I gather you broke a record and that it was successful. I can’t figure out whether just the three days underwater are over, or whether the three days in decompression are over too. I rushed down to Vevey and bought two papers, an American (Paris Herald) and a Swiss one, but found nothing. I will look again today.
I somehow felt there was no use writing you until this experiment was over and you were back in the world of average human beings. I read, out west, the speech you gave on the underwater work which was extremely interesting, clear and well written. Better written I thought, than the Geographic article (which I also read with interest), and gave one quite a good, lucid and vivid idea of the field and some of its problems. You appear to have the gift not only to think clearly, but to be able to translate what is not clear to other people in understandable and vivid and simple terms. It was a very good piece of work.
So much love to you Jon. I am still hoping for Christmas at Aspen—I’d like to see you—twice a year if possible! And those wonderful children—much love to B.
Mother
Nairobi
February 14th–15th [1965]
Darling Reeve,
We are about to start off on our safari—Father and I alone in a Land Rover which looks a little like a square battleship and holds camping equipment: tent, blankets, folding chairs, and boxes of cans, food, etc. We will be gone about ten days—going to animal country in Kenya and perhaps Tanzania—camping out most of the time. The game wardens have marked your father’s map for places to camp and given us instructions as to how to cope with army ants, rhinoceroses, lions and jackals! (of which rhinos are the most dangerous).
The country is very beautiful: great plains and distant gentle mountains and lots and lots of sky and quivering hot air. It looks a little like California or Mexico and has the same trees—eucalyptus and pepper and acacias and bougainvillea and jacaranda. Father took me from the airport straight into the Nairobi National Park, small but full of animals: giraffes, ostrich, wildebeest, gazelles, impalas, lions and cheetahs and monkeys and baboons. Wildebeests are gnus and look like gray water-buffalo (“Gno Gno Gno—not a gnu!”).* I prefer giraffes, who are very graceful and have velvety faces with great eyes and nibble all the time with their wrinkled camel-like mouths, or zebras who are round and sleek and skitterish, or, best of all, the gazelles.
Weather is like Mexico or California—cool in the morning and evening and very hot (dry and dusty) in the middle of the day. Now we are off to the really wild country. We will be back in ten days or so. No time to write more just now. Father is packing up the Land Rover. Africa is another planet but beautiful. I hope you are all right darling.
XOXOXOX—
Love, Mother
Scott’s Cove, Darien
January 22nd, 1966
Dear Sue,†
I am just back from over a month in Africa on an incredible safari reunion, organized by Charles for all the members of his family that could get there.‡ We were seven—at times eight. Two Land Rovers, four tents, all our food and water taken with us, no guides and bearers—or comfort! But lots of wild animals—beautiful country—too much driving, heat, dust, and putting up and down of tents. Cooking over campfires and lots of arguments. Only Charles would attempt, and succeed in carrying off, such an expedition! It was quite rigorous and exhausting, especially for the girls (Reeve, Ansy and Barbara). I am relieved we are all safely back home with no mishaps or serious illnesses (Ansy is having a baby and was quite uncomfortable—should never have gone—but is back in Paris and OK, I think.)
I have just recovered from the exhausting twenty-one-hour flight: Nairobi–New York (direct new Pan Am line—stops at Lagos, Monrovia and Dakar and flies the South and North Atlantic on the bias) and feel, as I always do, that I never want to fly again. I don’t think I can get another trip in this spring as I’m anxious to get back to Europe and see Ansy and what her arrangements are for the baby (not due till August). It is somehow different to have a daughter having a baby—so far it’s been the sons. I’m quite excited.
I did find Africa and the wildlife a very moving experience again (we saw the big migrations of wildebeest in the Serengeti this time) although I saw the game through a slight haze of mother’s anxiety about my family, especially Ansy. I do wish sometime you and Bob and Charles and I could have an evening together talking about Africa and conservation. So new to me—I have many questions I’d like to ask both of you.
Scott was with us in Africa for Christmas. He has been told his student’s exemption will not be extended and he will be drafted next year. This means he will miss out finishing his last year at Cambridge. I suppose it isn’t really a tragedy but he worked so hard to get into Cambridge, it is a great blow to him and I can hardly bear it for him. And this war* seems so senseless—and so endless. It was a relief to be away from newspapers for a while and not to read about it. One keeps hoping that somehow it will be settled—that it is being settled—under the dreadful news. But now this truce seems to be over and that hope gone.
This is an unfocused letter. Do let me know if you come through N.Y. on your way to Barbados—I might be here.
Much love and many thoughts.…
Darien, Conn.
Monday, June 6th, 1966
Dearest Land,
I can see why you love the West and want to ranch.† It is beautiful country where you are. One has a wonderful sense of space, wilderness, and animals—also, somehow, of time. We did feel very far away from New York and the overcrowded East. I loved the sense of the mountains and the elk who didn’t run away.
We had a really wonderful week, as you must know, since we stayed longer than we expected. Your father had a marvelous time, and it was something for me to watch him—I’ve never seen him on a ranch or a farm. He falls into it like a duck into water. I never realized how deeply ingrained in it he was.
