HOSTESSES have been known to prime the pump of conversation by asking (innocently) what mortals now living have had the most space in newspapers, the world over. Someone says the Prince of Wales, and the battle is on. Our foremost candidate is, of course, Charles Lindbergh. The manner in which he and his wife have conducted themselves while in and out of the spotlight is something to take pride in, especially in these days of unbalanced Americanism. And I rather think you will better appreciate their secret of success after reading North to the Orient by Anne herself (Harcourt, Brace, $2.50).
This is a charming, a characteristic, and an altogether modest account of the flight which the famous couple made to the Orient in 1931. They flew as the crow would fly if he had ambition, by the Great Circle Route, and in so doing blazed a new Northwest Passage by air. For centuries explorers have been searching for the same route by sea, a route which Amundsen’s sloop finally cleared in 1906 after a three-year tussle. It took the Lindbergh’s plane Sirius considerably less than a month to reach the same objective. And this violent contrast in time is a sample of the amusing mixture of past and future which is to be found in Anne Lindbergh’s chronicle. From the publicity of their take-off at Long Island the Lindberghs jumped to the friendly shelter of North Haven. At Ottawa they received (and declined) much expert advice. Thence they flew on into the Barren Lands and back a hundred years in history: Baker Lake, a fur-trading post that had never seen a white woman; Eskimos at Point Barrow and Nome; a forced landing in Shishmaref Inlet. Then, — as the orange and black plane swung south, — Russia, Japan, and China, steady flying from July 27 to September 20.
One’s first impression of this book is that Anne Lindbergh writes so well she must not stop. She has given us a picture of her husband none could do so well; she has indicated, quite unpretentiously, the self-reliance, and the enormous precaution without which such jaunts will be too risky for our grandchildren. And when, speaking of Russia, she says, ‘I think of people and not of ideas and plans and organizations,’ you understand why this book is such a cordial one and why she in her own right proved to be such a sane and admirable ambassador. There are times when the sun and moon appear to be of almost equal brilliance.
