Against Wind and Tide

by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Now—that’s enough about that. As to the paper: I wrote out before Saturday, in expectation of seeing you, some notes that I hoped to go over with you on some of the facts of my life and my points of view. They may not be at all what you want and they may be illegible, unexplained by word of mouth.

  On the questions in your letter about “why certain people write certain books,” one could write a book alone. The spurs to writing are infinite, as you must know. Some people write as a protest against the imperfect world and all they’ve suffered in it. (Your father wrote sometimes this way—critical of the society he had lived in.) Some people write out of love of the world—poets chiefly—praising it. (Do you know the poem of Elinor Wylie on the earth, ending up “I kiss the scars upon its face”?) Katherine Mansfield wrote driven by illness and death, feeling she must capture life in writing. Proust wrote in the same way to recapture the past. (Everything changes, everything passes—except art.) Chekhov and Tolstoy wrote out of love and compassion for human beings (Chekhov was a compassionate doctor as well—Tolstoy, a reformer), etc.

  I think, too, that women write for different reasons than men. (That is, true women—who fulfill women’s roles as well as write—not masculine women who are in another category.) There is a creative urge in men which I think is not as strong in women who, after all, satisfy that in having children. It seems to me that true women often write out of an excess of the mother instinct in them. They write to give more milk-of-human-kindness and more wisdom and more insights than their children can take. They write for other “children” in the world. (And I don’t mean literal “children” waiting for child-stories.) They have garnered a certain amount of honey in their hives—more than enough for the family around them—and they must go on giving it to the wider world because it is in their nature to give.

  But to come down to the particular: Why did I write? Why do I write? I think one must distinguish between the incidental accidents that turn one to writing (in my case, feeling inadequate in the world of conversation as an adolescent, or as in the years after losing my child, in sorrow, as an expression of and escape from the difficulties of life), and the deep inner spurs to writing that lead one on, no matter what the accidents of one’s life.

  I would write even if I published nothing. I wrote for years in diaries and notebooks and poems before I published anything. I believe I write to analyze, clarify, understand and perceive life. I write in order to see more clearly. If I did not write, I would be blind and deaf—as well as dumb. It is my lens through which to see myself and the world.

  Writing is a glass-bottomed bucket through which one looks to the still world below the ruffled surface of the waves. It is the blind man’s stick with which I tap my way along the pavement. It is also my keel, which keeps me steady in choppy waters and gives me direction. So you see I write because I have to. And incidentally it happens to be all I have to give (outside of what I give to my family). I give dates because I am a date tree. Not everyone likes dates. I tire of them, too. I would like to give oranges, pomegranates, or coconuts. But I don’t happen to grow anything but dates, unfortunately.

  Well—I cannot write you a letter like this every week and it would be simpler to see you. I would love to discuss related problems, as I think you may write in the future. Your poem is deep and also moving, though not completely clear. It doesn’t quite come through as a whole. “Anchored depths” is the best verse. I think you can write. I wish you would read, if it is in your college library, Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. It was a kind of writing—and living—Bible to me for many years, and I think you would like it. It would speak to you. Forgive pencil—but I write more easily with one.

  My love—

  AML

  If you quote anything from this letter in your paper you should say—“From an unpublished letter of AML.”

  Scott’s Cove, Darien, Conn.

  February 4th, 1963

  Dear Mrs. Johnson,*

  I came back from town last night to find your very nice letter to me with its cordial invitation to come to the luncheon you are giving for Señora Betancourt, wife of the President of Venezuela, and to have perhaps an hour or so afterwards to talk to you.

  I was very pleased by your letter on many counts, for your kind words about Gift from the Sea, and because of the directness and honesty of contact I felt talking to you for a few minutes the night of the White House dinner (I was more grateful for this than you can know). Naturally, also, because of the honor of the invitation to lunch with the wife of a head of state of a neighboring nation.

