A Private History of Happiness (4 page)

A sense of perfection returned several times during this day: the sounds of the bells clear in the air, the shape of the trees outlined, yet also softened, by the frost. That foggy rime ceased to be uncanny and became instead a kind of gleaming beauty, overlaying the familiar details of Henry White’s surroundings. It was impossible to see the trees and hedges without wanting to touch them, to feel this powdery, frosty quality instead of the usual unyielding surfaces.

This keen morning brought before all the senses the sheer wonder of creation. The fog was dispelled and even the temperature rose back to a more seasonal thirty degrees Fahrenheit on the afternoon of this English Christmas Day.

Patrick Kenny, priest, writing in his diary

NEW CASTLE, DELAWARE
• MAY 9, 1826

This morning, about 1 hour and ½ before sunrise, offered to the eye the grandest exhibition of divine power blazing forth from the E. by N. in the inexpressible golden tinge on the sky from N.E. to S.E. The nearer the vast Luminary approached, the more the eastern horizon seemed to dart, or pour forward a sea of fire, whose waves were met by a cloud from the west, as extensive and as gloomy, as the eastern panorama was vivid and enchanting. Just as the sun’s disk danced on the summit of our neighbouring hills, the black cloud dissolved in a smart and long continued rain; this latter proves to be a blessing to the parched fields, for it did not stop our corn works.

Patrick Kenny had arrived in Wilmington, Delaware, in the summer of 1804. Born in Dublin in 1763, he had come to America to serve as a missionary and priest to the small Catholic congregations in this area. The heat affected him so badly that he tried immediately to return to Ireland, but all the places for the voyage back were taken. Reluctantly, he stayed and soon was ministering to a congregation in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He also visited regularly a number of smaller “stations.” In 1805, he moved to a farm at White Clay Creek, New Castle, Delaware, belonging to the Jesuit order. There he stayed until his death in 1840. He renamed the farm “Coffee Run,” and it was from one of its windows that he appreciated this May sunrise.

His diary is full of sympathy, humor, but also grumbling, often about the pain from a sore leg. In April 1826, he was in his early sixties, and he often felt he was getting too old, especially for the long journeys he had to make to outlying congregations and individuals. He knew everyone’s troubles, from lost cows to family illness.

Patrick Kenny had not gotten up early this May morning for the sake of it. There was too much to do for lying in. Still, when he looked outside the window, he forgot for a moment why he was awake at this early hour. He had a long day ahead of him, with farmwork and
required visits, but now he just watched the sun gradually rise, as if it were being painted right before his eyes.

His record begins scholarly and precise, the sun rising not just in the east but from northeast to southeast. He knows exactly how long it is going to take for the whole sky to light up, because he is used to this time of the night. The “golden tinge” of light is the bare minimum of morning. Though his language is at times grand and conventional—“Luminary” and such like words—there is something very personal about this love for the very first light; it is never more distinct from darkness than at this borderline moment.

His own language seems to catch energy from the rising sun: “a sea of fire,” “the sun’s disk danced on the summit.” He loves the conflict between fire and water as the sunshine and the rain cloud are contending for possession of this new day. It would have been easy to moralize and think of good and evil, but he resists the temptation.

He must have stood still for an hour or more to see the sun dance along the hills. It is this stillness of the watcher that complements the drama of the scene in the sky. He never states his happiness; it is simply there in his steady attention.

At last the rain begins to fall. It is like the release of confined pressure as “the black cloud dissolved in a smart and long continued rain.”

Soon Patrick Kenny was back to the everyday troubles of his long workweek: “Called yesterday evening by Mrs. John Fox of Wilmington to visit her; this day she is taken ill with pleurisy. A most inconvenient call, in my most inconvenient week. Last Sunday’s journey to Brandywine, this day’s to Wilmington, next Friday’s to Wilmington again, and Friday afternoon’s to Newcastle, and Saturday’s to Wilmington for church on Sunday, and Monday’s to Philadelphia, and on my return, my journey to West Chester and home. If I shall be able to hobble thro’, God alone can give.” But that hour at dawn must have remained as a weeklong beacon of inspiration to him.

Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor, writing in his book of reflections

WITH THE ROMAN LEGIONS IN CENTRAL EUROPE
• BETWEEN 170 AND 180 CE

When you are drowsy in a morning, and find a reluctance to getting out of your bed, make this reflection with yourself: “I must rise to discharge the duties incumbent on me as a man. And shall I do with reluctance what I was born to do, and what I came into the world to do? What! Was I formed for no other purpose than to lie sunk in down, and indulge myself in a warm bed?”
—“But a warm bed is comfortable and pleasant,” you will say.—Were you born then only to please yourself; and not for action, and the exertion of your faculties? Do not you see the very shrubs, the sparrows, the ants, the spiders, and the bees, all busied, and in their several stations co-operating to adorn the system of the universe?

