SCIENTIFIC FARMING.
Southey, in The Doctor, remarks: “It is a fact not unworthy of notice, that the most intelligent farmers in the neighbourhood of London are persons who have taken to farming as a business, because of their strong inclination for rural employments: one of the very best in Middlesex, when the Survey of that county was published by the Board of Agriculture, had been a tailor.”
Scientific farming has of late years largely multiplied these amateur farmers; but, long before rural economy had taken this turn, we remember a curious instance. Some five-and-forty years since, when Davy’s Agricultural Chemistry was the only work of its class, there lived in a town of Surrey a gentleman-tradesman, who loved to relieve the monotony of his own business by flying off to experimental pursuits. In politics he was a disciple of Cobbett, and year after year foretold a revolution in England,—an alarm which he raised throughout his household. He took extreme interest in new mechanical projects; and kept a chronological record of the progress of the Thames Tunnel. In wine-making he was a very experimentalist, and knew by heart every line of Macculloch on Wine from unripe fruit. Next, he turned over every inch of his garden, analysed the soil à la Davy, and salted all his growing crops, as well as the soil. But he soon flew from horticultural chemistry to real farming; and about the same time took to road-making and macadamisation, and became surveyor of the highways. He next bought the lease of a house in the neighbourhood for the sake of the large garden attached to it; and here he passed much of his time in its experimental culture. Had he lived to the days of Liebig, how he would have revelled in his theories!
We have a strong confirmation of Southey’s remark in the present day in the case of Alderman Mechi, who has become a memorable man in this kind of experimental agriculture, and has transferred the magic of his Razor-Strop (by the sale of which, in ten years he realised a handsome fortune) to the barren heath-land of Essex. In 1840 he commenced his bucolic experiments by purchasing a small unproductive farm at Tiptree-heath; and here he tried what could be effected by deep drainage and the application of steam-power. The Essex farmers laughed at him as an enthusiast, and the country gentlemen kept aloof from him. Mechi, however, persevered, and brought his farm into such high productiveness that he realises annually an average handsome profit. We have seen his balance-sheet impugned: however, if public opinion is worth any thing, he has rendered great service to agricultural science by the exhibition of processes upon his model farm, Tiptree, which is known all over the European continent; for the Alderman has been presented with a 500l. testimonial of plate by noblemen and gentlemen interested in science and agriculture at home and abroad.
LARGE FORTUNES.
No single class can be pointed to in the present day as the first favourite of fortune. The loan-monger is still powerful, and so is the speculator; but bankers accumulate fortunes like those of the highest nobles, and a linen-draper left the other day cash which would purchase the fee-simple of the Woburn estates. The rate of fortunes has enormously increased. Pitt thought it useless to tax fortunes above a million, and now men die every day whose heirs chuckle over the saving produced by this want of foresight. A “plum” has ceased to be even a citizen’s goal, and there are tradesmen in London whose incomes while in trade exceed “a great fortune” of the time of the second George. Very enormous realised fortunes, properties that are producing 50,000l. a-year, are, however, still very scarce. Only fifty-seven are returned to the English income-tax; and though that is a palpably erroneous account, it may be doubted if there are a dozen individuals with that amount in the world. There are none in France or Italy beyond a few working capitalists, a few remaining in Germany, a considerable number in Russia, and perhaps thirty individuals in America. There are perhaps ten private incomes in India of that amount, as many in South America, and a few officials in the Eastern world accumulate very considerable sums; but there the list ends.[[103]] Yet, how often are large fortunes wrecked by those who succeed to them!
