The autobiography of Arthur Young - Arthur Young

WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON

SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE

1898

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

An apology for these Memoirs is surely not needed. Whilst Arthur Young’s famous ‘Travels in France’ have become a classic, little is known of the author’s life, a life singularly interesting and singularly sad. Whether regarded as the untiring experimentalist and dreamer of economic dreams, as the brilliant man of society and the world, or as the blind, solitary victim of religious melancholia, the figure before us remains unique and impressive. We have here, moreover, a strong character portrayed by himself, an honest piece of autobiography erring, if at all, on the side of outspokenness. In his desire to be perfectly frank, the writer has laid upon his editor the obligation of many curtailments, the Memoirs from beginning to end being already much too long. From seven packets of MS. and twelve folio volumes of correspondence I have put together all that a busy public will probably care to know of Arthur Young—his strength and weakness, his one success and innumerable failures, his fireside and his friends. One striking and instructive feature in this man’s history is his cosmopolitanism, his affectionate relations with Frenchmen, Poles, Russians, Danes, Italians, Scandinavians. Never Englishman was more truly English; never Englishman was less narrow in his social sympathies.

The religious melancholia of his later years is explicable on several grounds: to the influence of his friend, the great Wilberforce; to the crushing sorrow of his beloved little daughter ‘Bobbin’s’ death; lastly, perhaps, to exaggerated self-condemnation for foibles of his youth. Few lives have been more many-sided, more varied; few, indeed, have been more fortunate and unfortunate at the same time.

The Memoirs, whilst necessarily abridged and arranged, are given precisely as they were written—that is to say, although it has been necessary to omit much, not a word has been added or altered. Whenever a word or sentence needed explanation or correction, the editorial note is bracketed. The foot-notes, unless when otherwise stated, are all editorial.

For the use of Memoirs and letters, &c., I am indebted to Mrs. Arthur Young, widow of the late owner of Bradfield Hall, the last of Arthur Young’s race and name, a gentleman alike in his public and private life well worthy of his distinguished ancestry.