Becoming Madeleine L'Engle

by Charlotte Jones Voiklis

  They were crushed, but they hurriedly composed a letter from Marie asking Miss LeG not to read her copy of Ilse, if she hadn’t already, because there was a new version that was much better.

  Rough draft of letter to Eva Le Gallienne

  Dear Miss Le Gallienne—

  Please forgive the paper—it’s all I have at the moment—I just wanted to see you tonight and ask you please not to read the play by Madeleine L’Engle Camp which we sent you. Several important changes have been made and naturally the author would like you to read the revised version— of course we know you must be flooded with scripts right now and there isn’t much of a danger of your picking it up, but because there is a chance that you might, we wanted to tell you not to as quickly as possible—if you don’t want to read it at all just ask your secretary to send us a note and we won’t bother you with it—I suppose it would have been simpler if I’d written to you about it in the first place, but I did want to see you—Again, please forgive the appearance of this note. I am writing standing in the street.

  Gratefully yours, Marie Donnet

  Marie heard back from Miss LeG, who said it was fine to drop off the new version at the theater. Madeleine and Marie left shortly thereafter to spend the summer at the Straight Wharf Theatre on Nantucket, an island off the coast of Massachusetts. Miss LeG wrote to them, saying that she was interested in the play but still felt there was something not quite right about the ending. She ended the letter saying that Madeleine “must go on writing.” Madeleine, ecstatic, copied the letter from Miss LeG into her own letter to her mother.

  June 28, 1942

  Mother darlingest,

  What do you think of this? Read it several times. Carefully. We still feel hopeful. [Miss LeG] is famous for not doing things just to be kind, and why would she and [Margaret] Webster be willing to see me in the autumn if they didn’t think I could do something with Ilse? What do you think? (Don’t show this to anybody.) … Well, darling, what do you think? Tell me honestly.

  Loads and loads of love, hugs, and kisses, Madeleine

  Madeleine was exhilarated. She continued with her small acting parts in summer stock and began work on a comedy, ’Phelia. Marie sent Miss LeG Madeleine’s third revision of Ilse, and the two friends felt sure they would hear from her once they returned to New York.

  But they were bitterly disappointed each day that passed with no word. Madeleine was supposed to go to Jacksonville for a visit—her mother had broken her leg earlier in the summer, and Madeleine’s absence from her mother’s side was noted by the extended family. But she didn’t want to leave New York. They argued.

  September 25, 1942

  Darling sweet,

  Let us get a few things straight at once. I haven’t written you that I want to come to Jax, because you are quite right, I don’t want to. But I do want to see you—and it’s because I want so to see you, rather than the sense of obligation (that I do have) that I’m coming right now. Because you see, sweet, this is a very bad time to leave New York. Everything is going on. Not just waiting to hear from Miss Le Gallienne, although that, I admit, is a large part of it. I’ve had a chance to work in a semi-professional group in Ibsen’s “John Gabriel Borkman” which I had to turn down because of not being here. I almost got a regular equity company that is doing “Stage Door” on the Subway Circuit. If I’d got that I couldn’t have afforded to turn it down. You see, darling, these are the reasons I don’t want to leave just now. Do you understand? And these are the reasons why I can’t stay as long as I’d like to otherwise. But I do want to see you, more than I can tell you. I thought you understood that. You musn’t ever think that you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. You are over-weight [that is, more important], if anything. We poor artists are famous for being misunderstood by our families, and I am perpetually thankful that I have a mother who is as understanding as you are. And when I look at the parents of many of my friends I can think gladly “I need never be ashamed to have my mother meet my friends.” I hate so to have you unhappy about me, but I do believe that what I am doing, what I am constantly working for, is what you really want from me in the long run; and I have to take some things from you in order to give you others.…

  Well, maman, enough for tonight. Mille baisers. Je t’aime. A bientot.

  Ton enfant terrible qui travaille pour toi quand meme.

  Uncle Harry was doing well and had moved to the Hudson Theatre. When would Miss LeG be auditioning for apprentices? When would she read the revised Ilse? Madeleine and Marie vowed to wait at the back door after every performance of Uncle Harry in hopes of catching Miss LeG on her way out.

  Finally, one rainy afternoon, they got lucky. Miss LeG and her companion, Marion Evensen, were standing at the stage door after the matinee performance without an umbrella, and Madeleine and Marie offered to run and get a taxi for them. Miss LeG, finding them both funny and delightful, gave them a ride, too, and Marie was finally able to introduce her to Madeleine in person. They were stunned at the address she gave—West Twelfth Street, which was just three blocks from their own apartment! It was fate. Miss LeG still didn’t like the ending of Ilse, but since Madeleine had a comedy up her sleeve they quickly said they would send it, if Miss LeG would agree to read it. By the time they got to Twelfth Street, Madeleine and Marie felt as if they had really connected with Miss LeG and everything would be different now. Miss LeG told them to leave a copy of ’Phelia at the stage door of the theater.

