Lindbergh

by A. Scott Berg

  After two months of being worshiped in “El Dorado,” Lindbergh returned to the United States, flying from Havana to St. Louis. The city closed the schools at noon that Tuesday so that every student could gather by the Mississippi and greet him as one. Sixty thousand children, each with an American flag, waited for him—as did almost as many adults—filling the levee for ten city blocks. Lindbergh provided a half-hour stunt show before landing at Lambert Field. With that, he decided that this was to be his plane’s last hurrah, and he announced that he was retiring to private life. In the spring, he would fly his plane to Washington—a remarkable flight of 725 miles in less than five hours—where he would donate the plane to the Smithsonian Institution for permanent exhibition.

  But the kudos did not stop coming. Just skimming off the cream of the offers, he accepted an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Wisconsin, out of which he had flunked but six years earlier; he accepted the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Coolidge in a ceremony at the White House; and he accepted a medal and $25,000 from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation “for contributions to international friendship.” Lindy Clubs, complete with their own oath, laws, and salute, sprang up. Press coverage did not abate, as each event fostered the next. In an attempt to lure readers, a new magazine called Time tried boosting sales at the end of 1927 by naming a “Man of the Year.” The first such honoree was Lindbergh.

  He tried to concentrate his attention on the development of commercial aviation, entering into conversations with airlines, the Pennsylvania Railroad, even Henry Ford—all of whom were interested in the future of transportation. He also became a paid consultant of the Daniel Guggenheim Fund and the United States government’s Bureau of Aeronautics. Still unsettled, he kept himself in constant motion, flying all around the country. “Reporters and photographers had crowded in at every airfield,” Lindbergh later recalled of that period. “Automobile-loads of people followed them. The hotels where I stayed at night were watched. I could not walk along a street without being followed, photographed, and shouted at.” He had become the first person to be constantly stalked by the media.

  And then one day flying westward, Lindbergh crossed the Rocky Mountain ranges of southern Wyoming and eastern Utah and saw desert ahead. The sun was setting in front of him, and he knew a gang of journalists was waiting to ambush him in whichever town he decided to land. Instinctively, he brought his plane down right on the desert floor. “What peace I found there,” he later remembered, “on that warm but cooling surface of our planet’s sphere!”

  Lindbergh spent the night on the dried lake bed and experienced an epiphany. He realized he had been sentenced to a life as a public figure on a scale to which no man before him had ever been subjected. Feeling overexposed, overextended, and overexalted, he wished to “combine two seemingly contrary objectives, to be part of the civilization of my time but not to be bound by its conventional superfluity.”

  The solution was to simplify. “I would reduce my obligations, give away some of my possessions, concentrate my business and social interests,” he later wrote of his new objectives. “I would take advantage of the civilization to which I had been born without losing the basic qualities of life from which all works of men must emanate.”

  The Missouri Historical Society had asked Lindbergh if they might exhibit his trophies at Forest Park. He agreed to a ten-day display—during which time eighty thousand people visited. He extended his permission to show the prizes indefinitely; and during the next year, one and one-half million people peered into the display cases that took up most of the first floor of the west wing of the Jefferson Memorial Building. Lindbergh never asked for the return of his treasury; in fact, a few years later, he formally deeded the entire lot to the historical society.

  While he could share the trophies, he had nobody with whom to enjoy the celebration. Except for the occasional company of his mother, Lindbergh had experienced his entire year of accolades alone. Among the myriads who had glorified “the Lone Eagle,” there was only a handful of people he even wanted to see again. Living constantly in the public eye, it was difficult to imagine a personal relationship with anybody ever unfolding naturally. Friendships seemed difficult, a romance out of the question. Solitude seemed the most he could wish for, and that would have to be a hard-fought achievement. The fame he had never sought threatened to turn him into a freak.

