II

Consolation for Not Having

Enough Money

42

Happiness, an acquistion list

1.  A neoclassical Georgian house in the centre of London. Chelsea

(Paradise Walk, Markham Square), Kensington (the southern

part of Campden Hill Road, Hornton Street), Holland Park

(Aubrey Road). In appearance, similar to the front elevation of

the Royal Society of Arts designed by the Adam brothers

(1772-4). To catch the pale light of late London afternoons, large

Venetian windows offset by Ionic columns (and an arched tym-

panum with anthemions).

In the first-floor drawing room, a ceiling and a chimney-piece

like Robert Adam's design for the library at Kenwood House.

2.  A jet stationed at Farnborough or Biggin Hill (a Dassault Falcon

90oc or Gulfstream IV) with avionics for the nervous flyer,

ground-proximity warning system, turbulence-detecting radar

and CAT II autopilot. On the tail-fin, to replace the standard

stripes, a detail from a still life, a fish by Velazquez or three

lemons by Sanchez Cotan from the Fruit and Vegetables in the

Prado.

3.  The Villa Orsetti in Marlia near Lucca. From the bedroom,

views over water, and the sound of fountains. At the back of the

house, a magnolia Delavayi growing along the wall, a terrace for

winter, a great tree for summer and a lawn for games. Sheltered

gardens indulgent to fig and nectarine. Squares of cypresses,

rows of lavender, orange trees and an olive orchard.

4.  A library with a large desk, a fireplace and a view on to a garden.

Early editions with the comforting smell of old books, pages

yellowed and rough to rhe touch. On lop of shelves, busts of

great thinkers and astrological globes. Like the design of the

library for a house for William in of Holland.

5.  A dining room like that at Bekon Housi. ;n Lincolnshire. A long

oak table seating twelve. Frequent dinnc _ with the same friends.

The conversation intelligent but playful. Always affectionate. A

thoughtful chef and considerate staff to remove any administra-

tive difficulties (the chef adept at zucchini pancakes, tagliatelle

with white truffles, fish soup, risotto, quail, John Dory and roast

chicken). A small drawing room to retire to for tea and

chocolates.

6.  A bed built into a niche in the wall (like one by Jean-Francois

Blondel in Paris). Starched linen changed every day, cold to the

cheek. The bed huge; toes do not touch the end of the bed; one

wallows. Recessed cabinets for water and biscuits, and another for

a television.

7.  An immense bathroom with a rub in the middle on a raised

platform, made of marble with cobalt-blue seashell designs.

Taps that can be operated with the sole of the foot and

release water in a broad, gentle stream. A skylight visible from

the bath. Heated limestone floors. On the walls, reproduc-

tions of the frescos on the precinct of the Temple of Isis in

Pompeii.

8.  Money sufficient to allow one to live on the interest of the

interest.

9.  For weekends, a penthouse apartment at the tip of the He de la

Cite decorated with pieces from the noblest period of French

furniture (and the weakest of government), the reign of

Louis xvi. A half-moon commode by Crevenich, a console

by Saunier. a bonheur-du-jour by Vandercruse-La Croix. Lazy

mornings reading Pariscope in bed, eating pain au cnocolat on

Sevres china and chatting abour existence with, and occasionally

teasing, a reincarnation of Giovanni Bellini's Madonna (from

the Galleria delFAccademia in Venice), whose melancholy

expression would belie a dry sense of humour and spontaneity -

and who would dress in Agnes B and Max Mara for walks

around the Marais.

2

An anomaly among an often pleasure-hating and austere fraternity,

there was one philosopher who seemed to understand and want to

help. 'I don't know how I shall conceive of the good,' he wrote, 'if

I take away the pleasures of taste, if I take away sexual pleasure, if I

take away the pleasure of hearing, and if I take away the sweet

emotions that are caused by the sight of beautiful forms.'

Epicurus was born in 341 BC on the verdant island ofSamos, a few

miles off the coast of Western Asia Minor. He took early to philo-

sophy, travelling from the age of fourteen to hear lessons from the

Platonist Pamphilus and the atomic philosopher Nausiphanes. But

he found he could not agree with much of what they taught and by

his late twenties had decided to arrange his thoughts into his own

philosophy of life. He is said to have written 300 books on almost

everything, including On Love, On music, On Just Dealing, On Human

life (in four books) and On Nature (in thirty-seven books), though

by a catastrophic series of mishaps, almost all were lost over the

centuries, leaving his philosophy to be reconstructed from a few

surviving fragments and the testimony of later Epicureans.

What immediately distinguished his philosophy was an emphasis

on the importance of sensual pleasure: 'Pleasure is the beginning

and the goal of a happy life/ asserted Epicurus, confirming what

many had long thought but philosophy had rarely accepted. The

philosopher confessed his love of excellent food: The beginning

and root of every good is the pleasure of the stomach. Even wis-

dom and culture must be referred to this.' philosophy properly

performed was to be nothing less than a guide to pleasure:

The man who alleges that he is not yet ready for philosophy or that

the time for it has passed him by, is like the man who says that he is

either too young or too old for Happiness.

Few philosophers had ever made such frank admissions of their

interest in a pleasurable lifesiyle. It shocked many, especially when

they heard that Epicurus had attracted the support of some

wealthy people, first in Lampsacus in the Dardanelles, and then in

Athens, and had used their money to set up a philosophical estab-

lishment to promote Happiness. The school admitted both men

and women, and encouraged them to live and study pleasure

together. The idea of what was going on inside the school appeared

at once titillating and morally reprehensible.

