A Private History of Happiness (18 page)

Yet that original moment before the ascent remained untarnished. Normally, Edward Price was methodical. He planned, observed, and recorded everything. But here, in the wilds of Norway, he experienced this burst of happiness as he pictured himself standing on top of the highest peak. For that magic moment of immediacy, there had been nothing at all between the young artist and the top of the world.

Hannah Callender, young woman, writing in her diary

QUEENS, NEW YORK
• APRIL 1759

From thence went to the beach. The fine white sand along it is so hard that riding makes no impression on it. We rode several miles sometimes in the waves, which seem to meet you as though they would overwhelm. There are beacons placed on a hill to alarm the country in case of an invasion. We saw some ships out at sea, which looks of a green cast. The hills of Shrewsbury [in New Jersey] appeared at a vast distance. The riding is so fine that there are often great wagers won by racing. We bade adieu to one of the most glorious sights my eyes ever beheld and rode through a pleasant country to Jamaica [Queens County], where we dined. After dinner the company was full of mirth. J. R. inquiring how I liked the country, told me there was a place just by called Horsemanden’s folly or Mount Lookout, built round the body of a large tree to a great height, ascended by winding stairs. At the top it is floored and there is a table, half a dozen may drink tea on comfortably. I said I had a great desire to see it, and run from this crazy company. We went to a [sedan] chair and got in. It soon took wind where we were going, and the rest followed. Eighteen in so small a place made some of them fearful. The prospect was as far as the ken of sight. We saw the beach we had that morning been on.

Hannah Callender grew up in a well-off Quaker family. She was born in 1737, in Philadelphia. Her grandparents had been Scottish Quakers who had left the Old World to find a place less hostile to their faith.

But the previous years had been extremely difficult for the pacifist Quakers of the American colonies. The so-called French and Indian War had begun in 1754, and the Quakers, opposed to all wars, had become victims of hostility from their neighbors who supported the British war effort against the French. Callender’s diary recorded that when there was “a grand illumination” to celebrate a victory, “the Quakers paid.” The crowd “broke twenty panes of glass for us. Some window shutters shattered to pieces.”

Yet that spring day in the troubled year of 1759 gave Hannah Callender an interval of delight and freedom. She had come to New York and was taken to see Jamaica as a pleasant local town.

She went riding out this morning with a group of friends her own age. They “went to the beach” on Long Island. She noticed immediately the “fine white sand along it.” The horses moved easily across the beach, on the strip of sand “so hard that riding makes no impression on it.”

From time to time, the sea swept toward the racing horses, awesome in its power. These were not mere ripples by the shore; there was the power of the Atlantic in them as they hit the beach. Hannah Callender and her friends were riding right along the line where the sea met the land. This was a somewhat dangerous place, exciting, with a sense of risk. “The riding is so fine,” she exclaimed.

The pure white sand and the beating waves, the distant hills and the nearby dunes, all came together to create “one of the most glorious sights my eyes ever beheld.” Even the reminder of war, those alarm beacons on a hill, could not spoil that moment of happiness. The natural world was enough for a while to compensate for human folly.

That evening, further inland, the party climbed up to a high lookout at the top of a great tree. From there she had another view of the beach. She saw once more the place where she had been so happy. It reminded her that life had the promise of good moments in it.

William Turner, diplomat, writing in his journal

ALONG THE MENDERES RIVER, TURKEY
• NOVEMBER 17, 1816

We left [the town] at half past seven, and in two hours ascended to the source of the Mender Sou [Menderes]; for the first hour we rode along the plain at the foot of the mountain, which we ascended for the whole of the second; we rode mostly along the side of the river, and forded three streams which joined it from other sources; our road lay along high paths overhanging the river which was very rapid, troubled and tumultuous [. . .] as we rode to the source, we had light but frequent showers owing to the clouds breaking against the heights which were covered with them.

We reached the fall [and source] at half past nine; the scenery round it was of the wildest and most beautiful description; the water gushes out most copiously from a small square aperture in the rock, and falls about fifty feet over a bed of stone at an angle of about eighty-five; the width of the fall is about ten feet; above it the rock rises perpendicularly about 150 feet, with pines growing plentifully out of it; to the right of the fall rose another perpendicular crag of pine-clothed rock as high as that over it; the noise of the fall had a noble effect, and added much to the picturesque of the scene; to the right of the fall were several other streams gushing from smaller holes in the rock, and water poured copiously down from the mountains on every side, but these latter streams arise only from rain and melted snow, and are dry in summer.

