A Private History of Happiness (26 page)

Sojourner Truth, abolitionist and women’s rights campaigner, telling her story to a friend

FLORENCE, MASSACHUSETTS
• LATE 1840s

I’ll have my child again [. . .] I have no money, but God has enough, or what’s better! And I’ll have my child again [. . .] Oh my God! I knew I’d have him again. I was sure God would help me to get him. Why, I felt so tall within
—I felt as if the power of a nation was with me!

Sojourner Truth was born around 1797 as an enslaved girl named Isabella on an estate in Ulster County, New York. She was sold successively to three owners during her childhood, the last being John Dumont and his wife, also in Ulster County. The wife in particular treated her extremely cruelly. As a young woman, Truth had been forced to marry an older slave, Thomas; she had five children. Eventually she left the Dumonts and came to stay locally with Isaac and Maria Van Wagenen. In 1827, slavery was abolished in New York State. Truth found out that her son Peter (born in about 1822) had been sent to a slaveholder called Solomon Gedney, who then sold him to a planter in Alabama. But it was illegal to sell a slave out of the state of New York.

It was about twenty years later that Sojourner Truth, who had taken this name in her subsequent career as a preacher, abolitionist, and campaigner, was telling the story of her earlier years to a friend named Olive Gilbert, whom she had met as a fellow member of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry (a utopian group) in Florence, Massachusetts. Olive Gilbert wrote down the experiences as dictated, with some comments, and they were published in 1850. It had been, in many ways, a personal conversation in which one friend told another of her life.

Here Truth reached the moment when she had gone in search of Peter and had sought out her previous owners, the Dumonts. Her aim was to find the man who had illegally sold her son.

She remembered the encounter very vividly. John Dumont’s wife reacted with cruel contempt to her inquiry about Peter, and Truth recalled for Olive how she reached “a moment’s hesitation” and then suddenly and irrevocably she realized that she was not going to be defeated. She knew, and was able to declare, that “I’ll have my child again.” This, too, was met with dismissive indifference by Dumont’s wife. Where would she ever find the money to pursue her cause?

In response, Sojourner Truth found words that welled up from a deep source of inspiration inside: “I have no money, but God has enough, or what’s better! And I’ll have my child again.” She repeated this declaration like an anthem. Later in life, she became a great orator in the cause of abolition and women’s rights. As Olive Gilbert wrote, she possessed “a spirit-stirring animation” that moved her audiences. Here that stirring power of expression came to self-awareness under the pressure of a great hardship.

Many things about this encounter were deeply unhappy—Dumont’s hostility and also the anguish of not yet knowing how she would recover her son. But deep inside, this was also a moment of exaltation. She later recalled that, as she heard herself speak these words of poetic beauty and assurance, she “felt so tall within.” It was her own language that had given her this deep, answering self-affirmation, the happiness of discovering her own visionary will and expression. So great was the energy that she felt “as if the power of a nation was with me!”

Sojourner Truth’s fight for her son’s return was complicated and further testified to the force of will that she had discovered. She was directed by a friend to the home of Quakers who gave her support. From there she went to the Grand Jury at court and, with further legal help paid for by her supporters, she eventually forced the return of her young son by suing the man who had sold him illegally. Such was the threat to him—of fine and imprisonment—that Gedney had to travel to Alabama and retrieve the boy. The case was brought in the autumn of 1827, she recalled, and Peter was returned to her the following year. Her powerful words did come true: “I’ll have my child again.”

Ptolemy, astronomer, making a note in the margins of his book

ALEXANDRIA
• SECOND CENTURY CE

I know that I am mortal by nature and ephemeral, but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia.

Ptolemy was probably born in the late first century CE, in Egypt. He lived and worked in the city of Alexandria during the second century CE, and became the foremost astronomer and mathematician of the ancient Western world. The Greeks of antiquity had developed many aspects of what we would call pure mathematics, such as geometry. Ptolemy was among the first to apply mathematical ideas to the real world. He made maps; he analyzed light and music. Above all, he watched the planets and the stars in the sky.

Ptolemy had no telescopes or other aids to enhance sight. He simply observed the night sky as it grew dark outside the city. He had his own way of recording these observations and he also used records going back, in some cases, for centuries. The thirteen sections of his book
The Mathematical Compilation
became the most important influence for many thinkers on concepts about the solar system and the universe beyond—until the heliocentric understanding developed during the Renaissance. So great was its status that the book was generally known as
Almagest
, from both the Greek and the Arabic for “greatest,” making it “the greatest book.”

