The only pleasant moments that I passed were in visits to my friend Arbuthnot[[54]] at Mitcham, whose agriculture so near the capital brought good company to his house. He was upon the whole the most agreeable, pleasant and interesting connection which I ever made in agricultural pursuits. He was brother of the present Rt. Honorable.
I had in 1775 determined on making the tour of Ireland, to which the Earl of Shelburne[[55]] much instigated me, and I corresponded with several persons on the subject, who urged me much to that undertaking, but I was obliged to postpone it to the following year. The following is a note from Mr. Burke on the subject:—
‘Mr. Burke sends the covers with his best compliments and wishes to Mr. Young. He would be very glad to give Mr. Young recommendations to Ireland, but his acquaintance there is almost worn out, Lord Charlemont and one or two more being all that he thinks care a farthing for him. However, if letters to them would be of any service to Mr. Young, Mr. B. would with great pleasure write them.’
On June 19 of this year 1776 I embarked at Holyhead for Ireland, and in consequence of this journey through every part of the kingdom, produced in 1780 that tour which succeeded so well, and has been reckoned among my best and most useful productions; and I have reason to believe had considerable effect in enlightening the people of that country. I took with me many letters of introduction, from the Earl of Shelburne, Mr. Burke, and other persons of eminence in England; and on landing at Dublin, was immediately introduced to Colonel Burton, afterwards Lord Cunningham, aide-de-camp to the Earl of Harcourt, at that time Lord Lieutenant, and well known to the whole kingdom. Colonel Burton, to whom I was more indebted for letters of introduction than to any other man in England, was a most remarkable character. He had great care and elegance united with a measure of roughness, which may be attributed to a sort of personal courage which was apt to boil over. This led him into many quarrels, and not a few duels, one of which was fought across a table of no great length from end to end, and, not strange to tell of in Ireland, several of the party stood near enjoying the sport. He was a true friend to the interests of Ireland, and far more enlightened upon it than the greater part of well-informed people to be found there. He made immense exertions to improve the fisheries on his estate at Donegal, but they were unsuccessful. He was respectable[[56]] for general knowledge, and possessed a great flow of animated conversation. He carried me to Lord Harcourt’s villa at St. Woolstans, with whom I spent some days; and the Colonel arranged the plan of my journey, giving me a multitude of letters to those who were best able to afford valuable information. I kept a private journal throughout the whole of this tour, in which I minuted many anecdotes and circumstances which occurred to me of a private nature, descriptive of the manners of the people, which, had it been preserved, would have assisted greatly in drawing up these papers; but, unfortunately, it was lost, with all the specimens of soils and minerals which I collected throughout the whole kingdom. On returning to England, I quitted my whisky[[57]] at Bath, and got into a stage, and sent a new London servant, the only one I had, thither to bring the horse and chaise to London, and the trunk containing these things. The fellow was a rascal, stole the trunk, and pretended that he had lost it on the road; in addition to the loss was the torment of hunting him out (for he went away directly) through London for punishment. With great difficulty I found him, and serving a warrant upon him, carried him to Bow Street, where Fielding the magistrate at once dismissed the complaint, it being only a breach of trust, as the robbery could not be proved; and all I got for my pains was abuse from the fellow.
This was a very great loss to me, as the specimens I brought of soils would have been of great use to me in the course of experiments which I soon after began in the object of expelling gases from earths. In my journey through Ireland I was received with great hospitality, which characterises the nation, and with that particular attention which my peculiar object excited in so many persons who rendered agriculture either their profit or amusement.
I travelled four hundred miles de suite without going to an inn. Amongst those who were most desirous of my calling upon them was Sir James Caldwell, of Castle Caldwell, on Lough Erne. One anecdote will give some idea of his character.
