A Private History of Happiness (20 page)

On the way back the evening sun shone bright, and we could see all of the capital.

Lady Sarashina (also known as Sugawara no Takasue no Musume, meaning the daughter of Sugawara Takasue) was an attendant at the Japanese court in Kyoto. Her father had been an assistant governor in the province of Kazusa.

In this diary-style memoir, Lady Sarashina recorded a three-month journey from the provinces back to the capital that had taken place in around 1020, when she was a girl. This is an older woman’s vivid memory of an important event in her childhood.

They had set out for Kyoto on a foggy evening. The young girl had cried when she got into the carriage. She was anxious, too, about how she might be regarded in the capital city, having lived in a remote province far to the east. Would the people at court not think she was uncultured?

The journey was long, with many hardships compared to her normal life. Sometimes the rain fell so fiercely that their lodgings were wet, and she was so frightened of floods that she could not sleep.

On this day, near the end of their journey, things had begun to feel better. Their next temporary home was located “in the Eastern Hills.” Looking out at the fields as they went past, she enjoyed the fresh green that came from irrigation.

She went to a nearby Buddhist temple, taking a friend. Tired after this walk, as well as from the whole journey, she went to have a drink of water from a stone well. This was quite certainly not how she normally took a drink. Having no cup, the friends “scooped the water up” with their hands.

There were two great pleasures in that gesture: it was a shared experience, and it was so perfectly simple. After much anxiety and gloom on the road, a handful of fresh water satisfied the most basic of human needs.

They both enjoyed the pure taste of the well water, and the friend admitted, “‘I don’t think I could ever get enough of this fresh water.’” The young Lady Sarashina replied by using an apt quotation from a poem about being in the mountains and raising up water from between rocks. It was a deeply natural satisfaction, originating with the fundamental elements of water and stone.

Throughout the journey, there had been dangers and fears. Now there was a sense of harmony and of being at home. Fresh water—nothing more, nothing less—gave her this gift of belonging.

It was evening when they returned from the temple and saw the capital city, illuminated by the glow of the setting sun. It, too, was no longer frightening. A moment of happiness at a stone well had changed her outlook.

Cyrus P. Bradley, college student, writing in his travel diary

NEAR SANDUSKY, OHIO
• JUNE 14, 1835

Last evening, the agent assured us we should be in Sandusky. But it rained all the afternoon; there was a violent thunderstorm and the aspect of affairs became really discouraging. About nine o’clock, we stopped at a log hut to exchange our horses, when our new driver (for we change drivers here with the teams) [. . .] came out and declared with many emphatic asseverations that it would be absolutely impossible to get across the prairie that night [. . .] As we saw he was determined not to proceed, we gave up the case [. . .]

The log hut [. . .] was called a tavern; a bar well stocked with whiskey. At one end was a generous fire in a fireplace of true primitive capacity and here we sat and laughed at the awkwardness of our situation and poured maledictions upon those whose lies had been instrumental in bringing us here. Better had we not left the canal. Our boat doubtless [had already] arrived at Cleveland [. . .]

However, we forgot our cares over a good supper of roast venison, corn bread and fresh butter, and then enquired for lodging. There were many awkward grimaces made, as we all, one by one, poked up the crazy ladder into a dark hole of undefined dimensions, called par eminence the chamber. Here in the garret of a log hut, about a dozen persons passed the night
—the day had been rainy and the floor and the beds flowed with water. I managed to obtain a dry couch, and as I lay on my back, could contemplate the beauties of the starry creation or calculate an almanac through the chinks of the massive, rough-fitted logs which formed the roof and walls of the house.

However, I slept soundly, and at five o’clock, we [. . .] emerged.

Cyrus P. Bradley was born in September 1818, in Canterbury, New Hampshire. He was raised, he wrote in his journal, “in the woods” where, lacking boys to play with, he “found company in everything, in the birds, in the old cat, the cow,” and other animals. By June of 1835, he had grown into a lively and extremely articulate young man.
He had enrolled at Dartmouth College, but his health was poor. A trustee of Dartmouth suggested and arranged this trip for Cyrus, hoping that it would help to restore his health.

Cyrus made his way to Pittsburgh and then down the Ohio River to Cincinnati. In early June, he took a boat on the Ohio River to Portsmouth and then on, via the Scioto River, to Columbus. But this trip was from the start beset with delays. Growing impatient with the slow progress, he and some fellow travelers decided to leave the canal boat and take a coach overland. But further difficulties and delays beset them and so they found themselves arriving in the late evening of June 13 at this tavern, and still short of the town of Sandusky, which had been their goal.

