A Private History of Happiness (31 page)

Benjamin Haydon was an English painter who specialized in grand canvases of classical or biblical stories. After early difficulties, he was now, in his early thirties, a well-regarded artist and had many friends among artists as well as writers, one of whom was his correspondent in this letter, the novelist Mary Russell Mitford.

Haydon was in fact in some difficulty over money. It took a long time to complete his enormous paintings, which the poet Wordsworth declared authentic in “every nostril, every fingernail.” As a result, he sold few works and meanwhile his debts were mounting. Nevertheless, in 1819, he married Mary Hyman, a young widow, in defiance of these practical problems.

For a while, life was focused on love, and all he needed for happiness was one great truth: “Here I am.” That was enough, being there in the new home with his new bride. All his artistic plans and projects were advancing only slowly toward realization. But love was different—he was “sitting by my dearest Mary.” Nothing else was needed. The present moment was all sufficient, being by the side of the woman he loved.

He had an amused sense of himself as “a well-behaved husband,” accompanying his wife while she quietly mended her clothes. He did not know what exactly she was doing. He felt as if he had never been allowed into the secret world of a woman before. It was comforting and peaceful there.

The whole day felt right, “beautiful, cool, sunny, and genial.” The bright calm suited his mood. His art was all about violence and power; but here, in this moment of domesticity, he recognized a beauty that might be humble but was not therefore inferior to grandeur. He saw how ordinary details added up to a scene of precious value.

His wife joined in the written conversation with his friend as he recorded that “Mary smiles and says you must not believe one half of what I write now.” The letter became a playful interchange of love and friendship together.

He began to speculate about people’s reactions in his social circle when they would hear of his marriage. They would not realize how gentle and beautiful his Mary was. But this only added to his joy of the secludedness of the moment.

Washington Irving, author, writing in his travel journal

FONTAINEBLEAU, FRANCE
• AUGUST
30, 1824

Evening, walk in gardens of the Palace [the royal château]
—sociable Englishman hovering about us—our street [in town] a very noisy one—jovial blacksmiths always hammering and singing duets—accompanied by anvil—clanking of sabres—a body of lancers [cavalry soldiers] quartered here—lounging about streets—horses dallying by—arrival and depart of diligences—groups of young lancers about cafés. In other parts of the place a contrast is offered by silent, deserted palaces. Fine effect of moonlight in garden and after leaving the Palace—the moon crescent seen over pinnacles of the Palace mingled with trees of the Queen’s garden.

In the garden is a fountain of white stone or marble with bronze stag
—beautiful sunset in garden—rosy clouds.

Washington Irving is known around the world as the author of the stories “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” which were first published in
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
in 1819/20. He was born in 1783 and grew up in Manhattan, New York, the son of parents who had both emigrated from Britain. Washington Irving left for Europe in 1815, arriving initially in England, where he remained for some years dealing with troubles in the family business, before departing for Germany in 1822. In the summer of 1824 he was visiting Paris. Not far from the French capital was Fontainebleau, a town famous for its royal palace, a great château that had seen kings (as well as the Emperor Napoleon) come and go.

Washington Irving recorded this evening during his weekend stay in Fontainebleau in characteristic clipped phrases that sometimes seem to shuffle the sequence of events. He noted his “walk in gardens of the Palace” and also the amusing detail of an Englishman who was “hovering about us.”

Then he reported the moment when he came out of his Fontaine-bleau hotel and found the “street a very noisy one.” It was not the ordinary bustle of traffic. To his responsive imagination, this place was like the set of a charming opera, full of “jovial blacksmiths” singing their “duets.” It had the atmosphere of a stage, like watching a jolly French story complete with orchestral accompaniment. The hammers seemed to be playing the rhythm of a lively song. There were cavalry soldiers hanging about the cafés, swords clanking and horses coming and going. Washington Irving must have enjoyed how stereotypical these scenes outside his hotel were. His breathless phrases are full of pleasure. He was amused and also entranced. He was ready for a special evening experience.

It was all a prelude to the magnificent gardens of Fontainebleau, where he was met by a “fine effect of moonlight” when he came out of the château itself. It was as if the stage lighting had produced a sudden glow of pale silver, now that the music of the streets had fallen silent.

