The gay world—A call on Dr. Johnson—A venture—Offer of a career—Farming decided upon—Garrick—Marriage—Mr. Harte—Lord Chesterfield on farming—Literary work—Correspondence—Birth of a daughter.
In 1761 I was at the Coronation, had a seat in the gallery of Westminster Hall, and being in the front row above the Duke’s table, I remember letting down a basket during dessert, which was filled by the present Duke of Marlborough. On this visit to London I had a mind to see everything, and ordered a full dress suit for going to Court. This was in September. In December I was again in London figuring in the gay world.[13] In January 1762 I set on foot a periodical publication entitled ‘The Universal Museum,’ which came out monthly, printed with glorious imprudence on my own account. I waited on Dr. Johnson, who was sitting by the fire so half-dressed and slovenly a figure as to make me stare at him. I stated my plan and begged that he would favour me with a paper once a month, offering at the same time any remuneration that he might name. ‘No, sir,’ he replied, ‘such a work would be sure to fail if the booksellers have not the property, and you will lose a great deal of money by it.’ ‘Certainly, sir,’ I said; ‘if I am not fortunate enough to induce authors of real talent to contribute.’ ‘No, sir, you are mistaken, such authors will not support such a work, nor will you persuade them to write in it; you will purchase disappointment by the loss of your money, and I advise you by all means to give up the plan.’ Somebody was introduced, and I took my leave. Dr. Kenrick,[14] the translator of Rousseau, was a writer of a very different stamp; he readily engaged to write for me; so did Collier[15] and his wife, who between them translated the ‘Death of Abel.’[16] I printed five numbers of this work, and being convinced that Dr. Johnson’s advice was wise and that I should lose money by the business, I determined to give it up. With that view I procured a meeting of ten or a dozen booksellers, and had the luck and address to persuade them to take the whole scheme upon themselves. I fairly slipped my neck out of the yoke—a most fortunate occurrence, for, though they continued it under far more favourable circumstances, I believe no success ever attended it.
In September of the following year I broke a blood-vessel and was attended by a Lynn physician, who ordered me to Bristol Hotwells, as I was in a very consumptive state. I accordingly went, boarding and lodging in a house where I met very intelligent and agreeable society; amongst the number was one gentleman with whom I had many arguments concerning Rousseau and his writings, I, like a fool, much admiring both, my new acquaintance abusing them with equal heat. But the principal acquaintance I made at the Hotwells was Sir Charles Howard, K.B., then an old man. Being informed that I was a chess-player, he introduced himself to me in the pump-room and invited me to coffee and a game of chess. After some time and various conversations he made enquiries relating to my family and destination. I took it into my head that he seemed more affable when he was informed (for his enquiries were numerous) that Mr. Speaker Onslow and the Bishop of Rochester were my godfathers. On understanding that I was not bred to any profession and was without hope of any settlement in life, he asked me if I should like to enter the Army. I answered in the affirmative, but added that it could only be matter of theory, as I had not lived with any officers. He often recurred to the idea, and at last told me that he would give me a pair of colours in his own cavalry regiment, and bade me write to my mother for her approval.
