Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life (39 page)

Even as Anne counted the days and wished for home, Charles, unhindered by anyone’s schedule, conducted himself like a boy on a fishing trip. After flying southwest to Natal, Brazil, he decided to take a thousand-mile side trip up the Amazon to Manaus, Port-of-Spain, and Puerto Rico, delaying their return home by three weeks. Anne, crestfallen, refrained from complaining and chose once more to obey.
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When they landed in Miami on December 16, the city seemed to explode with life—signs and shops and billboards and people. So close to
home, Anne was thrilled to receive a wire from her mother in New York: the baby was fine and waiting for them in Englewood.
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But three days later, hours from home, flying from Charleston up the coast to New York, Anne was overtaken by fear. The abstract notion of “home,” which had propelled her forward day by day, buttressing her strength and galvanizing her will, seemed another ring of Hell. Already, she felt torn by pressures and obligations: the press, the ceremonious fawning of officials, caring for the baby, finding a place to live, writing a new book, making Charles happy. The flight, in retrospect, seemed easy. She had had one task to do, and Charles was her master. Now, she had to please the world. She must, she wrote in her diary,
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have the courage to say “no.”

After a chase by cameramen in planes dangerously close to theirs, Anne and Charles landed at College Point, Long Island. Once on the ground, they slipped by reporters into the Edo Aircraft factory and out the front door. To the press, the Lindberghs were heroes returning from a grand adventure. They raised the world above the squalor and hopelessness of the Depression. Home safe after thirty thousand miles of flight, tanned, vibrant, and smiling, they seemed nothing less than a miracle. The
New York Tribune
pictured the hand of God, cupped over white-capped waves, cradling a silver biplane. Although the plane was misrepresented—the
Tingmissartoq
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was a low-winged monoplane—the message was clear: the Lindberghs’ mission had been worthy of God’s protection. The irony, of course, was that news about the Lindberghs sold newspapers, and while God might protect them, the press would not.

Back in the routine of Next Day Hill, Anne found life on the ground chaotic. Jon was “spoiled,” and everyone seemed to know how to handle him better than she did.
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She took him out to Falaise to visit the Guggenheims for three days, hoping to establish again their old rapport. But a return to Next Day Hill to face Christmas at home without her mother, Con, and Dwight Jr. was more than Anne could handle. They had gone to spend the holidays with Elisabeth and Aubrey, who had moved to Pasadena.

Disheartened by her prognosis but still optimistic, Elisabeth was wheeled around her garden in a custom-made bed, certain that she was shocking the neighbors with her unconventional vehicle for sunbathing. Again like an actress on the stage, she told everyone that it was actually fun to stay in bed, and that she felt certain—down to the very marrow of her bones—that she was healing. In truth she felt like a kept woman, an invalid who had to paint her face to please her master.
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She missed her family in Englewood and she missed her school. When she married Aubrey the year before, Elisabeth had delegated the school’s directorship to her mother and its daily operations to Connie Chilton. Although Elisabeth believed that her vision was being honored, she missed the sense of fulfillment she had gained with it.

Elisabeth had a gift for pretense; Anne had none. In the weeks after Christmas she was miserable in Englewood, and everyone knew it. After being alone with Charles for five months, Anne was restrained by the surveillance of her mother. There were too many opinions, she wrote, too many servants, and no privacy. Concerned about the safety of Jon, now sixteen months old, Anne and Charles decided to rent an apartment in the city rather than a house in the country. She had found a “rather small place,” she wrote to her mother-in-law, a penthouse with two terraces, a sunny one for Jon and the other with beautiful views of the skyline for her and Charles. Jon would sleep in the adjoining room, and they would keep the dogs with them for protection. And she would begin to write the narrative of their transatlantic trip.
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While Anne wrestled with her discontent, her public image shone brighter than ever. The only female flyer who had crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific to Japan, Anne was awarded the Hubbard Gold Medal by the National Geographic Society. Her skill on the wireless radio, the society declared, ranked her as a world expert. The course of her flights, wrote the
New York Times
, “should be marked on every map in every school room. The boys already have their circumnavigator. The girls now have theirs.”
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The Lindberghs’ popularity was at an all-time high.
Newsweek
reported that Charles Lindbergh’s signature was worth more than that of
any celebrity alive—at least fifty dollars. Organizations, schools, and the media used the Lindbergh name to bring honor and profit to themselves. The Veteran Wireless Operators Association gave Anne a gold medal, Smith College honored her sister Constance, and even Charles Lindbergh, Sr., was resurrected as a prophet. The publishers Dorrance and Company reprinted his 1918 book,
Your Country at War
, claiming that his writings had foreshadowed the National Recovery Act and Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation.
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They hoped that his son would be pleased by their actions. Charles was pleased, probably more than he let on. He was learning to use his popularity as a political tool.