  But I must admit, especially because of the opportunity for that hour or so afterwards to talk to you about what you learn from and say to women in America in your various talks. I don’t know that I could offer any suggestions to you in your difficult task (I myself find talking to more than one or two women a most unnatural role), but the subject of women’s interests, needs and problems in America today is close to my heart.

  Before I go further I regret to say that, much as I am honored by the invitation to lunch on the 20th of February, it is really not possible for me on that date. We have a long-standing and traditional family ski-trip planned for that weekend. It involves three families, two generations of skiers, sisters, cousins, nephews, and nieces. I fear I cannot disrupt the occasion at this moment.

  I do, however, want to express my sincere thanks to you and to add that I would really like to see and talk to you if the opportunity should arise easily for you in your very busy and scheduled life. Perhaps in New York, or I could take the shuttle to Washington for a few hours possibly sometime.

  I will add our (unlisted) telephone number in case a moment should open. I do plan to be abroad (where my oldest daughter is this winter) for several weeks in March, but otherwise expect to be right here. I lead a rather unsocial life, since social occasions interfere so greatly with any kind of peace for writing. So I am, or can be, fairly flexible.

  With my sincere thanks and regret that I cannot be with you on the 20th.

  A cold Sunday, May 26th, 1963

  Dearest C.

  I cannot send off this license to you without trying to add something on Scott and the voluminous correspondence now going on between you and him, me and Ansy, Scott, etc. (I have a whole dossier on Scott on my desk.) It is hard to write about it. I wish I could talk to you, and to him, and that you could talk to him. At the moment, I tend to feel (with the little fox in St.-Ex.’s Little Prince) “Words are a source of misunderstanding.” And yet one must try.

  I felt, as you know, extremely upset by your original letter to Scott, written and sent off before I had a chance to read it, while I was off in Bucks County. I felt it was a very destructive letter, even though the facts as you laid them out to Scott (on his account-keeping, on his college and school records, on his managing his finances, on his plans for the future, on his taking the apartment without any money to pay for it and without letting us know—i.e., being generous at someone else’s expense) were irrefutable. When I wrote Scott a day or two later (waiting, as you asked me, so that the two letters did not reach him in the same mail), I covered a lot of the same ground and more. I told him that the things that you had said, the facts you had presented, were true and I could not argue against them.

  Nevertheless, I feel your letter to him was written in such a way, and couched in such terms, as to appear to be harsh and humiliating and dictatorial. (“Words are a source of misunderstanding.”) Perhaps you did not mean to be any of these things, or perhaps you wrote it in anger, or perhaps you felt, as I think you expressed to me, that it was a good thing to jerk him short—to make him think, to have him a bit pinched, etc.

  My own feeling was, and is, that this was not the kind of letter to send to anyone, least of all an adolescent (I realize Scott is a man and is old enough to be in the Army, but he’s still adolescent) boy alone in a foreign city who has had a discouraging year (due to his own failures, agreed) and a recent blow to his p
lans and hopes (of getting into Cambridge). These failures and setbacks speak for themselves. You don’t have to rub it in with harsh words, a history of failures, and withdrawal of support.

  Also, it is ineffective as a letter. When you write a letter in that tone, the effect is, rather than bringing someone around to reason (“snapping them out of it,” to quote your letter), it tends to stiffen their resistance and persistence in a course which may well be unreasonable and foolish. Any person of spirit and any child of yours with that inheritance of spunk and independence is bound to react with fight. (You won’t support me? OK, I’ll do it alone. I don’t need you and never will ask you again. There are other people I can turn to.) That kind of letter was bound to turn Scott away from you and to others for help, support and guidance. That is why I think it was a mistake, and I regret it.