This I did, and was not at all surprised by her reply. She begged and beseeched me not to think of any such employment, as my health and strength were quite inadequate to the life. I loved my dear mother too much to accept an offer against her consent. I also became acquainted with an officer in the Army, Captain Lambert, who visited the Countess of B. at B. Castle. She was esteemed a demirep, handsome and fascinating. A little before I left Bristol I was introduced to her, and had my stay been longer should have made one in the number of her many slaves. On returning from Bristol to my mother at Bradfield, I found myself in a situation as truly helpless and forlorn as could well be imagined, without profession, business, or pursuit, I may add without one well-grounded hope of any advantageous establishment in life. My whole fortune during the life of my mother was a copyhold farm of twenty acres, producing as many pounds, and what possibility there was of turning my time to any advantage did not and could not occur to me; in truth, it was a situation without resource, and nothing but the inconsiderateness of youth could have kept me from sinking into melancholy and despair. My mother, desirous of fixing me with her, proposed that I should take a farm, and especially as the home one of eighty acres was under a lease expiring at Michaelmas. I had no more idea of farming than of physic or divinity, but as it promised, at least, to find me some employment, I agreed to the proposition, and accordingly commenced my rural operations, which entirely decided the complexion of all my remaining years. My connections at Lynn carried me often to that place, and my love of reading proved my chief resource. I farmed during the years 1763-4-5-6, having taken also a second farm that was in the hands of a tenant. I gained knowledge, but not much, and the principal effect was to convince me that in order to understand the business in any perfection it was necessary for me to continue my exertions for many years. And the circumstance which perhaps of all others in my life I most deeply regretted and considered as a sin of the blackest dye, was the publishing the result of my experience during these four years, which, speaking as a farmer, was nothing but ignorance, folly, presumption, and rascality. The only real use which resulted from those four years was to enable me to view the farms of other men with an eye of more discrimination than I could possibly have done without that practice. It was the occasion of my going on the southern tour in 1767, the northern tour in 1768, and the eastern in 1770, extending through much the greater part of the kingdom, and the exertion in these tours was admitted by all who read them (and they were very generally read) to be of most singular utility to the general agriculture of the kingdom. In these works I particularly attended to the course of the farmer’s crops, the point perhaps of all others the most important, and the more so at that period, because all preceding writers had neglected it in the most unaccountable manner. They relate good and bad rotations with the same apathy as if it was of little consequence in what order the crops of a farm were put in provided the operations of tillage and manuring were properly performed.
It has been very justly said that I first excited the agricultural spirit which has since rendered Britain so famous; and I should observe that this is not so great a compliment as at first sight it may seem, since it was nothing more than publishing to the world the exertions of many capital cultivators and in various parts of the kingdom, and especially the local practice of common farmers who, with all their merit, were unknown beyond the limits of their immediate district, and whose operation wanted only to be known to be admired.
In December 1762 I was again in London, and, as usual, constantly at the theatre. The parts in which Mr. Garrick acted to my great entertainment were, Macbeth, Benedict, Lear, Posthumus, Oakely,[17] Abel Drugger,[18] Sir J. Brute,[19] Sir J. Dominant,[20] Bayes,[21] Carlos,[22] Felix,[23] Ranger,[24] Scrub,[25] Hastings.[26] I must once for all remark that this astonishing actor so much exceeded every idea of representing character that the delusion was complete, Nature, not acting, seemed to be before the spectator, and this to a degree a thousand times beyond anything that has been seen since. The tones of his voice, the clear discrimination of feeling and passion in the vast variety of characters he represented, surpassed anything one could imagine, and raised him beyond competition. I have often reflected on the principal personages who figured in England during this age, and I am disposed to think that Garrick was by far the greatest, that is to say, he excelled all his contemporaries in the art he professed. Few men have been able to laugh at their own foibles with as much wit as Garrick. A striking instance was his little publication called ‘An Ode to Garrick on the Talk of the Town,’ in which we find this stanza:
In 1765 the colour of my life was decided. I married. My wife[29] was a daughter of Alderman Allen, of Lynn, and great-granddaughter of John Allen, Esq., of Lyng House, Norfolk, who, according to the Comte de Boulainvilliers,[30] first introduced the custom of marling in the above-named county. We boarded with my mother at Lynn.
