A Private History of Happiness (16 page)

Gilbert White was mesmerized. He also understood the intentions behind this entertaining performance. There were moths living in this tree, a good evening meal for the owl.

His moment of happiness was a perfect balance between knowledge and imagination, understanding and admiration as the owl “exhibited on the occasion a command of wing superior [. . .] to that of the swallow itself.”
He was especially moved because fern owls could “only be watched and observed for two hours in the twenty-four.” It was a precious gift from this departing day.

His whole personality was engaged, he was enjoying everything about the owl’s existence here in this field. Without trying to take possession of the owl in any way, he felt a connection with it, and he loved it for its freedom and enjoyment of flying.

William Whewell, scientist and philosopher, writing a letter to a friend

VALAIS, SWITZERLAND
• AUGUST 18, 1829

From the sight of the Rhône glacier [canton of Valais, Switzerland] [. . .] I have learnt that nature has a love for the form of a waterfall such as I desired to see, but that for some good reason (possibly to prevent the valley below from being inundated) she turned the waterfall to ice as soon as she had set it a-going. You are to imagine [. . .] a waterfall half-a-mile broad and a thousand feet high, leaping down between mountains, gigantic even when compared with its dimensions, and laden with eternal snows; and you are to suppose that this vast sheet of water, as soon as it touches the bottom of the valley into which it plunges, boils up and spreads itself over a far wider space as it rushes away. You are then to wave the wand of your imagination a second time, and to turn all this cataract to ice, and you will have the glacier of the Rhône. You are to suppose all the partial torrents and bounds of water which are woven together to make its expanse to be modelled in strange and fantastic pyramids of ice with deep blue chasms between [. . .] To look it in the face under a beautiful blue sky is a good employment for an August morning.

William Whewell was born in Lancaster, England, in 1794, as son of a carpenter. In 1811, he won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge University. After a distinguished undergraduate performance, he became a college fellow in 1817. He was talented in many fields, especially in mathematics, and became a friend of other leading mathematical figures such as Charles Babbage, the inventor of a first prototype of the computer. A prolific and wide-ranging author, Whewell’s earliest books were on physics and geology; in 1828, the year preceding this visit to the Swiss Alps, he had become professor of mineralogy at Cambridge.

Whewell had set off for his Continental summer tour on July 4, 1829, going first to Cologne and Darmstadt in Germany. He enjoyed
discussions with scientific colleagues and visiting the tourist sites, such as Cologne Cathedral.

Then there was his mountain adventure. He recorded “walking twenty or thirty miles a day among the highest parts of the Alps,” and one of these days he “arrived at the glacier from which the Rhône issues.” He was excited both as a geologist and as a tourist.

He had been eager to see waterfalls, he confided in this letter to his friend Hugh Rose, a clergyman, and now he was granted that wish, though in an unexpected way. Looking at the immense glacier, he imagined it as a torrent of Alpine water that had been turned into ice, preventing the valley below from becoming flooded.

As a geologist, Whewell was interested in the ways in which the current landscape had come into existence. He saw the present scene as an expression of distant causes; but this was a friendly and informal letter, so instead of presenting a theory of glacial formation, he called on his friend to wave the wand of his imagination: first to summon up the fearsome prospect of a gigantic waterfall, then the magical transformation of all this water into ice and snow. There is a sense of wonder in his vivid words describing the “vast sheet of water” that, in its frozen state, “plunges, boils up and spreads itself” across the floor of the valley and creates “fantastic pyramids of ice.”

Part of Whewell’s point, though he left it implicit, was that the world had not always looked the way it did now. There had been eras, long ago, when the earth underwent immense changes. The science of geology had made considerable advances in the 1700s, and was now brought to vivid life with a flick of the writer’s own magic wand of eloquent imagination. There is immense intellectual satisfaction behind his words, the pleasure of being in the presence of such unique evidence for the ideas that he was working on, ideas about the distant prehistory of the modern continents and their mountains, valleys, and rivers.

This was altogether a fine way to spend a summer day in the Swiss Alps, one of the most majestic landscapes and a great monument to the history of earth itself—a day filled with the joy of both taking in and understanding the natural world.

Lucy Larcom, teacher and poet, writing in her journal

MAINE
• AUGUST 1860

It rained on the way, but it was only the cooler and more comfortable traveling for that; and when the sun came out in the west just as we reached the top of a ridge from which the whole long mountain chain was visible on the horizon, I felt that that one view was enough compensation for going, and that first glimpse I shall never forget. The round summit of [Mount] Blue, and the bolder ridges of Saddleback and Abraham [mountains], lifted themselves above the lower elevations that would be mountains anywhere but among mountains, far off and solemn with the deepening purple of sunset, and over them the sky hung, fiery gold, intermingled with shadow. The first glimpse was finer than anything afterward, though I rode up the lovely valley of the Sandy River, which is like a paradise, if not one, recalling ever the old words of the hymn: “Sweet fields arrayed in living green, / And rivers of delight.”

