Becoming Madeleine

Ashley Hall senior yearbook picture, 1937

In the summer of 1936, instead of going to camp, Madeleine stayed in Jacksonville to take a college entrance exam preparatory class. She was thinking about her future. She knew, of course, that she was going to be a writer, but she wasn’t sure college needed to be part of it. But Miss McBee, the Ashley Hall principal, often took a special interest in some of her students and encouraged them, including Madeleine, to go to Smith College, her own alma mater. It was considered a great honor to be tapped by Miss McBee, and Madeleine knew it. That, and her father’s approval of the idea, inspired her to try to prepare for the exam.

During the class she met Patricia Collins, who was, like Madeleine, an unusual girl among the southern students. She, too, was very tall, gawky, and bookish, and she wanted to study medicine. Madeleine and Patricia developed a fast and true friendship that lasted the rest of their lives. Like another of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s characters, Anne Shirley, the protagonist in Anne of Green Gables, Madeleine recognized “kindred spirits” and knew they were precious.

In Jacksonville, Madeleine was expected to attend social dances and aspire to genteel southern womanhood. She did not. She hated the dances and did not harbor the expected aspiration. She was not good at small talk, she was awkward with the boys (most of whom she towered over), and she inevitably threw up at every dance. She would find out later that she was allergic to bivalves: the scallops and clams and oysters that were southern staples in various forms at the dances. But at the time she felt as if she were allergic to the life that her parents hoped her to have. She became expert at finding excuses to stay off the dance floor; dawdling in the bathroom so no one would ask her to dance and even going so far as to rip her dress on purpose so she would have to stay home and sew it up.

Madeleine, circa 1937

When she returned to Ashley Hall in September 1936, she was a senior, rooming with her friend Nancy. She was still on the student council, but she wasn’t elected to the board until another girl left. With that, she felt the Eustace affair of the previous spring was finally behind her, and she was full of energy and excitement.

Then came the bad news: her father was desperately ill. He had caught a cold that turned into pneumonia. He was in the hospital in Jacksonville, and Madeleine needed to come at once to say goodbye. As she sat on the train, she tried to read Jane Eyre, but she couldn’t concentrate. Instead she looked out the window, watching the familiar landscape and saying over and over again: “Please, God, do whatever is best for Father. Please, do whatever is best.”

He died on October 30, before she arrived. Everyone was sad and somber, but there were no tears, not even from Mado, who simply went quiet, a paragon of stoic virtue.

Madeleine was raised to believe that such stoicism was the ideal. A journal entry written after her return to Ashley Hall indicates her effort to mask her emotional turmoil.

It is very hard to write this without crying, but I hope I have been brave. I didn’t want to cry—not really cry—when I was in Jax because I wanted to be brave and to help mother, and when I got back to school the tears wouldn’t come, but there was a great ache, and it was hard to laugh and joke, but I tried, and I hope succeeded fairly well.

Her father was on her mind a great deal in the following months, and his death pricked her ambition.

One reason that I don’t spend as much time on my lessons as I should is that when I think of a poem I simply have to write it, and I have ideas for so many poems and stories too often. But I do think that writing poetry and stories, and reading books in my free time instead of studying is far more valuable to me than if I did study. For I have to succeed in my writing, for Father’s sake as well as my own, for it meant so much to him, and he just missed success by bad fortune and not enough discipline.

In 1936, higher education for women wasn’t a given. Madeleine would be able to finish high school at Ashley Hall, but now that her father was gone, it was expected that she would return to Jacksonville and take care of her mother instead of going to college.

I do want to go to college, but I can’t leave Mother alone next year, and whatever I do, I must never let her think that it is a sacrifice for me to give college up. But I do want to go. One thing—most of the greatest writers never went to college. Oh, I must, I will succeed!

Although Madeleine thought her journal writing was an important outlet, one of her teachers thought differently.

Miss Sylvia says she doesn’t approve of diaries because she thinks that they are always written with the thought of other people’s seeing them and having them published, and that one is never honest with oneself in them.

Now, to be perfectly honest with myself, I am writing this journal with the idea of having it published, but not until I’m dead. Because I think we’re living in a very interesting age, and the thoughts and impressions of any young girl of average intelligence and interests of things more than the commonplace should possibly prove valuable historically in understanding the people of a certain period. And I’m always trying more and more to be perfectly honest with myself, although I absolutely admit that I wasn’t at first, though not putting down all things often put me in an unfavourable rather than a favourable light. But now I’m trying to put the bad things about myself as well as the good. What are my faults? Well, I’m very untidy, except where my art is concerned […] I do try to be neat, but so often I stop to write just a bit more of that poem or read just one more paragraph when I should be cleaning up. I have a sharp temper, and I lose it easily, but I don’t stay mad long and I never sulk. I worry too much, and I have too many moods. I ask too much of people. When I am interested in a conversation I am apt to talk too much, but I don’t think I burble about trivialities. I don’t study hard enough. There are many more things, I’m sure, but I can’t think of them just now. As for my virtues—I’ll leave them for the observant reader to find out!

The Christmas holidays that year were bittersweet. Mado had sold Red Gables, but she had moved into an apartment in the new skyscraper in Jacksonville where Grandfather Bion and Gaga had settled, so Madeleine and Mado did have family to keep them company.

Back at school, Madeleine was elected president of the student council for the spring 1937 term, the highest honor, but after all the drama and heartache, she didn’t find much joy in the position.

The day after tomorrow the Easter hols begin! I need them very much. Being president of Student Council is very wearing, and it is such a bore being an “example” all the time. I don’t feel the joy in being prominent that I did when I was “coming up” in the world. I hope I’m not as smug about it all as I was then. I’m more popular now at any rate, I think most people like me now instead of just my own particular crowd of friends. At any rate, I haven’t any particular enemies—except for Miss Thomas. That woman!

Later that spring, she worried about her final exams.

The exams begin next week, and I’m petrified, especially of chemistry. It would be just too awful if I failed and didn’t graduate after having gone through these four years to do so. And if I don’t do well on the school exams, what chance have I with college boards? Although it seems awfully futile taking college boards when I’m not going to be able to go to college.

Despite her worries, Madeleine did graduate from Ashley Hall. In her senior yearbook she was described this way:

Known For: Chemical fantasy, Admired For: Literary ability, Main Occupation: Falling down, Ambition: To stand on two feet, Likely to Be: First woman president.

But it still wasn’t clear whether or not she would be going to college. Her grades, her family obligations, and her family’s financial situation all seemed to threaten.

Illustration from Madeleine’s journal

More Journal Entries from Madeleine’s Senior Year at Ashley Hall

I’m so desperately, desperately glad I’m young. Growing old isn’t so bad if you can only do it gracefully, but so many people do it in such a sloppy manner that [it] is almost repulsive.

We had a perfectly horrible Chemistry test yesterday, which, thank goodness, I passed, thanks to a couple of lucky guesses. It is a great comfort to remember that Kipling was terrible in Latin and Maths!

I am longing for a letter from Peggy to give me the English point of view [on Edward VIII’s abdication in December 1936]. Poor Woodford is very cut up about it. Miss McBee says that Edward would not have made a good king—that his character, although charming, is weak; and that he drinks terribly, and I know only too well what that means.