  September 26, 1942

  Mummy darlingest,

  Guess who Marie and I rode down to her apartment on twelfth street from the Hudson in a taxi with? You may have three guesses. Right the first time. Miss Le Gallienne! And she was wonderful to us—so warm and friendly and un-cold and un-patronizing and marvellous! If I weren’t going to see you so soon I don’t think I could resist telephoning tonight. She still thinks the end of Ilse is wrong, and she wants to have a talk and see if we can’t put a finger on it, because she said she was very excited about the first two acts—and the end with Brand’s suicide seems like putting something theatrical on a Tcheckov play. She treated me as a mature artist—and yet understanding that in many ways I’m still a child. There was no question about her wanting to read the new play. She wants to read anything I write. As you can probably see by this letter she made us delirious with joy. Oh, mother, if only she likes the new play. Both Pat and Cavada think it is infinitely better than Ilse but I don’t know—I want to see what you think of it. I’ll tell you about this afternoon more in detail when I see you—I’ve got to get it typed—the comedy I mean, not this afternoon!

  Je t’aime a la folie—ton enfant heureuse.

  PS Pat says to send you her love.

  Madeleine typed the play and dropped it off for Miss LeG. A few weeks later, Marie called Miss LeG about ’Phelia. The director invited them over the very next day. When they got there Miss LeG said she hadn’t had the chance to read it yet, and then talked about a book that she was writing, her overwhelming pile of correspondence, and how much she hated typing.

  “I know how to type,” Madeleine said. With those five words, Madeleine joined the inner circle: Miss LeG offered her a job answering her correspondence.

  Those five words also marked the beginning of Madeleine’s career and the end of her friendship with Marie.

  Madeleine, circa 1943

  Making a Living

  Madeleine started going to the theater with Miss LeG on Tuesday and Thursday nights to go through her correspondence while Miss LeG was onstage, and then she would take the letters home and answer them. She and Marie also finally had the opportunity to audition for apprenticeships in the theater company for Uncle Harry. Marie eagerly prepared a very popular audition piece, the character Nina’s monologue from Anton Chekhov’s play The Seagull. Madeleine created an original monologue from Katherine Mansfield’s autobiographical writings; she described the audition years later in a journal entry.

  * * *

 
When I got out on the stage, trembling in every limb, to do my auditions, Miss Webster came up onto the stage and shook my hand, and said she was happy to meet me at last because she thought I was the most talented writer in the theater she knew anything about. The immensity of this didn’t hit me til I got home I was so petrified about the audition. She just nodded after I finished and I couldn’t tell what she thought. I was so frightened at the audition for Miss LeG two weeks later that I don’t remember a thing about it! Later Miss LeG told me that both she and Miss Webster said to each other that if they hadn’t known which was which they would have thought from the auditions that I was the actress and Marie the writer.

  * * *

  Marie and Madeleine were both selected as apprentices, but because of her job Madeleine was spending a lot more time with Miss LeG and was included in confidences and social activities that Marie was not. It surprised them both that Madeleine was the favorite, and Marie couldn’t help feeling left out. Madeleine and Marie’s friendship started to fray as Madeleine and Miss LeG’s connection grew stronger.

  Madeleine would later say that her relationship with Miss LeG wasn’t quite friendship but more a case of hero worship, so much so that Mado was concerned about the influence this woman had over her daughter.

  January 9, 1943

  Mother darlingest,

  Your letter this morning made me so happy after your last scoldy ones—and I’m still not sure what I’m being scolded about! But I’m glad you had the dream and that it made you feel happier—because, dearest, I do know that my contact with Miss Le Gallienne is good and will help me both as an artist and as a person. I had some wonderful talks with her while I was at the farm—and it was so good of her to let me just talk. She told me again how very much she believes in me as a playwright—and said that if I ever disappoint her she’ll go shoot herself—not me!

  I also asked her if she thought I should change my name. You know that I have been thinking of this for a long time. Do you remember once at the beach I was talking to Father about it and he suggested that I drop the “Camp” and call myself Madeleine L’Engle—and then he said something about maybe you mightn’t like it because of Dannie [the original Madeleine L’Engle]—I’m a little confused about that part of it. Anyhow I’ve been thinking of doing that for a long time—remember, I signed most of my requests to summer theatres last spring “Madeleine L’Engle.” Anyhow, when I said to Miss Le Gallienne, “Do you think I should change my name?” she said, “Yes, I do,” and suggested that I drop the “Camp” saying that she thought names were terribly important (which I do, too) and that she thought I’d feel happier as “Madeleine L’Engle”—that she found it impossible to think of me as “Miss Camp” and didn’t like to introduce me as that—it just didn’t suit my personality at all. I’ve always thought it was a singularly ugly name … But anyhow, lamb, if it’s all right with you, I think that I’ll call myself Madeleine L’Engle.

  It wasn’t all right with her mother for Madeleine to drop her last name, not really, but Mado could only watch and worry from afar, and coax her daughter to send more letters and real news. Mado became more alarmed and concerned when Madeleine and Marie abruptly moved to an apartment on Twelfth Street with more roommates and no spare room for Mado. Mother and daughter argued, and Madeleine tried to explain that she, at twenty-four, was trying to be independent and that she needed to make her own decisions and even her own mistakes.

