Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life (15 page)

Avidly, Anne followed Lindbergh’s movements in the news. While Lindbergh protested that he wanted to retire, he kept going, much as before. Each day the newspapers reported his flights and the accolades he received, from leaders who deemed him another Abraham Lincoln to showgirls who insisted he was their lover. Called everything from a “tool of American imperialism” to “Jesus Christ at the gates of Jerusalem,”
⁵⁰
Lindbergh accepted foreign and domestic awards, gave radio and written addresses, and flew survey flights for the airline TAT. It was rumored that he planned a trip around the world and a Pacific flight northwest to the Orient.

In the six months since Anne met Lindbergh, she had made him into the “newspaper hero” she claimed to detest. She imagined him above human pain, seeing him as both the artist and the art, the idol and the ideal. He spanned all chasms and merged all distinctions. He was life itself—free and unadorned, yet superbly civilized.

But she had no hope of marrying him herself. The marriage of Charles and Elisabeth was “inevitable.”
⁵¹
Life
magazine would probably print a special issue. The fact that they had neither dated nor spent time alone with each other seemed irrelevant. How could he resist Elisabeth’s “perfection”?

Lindbergh, though, had no interest in Elisabeth. In spite of her beauty and her “sparkling vivacity,” Lindbergh was thinking of the ambassador’s “second daughter.” He reminded himself that she was “extremely pretty,” dark-haired and blue-eyed, graceful and sensitive. His wife-seeking “project” was not going well; he had not met one woman he wanted to date.

On a trip to New York in the fall of 1928, he learned that Anne was
living alone at the Morrows’ Palisades Avenue home in Englewood. Carefully, he began “laying [his] plans.”
⁵²

When the phone rang, on the warm morning of an ordinary day in the middle of October, it nearly paralyzed Anne with fear. Her mother’s secretary, Jo Greame, told her that Lindbergh had telephoned the day before and said he would ring her again in the morning.
⁵³
Though she had imagined this moment for nearly ten months, Anne was hardly able to maintain her composure.

She stared at the telephone as though it were a bottle of “castor oil,” certain it would churn her system.
⁵⁴
Then, in a barely audible voice, she said, “Hello-o.”

Lindbergh declared his presence in his brusque manner: “Hello, this is … Lindbergh himself.”

“H-how do you do,” replied Anne softly.

Lindbergh boldly stated his intent. “When I was south last winter, I promised to take you up sometime here in the East. I called up to tell you I’d be very glad to arrange a flight—if you’d care to go?”

Dazed, Anne paused and then replied, “I—I’d love to.”

But as if conspiring in her own rejection, she told him she couldn’t see him for a week. She was going to the hospital for a minor operation. That, she implied, changed everything. To her surprise, Lindbergh held firm. “No,” he said, he had plenty of time. He was determined, even eager, to teach her to fly.

Anne prepared for the trip, still certain that she was a substitute for Elisabeth. When he telephoned a week later to ask whether he might visit her in Englewood to discuss plans for their flight, Anne, once again, was dumbstruck with fear.

Feeling cornered by his persistence and precision, Anne agreed to meet him at four o’clock the following afternoon.
⁵⁵

“Sick with excitement,”
⁵⁶
Anne waited in the fading October garden for Lindbergh’s chauffeured car to arrive. By 3:45, nearly “hysterical” with fear, she paced the courtyard. Just as she had given up hope, the maid called to her from the upstairs window. Lindbergh just phoned to say he had been delayed.
⁵⁷

When he arrived, it was nearly dusk. They stood in the courtyard, silhouetted against the open door, suddenly stunned by each other’s presence. Lindbergh apologized for being late; Anne nodded in polite forgiveness. Relieved and smiling, they entered the house, moving through the center hall into the living room. Charles strolled about confidently, hand in pocket, and Anne rang for the maid to bring them tea. They sat face to face by the fireside, discussing the flight and their strategy for avoiding the press.
⁵⁸

Anne had forgotten how tall he was, how thin and fair and “sunny.” She loved the ruddy cast of his skin and his easy, wide grin. Even his hair seemed to “laugh.”
⁵⁹

His manner, on the contrary, was businesslike, even cold.
⁶⁰
Anne felt like an octopus, tentacles spread, ready to ensnare him,
⁶¹
but he conducted the meeting as though he were “a small boy” on a fishing trip who would come and go as he pleased.
⁶²
She blamed his awkwardness on her frailty, as though it were her presence that brought out the worst in him. She didn’t deserve his kindness.

And yet Charles seemed familiar, like someone she had known in a dream.
⁶³
In the garden the next morning, contemplating the trees, Anne defined the dynamics of marriage. He, Charles Lindbergh, was like the big oak tree; cock-combed in red. She was small and frail, with a lacy crown. They would stand together, protecting each other.
⁶⁴

Three days later, wary of meeting at an airfield lest they be labeled “engaged” by the press, Anne and Charles met at the New York apartment of Cornelius Bliss, a friend of the Morrows. Anne remarked that she felt “like a deer, hunted by smiling, smirking, sure-of-themselves, relentless hunters.”
⁶⁵

Determined to survive the flight by adopting the persona of a sophisticated woman, she arrived in her gray riding trousers and an old leather coat, apologetic and certain that she looked ridiculous.
⁶⁶
Lindbergh at once set her at ease. She looked fine, he said, and he was certain she would learn how to fly.