This year (1765) I was in correspondence with the Rev. Walter Harte,[31] Canon of Windsor, and author of the ‘Essays on Husbandry’ and the ‘Life of Gustavus Adolphus.’ He advised me to collect my scattered papers in the ‘Museum Rusticum,’ and, with additions, to publish them in a volume. This I did under the title of ‘A Farmer’s Letters.’ I visited Mr. Harte at Bath; his conversation was extremely interesting and instructive. I have rarely received more pleasure than in my intercourse with this amiable and deeply learned man. It is well known that he was tutor to Mr. Stanhope, natural son of Lord Chesterfield, to whom so many of that nobleman’s letters were addressed.[32]
‘Sir,—I give you a thousand thanks for your book, of which I’ve read every word with great pleasure and full as great astonishment. When in the name of God could you have found time to read the ten or twenty thousand authors whom you quote, of all countries and all times, from Hesiod to du Hamel?[33] Where have you ploughed, sowed, harrowed, drilled, and dug the earth for at least these forty years? for less time could not have made you such a complete master of the practical part of husbandry. I can only account for it from the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and the supposition that Hartlib’s soul has animated your body with a small alteration of name; seriously, your book entertains me exceedingly, and has made me quite a dilettante, though too late to make me a virtuoso, in the useful and agreeable art of agriculture. I own myself ignorant of them all, but am nevertheless sensible of their utility, and the pleasure it must afford to those who pursue them. Moreover, you’ve scattered so many graces over them that one wishes to be better acquainted with them, and that one reads your book with pleasure most exquisite. It is the only prose Georgic that I know, as agreeable, and I dare say much more useful, in this climate than Virgil. Why have you not put your name to it? for though some passages in it point you out to be the author here, they will not do it so in other countries, and as I am persuaded that your book will be translated into most modern languages and be a polyglott of husbandry, I could have wished your name had been to it. How goes the Havabilious complaint: has not the Bath waters washed it away yet? I heartily wish it was, as I sincerely wish you whatever can give you ease or pleasure.
‘P.S.—Though I can be as partial as another to my friends, I cannot be quite blind to their omissions; for though you have enumerated so many sorts of grass, with a particular panegyrick on your dear Lucern, you have not described, nor so much as mentioned, that particular sort of grass which while it grows the steed starves.
‘Your Elève is very well at Dresden. I will send him his book when I can find a good opportunity.’
The following letters Mr. Harte was so good as to address to me:—
‘Dear Sir,—That I am obliged to trouble you with a letter, purely on my own account, I balance not a moment within myself, between interrupting a friend and being thought ungrateful. The kind mention you have been pleased to make of my Essays on Husbandry in the last number of the Museum Rusticum deserves my warmest thanks and acknowledgements: and though your good opinion of me as bonus agricola, bonus civis may be a little partial, yet sure I am that your favourable report is the overflowing of a generous mind, and under that medicament I must with modesty and diffidence arrange it, feeling at the same time that inward pleasure which Tacitus describes Dulce est laudari a laudato Viro. For my own part, my ill health, as I greatly fear, will make me unable to continue much longer on the theatre of agriculture; but if it pleases God that this nation is ever touched with a true vital sense of the uses of husbandry in their full extent (and runs not mad with the visionary notions of Colonies), there will soon be a succession of younger and abler genius’s to perfect that, which I have had the honor and satisfaction of suggesting to my beloved but mistaken country. I may say as old Dryden did to Congreve. (You will put aside the vanity of naming Dryden in the same paragraph with myself.)
‘And now, Sir, give me leave to assure you that I am extremely pleased with your last published performance, and the rather as the idea is useful and new. In order to send abroad a truly qualified person, as you have most judiciously characterised him, you do well to address yourself to noble-spirited individuals. Kings and ministers look upon agriculture as only physical means of supplying mankind with food; nor does one glimpse of an idea ever enter their heads or hearts concerning the circulation of profit from the highest to the lowest resulting from thence; nor of the national strength, health, population, and, I may say, the sobriety of getting money which results from that art when it is exercised and maintained in full activity. France might till this time have languished for her enclosure of waste land and exportation of superfluous corn if a shrewd and artful foreigner had not flattered a fair lady into a passion for agriculture; the man I mean is M. Patulle.[34] And indeed, since the times of Augustus and Mæcenas (which latter loved agriculture, before he loved poetry, but lavishly united both in Virgil) and since the time of Constantine IV. to the present hour I can recollect no Princes and Prime Ministers who understood the national advantages of husbandry in their full extent but Henry IV. and Sully.’ [Letter breaks off here.]
