A Private History of Happiness (11 page)

Immediately, she began to sort things out. Her steps may have echoed on the wooden stairs as she climbed up to the bedchamber for the first time. They had brought some sheets and blankets, so she “made up the beds on the floor.” She did not want to go back to the camp.

The next good thing was that her friend Polly arrived to keep her company. She was the daughter of Mrs. Reid, a neighbor who had been hospitably giving the White family tea for the past weeks.

Nothing was quite ready in the home, and Tryphena White recorded how the chimney, so crucial for the house, “is to be, for it is not built yet.” Not only was the carpenter’s table still downstairs, but so was the carpenter himself. She also pointed out the “loose rough boards,” and there was nowhere to cook inside yet.

Yet as she took stock of this improvised beginning of her new life, she experienced a fierce surge of happiness, which she preserved with the declaration that “we feel as proud of our house, as inconvenient as it is, as ever any person did of the most elegant house in the world.” She was happy to be one of the White family, with their resilience and their optimism, as they made their new start in this settlement that was still young in itself. It was the middle of the summer, and finally they were home.

Du Fu, poet, writing a poem

QIANG VILLAGE, CHINA
• CA. 758 CE

The sunset reddens o’er the lofty peak.

The sun steps down the level plain to seek.

The sparrows twitter on the wicker door

Home! yet so many miles have left me weak.

My wife and children start to see me here.

Surprise scarce vanquished wipes a furtive tear:

To think that swept by anarchy away

Yet Chance returns me to each bosom dear.

One of the most celebrated Chinese poets, Du Fu was born in 712 CE, during the long rule of the Tang dynasty. The world he grew up in was relatively stable, but during his lifetime this fabric became torn. This deeply personal passage from a little poem records a moment of joy from these dangerous and difficult years.

Despite his immense gifts, Du Fu failed the civil service examination that gave access to official careers. His last—and failed—attempt was in 747, and so he never really prospered under the rigid rules of the time. In the early 750s he married and had a family. After that, he developed a uniquely personal approach to poetry, writing about ordinary life and the troubles and pleasures of common people.

Meanwhile, the empire became less secure as the hitherto invincible Tang armies were defeated by foreign powers along the threatened borders, and an internal revolt became the full-scale An Lushan rebellion in 755. The emperor had to flee the capital at Chang’an. Du Fu, too, fled northwards with his family. At one point, his wife and children carried on, but he was unable to follow. He was captured by the rebels and was returned to the capital, where he became trapped.
Eventually he escaped and traveled alone down the long road to the emperor’s court at Fengxiang.

He had been separated from his family for a long time, and when the court granted him a family visit, he walked two hundred miles to try and find them. He had survived all the loneliness and worry. And now there was this moment of returning home—he had found his family at last. It was like a miracle to see his loved ones in the huge turmoil that had gripped the country.

This poem was written after Du Fu’s reunion with his family in around 758 at the village of Qiang. The moment was defined by the light of sunset. The war-torn land he had crossed was redeemed on this evening. The perspective stretched, like the image of memory, all the way to the horizon under a reddening sky. Over there was the big world that—for now—he had left behind.

Ahead of him was home. His gaze rested on small things—a wicker door, and sparrows chirping. This small scale moved him because he had been stranded in a world of vast spaces and impersonal distances. Now he had returned to the life he used to lead. Here and now this particular gate mattered because it was his. Here his wife and children, as well as these sparrows, had their home.

Now he could look back over the “level plain” where he had traveled to be with his family once again. He could still feel the hardships of his journey. He had had his share of bad fortune, but now luck had favored him in the best way possible. He could feel how much this reunion also meant to his wife and their children, seeing him suddenly emerge from the perilous world beyond. Their tears, barely suppressed, contained the intensity of their joyful relief.

He continued the poem with another glimpse of this peaceful local world: “The garden wall with neighbours’ heads is lined. / Each breast surcharging breaks in sighings kind.”

John Hull, silversmith and businessman, writing in his diary

BOSTON
• SUMMER OF 1658

7th of 7th [July]. My cousin Daniel Quincy was also cast upon his sick-bed, within a week after the other [Robert Sanderson’s son, John], and had also the fever, and was brought very low, but, through God’s favour, well recovered by the 17th of 8th [August]. My wife was ill when these [two] first began to be sick: but it pleased God, as they sickened, she strengthened; and He kept her, and my little daughter Hannah, that then sucked upon her, from any spice of the fever, though continually necessitated to be in the same chamber. The Lord make me sensible of his hand, and of the mixtures of his mercy to me therein, though most unworthy.

