Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life Read Free

She was proud of this house. Charles had called it Anne’s Chalet.
    Anne served a generous lunch: meat, cheese, dark bread with raw mountain butter, and salad. As we passed the salad and the bread, the conversation turned personal, with Anne skillfully orchestrating it. Yet beneath the placid surface of Anne’s talk was a relentless and piercing scrutiny. I had been warned of her intensity, of her finely tuned antennae hidden beneath her gentility and reserve. She scanned my face and hands, examined my jewelry and my clothes for traces of falsity and indiscretion. She probed my eyes to seek my intent.
    “I learned a lot about you,” she said as we sat after lunch on the balcony.
    I did not question her. I had passed a test.
    A s she spoke, she removed her dark glasses and I saw for the first time her violet, almond-shaped eyes. She leaned back into the worn, plastic-flowered chaise, looking up, unfocused, at the sky, as though seeking divine acknowledgment. She gazed at the hillside and the mountains, commenting on the birds as they fed at her window, enthralled by their beauty and by the intricacies of their play. They connected her, she said, to the “great forces of nature;” they renewed her energy and reasserted the creative essence of the universe. In this setting, amid the unshorn trees, the cowbells, and the mountains, she seemed strong and lucid, confident and proud of her ability to think and to remember.
    Because she knew few strangers, she spoke to me as a friend, relieved, even grateful to unburden her thoughts. In spite of her reticence, she loved to talk. Slowly, our conversation began to take shape.
    I spoke of her books; Anne spoke of Charles.
    I spoke of her poetry; Anne spoke of Charles.
    I spoke of her father; Anne spoke of Charles.
    “I want to set the record straight,” she finally said. “That’s all I have left of him.”
    Her monologue seemed to hang in space—bold and unadorned. It was as though she were renouncing something old and dear; as though she knew it was time to confront the inevitable. Her face grew soft as her words changed fragments of memory into a story.
    “My life began when I met Charles Lindbergh.”

1
A New Beginning
     

     
Charles Lindbergh on the steps of the American Embassy in Mexico City, December 1927
.
     
(Amherst College Archives)
     
    I have no life but this
,
To lead it here;

Nor any death, but lest

Dispelled from here;

Nor tie to earths to come
,
Nor action new
,
Except through this extent
,
The realm of you
.
    — EMILY DICKINSON
     

2
Coming Home
     

     

     
T hree sisters, Anne Morrow, Elisabeth Morrow, and Constance Morrow, on the steps of the American Embassy in Mexico City, December 1927
.
     
(Lindbergh Picture Collection, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library)
     
    The attributes of True Womanhood, by which a woman judged herself and was judged by her husband, her neighbors, and society, could be divided into four cardinal virtues—piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. Put them all together and they spelled mother, daughter, sister, wife-woman. Without them no matter whether there was fame, achievement or wealth, all was ashes. With them she was promised happiness and power
.
     
—BARBARA WELTER ,
The Cult of True Womanhood
     
     

3
The Early Years
     

     

     
D wight and Elizabeth Morrow, home from their honeymoon. Englewood, New Jersey, 1903
.
     
(Amherst College Archives)
     

F AMILY A LBUM 1
     
    My parents, my children:

Who are you, standing there

In an old photograph—young married pair

I never saw before, yet see again?

You pose somewhat sedately side by side
,
In your small yard off the suburban road
.
He stretches a little in young manhood’s pride

Broadening his shoulders for the longed-for load
,
The wife that he has won, a home his own;

His growing powers hidden as spring, unknown
,
But surging in him toward their certain birth
,
Explosive as dandelions in the earth
.
    She leans upon his arm,