A Private History of Happiness (34 page)
Read A Private History of Happiness Online
Authors: George Myerson
George Ridpath was born in about 1717, the eldest son of a Scottish church minister. He was educated at Edinburgh University and ordained in the Church of Scotland. In 1742, he became vicar of the village of Stichill, near the border town of Kelso in Scotland, and remained there until his death in 1772. He married Wilhelmina Dawson in 1764 and they had one daughter—but at the time he wrote this entry in his diary, he was still a single man and his manse was shared with his widowed mother. He was a scholar but not a deeply religious man. His reading was in history and philosophy and he tended to write his Sunday sermons only on Saturday, as he mentioned here: “Prepared for tomorrow.”
This December Saturday had plenty of reading in it. The vicar was busy with John Oldmixon’s
History of the British Empire in America
, published in 1708. (He had obtained a copy of the book in Kelso.) This was partly his interest as an author, since he wrote local history himself. (His
Border History of England and Scotland
was published posthumously in 1776 by his brother Philip, also a minister.) Next he turned to the writings of the great Roman author Cicero, whose
Letters to Atticus
were the model for polite correspondence and reflective conversation.
But as the evening was coming to an end and he was ready for sleep, George Ridpath picked a book by Epictetus (who died around 135 CE), a philosophical writer and freed slave who was born in what is now Turkey, lived in Rome and then in Greece. His main work,
The Discourses
, which would have been Ridpath’s nightcap book, was
a witty and epigrammatic defense of Epicurean philosophy, one of whose central principles was the focus on living a modestly contented life in this world. It is about how to live, the restraint of emotion and the attainment of balanced peace. Epictetus also argued for the tolerant acceptance of different religions. It seems to have been exactly what Ridpath enjoyed after composing his Sunday sermon.
He sometimes recorded the particular book he read last at night with a lovely expressive gratitude, saying as with Epictetus that he “slept on” the work. These books he curled up with last thing before blowing out the candles were texts he particularly liked, including also the poetry of the Roman author Horace. He must have had a particularly fine read of Epictetus this evening.
This enjoyment came as a bit of a surprise. He had “grown pretty much unacquainted” with the
Discourses
and so the short book felt again as if it was a new discovery. He loved reading this “divine little work”: here “little” and “divine” balance each other beautifully to make a touching acknowledgment that the ancient philosopher’s thought was inspiring and also on a human scale, profound yet not overwhelming. The vicar’s use of “divine” here is also amusing since it was not a religious book.
Two days later, on Monday the 15th, he spent some time working on a biblical commentary, but it was once again his evening read that drew an expression of appreciative pleasure: “At night read Epictetus with vast relish.” For George Ridpath, it was a real treat to settle down with a good book on a wintry evening, his sermon done for another week, his thought free to wander as he drifted toward sleep. It was the perfect end to the day and also the best of ways to welcome the night.
Walt Whitman, poet, writing in his diary
SARNIA, ONTARIO
• JUNE 19, 1880
Sunset on the St. Clair. I am writing this on Front Street, close by the river
—the St. Clair—on a bank. The setting sun, a great blood-red ball, is just descending on the Michigan shore, throwing a bright crimson track across the water to where I stand. The river is full of row-boats and shells, with their crews of young fellows, or single ones, out practising—a handsome, inspiriting sight [. . .]
As I write, a long shell, with its crew of four stript to their rowing shirts, sweeps swiftly past, the oars rattling in their row-locks.
Opposite, a little south, on the Michigan shore, stretches Port Huron. It is a still, moist, voluptuous evening, the twilight deepening apace. In the vapors fly bats and myriads of big insects. A solitary robin is whistling his call, followed by mellow clucks, in some trees near. The panting of the locomotive and measured roll of cars comes from over shore, and occasionally an abrupt snort or screech, diffused in space. With all these utilitarian episodes, it is a lovely, soft, voluptuous scene, a wondrous half-hour for sunset, and then the long rose-tinged half-light with a touch of gray we sometimes have stretched out in June at day-close. How musical the cries and voices floating in from the river! Mostly while I have been here I have noticed those handsome shells and oar-boats, some of them rowing superbly.
Walt Whitman had just turned sixty-one in June of 1880. He had published the first of several editions of his great lifetime collection of poems,
Leaves of Grass
, back in 1855. He was widely respected as a poet by critics and readers. But he was also short of money and in very poor health, having suffered a stroke.
