Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life

by Susan Hertog

  By January, however, Anne was back to her writing and had finished the first chapter of what promised to be a book, an account of their trip to Asia, beginning with the stopover at North Haven. She was satisfied with her writing because she had been wholly conscious of the joy she felt at that gathering of the family. It was the last time she saw her father, and “like a bee tasting a whole summer in one honey-suckle,”17 his memory now gave her strength and faith.

  She was beginning to see her trip as a journey beyond the bounds of ordinary narrative. Like Edward Hopper, she tried to paint the bare sides of barns, hoping that the canvas would reflect her emotions.

  While Anne nestled into a quiet life, Charles accelerated his work as technical consultant to Pan Am and TAT, charting passenger routes from North to South America, and inspecting transcontinental routes between New York and Los Angeles. On February 4, he celebrated his thirtieth birthday to more public acclaim, and with more public influence and faith in the future of commercial aviation, than he could have imagined during his transatlantic flight five years earlier. Hailed as the American Prince of Wales, he was urged by foreign leaders to continue his tours. Aviation, Lindbergh advised the United States military, should be added to the curriculum at West Point.18

  By mid-February, Anne and Charles were living part time in Englewood, spending their weekends in Hopewell. Anne was finally in her own home with her baby, and everything else seemed a diversion, even her writing. Charles, perhaps thinking of his mother’s entrapment, saw Anne’s domesticity as self-indulgence. He urged her to continue writing her book. Hoping to coax her out of the house, he asked her to help his public drive for flood relief in China and to join him on a short trip to the air races in Los Angeles. Reluctantly, Anne agreed.

  On February 7, with Charlie playing at her feet, Anne wrote a letter to Evangeline, describing the child’s every word and move. Charmed by her baby’s determination and sense of humor, and eager to share her joy in his games and laughter, she rambled on for pages, until Charles demanded that the letter stop. He wondered, he teased, whether she was writing another book.19

  On February 22, leaving Betty to care for the baby, Anne kept her promise to Charles. Wooden and doll-like, Anne spoke on behalf of the Federal Council of Churches before the microphones of the Columbia and National Broadcasting Systems and addressed the public on the state of the flooded regions of China.

  The New York Times reported:

  It was her first appearance before the microphone, but listeners detected no trace of nervousness, and her words, spoken in a pleasing voice and perfectly enunciated, came clearly over the air.20

  Charles sat by her side, nodding and smiling as she spoke, chatting in whispers with studio executives. Once more, Anne had earned his approval.

  11

  Within the Wave

  Anne and Charles arrive at Nanking, September 1931.

  (AP/Wide World Photos)

  WITHIN THE WAVE1

  Within the hollow wave there lies a world,

  Gleaming glass-perfect, rising to be hurled

  Into a thousand fragments on the sand,

  Driven by tide’s inexorable hand…

  Smooth mirror of the present, poised between

  The crest’s “becoming” and the foam’s “has been”—

  How luminous the landscape seen across

  The crystal lens of an impending loss!

  —ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH

  TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 1932, HOPEWELL, NEW JERSEY

  A continent away, the floods of the Yangtze raged, but two days after Anne’s radio plea for help, she and Charles had left the center stage of New York to spend a quiet weekend in Hopewell. Their four hundred acres of farmland and forest had proven a perfect retreat, far from the highway, along rambling country roads, unpaved and little traveled.2 With a mile of driveway between them and the nearest road, Anne and Charles were comfortable in their privacy; they rarely drew their shutters closed, and had fired the guard who had stood at their gate warding off souvenir hunters during construction.

