One has to spend so many years in learning how to be happy. I am just
beginning to make some progress in the science, and I hope to disprove
Young’s theory that “as soon as we have found the key of life it opes
the gates of death.” Every year strips us of at least one vain
expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its stead. I
never will believe that our youngest days are our happiest. What a
miserable augury for the progress of the race and the destination of the
individual if the more matured and enlightened state is the less happy
one! Childhood is only the beautiful and happy time in contemplation and
retrospect: to the child it is full of deep sorrows, the meaning of
which is unknown. Witness colic and whooping-cough and dread of ghosts,
to say nothing of hell and Satan, and an offended Deity in the sky, who
was angry when I wanted too much plumcake. Then the sorrows of older
persons, which children see but cannot understand, are worse than all.
All this to prove that we are happier than when we were seven years old,
and that we shall be happier when we are forty than we are now, which I
call a comfortable doctrine, and one worth trying to believe!
- letter to Sara Hennell, 1844
*unlike my girl Charlotte, or at least her creation Lucy, she does seem to think it something of a potato
descensus Averno facilis est