Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life (59 page)

B
ronze head of Anne Lindbergh by Charles Despiau
.

(Museum of Modern Art)

I
mages of Anne—Charles couldn’t get enough of them. As criticism of his pro-German stance intensified, he wanted to etch her onto the walls of his mind, as a sign of constancy in this pit-grave of politics. The task, however, was proving impossible. First Despiau and now Simon Elwes—painter of dukes, princesses, and kings—was summoned by Charles to perform the task. But no matter how many times the jovial painter put his brush to the cloth, the image turned out wrong. Elwes could not capture Anne’s depth of character, Charles wrote in his diary. He would have to settle for mediocrity.

To Anne, however, the painter’s brush was more than accurate. She felt sinful and useless, self-absorbed, and unworthy of Charles, Jon, and Land.
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On New Year’s Day, Anne skied down the hills of Englewood, contemplating the chaos of war amid the simplicity of the winter landscape. As she “danced” with a hill,
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all seemed tranquil and timeless, but she knew too well the illusion of the moment. Her thoughts turned toward possible American involvement in the war.
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Three days later, as if seeking approval from a higher source, Anne and Charles drove to Cambridge to visit Alfred and Evelyn Whitehead. When the tall, frail Mrs. Whitehead greeted them at the door, Anne felt an immediate kinship. Alfred, now eighty-two years old, was equally warm and engaging. His small bent frame played counterpoint to his fiery eyes. He spoke slowly and with precision, in beautiful prose, setting Anne at ease in spite of his penetrating mind and sardonic wit. He seemed to her a paradox of gentility and cynicism.
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Anne and Charles had read Whitehead’s 1933 treatise
The Adventure of Ideas
. His mathematical mind had permitted him to distill the flux of history into thematic abstractions that confirmed Charles’s view of an amoral universe. Recalling the fall of the Roman Empire and the age of decay that had augured its decline, Whitehead wrote,

To Anne, Charles Lindbergh and Alfred Whitehead were among the “vigorous race” who could dare to dream. The seriousness with which the esteemed philosopher treated Charles’s ideas gave Anne new confidence.

The idea of change began to pervade her diaries. She had thought she craved the peace of Long Barn, only to find that something within her rebelled against the perfect and peaceful English world. In Illiec, she had found a natural rhythm as she moved according to its swelling tides, the thunder of the sea, and the howling of the wind, leaving behind all manmade falseness. She was beginning to see that harmony with life meant accepting the chaos and adapting to change.

The writings of Whitehead and Saint-Exupéry melded into one as Anne developed a metaphor that would dominate her work. We contain a “changeless element,” she wrote, even as we submit to the rhythm of life. We must commune with that element or lose our power to create.

The opportunity to test her theory presented itself sooner than she had expected. Jim Newton, whom they had met through Alexis Carrel in Illiec three years earlier, had appointed himself their “guardian angel.” Sensing their need to “get away,” he had rented Anne and Charles a cottage on the island of Captiva, a remote island, only seven miles long, off the gulf coast of Florida.
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On January 21, Anne and Charles boarded a train for Tampa. Flirting with the public and the press, Charles ate in the dining car while burying his head in a mammoth book by H. G. Wells.
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His
Outline of History
was an analysis of the patterns of human history from ancient Sparta to the Great War. While the trainmen and the other travelers gawked, Charles sat, head resting on his hand, contemplating the inevitable thrust of evolution.

They met Jim Newton at Haines City and drove to Fort Myers, where they crossed the bay to Captiva. From the moment Anne and Charles saw its shoreline, the barely inhabited island seemed a place beyond ordinary life. Separately, and yet in unison, Anne and Charles recorded their enchantment—the palms silhouetted against the sky, the shell roads, and the wide stretches of virgin beach.
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Newton had borrowed a thirty-foot cabin cruiser and hired a young game warden to help them navigate the Everglades. Guided by him, Jim lurched through the deep waters of the Shark River, chopping his way through the branches of the mangrove trees. As thousands of birds swarmed above them, reminiscent of the Minnesota woodlands one generation before, they made their way, spear-fishing by day, lighting campfires at night, and taking turns sleeping and keeping watch on their boat.

Determined to be “crew,” Anne took her place beside the men. She was “steel,” Jim later said, handling the big poles and spearing the lobsters.
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“I have to do this,” she insisted.

They returned home on February 5, pleased that Anne’s article “Prayer for Peace” had been rated number one in a poll of readers. According to a concurrent Gallup Poll, only 23 percent of Americans wanted to join in the war against Germany.
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Even the British Ministry of Information wanted to publish the article in pamphlet form.
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Perhaps, Charles wrote, at last someone was listening.

