The Summer of the Great-Grandmother

by Madeleine L'engle

  Perhaps the fact that I write at all is a result of Mado’s passion for education. She did not think the schooling in North Carolina or Florida adequate for her children; I don’t know why she did not go home to Charleston, but went instead to Winchester, Virginia. Possibly she could not afford Charleston, but could eke out a living in Winchester by taking in boarders, or ill people, and nursing them. The boys went through college, and Dearma to the Virginia Episcopal Institute for Young Ladies—how pompous that sounds, but the girls there were given an education which isn’t even available to girls today, Episcopal, ladies, or no. Mado herself had been well taught, and was willing to go hungry, to work long hours, stay up with a patient all night, in order to give her children the learning she treasured. And I’m sure she herself taught her children far more than she realized. I know that not only has my mother taught me many things I never learned in school, but also that the summer Josephine turned three, Mother spent patient hours playing with her, and by the end of the summer Jo could read and write the alphabet and spell out simple words, and the whole process was a game for her.

  I wonder what I will be able to teach my grandchildren? Not much, this summer, except for a few folk songs and nursery rhymes when I sing them to sleep.

  Did Mado ever have the sudden, intemperate rages which sometimes hit me, and which are produced by what seems completely inadequate cause?

  She surely had reason for rage and resentment, and yet these are qualities which are never mentioned in regard to her. If they were there, she kept them to herself, and healed them in her own way, with prayer. I have her battered Bible, which Mother had rebound for me. It was much read, much marked, and there are stains which came, I think, through private tears. Perhaps through it she will teach me an alphabet of grace. She had that spontaneous quality of aliveness which illuminates people who have already done a lot of their dying, and I think I am beginning to understand the truth of that.

  “My grandmother,” Mother said of Mado, “was an incurable romantic, reading and rereading her favorite romantic stories and poems until her death.” And yet no one could accuse Mado of having had a protected life, or of losing her grip on reality.

  I need my own equivalent of the picaresque novels which may have reminded Mado of the lost years of the Spanish court—although it never occurred to her to bemoan them or try to return to them. I have occasional binges of reading English murder mysteries or science fiction, not so much as an escape but as a reminder that there is still honor and fidelity in the world, despite murder and crime; and that the sky above me is full of billions of solar systems and island galaxies, and that nobody has yet been able to put the creation of a galaxy into the language of provable fact.

  We are a generation out of touch with reality. The “realistic” novels push me further away from the truth of things, rather than bringing me closer. We cannot make mystery and miracle acceptable by trying to constrict them into the language of the laboratory or the television commercial.

  All that, in finite terms, is left of Mado is her Bible, some yellowed letters, a few pieces of once beautiful furniture, its veneer buckling from age and exposure to salt air. But there is more to her than that, and it is the mystery of her ousia which helps me to see a little more clearly through the dimness of human understanding.

  I do not want to romanticize about Mother’s senility. I know that there is no turning back the clogging of the arteries, and that there is nothing to look forward to but further decline. But if I stop here I am blocked in my loving, just as her thinking is blocked by atherosclerosis.

  I try to accept the bare factual truth of Mother’s condition, as Mado accepted loss and death; and yet I remember Tallis saying once that “we are not interested in the love of truth as against the truth of love.” This does not mean that we are not interested in the love of truth; his statement is one which I have to try to understand with all of me, not just my conscious mind. The love of truth without the truth of love is usually cold and cruel, I have found. The truth of love can sometimes be irrational, absurd, and yet it is what makes us grow toward maturity, opens us to joy. Mado, holding a dying Yankee soldier in her arms, was witness to the irrationality of the truth of love. This kind of truth is often painful; it must have been so for her, and I am certainly finding it true in this household this summer. But it is all that gets me through each day.

  5

  “Tell me a story, Mother …”

  “Well, tell me a story about when Greatie was a little girl.”

  Greatie: my mother’s great-grandmother; William L’Engle’s mother; Mado’s mother-in-law; Susan Philippa Fatio.

  How much will Léna and Charlotte remember of their great-grandmother? They have never known my mother as a full human being, but only as an ancient old woman with the strange title of the Great-grandmother, which they cannot yet pronounce, and so they will remember her mostly through the stories their mother and I tell them when they, too, say, “Tell me a story … Tell me a story about Gracchi.”

  Josephine and Maria and Bion have living memories of their great-grandfather; Jo was eleven when he died. I didn’t know any of my greats, but I feel close to Greatie because Mother has given her to me.

  Greatie and her parents were as much pioneers as Amma and Ampa and yet, in the early days of North Florida settling, there was an aura of cosmopolitanism and courtliness completely missing in the West. Greatie spoke French, Italian, Spanish, German; read Latin and Greek. She had a vast store of folk and fairy tales from all lands which she told and retold her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. “The one I remember best,” Mother said, “is the Spanish folk tale of Don Rat Humperez and Cockroachie Martínez.”

  The Fatios were originally from Sicily, and left home because of political upheaval and religious persecution; some settled in Italy, some in France, Spain, Switzerland. Why Greatie’s father, François Philippe Fatio, came from Switzerland to the New World, and to North Florida in particular, I do not know.

