Free A Private History of Happiness by George Myerson

normally have time to dawdle and linger. Their days were usually driven by purpose.
    This afternoon blossomed into happiness when they had a picnic together. There is a lovely sense of a shared experience in “our meal,” the picnic that they liked to take with them on such outings. Back then, there was almost something daring about having a meal “in the open air.” They were shaking off the constraints of convention that governed everyday life rather tightly.
    Yet this was also an expression of their essential personalities. Charlotte Bousfield’s chosen words, “thoroughly enjoyed,” capture how this happiness grew out of their way of living. Everything they did, this family did thoroughly. So they experienced this glimpse of leisure as fully as they committed themselves to the rhythms of work.
    For Will and Florence, this was an afternoon of being warmly received as a married couple. Her new mother-in-law had been friendly and supportive to Florence during the engagement, and it must have been pleasant for the newlyweds to spend such a relaxed holiday afternoon. While Victorian family life was often very formal, here the casual setting and the shared recreation made for a genuine ease and enjoyment together.

Pride in an Unfinished New Home
    Tryphena White, daughter of a settler family, writing in her diary
    CAMILLUS, NEW YORK • AUGUST 5, 1805
    Monday, we washed in rain water which we caught a few days before, and baked, and in the afternoon we began to move our little all over the river to our new building; we got our things chiefly over, at least those things which we wanted most to keep house with, and I went up [the steps to the] chamber and made up the beds on the floor. Polly came over to help me [. . .] The building is something like our shop, there is two rooms in it, and the chimney is right in the middle of the house, or is to be, for it is not built yet, the lower floor is all in one room, and a joiner’s table in one end of it, and a joiner at work. We have some shelves made to put our crockery etc. on, and a trap door to go down [into the] cellar with, and just one half of our chamber floor laid, and that with loose rough boards, we have 4 beds down, 2 one side of the room and 2 the other. My bed I have partitioned off with a curtain. We have a place made out a little way from the house to hang on a pot and kettle, and we do our cooking there. It is very customary for people here to keep their fire outdoors, when they have a fire place, but we feel as proud of our house, as inconvenient as it is, as ever any person did of the most elegant house in the world.

    The White family moved from their longtime home in West Springfield, Massachusetts, to a new settlement in upstate New York. Camillus was hardly a village yet, just a few houses and the beginnings of a square. Tryphena White’s father, Joseph, was building a small house in Genesee Street, where a few others already stood; he also had a water mill built nearby.
    Tryphena White was in her early twenties. Her brother Elijah was still at home, and her older sister, Anna, together with her husband, had also moved to Camillus. The children’s mother had died many years before, and they now had an affectionate stepmother called Phebe (Phoebe).
    In June 1805, Tryphena White had recorded the beginning of the construction of their new home: “Saturday in the afternoon our building was raised.” For the meantime, they had to camp, and conditions were difficult. On this Monday morning in August, they “washed in rain water,” which they had stored from the rainfall a few days ago, and also did some baking. The afternoon was very special: “We began to move our little all.” She had been looking forward to this day for a long time, coping with the primitive conditions and the lack of privacy. They went “over the river,” where the water mill would be built, and arrived at their new home.
    Immediately, she began to sort things out. Her steps may