I do hope I can get a decent mark in it. Oh! but I’ll be relieved when it’s over and I’ll be all through! This Sunday I’ll really write you a letter.

  It’s the most wonderful weather—cold and crisp. We’ve been going on nickle walks for our exercise. You know—at each corner you flip a nickle—heads left, tails right. It’s lots of fun and we’ve got to some awfully queer out of the way places. Must stop now and get back to the Elegy, which is where I am at this point. —M.

  When she did write in her journal, often during frequent trips to the infirmary with a cold or flu, she wrote about her past, describing what life had been like at Châtelard or at Ashley Hall, or she wrote character sketches of other young women at Smith. She also had class papers to do, and she worked on her stories and poems. Still, she made observations in her journal about writing.

  * * *

  I made a discovery yesterday. I don’t suppose it’s an original sort of discovery at all, but at any rate, I found it for myself. When you write anything—a poem or a story—it’s yours only as long as only you know anything about it. As soon as anybody reads it, it becomes partly theirs, too. They put things into it that you never thought of, and they don’t see many things that you thought plain.

  * * *

  Her short stories were often based on incidents in her own life, moments when she had an epiphany or had to resolve some kind of conflict. She wrote about that Christmas vacation from Châtelard that she would continue to revisit throughout her life, when her parents were wrapped up in their own worries and sadness. When Mado read the short story Madeleine proudly showed her, Madeleine was shocked when Mado burst into tears. Madeleine hadn’t realized how much she had been able to capture in her writing, and it gave her her first inkling that her writing knew more than she did.

  She met professors at Smith who helped her hone her craft and whose lessons remained with her throughout her life. Esther Cloudman Dunn taught Shakespeare and drove home the powerful thought that the playwright always started with an attention-getter: a storm, a battle, a fistfight. Professor Dunn also confessed that there was one Shakespearean play she had never read because she couldn’t bear to have read all of his works.

  Another professor, Mary Ellen Chase, taught the novel. On the first day of the survey class she handed out a one-hundred-question quiz about Jane Eyre with questions like “What color dress was Jane Eyre wearing when she met Mr. Rochester?” Indignant, Madeleine turned the page over and wrote: “I don’t know what color the dress was, but I know what the book is about.” She then wrote an essay instead of taking the quiz. Professor Chase handed the quiz back to her with the remark “Take no more quizzes.”

  Professor Chase, in a college-wide address, once divided all works of literature into three categories, “major, minor, and mediocre.” Her New England accent made it sound like “majah, minah, and mediocah,” and that phrase became a running joke on campus. But it wasn’t entirely a laughing matter for Madeleine or her classmates. They all aspired to being “majah” and feared being judged “mediocah.”

  Leonard Ehrlich taught creative writing, and although Smith would allow only one creative writing class to be taken for credit, Madeleine studied with him multiple semesters, not caring about the credit. He encouraged her and thought she had great promise as a writer. Hearing his words, she felt both vindicated—“I do have talent!”—and terrified—“What if I can’t live up to his expectations?” But under Professor Ehrlich’s tutelage she wrote many short stories, some of which were published in Smith’s literary journals, and some of which she reworked later into scenes in her novels.

  She didn’t respond positively to all her writing teachers: when one commented with a Freudian interpretation on a story of hers, she dropped the course.

  She met Marie Donnet and they became best friends.

  Madeleine and Marie, circa 1939

  They were both active in the theater department. Marie was an actor and director, and in some ways the opposite of Madeleine: outgoing, confident, and charismatic. They seemed to bring out the best in each other, and they accomplished a great deal on campus. Together, they started French House (a French-speaking dormitory), produced multiple plays, and had dreams of moving to New York together and making their mark on the theater. While Madeleine mostly concentrated on writing, she was also happy to take small parts onstage. Marie had much more of a stage presence, and Madeleine was as captivated with her as everyone else was. In turn, Marie was steadfast in her support of Madeleine as a writer.

  Smith College Weekly, October 18, 1939

  Madeleine was active in various student publications, reviving the campus literary magazine, Opinion, and then editing the Smith College Monthly. A classmate and colleague named Bettye Goldstein was also on the staff of both publications. Bettye later became famous as Betty Friedan, author of the feminist classic The Feminine Mystique.

  Madeleine adapted some of her short stories into plays, and was constantly revising and reenvisioning her work. Both Madeleine and Marie were determined to be, as Professor Chase would say, a “majah” force in the theater. Marie had met Eva Le Gallienne, founder of New York’s Civic Repertory Theatre and the most famous actress and director of the day, and found there was a chance that Miss LeG (as everyone referred to her) would come to Smith to direct a student play. Marie sent her Madeleine’s play A Weekend in the Country. Although the visit fell through, Miss LeG encouraged Marie and Madeleine to look her up when they moved to New York City after college.