He had a magical moment when the crescent of the moon seemed to rest above the pinnacles and rooftops of the palace and “mingled with” the shadowy outlines of the dark trees.

As the darkness had gathered earlier in the evening, he had seen in the garden a white fountain with the statue of a stag by it, as if enchanted to stillness. The sunset had made the clouds “rosy” and the whole place caught its beauty.

After the singing duets and the rattling swords, the Englishman and the cafés, this château garden brought an equally magical inner peace and happiness to Washington Irving.

Wang Wei, poet and painter, composing a poem

SOUTH OF XI’AN, CHINA
• CA. 759 CE

The vacant hills are fresh with recent rain.

The coming autumn threats in evening’s chill.

Amid the firs the moon peeps in again.

Bright flashes o’er the stones each mountain rill.

With chat of maids, who take their homeward way

Their washing done, the bamboo-groves resound.

The fisher’s skiff the lotus brushes round:

The water ripples as they stir and sway.

Although the fragrance of the Spring be gone,

Yet Nature’s lover well may linger on.

Wang Wei was born around 700 CE in Qi county, in the Chinese province of Shaanxi. When he was in his early twenties, he achieved the rare distinction of being made an “advanced scholar” through the civil service examination. He attained higher office in the provinces but was recalled to the capital, Chang’an (today’s Xi’an), in the 730s. His bureaucratic career did not really flourish. Later, in 756, he was captured by rebels during the turmoil of the An Lushan rebellion. Forced to work for them, his life was in danger when the emperor came back to power a few years later. Wang Wei was rescued by the intervention of his brother, a high-ranking administrator. Exhausted by these troubles and saddened by the earlier death of his wife and of his mother, he withdrew to his country retreat south of the capital.

There he wrote many poems about his everyday experiences of the place. He was living in the foothills of the Qinling Mountains, among forests and rivers. He studied Buddhism and developed a style of painting that proved immensely influential. He shared his observations with other poets. This was the heyday of the Tang dynasty but for Wang Wei, these last few years of his life were a time of deep quiet.

This poem describes an experience of the coming of evening at the summer’s end. The day had been wet. Now there was the sensation of that rain still lingering in the air as it blew down “fresh” from the hills. Autumn had not yet arrived but he could feel a slight nip of the seasons changing. It was a moment of change, between day and night, light and dark, summer and fall.

He looked at the fir trees and saw the moon through their branches. The moonlight was here and there reflected on the ripples of the rills, the small streams, as they ran down from the mountainsides, bubbling with the recent rainwater. He heard in the distance the “chat of maids,” the voices of women going home, finished with their washing by a river. He also heard the soft noise of the boats of the fishermen—perhaps they, too, were finishing their day’s work. Behind it all, there was the quiet, persistent sound of water.

The extraordinary peace that Wang Wei felt at that moment, with its evening details of objects and people, shades and sounds, was suffused by absences: rain that was no longer falling, the “vacant hills,” and “the fragrance of the Spring be gone.”

To start with, his mood might have been a blend of gentle sadness and appreciation for the beauty of the evening. As these different sights and sounds came to him, he mellowed into a moment of contentment, lingering with the last light of the day and a final taste of the summer.

Hans Christian Andersen, author, writing a letter to a friend

THE BROCKEN, GERMANY
• MAY 26, 1831

Here I am sitting on Blocksberg [the Brocken mountain] and writing to you in the middle of a cloud, a nasty cloud which perhaps looks very nice from below, and many a poetical genius wishes himself up in this heavenly land of the mountains; but they should only try it! Here is snow, the fire is lit in the stove, and I have an Englishman for my neighbour. It is quite like winter; I have been obliged to take two glasses of punch, and I am now going to bed, therefore no more of this place.

At this very moment three of the servant girls are dancing outside the window. They have, after the German fashion, flowing cloaks of cotton, and snoods over their heads; they are gathering flowers, while light, misty clouds pass them like lightning; it is like the witch scene in
Macbeth
! There is a party of thirty besides the other travellers; they have brought musical instruments with them, and play delightfully. As we cannot see anything, I am now going to sleep to sounds of music.