A Private History of Happiness (8 page)

The year so far had been cold. But now, on this early March day, he found the wind blowing nicely from the southwest and everything welcoming. The air had changed. It looked as different as it felt, and altogether it seemed that the sharpness of winter had passed. The lines and edges of things were softer: “Warm, hazy air all day till sunset.” This sense of spring made the whole day into one extended happy moment in his favorite garden.

“Mezereons bloom. Gooseberry and Elder put out their leaves.” These plants were not simply objects. To Gray, they were full of life.
The purple mezereons were flowering into the warm spring air before his eyes. The first leaves on bushes and trees were unfolding as he watched them. The apricots were showing their buds on this very day. It was a moment of gentle rebirth.

Each moment seemed to bring a new gift: “Lesser Tortoiseshell Butterfly appears.” It was as if small wonders were being conjured up by a magic spell. The garden was coming back to life one flower at a time: “Single Daffodils.”

Yet at the same time, as a promise of all that would soon come, there was also the “full bloom” of the Hepaticas, small perennial
flowers that had the strength to flourish at the very end of the winter cold. Their cycle of bloom was completing as other plants were just beginning. He was looking at the wonderful intricacy of time itself in this miniature of the natural world, forever consummated and reborn.

On this March 10 in a Cambridge garden, Thomas Gray perceived every leaf and flower as a distinct and separate creation. There were no general categories. “Hepaticas” now meant only these few lilac flowers, and the “Butterfly” named only one particular, fluttering speck of color. Words themselves were being reborn in that warm sunshine. In his happiness, it seemed as if the English language had been created to describe just this one day.

His delight in the “Lesser Tortoiseshell” was both that of a naturalist and a lover of passing moments. His passion for the world as it appeared in front of his eyes was paired with observant objectivity. He wanted to describe precisely this scene, as if to record it for eternity—although it would never exist again, either for him or for anyone else, exactly as it was on this one March day.

A year later, Gray moved to another Cambridge college, Pembroke. This was to be his last year in the college garden to which he was so attached. This warm early spring day was a lovely beginning to the finale.

Mary Dawson-Damer, aristocratic traveler, writing in her diary

CAIRO
• DECEMBER 31, 1841

We made a detour to visit the mosque of Amurath. We returned to our hotel, where we found some crazy-looking English carriages, in waiting to convey us to the garden of Schoubra, a distance of about a league, through an avenue of fine acacias, which in this climate are trees of considerable size, and afforded us delightful shade from the glare and dust. The pods of these acacias are of the size of tamarinds. I never saw anything to be compared to the beauty of the Schoubra garden. It is quite an illustration of those described in the Arabian nights. It is formed in the original Grecian plan of garden: straight rows, but thickly planted, and covering three square miles in extent. The lemon, orange, myrtle, and pomegranate succeeded to and touched each other, and below these, hedges of geranium in bright and full flower; the whole garden appeared to have been just watered, and produced the most refreshing and yet not overpowering fragrance.

We felt quite revived and enchanted, and might be excused for our constant and repeated terms of admiration, of “Oh! how sweet!
—Oh! how charming!” Tired as I was on arriving, I soon felt quite restored with the effect of so balmy an atmosphere.

Mary Dawson-Damer and her husband, George, a middle-aged aristocratic couple from England, were traveling in Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and Palestine. He was a cabinet minister in the British government. Her father had been a lord of the admiralty and a distinguished sailor, as well as a friend of royalty. The Dawson-Damers lived a metropolitan life at home in London.

She knew that “the garden of Schoubra” was part of the tourist trail. Benjamin Disraeli, the novelist and future British prime minister, had visited there in 1830. He recorded his favorable impressions of the man who had revived the garden, Muhammad Ali, the founder
of what became Egypt’s ruling dynasty until 1952. This garden was also the site of his palace.

The couple got into the waiting carriages as usual to go and see another sight. First signs were promising; a fine avenue of trees provided relief “from the glare and dust.” Nothing, though, prepared Mary Dawson-Damer for the sight of the garden itself: “I never saw anything to be compared to the beauty” of this Eden. It was like a scene from the
Arabian Nights
, as if she had entered a mythical realm.

Initially, she was impressed by its sheer size, three square miles of colorful trees, shrubs, and flowers. On such a large scale, as a lush landscape that was carefully arranged, she appreciated the open, “straight rows” of the planting. It was a kind of classical order that she called “Grecian,” though in fact the country she was presently touring was the origin of this geometric vision, since Pythagoras had derived some of his main ideas from Egyptian sources. Wave after wave of “lemon, orange, myrtle, and pomegranate” trees, with their different colors and smells, “touched each other,” and even the space below the trees was planted with geraniums “in bright and full flower.”