While the scientific authority of Ptolemy’s astronomical records was ultimately superseded, they still offer us the extraordinary sense of a man looking up at the “heavenly bodies” at precise moments that passed nearly two millennia ago. Because his records are so detailed, we know that Ptolemy made his first observation on the day that we would call March 26 in the year 127 CE. His final observation of the planets and stars was noted down on February 2 in the year 141 CE. During those fourteen years, we can trace his nights of viewing
when he made treasured observations about the movement of particular bodies. There was, for example, an early morning in February of 134 CE when he saw Venus, and an evening in February of 140 CE when the same planet came into his view.

An interesting controversy has long surrounded some of these records. It appears that Ptolemy adjusted some of his collected data so that his complex mathematical model could be fittingly applied. Critics have accused him of cheating. But in reality, he was doing what great theorists have always needed to do: balancing the messiness of the real world with the perfection of the abstract model. He was not interested simply in more and more data but in coming to understand the patterns behind the countless details.

Near the beginning of his book, Ptolemy made a note of how he felt. He knew that he was “mortal by nature and ephemeral.” Yet when he looked up at the heavens and saw the stars, he was lifted out of his ordinary mortal condition for a moment. And it was not simply what he saw that made Ptolemy happy. It was the sense that he understood “the windings to and fro” of the stars and planets. Through his theories, he found order in the apparent randomness of the universe.

That was why on such nights, Ptolemy felt as if he was standing by the side of Zeus, sharing heavenly nectar. This happiness was an inseparable and integral part of his achievement. Why else would a man have stood night after night in darkness, pursuing his solitary quest for knowledge, waiting for the skies to reveal their secret?

Francesco Petrarca, poet and scholar, writing a letter to a friend

FONTAINE-DE-VAUCLUSE, FRANCE
• CA. 1340

Strangely enough I long to write, but do not know what or to whom. This inexorable passion has such a hold upon me that pen, ink, and paper and work prolonged far into the night, are more to my liking than repose and sleep. In short, I find myself always in a sad and languishing state when I am not writing, and, anomalous though it seems, I labour when I rest, and find my rest in labour. My mind is hard as rock, and you might well think that it really sprang from one of Deucalion’s stones [Greek myth of stones that turned into people].

Let this tireless spirit pore eagerly over the parchment, until it has exhausted both fingers and eyes by the long strain, yet it feels neither heat nor cold, but would seem to be reclining upon the softest down. It is only fearful that it may be dragged away, and holds fast the mutinous members [. . .] My mind finds itself refreshed by prolonged exercise, as the beast of burden by his food and rest. What then am I to do, since I cannot stop writing, or bear even the thought of rest? I write to you, not because what I have to say touches you nearly, but because there is no one so accessible just now who is at the same time so eager for news, especially about me, and so intelligently interested in strange and mysterious phenomena, and ready to investigate them.

In his mid-thirties, Francesco Petrarca was achieving fame as a scholar and author when he wrote to the abbot Peter of St. Benigno in Italy about his passion for writing. It was around the year 1340 and he was probably at his home in Fontaine-de-Vaucluse in southern France. He had been working on an epic poem called
Africa
(about Roman history), his poetry was acclaimed throughout learned Europe, and honors accumulated: in 1340 he received invitations from both Paris and Rome to be crowned as poet laureate in imitation of ceremonies performed in ancient Rome. He agreed to be crowned on the Capitoline Hill in the Eternal City. But the real motive for his writing did not lie in such public recognition. On the contrary, the true fulfillment
of being a writer came to him in his secluded study when he was all by himself.

As he sat down to begin this letter, Petrarca noticed that he felt an “inexorable passion” when he had “pen, ink, and paper” at hand. He needed to write, no matter if he had anyone to write to or not. There is a wry self-knowledge in these words, as he acknowledged to the abbot that he was really writing for its own sake and not so much to address anyone in particular. He simply loved the business of writing more than anything else in the world.

Petrarca’s words also expressed his pleasure in the physical act of writing. He liked the feel of the pen in his fingers and the look of the paper as he put word after word in ink on it.

All times of day were good for writing but it seems to have been best of all when he wrote “far into the night,”
which brought a deep peace to his soul, a tranquillity happier than any sleep. It was as if the more energy he used, the more energetic he felt, “refreshed by prolonged exercise.” The harder he wrote, the more he was in love with the physical experience of covering the pages: “Let this tireless spirit pore eagerly over the parchment, until it has exhausted both fingers and eyes.” As he moved those aching fingers over the page, he felt a sense of supreme fulfillment. This was his calling.