Against Wind and Tide: Letters and Journals, 1947-1986

by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  †A large number of diary entries and letters from the preceding two-year period were destroyed by AML after her analysis (see this page).

  ‡Judy Guild, AML’s secretary.

  *Edward Brewster Sheldon (1886–1946), American dramatist.

  †Dwight Whitney Morrow, Jr. (1908–1976), AML’s brother.

  *AML was born on June 22, 1906.

  †Lucia Norton Valentine (1902–1992), Alan Valentine’s wife, was an architect and writer, a trustee of Smith College, and a trustee of the Morgan Library in New York City.

  ‡John Macmurray (1881–1976) was a Scottish philosopher and professor whose ideas on the nature of emotion as a motivational force were seen by some as contradictory to traditional Western philosophy.

  *CAL was for many years a consultant to Pan American World Airways; in 1965 he was named to its board of directors.

  †The Spirit of St. Louis (New York: Scribner, 1953), CAL’s memoir of his solo transatlantic flight, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1954.

  ‡CAL’s first book about his transatlantic flight, published in 1927 by Putnam.

  *Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. See note on this page.

  *“Lame ducks” was a family term for time-and-energy consuming friends.

  †The Lindberghs moved to a house near Hopewell, New Jersey, following the birth of Charles Jr. in 1930. When he was kidnapped from that house in 1932 and it became the headquarters for the ensuing investigation, Valentine—an old family friend—was a source of great comfort for AML.

  *Barbara Helen Robbins (1932–) was a classmate of Jon’s at Stanford University and his first wife. They would be married on March 20, 1954.

  †Jane O. Robbins (1916–2004), Barbara Robbins’s paternal aunt, who flew as a Women’s Air Force service pilot during the Second World War and later became a Christian Science practitioner.

  *Here AML draws music notes.

  *After the Point House was damaged in a hurricane in November 1950, AML had a small writing house built in the woods near the large family home.

  *CAL’s mother, Evangeline Lodge Land Lindbergh, suffered from Parkinson’s disease for many years. She died on September 7, 1954.

  †Mina Kirstein Curtiss (1896–1985) was AML’s creative writing teacher at Smith College and a lifelong friend. She was also a noted translator and editor, and wrote books on Proust and Bizet. In later life she founded the Chapelbrook Foundation, which provided support for writers over forty in need of funds to finish works in progress. She was the sister of Lincoln Kirstein, cofounder of the School of American Ballet and the New York City Ballet.

  ‡Family members other than CAL were not aware of this pregnancy.

  *He has never had his descent from the mountain.

  †Maurice Herzog (1919–), was one of the first two people to ascend the Himalayan peak Annapurna in 1950. His book recounting the expedition, Annapurna, was published in 1952.

  ‡It’s all that he lacks.

  *Susanna (Sue) Beck Vaillant Hatt was the daughter of old Morrow family friends in Mexico and a close confidante of AML

  †Mary Tarleton Knollenberg (1905–1993) was an artist known for her bronze and stone sculptures.

  *Here AML draws a smiley face.

  †Annie Spencer Cutter, AML’s maternal grandmother.

  *Emergency rations made up of dried meat, fat, and berries and pressed into small cakes. Originally used by Native Americans and later adapted by arctic explorers and the military.

  †Annie Spencer Cutter, Elizabeth Cutter Morrow’s younger sister.

  ‡Olga Sandor, an accomplished pianist, accompanist, and composer, and close friend of Janey.

  *AML’s sister Elisabeth.

  *Kurt Wolff (1887–1963) was a German-born publisher, editor, writer, and journalist. He and his wife, Helen, fled Europe for America in 1941 and founded Pantheon Books in New York in 1942. Among the authors they published were Günter Grass, Boris Pasternak, and C. G. Jung. Wolff was Franz Kafka’s first publisher in Germany.

  Denver Lindley (1906–1982), a magazine and book editor and translator, was at the time an editor at Harcourt Brace.

  *Jack Huber was a writer, actor, teacher, and close family friend.

  †Kitty Taquey, wife of Charles Henri Taquey (1912–1999), foreign service officer, diplomat, political adviser, and writer.

  ‡George F. Kennan (1904–2005), American diplomat, political analyst, Pulitzer Prize–winning author, and historian who played a key role as a government adviser during the cold war; and his wife, Annelise.