  In the spring of 1928 Lindbergh grew lonely, longing for intimacy. At the age of twenty-six, he decided “it was time to meet girls.” Unconsciously, his mind kept returning to one young woman he had encountered among the millions of his admirers, Ambassador Morrow’s daughter—the shy one who always seemed to be looking away. Anne had been taken with him as well, as she revealed only to her diary upon his departure:

  The idea of this clear, direct, straight boy—how it has swept out of sight all other men I have known, all the pseudo-intellectuals, the sophisticates, the posers—all the “arty” people. All my life, in fact, my world—my little embroidery beribboned world is smashed.

  8

  UNICORNS

  “A girl should come from a healthy family, of course.

  My experience in breeding animals on our farm had taught me

  the importance of good heredity.”

  —C.A.L.

  DWIGHT WHITNEY MORROW WAS THE AMERICAN DREAM incarnate, living proof that hard work could elevate the most humbly born to the nation’s power elite. He was often presumed to be descended from one of America’s first families, but the life of this influential banker-diplomat-politician—whom Walter Lippmann called the most “trusted” man of his time—actually began in poverty in West Virginia.

  In 1873, he was literally born into a world of education—in the building that was Marshall College. His father, James—a teacher’s son—had recently been named president of the college, a position whose perquisite of free lodging for him and his growing family was worth more than the meager salary. Shortly thereafter, the James Morrows moved to Allegheny, Pennsylvania, where he assumed a number of teaching jobs over the years, Mathematics and the Bible his favorite subjects. This father of eight never earned more than $1,800 a year.

  Although Dwight never grew as tall as five and one-half feet, and was plagued by chronic migraine headaches, poor digestion, and a slightly misshaped arm, no obstacle ever seemed insurmountable to him. He dreamed of following his older brother to West Point and scored highest in his district on the entrance examination. Shortly after being notified that he would receive the appointment, he discovered that he was being passed over in favor of the young man who had placed second—the result of political pull.

  Disillusioned but undeterred, Dwight Morrow wrote to the man who had the final word on appointments to West Point. Just weeks before his eighteenth birthday, he sent a handwritten letter to President Benjamin Harrison himself, reminding him of his special power to appoint ten cadets himself every four years. “A dissapointment [sic] of the kind I received may not seem very much to a man in your position,” he wrote the Commander in Chief; “but if you were ever a poor boy, with a poor boy’s ambitions you can appreciate my position.” Morrow received no satisfaction, not even a personal reply; but the episode proved to be a turning point in his life. Deprived of the opportunities West Point might have afforded him, he grew determined to turn his adversity to greater advantage, to become a man of influence himself. A former teacher in Pittsburgh who knew the Morrows informed Dwight that it was not too late to apply for the next term at his alma mater.

  Amherst College became Morrow’s lifelong passion. As an undergraduate, he scraped by financially, borrowing money and tutoring; but he was quickly recognized as the most dynamic member of the class of 1895—an A-student, a prizewinner in Mathematics, Writing, and Forensics, as well as the class orator at graduation. He wrote for the campus literary magazines, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and made many friends. Upon graduation, Amherst legend has held for more than a century, Dwight Morrow was
voted “Most Likely to Succeed” by a unanimous vote save one—his, which he cast for classmate Calvin Coolidge.

  Amherst not only opened up the world intellectually for Morrow, but also romantically. In the spring of his sophomore year, the diminutive young man with the Roman nose and determined gaze attended a dance at which he met a freshman from Smith College, across the Connecticut River in Northampton. Elizabeth Reeve Cutter, from Cleveland, was possibly the only coed in Massachusetts whose zeal for college matched his. Outstanding in both scholastics and extracurricular activities, Elizabeth—Betty to most, Bee to a few, and ultimately Betsey to young Mr. Morrow—was racking up as many honors and prizes at Smith as he had at Amherst.