Once in the air, Anne relaxed. In a de Havilland Moth—the open plane having been Anne’s suggestion—they circled the New York and
New Jersey coastline. Lindbergh, anticipating the noise of wind and engine, had devised a sign language; by tapping his helmet, he could let her know they should shift the controls from one to the other. Anne at first was “terrified” when he waved his hands to signal her turn. The plane was as stubborn as an elephant, and she pleaded silently with the rudders to obey her. Soon, losing her fear in a fit of laughter, she managed to bumble through the interlude, with Lindbergh controlling the rudder and stick with his feet and knees. Graciously, he turned and smiled as he resumed control with a light tap of his helmet.
⁶⁷

Their secret adventure bound them, strong and fast. But word had leaked to the press. Three days later, their second meeting was short and hurried. Stalked by reporters, they flew from Teterboro in New Jersey across the Hudson and the East River to Long Island City and back again. Mammoth clouds, gray and rolling, hollowed a tunnel for their plane. And, like a “commanding hawk,” at 160 miles an hour, they flew down the coast back to Teterboro, skimming the tops of trees. Again Anne took control of the plane, this time rising above self-doubt. Flying now felt easy and natural, and she delighted in the beauty of the sky and the earth. It was not only an escape from books and introspection but a chance to transcend the boundaries of imagination.
⁶⁸

Anne wrote to Con that she always thought she had seen the limits of the world. But now, “at one breath-taking instant, I saw
beyond!”
⁶⁹

That evening Lindbergh returned to the Morrow home and asked to take Anne for a ride in his car. For hours they rambled through the back country roads around Englewood in Lindbergh’s new black Franklin sedan. Charles wore a fedora, brim turned jauntily down on his forehead, and a bright blue tie that matched his eyes. Anne was surprised at how easily they slipped into a rhythm, discarding preconception for the give-and-take of honest conversation. Charles seemed eager to lift his mask of perfection, and Anne was grateful that the hero image was gone. She enjoyed his playful nonchalance, his dry humor, and the subtlety of his wit. For all his coolness and reserve, Charles was gentle and seductive. He treated her tenderly, buoying her confidence and assuaging her fears.

Of course she had the courage to fly, he said; of course she could learn to master a plane. He told her she shouldn’t act like a schoolgirl. Rules, he said, were meant to be broken, and much of academic learning was “useless.”
⁷⁰
But in spite of the certainty of his demeanor, Charles Lindbergh was learning, too. He learned that beneath Anne’s façade of timidity was wanderlust, curiosity, and warmth. She offered him love without the suffocation that had attended his mother’s. At the end of the evening, Charles asked Anne to marry him.

“You must be kidding!” Anne blurted in astonishment. “You don’t know me.”
⁷¹

“Oh, I do know you,” he replied.

And one can only take him at his word. In the short weeks since their first date, Anne had shown him her competence and her character. After just one lesson, she had flown Lindbergh’s plane with ease and grace. She had proven herself capable of his peripatetic life and had instinctively protected him from the press. Her sense of adventure, her childlike curiosity, her sheer delight in the beauty of nature were evident wherever they went, whenever they flew. Finally he had found someone who understood him, someone he could teach and mold. Her quick mind and agile body would make her an efficient and able “crew”—willing to follow, willing to comply, and willing to let him do as he pleased.

Stunned and flattered, Anne agreed. His proposal seemed impulsive and absurd—almost laughable—yet Anne knew she was to take it seriously. How could she dare to say no to Charles Lindbergh, coveted by millions of women? Wasn’t his love what she had always wanted?

There remained, however, a “hideous chasm” between them, Anne wrote to Con.
⁷²
Charles, it seemed, never opened a book. She wondered whether they could bridge such a gap. How could anyone so different be so wonderful?
⁷³

Anne was “completely turned upside down,” overflowing with feelings she couldn’t understand or control.
⁷⁴
With Charles, she had crossed into another sphere, she noted, like the boy who had flown too close to the sun.
⁷⁵
Charles’s presence was almost like a sleeping potion. She
couldn’t write. She couldn’t read. Nothing interested her. He seemed to call up every ounce of her energy, and when he left, he took everything with him, leaving nothing of himself behind.

Betrothed in secrecy, they waited for the right moment to tell the Morrows. While Anne remained in Englewood, wondering when they would make their announcement, Charles disappeared. On October 29, he left for a hunting trip in northern Mexico with an American friend. Within three hours of their first expedition, the press reported that he had bagged a deer. Something else was in the air, and the reporters sensed that the trip to Mexico was more than a holiday. While Charles parried with the reporters’ questions, changing his story each time they spoke to him, he quietly made plans to meet Anne in Mexico.

The Morrows, now privy to the secret, joined in the evasion of the press. Dwight arranged an official invitation by Secretary of War Alex McNab, and Charles arrived at Valbuena Field on the evening of November 9. Two hundred people greeted him at the airport; Ambassador Morrow was nowhere to be seen. Carefully, Charles was “whisked” to the embassy and on the next day was driven to the Morrows’ Cuernavaca retreat. Although the Mexican newspapers reported the couple engaged, the embassy continued to disclaim any romance between Anne and Charles. Lindbergh, hounded by reporters, stayed with the Morrows for two weeks. The couple was sighted in Lindbergh’s rented Curtiss Falcon and Dwight Morrow’s official embassy car, and the Mexican people, fed by the press, relished the rumors that Lindbergh had married the ambassador’s daughter.