  §Martha Knecht, cook and housekeeper for the Lindberghs during the 1950s and 1960s.

  *For the book now formally titled Gift from the Sea.

  †Charles Land Jr., brother of CAL’s mother, was known in the family simply as “Uncle.”

  *The pet name Elizabeth Cutter Morrow’s grandchildren gave to her.

  †The Lindberghs’ German shepherd.

  *ECM’s personal maid.

  *Distaste.

  *Saran Morgan, Constance Morgan’s eldest daughter.

  † J.P. Morgan & Co.

  *Family name for CAL.

  *ECM died on January 24, 1955.

  †The name given to the large Georgian house built by AML’s parents in 1928 in Englewood, New Jersey. After Elizabeth Cutter Morrow’s death in 1955, the building was converted to house the Elisabeth Morrow School (see note on this page). Like the Morrows’ “Casa Mañana” in Mexico, “Next Day Hill” was meant to be a pun on “Morrow.”

  *The pet name AML and Barbara chose for use by AML’s grandchildren.

  *Elizabeth Vining (1902–1999), a librarian, former teacher of Emperor Akihito of Japan, and Newbery Medal–winning children’s book author, had reviewed Gift from the Sea on the front page of the New York Times Book Review on March 20, 1955.

  *D.D. is AML’s usual greeting in letters to Dr. Dana Atchley from this point forward.

  †The character “Don,” who is a disillusioned psychiatrist and uncle-by-marriage to the bride in AML’s book-in-progress, Dearly Beloved, which would be published under the newly established Helen and Kurt Wolff imprint at Harcourt, Brace & World, in 1962.

  *Ruth Thomas Oliff. See note on this page.

  *Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where AML took classes in the early 1940s.

  *Faith Morrow, daughter of Dwight Morrow Jr. and Margot Loines Morrow.

  †Attributed to Clarence Day.

  ‡Gertrude Stein.

  *Land spent the summer of 1955 working on the 850,000-acre Chilco Ranch, one of the original large ranches along the Cariboo Road in British Columbia.

  †In 1952, between his sophomore and junior years, Jon worked as junior technical crew aboard an oceangoing tug, with researchers who were making seismic profiles of the Atlantic Ocean floor. In rough seas off the Grand Banks, several heavy depth charges broke free on the deck. While not armed with detonators, the charges, which weighed several hundred pounds each, were “dent sensitive” and might have exploded on impact had Jon and another crew member not been able to tie them down.

  *Here AML draws a smiley face.

  †The Saturday Review of Literature, a popular literary magazine.

  *Here AML draws music notes.

  †AML slightly misquotes this traditional nursery rhyme.

  ‡A close friend of AML’s.

  §Instruction to play a musical passage in a sustained, drawn-out manner.

  *Brand name for plant food.

  *It is of the earth at rest.

  *Helen Wolff (1906–1994) was a noted publisher and editor, and co-founder, with her husband, Kurt (see note on this page), of Pantheon Books in 1942 and of the Helen & Kurt Wolff imprint at Harcourt, Brace & World in 1961. She was renowned for introducing American readers to such eminent European writers as Günter Grass, Umberto Eco, and Max Frisch.

  †Polish-born harpsichordist (1879–1959).

  ‡The novel Dearly Beloved, which was published in 1
962 by the Wolffs, after they had moved to Harcourt.

  *Dr. John Rosen, AML’s psychiatrist. See note on this page.

  †George Eman Vaillant, M.D., Sue Vaillant Hatt’s son by her first husband, the anthropologist George Clapp Vaillant.

  *The Wave of the Future (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1940), AML’s controversial third book, appeared to support CAL’s isolationist views. In later years she would refer to it as a “mistake.”

  †In a footnote, AML writes: “Sue is—of course—& always has been a deflater.”

  ‡The Spirit of St. Louis was eventually made into a movie in 1957, directed by Billy Wilder and starring James Stewart as CAL.

  *Mina Kirstein Curtiss (see note on this page).

  *Alexis Léger (1887–1975), French poet, diplomat, and man of letters who wrote under the name Saint-John Perse. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1960.