  She was no taller than he, with thick eyebrows, high cheekbones, and almost porcelain skin, which made her look like an Eskimo doll. No beauty—which did not matter to Morrow—she was all personality—which did. They quickly realized they were kindred spirits—hardworking, energetic young people at prestigious colleges, with a lot to prove. Although her family’s financial circumstances were hardly as dire as that of the Morrows, Elizabeth’s drive to succeed was at least as powerful as Dwight’s. Since childhood, she had been fueled by a circumstance she seldom mentioned. At the age of nine, her twin sister, Mary, suffered a long illness and died. The result was that Betty charged through life— “determined to accomplish,” observed one of her relatives, “enough for two.”

  Miss Cutter and Mr. Morrow’s affections for each other grew slowly, in accordance with the innocence of the times and the seriousness of their natures. Before they spoke of marriage, he had graduated from Columbia Law School and secured a position at the young but illustrious New York law firm of Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett; and she had taught at a private school in Cleveland, studied at the Sorbonne and in Florence, and had several poems published in national magazines. In June 1903—after his salary was raised to $3,000—they wed, honeymooning in the hills of New England, where they visited their respective alma maters.

  With abilities equaling their ambitions, the Morrows were always looking ahead. He proved to be an unqualified success at his law firm, putting work before pleasure and often losing himself in thought. Both Morrows preferred the “generous backyard life” of the suburbs to the social pressures of New York City; and directly across the Hudson River from the northernmost tip of Manhattan Island, they discovered the newly incorporated city of Englewood, perched on the Palisades. By commuter train to Jersey City and through the “Hudson Tube,” or by ferry down the river, one could commute to lower Manhattan in less than an hour. Already Englewood was becoming known for its fine schools and free library; and the general practitioner made housecalls in his two-seated buggy. The town was attracting a number of bankers, among them Henry P. Davison and Thomas Lamont, power-players at J. P. Morgan & Company.

  On their first visit to Englewood, the Morrows learned of a new house for rent on Spring Lane, an easy walk to the town center and the Presbyterian Church. The rent was more than they had budgeted, and the three-story house—with unexpected gables and small windows in odd places—contained more rooms than they needed; but they opted to bank on the future. One night in what they called “the little brown house,” Morrow awoke from what he considered “the most horrible” nightmare, in which he had dreamed that they had become “enormously rich.”

  Within a few years his income had increased tenfold, and children filled the house. Elisabeth Reeve was born in 1904; Anne Spencer two years later, and Dwight Jr. two years after that. In 1909, the Morrows moved into a larger house of “late gingerbread architecture” on an acre of land on Palisade Avenue, then still a country road. It was a sprawling place, full of trees, with a bedroom for each child. A third daughter, Constance, was born in 1913. “If we keep to our present resolutions and ill fortune does not overtake us,” Morrow wrote at the time, “we shall live here for the rest of our lives.”

  Morrow flourished in corporate law and became a partner at Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett in short order. With his growing list of civic boards and local charities, he found it increasingly difficult to spend time at home. “This, Betsey, is not the life for you or me,” he told his wife. “Once we have made $100,000 we shall retire from the practice of the law. I shall teach history: you will write poetry: the children will earn their own living.”

  That dream never came true, but his nightmare did. At the end of 1913, Thomas Lamont approached his neighbor to offer him a partnership at J. P. Morgan & Company. Although unexpected, the timing was right for both Morrow and Morgan. He was looking for a new challenge; and the fifty-two-year-old banking empire—at its zenith in power and its nadir in reputation—provided the opportunity. It was, in fact, the very moment when Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh of Minnesota had called for a Congressional probe of Wall Street’s concentration of power, the Money Trust. With the sudden death of J. Pierpont Morgan, the firm sought a new senior partner. They selected Morrow—“not merely because of his talent, for talent was plentiful and easy to buy,” Calvin Coolidge would later explain, “but … for his character, which was priceless.”

