Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life Read Free Page B

and the foam’s “has been”—

How luminous the landscape seen across

The crystal lens of an impending loss!
    — ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH
     

12
The War
     

     

     
C harles Augustus Jr. celebrates his first birthday, June 22, 1931. (Popperfoto)
     
    … Listen, my heart as only

saints have listened
…
Listen to the voice of the wind

And the ceaseless message that forms itself out of silence
.
It is murmuring toward you now

From those who died young
.
    — RAINER MARIA RILKE ,
    The First Elegy
,
    T RANSLATED BY S TEPHEN M ITCHELL
     

13
Ascent
     

     

     
Anne and Charles, after the kidnapping, fall 1932. (Sygma)
     
    Plunge deep

Into the sky

O wing

Of the Soul
.
    Reach

Past the last pinnacle

of speech

Into the vast

Inarticulate face

of Silence
.
    — ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH 1
     

14
Death Is the Answer
     

     

     
A nne Lindbergh with Jon at Next Day Hill, 1934
.
     
(Lindbergh Picture Collection, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library)
     
    And so you died like women long ago
,
died in the old warm house, old-fashionedly
,
the death of those in child-bed, who are trying to close

themselves again, but cannot do it, because that darkness

which they also bore returns and grows importunate, and enters
.
    — RAINER MARIA RILKE ,
   
Requiem, For A Friend, 1

   T RANSLATED BY J. B. L EISHMAN
     

15
Purgatory
     

     

     
A nne prepares for the Hauptmann trial, Englewood, 1935. (Lindbergh Picture Collection, Manuscripts And Archives, Yale University Library)
     
    With rage or despair, cries as of troubled sleep or of a tortured shrillness—they rose in a coil of tumult, along with noises like a slap of beating hands, all fused in a ceaseless flail that churns and frenzies that dark and timeless air like sand through a whirlwind
.
     
—
DANTE ,
The Inferno
,
F OREHELL , C ANTO 3
     
     

16
The Arrest
     

     

     
B runo Richard Hauptmann, September 1934
.
     
(New Jersey State Police Museum And Learning Center Archives)
     
    God’s purpose is justice. I am a friend of Nature since I was a child. I see God growing up in the grass, and I hear the winds
.
     
— BRUNO RICHARD HAUPTMANN ,
O CTOBER 3, 1934 1
     
     

17
Testament
     

     

     
A nne testifying in the trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, January 3, 1935
.
     
(AP/Wide World Photos)
     

T ESTAMENT
     
    But how can I live without you?
—she cried
.
    I left all the world to you when I died:

Beauty of earth and air and sea;

Leap of a swallow or a tree;

Kiss of rain and wind’s embrace;

Passion of storm and winter’s face;

Touch of feather, flower, and stone;

Chiseled line of branch or bone;

Flight of stars, night’s caravan;

Song of crickets—and of man—

All these I put in my testament
,
All these I bequeathed you when I went
.
    But how can I see them without your eyes

Or touch them without your hand?

How can I hear them without your ear
,
Without your heart, understand?
    These too, these too

I leave to you!
    — ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH 1
     

18
A Room of Her Own
     

     

     
A nne writing at her desk at North Haven, Maine, summer 1935
.
     
(Lindbergh Picture Collection, Manuscripts And Archives, Yale University Library)
     
    The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman. It is only when we know what were the conditions of the average woman’s life— the number of her children, whether she had money of her own, if she had a room to herself, whether she had help in bringing up her family, if she had servants, whether part of housework was her task—it is only when we can measure the way of life and the experience of life made possible to the ordinary woman that we can account for the success or failure of the extraordinary woman as a writer
.
     
— VIRGINIA WOOLF ,
Granite and Rainbow
     
     

19
Crossing Over
     

     

     
A nne, Charles, and Jon arrive in Liverpool, England, December 1935
.
     
(Popperfoto)
     
    We, local and ephemeral as we are, are not one moment contented in