Anne Lindbergh and Family, Archive of 12 Letters to Connecticut Neighbor

A collection of 12 letters, five by Anne Lindbergh, as well as two Valentine cards and a wedding invitation, spanning a span of approximately twenty years, from between the years 1954-1974 [some of the letters are undated]. The majority are correspondence between members of the Lindbergh family (Anne, Reeve, and Anne Spencer Lindbergh) and family friend, John Oldrin. There are also a few letters from a handful of additional authors. Approximately 25pp. Most with envelopes; includes two poems, one each by Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Reeve Lindbergh. Bold signatures, with flattened mail folds to letters. Varying degrees of toning and soiling. Some tears on envelopes from opening, but overall very good.

This charming collection of letters includes Anne Lindbergh’s love of writing and nature, as she and her children write to their friend and Darien, Connecticut, neighbor John Oldrin over three decades. Oldrin wrote a series of successful children’s books regarding animals and shared a love of poetry and children with Anne Lindbergh and a love of nature with all the Lindbergh family.

Highlights and Excerpts:

March 17, 1970, No Place. ALS. Signed "Anne M.L."
"…We have been obsessively busy since coming back from Hawaii. First I went to Smith to give a speech on Environment ('Earth Values'). Then we have been working day & night on proof-reading for C.A.L.'s new book. And here comes Income tax time!...Also I have seen your hawk over here three times since Christmas. I get so excited I nearly drop the glasses. He sits on a dead branch overlooking the swamp. I have not seen him soar. He is chunky - not a longtail - and brown on the back speckling with light brown or dull white…Is this your hawk?..."

July 11, 1974, "Tellina", Darien, Connecticut, ALS. Signed "Anne"
"I like the poem about the field very much. Thank you - for the poem - and the field! Here is a fragment of a poem I like also related to a field…'I learn from the land. Some day like a field I may take the next thing so well that whatever is will be me…' by William Stafford. Who wrote your poem? You?"

January 20, [no year], No Place, Card. Signed "Anne"
"Don’t worry. It is a charming book and illustrations and text are so perfect together as if they had been done by one person. In a way, this is more of a story than the first one. And you have left the kingdom of men for the kingdom of animals and because the men are not looking over your shoulder - but seen through the eyes of the animals - the story gets great freedom and a truth of its own…"

September 15, [no year], No Place, Card. Signed "Anne M.L."
"Jeanne tells me that you are having very anxious hours over your wife's illness. I feel so for both of you and hope you are going to have good news soon. I also want to tell you how much I appreciate your thought of Scott and the other children at such a time…I arrived at the hospital yesterday and he smiles his big-eyed smile…He is getting along fine & I hope will be home soon…"

July 1960, Les Paccots, Poem. Signed "Reeve"
"It's gone - my rainbow's gone.
Leaving me behind
To face the world,
Leaving just a tiny
Pain in the middle of me,
Inside me where I can't possibly
Get at
It…"

No date, No Place, "Visitation" Poem. Signed "ALM"
"(I send you this poem written long ago - at my sister's death - as one might send flowers)
You think there are no angels any more -
No angels come to tell us in the night
Of joy or sorrow, love or death -
No beath of wings, no touch of palm to say
Divinity is near.
Today.

Our revelations come
By telephone, or postman at the door,
You say - Oh no, the hour when fate is near,
Not these, the voices that can make us hear, not these
Have power to pierce below the stricken mind
Deep down into perceptions grieving core.

Blows fall unheeded on the bolted door;
Deafly we listen; blindly look; and still
Our fingers fumbling with the lock are numb,
Until
The Angels come…"

July 5, 1960, Idlewild, ALS Anne Spencer Lindbergh. Signed "Queen-of-the-Seven-Braids"
"We are in the airport, waiting for our plane to Paris (thus ball-point pen), and this is the first chance that I have had to answer your letter. We would have loved to use the boat - we felt absolutely marooned without Scott's - but unfortunately there was not enough time before we left. Please watch out in your tractor - I had visions of some iron claw reaching up in rebellion to tear the shirt off your back. Do you still have elves? Of course, because now there is Lucy…"

Anne Spencer Morrow Lindbergh (1906-2001) was born in New Jersey to Dwight Morrow, a partner in J. P. Morgan & Co., U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, and U.S. Senator, and Elizabeth Morrow, a poet, and teacher, who served as acting president of Smith College. Anne Morrow graduated from Smith College in 1928 and married Charles Lindbergh in May 1929. That year, she also flew an airplane solo for the first time, and in 1930, became the first American woman to earn a first-class glider pilot’s license. Together, the Lindberghs were the first to fly from Africa to South America and explored polar air routes from North America to Asia and Europe. She published her first book, North to the Orient, in 1935. Their first child, Charles Jr., was born on Anne Lindbergh’s birthday in June 1930. After the kidnapping of their child in March 1932, the discovery of his body in May 1932, and the press frenzy surrounding the “crime of the century,” the family moved to England. There, both Lindberghs developed isolationist views about American involvement in World War II, harming their public image. The Lindberghs had five more children—sons Jon (b. 1932), Land (b. 1937), and Scott (b. 1942), and daughters Anne (1940-1993) and Reeve (b. 1945). After the war, Anne Morrow Lindbergh returned to her literary career, receiving acclaim for the inspirational Gift from the Sea (1955), and writing other poems and essays. She published her diaries and letters in five volumes between 1971 and 1980. Over the course of her marriage to Charles Lindbergh, they lived in New Jersey, New York, England, France, Maine, Michigan, Connecticut, Switzerland, and Hawaii. In the early 1990s, she suffered a series of strokes and required continual care at her home in Connecticut, before moving to live near her younger daughter in Vermont in 1999.

John Oldrin (1901-1985) was born in Connecticut and became a banker and civic leader in Darien, Connecticut, where his home was called Round Meadow. During World War II, he worked for Pan-American Air Ferries in the Africa-Orient division. After the war, he worked as an executive for Pan American in New York City. In 1951, he published a children’s book entitled Round Meadow about the adventures of a spotted fawn named Dasher. He followed it with Eight Rings on His Tail: A Round Meadow Story (1956) about a raccoon, and Chipmunk Terrace (1958). He married Edna Young Brenchley (1881-1952), in 1932. After she died in April 1952, Oldrin married Virginia Johnson Knowlton (1924-2009) in 1956, and they had two children, Lucy Royer Oldrin and John Wood Oldrin (b. 1961).

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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