  Mother’s personal memories of Greatie are, of course, of a very old lady living in quiet poverty; but these last years of Susan Philippa Fatio’s life, austere though they were, must have seemed strangely uneventful to the old lady. How many homes were burned out from under her? I’m not sure; I’ve counted up to six.

  “Once upon a time when Greatie was a little girl,” Mother said, during that winter of inner and outer cold in Chamonix, while we sat huddled in sweaters and drank countless cups of tea to keep warm, “she was living with her parents on their plantation called New Switzerland on the St. Johns River.” One day one of the servants came rushing to them through the woods in great excitement and told them that the Indians were preparing to attack and were going to scalp the entire family. François Philippe refused to believe them, because the Indians had always been friendly with the family. But New Switzerland was caught in the middle of a war between the Indians and Andrew Jackson’s forces; the Indians had been unfairly attacked, and they were so angry that they were out to scalp all whites in their path, even those who had been their friends. Two faithful servants, Dublin and Scipio, held François Philippe bodily to keep him from going to reason with the Indians, persuaded him that they were beyond reason at that moment, and urged the entire household into a boat which was always kept at the dock. Scipio had been polishing the table knives and carried them into the boat, “and so the knives were the only possession saved from the fire. Greatie told us that shots followed them across the river and splashed into the water, and why nobody was hit she never knew …”

  Their next home was burned, too, by vindictive arsonists. Greatie and her family were constantly being caught in the middle of someone else’s fight. There was the battle for the Floridas, as the large, southernmost territory was then known; the Fatios lived in a section which passed back and forth between the Spanish and the English on paper—which didn’t affect them nearly as much as border warfare between the Florida settlers and a group of bandits, called “fi
libusters” by Greatie, who came in from Georgia. One of the filibusters called himself Dictator of the Republic of Florida, and François Philippe fought with the Spaniards against this premature Hitler.

  “Shortly after this battle, in which he was nearly killed,” Mother said, “the roof of their house in St. Augustine blew off in a storm; it was taken up bodily by the wind and settled on top of the family as they were trying to escape. Can you imagine rushing out of the house and then being trapped under your own roof?”

  “What happened?” Of course I knew, but I was breathless with excitement no matter how many times I heard the story.

  “They were rescued by Commodore Campbell of the United States Navy, who came to their assistance with his sailors. The family were all bruised and bleeding, but they were lucky to get away without being drowned, because the tide was rising and the streets were soon flooded.”

  “Did they lose everything again, everything?”

  “Everything. This time they didn’t even save the knives.”

  Everything. Nor was this the last time.

  And yet Greatie wrote, after they finally rebuilt their home on the St. Johns River, a home of pine logs and cypress bark: “We were well content to be there once more, leading a life of tranquility and ease. My father, when well-supplied with reading matter and the society of a few friends, seemed never dull or dissatisfied. Chess, cards, and backgammon varied the monotony of the repose of country life; and to look out on the river, flowing majestically by, seemed always to charm him. He was sixty-five years of age when we returned to New Switzerland, but full of vigor of mind and body. He was possessed of a cheerful and vivacious disposition, and was witty and full of anecdote. I never tired of listening to his descriptions of Switzerland. I remember one afternoon, when sitting on the piazza with him, his calling my attention to some grandly beautiful clouds looming up on the horizon, across the river, and saying, ‘Look, look, my child, before it changes; you cannot have a more perfect picture of Mont Blanc than that cloud gives you; no painter could represent it as well. Call your mother to see it. O beautiful, beautiful!’ and his handsome face beamed with pleasure as he gazed at it.”

  But a life of “tranquility and ease” never seemed to last long for Greatie. “In the year 1836 the homestead at New Switzerland was again destroyed, being burnt by Seminole Indians …”

  Six years earlier Greatie had married Lieutenant John L’Engle, “of the 3d U.S. Artillery, a graduate of the Military Academy of West Point.” She does not say a great deal about him. I would gather that he was a literate and charming man, but also a dreamer and impractical. After her marriage she continues to speak of New Switzerland as home, and so this final burning affected her deeply. She writes, “My father and brother having died within six months of each other, Colonel Miller Hallowes, fourth son of my Aunt Louisa, came from England to receive her share of my grandfather’s property, which my father had been taking care of for her.” Miller Hallowes was at New Switzerland when the Indians attacked, and he was wounded by a bullet. Scipio, the same Scipio who had helped in the escape at the time of the first New Switzerland fire, helped him into a boat. The Indians went into the house, “feasted and drank, dancing and yelling, cut up the piano, and finally set fire to and destroyed the houses with their contents. The houses have never been rebuilt.”

  Greatie, the teller and writer of tales, was wistful that “in all our wanderings there were no schools or other educational opportunities” for the younger Fatio children. Five of the children received formal schooling, but “Leonora and I had no such advantages. Fortunately for us we both loved books and, more fortunately still, our parents were educated persons, lovers of learning and culture, who took pleasure in imparting knowledge to us. To them we were indebted for all we learned.”

