Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life

by Susan Hertog

  As the revolution raged outside the walls, there was a minor insurrection within. With hours alone and time to pass, Charles, Anne, Betty, and Dwight discussed wedding plans. Betty wanted a traditional Presbyterian ceremony and a properly decorous affair; Anne and Charles had in mind something simpler. While Betty made her plans with great excitement, devising a list of essential guests,18 Anne wondered why she even had to wear a wedding dress. Anne wanted her own kind of wedding, one not bound by her parents’ rules. Using Charles as her buffer, she challenged her parents’ wishes. With Charles now speaking for both of them, Betty and Dwight had to listen. By the time Charles left, on March 14, Anne’s happiness was evident. She announced she was certain that Charles was the “right” person. She told her family she was “sure sure sure.”19

  But within twenty-four hours of Charles’s leaving, Anne’s fears returned. She began to see both sides of the ledger; Charles’s voice was obliterating her own. Handling her parents and the press were practical necessities, but she would not trade marriage for her love of literature and philosophy or the possibility of becoming a writer. She had to be sure that Charles would respect her differences and her needs.

  On March 15, Anne began a long letter to Charles, and continued it over the course of several days.20 It was a kaleidoscopic representation of her thoughts, sometimes philosophical, sometimes reflective, sometimes wistful and poetic. She quoted from Shakespeare and Wordsworth, seeking, she wrote, “recollection in tranquillity;” she described “sunlight through a jar of marmalade” and told him of her mysterious longing for the sea. But somewhere in the middle she lost her nerve. Desperately seeking the words with which to gain Charles’s notice and approval, Anne realized she was talking to herself, perhaps risking more than she knew. By the end of the letter, she apologized profusely, begging Charles to forgive her foolish thoughts.

  But everything without Charles seemed absurd. Since the announcement of the engagement a month earlier, the embassy staff, along with her family, were still trying to regain their balance. On March 16, 1929, the night before Elisabeth’s twenty-fifth birthday, the staff officials threw Elisabeth a party. With the obvious cooperation of her parents, the men dressed up like St. Patrick’s Day kittens, with large green bow ties and black tuxedoes. Knowing Elisabeth’s love of rabbits, with whose skittish whimsy she felt akin, her mother’s secretary presented her with a live rabbit on a bed of greens. Elisabeth was at once the centerpiece of the celebration and fair game for everyone’s ridicule.

  Then there were gifts that sent the party guests into fits of laughter and Elisabeth into fits of shame. Allen, one of Elisabeth’s friends, gave her a Victrola record addressed to “Miss Clay Pigeon” and signed “Augustus.” The song was “Consolation,” from an Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein show.21 Its refrain was supposed to be a comment on Elisabeth’s feelings at being rejected by Charles Lindbergh:

  I’ll tell you what I need, I need your consolation

  Just a touch of tender demonstration

  I need a little more than friendly conversation

  What I need I cannot get by phone

  I need to feel that pressure upon my lips

  as they caress your own.

  I’ll tell you what I’ll do to show appreciation,

  I’ll let no one console me but you alone!

  Another friend, Fred, composed a huge collage—framed in glass and ready to hang—of more than fifty newspaper clippings that parodied Elisabeth’s alleged rejection by Charles. To ensure her immediate recognition, he placed a photograph of Elisabeth in the middle of the tabloid pieces, bearing headlines that ridiculed her appearance and her personal habits and predicted a tragic life as a spinster without Lindbergh.22

  While Elisabeth seemed to take it all in fun, for the first time she was seeing herself as the public saw her—passed over, rejected, and without a future. She fantasized about running away with Connie but knew they couldn’t run far. For, alas, she was the ambassador’s daughter and had to be careful to do the right thing.