Lucy Larcom was thirty-six in the summer of 1860. In her childhood, following the death of her father, she had had to work in the mills in Lowell, Massachusetts. Her talent as a child poet had attracted support, and she eventually obtained a teaching degree. For several years now, she had been a teacher at a seminary in her home state. She had also published a poem in a literary magazine that had received wide acclaim.

She had never seen these mountains of Maine before. When she had left Massachusetts before, in the 1840s, it had been to teach at a school in Illinois. Now her summer vacation from the seminary had taken her to these new scenes, and she loved the freshness of the experience.

That particular August day, on the way to the mountains, it rained, but it made the traveling easier. Late in the afternoon, the summer sun appeared just as she “reached the top of a ridge.”

In that sudden sunshine, she glimpsed for the first time a “long mountain chain” in the distance. Though it was far away, the whole
scene was “one view,” burning a single image into her mind. At its center, there was the striking “round summit of Blue.”

It all came together like a pattern of balanced opposites, round and edgy, high and low, light and dark. She was happy that a whole world had opened up instantaneously before her.

Lucy Larcom knew that her “first glimpse” of these mountains was bound to be “finer” than anything that would come afterwards—a glimpse she would “never forget.” She returned to this thought a little later: “What can be more beautiful than green meadowlands, bordered by forest-covered slopes, that ever rise and rise, till they fade into dim blue mountain-distances?” Nevertheless, she did try the next day to re-create the original excitement and get closer to one of the summits itself: “I climbed one mountain halfway—the bluest of the blue—and so called, by emphasis, Mount Blue.” But it wasn’t quite the same, since “the distant view is always more impressive, more full of suggestions for me.” On the final day of her vacation, as she passed that glorious viewpoint of the first evening, she “hoped for a repetition of the first delight. But the far-off ridges were closely veiled with mist and rain, and a thundershower swept toward us from them, across the wide valley.”

But there was one final blessing: “Yet as we turned to leave, Mount Blue just lifted off his mist-cap for a few minutes, as if to say good-bye.” She was now able to visualize the mountain from memory: “Altogether, it is a most charming and comforting picture for future remembrance: flowery mountain slopes, little garden patches of goldenrod, white everlasting and purple willow herb, under the shade of maples, and firs, and graceful hemlocks; and glimpses of cottagers’ homes on hillsides and by running streams.” The magic of the original moment was safely preserved, deep inside her: “My eyes are rested, and my heart is glad.”

Matsuo Basho, poet and traveler, writing in his travel journal

TAKEKUMA, JAPAN
• SUMMER OF 1689

My heart leaped up when I saw the pine tree at Takekuma. Its roots split out from the ground into two trunks, proof that it looks as it did in ancient times. My thoughts turned to the Abbot Noin [recluse and poet]. A long time ago, the newly appointed Governor of Mutsu Province had cut down this tree and used the wood as stakes to support the bridge over the River Natori. When Noin came here [nearly seven centuries before Basho], he wrote that no trace of the tree remained. I had heard that this tree had been felled time after time, generation after generation, only for a new tree to be grafted onto the stump each time. But now it seems to have attained the splendid power to last a thousand years
—it is truly a wonderful sight.

In May of 1689, Matsuo Basho set off on a journey that would last nine months among the uplands and lowlands, the forests and the shores of Japan. In his mid-forties, he was already a famous poet, a leading practitioner of the art of haiku, the short, highly structured poem for which Japanese literature is now globally celebrated. Yet Basho had not come from a wealthy or powerful background. His brothers were farmers. He himself, son of a minor samurai, had been in the service of a local lord until the man’s death had set him free. Then he had moved to the capital, Edo (Tokyo), where he taught and wrote poetry.

In 1684, he had made the first of several journeys that he recorded in unique travel journals, a personal blend of poetry and description. These journeys were becoming increasingly important in his life. He called them “wayfaring,” as distinct from pilgrimages. He described himself as a kind of human bat, a cross between a bird and a mouse, between a monk and a secular man.

An early highlight of this journey in 1689 was his visit to see this long-famous pine tree. He had known about it, and now he was here.
He loved the way the real tree in front of his eyes resembled the one described in ancient texts, its single root dividing into two trunks.

As he stood there looking at the tree, feeling his heart leap up, his memory filled with human voices. There had been another poet, Abbot Noin, who had come to Takekuma only to find the tree “cut down,” turned into supports for a bridge by an officious governor. After many generations and many new grafts, now the twin trunks were here again.