CHAPTER VI
FIRST GLIMPSE OF FRANCE, 1783-1785
Birth of Bobbin—Ice baths—‘The Annals of Agriculture’—A group of friends—Lazowski—First glimpse of France—Death of my mother—The Bishop of Derry—Fishing parties—Rainham.
On May 5 of this year my dear Bobbin was born.[[83]] I passed the year at Bradfield, and was much in the society of many neighbouring gentlemen. At this time I was a desperate bather, going into the water every morning at four o’clock each winter, and with or without the obstruction of a thick coat of ice, having often to break it before I could bathe. All my friends much condemned the practice, and assured me that I should kill myself, but it became so habitual that their prophecies were vain. As soon as I was out of bed I continued my favourite practice, walking about two hundred yards to a bath I had constructed, and plunging in, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather.
I had this year a severe fever, which occasioned several of my friends, with all the acrimony that a departure from the usual modes of life occasions, strongly to dissuade me from persisting in my scheme. I myself was firmly persuaded that it was not, as they declared, the cause of my illness, and therefore when I was perfectly recovered resumed the practice, which I continued for many years; and I once at Petworth, at Lord Egremont’s, went into the bath at four in the morning, when the thermometer was below zero. Upon coming out, walked into the shrubbery, and rolled myself in the snow as an experiment to see the effect on my body; it had none, except that of increasing strength and activity, and was not at all disagreeable.
In January commenced one of the greatest speculations in my life—the publication of ‘The Annals of Agriculture.’ I had long meditated such a work, and corresponded upon it with Mr. Whyman Baker, of Ireland, who had promised communications. The plan which first suggested itself was peculiar, and to the exclusion of all private profit—with a constant publication of the printing and publishing accounts—but the booksellers applied to, rejected the idea, and the work appeared monthly, with very indifferent success, for about a twelvemonth. The correspondence being highly respectable, and no papers inserted without the name and place of abode of the writer, it rose gradually to the support of itself, and after a time enabled me to insert a great number of plates. It would have proved a very profitable publication but for the many numbers which were obliged to be reprinted. Printing only 500 afterwards occasioned reprinting another 500, still a third 500. This created so large an expense that it swallowed up everything that wore the resemblance of profit, and many years afterwards I continued reprinting various numbers for the sole object of completing sets; this formed a back current; which carried away what would have been profit. It may be added that many of those papers written by myself, forming perhaps a third or fourth of the whole work, may be reckoned among my most valuable productions, and have received the sanction of approbation, by being translated into several foreign languages. It is an anecdote which cannot be generally known, that two very able letters, which came under the name of Robinson, the King’s shepherd at Windsor, were really the production of his Majesty’s own pen, describing what he had long been intimately acquainted with, the husbandry of Mr. Ducket. The King took in two sets of the work, one of which he regularly sent to that farmer; and in the interview which I had with his Majesty upon the terrace of Windsor, the first word the King said to me was: ‘Mr. Y., I consider myself as more obliged to you than to any other man in my dominions,’ and the Queen told me that they never travelled without my ‘Annals’ in the carriage. Lord Fife informed me that he himself always had the ‘Annals’ sent him the moment they were published, but still he always found that the King was beforehand with him, for upon the first of the month, while the number was unopened upon his table, riding out and meeting his Majesty, he at once spoke to him on a paper of his own (Lord Fife’s) in that number, showing that he had read the whole before it had met the eye of the author.
Among the letters I received this year the following may be particularly noted:—
l.
‘Londonderry: April 23,1783.
‘A thousand thanks to you, my dear friend, for your recollection of me at so many miles’ distance, and for your summary Gazette of the present miscellaneous state of our neighbours, but no thanks at all to you for wishing me back to the foggy, fenny atmosphere of Ickworth, in preference to the exhilarating and invigorating air, or rather ether, of the Downhill. When you are vapid, if ever those pétillant spirits of yours are so, come and imbibe some fixed or unfixed air at the Downhill, where a tree is no longer a rarity, since above 200,000 have this winter been planted in the glens round my house; come and enjoy the rapidity and the success with which I have converted sixty acres of moor, by the medium of two hundred spades, into a green carpet, sprinkled with white clover. Am I not an adept in national dialect? Come and enjoy some mountain converted into arable, and grouse metamorphosed without a miracle, into men; come and teach a willing disciple and an affectionate friend how to finish a work he is barely able to begin.
‘In all my leases to the tenants of the See, I have providently, and with a long forecast, made a reservation to myself of all the bog and mountain lands deemed unprofitable. Well, these I am enabled by statute to grant in trust for myself during sixty-one years. Now is the moment to execute this great purpose; the reserved acres amount to several thousands, and upon one mountain only I have received proposals for building 200 cabbins (cabins); the limestone is at the bottom of the hill, and the turf at the top. What gold may not this chemistry produce, and who do you think would himself submit to vegetate at Ickworth whilst he can direct such a laboratory at the Downhill?