  *Here AML writes in a footnote: “It is not only difficult to do because you keep hurting people’s feelings as you do it—& losing their ‘love’—but part of you wants to stay in the picture frame. It is easier—self-satisfying—pleasant & you are patted on the back for it.”

  *Kyrill S. Schabert (1909–1983) was co-founder and president of Pantheon Books from 1943 to 1961.

  †Leland Hayward (1902–1971) was the producer of the film The Spirit of St. Louis.

  ‡The Unicorn and Other Poems, 1935–1955, was published by Pantheon in September 1956.

  §Draft chapters from AML’s novel Dearly Beloved.

  *Land was a freshman at Stanford University at that time.

  *Margaret Bartlett “Monte” Millar, AML’s secretary in 1935, when the Lindberghs left the United States to live in England in response to the relentless publicity that plagued the family following the kidnapping and murder of Charles Jr. and the threats made on Jon’s life.

  *This appears to recount a trip AML took prior to July 3, to visit Jon, Barbara, and their daughter.

  *Lewisohn Stadium was an amphitheater and athletic facility on the campus of the City College of New York that hosted many notable events. It was demolished in 1973.

  †Amyas Ames (1907–2000), investment banker, amateur pianist, and supporter of the arts. In the 1970s Ames served as chairman of the New York Philharmonic as well as Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. He was the husband of AML’s friend Evie Ames.

  *The line AML quotes from “The Relic,” by John Donne, is actually “A bracelet of bright hair about the bone.”

  *John Ciardi wrote a review of The Unicorn and Other Poems in the Saturday Review of Literature in January 1957, calling it “an offensively bad book—inept, jingling, slovenly, illiterate even, and puffed up with the foolish afflatus of a stereotyped high-mindedness, that species of esthetic and human failure that will accept any shriek as a true high-C.” The review ignited a firestorm of criticism and controversy, prompting a rejoinder in the magazine a few weeks later by its founding editor, Norman Cousins.

  *146 East 19th Street, in the Gramercy Park section of New York City.

  *Jon and Barbara’s second daughter, Wendy, was born in September 1956.

  *Margaret Constance Eiluned Morgan, youngest child of Constance and Aubrey Morgan.

  *Here AML inserts a footnote (“soviet space dog”) referring to Laika, who was on board the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 when it was launched on November 3, 1957, thereby becoming the first dog to orbit the earth.

  *After her marriage to AML’s brother Dwight Morrow Jr. failed, Margot married John Wilkie, president of Central Hudson Gas and Electric Corporation, and chairman of the Vassar College Board of Trustees.

  †Samuel Island, one of the small “Gulf Islands” in the Strait of Georgia, British Columbia.

  *In July 1958 President Dwight Eisenhower sent 14,000 American troops into Lebanon to support the pro-Western government of President Camille Chamoun against internal opposition and threats from Syria and Egypt. The forces were withdrawn in October of that year.

  *Jim Robbins was killed when his plane crashed into a mountain ridge in bad weather, just east of the Tetons. His body was discovered the following spring by a sheepherder.

  *Jon and Barbara’s eldest daughter, originally named Christine, was now known as Kristina.

  *Ingmar Bergman, the film’s director.

  *Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist whose book, From Death-Camp to Existentialism (later reissued as Man’s Search for Meaning), described his experiences in a series of concentration camps and his groundbreaking psychotherapeutic method of finding meaning in all forms of experience, however horrifying they may be.

  †Edmund W. Sinnott (1888–1968), American botanist, university professor, and textbook author.

  *A building in the complex of what was then known as Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.

  *Land would marry Susan Miller, a classmate at Stanford and a cousin of Jon’s wife, Barbara, in August 1960.

  †Tommy Miller, Susie’s brother, then a student at Yale.

  ‡Here AML draws a smiley face.

  *Erich Maria Remarque (1898–1970), German-born author of the novel All Quiet on the Western Front and of later novels that examined the struggles of individuals in Nazi Germany.

  *Dearly Beloved would be published under the newly established Helen and Kurt Wolff imprint at Harcourt, Brace & World in 1962.

  *With Anne and Scott living in Europe in 1961, the Lindberghs had rented an apartment in La Tour-de-Peilz near Lake Geneva in Switzerland for the year. Reeve attended, as a day student, a British boarding school in Clarens.