On February 9, 1934, citing collusion, President Roosevelt ordered the cancellation of all commercial airmail contracts. Although it appeared to be an act of belligerence against the airline industry, it was the culmination of a long series of investigations. Ever since the Kelly Act of 1925, when the airplane was recognized as a viable adjunct to the postal service, the postmaster general had had the authority to award airline contracts at his discretion. But it wasn’t until the McNary-Watres Act of 1930, which gave him the power to transmit airmail payments to commercial carriers, that his authority began to have real implications for the airline industry.

In May and June of 1930, Postmaster General Walter F. Brown hosted what became known as the “Spoils Conferences.” The purpose of the meetings was to divide the airmail contracts among invited representatives of all the major airlines. Uninvited smaller operators were not welcome. These secret meetings led to wild stock promotions and tens of millions of dollars to airline promoters, who invested little or no cash. The larger companies gobbled up the smaller ones, creating huge conglomerates and millions of dollars for entrepreneurs and stock owners, who in large part happened to be Republicans. In the summer of 1931, a small airline spurned by Brown leaked the news to the press. The result was a congressional investigation that exposed the machinations of Brown and the airlines.
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Lindbergh was linked to the scandal when it became known that he
had received twenty-five thousand shares of TAT stock, valued at $250,000, as well as the option for twenty-five thousand shares at a preferential price when he became a technical adviser in 1928. When the Democrats and Roosevelt came to power in March 1933, the pressure was high to redress the injustice.

Lindbergh, who had begun his career as an airmail pilot, and who worried that his name would be smeared, along with that of his employer, TAT, now TWA, sent a telegram to Roosevelt the very next day, leaking it simultaneously to the press. He wrote that the entire industry was being condemned without a trial, which transgressed the right of all citizens, especially those who had worked so hard to ensure its success. Roosevelt was appalled by Lindbergh’s action. It was unethical, he believed, in view of Lindbergh’s popular acclaim, to register his protest publicly without giving him the opportunity to respond in private. But Lindbergh was implacable. He feared not only for the safety of all the inexperienced army personnel who had taken over the airmail routes, but for the future of commercial aviation. On February 15, he received a “polite telegram” from the postmaster general, chastising him for his unjust accusations made without knowledge of the facts. It was sent to the Morrow estate, where, the next day, Lindbergh received it on his return from New York.

Immediately, he duplicated the telegram and sent it to the newspapers, using it to further condemn the Roosevelt administration. Pitting his power to manipulate public opinion against the authority of the government, Lindbergh deepened the wound. Roosevelt had tried to squelch Lindbergh’s protestations by offering him a place on a new committee formed to study the army operation of airmail, but Lindbergh, growing more bold, threw the offer back in his face and used it to deride Roosevelt.

Unfortunately, Lindbergh’s prediction of disaster came true. By the end of the first week of army operations, five pilots were dead, six were injured, and eight planes were wrecked. By May, twelve pilots were dead, and the cost to the government was almost four million dollars.
In June the Air Mail Act of 1934 was passed, giving the air routes back to the airlines and placing them under the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

The incident, however, had made clear to Lindbergh the breadth of his influence on the press and public opinion. He was beginning to believe that he had a moral imperative to take a stand on public issues.

