Education: Retribution

Lucy Madeira Wing, who was 75 last week, is a reformed tomboy. For 52 years, as a kind of “retribution” for an early and intense dislike of anybody in skirts, she has been teaching girls. “Miss Madeira,” founder and headmistress of Virginia’s exclusive, expensive and excellent Madeira School, went to public school herself. She would like to see the day when private schools like .Madeira close down.

The Madeira School was founded for a grubbier motive than most educators like to admit: Lucy wanted to make more money. A Vassar graduate (’96), Miss Madeira began teaching English and history in a Washington, D.C. private school. After ten years of it, she was earning $950 a year. Borrowing $6,000, she started her school in 1906 in a rented building in downtown Washington. One month before the term began, a parent telegraphed to ask if there were any openings. Replied Miss Madeira: “All of them.”

For 25 years, the headmistress sank her profits in the school. Then she borrowed $900,000 on her reputation, in 1931 moved the school into new Georgian buildings on a wooded, 200-acre estate overlooking the Potomac, twelve miles from town. Today there are 186 girls, and most of the debt has been paid off.

Simply Dreadful. Miss Madeira, one of Washington’s last New Dealers, thinks it “simply dreadful” that most of her students must come from “economic royalist” families.* Returning from vacation, the daughter of a West Virginia mine operator once told the headmistress: “My father likes everything about your school except your ideas.”

Most Madeira girls go to good colleges (favorites: Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr), marry comfortably, and send their daughters back to Madeira. Among past & present Madeirans: Paulina Longworth, Joan Morgenthau, Susan Saltonstall, Diana Hopkins, Laurette Soong (niece of Madame Chiang Kai-shek).

Duty, Not Reward. To keep the girls from outspending each other, the headmistress dresses them in green jumpers and cotton dresses. Lipstick, smoking, furs and Washington charge accounts are forbidden. So are unchaperoned dates.

Miss Madeira has a simple definition of education: “Discipline of the mind.” The headmistress disciplines Madeira minds on liberal arts, the Bible and public affairs (she teaches the last two subjects herself). Exams are tough, but no marks are ever posted. Miss Madeira believes, with Robert Louis Stevenson, that “the world must return … to the word duty and be done with the word reward.” She also drums into the girls two mottoes of her own: “Function in disaster” and “Finish in style.”

A onetime Vassar actress, Miss Madeira still appears in student and faculty plays (some recent roles: the sultan in Arabian Nights, Two-Gun Dick in a Wild West show). Last week the girls put on a birthday performance of Miss Madeira’s favorite scenes from Shakespeare and watched her cut an enormous cake. Then the headmistress, in a new flowered print dress, made a speech in praise of longevity (“Growing old is a delightful experience”) and teaching (“A journey in the country of the mind”). Was Miss Madeira planning to quit? Said she: “I’m going to retire when the girls think I’m getting old.”

*Madeira’s tuition for boarders: $2,000 a year, plus extras. Next year: $2,200.