  You have sent me Scott’s answer, which was what one would have expected. It is a rather wordy and sometimes vague letter, but certain things stand out: along with an acceptance of your criticisms and acceptance of his failures, a certain pride, dignity and courage. There is no sign in that letter (you may have a later one) of his reasons for the stand he is taking—i.e. of staying on in Rome, or of how he is going to meet his very real problems of finance, of schooling, of the problems of everyday life that he has not, up to now, handled too responsibly. But there is every sign that he intends to do it alone without your help or guidance—or mine.

  My guess is that he will flounder around quite a bit this first year, and then pull himself out of it—not without quite a few mistakes, pitfalls and heartaches (I hate to see it). But he has, if I read him right, chosen his stand. He prefers to learn from the world than to learn from you. It may be the harsher way to learn, but it may be the best way for Scott to learn.

  I do not know whether I can explain it to you, or even if I can put it in words—or even if put in words it would convince you. It takes a whole other way of looking at Scott and listening to him. To understand Scott’s pattern you must look back at him, as far back as you can remember. (I am now just talking in hints and clues. This will not be clear or perhaps convincing.) I see Scott as an unusually independent child (“I listen to myself”) and also an unusually sensitive child, idealistic. Also stubborn and persistent. His independence may come from you, his sensitivity from me, his stubbornness from both of us! But the non-conformity has been there a long time.

  Scott has to do it differently. Why? I would try at the answer by guessing that he had to rebel early to hold his own—against his brother, his father, his older sister. In any case, I think he is and has always been fighting the authority—in school, in college. It is normal for children to rebel against their parents, especially their parent of the same sex. Ansy rebelled against me. Reeve in a quieter way. The older boys did it more normally. Land had his fling, but Jon’s rebellion was just emancipation—one hardly noticed it. Scott, however, goes at it in a big way, and has been the rebel for a long time—but not against you. He has rebelled against orderliness, against being on time, against doing well at school, against examinations, regulations, accounts—but not against you. Perhaps he always admired you too much. You are a tremendously strong person; it is hard to rebel against you. Also, you are always right, or almost always right. It is almost impossible to rebel against someone who is always right, who is reasonable, who is infallible.

  Of course, he is going to flounder around. I’m afraid he will flounder around a lot for a year or two, but I have a feeling he will be able to take the real beatings of his own blundering from the world better than the fake beatings from his parents’ disapproval.

  Actually, I do not think we can help him much here. This makes me sad and I feel sadness in your letter. But I feel Anne can help him more than anyone. She is the closest to him, and she has been through a long adolescence too—and she had to leave us. She had to find a new family, a new life, a new country. (This is rebellion, too. I ask myself why she can take from the Feydys what she couldn’t take from me—from us?) But she is finding her way to strength. Paris is not Mother. Cambridge is not (for Scott) either Father or Mother, and he did better on his own in England than anywhere else so far.

  Anne has been in touch with Scott and has written me and will see him sometime during the summer. She sounds quite free and strong. She has a part-time job for next year doing translating and as a guidance counselor for Sarah Lawrence girls in Paris.

  Scott’s Cove

  Late at night, Sunday, June 9th, 1963

  Dearest Scott,

  I was very happy to get your letters of May 29th and June 2nd (one describing your routine and apartment, the next describing John’s mother, Baroness Backhoven—also the ants!). Both letters sound much more real and easier and like you. I am also delighted I can see you on my way to Como. I have not yet got my reservation since I have been waiting for your father to get it through Pan Am. But I will cable you when I do.

  I understand much more about the apartment now, and think perhaps it was the best thing to do. I really—as you guessed—don’t approve of your rigid austere routine. Too rigid. You don’t have to prove your worth to me by any such Puritan austerity. But perhaps you’re proving something to yourself or Father. A more moderate schedule works better, and is more natural to you, and will last longer.

  However, you said you were going to relax it in a month. I do approve of the Italian and Latin. Rome is a good place to study Latin and it may well help you. Also am delighted you may be able to take the exams in December and that you’ve written other universities in England (good reasoning here).