‘Dear Sir,—Your last kind pacquet was conveyed to me here by our much esteemed friend Mrs. Allen, whom I hope to see at Bath in about twelve days. I am now to thank you for entertaining me with so much and so good matter relating to Harrows, and look upon your improvement to be a most sensible and most ingenious one at the same time. This is the happy perfection in writing which Horace mentions:
‘In the same manner I have also read with delight and improvement your remarks upon broad-wheeled waggons, in the Museum for last March: but why, my good friend, do you bury such dissertations as yours in blue-paper Periodical Essays? Or why rather do you not throw them together in one book, or large pamphlet? I return you my best thanks for your Technical Terms of Art in the Suffolk Husbandry, and the provincial words, which latter, one time or other, shall be considered by me in a more extensive and critical view respecting the English language in general. Many of these provincial words[35] are the truly classical words of our nation. Some of them are elegant and musical, and most of them in general express the sense in their sound. In one word, from a thorough knowledge of the provincial words of our language, one might venture to explain Shakespear, B. Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, &c., better and safer than all his editors and conjectural critics. If you have a friend tolerably skilled in husbandry, who lives in any part of England except the southern and western, be so obliging to me as to solicit his assistance, and convey the list of words to me; for by what I have before suggested, you see I have views that extend beyond husbandry.
‘When you go to London, will you not be tempted to make a flying excursion to Bath? ’Tis a digression, but it can hardly be called an episode. If I have any skill, or knowledge of the world, Mrs. Allen’s conversation alone will indemnify you for your trouble, and that most amply. He also who subscribes his name to this letter has a private ambition to be better known to you than upon paper.
‘I am, dear Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,
‘Dear Sir,—If gratitude did not operate strongly upon me (and that towards a friend whom I never saw but hope to see, know, and cultivate his friendship) I should not trouble you with another letter so quick upon the heels of my last from Windsor; but finding by chance here, in a lone village, the Museum Rusticum, I see you have done justice to the Essays on Husbandry. I wish they had half the merit which your partiality to the author fancies they have.
‘In the main particular you have spoken exactly my private sentiments. When I write for the instruction and amusement of Cuddy and Lobbin and Clout in matters of husbandry I will also publish a supplemental essay on the art of push-pin,[36] stylo puerili. Who would write for farmers, who perhaps cannot read, or who, I am sure, will never try to read? Were I condemned to this punishment I would desire my footman to hold the pen—and even then what would such critics say? They would find fault with inelegance and want of propriety in the work. They bring to my mind an anecdote which de Voltaire once told me of his father (by the way, Voltaire put the incident into a farce, and was disinherited for it). The peevish old gentleman said one morning when his son rose from bed at about 11 o’clock: “Young man, you were drunk last night; you will sleep away your senses, neglect your studies, and die a beggar.” Piqued at this reproach, Voltaire got up at 4 next morning, and by the by it was in winter. “Son,” said his father at breakfast, “you will ruin us in the expenses of fire and candle. All your draggle-tailed Muses will never indemnify us with the wood-merchant and chandler.” This is a just picture of a reviewing Critic or a Mago.
