To Value Self

In the free box outside the local thrift store I found a book by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, The Flower and the Nettle, her letters and diaries from 1936-1939. It was published in 1976. In the 1970's, Lindbergh, who died in 2001, published many volumes of letters and diary entries from her early life.

As a young woman, Anne admired her famous husband Charles nearly to the stage of hero-worship.When she met him as a college senior, he'd already flown his solo, non-stop transatlantic flight. She was a girl in love with a god. By the time of these diary entries in 1936 their fame had become a hellish burden. Anne had published only one book, an account of a flight she'd taken with Charles in Asia. She undervalued herself and overvalued her husband.

This passage intrigued me last night:

"I feel very proud of C. He is like sunlight to them [their famous friends]. They turn to him, his practicalness, his vision, his simplicity, his clarity.
I feel, too: Who am I to say No, I want my own life, No, I want my own work, No, I will not go to Africa [with him] because I want to finish a book. Of what value would that book be? A personal account of hashed-over dead experiences. Of what value, next to the vision, the news that C. can give, and I by keeping him happy, by doing what he wants? And yet, he does not want that. He wants me to have my own life -- to write" (44).

At this point in her life Anne cannot rightly assess her own value as a writer, nor the books still incipient in her mind. Her "personal accounts of hashed-over dead experiences" will end up out-living anything her husband writes or invents, and although school children do still recognize his name or his plane, "The Spirit of St. Louis," he is only a figure in history. He has no voice. Anne speaks still; her elegant book, Gift from the Sea, is loved by women around the world. She writes honestly about marriage, about talent, about solitude and self-care. Remembering my impressions of that book, I think Anne became more jaded as the years passed, especially about her marriage and about the damaging influences of the outside world. She was a woman with a rich inner life, but in 1936, when she wrote these diary entries, she has more self-doubt, less self-value. 

I'm only beginning The Flower and the Nettle. Reading of pre-WW2 Europe from her eyes will be interesting, but I think getting to know Anne Lindbergh as a younger woman will be enlightening too. In 1936 they're living in a very old home called Long Barn, which belonged to Harold Nickolson and Vita Sackville-West, a few cottages and a barn strung together and full of the nooks and crannies we imagine in a 400-year-old English country pile. What fun!


The Lindberghs came here to escape America, the hounding press, the horror of the kidnapping and murder of their 14-month-old son. Anne wanted solitude, safety, and peace, and she found them at Long Barn.