by Susan Hertog
4
A Rebel at Last
Anne Morrow, the Colonel’s lady, 1929.
(Brown Brothers)
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies that apprehend
More than cool reason comprehends.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
ACT V, SCENE I
JANUARY 1928, NORTHAMPTON, MASSACHUSETTS
After the sunlit gardens of Mexico, Anne found Northampton bleak and oppressive. The winter light cast ashen shadows, covering the campus in a heavy pall. But inside the walls, the air was conflagatory. Anne learned that a freshman, Frances Smith, had disappeared, and rumors of her suicide swept through its halls.1
The “horror,” Anne wrote, was beyond words or imagining. The questions—the relentless interrogations by police and reporters shrouded an enveloping cloud that changed the face of everything. Most terrible was the realization that her friend had died and that she had done nothing to stop it.
Before the Christmas holiday, Anne had been asked to give Frances counsel. But Frances’s fears were much like her own. Feelings of inadequacy, along with a vivid imagination, had made her shy, lonely, and withdrawn. Even as a child, Anne learned, Frances had fallen into trance-like states, in which she isolated herself from family and friends; this time, however, she had no hope of return. Feeling “weightless,” as though she could “fly,” she had thrown herself into the Connecticut River.2 Several months later, the police found her body bloated and misshapen, but not decomposed, in an orange dress and a red coat.
Anne, preoccupied by Lindbergh, feared she might meet a similar end. She, too, had flying fantasies and wondered whether she was going mad. Frances’s mother insisted that Anne could have helped her daughter; that Anne was the only friend Frances loved. Sleepless with guilt and anxiety, wondering what she should have done, Anne waited for each dawn by counting the hours. Every morning at exactly four-thirty, she would rehearse her memories of Lindbergh’s take-off from Mexico.3 She recalled their breakfast by the embassy fireplace, their drive through the deserted streets to the airport, the excitement of watching his silver plane rise defiantly over the earth, catching the first glow of morning.4
While Anne cloaked herself in darkness, she wrote in her diary, Lindbergh transformed life with his “burning intensity.”5 The American public agreed.
Lindbergh, counted among the miracles of the New Year, was hailed by American clergy as the quintessence of Christian virtue.6 Leaving Mexico City on December 28, 1927, he flew 9,060 miles, circling the coast of Central and South America, through the islands of the Caribbean, and back along the gulf coast of Florida through Georgia and Texas to St. Louis, Missouri. Hailed as a divine emissary of peace and good will,7 he received a hero’s welcome in every capital. Once again, thousands of people stormed his plane, surging toward him with frightening force and lifting him high above them.8 Parades were staged; holidays declared.9 Stamps were issued, and streets were named in his honor.
The New York Times quoted the chairman of the Senate Library Committee as saying:
Lindbergh achieved what no person, living or dead, had ever accomplished … [He] had occupied the first page on every cosmopolitan newspaper in Europe and America … he has made himself the hero of every son, the sweetheart of every daughter.10
Little did the press know that the daughter of Dwight and Betty Morrow was already sweet on Lindbergh. But just as Anne’s spirits rose with his memory, she was “terrified” by a call from Elisabeth. Their brother, Dwight Jr., was “very ill.”11 In fact, Dwight had had a nervous breakdown when he returned to Groton after the Christmas holiday. The father had tried to rally young Dwight by writing him letters like those of a football coach, hoping to inspire moral rectitude. But nothing Morrow said or wrote was able to penetrate Dwight’s fear and self-doubt.12
Two thousand miles away in Mexico, Betty and Dwight tried to deny the severity of Dwight’s illness, insisting to each other that his breakdown would be swift and passing. On Valentine’s Day, 1928, drowning in a deluge of diplomatic celebrations, Dwight Sr. wrote a letter of gratitude to Elisabeth, who had taken a leave of absence from her teaching post at school in Englewood to help care for her brother. He reassured her that Dwight would recover as soon as he was able to get some rest.13 But the breakdown was more serious than the Morrows were willing to admit. Their son was hallucinatory and delirious.