  Throughout the month of March, Anne continued to write letters to Charles, acting out roles like a bit performer, hoping to hear at least a little applause. How could she define herself to Charles? Was she a literary connoisseur? A schoolmarm? A preacher? Or a giggling, foolish child? Again, her frustration became self-contempt. She just wanted to know that she had pleased him. Her cloistered life at the embassy had given her too much time to think about trivial things. Nothing she did seemed important or purposeful. She begged his forgiveness, hoping her pettiness was not tiresome.23

  In truth, it was Anne who was bored—bored and angry. The unending fabrications of the press had become unbearable. They goaded her with fantastic rumors, hoping to incite her to speak. The whole world, apparently, wanted to know where and when she would marry Charles Lindbergh.24 Defiantly, Anne refused to see the reporters. While rumors proliferated that she would marry Charles in Englewood, she considered playing the press the fool by marrying Charles right there at the embassy in Mexico.25

  Three days later, without notice, Charles arrived. Anne was so happy to see him that his mere presence assuaged her fears. Immediately, she announced to her parents that she was very much in love and wished to be married as soon as possible. In swift response, the Morrows planned to leave for Englewood on April 28, setting the date for the wedding at the end of May.

  Elisabeth was more than pleased. She intended to head straight for Boston. For the first time, Elisabeth contemplated the possibility of her own marriage. Lonely, and confused about her feelings for Connie, Elisabeth wondered whether there was a man capable of awaking her love. Perhaps he had died in the Great War, she wondered, unknown and buried in France. Within a week after Charles’s arrival, Elisabeth took to her bed with crying spasms.26 She was caught in a web of expectations contrary to her deepest instincts.

  When Charles left, Anne became depressed and listless. The thought of another month without him was so difficult that for ten days she could not even write to him. She felt selfish, apathetic, and unresponsive—a burden to everyone around her.27 “‘Oh god!’” she finally wrote to him, quoting Hamlet, “‘I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”28 Consoling herself that his return to Mexico would quell her fears, nonetheless, she dreaded standing up to the press alone.

  The Morrows left Mexico City, as planned, on Sunday, April 28. On May 2, after three days with Grandma Cutter in Cleveland, they arrived in New York. Their arrival, however, had been leaked to the press, and they were greeted in Englewood by a hungry mob of reporters and thrill-seekers. Ringed by Secret Service men, Anne, Betty, and Elisabeth fought their way through the crowd into the house, only to find threats against their lives in the mail.29 Anne’s bad dreams had been prescient. The Morrows were subjected to a barrage of public adulation and newspaper publicity.

  Nonetheless, for Elisabeth the moment was filled with possibility. Her parents, preoccupied with the logistics of the wedding, would loosen their grip on her. Anticipating her trip to Boston, Elisabeth wrote to Connie that she would love her so deeply and so well that she would never look or feel the same way again.30

  Betty and Dwight, meanwhile, were fighting an all-out battle with a foe so fierce, they could not anticipate its moves. Anne and Charles had formed a powerful alliance, the goal of which, short of blatant impropriety, was to break free from the traditions and restraints of the Morrow family. The wedding plans had become a contest of wills.

  To Betty, Anne seemed cold and detached, as if she had shifted her allegiance to Charles. Betty was disappointed that neither of them wanted to be married by a minister in a church. They found the idea hypocritical, since neither one had the habit of attending church. Saddened by their flouting of ritual and tradition, Betty worried that her relationship with Anne would never be the same.31

  Four days later, Betty had a productive talk with Charles. His distrust of organized religion
and the ministry was rooted in memories of his father’s small-town politics, when churchgoing had been a part of the public show. He would agree to marriage by a minister, he finally told Betty, but would not tolerate the presence of politicians.32

  Elisabeth’s weekend in Boston with Connie made her even more certain of their love. Theirs was a simple communion, and Elisabeth offered her eternal affection. Thrilled by the beauty of their physical and spiritual intimacy, Elisabeth declared that being with Connie was all she lived for. They shared so much joy, in so many ways; she was convinced that their complete and perfect understanding would keep them lovers forever.33

  While Elisabeth was buoyed by thoughts of spending a long quiet summer alone with Connie, Anne was exhausted by her wedding plans. On Anne’s behalf, Elisabeth called Mr. Russell Leffingwell, a former partner of their father’s at J. P. Morgan and Company, to request the use of his home in Oyster Bay before they took their scheduled trip to Maine. Mr. Leffingwell consented, and the very next day Anne and Elisabeth were off.