John Hull came to Boston from England with his parents in 1635, when he was about ten years old. He became a successful member of the Massachusetts colony, training as a silversmith and then being appointed mintmaster. In partnership with Robert Sanderson, he devised and made the first coinage for the Massachusetts mint. In 1647, he married Judith Quincy, from one of the leading families in Boston.

They had already lost children in infancy before “the fever” (probably the measles) came to the colony in 1658. He had watched the sickness getting closer to his own family: “My cousin Daniel Quincy was also cast upon his sick-bed, within a week after the other, and had also the fever.”
His wife became ill around the same time. It was a time of desperate fear.

Hull’s wife, Judith, might have caught the illness from the others (although infection was not understood at that time). If the sickness did pass between people in that way, then he had also reason to worry about their child, “my little daughter Hannah.” The baby could not be moved away from the mother since she was still being breast-fed. He was worried that some “spice of the fever” might pass to the baby. She was small and frail; how could she possibly survive when adults
did sicken and die? His fear was vividly caught by the word “spice,” which suggested that the merest little grain of the disease could be too much.

But his fear was proven groundless. Instead of disaster, there came recovery. His wife regained her health as “she strengthened,” and their baby daughter had been kept safe from the scourge. He expressed the sudden happy relief as thanks to God: “The Lord make me sensible of his hand.” For some time past, he must have been tormented by a fear of malign fate. Now he was able to feel thankful again for God’s “mixtures of his mercy to me therein.”

He felt that he had done nothing to deserve such blessings. That was part of the unspeakable joy that came to him, “though most unworthy.”

Eighteen years later his daughter, Hannah, married the judge and writer Samuel Sewall. On her wedding day, John Hull is said to have given her an unusual dowry: her weight measured in his pine-tree coins, some of the first American colonial coinage.

Such deliverance from the ominous shadow of loss remains a profound part of all family love. The seventeenth-century father expressed his joy with careful dignity, which did not hide the depth of the fear and the profound gratitude he felt as that darkened summer passed.

Edmund Verney, wealthy gentleman, writing a letter to his son

LONDON
• JANUARY 22, 1685

I have this day sent you [. . .] all your things except your old coat, which I did not think you would need nor worth sending; your old hat I did not send neither, for it was so bad I was ashamed of it. All your new things I bought you I put into a new box [. . .] and your two guineas in your fob [small pocket], and a new knife and fork in your great pocket; and so God bless you, and send you well to do.

I am your loving father

Edmund Verney

In your trunk I have put for you

18 Seville oranges

6 Malaga lemons

3 pounds of brown sugar

1 pound of white powdered sugar made up in quarters

1 lb of brown sugar candy

¼ of a lb of white sugar candy

1 lb of picked raisins, good for a cough

4 nutmegs.

Edmund Verney was nearly fifty years old. He had lost his wife many years before. His son, also named Edmund, had left the day before by coach from their home in London to return to studying at Oxford University. The whole of that day had been spent packing, and now the luggage was to follow him.

The Verneys were a wealthy and important family. They had large estates in Buckinghamshire, where Sir Ralph, Edmund senior’s father, was the landowner. Sir Ralph had been an important politician in the reign of King Charles I, but he had run into difficulty during and after the Civil War that ended with the execution of the
king in 1649. Oliver Cromwell came to power and the monarchy was temporarily replaced by the Commonwealth. Sir Ralph had taken his family into exile in France, even being imprisoned on their return to England. But since the Restoration of the monarchy under Charles II in 1660, the Verneys had been secure again in the old prosperity. Still, Edmund senior had known troubles.

There were plenty of servants in their London home to do the packing and sorting. He did not need to do this work himself. It was his choice. His feeling of loving care showed through his words.

He carefully sorted out his son’s belongings. With a touch of humor, he reported his decision to withhold the “old coat,”
and also the battered hat that went with it. He carefully listed the two guineas, the new knife and fork, and “a new box” to put various purchases in. “God bless you,” he added warmly. “I am your loving father.”

Then he put in some treats: oranges and lemons, not easy to come by in an English winter. They were luxury items, certainly. Sugar had begun to become part of English everyday life, but to the more familiar brown sugar he added some fine embellishments: fancy cubes, some candy, raisins and nutmegs, and spice from the Indies. There was a hint of concern in his reminder that the raisins were “good for a cough.”

Edmund Verney’s love and happiness as a father were expressed in these lines, particularly in words like “In your trunk I have put for you.” Aristocrats like him really did not do these things themselves. But he
did
, putting in the sugar and fruit, choosing little precious gifts—“for you.”