ARTHUR YOUNG: AUTHOR OF THE AGRICULTURAL TOUR
"The magic of property turns sands into gold. Give a man the secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden; give him a nine years' lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert."—Arthur Young.
Arthur Young, the greatest of English agriculturists and the poorest of practical farmers, was born at Whitehall, London, in the year 1741. He was the youngest son of the Reverend Dr. Arthur Young, Prebendary of Canterbury Cathedral, Rector of Bradfield, and of Anne Lucretia, daughter of John de Cousmaker, a Dutchman who accompanied William of Orange to England. From his father Arthur inherited good looks and literary talent; and from his mother the love of learning and brilliant and pleasing speech.
Mrs. Young brought her clerical husband a large dowry, much of which was swallowed up in the vortex of his debts, and later, on his death, in promoting the agricultural schemes of her gifted but unbusinesslike son. His home from the first, and for the most part of his life, was Bradfield Hall in the County of Suffolk—a property which had been in the hands of the Young family since the year 1672. After a visit to Bradfield, reached from Marks Tey on the Great Eastern Railway, you do not wonder at Young's early love of rural life. A broad, winding, elm-bordered road, meadows knee-deep in wild flowers and waving grasses, tangled hedges of eglantine and honeysuckle, rustling cornfields and silent woods—these, all these, were the sweet pathways to his home.
At the age of seven the lad was sent to the Grammar School at Lavenham in order to learn the Greek and Latin languages, together with writing and arithmetic. Owing to the indulgence of a fond mother, his attendance at his classes was irregular, and neither the centurions of Cæsar nor the wooers of Penelope were able to beguile him from his pony, his pointer and his gun. But the cheapness of his board and schooling would delight the hearts of many parents in the Transvaal and elsewhere in the year of grace 1912. Here is the bill:—
"The Rev. Dr. Young to John Coulter (Master of Lavenham School), Xmas, 1750 to Xmas, 1751. A year's board, etc., £15. Sundries, £2 4s. 4d. Total, £17 4s. 4d."
On leaving Lavenham, he was apprenticed, at the wish of his mother, to a wine-merchant at Lynn. He deserted his new work. He was fond of music and the drama. He excelled in dancing, but was always a diligent scholar.
His income, in those days, was not excessive, being thirty pounds per annum: but his foppery in dress deprived him of the means wherewith to purchase his beloved books. Accordingly, he wrote a pamphlet entitled "The Theatre of the Present War in North America," for which he received ten pounds' worth of books from the publisher. More balls compelled him to compile more political pamphlets in order to procure more books. In the year 1759, at the age of eighteen, he left the counting house at Lynn, as he tells us in his own words, "without education, pursuits, profession or employment." That same year his father died much in debt.
He next went to London and started at his own expense a monthly magazine called "The Universal Museum." It failed, and he returned home. All his wealth was now summed up in a freehold farm of twenty acres. His mother owned eighty acres at Bradfield. She persuaded him to reside with her and to manage the farm. He had no knowledge of agriculture, but he accepted, and tells the story in his own words: "Young, eager, and totally ignorant of every necessary detail, it is not surprising that I squandered large sums under golden dreams of improvement." At the age of twenty-four he married Miss Martha Allen of Lynn. One of his biographers says: "The marriage brought him an enviable connection—troops of friends, a passport into brilliant circles, but no fireside happiness. The lady was evidently of a captious disposition, shrewish temper and narrow sympathies." Another biographer writes: "A loving son, a devoted father, Young was an indifferent husband."