  Morrow wrestled with the fantastic offer for a month. After three weeks of pounding headaches, he saw a political cartoon in a newspaper in which J. P. Morgan was portrayed as a vulture feeding on the entrails of the shareholders of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. The bank had for the past decade been actively involved in the monopolistic operation of the transportation giant of the northeast; but that involvement had also created a company that greatly improved the public’s transportation needs and turned it into a sound investment. The unfairness of the cartoon clinched Morrow’s decision. He and his wife stayed up until two o’clock in the morning drafting his resignation letter to his present employers. “We is bankers after we mail this letter,” Dwight said to Betsey, filling his pipe. “Well,” she replied, “I hope we’ll be as happy as we’ve been as lawyers.”

  Morrow had suddenly reached the highest echelons of international finance, bringing with him the luster of integrity. Upon entering his new offices at 23 Wall Street, he also became a partner in Drexel & Co. in Philadelphia, Morgan, Grenfell & Co. in London, and Morgan, Harjes & Co. in Paris. Morrow was soon dealing with the heads of General Motors and Du Pont; he helped save the credit of the City of New York; he conferred with the Secretary of the Treasury about financing the War; he worked with Jean Monnet reconstructing postwar Europe.

  Domestic changes accompanied the professional challenges. While Dwight and Betty maintained a semblance of modesty in their standard of living in Englewood, his new position forced them to pay more attention to appearances. The Morrows continued to remain active in local affairs, but the demands for their participation on boards of national organizations, chairing school committees, and heading fund drives steadily increased. His work required their taking an apartment in New York City; and though they clung to the image of living in Englewood, the eleventh floor of the new building at 4 East Sixty-sixth Street became the address at which they gradually found themselves residing. Morrow became one of the owners of the fashionable building.

  Living in Manhattan, the Morrows began summering on the island of North Haven, in Penobscot Bay, Maine, and winter-vacationing in Nassau. Morrow’s new job involved frequent travel to Europe. Whenever possible, he took his children along for the educational benefits, reading appropriate passages from Henry James as they stopped in England and France. Dining with Rockefellers and Vanderbilts, professors and judges, ambassadors and generals, presidents and prime ministers, no doors were closed to the Dwight Morrows.

  Everything they touched turned into success. To their children, their marriage seemed ideal while their own lives were enormously privileged. In her early years of motherhood, Betty Morrow dropped everything at five o’clock, so that she could read to her youngsters. In time, they used this children’s hour to read by themselves and to write poetry and diaries.

  While demands on the Morrow children were few, expec
tations were infinite. The household was a hotbed of achievement with little room for imperfection. Life proved hardest on Dwight Jr., the only boy, carrying the burden of the great man’s name. He was automatically sent to Groton to prepare for Amherst, and before reaching college he began to falter under the pressure, developing a slight stammer. Betty Morrow took greater interest in her daughters.

  Elisabeth exceeded her dreams. Blessed with the finest features of her parents, she grew into an exquisite young blonde, delicate in beauty and strong in personality. The apple of her father’s eye talked for years of opening her own primary school. She emulated her mother’s success at Smith College, adding social sheen that came from prestigious parents. “She was the belle of the ball,” noted her youngest sister, Constance, more than sixty years later; “she was sophisticated and graceful and men fell at her feet.” Physically, she was fragile, the result of a childhood bout of measles. Her mother, with her lifelong fear of disease, did not cater to her illness. Although Elisabeth had developed a weak heart with a faulty valve, she knew the way to win her mother’s approval was to carry on as though she were perfectly fine. That valor made her even more attractive to her many suitors. Most ardent of all of them was one of the sons of Morgan partner Thomas Lamont, Corliss, who also maintained that “Elisabeth was her mother’s obvious favorite.”

  Nine years her junior, Constance would follow her to Milton Academy (and later Smith College) and perform with equal aplomb. Having brains and looks—and young enough not to have to compete with her sisters—she developed the most vibrant personality of all the Morrows.

  Anne was caught in the middle of two sisters who seemed to meet their parents’ expectations with grace and ease. Not quite as pretty—dark-haired and forever self-conscious about her slightly wide nose—Anne lagged in Elisabeth’s shadow. More than anyone in her family, she withdrew, finding comfort in reading and writing. By her mid-teens she had become an inveterate diarist and letter-writer.