A Private History of Happiness (32 page)

Hans Christian Andersen was in his twenties, only a few years out of school in Copenhagen. He was escaping from an impoverished background with the support of patrons who recognized his literary power. One day he would be the world-famous author of classic fairy tales. Already in 1831 he knew that he was going to be a writer. He had had a first success with a story. But he was not yet sure what kinds of books to write.

In such letters as this one to his friend Mrs. Laessoe back home, he was exploring the possibility of travel writing, which was fashionable at the time. That is why he was staying at this hotel in the Harz Mountains in northern Germany. It must have felt a long way from his native city by the sea: “Here I am sitting on Blocksberg and writing to you in the middle of a cloud, a nasty cloud.”

The fire was crackling in the stove. An Englishman was sitting nearby. Though it was almost June, Andersen had two glasses of hot punch to warm up. “It is quite like winter,” he remarked. Clearly, to him there was nothing romantic about this evening, and he was ready for bed.

Then, “at this very moment,” he stopped complaining. Outside the window he saw three shadowy figures. He noticed their German-style cloaks “and snoods over their heads.” It was a strange scene, these young women gathering flowers in the darkness. Forgetting all the discomfort and tedium, he became immersed imaginatively in the moment with those “flowing cloaks of cotton” and the mysterious light. He was no longer cynical. Instead he was bewitched by the appeal of these women. And why were they gathering flowers on this cold and misty evening?

Andersen began to play with different associations. Everybody knew the German folktale of Walpurgis Night—the eve of May Day—when witches were believed to hold their celebrations on the Brocken. And then there was Shakespeare’s play
Macbeth
, which he had read when he was eleven. He loved it and he had read it many times since. For him, those three “servant girls” were instantly transformed into the three witches, and the clouds on a German mountain were turned into the fog on a Scottish heath. He had a feeling of magic even though he knew better.

Then the spell was diluted. Soon these “witches” had companions. A crowd was gathering, complete with musical instruments.

Andersen decided to retire to bed after all. As he did, his sense of magic returned. The melody flowed into his chamber and he was “going to sleep to sounds of music.” The present moment was suddenly beautiful and complete. He had no lingering thoughts about future prospects as he slipped gently and happily to sleep, accompanied by the music of the mountain.

Niccolò Machiavelli, politician and philosopher, writing a letter to a friend

NEAR FLORENCE
• DECEMBER 10, 1513

When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; on the threshold I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace. Fitted out appropriately, I step inside the venerable courts of the ancients, where, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on that food that alone is mine and for which I was born; where I am unashamed to converse with them and to question them about the motives for their actions, and they, out of their human kindness, answer me. And for four hours at a time, I feel no boredom, I forget all my troubles, I do not dread poverty, and I am not terrified by death. I absorb myself into them completely. And because Dante says that no-one understands anything unless he retains what he has understood, I have jotted down what I have profited from in their conversation and composed a short study, “About Princes,” in which I delve as deeply as I can into the ideas concerning this topic, discussing the definition of a princedom, the categories of princedoms, how they are acquired, how they are retained, and why they are lost. And if ever any whimsy of mine has given you pleasure, this one should not displease you.

Niccolò Machiavelli was born in 1469. He rose to become a powerful man in his native city of Florence. By 1511, he had been a diplomat and minister in the republican government for a number of years. Then, in 1512, the Spanish army overthrew the republican regime, leading to the return of the powerful Medici family in Florence. Machiavelli was accused of conspiracy against them. He was put in prison and tortured. After some months, he was released and allowed to go into exile on his father’s rural estate at San Casciano, south of Florence. That is where he wrote this letter to his friend Francesco Vettori, who was a diplomat living in Rome.

Machiavelli had been used to a grand lifestyle. Now he lived on what to him felt like a farm, surrounded by fields and trees. He spent his days
rambling and pausing at the local inns. He was not impoverished or in hardship, but he was bored. He had never been interested in country life. While not far away from his beloved city, this was all alien to him.

Yet at the end of each weary day, he had a path that led back to happiness, perhaps even to happiness deeper than any in his days of success and honor. Taking off the ordinary clothes in which he wandered the woods and meadows, he dressed himself as if for the grand life from which he was now exiled. But instead of visiting the courts and palaces of his contemporaries, he stepped into his own study and, by opening the leather-bound books with their texts in Latin, he met the gathered spirits of the past, particularly the spirits of ancient Greece and Rome. Seated in this room, he read historians and philosophers, letters and poems. At last, he was safe from the boredom and anxiety of his present world.