  Eva Le Gallienne, circa 1930–40

  Marie and Madeleine were giddy with excitement. They made plans to have Miss LeG produce Madeleine’s next, and better, play on Broadway.

  Madeleine, circa 1941

  The Best School for a Writer

  When Madeleine graduated from Smith College in 1941, the world news was beyond frightening. Hitler had invaded several countries, and Europe was being devastated by World War II. Madeleine feared that the United States would soon have to join the Allies in order to end it.

  Yet her own future was bright—not only were Madeleine and Marie moving to New York City, but several of their friends from the drama department at Smith, including Cavada Humphrey, were hoping to make their way to Broadway as well. Madeleine’s dear friend Patricia Collins from Jacksonville would be in the city, too—she was starting medical school at Columbia University.

  Before settling in the city, however, Madeleine and Marie spent that summer in Cape
May, New Jersey, acting in a summer-stock theater company.

  Madeleine, circa 1941

  Afterward, they moved to an apartment on West Ninth Street, right in the heart of Greenwich Village. The neighborhood had a colorful reputation as a home to artists, both starving and successful. Madeleine was going to write plays and fiction, plus do a little acting on the side in an effort to understand character and dialogue (she would later say that the theater was the best school for a writer), and Marie was also going to try out for parts in plays so that she could work her way up the theatrical production ladder and eventually become a director. They both felt that Marie was the one who could quite possibly become a star.

  The move to New York was a big one. Mado tried to discourage Madeleine. Going to college so far away from home was one thing, but a precarious start as a writer in the big city was another. Her mother understood and accepted that Madeleine was a writer—she had married one, after all—and knew that it was imperative for Madeleine, as it had been for Charles, to write. But couldn’t she do it in Florida?

  Madeleine would not be deterred. Knowing that if she pushed too hard it might cause irreparable harm to their relationship, and wanting to make sure her daughter would live comfortably, Mado offered Madeleine some furniture that had been in storage all these years from the apartment on East Eighty-Second Street, including the parlor grand piano. Mado also provided some financial help, with the condition that a bedroom in the apartment be available to her whenever she visited. However, Mado didn’t make the trip much more than once a year.

  Madeleine’s beloved Mrs. O was back in the picture—she didn’t have a telephone but was available as a maternal figure for Madeleine, and was hired by Mado to sew curtains and check in on Madeleine every now and again.

  Dear Mrs. Camp,

  I received your letter and check. Many thanks for same. Your letter sounded as if you were very depressed. I know you are greatly worried over Madeleine and her future. Sometimes I feel myself it’s too bad she chose such a hard profession for I think it’s a very hard one. I have not heard from Madeleine in a couple of weeks, I did have a neighbour call up last week and ask how she was and she answered and said she was very well and would write to me. So far I have not heard from her. I know she had a cold around the holidays for May called up and she told her. I can’t understand Marie’s mother writing to you and complaining for after all I think your position is much worse for she can see Marie and you are so far away from Madeleine. I know at the present time they are taking up with Miss Le Gallienne and have no time for anyone. I only hope and trust to God she will have the right influence over her. Do you know anything about her, if she is a fine character? Young people are so easy taken in and now is the time to lay her foundation for the future.

  Mrs. Camp, don’t feel Madeleine doesn’t think about you and I really feel she does hold things back from you so as you won’t worry. I have told her time and again to keep you posted all the time with what she is doing … I think Marie’s mother resents Marie having no time for her only for Madeleine and she expected when she would live so near she would see more of her and she don’t and that’s where the trouble comes in.

  Mary O’Connell

  Even so, her mother worried, a lot. In response, Madeleine continued to write daily postcards.

  March 21, 1942

  Mummy darlingest,

  If we didn’t keep always the intensity of dreaming we have when we’re children we couldn’t even write or act or paint or compose or play or whatever it is we do. It makes things harder for us, yes—but it also makes them better. If we’re more unhappy than other people we’re also more happy—I wish you could understand that—it would keep you from worrying about lots of things.

  Loads and loads of love, hugs, & kisses—

  Madeleine.

  But Mado wanted more details than could be put on a postcard, so she cajoled her daughter in multiple ways to be more in her confidence. But after years of being regimented and rule-bound in boarding school and college, Madeleine decided no one was going to tell her what to do or when to do it. For the first time, she was independent and she loved it! She and Marie had a rotating band of roommates, and while she had often chafed at the rules at school, she quickly saw the wisdom of having some guidelines when living with a group of people. She hated doing the dishes but discovered she loved cooking, so that became her job.

  Madeleine wrote and sent out stories to magazines and periodicals. She spent some money seeing plays (seats at the top row of the balcony often sold for one dollar). She taught English and writing to European refugees. And when the United States entered the war in December 1941, after Pearl Harbor, she, like everyone else, swallowed her fear of the violence on her doorstep by taking Red Cross training and volunteering in the newly formed American Theatre Wing, which sponsored programs to help the Allies in the war. One of the programs was selling war bonds at different plays being performed throughout the city. An unexpected perk of this was being able to see lots of plays for free: after the lobby emptied, the volunteers were allowed to stand in the back of the theater or sidle into an empty seat.

