Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life

by Susan Hertog

  20

  Polish Bright His Hoofs

  Anne at Long Barn, Kent, England, spring 1937.

  (Lindbergh Picture Collection, Manuscripts And Archives, Yale University Library)

  UNICORN

  Everything today has been

  “Heavy” and “brown.”

  Bring me a unicorn

  To ride about town!…

  And I will kneel each morning

  To polish bright his hoofs

  That they may gleam each moonlight

  We ride over roofs!

  —BY ANNE MORROW,

  JANUARY 19271

  WINTER 1937, LONG BARN, SEVENOAKS, ENGLAND

  The winter of 1937 was both a sleep and an awakening. The new pregnancy made Anne tired and slow, blunting the “sharp pointed flame” of her mind.2 She could write for only two hours each morning, and even that time was less than productive. And yet her ideas had begun to coalesce—all her disparate glimpses of insight about women and family and creativity began to take form beneath her quietude. Anne knew that she could not follow Charles; he “raced ahead into new ideas, new countries, new schemes.” She had to see life within her frame—narrow and near, deep and essential. She read books with a new energy and challenged herself to formulate conclusions.

  Was it possible to reconcile her need to write with the responsibilities of motherhood? She wrote to her cousin Margaret Landenberger Scandrett, that she would not choose to work if it meant denying the needs of her family. “Deep down in my heart, I don’t honestly want to be a ‘woman writer’ any more than I once wanted to be a ‘woman aviator’ … I am not prepared to sacrifice … those advantages and qualities that are truly feminine.”3

  Echoing the poetry of Lao-tzu, Anne wrote that a woman must stand at the hub of a wheel that moves toward a larger goal. Creative work was merely one spoke of the wheel, a ray of insight leading to and from a unifying core, essential to the balance of the wheel, without which her life would simply stop turning. Out of this way of life, she wrote, “some very great art might spring—not much but pure gold.”4

  The pattern of a woman’s life, she implied, was determined not by talent but by values. Her walls were narrow but her wells were deep, serving as reservoirs of perception for her husband and children. Anne’s theories, however, were about to be tested by a woman who had broken all the rules.

  On January 15, Anne and Charles drove, for three and a half hours, north to Maidenhead to spend the night with Lady and Lord Astor at their home, Cliveden. High on a cliff overlooking the Thames, Cliveden was a huge and imperious Roman villa, built in 1850 and purchased by William Waldorf Astor5 in 1893. The estate was a wedding gift given by Astor to his eldest son, Waldorf, on his marriage, in 1906, to Nancy Langhorne.

  Small and delicate, with a finely-boned face and stately carriage, the quick-witted Nancy Langhorne had made her way easily into the turn-of-the-century British society. Born in Greenwoods, Virginia, to a large farming family that had lost its money during the Civil War, she was married at the age of eighteen and divorced at twenty-four. In 1903 she went, with her son, to England, where she met Waldorf Astor. At the time of their marriage, Astor was a Conservative member of the House of Commons, but in 1918, when he succeeded to the viscountsy, he became a member of the House of Lords. His father died in 1919, and Nancy won his seat in the House of Commons, becoming the first woman to sit in the lower house of Parliament. Before her swift and unprecedented political ascent, she had spent the early years of her marriage at her husband’s side, serving an apprenticeship to public life. This she did while raising four sons and a daughter. Her home, a grand salon, was frequented by the political and social elite. Nancy, savvy and brazen, with “volcanic” energy, had a natural flair for public speaking and an instinct for politics. Although she ran her campaign in 1919 on a platform of protective legislation for women and children, once she was seated, she earned a reputation as a right-wing spokesperson—a colonialist and an anti-communist with German sympathies. She thought of herself as a realist with a pragmatic view of foreign policy.6

  By the time Anne and Charles met her, in 1936, her reputation was beginning to tarnish. Her propensity for talk had already earned her a reputation for political indiscretion. She blamed the rise of Hitler on the misjudgment of her countrymen and their allies. His strength was, she believed, an outcome of the folly of the Treaty of Versailles. If he had defects, so did English democracy, and whatever the unattractive aspects of his political philosophy, they were preferable to those of Soviet communism. But Hitler was beginning to look like a rogue, and Nancy’s pragmatism was beginning to look like ideology. While “the Cliveden Set” had not yet become synonymous with German appeasement, the seeds of pro-German support were being sown. By January 1937, Nancy was demonized by the English public, along with those who moved in her circle.7 And yet, Anne and Charles chose to dine with her.

