Madeleine and Sputzi, Dearma’s dog, circa 1935
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.
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. They will not be back until one thirty. Hane came in with us and listened to Carol’s radio.
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
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.
Being on the student council also conferred privileges, like extended library access, that appealed to Madeleine. The council kept everyone on her toes by having a couple of leadership positions that were rotated and voted on monthly. The highest level of leadership, though, was board member, reserved for upperclasswomen, and the tenure was for a longer term. These positions became a source of anxiety for Madeleine once she was on the student council: the elections for leadership and board were often a popularity contest, and there was a great deal of lobbying and retribution paid, but she did aspire to rise through the ranks.
Madeleine also spent a lot of time writing her own stories and poems.
Poem, circa 1935
She was very serious about improving her writing and someday being an accomplished author, as shown in a journal entry from the summer after her first year at Ashley Hall.
I am rewriting an old story that I wrote last year called Pippa and hope to make something fairly decent out of it—also, a collection of poems called “Peter Thinks,” and when I’ve finished, I’m going to send it to the publishers. I know that many people get a stage when they want to write, but it is no stage for me. I was born with the itch for writing in me, and o, I couldn’t stop it if I tried. I have always written. Why, if I look back to earlier journals I see pages on my desire to write. When I was a tiny child I was never so happy as when scribbling rhymes. O, I have to write, there is no doubt about that, and in this journal as in my first real one, I am going to copy that last wonderful verse from “The Fringed Gentian”:
Then whisper, blossom, in thy sleep
How I may upward climb
The alpine path, so hard, so steep,
That leads to heights sublime.
How may I reach that far off goal
Of true and honored fame
And write upon its shining scroll
A woman’s humble name.
And now I do swear a vow. I, Madeleine L’Engle Camp, do solemnly vow this day that I will climb the alpine path and write my name on the scroll of fame.
The poem she quotes in this journal entry was reprinted in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Emily series, which remained a favorite of hers. She began writing in her journal in earnest, using it not only to record events but also to sketch characters and practice dialogue.
That summer she went to Huckleberry Camp, in Connecticut, where on one occasion she went too far in playing a practical joke, exercising her storytelling skills but scaring herself in the process.
I wish I did not have a way of doing things that I instantly regret. Tonight I had a devilish—yes, I must use that word—desire to see how gullible Gertie Pike was. So I told her that my name was not really Madeleine Camp, but Carol Grave. Well, it would have been all right if I had let it go at that, but I didn’t. I carried it further and said that I was adopted by some Camps, and that before, I had lived in Switzerland with my parents. Well I had to go on then. So I said there was a fire, and I can’t write what I said next because it makes me feel too awful, and of course, though Gertie had taken it in I instantly confessed that I had been fooling because it makes me feel awful to think of anything happening to mother and father, and o, I wish I hadn’t said it. Supposing it really—O, I can’t even think that. O, why did I say it—O, why am I always doing things I feel terribly over after? But I have such an awful way of being and feeling impersonal about myself, and O, I must stop even writing about this or I will worry over it for days.
After camp, she returned home to Red Gables and her parents and Dearma, who was still ill. Days were lazy and hot, and Madeleine worked on a book of poems, wandered the boardwalk, and swam in the ocean. She also thought deeply and continued to be concerned about the state of the world.
I am afraid of ideas tonight. Mother and father talked politics for a couple of minutes tonight, and politics always get me jumpy when the world is in a mess like it is now, and so tonight I am afraid of ideas—not actualities.
An idea has more power over human mind than anything else—actuality you can touch, but ideas are elusive—ununderstandable. But these thoughts have the power to make you understand beauty, fear, rejoice—almost more than actualities.
Madeleine’s bedroom was right across from Dearma’s. She often had to turn out her light before she was quite ready for sleep in order to not disturb her grandmother, but she didn’t mind. She loved the sound of Dearma’s gentle snoring. But then, just before Madeleine was scheduled to go back to school, Dearma died.
Dearma died yesterday morning a while before five o’clock. She didn’t feel well when she went to bed, and Mother fanned her for a long time. Her pulse was slow, but not as slow as it had been often before. I woke up in the night and heard her go to the bathroom and get back into bed and turn out the light. Later I woke up again and heard her breathing queerly. I ran and told Mother and we called the Doctor but it was too late.
I am not going to remember all that. I am going to remember her the way she really was … The funeral was this afternoon, and O, I can’t write anymore. I feel as though my feelings were all bottled up inside me, and I can’t take the cork out. I wish I could. It would be such a relief if I could just write everything out … I read in Emily Thinks about the milestones that you pass. I think that this has been my passing from childhood into girlhood, because as mother says, though I am fifteen, I have really been a child all these years.
And I read in another book that a person is never dead until you have forgotten them, so Dearma can never be dead to me, because I will never forget her.
When Madeleine returned to Ashley Hall for her second year of high school, she threw herself into student activities, still excited to be on the student council. She was also elected assistant editor of the school’s literary magazine, Cerberus.
Cerberus staff photo, with Madeleine standing fourth from left, circa 1936
But her poor grades at Châtelard meant that it was unclear when she would graduate. She had hoped that she would only have another two years of high school, but she was doing poorly in Latin. She found it difficult to put an effort into something she didn’t understand or enjoy.