The Marquis of Lansdowne, then Earl of Shelburne, being in Ireland, and intending to call on Sir James, he, with an hospitality truly Irish, thought of nothing night or day but how to devise some amusement to entertain his noble guest, and came home to breakfast one morning with prodigious eagerness to communicate a new idea to Lady Caldwell. This was to summon together the hundred labourers he employed, and choose fifty that, would best represent New Zealand savages, in order that he might form two fleets of boats on the Lough, one to represent Captain Cook and his men, the other a New Zealand chief at the head of his party in canoes, and consulted her how it would be possible to get them dressed in an appropriate manner in time for Lord Shelburne’s arrival. Lady C., who had much more prudence than Sir James, reminded him that he had 200 acres of hay down, and the preparations he mentioned would occupy so much time that the whole would now stand a chance of being spoiled. All remonstrances were in vain. Tailors were pressed into his service from the surrounding country to vamp up, as well as time would permit, the crews of men and fleets. The prediction was fulfilled: the hay was spoiled, and what hurt Sir James much more, he received a letter from Lord S. to put off his coming till his return from Kilkenny, and that uncertain. To add to the mortification, after some weeks, Sir James being on business at Dublin, Lord S. arrived without giving notice, and Lady C., not presuming to exhibit the intended battle, but wishing to amuse his Lordship as well as the place would afford, told him at breakfast that the morning should be spent in fishing. Lord S. replied, ‘My dear Lady C., you look upon a fine lake out of your windows; but I have often remarked—from the ocean to the pond—that where at the first blush you have reason to expect most fish you are sure to find least.’ This made Lady C. exert herself—boats, nets, and all were collected, and they caught such an immensity as really proved a most gratifying spectacle to his Lordship, who confessed that his maxim failed him for once. His stay was too short for Sir James’s return.
At Lord Longford’s I met a person of some celebrity at the time for adventures not worth reciting, Mr. Medlicott. Lord L. and he gave me an account of a gentleman of a good estate in that neighbourhood, but then dead, whose real life, manners and conversation far exceeded anything to be met with in ‘Castle Rackrent.’ His hospitality was unbounded, and it never for a moment came into his head to make any provision for feeding the people he brought into his house. While credit was to be had, his butler or housekeeper did this for him; his own attention was given solely to the cellar that wine might not be wanted. If claret was secured, with a dead ox or sheep hanging in the slaughter-house ready for steaks or cutlets, he thought all was well. He was never easy without company in the house, and with a large party in it would invite another of twice the number. One day the cook came into the breakfast parlour before all the company: ‘Sir, there’s no coals.’ ‘Then burn turf.’ ‘Sir, there’s no turf.’ ‘Then cut down a tree.’ This was a forlorn hope, for in all probability he must have gone three miles to find one, all round the house being long ago safely swept away. They dispatched a number of cars to borrow turf. Candles were equally deficient, for unfortunately he was fond of dogs all half starved, so that a gentleman walking to what was called his bed-chamber, after making two or three turnings, met a hungry greyhound, who, jumping up, took the candle out of the candlestick, and devoured it in a trice, and left him in the dark. To advance or return was equally a matter of chance, therefore groping his way, he soon found himself in the midst of a parcel of giggling maidservants. By what means he at last found his way to his ‘shakedown’ is unknown. A ‘shakedown’ when I was in Ireland meant some clean straw spread upon the floor, with blankets and sheets, in what was called the barrack room, one containing several beds for single men.
At Mr. Richard Aldworth’s, in the county of Cork, I met with an instance, both in that gentleman and lady, of elegant manners and cultivated minds. He had made the grand tour, and she had been educated in that style which may be imagined in a person nearly related to a Lord Chief Justice and an Archbishop. But it was evident that patriotic motives alone made them residents in Ireland. A sigh would often escape when circumstances of English manners were named, and they felt the dismal vacuity of living in a country where people of equal ideas were scarce. Mrs. Aldworth had in her possession one original manuscript letter of Dean Swift, entrusted to her under a solemn promise that she would permit no copy to be taken, nor ever read it twice to the same people. It was without exception the wittiest and severest satire upon Ireland that probably ever was written, and it was easy to perceive by the manner in which it was read that the sentiments were not a little in unison with those of the reader. This letter was equally hostile to the nobility, the gentry, the people, the country, nay the very rivers and mountains; for it declared the Shannon itself to be little better than a series of marshes, that carried to the ocean less water than flows through one of the arches of London Bridge.
From various other instances, as well as from this, I was inclined to think that that degree of a polished and cultivated education, which suits well enough for London or Paris, or a country residence in a good neighbourhood of England, was ill-framed for a province in Ireland. Persons of equal attainments may now and then come across them, but they are compelled to associate with so many who are the very reverse that a more certain provision of misery can scarcely be laid.