  On his return to England from Germany in August 1936, Charles hoped to convince Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin of the dimensions of German air superiority. Baldwin, however, brushed his theories aside, throwing Charles into a “cold rage.” Privately, Charles derogated England’s people and power as second-rate, and believed that its “best brains” had been killed in the Great War.8 But many American State and War Department officials were eager to listen to him. Interested, too, were private citizens in France and England, among them the Astors and their friends.

  Anne loved talking to Lord Astor at dinner, she told her mother. He was kind and responsive—not stuffy at all. Best of all was the tour, after dinner, when Lady Astor took her through the rooms of the house. Unintimidated by its tradition or its splendor, Nancy Astor had stripped it of its Roman statues and busts and replaced its gloomy tapestries and furniture with chintz curtains and slipcovers, books, and flowers. In spite of its size, Anne found it warm and comfortable. Nancy showed Anne the dining room in which she had first met Anne’s father and Elisabeth during their stay in London for the Naval Conference in 1930. With dramatic flair, she re-created the evening for Anne, and then guided her into the library. There, they sat in front of the fire, amid Dutch portraits of children, and talked of poetry, “Daddy,” and Elisabeth.

  When Anne returned to Long Barn from Cliveden, she pondered not only the patterns of womanhood but the moral justification of English aristocracy. Large estates were like social microcosms, reflecting a natural human hierarchy. The quality and ethics of life at the top trickled down through the ranks, bestowing pride and purpose on the servant class. Anne felt nothing but admiration for the Astors, and she was proud to say that Charles articulated his views on Germany with a precision worthy of the distinguished couple.9

  Charles was planning a trip to India at the end of the month on behalf of Pan Am and British Imperial Airways, which wanted to link India’s cities to a worldwide network of air-mail flights. Torn by her need to write and her desire to take care of Jon, Anne, now five months pregnant, reluctantly agreed to accompany Charles.10 On the evening of January 21, Anne left Jon asleep in his bed, thinking how little he cared that they were going and how much it meant to her. As they flew across the Alps, in their new low-wing Miles Mohawk plane, they were wrapped in a shroud of fog. Lost and out of control, they dropped to earth, flying blindly, suspended between life and death. Caught, once again, in the nexus of “the timeless with time,” Anne was no longer afraid. Later, the incident would become the core of her book Steep Ascent and a metaphor for her relations with Charles.11

  They flew to Pisa and then to Rome, basking in color and sunlight after the gray days of an English winter. Anne delighted in the architecture of the ancient buildings and ruins, but her pleasure brought an unexpected loneliness. The richness of its history was lost on Charles, she wrote, who lacked the knowledge of those who had had a classical education. If only Elisabeth were here, she mused.12

  They flew through Italy, across the Mediterranean, into Egypt and Palestine, and finally to Calcutta. While Charles was
being treated with the deference of a religious icon,13 Anne, in her letters home, analyzed the social texture of India. The size, the complexity, and the diversity of the people, along with the economic and social discrepancies, made it a land of injustices that would take generations to resolve. She was instinctively drawn to the Indian intelligentsia, yet she sensed their bitterness toward the English. But again, affirming the value of aristocracy, Anne wrote that the British had brought India peace, order, and a sense of national pride.14

  For the moment, Charles had little patience with social analysis. He was worried about American military power in comparison with the developing German forces. Although America was still ahead, he wrote to his friend Harold Bixby, its lead was narrowing with “amazing rapidity.” Russia’s progress was unknown, but Italy was becoming another important competitor.15

  Back at Long Barn, the spring passed quietly. The aubretia and daffodils bloomed in the soft April sunshine, and every morning the thrushes and the blackbirds sang. With her window open to the sounds of the spring, Anne sat at her desk with maps and photographs, trying to weave the facts and memories of their transatlantic flight into metaphor and narrative. She was happy to be pregnant, happy to be home with Jon, and grateful for her clarity of mind and the time to write.