And do you alone refuse to discharge the duties of man, instead of performing with alacrity the part allotted you by nature? “But some rest and relaxation,” you will urge, “is necessary.”
—Very true; yet nature has prescribed bounds to this indulgence, as she also has to our eating and drinking. But you exceed the bounds of moderation, and what is sufficient, in this instance. Though I must confess, where business is concerned, you consult your ease, and keep within moderate limits.

Marcus Aurelius became the Roman emperor in 161 CE, when he was forty years old. By the time he wrote these thoughts—in Greek—in his book of philosophical reflections, he had been one of the most powerful men on earth for over a decade. His empire stretched from North Africa to England and from Syria to Spain. For a while, he had shared responsibility with his brother—now he ruled alone. During the decade before his death in 180 CE, he spent much time on military campaigns in Central Europe. Everywhere he went, he took his writing.

Now, eighteen hundred years later, the empire is long gone. Highways and train tracks run where straight roads took his legions. But the words that he wrote down, presumably morning and night, live on.

Marcus Aurelius is famous as a stoic philosopher, a thinker whose ideas are stern and morally demanding. As human beings, we have a duty, whether emperor or citizen, to give our best.

Nothing was too small for the emperor to offer advice on it. Here he imagined he was talking to somebody who was just waking up in the morning. As befitted both a stoic and a commander, his advice was to rise and greet the day. There was work to be done. He must have had that thought on many days as the sun rose over the war-torn land. Yet as we listen to this stern and serious voice, we can hear something all too human within it: here is a man who knows that there is nothing more pleasurable “than to lie sunk in down, and indulge myself in a warm bed.” There is such a strong sensation of the comfort and warmth inside the bed, a refuge from all the difficulties that await. He is said to have had trouble going to sleep, and if so, this drowsy time in the morning would have been even more restful, bringing the long-awaited ease.

He knew, like us, that he had to get up; and he felt all the more the pleasure of lingering in what was perhaps the softest bed in the Roman Empire. This contented self even replied to the moralist that for all the moral imperatives of duty, “a warm bed is comfortable and pleasant.”

Soon enough, of course, he countered with arguments and logic. Across much of Europe and northern Africa and out to the East he ruled his empire, even though there were continuous revolts. Not many people have been more powerful in the history of the world than Marcus Aurelius. But the reason we still care about his words is that he knew about simple pleasures, too.

The disproportion between the description of the warm bed and the vast military empire outside is touching. It reveals something important about the true sources of happiness, before the stoic emperor is obliged to move on.

Anna Seward, writer, composing a poem

LICHFIELD, STAFFORDSHIRE
• DECEMBER 19, 1782

I love to rise ere gleams the tardy light,
Winter’s pale dawn; and as warm fires illume,
And cheerful tapers shine around the room,
Thro’ misty windows bend my musing sight
Where, round the dusky lawn, the mansions white,
With shutters clos’d, peer faintly thro’ the gloom,
That slow recedes; while yon grey spires assume,
Rising from their dark pile, an added height
By indistinctness given. Then to decree
The grateful thoughts to God, ere they unfold
To Friendship, or the Muse, or seek with glee
Wisdom’s rich page: O, hours! more worth than gold,
By whose blest use we lengthen life, and free
From drear decays of age, outlive the old!

Anna Seward was the daughter of an eminent clergyman. He became senior canon of Lichfield Cathedral in the English Midlands in 1750, when she was eight years old. They were given the Bishop’s Palace in the cathedral close, since the bishop did not want it, and the senior canon was next in rank. These poetic lines were written in the bedroom where Anna Seward had begun most days since that time, thirty-two years before. Even now, as a middle-aged woman, the associations and memories were strong. She had never married, despite some romances. She had, though, become a well-respected poet and friend of such famous writers as Samuel Johnson.

She awoke on that December morning just before dawn. Christmas was not far away. She felt anew the sensation of another day unfolding. “I love to rise” describes this moment, and also many others that she remembered with pleasure. The fire was warming in the grate, now as always. The candles were lit around the room, and it seems as
if both she and these “tapers” shared in the “cheerful” feeling. The windowpanes were “misty” with cold. Then she peered outside.

The outlines of the buildings in the close, “mansions white,” were just emerging from the dark. Further off, the three spires of the cathedral were starting to materialize, more impressive for their “indistinctness” than when clear daylight revealed their proportions. Of course, she knew every detail of this scene. Yet the mystery never passed. This was a moment when the close hovered between absence and presence, shadow and solidity. This was a moment she loved, so full of possibilities each dawn.