Whitman had come to Canada for several weeks at the invitation of a younger man, the psychiatrist Richard Bucke, who admired his work. He began his visit with Bucke and his wife at their home in London, Ontario. From there Whitman took a train to Sarnia on the St. Clair River (where Richard Bucke had previously worked and
lived) and stayed there for a few days. He could see Port Huron, Michigan, on the opposite shore.
On this June evening, he was at ease. He had always loved looking out over water and watching people on their journeys. His great poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” had expressed his passion for the maritime life of his native New York. But he could appreciate this place, too, in its different way.
He gazed across the St. Clair at the different rowing boats. The rowers went past with ease and strength. He admired such flexibility and power but now it also carried the slight sadness of the contrast with his own age and lack of youthful athleticism. He turned his gaze overhead, a connoisseur of skies. Compared to New York and New Jersey, where he now lived, this was rather another world. He had become the voice of urban energy. Yet here, he was happy to find a gentler rhythm.
Walt Whitman’s moment of happiness here was made up of contraries: the whistling of the robin and the locomotive sound; the machines and the rowing boats; the approaching night and the last glimmering of daylight. On this evening, the opposites were reconciled: past and future, land and water, urban and rural life, youth and age. Under it all there ran a deeper resolution, between Whitman’s strong self and the world beyond him, which would outlast even his immense personality. Everything was at peace in this gentle moment, as tensions had slipped away.
Ann Yearsley, poet and author, composing a personal preface to a poem
BRISTOL
• FEBRUARY 27, 1795
Begun from the circumstance of the moment, and prolonged as the images of memory arose in the mind of the author, February 27, 1795.
Author
(
to her son
):
Go you to bed, my boy.
Son
: Do you write tonight?
Author
: I do.
Son
(
laying his watch on the table
): See, how late!
Author
: No matter—You can sleep.
How patiently toils on this little watch!
My veins beat to its motion.
Ann Yearsley had seven children. This February evening, when she was in her early forties, she was sitting by the bedside of one of her sons.
She had had an unusual life. Her parents were poor, her mother being a milkwoman. Some poems Ann Yearsley had written came to the attention of a lady (herself a noted author) who recognized her talent. Yearsley published her first collection of poetry in 1785 and it was immediately well-received. Among her subsequent works was the “Poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave Trade.”
The money from her authorship had improved life for Ann Yearsley and her husband, who was a yeoman farmer. But a quarrel with her patroness had ended that peaceful time. Still, she had also published a novel, and a play of hers had been performed in Bath.
As she was sitting with her son, she recorded this precious moment. She began with the date: February 27, 1795. She remembered the snatch of conversation with him, an ordinary domestic exchange at the end of the day. “‘Go you to bed, my boy.’” It was what any parent would say; it has been said countless times down the centuries on quiet evenings. He was not quite sleepy yet. Her energy was what
had kept him awake. He knew she was not going to sleep, and he wished to share the evening: “‘Do you write tonight?’” Her writing ran through his young life.
“‘I do.’” She was calm and reassuring, purposeful and at ease. He pointed to his pocket watch, a proud possession: “‘See, how late!’” Perhaps he wanted her not to write tonight, to be with him instead. She soothed him: “‘No matter—You can sleep.’” There was nothing special about this hour of the day, nothing to worry the child. He went to sleep.
She heard the ticking of the watch, like the beating of her son’s heart or the sound of his breathing. In the next minutes, she composed a beginning for her poem: “How patiently toils on this little watch!” Like herself, even and unstoppable. “My veins beat to its motion.” She began to write, a long poem full of ideas and arguments.
This was a moment of simple truth, peace at the end of the day. That is why she recorded it, before she commenced to write the poem. In that moment, life was integrated and in balance. Both mother and poet, she sat happily by her child’s bedside.
It was a moment of quiet joy attained against great pressure. When the noted author Horace Walpole had agreed to sponsor Ann Yearsley’s poems initially, he expressed a concern that such support might distract her from her duties to her family: “Were I not persuaded by the samples you have sent me, madam, that this woman has talents, I should not advise her encouraging her propensity, lest it should divert her from the care of her family.” She had overcome these prejudices and earned this moment of complete happiness.
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