‘I remain, dear Sir, &c. &c.,
‘John Yeldham.’
My correspondence with Mr. Harte continued. It gave me pain to find that his health greatly declined. He was a cripple at Bath, but the disorders of his body seemed little to affect the vigour of his mind. He spoke very flatteringly of the reception of my ‘Farmer’s Letters.’ ‘I am amazed,’ he writes, ‘that you have so soon and so easily acquired the hardest point in all writing—namely, perspicuity and ease of style.’ And elsewhere, ‘Your letter addressed to my Lord Clive on an experimental farm is new, spirited and pleasing, but I fear he has not a spark of the divina aura in him. I have shown your pamphlet to the best judge in England, my Lord Chesterfield, who is now here. He likes it extremely, and vows if he was young and rich enough he would carry your scheme into execution.’
From Samford Hall I moved, in 1768, to another farm at North Mimms, in Hertfordshire. I had scarcely settled here before my bookseller united with many correspondents in urging me to take another tour. I accordingly travelled through the north of England, registering so many observations, and noting the experiments of such a number of gentlemen, that the record of the whole, with the necessary remarks, filled four octavo volumes, and enabled me to present the public with interesting agricultural details never before published. I may assert this without vanity, because the real merit belonged to those who furnished me with the information; and the success of the work was so great that the first edition was sold almost as soon as it appeared. In the ‘Six Weeks’ Tour’ I visited but few gentlemen, and consequently witnessed but few experiments. On the ‘Northern Journey’ the case was very different, and the number of trials reported on a variety of soils were great and interesting. I spent some time with my friend, Mr. Ellerton, of Risby, in the East Riding; he accompanied me to York races and on a visit of several days to the Marquis of Rockingham, who had previously to the journey invited me to see him, and pointed out a number of persons proper for me to visit. Amongst the company at Wentworth was Mr. Danby, of Swinton, and his daughter,[[39]] then in the full blaze of her beauty. My Lord Rockingham overheard her speaking to me and using the expression ‘amazingly fine turnips.’ ‘So, so, Mr. Young,’ said his lordship, ‘you are getting farming intelligence of Miss Danby; the lady must let us hear more of those fine turnips.’[[40]] His lordship ordered me into an apartment, in a closet of which was a considerable collection of ancient and curious books on agriculture, which he pointed out for my amusement when I had time to consult them. There was one circumstance which seemed very awkward to me at Wentworth, the necessity of every person always having his hat under his arm, a hint of which Lord R. gave me on my arrival, and I saw the want of it in one or two new comers, who, when the horses were brought to the door, had a journey to make through the house before they could find their hats. From Wentworth I went to the Duke of Portland’s and others, and afterwards examined a great part of the county of York with much attention, everywhere being received in a very flattering manner.
This year I made many visits to my friend, Dr. Burney, in Poland Street, to whom my wife’s sister was married, and whose daughter Hester (by a former marriage) entertained, or rather, fascinated me, by her performance on the harpsichord and singing of Italian airs. I was never tired of listening to the ‘Ah, quelli occhi ladroncelli,’ and ‘Alla larga,’ of Piccini,[[41]] and it is marvellous to me now to recollect that I was thus riveted to her side for six hours together.
During this year my daughter Bessy was born, and the second edition of my ‘Farmer’s Letters’ published.
1769.—My son Arthur born. The whole of this year I passed at North Mimms, very well received and visited in that thronged neighbourhood. The Duke of Leeds, who lived in the parish, condescended to make overtures with a view to my acquaintance. Sir Charles Cocks, afterwards Lord Somers, if I do not mistake the year, did the same, and often drank tea with me; also Dr. Roper and his wife Lady Harriet. He was a man of great learning, and she a most amiable woman, free from all pride and affectation. I also often met Lady Mary Mordaunt at two or three houses, and her sister Lady Frances Bulhely, with whom she lived; with the former I had something of a flirtation and lent her many books; she was rather handsome and very agreeable. I was elected member of a dining club at Hatfield, and became acquainted with Samuel Whitbread, Esq. M.P.,[[42]] and Mr. Justice Willes from East Barnet. I was very well received by Mrs. Willes, a fine lady, and rather fantastical. They were both vain people, and I remember one day at dinner Judge Willes saying to his wife, ‘My dear, I think we are rather scant in servants’—yet there was one to every chair and some to spare. She was making an ornamental path round the homestead, and asked my advice in several difficulties. During this year Prince Massalski, Bishop of Wilna, wrote me a long French letter on the agricultural prosperity of England. He afterwards passed two days with me in Hertfordshire, an agreeable, well-instructed man, who much lamented the miserable state of his own country.