‘As to the Museum Rusticum (your writings in it excepted) I know nothing of the authors, but look upon it (as I am now speaking to you sub sigillo silentii) as a blue-paper job. Books in this age are a manufacture as much as hats or pins. The bookseller chooses a subject and the author writes at 10s. a sheet. It is probable that one man in a garret, who does not know a blade of wheat from a blade of barley, writes half the letters from the ‘Kentish man,’ ‘Yorkshire man,’ ‘Glocester man,’ &c. And perhaps the same hand, in the notes, signs with all the letters in the alphabet. Perhaps this very man Rocque (I speak only from conjecture), for I observe the whole work has a tendency to favour this avanturier in agriculture. I declare to you seriously that I know nothing of its authors, you excepted. Might it not be better if you kept your admirable tracts by you, and to those you have already published, so much to your honour, you may add such occasional pieces as you shall afterwards write, and let them all appear together in a volume which might be entitled Sylvae,[37] or occasional tracts on husbandry and rural economics. I would have all books on husbandry, if possible, pocket volumes, that one may read in the fields, &c. In short, I would print it in a beautiful duodecimo as du Hamel does; you have written enough already to make one such volume, or nearly. However, there must be some new things in this work; doubtless you have the plan of more tracts by you. If you read French I would recommend a charming idea to you in this enclosing age, namely a little 12mo. called "L’amélioration des Terres," by Patulle. In that work are plans, and also the manner of throwing a square tract of ground of three or four hundred acres, &c., into an ornamented farm, or, as the French call it, ferme ornée: the house and buildings in the centre; the fields are square, the hedges quick set, and the owner may command with his eye, and almost with his voice, everybody and thing he is concerned with. If you cannot get the book (though you certainly may at Vaillant’s) I will send you mine.
‘Dear Sir,—My wretched state of health must be my just excuse for being so bad a correspondent. I owe you an answer to a letter of yours which was equally kind and long, and that answer is now of near a quarter of a year’s standing; not but that I think of you and my honoured friend at Lynn almost every day of my life. Pray inform me in your next how your husbandry lucubrations go on in point of progress and advancement? I will be responsible for their good taste and accuracy. You are like the Matinian bee mentioned by Horace, which gathers more fragrance from a few sprigs of thyme than others can do from the stately lilac and larch trees. You gave me some hopes that my ever honoured friend at Worcester should convey to me, from you, some manuscript dissertations on agriculture, but I have been so unhappy as to know no more of them than of the lost books of Livy. In the course of the winter you will see an octavo volume of religious poems intituled the “Amaranth,” adorned with very fine sculptures from the designs of the greatest masters, and executed by an artist of my own forming, who never appeared before in a public capacity, except on my Essays on Husbandry. The poetry I hope will prove that I have been bred up in the school of Pope, and I hope the disciple will retain something at least of the manner of the master. When you see Mrs. Allen you will impart this little anecdote to her, because I am not yet quite clear whether I shall prefix my name or not.
‘P.S.—I have just had a visit from my old friend the Marquis of Rockingham, who (to say truth) loves husbandry as much as you or I do, and is, besides, an excellent judge of it speculatively and practically.’
‘Dear Sir,—I received safely by coach your manuscript, which shall be perused with all the accuracy of friendship, after having turned partiality out of doors. My impatience about whatever concerns you has already made me read a part of your work, and enables me to prophesy well concerning it. Pray be not fearful about the execution of your plan, which seems to me a good one; authors must be careful but not fearful; we have a proverb in husbandry (as old, I think, as Henry VII.’s time), which deserves to be written in letters of gold: "He that’s afraid of a blade of grass must not sleep in a meadow."
‘I like one part of your manuscript exceedingly; it is in truth the only thing wanted, and yet the only thing too often omitted, I mean the idea and calculation of the outgoing expenses. M. Patulle felt this as folly as you do, and as good wit will jump, hit upon a part of your plan. You therefore must see that book, as the French say, coûte que coûte; I have, I believe, almost the only copy in England, which shall be conveyed to you in a week’s time.
Mr. Harte published a volume of religious poems called ‘Amaranth,’ which he sent me. He took great pains about the decoration of this book by a young artist of his own forming, but it had no success.
In 1766 my daughter Mary was born, and I remained at Bradfield, with the exception of several journeys to Lynn.