  Still, for Mado, these moves felt like emotional abandonment. However, she continued to support Madeleine with a stipend and gifts of food and clothing. Marie didn’t have that kind of family support, or the income Madeleine received from answering Miss LeG’s letters, and she was dependent on Madeleine in ways that must have further strained their friendship.

  When Uncle Harry closed in May 1943, the two young women needed to find summer-stock jobs until the theater company took the play on tour in the fall.

  The Straight Wharf Theatre in Nantucket, where Madeleine and Marie had spent the previous summer, was in danger of closing down, so they worked together to make sure it survived. Marie and another friend from the company offered themselves as managers, which would help Marie in her ambition to be a producer and director. Madeleine would contribute two of her original plays—’Phelia and The Christmas Tree—and finally see them performed in front of live, paying audiences. Miss LeG and Margaret Webster were staunch advocates, and promised to come visit. Before Madeleine left, Miss Webster even arranged a preview of The Christmas Tree in New York and invited her friends to come see it.

  However, it was a tough summer. ’Phelia didn’t go over well, and The Christmas Tree was too dark for the summer audiences.

  One bright spot for Madeleine was an inquiry from an editor at Vanguard Press in response to a story Madeleine had published in a magazine called New Threshold.

  In the fall of 1943, Madeleine and Marie were relieved to return to New York and go on tour with Uncle Harry. This meant living out of a suitcase, a different city every night, but Madeleine didn’t mind. Being on tour brought the close theater community even closer. However, Marie was pulling away from Madeleine, and so Madeleine shared rooms with different female members of the company. Madeleine’s part in the play was small, just a few speaking lines. She was also writing a combination of a play and a novel. It was the story of Katherine, a pianist with a lonely childhood. Madeleine would steal time to write in her notebook between her scenes onstage and on trains going from one city to the next. Eventually this story became her first novel, The Small Rain.

  Madeleine’s first-draft notebook for what would become her novel The Small Rain

  By the time the Uncle Harry company returned to New York, Marie had fallen out with Miss LeG and Madeleine. She left both the theater company and their apartment. It wasn’t until more than two years later that Madeleine was able to write about that time.

  * * *

  The beginning of our association with Miss LeG was the end of Marie’s and my friendship, though we didn’t realize it then. Because right from the start I was the one with Miss LeG and Marie was not. I was the one whose talent she believed in, whose personality was interesting to her. I don’t know who was more stunned at this, Marie or me. I had been completely accustomed to thinking of Marie as the superior one of the two of us, the beauty, the personality. I felt that people accepted me first because I was Marie’s friend and second for myself.

  * * *

  Miss LeG and Margaret Webster’s theater company followed up Uncle Harry with the production of a Chekhov play, The Cherry Orchard, on Broadway.

  Still close to Miss LeG, Madeleine was an understudy and assistant stage manager. The company also needed someone to take care of Touché, a white poodle who was an integral part of the play, and knowing Madeleine was lonely and bruised from the breakup of her friendship with Marie, and a longtime dog lover, they asked that she take on that job, too. Madeleine was happy to do so. Touché, a truly professional performer, would lie completely still around Madeleine’s neck like a fur stole in order to ride the subway back and forth to the theater undetected (since dogs were not allowed on the subway).

  In June 1944, Vanguard Press offered Madeleine a one-hundred-dollar advance on The Small Rain. A hundred dollars was a small fortune in those days, and it allowed her to take the summer off to work full-time on a revision. All of her dreaming born of fiery determination was coming true—she was climbing the “alpine path” and writing her name on the scroll of fame.

  Madeleine and Touché, circa 1945

  Madeleine, circa 1944

  Work and Love

  Madeleine turned in her revision of The Small Rain in the fall of 1944 and joined the touring company of The Cherry Orchard. She was still in charge of Touché, and still an understudy. Since the Broadway run of The Cherry Orchard had been a box-office disappointment, the casting had been rethought and an actor named Hugh Franklin was now playing the role of Trofimov. He was tall and slim, and Madeleine was st
artled by his bright blue eyes. However, in her experience, men who got leading roles tended toward arrogance, so she assumed that she and Hugh were not going to be friends.

  Hugh Hale Franklin, circa 1944

  It turned out, though, that she was enchanted by him and he was equally enchanted by her. They soon found they had much in common. Both struggled with feeling like outsiders, both felt uncomfortable with the sometimes frantic social life of the theater crowd, and both loved Tchaikovsky—in particular his ballet Swan Lake—and they would use the music as a private signal between themselves.

  But in many ways they were also opposites. Although Madeleine strove for emotional equilibrium, more often than not she was unable to maintain a stoic façade. Subject to moods and tempers, she was impulsive, sensitive, and demonstrative. Hugh kept a cool head during arguments and was much more reserved, private, and relaxed. Their life experiences were completely different, too. Hugh had grown up in Oklahoma with devout Baptist parents—no dancing, drinking, or cards—but he had studied at Northwestern University, north of Chicago, and had street smarts. Madeleine had a more cosmopolitan upbringing—with her childhood in New York, her early adolescence in France and Switzerland—and was going to be a published writer, but she was also naïve and gullible.