  But the beauty and peacefulness of Oyster Bay were fleeting. Betty Morrow wrote that Con, now boarding at Milton Academy, near Boston, was receiving life-threatening phone calls. Furious at the relentless press, they wondered if they should take Con out of school.

  On May 18, the Morrows left for their home in North Haven, Maine, in Lindbergh’s plane. Betty was delighted that the trip took only four hours, although for most of the ride, her air sickness prevented her from looking down. Nonetheless, she remarked with pride that Anne had flown the plane during part of the trip. Grateful when the flight was over, Betty was glad to see her beautiful island and the lavender hills which swept the horizon beyond Deacon’s Point.

  When Charles landed the plane in the meadow, it looked like a woolly monster, an oversized yellow and black hippopotamus quietly taking its evening meal in the fertile pastures behind their house. They arrived, of course, to a band of reporters—thirteen, to be precise—from the Portland Telegram, who stalked them all the way from the plane to their house. Three Secret Service men had to patrol the estate; one of them slept in the house.34

  Charles rejected Betty’s offer of a formal introduction to a select group of friends and relatives; he hoped to keep the visit as private as possible. On May 20, the Morrows quietly celebrated the anniversary of Charles’s transcontinental flight. Again locked in the house, this time because of bad weather, Charles and the Morrows spent much time alone—talking, reading, playing jacks, and bantering. For the moment, there was a truce. Charles told stories about his flight and filled the long hours by the fire with memories of where he had been and what he’d been doing exactly two years earlier.

  On May 23, with less than a week until the wedding, the Morrows began their journey to Englewood. Returning home was filled with the bittersweet memories of a family in transition. It was sweet with presents and letters from friends, bitter with anticipated emptiness. With Anne about to be married, the family’s time together would never be the same. The present already belonged to the past, and every gesture became an artifact. In a sense, the rite of passage had already taken place, but they were about to make it sacred, and, for the Morrows, that made all the difference.

  Anne sat by silently while Betty and Charles conducted final negotiations. They examined each paragraph of the traditional Presbyterian wedding service, line by line. Betty feared liturgical violation; Charles feared violating his integrity. At last, Betty was relieved to find that the essential rituals would be performed—the Lord’s Prayer and the Benediction. And Charles was satisfied that his integrity would be preserved. He shyly practiced his wedding vows, but only when he was alone with Anne.35

  Straddling both sides, fearful of offending either, Anne said nothing. It was clear that Charles and her mother were fighting for control. Her mother, who still wanted to lay down the rules, would not easily renounce her power. To Betty, Anne was her little girl, grown more precious since her betrothal to Charles. Four days before the wedding, as if wanting to freeze Anne’s childhood in time, Betty knocked on Anne’s bedroom door. As they sat next to one another on Anne’s bed, Betty shared her deep sorrow. Hugging one another tightly, they moved toward the little white chair that used to be in Anne’s nursery room. There they sat together, Anne snuggled close in her mother’s arms. As if rocking against the strains of an old melody, Betty comforted both of them.

  For Anne, the days before the wedding bore a sense of loss. Most of all, she would miss her sisters. In bedroom by bedroom, Anne said good-bye.

  “She came out of Con’s room, crying, ‘I love them both!’” wrote Betty. Betty consoled her. “She held me close—so close!”36

  As the wedding grew near, Dwight Jr.’s distance from the family became poignantly clear. Yet in her diary, Betty, strangely, treated his absence with nonchalance. Her formal list of wedding guests did not include him. Later, she would explain to friends that his physician, Dr. Riggs, had cautioned the family not to press him to attend; being there might cause a setback of weeks or months. Betty noted that Dwight dreamed of coming to the wedding but feared a breakdown.

  Betty carefully numbered her wedding guests. She and Dwight Sr., Elisabeth and Con—four. Mrs. Lindbergh—one. Her mother and sisters, Annie and Edith, and Edith’s husband, Shelton Yates—four more. Dwight’s sisters, Alice Morrow and Agnes Scandrett, both of whom lived in Englewood, and Agnes’s son, Richard—three. Dwight’s brother Jay and his wife, Hattie—two more. And their neighbors—the Vernon Munroes, the C. W. Hulsts (Aunt Maud and Uncle Dutch), Betty’s college friend Amey Aldrich, and the Presbyterian minister, Dr. William Allen Brown. Altogether, twenty.