To me it was a new language, but I loved the sense of space and wildness and the mountain quiet and the elk.
I wish you hadn’t apologized for its being “a little unorganized.” Actually I think it was miraculously well organized for the first year. I remember Aunt Con saying once that a ranch or farm is the man’s equivalent for woman’s work in the family since it deals with animals, weather, crops, pests, disease—all unpredictable things. Because of this, it cannot ever be perfectly organized like a business. There are too many variables not under one’s control. Anything as close to life is going to be as unpredictable as life. But you chose it because it was close to life, and not removed like academic life or business.
We came at a busy time and I hope it was not too much for you and Susie. I thought the house very attractive—a wonderful combination of both of your pasts and present: your pots and rugs, Susie’s weaving. I won’t be quite happy about Susie until she has a shack of her own to weave in. It makes such a difference to a woman to be able to work somewhere outside of her full-of-duties house (out of that kitchen!).
Erin* and Peter were enchanting. I felt close to them, particularly Erin this time, because she communicated so much to me and seemed in the direct line (like my sister Elisabeth and Ansy) of my family, though her marvelous artistic color sense is like Susie—much else, too. The ranch is a wonderful place to bring up children and they show it. Your father was much impressed with them, as he was with everything at the ranch.
I am glad you have those cabins on the river and so glad we had that lovely evening around the campfire, with the vapor trail circling the sky. No sound but the rushing river.
Much love, Land, and thank you for all you did—
Mother
Scott’s Cove, Darien, Conn.
November 6th, 1966
Dear Nigel Nicolson,*
I am distressed to have to write you this letter about the letters and diary of your father which you have just published and of which you sent me portions last year to comment on.†
You were considerate and meticulous in sending me all the pages in which the Morr
ow family were mentioned “for my perusal and possible deletion.”
Although there were a number of inaccuracies, I felt, in the context of a diary, they were not of great importance and I wrote you that I did not find anything which needed to be deleted from our point of view, from these excerpts.
I also wrote that, though my husband was away, I was sure he would not wish to change anything in your father’s manuscript, for I know that he feels strongly, as you do, that diary entries should not be changed. I did not mean to imply his approval or verification of the entries made by your father, which I had, of course, no right to give.
Reading the whole book now I am shocked to come on passages such as the one on p. 343, describing my husband as believing in the Nazi theology and hating democracy as represented by the American public. It is hard to believe that I could pass over such statements without saying how untrue to my husband and his feelings I know them to be.
However, I have checked the pages you sent me and the statements are clearly there. I must have concentrated entirely on the portions of the diary that were directly concerned with the Morrow family, which I felt was my province, and passed extremely lightly over the political or official sections in which I felt less competent to remember or judge.
I am afraid that my carelessness in this respect has contributed to a difficult situation for both my husband and you, as well as for your father.
I am deeply sorry.
Very sincerely yours,
Anne Lindbergh
Scott’s Cove
November 26th, 1966
Dear Scott,
You did not owe me a letter. I owed you one, so scratch that guilt off! I owe a great many letters at the moment. Some of them spring directly or indirectly from the African article.* This is a good weekend to get at them. (Thanksgiving weekend with nobody here. Reeve went to North Haven with the Morgans but I decided to stay home—less “hassle.”) But I think I’ll try to answer your letter first.
When I first read it, I was aghast and thought, “I can’t comprehend this at all. It is pure philosophy. Scott is way beyond me—I never learned what words like ‘syllogism’ meant, etc.” But I persevered and have now read it four or five times and found it extraordinarily interesting and challenging and not as far from the things I’ve been reading as I first thought. At first, certain key sentences jumped out at me and I underlined them in red, and then I began seeing the whole thesis (which hangs together very well). Then I began to look up relevant passages in the books I have been reading (Martin Buber and a book on Buddhism).
The first sentence I underlined was “At least I have learned that no struggles are real that are not internal.” The next one was: “Philosophical method is not helpful to the problems of the self, and I can’t find the opening to religious method.” Then your statements about the possibility (or solution) of the self being nothing but a myth—or the non-self being nothing but a myth.
Then in the book on Buddhism I found “To the Buddha the idea of a separate self was a mere intellectual invention, corresponding to no reality at all. The self, he argued, was plainly ‘a process in time’ not a single solid ‘thing’ or ‘fact.’ The term ‘I’ is merely a convenience for designating an ever changing combination or bundle of attributes of the body—sensations, perceptions, mental formulations (ideas, wishes, dreams) and consciousness. There is a constant interplay and interconnection among [these] which may give a sense of personal continuity and identity but which, in truth, preclude the possibility of a definite ‘I’ existing by itself, totally independent of and unconnected with the constantly shifting relation between physical and psychic forces …”†
Rather like, it seems to me, the physicists of today, who say there is no such thing as “matter.” A table is just an aggregate of negative and positive charges, etc. (This is probably not accurately stated, but I am not a scientist.) However, one has to deal with the table as if it were real solid matter, and it does not disappoint us. One can set a tray of coffee and eggs down on it and it doesn’t crash to the floor. The set of relations between the energies within the table are such that one can act as if it were solid matter.