Whereas Machiavelli’s contemporaries shunned him—he was too dangerous to be connected with—the classical authors “out of their human kindness, answer me.” He had no need any longer to feel ashamed. He was free from the routine of country life and he could temporarily perhaps find relief from the memories of his painful imprisonment. Death itself fell silent. After all, these kind literary friends were centuries old themselves. Immortality beckoned.

It was a deep, rich, and long moment—“for four hours at a time”—during which he turned those pages and in his thoughts conversed with his ancient friends. It was the kind of extended happiness in which the rest of life fades into the background and then disappears altogether: “I absorb myself into them completely.” He was entirely himself, doing the things “for which I was born.” Yet he was freed of all self-consciousness and self-concern.

Out of the happiness of such evenings, there was born one of the immortal books of world civilization: Machiavelli’s
The Prince
. It was not ambition, danger, or suffering that nurtured the inspiration for this work. On the contrary: the ideas flowed out of these happy hours, being at ease, in his study. No doubt the experiences of his political and public past were a part of the achievement. Certainly, the book itself is full of worldly wisdom and experience. Yet its origins lay elsewhere, in the to and fro of the perfect imaginary conversations in the study of a countryside home outside Florence as the evening settled over the woodland.

Unknown Author, composing a poem

NEAR OSAKA, JAPAN
• BEFORE CA. 759 CE

I pass the sparkling sea of Naniwa

And by the sun’s going down I am beyond Mt. Kusaka where the grass is yielding under foot.

You who are no less pretty than the blossoming flowers that crowd the mountain
—

Before you know it I will be back to see you.

This description of a good feeling in the evening comes from the oldest Japanese anthology of poems, called
Manyoshu
(
Collection of Ten Thousand
Leaves
). The volume was completed around 759 CE at the imperial court in Kyoto by leading scholars. The large majority of the 4,500 poems of different periods were by aristocratic and court authors. This poem, though, was different. It was included anonymously, with the explanation that the writer was of too humble a rank to be named in this noble company. Now it gives us a snatch of daily happiness from the world beyond the court.

The Nara period in Japan, during much of the eighth century CE, was widely influenced by Chinese ideas; and indeed, the script in the
Manyoshu
used Chinese characters to express Japanese sentences. The delicate sense of the everyday moment has strong links with Tang Chinese culture. But there is also a distinctive and very personal feeling to the evening moment here.

The author begins his poem by the sea. The waves are shining in the sun at Naniwa (present-day Osaka). Then he records a journey inland as the daylight begins to fade and the night comes closer. The time in this snapshot from a man’s life long ago changes simply with the natural light, not due to any clock. His was not social time but natural time, the rhythm of the sun in the sky. When he began, the sea was sparkling. His journey then took him beyond a grassy mountainside as the sun sank lower in the skies.

This was a man for whom life must have been very present in the passing minutes of that evening. The background of his life is lost to us, since he probably never tried to record it. But those sensations as he looked at the sea and the sunset were preserved in that ancient
Collection of Ten Thousand
Leaves
. There is something strange and touching about how these passionate instants of the joy of life on a Japanese evening survived so many centuries.

His consciousness is preserved in the sights and sounds as he left behind those sparkling waves and crossed the grassy land. There, on all sides of the mountain, were “blossoming flowers.” They were probably shrubs known as
ashibi
, an intense swirl of color flowing over the land.

He must have felt a kind of all-embracing sensation of beauty. He found himself addressing his thoughts to the woman he loved. Her beauty, too, was here around him now, present to his eyes like the natural world in the evening light. Her presence was part of these blossoming riches, the flowers “that crowd the mountain.”

Darkness was falling. His mind flashed ahead now, to the finish of this journey. Soon he would be with her. The meeting, the embrace of love, they would be the final expression of this evening when his world was beautiful.

Dorothy Wordsworth, writer, recording the day in her diary

GRASMERE, CUMBRIA
• MAY 16, 1800

Warm and mild, after a fine night of rain [. . .] I carried a basket for mosses, and gathered some wild plants. Oh! that we had a book of botany. All flowers now are gay and deliciously sweet. The primrose still prominent; the later flowers and the shiny foxgloves very tall, with their heads budding. I went forward round the lake at the foot of Loughrigg Fell. I was much amused with the busyness of a pair of stonechats [birds]; their restless voices as they skimmed along the water, following each other, their shadows under them, and their returning back to the stones on the shore, chirping with the same unwearied voice. Could not cross the water, so I went round by the stepping-stones [. . .] Rydale [lake] was very beautiful, with spear-shaped streaks of polished steel. Grasmere [lake] very solemn in the last glimpse of twilight. It calls home the heart to quietness.