A Private History of Happiness (33 page)

Dorothy Wordsworth had come to live in the village of Grasmere in the mountainous English Lake District. She was keeping house for her brother William, already a well-known poet. They had grown up not far away but had recently been living in the southwest of England. She was twenty-eight in the late spring of 1800.

She kept a private journal that made her posthumously famous in her own right. On this day she went for a ramble alone, which ended in a special moment by the two nearby lakes, “Rydale” (Rydal Water) and Grasmere.

Her words offer a string of little pleasures. The air was soft and fresh: “Warm and mild, after a fine night of rain.” In the woods, by the lake beyond the village, some of the plants were strange to her but she wanted desperately to know what they were: “Oh! that we had a book of botany.” But she was able to set aside these concerns and simply enjoy the sight of “flowers [. . .] gay and deliciously sweet.” Her senses responded to the immediate appeal of the late spring scene.

She walked along the lakeside, underneath the slope of Loughrigg Fell, a steep hill. There she was entertained by two birds as they “skimmed along the water.” Her eyes followed the flight of the stonechats, “their shadows under them.” Every detail stood out for her, even these small spots of darkness sliding over the water’s edge.

The afternoon was slowly turning into evening. Dorothy Wordsworth wanted to set off home, which meant crossing the little river that flowed between the two lakes. She found she had no path to “cross the water” until she “went round by the stepping-stones.”

As she balanced her way from stone to stone in the little river, the sun had almost set and the last light gleamed in the sky.

On one side was Rydal Water, “very beautiful, with spear-shaped streaks of polished steel,” where the silver gleam of the evening was reflected. In the other direction was Grasmere lake, “very solemn in the last glimpse of twilight,” still under the darkening sky. It was almost a spiritual experience, though firmly rooted in the sensations of a day’s end in this world.

Dorothy Wordsworth had seen many enjoyable things on her day’s excursion. Now this evening brought her a moment of deep tranquillity: “It calls home the heart to quietness.” She also noted that she “had been very melancholy” as she made her way back home, disappointed also to have found no letters waiting for her when she called at the village of Clappersgate where they would have been kept for her. She was even tearful, perhaps with some fatigue. Yet at the very conclusion, the joy and peace of the day flowed into her feelings, and “when I came to Grasmere [village] I felt that it did me good.” Even the touch of sadness was now part of the profound acceptance and affirmation of life that this evening had given her.

Henri Frédéric Amiel, philosopher, writing in his journal

GENEVA
• JUNE 16, 1851

This evening I walked up and down on the Pont des Bergues [a bridge in the heart of Geneva], under a clear moonless heaven, delighting in the freshness of the water, streaked with light from the two quays, and glimmering under the twinkling stars. Meeting all these different groups of young people, families, couples, and children, who were returning to their homes, to their garrets or their drawing-rooms, singing or talking as they went, I felt a movement of sympathy for all these passersby; my eyes and ears became those of a poet or a painter; while even one’s mere kindly curiosity seems to bring with it a joy in living and in seeing others live.

Henri Frédéric Amiel lived in Geneva, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. He was twenty-nine and had been appointed as professor of aesthetics and French literature at the Academy of Geneva two years earlier. (In 1854, he became a professor of moral philosophy.) He was a private man who enjoyed reading, listening to music, and the beauty of the natural world. He enjoyed conversation, too, and was kind and relaxed with children, though he was not always at ease teaching his students.

He lived alone, and his social life was further constrained by political conflicts that were rife in Geneva at the time. Amiel had become a professor after Geneva’s Radical Party had taken over power from the conservative and aristocratic faction. Though Amiel himself was hardly aware of the political issues, his appointment, and others like it, were controversial (because previous professors had left their posts when the regime changed), and this limited his access to the largely aristocratic cultural and intellectual life of the city. He was very much on his own.

On this early summer evening, he felt better. He “walked up and down on the Pont des Bergues,” a bridge over the River Rhône where
it emerges from Lake Geneva. It was pleasing to be close to “the freshness of the water.” Light shone out from the quays onto the dark water. Above, the stars were pinpoints in a clear sky, “twinkling” in the “moonless heaven.”

The old city seemed at home with the natural world. Everyone, apparently, had come out for the June night. All kinds of people were walking by the lake. They shared an appreciation of this freshness and the panorama of sky, stars, and water—and the mountains as backdrop.

Amiel noticed the different people: young and old, families and couples, strolling together. And what contrasts between their lives! It was getting later and they were on the way home, but to such varied homes: garrets here, drawing rooms there.

It was their voices that struck him. Perhaps it was getting too dark now to see the faces clearly, but he could hear them all, “singing or talking as they went,” filled with an appreciation for life.

