Charles Lindbergh - Self Exile in Europe (1936-1939)

Self Exile in Europe (1936-1939)

An intensely private man when it came to his family life, Lindbergh became exasperated by the unrelenting press and public attention focused on them in the wake of the kidnapping and Hauptmann trial. Particularly concerned for the physical safety of their then three-year-old second son, Jon, by late 1935 the Lindberghs secretly came to the decision to voluntarily exile themselves in Europe. Consequently in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, December 22, 1935, the family "sailed furtively" from Pier 60 (West 20th St, Manhattan) for Liverpool, England, as the only three passengers on board the United States Lines freighter SS American Importer. To help maintain the strict secrecy, Lindbergh insisted upon for their departure, the family traveled under assumed names and using diplomatic passports which had been issued just a week earlier through the personal intervention of Treasury Secretary Ogden Mills.

News of the Lindberghs' "flight to Europe" did not break until a full day later in an exclusive front-page story by New York Times aviation editor Lauren "Deac" Lyman, a longtime family friend, supporter and confidant, published in the paper's final Monday morning edition although Lyman intentionally withheld the identity of the ship as well as its time and port of departure from that initial account. While Lyman included the information in his followup story published the next day, radiograms sent to Lindbergh on the American Importer were nevertheless all returned with the notation "Addressee not aboard."

Although Lindbergh had "offered no public explanation" for the family's unannounced departure, shortly before they sailed he had told Lyman in a private interview: "We Americans are a primitive people. We do not have discipline. Our moral standards are low. It shows up in the private lives of people we know — their drinking and 'behavior with women.' It shows in the newspapers, the morbid curiosity over crimes and murder trials. Americans seem to have little respect for law, or the rights of others." For those reasons, Lindbergh told Lyman, he had decided to take his family to England to "seek a safe, secluded residence away from the tremendous public hysteria" that surrounded him in America.The Lindberghs arrived in Liverpool on December 31, 1935 where they secluded themselves before later departing for South Wales to stay with relatives.

The family eventually rented "Long Barn" in the village of Sevenoaks Weald, Kent, England. One newspaper wrote that Lindbergh "won immediate popularity by announcing he intended to purchase his supplies 'right in the village, from local tradesmen.' The reserve of the villagers, most of whom had decided in advance he would be a blustering, boastful young American, is melting." At the time of Hauptmann's execution, local police almost sealed off the area surrounding Long Barn with "orders to regard as suspects anyone except residents who approached within a mile of the home." Lindbergh later described his three years in the Kent village as "among the happiest days of my life." In 1938, the family moved to Île Illiec, a small four-acre island Lindbergh purchased off the Breton coast of France.

Although Charles and Anne Lindbergh had made a brief unannounced holiday visit to the US in December, 1937, the family (including a second son, Land, born in London in May, 1937) would continue to live and travel extensively in Europe for more than three years before finally returning to reside again in the United States in April, 1939, settling in a rented seaside estate at Lloyd Neck, Long Island, NY. The timing of the family's return came primarily as the result of a personal request by General H. H. ("Hap") Arnold, the Chief of the United States Army Air Corps in which Lindbergh was a Colonel in the Reserves, for him to accept a temporary call up to active duty in order to help evaluate that service's readiness for a potential war. Lindbergh's brief four-month tour was also his first period of active military service since he had graduated from the Army's Flight School 14 years earlier in 1925.