  No wonder her son, William, was able to write letters to Cousin Miller Hallowes and Aunt Leonis when he was only eleven years old.

  Greatie had also memorized reams, and could recite, with flourish and pleasure, from her favorite books, ranging from Plato and the Bible to romantic novelists. This huge store of memory stood her in good stead, for she was blind during her last years. But she lost none of her storytelling ability, or her complete recall of all that she had learned.

  “Tell me about Greatie and the African princess.”

  That was probably my favorite story about Greatie. A wealthy planter and slave trader fell in love with an African princess, and married her. She lived in his huge house partly as wife, partly as servant, bore him many children, and nearly died of homesickness. She was ostracized by both whites and blacks, except for Greatie, who once a week was rowed down the river—it must have been a two- or three-hour trip in the grizzling sun—to spend the day with the princess. First Greatie had to have lunch with the slave trader, while the princess served them. Then Greatie and the princess went off together to the princess’s rooms, and talked, and drank cold tea together.

  If Mado had strong ideas about what was right and what was wrong in human relationships, so did her mother-in-law. Greatie and the princess were close friends in a day when such a friendship was unheard of, and Greatie simply laughed when she was criticized and sometimes slandered because of this relationship. I was delighted when I learned, only recently, that a good friend of mine is a descendant of this long-gone African princess.

  “Tell me the story about Greatie and the pirate.”

  In the old days of our country when there were many small clusters of settlers in tiny villages which are now large cities, it was the custom for the people in the “big house” to take in travelers for the night, or longer.

  One winter a charming Frenchman, Monsieur Dupont, came through the township of San Pablo, in which the young Greatie was living. He was grateful for hospitality for “a night or two,” and spent the winter. He was a witty conversationalist; his manners were courteously impeccable; he was a fine musician and he and Greatie played duets by the hour. When at last he left, with many declarations of affection all round, he gave her some of his music and books; and it was only when leafing through them that she saw his signature and discovered the real identity of her guest: Jean Laffite, the famous pirate.

  6

  They are all dead, long dead, these golden lads and lasses, so long dead that the taint of corruption no longer clings to their dust. They are all gone, François Philippe, Dublin and Scipio, the African princess and the French pirate. Greatie is remembered only by a few remaining great-grandchildren.

  And by me.

  The flesche is brukle, the Fiend is sle;

  Timor mortis conturbat me.

  Mother said once, “What a passion for education my forebears had!” When I think that Greatie was never formally schooled, it makes me wonder about the present-day school system. These “uneducated” women, Greatie, Mado, my mother, were fluent in more languages, had a far greater background in classics and world history, than most college graduates today.

  There was a tradition in the L’Engle family, the Fatio family, that every child in the household should be taught to read and write at an early age, and the children of the servants learned their letters side by side with the children of the family. Interesting; in every single family letter I have come across, the Negroes are always referred to as servants, never as slaves; and service, at that time, had not taken on the connotation of drudgery it now has; it was an honorable word; and if the Negroes on the plantations served their L’Engle and Fatio masters, the masters likewise served their servants.

  Maybe there were Simon Legrees in my family but they made little impression on my mother. And I do not believe that she has given me an overidealized picture of Greatie or of Mado; they are very alive for me, rounded, full, erudite women with all kinds of human flaws (which have come down to me): quick tempers, impetuousness, opinionatedness. But they are real. I respect them and love them. I try not to let them down, but I know that when I do, they would understand and expect me to pick myself up, shake off the dust,
and start right over.

  I’m grateful that Mado and Greatie are part of my roots. I’m unusually fortunate in Mother’s repertoire of stories, as wide as Greatie’s. My Oklahoman husband knows little of his roots, which is a loss.

  Pride of family: is there a difference between pride of family and respect for a family tradition and responsibility to it? I think so, although I have seen people whose pride in ancestry is sheer snobbery and seems to provide only an excuse for laziness and ungenerosity of spirit.

  Mado had the most generous of hearts; if I am mean of heart I am letting her down, as well as myself. Greatie had compassion and true friendship for a black woman at a time when such a thing was unheard of. Dearma visited those in jail and fought for prison reform long before it became a cause célèbre. The first hospital in the Deep South with beds for blacks came into being because of the vision of one of Mado’s grandsons. These are very small drops in the bucket, but they came at times when the bucket was nearly empty, and they give me a tradition of compassion and generosity to live up to. This is Mother’s family, because this is Mother’s book, but there are examples of courage and nobility in Father’s family, too. And, on both sides, there are examples of meanness and selfishness and greed. A vast, closely knit family such as Mother’s had its full share of scandals and skeletons in the closet. Most of these I did not learn from her, and since they were sometimes told me with intent to hurt, they have little place in this book.

  If I continue my journey through the past, beyond Mother, Dearma, Mado, Greatie, I come to forebears who settled in Charleston, South Carolina, well before the American Revolution. They were a conglomeration of French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution, and Frenchmen who had come to Ireland at the time of the Norman conquest, who had been given huge grants of land, and later had to flee Ireland when these same grants were taken away from them by Henry VIII’s Cromwell, a kind of rude justice.