There were frequent leaks from disgruntled Epicureans detailing

activities between lectures. Timocrates, the brother ofEpicurus^s

associate Metrodorus, spread a rumour that Epicurus had to vomit

twice a day because he ate so much. And Diorimus the Stoic took

the unkind step of publishing fifty lewd letters which he said

had been written by Epicurus when he'd been drunk and sexually

frenzied.

Despite these criticisms, Epicurus's teachings continued to attract

support. They spread across the Mediterranean world; schools for

pleasure were founded in Syria, Judaea, Egypt, Italy and Gaul; and

the philosophy remained influential for the next 500 years, only

gradually to be extinguished by the hostility of forbidding bar-

barians and Christians during the decline of the Roman Empire in

the West. Even then, Epicurus's name entered many languages

in adjectival form as a tribute to his interests (Oxford English

Dictionary: 'Epicurean: devoted to the pursuit of pleasure; hence,

luxurious, sensual, gluttonous').

Browsing in a newsagent in London 2,340 years after the philoso-

pher's birth, I came upon copies of Epicurean. life, a quarterly maga-

zine with articles on hotels, yachts and restaurants, printed on

paper with the sheen of a well-polished apple.

The tenor of Epicurus's interests was further suggested by The

Epicurean, a restaurant in a small Worcestershire town, which

offered its clientele, seated on high-backed chairs in a hushed

dining room, dinners of seared sea scallops and cep risotto with

truffles.

3

The consistency of the associations provoked by Epicurus's philos-

ophy throughout the ages, from Diotimus the Stoic to the editors

of Epicurean life, testifies to the way in which, once the word 'plea-

sure' has been mentioned, it seems obvious what is entailed. What

do I need for a happy life?' is far from a challenging question when

money is no object.

Yet 'What do I need for a healthy life?' can be more difficult to

answer when. for example, we are afflicted by bizarre recurring

headaches or an acme throb in the stomach area after evening

meals. We know there vsi a problem; ir can be hard to know the

solution.

In pain, the mind is prone to consider some strange cures:

leeches, bleeding, nettle stews, trepanning. An atrocious pain

pulses in the temples and at the base of

the head, as though the whole cranium

had been placed in a clamp and tight-

ened. The head feels as if it may soon

explode. What seems intuitively most

necessary is to let some air into the

skull. The sufferer requests that a friend

place his head on a table and drill a

small hole in the side. He dies hours

later of a brain haemorrhage.

If consulting a good doctor is gen-

erally thought advisabi e despite the

sombre atmosphere of many surgery

waiting rooms, ir is because someone

ho has thought rationally and deeply

about how the body works is likely to arrive at better ideas about

how to be healthy than someone who has followed a hunch.

Medicine presupposes a hierarchy between the confusion the lay

person will be in about what is wrong wirh them, and the more

accurate knowledge available to doctors reasoning logically.

Doctors are required to compensate for their patients' lack, at

times fatal, of bodily self-knowledge.

At the heart of Epicureanism is the thought that we are as bad at

intuitively answering 'What will make me happy?' as 'What will

make me healthy?' The answer '..'which most rapidiy comes to mind

is liable to be as faulty. Our souls do not spell out their troubles

more clearly than our bodies, and our intuitive diagnoses are rarely

any more accurate. Trepanning might serve as a symbol of the

difficulties of understanding our psychological as much as our

physiological selves.

A man feels dissatisfied. He has trouble rising in the morning and is

surly and distracted with his family. Intuitively, he places the blame

on his choice of occupation and begins searching for an alternative,

despite the high costs of doing so. It was the last time I would turn

to See Inside an Ancient Greek Town.

Deciding rapidly that he would be happy in the fish Business, the

man acquires a net and an expensive stall in the market-place. And

yet his melancholy does not abate.

We are often, in the words of the Epicurean poet Lucretius, like

the sick man ignorant of the cause of his malady'.

It is because we understand bodily maladies better than we can

that we seek doctors. We should turn to philosophers for the same

reason when our soul is unwell - and judge them according to a

similar criterion:

Just as Medicine confers no benefit if it does not drive away physi-

cal illness. so philosophy is useless if it does not drive away the

suffering of the mind.

The task of philosophy was, for Epicurus, to help us interpret our

indistinct pulses of distress and desire and thereby save us from

mistaken schemes for Happiness. We were to cease acting on first

impulses, and instead investigate the rationality of our desires

according to a method of questioning close to that used by Socrates

in evaluating ethical definitions over a hundred years earlier. And

by providing what might at times feel like counter-intuitive diag-

noses or our ailments, philosophy would - Epicurus promised -

guide us ro superior cures and true Happiness.

4.

Those who had heard the rumours must have been surprised to

discover the real tastes of the philosopher of pleasure. There was

no grand house. The food was simple, Epicurus drank water

rather than wine, and was happy with a dinner of bread, vegeta-

bles and a palmful of olives. 'Send me a pot of cheese, so that

I may have a feast whenever I like he asked a friend. Such were

the tastes of a man who had described pleasure as the purpose of

life.

He had not meant to deceive. His devotion to pleasure was far

greater than even the orgy accusers could have imagined. It was

just that after rational analysis, he had come to some striking con-

clusions about what actually made life pleasurable - and fortu-

nately for those lacking a large income, it seemed that the essential

ingredients of pleasure, however elusive, were not very expensive.