They disagreed completely on how I ought to be brought up. Father wanted a strict English childhood for me, and this is more or less what I got--nanny, governesses, supper on a tray in the nursery, dancing lessons, music lessons, skating lessons, art lessons."
Her father's failing health sent her parents to Switzerland and young Madeleine to a series of boarding schools, where she found herself very unpopular because of her shy, introspective ways. "I learned," L'Engle recounts in The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, "to put on protective coloring in order to survive in an atmosphere which was alien; and I learned to concentrate. Because I was never alone ... I learned to shut out the sound of the school and listen to the story or poem I was writing when I should have been doing schoolwork. The result of this early lesson in concentration is that I can write anywhere."
L'Engle became involved in theatre at Smith College, acting as well as writing plays. Soon after graduation, she was made an understudy for a Broadway production. Later she was given a few small roles and the position of assistant stage manager for Anton Chekhov's Cherry Orchard.
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