  As she had done in her early days in Princeton, Anne set up the nursery and counted her towels and blankets. She delighted in domesticity and spending time with Charles and Jon.16 Seeing Jon in his “ragged red raincoat, thumping along with his boots,” was consolation for anything.17 She sat in the sun and walked slowly around the paths, cutting tulips, content to be waiting.18

  On May 11, after two days of irregular pains, wondering whether she was going into labor, Anne asked Charles to drive her to the London Clinic. It was Coronation Eve,19 and the crowds in the flag-draped streets were in holiday mood. Charles concentrated on getting through the mobs and traffic jams; Anne, overjoyed with excitement, looked at the candle-lit trees and remembered the beauty of her wedding night. Her labor continued through Coronation Day as she listened to the cheering crowds lining the streets. As her contractions came and went, she counted her breaths and read The Years by Virginia Woolf. By nightfall the pain was overwhelming, but she was determined to be conscious at the birth of her child. Between the whiffs of chloroform she caught Charles’s eyes; his presence in the birthing room was enough to make the pain bearable. She was no longer tormented by fears of inadequacy and death, and the voice that had taunted her through the birth of Jon was silent. By morning, her third child, a son, was born. They named their “Coronation baby” Land, in memory of Charles’s maternal grandparents.

  Anne felt reborn—at peace and in control. With the pregnancy and birth behind her, she was suddenly “alive,” eager to make up for lost time. Reviewing the year they had spent in England, she felt she had achieved nothing. Nonetheless, her time with Charles and Jon was “pure gold.”20

  While Anne dug her roots deep in Long Barn, Charles seemed to spin untethered. Several times a month he flew to Saint-Gildas, an island off the coast of Brittany, to work with Carrel in his summer laboratory.21 After the visit to the Carrels’ the previous August, Anne had little desire to return. The island had had a haunting beauty, bathed in a hazy green-gray light, but the Carrels had been less than hospitable to Anne. Solicitous and deferential toward Charles, they had insulted her with their categorical opinions. At once intimidated and repulsed by their arrogant notions of human types, she was troubled by their sanctimonious air. It was as though they were ordained vicars of God, looking down in judgment on lesser beings. They spoke of “auras,” intangible currents of light and sensation that emanated from the bodies of human beings, defining and classifying personal value. Charles’s aura, they said, was “deep, deep violet;” hers was “pale, pale blue.”22 Charles was incisive; she was superficial. Charles had greatness; she was condemned to mediocrity. But even as she understood the absurdity of their views, she wondered whether they had hit upon the truth. Were these the ideal measures of the Aryan spirit? Anne had always believed she was lesser than Charles. The Carrels’ judgment was strangely liberating.

  Charles’s absence, however, and the consuming routine of caring for two children created a paradox. Anne was both happy and lonely, as if a piece of herself had died. In a letter to her friend Thelma Crawford Lee, Anne paraphrased a thought expressed by Rebecca West in her book The Thinking Reed, a rumination on the “price” women pay for their relations with men. A woman involved in a marriage, wrote West, especially a happy, absorbing marriage, seemed to lose her capacity for friendship. West wondered whether men had an unconscious desire to keep their women occupied so that they had no time for anything else. Anne wondered, along with West, whether only a part of her was expressed through marriage and other parts were wasted.