The evening brought them all together. Suddenly, Amiel had a sensation almost out of nowhere. He felt connected to his fellow Genevese, and he shared their lives for a moment. They were just “passersby,” strangers on a pleasant night: yet at this moment, he “felt a movement of sympathy” for all these individuals walking by the river and the lakeside. They were no longer indifferent, though in a way they were still strangers. He felt as if he were able to embrace them all equally.

He understood something, almost against the grain of his usual thoughts. He realized that to relish his own life, he had to enjoy the presence of other people with their very different and separate lives. Other people made him happy. He discovered in that moment by the evening lake that he felt “a joy in living and in seeing others live.”

Amiel’s senses were alert and he experienced the scene like “a poet or a painter.” People and their activities were sharply real to him. He was used to feeling “kindly curiosity,” but now as everyone felt suddenly so real and their lives as deep as his own, this natural interest brimmed over into excited pleasure.

This was perhaps just a passing moment, and it had in a way begun so casually, but it was as deep as any other in a philosopher’s thoughtful lifetime.

Francis Higginson, clergyman and emigrant, writing in his voyage journal

OFF CAPE ANN, MASSACHUSETTS
• JUNE 27, 1629

Saturday a foggy morning; but after eight o’clock in the morning very clear. The wind being somewhat contrary at south and by west, we tacked to and again with getting little [change], but with much ado. About four o’clock in the afternoon, having with much pain compassed the harbour, and being ready to enter the same (see how things may suddenly change!), there came a fearful gust of wind and rain and thunder and lightning, whereby we were borne with no little terror and trouble to our mariners, having very much ado to loose down the sails when the fury of the storm struck us. But, God be praised, it lasted but a while, and soon abated again. And hereby the Lord showed us what he could have done with us, if it had pleased him. But, blessed be God, he soon removed this storm, and it was a fair and sweet evening.

We had a westerly wind, which brought us, between five and six o’clock, to a fine and sweet harbour, seven miles from the head point of Cape Ann.

Francis Higginson was born around 1587, in Leicestershire, central England. He was the son of a vicar, and when he graduated from Cambridge University in 1610 he was set to follow in his father’s footsteps. He did become a Church of England minister, also near Leicester, but by 1627 he had joined the Puritan movement, in conflict with the bishops. In 1628 the archbishop of Canterbury began a concerted attempt to impose discipline on those members of the Church of England who sympathized with nonconformism. Fearing imprisonment, Francis Higginson agreed to join a party of emigrants organized by the Massachusetts Bay Company. On April 25, 1629, he and his wife, Ann, with their children, left from Gravesend on board the
Talbot
, bound for Massachusetts.

On Saturday, June 27, their ordeal at sea was nearly over. They were approaching the Massachusetts coast at Cape Ann. The “foggy morning” seems to have turned into a fine day. But suddenly, “about
four o’clock in the afternoon,” the sea became rough with “a fearful gust of wind and rain and thunder and lightning.” Such a storm was bound to impress a devout man of the time as a divine warning. But there was also the drama of events in front of his eyes, the sailors fighting to keep the ship seaworthy and the fear that at this final moment, so close to the harbor, all their sufferings on the way across the Atlantic would be in vain.

The raging wind and driving rain were intense but fortunately did not last too long. The afternoon had gone with the storm and there was a moment, after the skies had calmed, when Francis Higginson felt the simple joy of “a fair and sweet evening.” Now he had the great pleasure of just being alive, as that afternoon of “terror” ended in calm. For Higginson, further trials lay ahead and he would die just over a year later, after playing a short but leading role in the life of the new settlement of Salem. Yet this moment speaks for itself.

After the storm had passed, the benign aura of this place seemed to embrace the emigrants once again, as it had the previous day when their approach to the New World was welcomed, so it felt, by beautiful yellow flowers on the very surface of the sea: “The sea was abundantly stored with rockweed and yellow flowers, like gilliflowers [. . .] The nearer we came to the shore, the more flowers in abundance, sometimes scattered abroad, sometimes joined in sheets nine or ten yards long, which we supposed to be brought from the low meadows by the tide. Now what with fine woods and green trees by land, and these yellow flowers painting the sea, made all desirous to see our new paradise of New England, whence we saw such forerunning signals of fertility afar off.”

Those beautiful waters had darkened for a little while but now, in the mellowed light of evening, the sense of fulfillment and hope returned. Each of those two days had its moments of happiness, which this day’s ending brought to completion.

George Ridpath, historian and vicar, writing in his diary

STICHILL, SCOTTISH BORDERS
• DECEMBER 13, 1755

Prepared for tomorrow. Read some of the
History of the British Empire in America
, vol. 1, which I got today from the library. Read
Letters to Atticus
[by Cicero] in the evening. And slept on Epictetus, a divine little work which I had grown pretty much unacquainted with.