  Through Marie and her work with the Theatre Guild (a production company and incubator of talent), the two friends cultivated a cohort of like-minded, ambitious theater people, including Herbert Berghof, an actor who had left Vienna, Austria, in 1938. He later became a renowned acting teacher whose students included Jon Stewart, Al Pacino, Liza Minnelli, Robert De Niro, and Matthew Broderick. Berghof was older than Madeleine, worldly and successful, and his interest in Madeleine was flattering and intoxicating. There was flirtation, too.

  * * *

  Spent hours with Berghof just sitting at the drugstore drinking cup after cup of coffee and talking and talking. Every time I see him it amazes me again that he obviously thinks of me not as his student but as his friend—that he believes so in me and my work—it makes me feel terribly happy and humble.

  * * *

  Madeleine had always been shy and awkward in her romantic life, so she wondered but never asked if he was married. (He never said!) They talked mostly about art and work, and she thought Berghof was fascinating and sweet and earnest.

  Starstruck and ambitious, and spurred on by Eva Le Gallienne’s casual offer to be in contact when they came to New York, Madeleine and Marie were obsessed with getting a play of Madeleine’s into her hands. That play was a drama called Ilse, and they were convinced it was the perfect vehicle for Miss LeG’s talents, because to them Ilse was the perfect heroine, full of honor and tragedy.

  After Marie sent the play to Miss LeG in the spring of 1942, they were on tenterhooks waiting for her reply. Would Miss LeG understand the play and the character? Would she agree to work with them and do Ilse as her next project? Madeleine was aware of the audacity of their request, but she also had complete faith that the play was good and that it was right for Miss LeG.

  * * *

  We’re so crazy, so completely crazy, but it’s all a pattern—there’s nothing haphazard about it. We haven’t been so madly persistent since the spring we started French House—knowing that what we were doing was presumptuous and insane, and yet knowing that it must be done and that it was right.

  * * *

  But then they heard that Miss LeG had been hospitalized with pneumonia. Madeleine careened from worry about her play to worry about Miss LeG, whose genius and illness, she thought, were like her own father’s.

  In spite of her anxiety, Madeleine kept working on rewriting and workshopping Ilse with her theater friends. And she couldn’t stop fantasizing about what it would be like to work with Miss LeG. But when Miss LeG recovered, Madeleine learned she was starting a new project—Uncle Harry, by a playwright named Thomas Job—and that she wouldn’t be directing the play, but starring in it. Margaret Webster, who was best known for her productions of Shakespeare, would be directing it, and she was one of Marie’s idols. Madeleine was plunged into despair because it meant Miss LeG wouldn’t
be doing Ilse.

  However, she soon rallied. Miss LeG hadn’t responded to Ilse yet—maybe that meant she hadn’t even read it? Marie and Madeleine knew they had to be persistent and lucky as well as talented in order to get their big break, so they arranged to sell their American Theatre Wing bonds at a play called Angel Street, which was being performed in a theater close to the Broadhurst Theatre, where Uncle Harry was in rehearsals. They made friends with the Broadhurst’s doorman, Bill, who was an old vaudevillian. He was very happy to show two eager young fans backstage after hours. Once they even had a picnic with Bill on the stage!

  Uncle Harry playbill

  Madeleine and Marie stalked the theater after work in the weeks leading up to the opening of Uncle Harry, hoping to see Miss LeG and hear what she thought about Ilse, but they didn’t have any luck. They also heard rumors that Miss LeG and Margaret Webster were going to start a theater company if the reviews of Uncle Harry were good. This meant that the play would be able to move to a bigger theater and then go on tour—it also meant that Miss LeG could be tied up with Uncle Harry for as long as two years. The good news for Madeleine and Marie was that if the theater company happened, they could audition for apprenticeships and, if accepted, work full-time on the production, gaining valuable experience and exposure while playing small stage roles.

  Once Uncle Harry opened, Madeleine saw it several times that first week and thought it was decent, but in no way worthy of Miss LeG’s talents.

  And there was still no news about Ilse. Being so near Miss LeG for weeks without being able to speak to her was almost too much to bear, and time was running out—it was June 1942, and Madeleine and Marie had signed on with a summer-stock company and were getting ready to leave the city. Forced into action the day they were to depart for the summer, Marie sent a note backstage after the matinee performance asking to see Miss LeG. She was overjoyed when Miss LeG’s maid came to the door and asked her to please come back after the evening performance. But when the young women returned that night, the maid seemed not to even recognize Marie. “Miss Le Gallienne isn’t seeing anyone tonight,” the maid said. “If you have anything important to say, you can write it down.”