  The stone manor, stark and angular against the fields, played counterpoint to the dense woodlands beyond. Its white fieldstone walls formed a U-shaped structure, which at once embraced those who entered and held the relentless wind at bay. It had rained for nearly forty-eight hours, and the March wind whipped about the house, hissing through the windows and doors. Inside, the fires were lit, and Elsie Whateley, a handsome English woman of forty-seven who served as housekeeper and cook, prepared a late dinner in the west wing. Charles had left the previous morning for business in New York, and Anne sat in the living room, awaiting his return. She glanced constantly at her watch, listening for the familiar sounds of Charles’s approach, eager to see him after his two days away.3

  It was rare for Anne to be in Hopewell on a Tuesday. She and Charles usually rose early on Monday morning and returned to Englewood with the baby by midday. But the baby, now twenty months old, had a cold, and Anne, three months pregnant, was fighting the fatigue of the long days and interrupted nights of caring for him. While Anne prized her weekends without the nurse, the baby’s schedule was strict and demanding, even more so now with the onset of his cold. It called for breakfast at six-thirty, lunch at noon, a nap at two-thirty, dinner at six, and bedtime at eight. Anne had been giving Charlie her constant attention, oiling his chest, putting drops in his nose, keeping him warm and dry, and getting up several times at night to check his breathing.4

  On Monday morning, Anne had awakened to a blustery rain and the noise of Charlie’s congested breathing. Charles urged Anne to stay home, and took off as usual for business in New York. Anne telephoned Betty Gow at Next Day Hill, informing her of Charlie’s cold and her intention to remain in Hopewell for another day. But on Tuesday morning, exhausted by another sleepless night, Anne told Elsie Whateley’s husband, Oliver, serving as butler, to call the station for a schedule and to summon Betty Gow to come from Englewood by train.5

  It was nearly ten-thirty when Whateley rang the Morrow residence. Violet Sharpe answered the phone. A vivacious English country girl with rosy cheeks and big hips, Violet had a weakness for men, loose talk, and illicit beer.6 Popular among the Morrows’ twenty-nine servants, she was admired most by Septimus Banks, the butler and head of the domestic staff. Violet had thoughts of marrying Banks, hoping he would rescue her from spinsterhood and domestic service. But it turned out that he was a drunkard, and there were rumors that Violet had decided to abort their baby. Betty Morrow had come close to dismissing Banks several times for drunkenness on duty, but had chosen to retain him. His aristocratic speech and manner, cultivated in the homes of the Carnegies and Vanderbilts, suited Betty’s notions of propriety and breeding.7 Banks knew he was there to stay; Violet, however, was becoming restless. Now twenty-eight years old, she sought the company of other men and earned a reputation as an easy mark at the bars she frequented on her nights off.8 Within the Morrow home, however, Violet was the model of the proper downstairs maid. She helped the other servants in the kitchen, cleaned the public quarters of the house, and answered the phone when Banks was busy or away.9

  When Violet summoned Betty Gow to the phone, Whateley informed her of Anne’s request. Anne, too, spoke to Betty, giving her details of the baby’s cold. Betty didn’t relish the idea of traveling to Hopewell by train in the storm, and, with the permission of Mrs. Morrow, she asked the Morrow chauffeur, Henry Ellerson, to drive her in one of the family cars.10

  Ellerson was also flirting with dismissal. A drunk and a gambler, a truck driver turned chauffeur, he had been destitute until he was hired by the Morrows as a gateman. Doubling as the family’s second-string driver, he had taken Charlie to Elisabeth’s school every day and knew the Lindbergh’s habits well. Although he was married and had two children, he rarely lived at home, frequenting the speakeasies around Englewood and dating a local woman. For a time, he had lived in a rooming house with Betty’s boyfriend Red and other Morrow servants.11


  Before leaving Englewood, Betty telephoned Red at his rooming house. While they had seen each other for dinner with several Morrow and Lamont servants12 on Sunday and Monday, they had planned a date for Tuesday evening with a German couple named Marguerite and Johannes Junge.13 Marguerite, an American of German descent born to a wealthy Hamburg family that had lost its money after the war, had been a dressmaker and seamstress on the Morrow staff for nearly a year. Although the Morrows had known her as a spinster named Jantzen, recommended by a German friend of theirs, she had been married for nine years to Johannes, a street-smart and articulate marine surveyor and export agent, newly arrived and unemployed.14 Marguerite and Red Johnson had become “intimate friends,” living in the same boarding house along with Ellerson. In the three months since Johannes’s arrival, he, Marguerite, Betty, and Red had become a foursome.

