Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life Read Free Page A

as if to hide

A strength perhaps too forward for a bride,

Feminine in her bustle and long skirt;

She looks demure, with just a touch of flirt

In archly tilted head and squinting smile

At the photographer, she watches while

Pretending to be girl, although so strong,

Playing the role of wife (“Here I belong!”),

Anticipating mother, with man for child,

Amused at all her roles, unreconciled
.
    And I who gaze at you and recognize

The budding gestures that were soon to be

My cradle and my home, my trees, my skies
…
    —ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH
     

4
A Rebel at Last
     

     

     
A nne Morrow, the Colonel’s lady, 1929
.
     
(Brown Brothers)
     
    Lovers and madmen have such seething brains
,
Such shaping fantasies that apprehend

More than cool reason comprehends
.
    —
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE ,
   
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
,
   A CT V, S CENE I
     

5
Presentiment
     

     

     
A nne Morrow and her mother, Elizabeth Cutter Morrow, 1929
.
     
(Lindbergh Picture Collection, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library)
     

P RESENTIMENT
     
    I am still as an Autumn tree

In which there is no wind

No breath of movement

Yet, there on a top branch

For no cause I can see

A single leaf oscillates

Violently

To what thin melody does it dance?

What lost note vibrates in me?

From the past or the future?

Memory or presentiment?
    — ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH 1
     

6
The Mermaid’s Bargain
     

     

     
Anne Morrow and Charles Lindbergh in Mexico City, 1929
.
(AP/Wide World Photos)
     

T HE L ITTLE M ERMAID
     
    Only the little mermaid knows the price

One pays for mortal love, what sacrifice
…
The magic sweetness of a mermaid’s song
,
She must abandon, if she would belong

To mortal world, the gift—of fatal choice—

That would have won the Prince, her golden voice
.
    — ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH 1
     

7
Honeymoon Politics
     

     

     
M arried three months, Anne and Charles make a mail route survey tour for Pan Am through the Caribbean
.
Trinidad, September 1929
.
     
(Sygma)
     
    Within marriage, power is the ability to impose one’s imaginative vision and make it prevail … Love is the momentary or prolonged refusal to think of another person in terms of power
.
     
—PHYLLIS ROSE,
Parallel Lives
     
     

8
The Odyssey
     

     

     
A nne and Charles, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, 1929
.
     
(Lindbergh Picture Collection, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library)
     
    And this should give you pause my son; don’t stay too long away from home, leaving your treasures there and brazen suitors near. They’ll squander all you have and take it from you, and then how will your journey serve?
     
—HOMER,
The Odyssey
     
     

9
Into the Cauldron
     

     

     
Charles and Anne, Dwight and Elizabeth Morrow in North Haven, Maine, en route to Asia, July 1931
.
     
(UPI/Corbis-Bettmann)
     

T HE L ITTLE M ERMAID 1
     
    Into the smoky cauldron she must throw

A mermaid’s kingdom, gleaming far below

The restless waves and filtered light that falls

Through dim pellucid depths on palace walls
.
    All childhood haunts must go, all memories;

Her swaying garden of anemones

Circled by conch-shells, where the sea-fans dance

To unheard music bending in a trance
.
    — ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH
     

10
Black October
     

     

     
D wight Morrow in Lindbergh’s plane, waving to the crowd on his senatorial campaign tour, May 1930
.
     
(Amherst College)
     
    Nothing in human affairs deserves anxiety, and grief stands in the way to hinder the self-succour that our duty immediately requires of us
.
     
—PLATO,
The Republic
     
     

11
Within the Wave
     

     

     
A nne and Charles arrive at Nanking, September 1931
.
     
(AP/Wide World Photos)
     

WITHIN THE WAVE 1
     
    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”