As the airline scandal thrust Lindbergh’s name back into the public arena, it had the unintended consequence of making Betty Morrow’s poetry famous. A window into the Morrow and Lindbergh lives, her poetry was the coveted treasure of
The Atlantic Monthly
. With the death of her husband, the murder of her grandson, and the impending death of her daughter Elisabeth, Betty began to break with conventional rhyme and form, creating a dialogue between language and emotion. In April 1934, three of her poems were published by
The Atlantic Monthly:
“Saint of the Lost,” “Asphodel,” and “Hostage.” “Saint of the Lost” is the least personal of the trio, an ode to Saint Anthony, watchman of the fallen, the hurt, and the lost. “Asphodel” is a retreat into myth, riddled with the sadness of her husband’s death and the presentiment of her oldest daughter’s passing. But “The Hostage,” written in the masculine third person, is a clear expression of her anguish in the wake of Charlie’s kidnapping. She speaks of violent murder and its forms—strangling, stabbing, shooting, throwing, starving, drowning—and the vicarious death of those who wait for the “hostage” to return, exploring the evil that is human and the emotions it evokes. The poem reflects the family’s rage and marks a turning point in Betty’s work.

Through this time of grief and foreboding, Anne and her mother gave each other courage and consolation. But in spite of the similarities in their writings, Anne never shared the intimacy enjoyed by her mother and Elisabeth. Especially in the face of Elisabeth’s illness, reminiscent of the slow and painful death of Betty’s twin, Mary, Anne felt inadequate and pushed aside. Like Betty, Anne sensed she could never fill her sister’s loss in her mother’s life, and both of them knew that Elisabeth was dying.

Within three months, Elisabeth had gained seventeen pounds. Hoping her plumpness would project an image of health to her friends, she protested that she really looked wonderful. In truth, she was growing weaker by the day. In a letter written to her mother about the future of her school, Elisabeth began to come to terms with the closeness of her death. The letter carried the solemnity of one who wanted to make her wishes known. Wrapped in salutations of love for her mother, it was a statement of Elisabeth’s educational philosophy.

Her school meshed progressive and traditional values. She wanted to keep “the best of the old and the best of the new.” She would find a way of educating children that would free them from the constraints of mindless conformity. While she would draw upon the ancient principles of Plato, there would be those who would call her a rebel. Nonetheless, she believed that the quality of life depended on self-knowledge and relationships. It was her goal to help children confront “the truth.”
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Reflecting her parents’ commitment to the community, yet unaccepting of their Calvinist predilections, Elisabeth’s plan to foster individual needs was a desire for her own legitimacy and, with it, a kind of self-absolution.

While Elisabeth approached reconciliation, Anne was at odds with her life in New York. She and Charles hated the tumult of the city and thought about moving to California. Anne wrote to Elisabeth that she and Charles had bought a new single-engine, high-wing monoplane, built by the Monocoupe Corporation of St. Louis. It would be ready at the end of July, and they planned to visit her and Aubrey in California.

In early July, Anne luxuriated in the peace and beauty of the Morrow home in North Haven. The lull between trips let her slip into a midsummer torpor. She reveled in the island sun and soaked herself in long days with Jon, living a child’s life again.
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For the first time, Anne was beginning to appreciate the past without dredging up the darkness of the kidnapping. Jon was just Jon—not a baby like Charlie, not Charlie’s brother, but her child—unique, sufficient. And yet, she did distance herself from him; practicing a survival
mechanism to protect herself from loss. Anne resolved to see the “essentials of life,” the essence of childhood, not Jon alone.

She left North Haven feeling healthy and strong, she wrote, at one with her family and with nature. Charles, too, was well. Tanned and rested, on August 2 he flew a 3000-horsepower Sikorsky seaplane, under the auspices of Pan Am, and topped all records for a seaplane flight.
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The craft, it was anticipated, would cut two days off the run from Miami to Buenos Aires, putting South America only five and a half days from New York. With planes like these, the 710-horsepower
Tingmissartoq
was quickly becoming a relic. Anne and Charles had arranged to have it displayed at New York’s Museum of Natural History.
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