  This would be Betty’s fourth visit to the Hopewell house, but only her second visit when the Lindberghs were there. She had visited twice before with Red; once at the end of November and again, only two weeks earlier, on St. Valentine’s Day. Oliver and Elsie Whateley, lonely in Hopewell, were grateful for the company of their two young friends. New to domestic service, Elsie had been a clerk and an aspiring singer in England and Oliver had been a jeweler by trade. Bald and stocky, Oliver had neither the stature nor the instincts of a seasoned butler. To pass the long days while the Lindberghs were away, Oliver gave unauthorized tours of the house and grounds to curious visitors and passersby.15 Betty’s friend Red, easygoing and friendly, was a welcome companion for an afternoon. They walked the rooms, the halls, and the stairwells, and paced the hard frozen fields. Stretching the bounds of a casual tour, Oliver took Red into the surrounding woods, following the underground electrical lines until they surfaced into the trees.16

  Unable to reach Red at his rooming house, Betty left a message with his landlady and asked Marguerite to let him know about her sudden trip to Hopewell. Betty and Henry Ellerson left the Morrow home at approximately 11:45, making one stop in town to buy candy at a drugstore. Ellerson would later note that Betty had the “blues” and was uneasy at the thought of “being confined” in Hopewell.17 They arrived at the estate around two, and after a quick lunch with Ellerson and the Whateleys in the kitchen, Betty joined the baby at two-thirty in the nursery.18

  In the gray light of the winter afternoon, Charlie, a round-faced child with golden curls, his mother’s violet eyes and father’s dimpled chin, played on the bare tiled floor with his blocks and trucks. As he played, he engaged Betty in his familiar babble, pointing to the objects on the walls and floor, and wandering around the small, gaily decorated room in sudden moments of purposeful activity. While the room echoed Anne’s childhood nursery, a miniature world of toys and furniture, it seemed the center of this house, far different from the nanny-governed island Anne had known.

  Betty Gow’s arrival and a break in the weather permitted Anne to walk down the driveway and to wander in the mud-soaked clearing that surrounded the house. At about three-thirty, she stopped below the nursery to throw pebbles at the southeast window in the hope of attracting Charlie’s attention. The flutter aroused Betty, who lifted Charlie up to the window to smile and wave to his mother.19 Satisfied with her walk, Anne returned to the house to have her tea and requested that the baby join her in the living room. At five o’clock, Charlie came to play. He stayed for a while, and then wandered into the servants’ sitting room to visit with Betty and Elsie. Rambunctious and playful, Charlie ran twice around the kitchen table before surrendering to Betty’s arms. She carried him upstairs to the nursery, while Elsie prepared the Lindberghs’ dinner.20 At five-thirty, Whateley received a call from Charles advising him that he would arrive home later than expected.21

  At six o’clock, Anne visited the nursery to find Charlie finishing his cereal at his small maple table in the center of the room. She stayed to help Betty feed him and prepare him for bed. As Betty was dressing Charlie for the night, he spit up his medicine on his nightsuit. In the course of changing his clothes, Betty worried that he would soil another new suit with his chest oil. An experienced seamstress, Betty offered to make a nightshirt with an extra high neck and sleeves to go under his usual sleeveless shirt. Pleased with her suggestion, Anne offered to go down to Elsie for scissors and thread. On Anne’s return, Betty cut a pattern from her old flannel petticoat and sewed the shirt while Charlie and Anne played.22

  It was late, nearly thirty minutes past Charlie’s bedtime, when he was ready for bed. Betty rubbed his chest once again with oil and dressed him in three layers: first, her handmade flannel shirt, then his store-bought sleeveless nighty, then his new gray Dr. Denton’s suit. As usual, Betty covered his thumbs with metal guards to prevent his thumb-sucking and fastened the strings around his wrists. She lowered the crib’s rail and placed him in it, face down. Anne and Betty closed the windows and tried to bolt closed the warped southeast shutter. In order to do so, they leaned over the large black suitcase set on a long, low cedar chest, being careful not to topple Charlie’s Tinkertoy car, perched on its wheels on the windowsill.23 But even with the force of their combined strength, the shutters refused to catch.24

