Read Online Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life by Susan Hertog - Free Book Online
Authors: Susan Hertog
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“Lindbergh’s aboard,” but they had been forbidden to take notice or to engage in conversation. All were content to play his game, just glancing as they passed him, pretending that he was no one of any importance. Charles, now a detached observer, saddened by the antiseptic luxury of jet flight, would watch the stewardesses walk up and down the aisle serving full-course meals on household trays. It was, he found, hard to remember that they were 35,000feet above the same Atlantic Ocean he had flown over thirty-five years earlier in a 300-horsepower plane.
He traveled for months at a time, often cutting a wide swathe through the gamelands of East Africa while also alloting time to Pan Am. His growing interest in wildlife conservation had convinced him that “civilization” was not “progress,” and he sought to understand primitive human and animal life in the jungles of Tanzania and Kenya, places untouched by guns, planes, and “white men.” He believed that, in spite of the advances of science and technology, Western culture had alienated man from his place in nature, denied him spiritual connection with life, and deprived him of the “miracles” of God’s creation. 5
There was an aspect of Charles’s conservation philosophy that harked back to his childhood in Minnesota. On the front porch of his riverside home, he had listened to his father’s spoken memories of dense virgin woodlands filled with deer and of clear skies blackened with wild geese. Later, he regretted having taken the path of scientific inquiry. The only true criterion by which to measure progress, he wrote in “Civilization and Progress,” was the quality of human life. There was no reason to believe that the spear-thrusting Masai of Kenya lived less happily or well than his Pan Am colleagues in the boardrooms above the streets of New York.
Anne’s time in Darien was punctuated by visits to and from the children—Jon and Land and their families out west, her brother Dwight, now a professor of history at Temple University, her son Scott, now enrolled at Amherst, and her daughters Reeve and Anne, students at Radcliffe. But the children seemed to register the strain of a marriage defined by their father’s absences and their mother’s loneliness and disappointment. Anne Jr., a blond Botticelli beauty with an incisive mind and acerbic wit, had grown severely depressed. When she talked of dropping out of school, and Anne encouraged her to see Dr. Rosen, Charles was furious. His anger was stoked by their son Scott, as argumentative and tenacious as he. Rebellious but sensitive, he would not comply with Charles’s notions of “manhood” and discipline. Scott was opposed to the war in Vietnam, unhappy at Amherst, and hoped to find refuge at Oxford in England. He and his father fought incessantly aboutthe responsibilities of “patriotism,” and Charles demanded that Scott remain in this country and serve in the military. Anne would develop migraine headaches, feeling powerless to protect Scott from Charles. 6 When she did summon up the courage to defend Scott, asking Charles to see how deeply his criticism affected their son, she could not move him. Charles persisted in expressing his contempt for Scott’s behavior.
The other children had developed their means of coping with Charles. Jon, earlier than the others, had learned to keep the peace by acting obedient and remaining silent; Land, now a cattle rancher in Montana, chose to keep the buffer of distance between them. Sunny-faced Reeve seemed unscathed until long into adulthood when she could face the emptiness of her father’s absences and the fullness of his rage. Even as she treasured her mother’s sensibilities, she questioned her timidity and emotional reticence.
Anne spent the spring of 1963 alone in their chalet in Vevey and often visited Helen and Kurt Wolff in Locarno. Weakened by heart disease and no longer able to bear the stress of independent publishing, Kurt had
He traveled for months at a time, often cutting a wide swathe through the gamelands of East Africa while also alloting time to Pan Am. His growing interest in wildlife conservation had convinced him that “civilization” was not “progress,” and he sought to understand primitive human and animal life in the jungles of Tanzania and Kenya, places untouched by guns, planes, and “white men.” He believed that, in spite of the advances of science and technology, Western culture had alienated man from his place in nature, denied him spiritual connection with life, and deprived him of the “miracles” of God’s creation. 5
There was an aspect of Charles’s conservation philosophy that harked back to his childhood in Minnesota. On the front porch of his riverside home, he had listened to his father’s spoken memories of dense virgin woodlands filled with deer and of clear skies blackened with wild geese. Later, he regretted having taken the path of scientific inquiry. The only true criterion by which to measure progress, he wrote in “Civilization and Progress,” was the quality of human life. There was no reason to believe that the spear-thrusting Masai of Kenya lived less happily or well than his Pan Am colleagues in the boardrooms above the streets of New York.
Anne’s time in Darien was punctuated by visits to and from the children—Jon and Land and their families out west, her brother Dwight, now a professor of history at Temple University, her son Scott, now enrolled at Amherst, and her daughters Reeve and Anne, students at Radcliffe. But the children seemed to register the strain of a marriage defined by their father’s absences and their mother’s loneliness and disappointment. Anne Jr., a blond Botticelli beauty with an incisive mind and acerbic wit, had grown severely depressed. When she talked of dropping out of school, and Anne encouraged her to see Dr. Rosen, Charles was furious. His anger was stoked by their son Scott, as argumentative and tenacious as he. Rebellious but sensitive, he would not comply with Charles’s notions of “manhood” and discipline. Scott was opposed to the war in Vietnam, unhappy at Amherst, and hoped to find refuge at Oxford in England. He and his father fought incessantly aboutthe responsibilities of “patriotism,” and Charles demanded that Scott remain in this country and serve in the military. Anne would develop migraine headaches, feeling powerless to protect Scott from Charles. 6 When she did summon up the courage to defend Scott, asking Charles to see how deeply his criticism affected their son, she could not move him. Charles persisted in expressing his contempt for Scott’s behavior.
The other children had developed their means of coping with Charles. Jon, earlier than the others, had learned to keep the peace by acting obedient and remaining silent; Land, now a cattle rancher in Montana, chose to keep the buffer of distance between them. Sunny-faced Reeve seemed unscathed until long into adulthood when she could face the emptiness of her father’s absences and the fullness of his rage. Even as she treasured her mother’s sensibilities, she questioned her timidity and emotional reticence.
Anne spent the spring of 1963 alone in their chalet in Vevey and often visited Helen and Kurt Wolff in Locarno. Weakened by heart disease and no longer able to bear the stress of independent publishing, Kurt had
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