One by one, the nations of Europe staked their territorial claims. In late February, 68,000 men died in the battles between Germany and Russia on the Finnish border, and Mussolini pledged his commitment to the fall of France. Britain announced that 400,000 children would be evacuated from the cities to the countryside.
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As Hitler’s intent became clear, Charles’s diaries assumed the tone of one who knew he must answer to history. He withdrew, seeking lessons from his past. On a trip to Washington, he retraced the steps through boulevards and corridors he had once walked with his congressman father. But all he saw was disorder and degeneration. He could not but wonder, he wrote, whether America was a country in “decline.”
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On a visit to the Smithsonian, he hid behind a statue of Martha Washington to view the crowd that paid homage to the
Spirit of St. Louis
, his now primitive airplane. He marveled now at his courage in flying the flimsy machine across the Atlantic. How wonderful it was in a museum, he wrote, never to be flown again, like an icon of the past.
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Seeking courage from his accomplishments, he bought a big globe, on which he smeared in bold black ink the routes he had charted during their frontier flying days.
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Acknowledging that Anne was at the core of his survival, Charles rewarded her for her love and loyalty. He remodeled the garage of the Lloyd Neck house. The structure, which stood on top of the hill, overlooking the sea, contained the room where Anne wrote. With a warm stove and an expansive view, Charles was sure she would be comfortable there.
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Anne, in turn, gave Charles a gift. She offered him
The Way of Life
, by Lao-tzu, a treatise on solitude and the balancing mechanism of a “changeless core.”

Frequently nauseated, since her return from Florida, Anne took to her bed and gained a reprieve from the clamor of politics. Her doctor confirmed what she had hoped: she was pregnant again. The thought of having another child stirred memories of both her own childhood and the deaths of Elisabeth and Charlie.
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Echoing her reading of Theosophy and the poetry of Rilke, Anne wrote, “There is no wall but time between the living and the dead.”

While spring in Lloyd Neck dragged its heels, refusing to bloom beneath the rotting leaves, Germany invaded Norway and Denmark.
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When the Norwegians and Danes were forced to surrender, Charles was pleased with the “amazing success” of the German army. It was not only a triumph of “air power,” he wrote, it was also “a turning point in military
history.”
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Anne, on the other hand, was shocked by the ruthlessness of the German troops.
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But with the arrival of spring, she felt closer than ever to Charles. She was certain, she wrote, that Whitehead was right. Events were ideas waiting to be born; like waves breaking against the shores of human experience, they swelled and receded according to a higher law. Human life was driven by notions of reality that were undefinable by existing language. Something good, though, would come; some hidden element for the good of mankind. Hitler’s love for his people was no different from Roosevelt’s. He, too, had instituted a kind of “New Deal.” And he was just an accidental scourge, the means through which a new idea emerged. The Nazis were merely riding the wave.
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Unknown to Anne, Hitler had long since formulated the “final solution.” Heinrich Himmler saw to the construction of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen in Poland, facilities for slave labor and the extermination of the Jewish population in occupied territory.
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As word—sparse and incomplete—of Jewish persecution filtered home, Charles noted in his diary that he was still pleased with his ancestry. But one’s life, he wrote, was also determined by one’s environment, and one must teach one’s children to take care of themselves. Once again, mimicking his father’s attempts to foster his manhood, Charles took Jon to a pasture near their home and left him alone to cope with a butting ram. Charles climbed over a fence and hid in an adjoining field to watch his son battle with nature. The ram got tired of butting, and Jon, wrote Charles, learned to protect himself.
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Unable to keep silent, Betty Morrow once again made known her opinions, so different from her children’s. Appalled by the events in Norway and fearing the imminent invasion of France, she delivered a radio address that urged the public to extend active aid to the Allies. Known in the press as the mother-in-law of Charles Lindbergh, Betty sought to stand for herself. She told Anne she was doing it for “Daddy.”

Her views reflected those of 51 percent of the public,
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and she continued to urge the American government to send airplanes and money to the Allies and to stop the export of war materials that might find their way to
the aggressors.
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As her husband had done in
The Society of Free States
, published in 1919, Betty spoke of nationalism in the context of voluntary international cooperation, exercising her influence in her husband’s name. As a widow, she became the man she married, a heroine in hero’s shoes.

On May 10, 1940, Hitler launched a massive offensive; he broke through the French Maginot Line, and the British troops stationed in France withdrew to the beaches of Dunkirk.
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The courage of the British, civilians and military men, in rescuing many of their soldiers was to be known as a miracle.

In a speech to the House of Commons on May 13, Churchill, referring to Dunkirk, turned defeat into inspiration. “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds … until in God’s good time the new world with all its power and might steps forth to the rescue and liberation of the old.”
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And he asked Roosevelt to lend England fifty destroyers.

Three days later, Charles wrote in his diary that the press was “hysterical.” They implied that America was just days away from attack.
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In response to Churchill’s request, Roosevelt called for “sharply increased military spending” and the “modernization” of the United States Army and Navy.
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Days later, Charles made another radio address, hoping to sway public opinion.
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And on May 19, he urged the government to adopt a policy of “defense preparedness.” Of course we need a greater army and navy, he said, but let us not be manipulated by propaganda. Let us not fear an invasion or commit ourselves to war. American editorials called him “ignorant” and “blind”
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; the Italian press praised his speech as “cheering news.”
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