  The letter about the Baroness delighted me. I wish I could meet her. Never lose an opportunity to meet or see or talk to someone like that. They have their wisdom of life and can sometimes help you to find yours; just by talking to them, one is more oneself.

  Sorry about the ants! (I find flitting the surfaces helps—also one can buy “ant powder” or traps.)

  I have had a short letter from your father, very full of praise about a letter you wrote him, on your plans (since I didn’t see the letter, I can’t comment). I do find it hard to bounce up and down with the sudden changes. You are the same person you were three or four weeks ago, and I found much to admire and praise in you then—still feel the same. Though perhaps this means you have communicated yourself and your plans better to him in these last letters. That is something.

  We must talk about communication and its difficulties.

  Scott’s Cove

  Monday, September 16th, 1963

  Darling Reeve—

  What a cold goodbye I gave you on those granite steps at Harvard! Not even a hug and a kiss, but somehow I felt I could not prolong that moment by anything—that it was best for you to go to Sarah and the unpacking, and for me to go back as fast as possible to Scott’s Cove. Then the new life—new lives—could begin.

  I suppose one isn’t “meant to like it”—leaving one’s child or one’s mother—and so it hurts. But it is a “normal” hurt, so to speak, one that goes with life so one can find one’s way out of it. I think it will be so for you, too. It is normal to be meeting and parting at your age with those one loves and feels close to. And you cannot find—at Radcliffe—quickly others to be so close to.

  But you will find them. You did at Château-d’Oex and you did at St. George’s and you did at Rosemary and you will at Radcliffe.* But at first it will be all queer and uprooted and just practical, dry, confusing-on-the surface things that don’t feed you inside (the astral body!). But they are a help, too, and they are to become routine, and routine tides you over until you can go deeper—find real friends or real interests. The beginning of things is always superficial. It takes time for the deep things to grow. But you are wise and patient and know how to have faith and wait and watch for the real things to come.

  They will come, even right away, in little spurts—little sprigs of green. You will find someone who likes Handel’s Water Music or Rilke—or you will see Rhidian,�
� someone you can be honest with and admit how confusing it is. (Just admit it’s confusing—don’t try to make order out of it immediately. Just go along with it—gradually, it will sort itself out.)

  Well, you will work it out. Try to get enough sleep.

  I miss you very much. It has been so wonderful to live along with you for so many years. But it is a normal loneliness and I will recover—I will find a new life, too. And I have complete faith that you—if you follow your deep and very true instincts—will find a great deal of richness wherever you are.

  Much love, darling. I think about you all the time.

  Darien

  October 21st, 1963

  Darling Ansy,

  It was wonderful to get your letter, plus pictures, plus sample of the (I assume!) wedding dress material.‡ I think it is very lovely. When did you get the material? And the sketches look as if it would be very practical, too (not exactly what one expects from a wedding dress, but we were a sentimental generation). It is exquisite and romantic and you will look lovely in it. I don’t think $336.00 is too much for a wedding dress which is also a suit and has three tops and is an evening dress too. Your drawings were a great deal of fun. I did not show them to your father (but will to Reeve) because I thought they would conjure up the image of a formal wedding which would scare him away, maybe!

  I think you should, unless you have already, write him a letter and tell him exactly what the “wedding” will be and urge him to be there, for part of the time anyway. (I showed him all the part of your letter about the wedding date, etc.) I have already told him that I don’t think there will really be any “wedding” in our sense of the word. Tell him he doesn’t have to “give you away” as fathers do in U.S. weddings. No minister, no church, no aisle, no white wedding dress and veil, etc. Just going to the Mayor’s office (Is that formal? How many people?) and then a small reception at the Feydys afterwards. Just the same, he said he didn’t know whether he’d be there or not—said he’d like to come and see you and Julien and the Feydys but wasn’t sure he’d be there for the wedding. Try to write him what it will be like and that he doesn’t have to stand around all the time, meet a lot of people, etc. Perhaps he could be there for the most private part.