Anne had a special feeling for Dwight. In spite of his intelligence and driving ambition, he was as sensitive and vulnerable as she. Dwight always seemed a piece of herself, and now his illness made her question her sanity. Exploring madness in her diary, Anne projected herself into the mind of Frances, alienated, alone, and the object of ridicule.14 Trying to understand Dwight’s breakdown, trying to grasp his pain, she imagined her death. “Useless” and good for nothing, she would gladly have exchanged her life for his.
The thoughts of madness turned back to Lindbergh and love, however, when her old boyfriend P announced his engagement. She hadn’t wanted to marry him; she just didn’t like being left behind. Resolutely, Anne denounced romantic love, affirming only the love for her family.15 Yet her parents were far away, and their house in Englewood was no longer a refuge. She returned to school from a weekend visit feeling “poked … pulled … hurried.”16 Lonely and confused, Anne at times felt small and worthless; at others, strong and in control. Consolation and perspective came only through writing and observations of nature.
“I must say over and over to myself, Make your world count.”17 She wanted to live an honest and purposeful life. Perhaps she would teach or find the courage to write. She would immerse herself in the things she loved—literature, art, music, and nature—but, like her mother and father, she would dedicate herself to others, finding happiness as a wife and a mother.
By March, spring held the promise of reconciliation. For the first time since Anne’s return from Mexico, she had faith in the rhythm and goodness of life.18 She wondered if it was selfish to want happiness and love when the mere turning of the seasons offered so many “miracles.”19
The real miracle she wanted was Charles Lindbergh, and try as Anne did to hide her feelings from family and friends, Elisabeth had caught on. Anne’s need to idolize others, noted Elisabeth, was an old pattern. With Lindbergh, it had reached a new dimension.20 The only way to dispel her anguish, Anne decided, was to erase Lindbergh from her thoughts. She turned to books, gardening, and food in an attempt to regain her composure.
But Lindbergh felt out of control, too. By the time he returned from his Latin American tour, in mid-February 1928, he had had enough of the limelight. Mauled by overzealous fans, exhausted from giving speeches and signing autographs, he was weary of good-will flights. At a luncheon given by the Guggenheim Fund, he announced that it would be his last official function. It was time for him to “retire to a private life.”21
Lindbergh’s desire for privacy ignited a debate about his rights and responsibilities as a public figure. While the media justified their intrusion by declaring Lindbergh’s life a matter of “public record,” private citizens urged compassion for the “boy-hero” whom “Fame” had taken in her hand.22
Nonetheless, the New York Times pursued him. Interpreting Lindbergh’s desire for a “private” life as a wish to marry, the newspaper launched a drive to snag him a wife. Like a matchmaker, the newspaper reported him in “perfect health” (although a little thin for his six-feet-two-inches),23 and blessed with a small fortune (estimated between $400,000 and $1 million).24 If any woman was seen within Lindbergh’s proximity, he was, reportedly, “engaged.” And Lindbergh was constantly swarmed by suitors—from the daughters of wealthy businessmen and high public officials to street walkers and starlets who demanded his attention. The protection of friends worked against him. Guarded in the grand salons and country estates of the rich and powerful, safe from the intrusive press, he had little time alone
with women. Charles was now twenty-six years old, and he had never had a date.
Before the flight he wasn’t interested in girls; after the flight he was suspect and cold.25 A wunderkind in an adult society of aviators, statesmen, and politicians, Charles had a social life that was frozen in time. When he left his friends and his mother in Wisconsin five years earlier, he had left his boyhood behind. And all that he had ever known of intimacy was his father’s abandonment and his mother’s suffocation. Everything in between—easy conversation, dating, and sexuality—was nothing more than a pleasant abstraction.