  It was seven-thirty when Anne left the room, turning off the nursery lights behind her. She told Betty she usually opened the French window halfway, depending on the direction of the wind. Betty washed the baby’s dishes and clothes in the bathroom adjoining the nursery. It was nearly eight o’clock when she was through; satisfied that Charlie was asleep, she pinned his blanket to the mattress cover, opened a window, and closed both doors. Before retiring to the kitchen to have her dinner, Betty stopped in the living room to assure Anne that the baby was comfortable and fast asleep.25

  At about ten minutes after eight, Anne thought she heard Charles’s tires on the gravel driveway. She crooked her head toward the front door, and then, uncertain, turned back to her writing. It was 8:25 when Anne finally heard Charles honk his horn and pull his sedan into the garage.26 It was a late return home, but it should have been later. Charles was scheduled to speak at an alumni dinner at New York University, but he had confused the dates and had driven home to Hopewell to see Anne and the baby, as he had promised the morning before.27 He had spent two full days at the offices of TAT and at the Rockefeller Institute, working with Alexis Carrel. Tired from the two-hour commute, he walked through the garage into the kitchen, where Betty and Elsie were having dinner. He inquired about the baby’s health, went to the pantry to greet Oliver Whateley, and then walked through the dining room to the living room, where Anne sat writing at her desk. They went upstairs to the bathroom that adjoined the nursery on the other side, and she talked with him while he washed for dinner. It was 8:35 when Anne and Charles went down to the dining room, where they were served by Whateley, and nine when they returned to the living room, after telling the servants they did not wish to be disturbed.28

  Their afterdinner talks had become something of a ritual. It was time alone, valued more than ever because they spent their days apart. In Englewood, Anne had her mother and Elisabeth to keep her company. Here, in Hopewell, she had no one but the servants. The pregnancy made her feel foggy and old—too tired for productive work; it was difficult to write anything but letters. She missed the agility of her mind and body. Her only compensation was the sheer beauty of Charlie and the chance to be with him and watch him grow. After all the loneliness she had known as a child, Anne refused to have barriers of servants between her and her little boy.

  For the moment, however, Anne basked in the richness of her husband’s mind, flushed with the stimulation of city and laboratory, and capable, she believed, of mastering anything. His mental agility and range of interests surpassed Anne’s expectations; what appeared to be mechanical prowess had shown the depths of creativity. Proof was the eagerness with which Dr. Carrel had enlisted Charles in his laboratory projects. Disciplined, persistent, and confident in his judgment, Charles solved problems with scientific rigor. Even without prof
essional training, he could think beyond some of Carrel’s illustrious colleagues.

  Anne was engrossed in their conversation when Charles jumped up, startled by a noise.

  “What’s that?” he asked. Anne listened but heard nothing.

  Later, Charles would remember a strange cracking noise, but it was a “kitchen” sound, he would say, like the breaking of the slats of a wooden crate.29 Assuming that Whateley had things under control, Charles took no further notice. Tired and not feeling well, Anne cut their talk short. Sometime between 9:10 and 9:15, they retired to the second floor, where Charles bathed and changed his clothes. Anne bathed and read while Charles went to his study, just below the nursery, to work.30

  Earlier, at 8:35, while Charles and Anne were dining, Betty had been summoned to the kitchen telephone by Whateley to talk to her boyfriend, Red Johnson. They spoke for a few minutes about her trip to Hopewell and the baby’s health, and then, with sadness, said their good-byes. Red was leaving early the next morning for his brother’s home in West Hartford, Connecticut. He asked Betty whether he should await her return, but Betty encouraged him to go as planned. Then Betty chatted with Oliver and Elsie while they cleaned up the kitchen and, after that, accompanied Elsie to the Whateleys’ apartment over the garage while Oliver remained in the sitting room to read.31

  At ten o’clock, as usual, Betty went up the west-wing stairs and crossed the landing to check on the baby before she went to sleep. With only the light from the hall to guide her, she walked into the baby’s bathroom and opened the door to the nursery. The air seemed uncommonly cold. She closed the window, stopping for a moment to turn on the electric heater, and then made her way in the half-light of the bathroom toward the baby’s crib. As she approached, the silence alarmed her. She could not hear the baby breathing. Nervously, she ran her hands over the bed linens and then rushed to Anne, who was coming out of the bathroom.32