  *Kidnap: The Story of the Lindbergh Case, by George Waller, was published in 1961 by the Dial Press.

  *Following the kidnapping of Charles Jr. in 1932, a number of politicians appeared at the Lindbergh house in Hopewell, New Jersey, solely to have their photographs taken beside the broken ladder used by the kidnapper.

  †Eighty-two-year-old Charles Land was in failing health and was placed by CAL in a sanitarium in Switzerland.

  ‡A bibliography assembled by Sam Bornstein in 2004 lists 210 published books and articles about the kidnapping.

  *On April 17, 1961, some 1,400 Cuban exiles, trained and backed by the U.S. government, landed in Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in a failed attempt to join with local rebels to overthrow Fidel Castro. The operation was a great embarrassment to the Kennedy administration and led both to the long-term disintegration of American relations with Cuba and to a strengthening of ties between Cuba and the Soviet Union.

  *The revolt of Algerians against French colonial rule triggered a revolt against the French government itself by the French Colonial Army, which was quelled after the appointment by the French parliament of Charles de Gaulle as president.

  *For Dana Atchley’s book, Physician, Healer and Scientist (MacMillan Career Book, 1961).

  †Learned Hand (1872–1961), noted American judge who served for many years on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and then on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

  *Amey Aldrich, a college friend of Elizabeth Cutter Morrow’s, known affectionately as Aunt Amey to family members.

  *David Rockefeller (youngest son of John D. Rockefeller, philanthropist, and president of Chase National Bank) and his wife, Peggy; Archibald MacLeish (Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, lawyer, journalist, and adviser to Franklin D. Roosevelt) and his wife, Ada; Alexis Léger (see note this page) and his wife, Dorothy Milburn Russell; René D’Harnoncourt (director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City); and Thornton Wilder (Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and novelist).

  †The guests of honor at the dinner were André Malraux (1901–1976), the French novelist, diplomat, and explorer who at the time was the French minister of culture, and his wife, Marie-Madeleine Lioux.

  *In 1962 the Lindberghs subdivided their property in Scott’s Cove, sold their house, and had a smaller house built a little farther up the cove. The smaller house was eventually na
med Tellina, after the “Double Sunrise” shell described in Gift from the Sea.

  *AML’s niece, daughter of Dwight Morrow Jr. and Margot Loines.

  †Suffering from depression as the result of several difficult romances, Anne lived in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, for a short time, to be treated by Dr. John Rosen.

  ‡Reeve had hepatitis and was in bed for several weeks.

  *In 1962 CAL bought several acres in the hilly farmlands—Les Monts-de-Corsier—above the village of Vevey and Lake Geneva, in French Switzerland. There he and AML built a compact but practical chalet, which they called Planorbe, where AML spent most summers until the last years of her life. CAL used it as a European base throughout the year.

  *Nikita Khrushchev’s attempt to install nuclear weapons in Cuba resulted in a U.S. military blockade of the island in October 1962, which was lifted after Khrushchev agreed to dismantle the missile bases and ship the weapons back to the Soviet Union.

  *A son of John and Adelaide Marquand (see note on this page).

  *Lady Bird Johnson (1912–2007), wife of then vice president Lyndon Johnson.

  *Château-d’Oex, a town near Gstaad, Switzerland, where Reeve attended a one-month intensive French program; St. George’s School for Girls, in Clarens, which Reeve attended as a day student in 1960–1961, when the Lindberghs spent a year in Switzerland; Rosemary Hall, an independent boarding and day school then located in Greenwich, Connecticut, which Reeve attended for the last two years of high school.

  †Rhidian Morrow Morgan, son of AML’s sister Constance and her husband Aubrey Morgan, who was then a freshman at Harvard.

  ‡Ansy had become engaged to Julien Feydy, a French law student and son of Hélène Feydy, who taught American students in Paris, and Jacques Feydy, a painter and professor of art history at Sorbonne University. They would be married in December 1963 in the Dordogne village of Douzillac, where Julien’s parents owned a large, rustic summer house called Les Rieux.

  *Kurt Wolff died on October 21, 1963, in Marbach, Germany.

  *James Miller, Susan Miller Lindbergh’s younger brother, was then a student at Yale.

  †Betsy O’Hara was a close friend of Reeve’s from Rosemary Hall.