1770.—What a year of incessant activity, composition, anxiety and wretchedness was this! No carthorse ever laboured as I did at this period, spending like an idiot, always in debt, in spite of what I earned[[43]] with the sweat of my brow and almost my heart’s blood, such was my anxiety; yet all was clearly vexation of spirit. Well might my dear mother write to me as she did. I trusted in an unparalleled industry, but not in God; and see how He brought it all to nought, as if to convince me of my supreme folly and infatuation. My old Suffolk bailiff was the channel through which I ran into debt to the Bury banker by a series of drawing bills, one to pay another, till the plan became so obvious that he cut short and refused to accept any more. I had run near a thousand pounds into his debt, and it was necessary for me to go over directly to Bury to see what could be done to pacify him. He was at his country seat at Trosston. Thither I followed him, and, with great difficulty, persuaded him to have patience, under a promise that I would make arrangements to pay him very speedily. This I did with difficulty, and I scarcely recollect how. I shall, in the first place, note that the Eastern Tour was accomplished, the journal of which was afterwards published in four volumes. In the preface I returned thanks to those who contributed to my information, and in the number were many most distinguished personages amongst the nobility and gentry in the counties through which I travelled, with numerous distinguished farmers.
It is necessary here to pause a little in order to examine the object and the effect of the three tours I made and published. They have, by the very best judges, been esteemed highly useful to practical agriculturists, and unquestionably they are equally so for the information they afford in political economy: they have accordingly, in these views, been celebrated[[44]] in almost every language of Europe. When a work appears, the object and execution of which are equally novel and unexampled, it is not surprising that a certain measure of success should attend such a work. Nothing in the least similar to it had before appeared in the English language; for though there had been a tour of Great Britain, and other tours through great part of the kingdom, yet all these works agreed in one circumstance—that of the authors confining their attention absolutely to towns and seats, without paying any more thought to agriculture than if that art had no existence between the towns they visited. Indeed my work was admitted on all hands to be perfectly original. In regard to the practical husbandry of the farmers, and the experimental observations of the gentlemen I visited, the utility of these could not be doubted. When a Lord Chancellor of England, amusing himself with husbandry, read the English works on that subject for information, and burnt them as affording him nothing but contradictions, without doubt he complained that these writers did not describe the common management of the farmers, and on that management founding their propositions of improvement. But the fact was, and it must be, in the nature of things, writers confined to their closets, or, at most, to a single farm, could not describe what it was impossible for them to know; and before the appearance of my tours there was scarcely a district in the kingdom described in such a manner as to convince the reader that the authors had any practical knowledge of the art; for a man to quit his farm and his fireside in order to examine the husbandry of a kingdom by travelling above four thousand miles through a country of no greater extent than England was certainly taking means sufficiently effective for laying a sure basis for the future improvement of the soil. To understand well the present state of cultivation is surely a necessary step prior to proposals of improvement. This I effected; and in the opinion of some very able agriculturists now living, the greatest of the subsequent improvements that have been made during the last forty years have, in a great measure, originated in the defects pointed out by me in the detail of these journeys.
I shall venture to insert one anecdote which occurred in the Northern Tour. At Mr. Danby’s, at Swinton in Yorkshire, I met a very uncommon instance of extraordinary industry in a collier, who improved some waste moors by the labour of his own hands beside his common hours of working in the colliery. He had so animated a spirit of improvement that I thought it a great pity that he should be left without better support; and therefore I proposed a subscription for him, which raised in all about 100l., and Mr. Danby, his landlord, releasing him from his colliery, he was enabled to extend his improvements with much more comfort to himself. After a few years he died, leaving his farm for the benefit of his family. He shortened his life, poor fellow, by his industry.