The plan had been just to change horses and then complete this leg of the increasingly wearing journey. But the new driver, whom Cyrus described with some nervousness as “a great, strapping, bare-legged” fellow, refused absolutely to take them anywhere in the dark. Cyrus was stranded in this rudimentary log hut for the night.

There was a generous stock of whiskey and the warmth of a basic but roaring fire. He and his companions sat and “laughed at the awkwardness” of their frustrating situation and cursed the agent who had sent them on this detour. But then Cyrus’s mood changed completely and his good spirits were more than restored in a short time. It was the joy of a good dinner that had this instantly restorative effect.

The ingredients of the dinner were homemade and tasty, and that was an essential element of the charm and pleasure of the experience: “roast venison, corn bread and fresh butter.” These must have been local products. This “good supper” was a tonic, particularly for a young man whose health was poor. It was the simple richness of life itself that he enjoyed in that tavern on an unpredicted overnight stay.

After that fine meal, the continued inconveniences of the place seemed merely amusing, no longer upsetting. They climbed up to the garret where their bedding was waiting. Instead of worrying about the rainwater everywhere, Cyrus Bradley was fortunate enough to take possession of a dry couch and then looked up and “could contemplate the beauties of the starry creation” through the holes in the roof. Then he fell asleep.

The dinner of roast venison, corn bread, and fresh butter had transformed a bad evening into a special night.

Humphry Davy, chemist and physicist, writing a letter home

BRISTOL
• NOVEMBER 19, 1800

My dear mother
—

Had I believed that my silence of six weeks would have given you a moment’s uneasiness, I should have written long ago. But I have been engaged in my favourite pursuit of experimenting, and in endeavouring to amuse two of my friends who have spent some days at the Institute [. . .]

Accept my affectionate thanks for your presents. I have received them all, and I have made a good use of them all. Several times has a supper on the excellent marinaded pilchards made me recollect former times, when I sat opposite to you, my dear mother, in the little parlour, round the little table eating of the same delicious food, and talking of future unknown things. Little did I then think of my present situation, or of the mode in which I am, and am to be, connected with the world. Little did I then think I should ever be so long absent from the place of my birth as to feel longings so powerful as I now feel for visiting it again.

I shall see with heartfelt pleasure the time approaching when I shall again behold my first home
—when I shall endeavour to repay some of the debts of gratitude I owe to you, to the Doctor [Tonkin], and to my aunts. My next visit shall not be so short a one as the last. I will stay with you at least two or three months. You have let half your house. Have you a bedroom reserved for me, and a little room for a laboratory?

When he wrote this letter home to his mother in Penzance, Cornwall, twenty-one-year-old Humphry Davy was working in a newly founded scientific institution in the English city of Bristol, where he was devising experiments on the recently discovered “laughing gas” and on an early version of the electrical battery. His research on voltage would become the first of his papers to be published in the Royal Society’s
Philosophical Transactions
. He was appointed to
the Royal Institution in London in 1801, where his work on electricity made him world-famous. Davy was not from a wealthy background and he was largely self-educated, with the support of his mother and Dr. John Tonkin, a local surgeon. All along, Davy remained proud of his Cornish roots.

Soon he would be in London. But already in Bristol, the young scientist
was far away from his family in Cornwall and intensely immersed in his research.
Thus,
not surprisingly, he had forgotten to write home. Now he was eager to remedy the fault.

His anxious mother had sent a parcel of treats—and he had not replied in six weeks. He was indeed feeling guilty.

But, as he explained in this letter, though he had been too distracted to write before, it had not stopped him from enjoying the food she had sent. He had dined well “on the excellent marinaded pilchards,” a treat he must have anticipated after the hard work in the laboratory in Bristol. The pilchards, little sardines, had been marinaded to preserve them. This also preserved the taste of home for him. As another writer from the period put it, “pilchards are to Cornwall what herrings are to Yarmouth, cotton to Manchester and coals to Newcastle.” This writer added that one could smell “the odour of pilchards” everywhere in a Cornish town, “in every corner, cottage, lane, loft, room, inn, chapel, and church thereof.”

For Davy, the pilchards were a flavor reminiscent of his earlier years. They had made him “recollect former times, when I sat opposite to you, my dear mother, in the little parlour.” On those evenings in the past, “eating of the same delicious food,” he had talked excitedly of “future unknown things.” Now those dreams were on the verge of becoming real by his impending appointment in London. The taste of the fish had brought back the old days and reaffirmed the values with which he had been brought up. He was happy in the present moment, which was filled with the happiness of the past.

Anna Winslow, schoolgirl, writing a letter home to her mother