William Turner was in Turkey, setting out as a British diplomat. He was in his twenties, and this was his first post. Subsequently, in the 1820s, he was for a time the British ambassador in Constantinople. He later held a number of diplomatic postings elsewhere.

During his first years in Constantinople, Turner took several trips to explore the region. Here he was touring west-central Turkey and had come to the Menderes River. It was known more famously as the Maeander, whose windings had given their name to a verb in ancient Greek for a river’s snaking course. The river was celebrated
in Homer’s
Iliad
. Turner, like all young men of his education in that period, knew the Greek classics.

As his party went up the mountain and closer to the source of the river, the water was making an ever-deeper impression on him. He thought about where it was all coming from. Rain and melted snow provided one origin. Scientific explanations aside, he felt simply the water’s rush of power, its energy of moving.

The waterfall itself, marking the river’s source, was not huge, yet “the noise of the fall had a noble effect” in its romantic setting, with the rock rising sheer above it and dotted with pine trees. The reason why this waterfall was special was not simply its immediate impact on the senses. Here the water was pouring out “from a small square aperture in the rock,” with “several other streams gushing from smaller holes in the rock,” and it all “poured copiously down from the mountains on every side.” This was the source of a great river, whose power and permanence were emerging right here, from inside the earth, and then rushing down the mountain. There was something elemental about this sudden and continuous uproar.

It all gave William Turner a rich sensation of mind and senses. He was in the presence of the creativity of nature itself. He had ventured out in the pursuit of rational knowledge, but he had found something deeper: an experience of happiness in the presence of water as source of life.

Ibn Battuta, scholar and traveler, speaking about China in his travel memoir

TANGIER, MOROCCO
• CA. 1354

After a voyage of seventeen days, during which the wind was always favourable, we arrived in China. This is a vast country, and it abounds in all sorts of good things [. . .] You find in China a great deal of sugar as good as that of Egypt, better in fact; you find also grapes and plums. I used to think that the plum called Othmani, which you get at Damascus, was peerless; but I found how wrong I was when I became acquainted with the plum of China. In this country there is also an excellent watermelon which is like that of Khwarezm and Ispahan. In short, all our fruits have their match in China, or rather they are excelled.

Ibn Battuta was born in 1304 in Tangier. He came from a learned Moroccan family and was himself a scholar in law and other fields. But his lifelong passion was to travel, and he authored one of the great travel books of all time, the
Rihlah
(
Travels
), about the many places he had visited.

Ibn Battuta was destined for a relatively stationary life. But this changed during his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1325, when he decided to keep traveling afterwards. Three decades and tens of thousands of miles later, he came home to Morocco to tell his story. He dictated his many adventures to a clerk, summoning up in his mind all the moments of a lifetime spent exploring far from home.

After his initial pilgrimage to Mecca, instead of returning to Morocco, he had gone to Persia. The appetite whetted, he went to eastern Africa, then to India, where he worked as a judge for the sultan in Delhi, which he thought a fine city. He spent years there and then was sent by the sultan on an embassy to China, which was for him an almost legendary country. The first attempt to get there failed; he was shipwrecked, and instead of China he saw what is now Sri Lanka. But eventually he succeeded in reaching his most distant destination.

Ibn Battuta was amazed by China. Most of his travels had taken him round the Islamic world, which at the time stretched from Spain to North Africa and Arabia, Persia through India. In China he admired the fields by the wide river, the corn, and the fruit trees.

He appreciated the tastes of this country. There was the Chinese sugar, “a great deal” of it. Tasting this sugar allowed him to compare China to Egypt, another fine source of sweet harvests. We can almost hear him considering the tastes, as the distinctive sugars crunched and dissolved in his mouth and again in his memory. On first encounter, the Chinese variety was “as good as that of Egypt,” and then he decided it was “better in fact.” There were other sweet treats, too, an abundance of fruit including grapes and watermelon.

Above all, there was a particular moment when he tasted a Chinese plum for the first time. He remembered the finest plum in Syria. When he had tasted that, he had been sure its sweetness was “peerless.” Then he “became acquainted with the plum of China.” The new taste burst upon him. It was sweetness unlike any other. The flavor of life itself.

Looking back many years later, it was such memories that confirmed for Ibn Battuta that his lifetime of travel had been worthwhile. Who else could compare the perhaps finest plums in the world—from Damascus and China?

His happiness was twofold. First, there was the taste sensation itself; then there was the joy of being able to compare tastes from across the world. The moment when he had tasted his first Chinese plum had been straightforward—and yet his whole life had been affirmed by it.