Nonetheless, the rumors were right: Lindbergh was ready to take a wife. Embarking on a “girl-meeting project,” much as he charted a map for a flight, he reviewed in his mind the possibilities. Thoughts of Anne Morrow never surfaced. She had seemed so young, shy, and naïve, more like a schoolgirl than a prospective mate.26
Insulated at Smith from news of Lindbergh’s travels and the public debate, Anne wondered why he was so silent. Hadn’t he promised to teach her and Elisabeth to fly? Nearly three months without a call from him, and Anne was feeling rejected. It never crossed her mind that Lindbergh had met hundreds of young women and had invited many to fly in his plane; she chose to protect herself from disappointment. Extolling the virtues of Platonic love, she asked her diary whether it was possible to love someone “objectively”—to view Lindbergh as an “oracle” rather than as a “carnal” presence. It was the perfect solution. The “divinity” of the relationship would be preserved, as though the absence of one’s beloved was merely a “condensed presence.”27 But she considered her envy of Elisabeth’s happiness with Constance to be selfish and sinful. It would be better to find solace in nature, she concluded.28
Dwight Jr.’s illness brought the Morrow family together, but it sent a chill through their long-awaited Easter holiday. Elisabeth, at the request of her brother, accompanied him to Southern Pines, a rest home in North Carolina, where they were met by their maternal grandmother, Annie Cutter. It seemed all too appropriate that Betty had called her mother for help. Betty saw her son as she had seen her father—a sensitive, high-strung “genius” unable to “cope” with the pressures of conventional masculine life. Although the medical jargon had changed in the thirty years since Betty’s father was labeled neurasthenic, Dwight Jr. was considered “of nervous temperament.” Who better than her mother, a nursemaid to her husband all his life, to help raise the spirits of a boy who felt inadequate to the demands of manhood?29
Strangely, Dwight Jr. drew strength from his madness. Perhaps for the first time, in the aftermath of his breakdown, he was aware that he was different from his father. While his father could easily harness his intellect, Dwight fractured in the process, succumbing to paroxysms of fear and self-doubt. Sheltered in the rest home, he sought to prove himself worthy to his family by challenging his father’s standards. The father was certain that ancient and European literature and history were the core of Western civilization; Dwight Jr. studied the “mysteries” of Native American culture. The father played a mediocre game of golf; the son sought mastery. On the golf course at Southern Pines, he practiced the game with a passion. When he finally hit a hole in one, he cabled his father: “CURED.”30 Dwight Jr.’s words shouted through the wires; finally he too was a winner.
Since Elisabeth was occupied with helping Dwight Jr., Anne went to Mexico on holiday alone. Certain that her stay would be cast in “shadows” without the “sunlight” of her sister’s presence,31 she nonetheless threw herself into the beauty of the Mexican landscape. Her diary assumed a new dimension, building on the multisensory style of her adolescent essays. She absorbed the line, color, and sound of the landscape—the montage of sun and shade, fire and ice—splashing it onto her pages as though she were composing an expressionist painting.32
To Anne’s surprise, she did not miss Elisabeth. She found the solitude both naughty and exhilarating. On Easter Sunday, April 8, two days after Dwight’s cable to his father, Anne echoed her brother’s call for self-confirmation. She would no longer be weak and self-apologetic, pining away for recognition from Charles. “Colonel. L.” was not to be her standard; he would have to rise to her measure.33
Elisabeth, too, had found release. Alone in Englewood, out of sight of her mother, she reveled in her autonomy. Playing responsibility against desire, she used her devotion to Dwight Jr. to garner time alone with Connie. Connie’s presence was an anodyne; with Connie, Elisabeth didn’t feel sick. Plagued with poor health since a bout with pneumonia during her freshman year at Smith, Elisabeth was short of breath and easily fatigued. Her mother, perhaps thinking of the death of Mary, her twin, had spun webs of restrictions around Elisabeth until the daughter screamed in suffocation. But only Connie seemed to hear.