  Anne confided in her friend that she had a feeling of emptiness that had no name; her commitment to her family seemed to fall short of happiness. She did not have the nourishment of people and responsibilities beyond her home, the sense of pride and purpose that she had before she was married.23

  But if she was torn with conflict, no one around her knew. Two weeks later, on August 16, Margot and Dwight, on their honeymoon, arrived at Long Barn. Their love had germinated in the dark months of the Hauptmann trial, when Margot was a source of sustenance to the Morrow family. After Dwight’s first year at Harvard Law School, assured by his doctors that he had been “cured” by psychotherapy,24 they had married in May. They seemed a perfect union of opposites. Margot was strong, sturdy, and confident; Dwight was nervous, sensitive, and fragile. His neediness had given her a permanent place in the family she had come to love. But after three months, their marriage was beginning to falter, and Margot was desperate. It didn’t take her long to realize that Dwight was still ill.25

  While they were touring in Brittany, Dwight received notice that he had not made the school’s law review. He went into a deep depression, hallucinating and talking to himself. Frightened, Margot took him to Long Barn, hoping that Anne would be able to console him. Anne understood him well; Dwight felt better almost immediately.

  But the salve of Anne’s presence would not last. Dwight returned to the States and resumed his studies at law school, but before the year was out, he was overwhelmed by paranoia and forced to leave Cambridge for home. Those close to him believed that the “fire and brimstone” of his early church education had filled him with the terror of damnation. As if in compensation, he had delusions of grandeur, imagining himself Jesus, saving the souls of the damned through his corporeal death. Sometimes, he would see himself as a “lighthouse,” illuminating the way for those lost in the darkness.26 There was a certain irony in his brother-in-law’s achieving the public stature to which Dwight aspired.

  In a sense, Dwight’s terrors were not much different from Anne’s. An alignment of genes, a biochemical shift, and the same voice that taunted Anne in the aftermath of Charlie’s death might have found a way to consume her. She, too, feared sin and damnation and sought to be an incorporeal saint. In the summer of 1937, while Dwight Jr. succumbed to his fear and desperation, Anne sat in her second-floor office, overlooking the manicured gardens of Long Barn, seeking “salvation” through the written word. Each morning, between trips to school with Jon and feeding Land his milk and porridge, Anne wrote Listen! The Wind.

  Listen! The Wind,27 like North to the Orient, is a travel book suffused with myth. The book narrates ten days of the Lindberghs’ five-month tour, from November 27 to December 6, 1933, to the Cape Verde island of Santiago off the coast of Africa and on to the English colony of Bathurst in Gambia. Anne struggled to write the book from her return home to Englewood in December 1933, through the Hauptmann trial in 1935, and their self-exile in England through the summer of 1937 at Long Barn.

  While North to the Orient is a confrontation with death and a statement of loss, Listen! The Wind is an encounter with evil and an act of penance. Death is not “the answer”
that will take Anne “home.” She has to acknowledge the evil inside herself, renounce her moral righteousness, and come to terms with the “fallen” nature of man. Still hiding behind the façade of Charles’s heroism, careful not to expose his vulnerability, Anne speaks for both of them. She unmasks the “sin” of their arrogance and carries the burden of insight and atonement.

  Listen! The Wind is a sophisticated work with a strong narrative and an unyielding vision. It is written in layers to camouflage Anne’s intent, but the linear narrative is precise in detail, time, and place. The second layer meshes two governing metaphors: Odysseus’ descent to Hades on his journey home, and Dante’s pilgrimage through the Inferno. The third layer is the relation between the two “Annes”—Anne the narrator, omniscient and omnipresent, and Anne the protagonist, living in the moment and vulnerable to the vicissitudes of time, place, and events. Using the literary technique of “doubling,” Anne preserves her public image while subjecting herself to moral scrutiny and condemnation. Through the veil of the written word, Anne exorcises her demons and saves herself, pulling Charles, unaware, behind her.

  While Anne the narrator, detached and confident, establishes the authority of herself and Charles, the certainty in her voice erodes her argument from within. She and Charles are equipped for everything, she tells the reader. They are independent and in control. They came like “giants on the wind,” jumping from island to island, as though stepping on stones across the Atlantic.