I have just been speaking to Miss McBee about whether I am to graduate next year or the year after. If I pass all five subjects this year, I will be able to graduate next year, but I am so mixed-up in my Latin because of not studying at Chatelard the first year, and being sick a lot of the next year and not studying very hard the rest of it that I am afraid I will fail. Besides, I know so little about it that I am not interested enough to study very hard this year, but Father and Mother want me to learn it because they think it will help me in my writing.
If not obedient, Madeleine was ever creative in her assignments for school. In American history, she wrote a paper on the early American colonies as a series of letters. She imagined a band of dispersed friends writing back to the one who stayed behind in England. She wrote letters from Virginia, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and more. Her teacher, unimpressed, gave her a C+ with this comment: “This is interesting and well done although not what I had expected. History if viewed correctly provides its own thrill and human touch without additional fiction.” In English, however, Madeleine’s work was so good that she was exempt from taking final exams.
Like most teenagers, Madeleine was caught up in any drama that happened between other girls and herself. She wanted to surround herself with girls who were both effervescent and intellectual, and when she was stuck with someone who wasn’t like that, she could be grumpy.
I’d be happier with another roommate. But I don’t want to worry Mother and Father. But I don’t like Mary. She just gets on my nerves. She has no enthusiasm, no pep or vitality, she hardly ever speaks above a whisper, and she isn’t in the least conversational or original or human and she hasn’t any backbone. And these are qualities I like in a girl.
Mary and Madeleine never did manage to become friends.
Shortly before her sixteenth birthday Madeleine wrote:
But O, I don’t want to grow up! I remember how unhappy I was when I was thirteen. I didn’t want to be in my teens. I wanted to stay a little girl and I still do.
And once again her father had strong opinions about her education—he thought she needed another year at Ashley Hall.
I am, to put it mildly, discouraged, I have tons of work to make up in Latin and algebra, and so I have to drop one of them. And so just as I am getting interested in old Caesar, I have to put him behind me. Miss McBee says that I can take the Calvert system this summer and make it up, and so graduate next year. So far, well and good, but Father doesn’t want me to graduate next year. He thinks 17 is too young. And isn’t! O, it isn’t! I think eighteen is too old. But I suppose it would help to get a more extensive education, but then I won’t graduate from college till I’m twenty-two, and then I want to go to the art students league, and then study abroad, and I’ll be middle aged before I finish my education!
Madeleine wrote lots of poetry and sent it to the magazine Good Housekeeping under the pseudonym Elizabeth Applegate Martin, her father’s grandmother’s name, which she thought beautiful. She even wrote a pretend letter to that great-grandmother about it.
When her poems were rejected, she accepted it with good grace and more than a little bit of bravado.
She shared her poetry with her parents. Her father would send her back letters of both encouragement and serious feedback.
April 21, 1935
Dear Daughter,
… On our way back we stopped at the post-office, and found your letter with the poems, “Night Cry” and “Night.” I like them both. In the first: “The moon shivers behind a thin cloud” seems a very suggestive and rememberable line, but of course all appreciations and criticisms are personal. Mother thinks that “Night” has too much use of the word, light, but my feeling is that your intention was to make your effect with just that repetition, and I believe with a little smoothing it will be very successful. Of course “The night with its thousands of eyes—” is in itself very lovely, and you are perfectly free to phrase it so; but that old war-horse, “The night has a thousand eyes, the day but one,” I think detracts from the dignity of your line, because in the public mind it has much the same appeal as a crooner’s song; but you must decide for yourself. With a little smoothing you have a lovely thing there.
More Journal Entries from Madeleine’s First Two Years at Ashley Hall
Tomorrow is Leonora’s birthday. She will be seventeen! Heavens! Aren’t we aged! Well, I have to wait for two years before I get to be there, anyhow. I wish we didn’t have to grow up—at least not so quickly. It is such fun to be a little girl.
We also had forum tonight, and Miss McBee told us of her experiences in the war. It was awfully interesting, but O, I hope that nothing like that ever happens again.
I am much too shy. It is mother’s despair! And mine too, incidentally—I hate my shy awkwardness in being introduced to people. Once I get to know them it isn’t so bad, and Leonora has often told me that I am a very interesting conversationalist. But I can’t be sure of that. It seems to be that I either talk too little or too much.
I must stop losing things, I say things occasionally that I shouldn’t say … Another thing I do occasionally that I hadn’t thought of before but that is very serious, and that I must never do again is that when I haven’t studied a lesson well enough I exaggerate on the amount I have studied. A lot of people do, but that makes no difference. I haven’t been doing it lately because I have been studying, and I didn’t realize that I was exaggerating when I did, but it is a form of lying, and I have always prided myself on being strictly honest.
Today I received an autographed copy of Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain. Saturday I received a letter from Mr. Brett at Macmillan saying that he had spent a delightful evening with father, and that it was agreed that I would probably enjoy receiving an autographed copy. And it was coming under separate cover and here it is. Everyone says that it is simply wonderful, but I am afraid that it will depress me awfully, because anything about the war always does. O, there mustn’t be another war.
O, if only I can succeed and be a poet and author and an artist. I must. O, God, give me the determination. And the will to work, and the talent. I wish I dared say genius. I will say it. Please give me genius.
I know italics are midvictorian, and everything else, but when you are as tremendously in earnest as I am, you have to have them.
Louisa May Alcott had an awful temper, and we both have the same birthday. Maybe that has something to do with it! Louisa succeeded, and I must too!