Yet even that profusion was not quite why Mary Dawson-Damer had such a sensation of intense happiness at the garden of Schoubra
.
The whole place seemed to have just been watered. After all the dust and heat, her senses were met by a misty cloud, filled with the scents of every kind of plant surrounding her. It was the distillation of sweetness. Her pleasure was both sensory and spiritual, as she was breathing in the essence of this garden.

Murasaki Shikibu, author and court lady, writing in her diary

KYOTO, JAPAN
• CA. 1008–1010

Each treetop around the pond, each tuft of grass by the stream, takes on its own colour, which becomes more alluring in the charming light of the sky. Even more moving is the monks’ ceaseless recitation of the sutras. Against the sound of the gradually cooling breeze, it blends with the endless trickling of the water throughout the night [. . .]

It is still the depth of night. Clouds obscure the moon, and dark shadows lie beneath the trees. Voices are heard: “How about we open the shutters?” “But the ladies probably won’t be ready yet!” “Attendant! Open the shutters!”

Suddenly the bell that announces the Ritual of the Five Great Mystic Kings is rung, and the pre-dawn ceremony begins. The clamour of the priests’ voices vying with one another is heard near and far; it is truly magnificent.

The abbot of the Kannon-in hall leads twenty priests out from the east wing to recite incantations. Even their footsteps as they stomp across the bridge sound strange. When the head priest of Hosshoji Temple returns to the stables, and the head of Henji Temple to the library, I imagine looking over at them as they cross those elegant arched bridges, accompanied by their retinues robed in priestly attire, and disappear among the trees. What a moving sight! [. . .] Dawn breaks as the men and women of the court assemble.

As I look out through my door into the faint mist, I see that the morning dew is still on the leaves.

Known only by her nickname, “Murasaki Shikibu,” this court lady was the author of the famous romance
The Tale of Genji
, written at the Japanese court at the beginning of the eleventh century. Her story of Prince Genji quickly became a cult among the courtiers of the imperial palace in Kyoto, where she was an attendant to the empress. Murasaki’s family was distantly related to the dominant branch of
the Fujiwara clan, whose chief, Michinaga, was the real power in the empire. She, though, was on the fringe of the hierarchy, living in the part of the inner palace reserved for attendant women.

Her real name is lost. “Murasaki,” meaning purple or lavender, is the name of one of the female characters in her romance, and “Shikibu” was her father’s rank in the imperial service. Leading up to the year 1010, she was probably in her late thirties, a widow with a daughter, passionately loyal to a mistress who was herself insecure in that palace of intrigue and rivalry.

Late one night, she was looking out on the garden of the palace. The outlines of the trees appeared as strange and beautiful objects faintly outlined in the dim glow of the night sky. Even the clusters of grass were patches of dark colors along the water. This garden was both a place of beauty and a sacred space, where many temples were scattered. Bridges led over streams and ponds.

Then Murasaki hears the chanting of the monks and the music of the water merge into one voice, calling from the heart of this mysterious night. But these mundane interruptions do not break the spell. The very start of the day’s ceremonies is in preparation, still under the cover of night. A bell rings. The Ritual of the Five Great Mystic Kings puts to flight threatening spirits of evil and so makes each day safe. This ritual is the prelude to first light.

Those were the rules and conventions. But for the listening woman, the bell, the voices, and the water created a musical moment she found “truly magnificent.” She heard, as if for the first time, the sound of the monks’ footsteps as they crossed a bridge. Every noise was distinct. She noticed other clergy, crossing bridges and walking along paths. Morning was creeping through the garden.

As night and dawn met, she had another moment of pure beauty, glimpsing through “the faint mist” a sparkling garden of “morn-ing dew.”

Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, diplomat, writing a letter to a friend

NEAR ISTANBUL
• WINTER OF 1554/55

After stopping one day at Adrianople [Edirne], we set out to finish the last stage of our journey to Constantinople [Istanbul], which is not far distant. As we passed through these districts we were presented with large nosegays of flowers, the narcissus, the hyacinth, and the tulipan (as the Turks call this last). We were very much surprised to see them blooming in midwinter, a season which does not suit flowers at all. There is a great abundance of the narcissus and hyacinth in Greece; their fragrance is perfectly wonderful, so much so that, when in great profusion, they affect the heads of those who are unaccustomed to the scent. The tulip has little or no smell; its recommendation is the variety and beauty of the colouring.

Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq was born in 1522 in Flanders. He was a talented youngster who entered the University of Louvain at the age of thirteen. He was the illegitimate son of a local landowner, but such was his progress that the authorities issued a patent for his legitimacy. In November 1554, at a comparatively young age, Busbecq became the ambassador for the Holy Roman emperor to the court of the Ottoman sultan at Constantinople. War was in the air, and his task was to negotiate as good a truce as he could manage.