Many a Londoner past middle age may recollect Thomas Clark, “the King of Exeter ’Change,” who was long one of the most singular characters in the metropolis. He took a stall in the ’Change in 1765, with 100l. lent him by a stranger. By parsimony and perseverance he so extended his business as to occupy nearly one-half of the entire building with the sale of cutlery, turnery, &c. He grew rich, and once returned his income at 6000l. a-year. He was penurious in his habits: he dined with his plate on the bare board, and his meal, with a pint of porter, never cost him a shilling; after dinner he took a glass of spirits-and-water at the public-house opposite the end of the ’Change, and then returned to his business. He resided in Belgrave-place, Pimlico; and morning and evening saw him on his old horse, riding into town and home again—and thus he figured in the print-shops. He died in 1817, in his eightieth year, and left nearly half a million of money. His daughter was married to Hamlet, the celebrated goldsmith of Coventry-street who, however, met with sad reverses; and, among other unsuccessful speculations, built the Bazaar and the Princess’s Theatre in Oxford-street.
The wealth of the celebrated Mr. Beckford, the son of the demagogue Alderman, and Lord Chatham’s god-child, proved the shoal upon which his happiness was wrecked. He succeeded to his father’s enormous fortune at ten years of age. He was educated at home: he was quick and lively, and had literary tastes; he had a great passion for genealogy and heraldry; studied Oriental literature: in his seventeenth year he wrote a history of extraordinary painters. His father had left him, principally in Jamaica estates, a property which, on the conclusion of his minority, furnished him with a million of ready money and an income of 100,000l. a-year. He travelled and resided abroad until his twenty-second year, when he wrote Vathek, a work of startling beauty. At twenty-four he married; but the lady died in three years. He passed many years in travelling, principally in Spain and Portugal, before he got sufficiently settled in mind to return to his family-seat, Fonthill in Wiltshire. He began to reside there in 1796, and immediately commenced the great squandering of his money. He had always a hundred, and often two hundred, workmen engaged in carrying out his wayward fancies. But he was haughty and reserved; and because some of his neighbours followed game into his grounds, he had a wall, twelve feet high and seven miles long, built round his home-estate, in order to shut out the world. He then began the third house at Fonthill, considering the second too near a piece of water. The new house was built in a sham monastic style, was called the Abbey, and cost a quarter of a million; but never put to any use, except on one occasion, to receive Lord Nelson. While Beckford was indulging these gigantic follies, he lost, by an adverse decision in a Chancery-suit, a considerable portion of his Jamaica property; he was also cheated out of large sums of money, and in the end was obliged to sell Fonthill; the purchaser was Mr. Farquhar, a rich but penurious merchant. In a few years the lofty tower of the Abbey fell down. The estate is now the property of the Marquis of Westminster. Mr. Beckford removed to Bath, and there built, on Lansdowne Hill, an Italian villa, with a lofty prospect-tower. While residing here he wrote an account of the travels which he had made half a century before; and having got through large sums of money in planting and building, he died in 1844, in his eighty-fourth year; and upon his tomb a passage from Vathek is inscribed.
Mr. Beckford was unquestionably a man of genius and rare accomplishments. “But his abilities were overpowered, and his character tainted, by the possession of wealth so enormous. At every stage of life his money was like a millstone round his neck. He had taste and knowledge; but the selfishness of wealth tempted him to let these gifts of the mind run to seed in the gratification of extravagant freaks. He really enjoyed travelling and scenery, but he felt it incumbent on him, as a millionnaire, to take a French cook with him wherever he went; and he found that the Spanish grandees and ecclesiastical dignitaries who welcomed him so cordially valued him as the man whose cook could make such wonderful omelettes. From the day when Chatham’s proxy stood for him at the font till the day when he was laid in his pink granite sarcophagus, he was the victim of riches. Had he had only 5000l. a year, and been sent to Eton, he might have been one of the foremost men of his time, and have been as useful in his generation as, under his unhappy circumstances, he was useless.”[[104]] It may be added, that he was worse: for he so threw about his money at Fonthill as to corrupt and demoralise the simple country-people. We remember three of his London residences: one on the Terrace, Piccadilly, on the site of the newly-built mansion of Baron Rothschild; another of Beckford’s town residences was No. 1 Devonshire-place, New-road; and the third, No. 27 Charles-street, May Fair, a very small house, looking over the garden of Chesterfield-house.