I wonder if Krishnamurti’s “awareness” is not what Buber means by the direct “I-thou” relationships. “Awareness” is certainly not just passive “reception.” It is also very close to Buber’s search for truth, as in this quotation:
“Is there a truth we can possess? Can we appropriate it? There certainly is none we can pick up and put in our pocket. But the individual can have an honest and uncompromising attitude toward the truth; he can have a legitimate relationship to truth and hold and uphold it all his life.”*
It seems to me that what you are doing in your study of philosophy is not solving the problems of the self, or learning to apply yourself fully to something, or finding “The Truth.” It is learning to have “a legitimate relationship to truth.” Much of this seems to me to be learning to use a tool—or tools. Tools of the mind, of logic, of precision, of nomenclature. I would find it excruciatingly difficult, like mathematics—abstract and, I fear, dull—unrelated to life. Perhaps it seems sometimes like this to you and this is why you feel you cannot apply yourself fully to it. One cannot dedicate oneself to something one thinks is dull or unrelated to life. One cannot will dedication. This is a contradiction of terms. One can will oneself to application, goaded on by the desire to succeed, to compete with others, or to prove something to oneself or to others, or to gain a particular benefit. This is legitimate motivation, but don’t let’s call it, or wish it were, dedication.
You haven’t yet found the thing you can be dedicated to, but you have considerably sharpened your tools so that when you do find it, you will apply yourself far more effectively and with less hindrance. Among other things, you are learning to express yourself very clearly and sometimes very beautifully. I like your image of “the vitality of the self … like the sea breaking on a beach, some things going out as the wave draws back, others replacing those as the wave surges in.”
I have written all morning and I must go back to the house and feed the puppy who is now a miniature lion, bouncing around the kitchen floor and making puddles every six minutes and yipping with high insistent yips.
It has been a beautiful fall and now is bare and cold and gets dark very early—after a glittering cold sunset—copper sky and etched skeletons of trees.
Much love—how I hope we do meet for Christmas—
Mother
Scott’s Cove
February 17th, 1967
Darling Ansy—
Such a long time without writing you! It was impossible to write on the boat, which was rough, windy and cold on the trip down from San Diego,* and very busy and active once we were in the lagoons, with whales spouting all around us. (We didn’t see anything eight feet long, but lots of mothers with babies on their backs. And one baby whale played around Jon until his mother [the whale’s] chased him away.) It was very much a man’s trip—strenuous and adventurous. Jon and your father did a lot of diving in wet suits with tanks on their backs. And Land chased whales in an outboard motor skiff. (Jon and Father also.) These whales are gray and not too big—but still, pretty impressive.
Jon ran the expedition and did it very well, and Father was magnificent, taking second place. (The first day, it was a real effort. Land remarked, “Father’s having such a hard time not running the expedition.”) He kept tripping himself up and saying: “Well now, Jon, this is your expedition. What do you say?” In the end it worked beautifully and Father and everyone else had a wonderful time (really better than the African trip). No one was sick (though Susie doesn’t like rough weather). Susie and I cooked, and there were some of the same problems: washing dishes in salt water, not enough fresh water to wash dishes or ourselves. (Our hair got zombie-ish.) But it was quite a happy trip, and a change for Susie and Land. Rather cold night and morning (I wore ski long johns to bed), but sunny and hot midday.
The boat
was fairly comfortable though not roomy, and Father, Jon, Susie, Land and I all slept in one small cabin, in layered bunks like a filing case. We gave the one partially private bunk to the photographer. The captain, a friend of Jon’s, slept in the wheelhouse, when not at the wheel. It was very wild desert country—sand-dunes and cactus and purple mountains in the distance, the sea teeming with life: ducks, geese and pelicans, porpoises, seals, and whales. We stopped to refuel in two small Mexican ports, little collections of gaily painted shacks climbing up dry wrinkled hills. Land and Susie used their Spanish and we ate tortillas and freshly caught lobster.
I flew back via Seattle, stopping to see Barbie who is having another baby (a deep secret kept from everyone) in less than a month now!
Reeve was down Tuesday to collect her skis. We went to the pet shop to buy a collar for Davin* and she saw these monkeys in a cage and bought one small wizened one! (“It’s your res-spons-ibilit-ee!”) She has named it Roger, and she took it up to Radcliffe in a small carrying box like a workman’s lunch-box. It kept squealing and putting a long thin hairy arm out of the breathing hole. During supper we let it out in her bathroom upstairs. It was terrified and leaped all over from fixture to fixture, slipping from slipperiness onto the floor. In an hour it was the dirtiest place I have ever seen: monkey droppings, grapes, and banana remains over every inch of floor—and wall. Whee!
Reeve left with the monkey and a large cage she expects to keep it in. And I cleaned the bathroom so Mrs. Swanson wouldn’t know—or have to do it. I’ll keep you posted on it. She says Peggy’s family will keep it weekends!
Against Wind and Tide: Letters and Journals, 1947-1986 Page 28