  On Sunday, May 26, the day before the wedding, the Morrows laid out a grand charade. The house brimmed with spring flowers cut from their gardens as the staff worked overtime to prepare the food for a coterie of friends and family who would attend Betty’s fifty-fourth birthday party. The guests paraded up the winding tree-lined drive, past reporters and police, in cars and by foot, in their summer finery. The women wore peach, yellow, and ivory chiffon dresses and matching straw hats. The men wore light blue and gray suits with Panama hats. Betty and Dwight greeted their guests at the front door and ushered them through the foyer, also thick with flowers, and out on to the stone verandah. In full view of the reporters, watching the grounds from the driveway below, the servants passed the tea and served the punch to the light-hearted group celebrating Betty’s birthday.

  Meantime, the Morrows had the wedding cake smuggled into the house. A reporter noted that one of the guests who attended the reception carried “a huge box.” A neighbor, perhaps Vernon Munroe, had been appointed by the Morrows to select the cake and arrange to have the initials L and M interwoven on top of the rosebud frosting. Amid the flowers and teacups, they devised plans and codes and set times and procedures for the following day. Knowing that reporters would record each detail of her wardrobe, Anne made certain that she was noticed in her new “French ensemble” of cross-bar printed blue-and-white crêpe.

  A warm haze blanketed the northeast on the morning of May 27. Camouflaging their anxiety beneath a flurry of activity, Anne, Con, and Elisabeth walked through the “old” courtyard garden to pick forget-me-nots for Anne’s bouquet. While Elisabeth arranged the larkspur and columbine, Con and Anne walked together through the gardens on the hills above the house. Sworn to secrecy, the servants diligently attended to their chores, ensuring that the routine would remain unbroken.

  Later that morning, in a gambit to distract the press, Anne and Charles went driving in Charles’s car, wearing the clothes they had worn the day before at Betty’s birthday reception. They visited the home of friends, Dr. and Mrs. H. G. Ward, where formal photographs of the bride and groom were taken.

  Shortly after noon, twelve of the guests assembled for lunch in the grand dining hall: the Morrows, Evangeline Lindbergh, Betty’s mother and sisters, Vernon Munroe, Aunt Maud, Uncle “Dutch,” and Betty’s friend Amey Aldrich. Anne love
d the warmth of her family and friends and was too nervous, she later wrote, to eat her favorite asparagus dish.

  After lunch, as if to taunt the press one more time, Anne and Charles took a ride about town. Dressed in the same clothes they had worn that morning, they nodded to the reporters as they whisked by.

  At three-fifteen, according to an arranged telephone code, the wedding guests, also in the clothes they had worn the preceding day, walked casually up the winding drive and into the sunken courtyard. Greeted, this time, by Betty alone, they went through the main foyer, now shaded, and into the large drawing room. With the shades closed to the afternoon sun, the room with its elaborately carved oak walls and fifteen-foot ceilings was like a church.

  Anne, meanwhile, prepared herself in the downstairs ladies’ dressing room, adjusting her full floating gown and lacing the larkspur and columbine her sisters had gathered into her handmade Brussels cap.37 At a signal from her maid, Charles came into the room, wanting again to reassure her. He was followed by Betty, Elisabeth, and Con, who kissed her before leaving her with their father. Gently, he offered his arm, and they walked through the hall and down the three stone steps, pausing at the double doors of the drawing room.

  On cue from Betty, Minister William Allen Brown, tall and stately, rose to his feet. Everyone, in hushed excitement, turned to see the bride.

  Betty sighed with joy at her daughter’s loveliness as she walked toward Charles. She seemed like a vision in her crême white chiffon dress, worn with the silver French veil she and Elisabeth had chosen. The veil, set in her soft wavy hair, fell to her shoulders, resting like a cloud in the folds of her dress.