Martian's Daughter: A Memoir by Marina von Neumann Whitman
Authors: Marina von Neumann Whitman
Ads: Link
Granny Gitta was as tightly wound and tense as any of the others, but she was outwardly calm and gentle with me.
The move to Princeton gave me the opportunity, once again, to go to a truly remarkable school. The quality of education delivered at Miss Fine's School for Girls totally belied its prissy, finishing-school name. Within the walls of a converted mansion in the middle of town, the environment was one of an intellectual intensity that could perhaps be achieved, in the 1950s, only in a single-sex institution. Many of our teachers were brilliant women who today would be doctors, lawyers, or, most likely, professors at first-class colleges or universities, but for whom already-limited opportunities were narrowed further by the fact that they were faculty wives or otherwise tied geographically to the Princeton area.
Not only did we get first-class instruction in the usual basic high-school subjects, but if three or more students wanted a more advanced class in Latin or Greek or calculus, one of the faculty members would teach it. We read Racine and Molière in French class, Virgil and Ovid in Latin. But what really stretched us to our intellectual limits were the history and English classes taught, in alternate years, by Anne Shepherd.
Mrs. Shepherd, a Vassar graduate divorcée with a brilliant only son (who, tragically, grew up to become one of the first American casualties in the Vietnam War), was the sort of teacher who comes along once in a lifetime. Surely everyone in our class could not have been geniuses, but she somehow inspired us to think and probe and imagine as if we were. When, in 1965, Miss Fine's School merged with its male counterpart, Princeton Country Day School, to become the Princeton Day School (PDS), Mrs. Shepherd's intellectual passion and brilliance proved as effective with adolescent boys as it was with adolescent girls. When she died, at the age of ninety, she was still teaching, as a volunteer in the Princeton Adult School. And today plaques in the library, the computer center, and an assembly hall, as well as a bust in an outdoor garden at PDS, honor her memory.
The results of this nurturing were amazing. Four of the twelve members of my senior class applied to Radcliffe College, the women's branch of Harvard, which in those days conducted a nationwide test in English literature for all applicants. One day in the spring of our senior year,the headmistress of Miss Fine's received a phone call from the president of Radcliffe, inquiring about the school. She told him it was a private school for girls in Princeton, New Jersey, then asked why he wanted to know. It turned out that the four applicants from Miss Fine's had placed something like first, third, sixth, and ninth in that competitive exam (I placed third).
Some of us not only stretched our minds for Anne Shepherd but we also opened our hearts in candid outpourings of our hopes and fears. In one essay, written loosely in the form of a poem, I described the stage of life I was going through.
Adolescence is a bittersweet hour
Between childhood and the time
When we meet the world face to face,
And become a part of it. Now all
Is new, confusing, the joys so strange,
So sharp, that they are almost pains.
…
…Now the warm,
Close security of childhood dissolves
And we see the world, a frightening place
But, oh, so tempting, promising success,
Yet warning of a thousand pitfalls on the way.
Will we succeed or fail, will happiness be ours,
Or grief? Will we even have a chance to try
This world, or will everything end tomorrow
In a blinding ball of flame? No one knows.
We can only work, and hope, and think.
And, in the dark, become children again,
And dream.
Also stashed in my attic is a yellowed copy of a paper I wrote in tenth grade, tracing the literary history of a classic morality tale, the battle for his soul between Dr. Faustus and
The move to Princeton gave me the opportunity, once again, to go to a truly remarkable school. The quality of education delivered at Miss Fine's School for Girls totally belied its prissy, finishing-school name. Within the walls of a converted mansion in the middle of town, the environment was one of an intellectual intensity that could perhaps be achieved, in the 1950s, only in a single-sex institution. Many of our teachers were brilliant women who today would be doctors, lawyers, or, most likely, professors at first-class colleges or universities, but for whom already-limited opportunities were narrowed further by the fact that they were faculty wives or otherwise tied geographically to the Princeton area.
Not only did we get first-class instruction in the usual basic high-school subjects, but if three or more students wanted a more advanced class in Latin or Greek or calculus, one of the faculty members would teach it. We read Racine and Molière in French class, Virgil and Ovid in Latin. But what really stretched us to our intellectual limits were the history and English classes taught, in alternate years, by Anne Shepherd.
Mrs. Shepherd, a Vassar graduate divorcée with a brilliant only son (who, tragically, grew up to become one of the first American casualties in the Vietnam War), was the sort of teacher who comes along once in a lifetime. Surely everyone in our class could not have been geniuses, but she somehow inspired us to think and probe and imagine as if we were. When, in 1965, Miss Fine's School merged with its male counterpart, Princeton Country Day School, to become the Princeton Day School (PDS), Mrs. Shepherd's intellectual passion and brilliance proved as effective with adolescent boys as it was with adolescent girls. When she died, at the age of ninety, she was still teaching, as a volunteer in the Princeton Adult School. And today plaques in the library, the computer center, and an assembly hall, as well as a bust in an outdoor garden at PDS, honor her memory.
The results of this nurturing were amazing. Four of the twelve members of my senior class applied to Radcliffe College, the women's branch of Harvard, which in those days conducted a nationwide test in English literature for all applicants. One day in the spring of our senior year,the headmistress of Miss Fine's received a phone call from the president of Radcliffe, inquiring about the school. She told him it was a private school for girls in Princeton, New Jersey, then asked why he wanted to know. It turned out that the four applicants from Miss Fine's had placed something like first, third, sixth, and ninth in that competitive exam (I placed third).
Some of us not only stretched our minds for Anne Shepherd but we also opened our hearts in candid outpourings of our hopes and fears. In one essay, written loosely in the form of a poem, I described the stage of life I was going through.
Adolescence is a bittersweet hour
Between childhood and the time
When we meet the world face to face,
And become a part of it. Now all
Is new, confusing, the joys so strange,
So sharp, that they are almost pains.
…
…Now the warm,
Close security of childhood dissolves
And we see the world, a frightening place
But, oh, so tempting, promising success,
Yet warning of a thousand pitfalls on the way.
Will we succeed or fail, will happiness be ours,
Or grief? Will we even have a chance to try
This world, or will everything end tomorrow
In a blinding ball of flame? No one knows.
We can only work, and hope, and think.
And, in the dark, become children again,
And dream.
Also stashed in my attic is a yellowed copy of a paper I wrote in tenth grade, tracing the literary history of a classic morality tale, the battle for his soul between Dr. Faustus and
Similar Books
