Read Online Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life by Susan Hertog - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Susan Hertog
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that she would never write another novel, she hoped that the story of her youth would be more compelling than any fiction she might imagine.
The bout with viral pneumonia in the spring of 1965 had left Anne physically exhausted, but it was an exhaustion she seemed eager to cultivate in order to free herself from Charles’s schedule. 12 Nonetheless, Anne agreed again to accompany Charles to Africa during the Christmas holiday. Inspired, perhaps, by her memories of the trips with Charles in their “golden days,” she invited the children to join them. The safari would be a family expedition. Land refused to travel with his father, but Jon and his wife, Barbara, Anne Jr. and Julien, Scott, and Reeve traveled with Anne and Charles, without guides or guns through the “big-game lands” of Serengeti, Lake Manyara, Kilimanjaro, Olduvai, Amboseli, and Ngorongoro. Charles assumed his usual military stance, commanding his family as if they were troops on a battlefield. In fact, nothing had changed since their honeymoon. Charles held the maps, decided their course, orchestrated the folding and unfolding of their gear, and delegated responsibilities according to what he saw as their collective needs. “This isn’t a democracy,” he was fond of saying; “this is a beneficent dictatorship.” 13
While Anne cooked their meals by campfire in the 120–degree heat, Charles went off scouting with the local game wardens. Feeling deserted by Charles, one day, in the Chumba Valley, Anne and the children staged an all-out mutiny, packing up the Range-Rovers so that they could head off for cooler and more temperate terrain. Charles returned and demanded that they unpack. Persuaded by Jon to obey, the children and Anne did as they were ordered. 14
Though the family reunion was a failure, it was invaluable for Anne. On October 21, 1965, coincidentally the second anniversary of Kurt’s death, Anne published “Immersion in Life” as the cover story of
Life
magazine. It was one of Anne’s old-time travel pieces, reminiscent of
North to the Orient
and
Listen, The Wind:
a physical journey as a moral adventure, an exploration of the connections between man and nature and man and God. Writing in the first person, with the “innocence” of a child’s eye, Anne piles image on image, wrapping the reader in sight, sound, and smell until he is enfolded in the landscape. It is a musical piece, as thunderous and dissonant as the
Dearly Beloved
fugue, but dominated by a sweeping, harmonizing melody. It is confident and commanding as never before, modulated and precisely controlled, strong in detail, yet lyrical in language. Like all her narratives, it is a disguised sermon, filled with the demands of her Calvinist ancestry. But it is also the exercise of literary imagination in the comprehension of God’s will. It is the sanctification of literature as prayer.
On a trip to Paris in 1966, Charles took his usual place in the back of the plane, hiding behind his books and papers. But his long legs, thrust sideways between the seats, needed a stretch, and he walked down the aisle toward the back galley. Adrienne Arnett, a twenty-five-year-old stewardess who had seen him many times before, brushed by in the opposite direction. She was an attractive young woman, blond, buxom, and blue-eyed, distinctive in her jingling laugh and her direct, unabashed manner. Against company rules, Adrienne broke the silence. 15
“You make me suspicious,” she blurted out. To her surprise, Charles was not offended. He wheeled around, eager to banter, delving, in a teasing way, her apparent curiosity. Taking advantage of the opportunity, she told him that he was a man of “special destiny.” It was no accident that he had flown the Atlantic, she said. His gifts were akin to those of all extraordinary men, no different from Thomas Jefferson’s or Benjamin Franklin’s. Intent on proving that she was more than she appeared to be, she told him that she was a
The bout with viral pneumonia in the spring of 1965 had left Anne physically exhausted, but it was an exhaustion she seemed eager to cultivate in order to free herself from Charles’s schedule. 12 Nonetheless, Anne agreed again to accompany Charles to Africa during the Christmas holiday. Inspired, perhaps, by her memories of the trips with Charles in their “golden days,” she invited the children to join them. The safari would be a family expedition. Land refused to travel with his father, but Jon and his wife, Barbara, Anne Jr. and Julien, Scott, and Reeve traveled with Anne and Charles, without guides or guns through the “big-game lands” of Serengeti, Lake Manyara, Kilimanjaro, Olduvai, Amboseli, and Ngorongoro. Charles assumed his usual military stance, commanding his family as if they were troops on a battlefield. In fact, nothing had changed since their honeymoon. Charles held the maps, decided their course, orchestrated the folding and unfolding of their gear, and delegated responsibilities according to what he saw as their collective needs. “This isn’t a democracy,” he was fond of saying; “this is a beneficent dictatorship.” 13
While Anne cooked their meals by campfire in the 120–degree heat, Charles went off scouting with the local game wardens. Feeling deserted by Charles, one day, in the Chumba Valley, Anne and the children staged an all-out mutiny, packing up the Range-Rovers so that they could head off for cooler and more temperate terrain. Charles returned and demanded that they unpack. Persuaded by Jon to obey, the children and Anne did as they were ordered. 14
Though the family reunion was a failure, it was invaluable for Anne. On October 21, 1965, coincidentally the second anniversary of Kurt’s death, Anne published “Immersion in Life” as the cover story of
Life
magazine. It was one of Anne’s old-time travel pieces, reminiscent of
North to the Orient
and
Listen, The Wind:
a physical journey as a moral adventure, an exploration of the connections between man and nature and man and God. Writing in the first person, with the “innocence” of a child’s eye, Anne piles image on image, wrapping the reader in sight, sound, and smell until he is enfolded in the landscape. It is a musical piece, as thunderous and dissonant as the
Dearly Beloved
fugue, but dominated by a sweeping, harmonizing melody. It is confident and commanding as never before, modulated and precisely controlled, strong in detail, yet lyrical in language. Like all her narratives, it is a disguised sermon, filled with the demands of her Calvinist ancestry. But it is also the exercise of literary imagination in the comprehension of God’s will. It is the sanctification of literature as prayer.
On a trip to Paris in 1966, Charles took his usual place in the back of the plane, hiding behind his books and papers. But his long legs, thrust sideways between the seats, needed a stretch, and he walked down the aisle toward the back galley. Adrienne Arnett, a twenty-five-year-old stewardess who had seen him many times before, brushed by in the opposite direction. She was an attractive young woman, blond, buxom, and blue-eyed, distinctive in her jingling laugh and her direct, unabashed manner. Against company rules, Adrienne broke the silence. 15
“You make me suspicious,” she blurted out. To her surprise, Charles was not offended. He wheeled around, eager to banter, delving, in a teasing way, her apparent curiosity. Taking advantage of the opportunity, she told him that he was a man of “special destiny.” It was no accident that he had flown the Atlantic, she said. His gifts were akin to those of all extraordinary men, no different from Thomas Jefferson’s or Benjamin Franklin’s. Intent on proving that she was more than she appeared to be, she told him that she was a
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