Elisabeth had met Constance in a philosophy class in 1924, during her junior year at Smith. There was an immediate bond between them, strengthened by their belief in God and prayer. Connie, the daughter of a wealthy leather merchant, was worldly, assertive, and practical, with searing blue eyes, curly blond hair, and a tall husky frame that radiated confidence. She alone seemed capable of piercing Elisabeth’s persona, exposing her fearful and fragile personality. With Connie, Elisabeth could talk about everything—personal relationships, literature, and philosophy. As Charles did to Anne, Connie appeared to Elisabeth as a member of superior breed, capable of raising her to a higher moral realm. Elisabeth made a pact with Connie not to love anyone else, least of all a man. They believed that sexuality tainted love, debasing and diminishing the spiritual bond. Whether Elisabeth was frightened of sexual intimacy, was in need of Connie’s maternal warmth, or was homosexual is not clear. Their love, rooted in Presbyterian piety and Victorian virtue, was strangely naïve. Frightened of their feelings for each other, they implored God to give them wisdom and guidance.34
To Dwight and Betty Morrow, the fundamentalist teachings of the Hebrew Bible condemned love between women as alien and abhorrent; it was even more distressful to them because their family was in the public eye. It is difficult to separate their desire to protect Elisabeth’s health from their need to keep her apart from Connie, and it is difficult to discount the psychosomatic aspects of Elisabeth’s illness—the digestive problems, the nervousness, and the fatigue—from the guilt she may have felt in loving another woman.
Yet Betty had had “crushes” on women at Smith, and her own adjustment to heterosexuality had been both slow and difficult.35 Had mother and daughter shared these feelings, they might have alleviated the tension, but there is no evidence of such conversations. As it was, Elisabeth staged an underground war.
While Anne saw Elisabeth as gracefully confident, she was, in fact, nervous and sad. Anne sensed Elisabeth’s pulling away but could not understand the reason. Elisabeth’s preoccupation with Connie angered Anne. A friend of Connie’s later said, “Anne would always feel that it was Connie Chilton who stole her sister.”36
By necessity, Anne moved closer to her younger sister, Con. Just as ready to adore her as she had worshiped Elisabeth, Con was to Anne the ideal woman, a height to which she could only aspire. When Con joined her in Mexico, they had a “perfect” time. They shared the warmth and beauty of the landscape and established a rhythm and a reciprocity that would later serve as Anne’s paradigm for the perfect heterosexual relationship.37 It was like being in love, she wrote.38
Anne had found victory in her trip to Mexico. Feeling productive and back in control, she was eager to return to school. But no sooner had she boarded the train for Northampton than her obsession with Charles Lindbergh returned. This time, she rejoiced in his superiority. She knew she would never be a great aviator; she took solace in her admiration for him. After all, she wrote, if she were more like him, she would never have recognized his greatness.39
Back at Smith life resumed its nightmarish quality. Anne felt confused and irrational, as though her center would not hold.40
Determined to fly again, with or without Lindbergh, Anne h
ired an instructor at an airfield near Northampton. Flying opened to her a “fifth dimension”—a state of higher consciousness—but she condemned her efforts as “trivial” and “hysterical.”41 She felt like a child back in the nursery, pretending to be grown-up in her mother’s clothes.
While Anne watched Charles Lindbergh, Lindbergh, no doubt, watched Dwight Morrow. In fact, most of America was watching. Morrow had attracted the support of a powerful journalist, Walter Lippmann, the editor of World Magazine. Because he had an audience of more than ten million Americans, he was courted and feared by officials and politicians. His soft line on Latin American debt and his noninterventionist stance were construed by his critics as Bolshevik and un-American. But, like Morrow, Lippmann saw himself as a philosopher and a historian, a would-be academic coerced into the political arena by the force of his moral conscience.
When the Mexican government threatened to nationalize the oil industry, Lippmann and Morrow worked to protect American property rights. They negotiated a deal with the Mexican government that granted ownership to American oil companies and also tightened the restrictions on salable land.42 Emboldened by their success, they sought to resolve the church-government controversy that had split the country into warring factions. Establishing the key issue as the registration of priests, Morrow and Lippmann struck a deal whereby the church could keep its land if it permitted the government to regulate the clergy. The agreement was sealed, and the churches reopened. The hallmark of the achievement, Morrow wrote to his son, was that neither side could claim a victory.43
While time would reveal that Morrow’s negotiations had achieved nothing of enduring consequence, his diplomatic style gave the illusion that United States–Mexican rapprochement was possible. He was hailed as victorious on both sides of the table.44