Home travels—A move—Anecdote of a cat—Disillusion—‘A Farmer’s Letters’—Another move—‘In the full blaze of her beauty’—Hetty Burney and her harpsichord—‘Scant in servants’—Maternal solicitude—Money difficulties—More tours—Lord Sheffield—Howard the philanthropist—Correspondence.

During this year I executed that journey, the register of which I published under the title of a ‘Six Weeks’ Tour,’ in which, for the first time, the facts and principles of Norfolk husbandry were laid before the public, and which have since become famous in the agricultural world. Till my work appeared nothing of that husbandry was known beyond the county. The publication excited great interest, and became unquestionably the origin of many and great improvements in various parts of the kingdom. I scarcely went into any company in which it was not mentioned. Had I better understood the art of husbandry it might, perhaps, have been well for me. Finding that a mixture of families was inconsistent with comfortable living, I determined to quit Bradfield, and advertised in the London papers for such a house and farm as would suit my views and fortune, that is to say, one thousand pounds which I received with my wife, the remainder being settled upon her. I fixed upon a very fine farm in Essex called Samford Hall; there I worked with incredible avidity both in the agricultural and literary department. I remember once to have written a quire of foolscap in one day! The work was entitled ‘Political Essays on the Present State of the British Empire.’

And here I may mention a singular instance of animal sagacity. The gentleman who gave up the house to me was a Mr. Farquharson. His wife had a favourite cat which, upon their removal, was put into a sack and carried away with the furniture from Essex to Yatesby Bridge in Hampshire. I was surprised in about five or six days to see poor puss again at Samford Hall; nearly at the same time a letter was received from Mrs. Farquharson lamenting her loss, but doubting the possibility of the cat having returned to its original home. The circumstance is astonishing, and shows an instinct almost incredible, for the animal must have travelled seventy miles and threaded the Metropolis.

My landlord, a Mr. Lamb, was a King’s messenger. He had formerly been, I believe, butler or valet de chambre to the Duke of Leeds, and gave me many accounts of the journeys he had made to Petersburg, Constantinople, Naples, &c., profiting by every journey very considerably, as he expended much less in travelling than was allowed by Government. I write from memory, but I think he said that a journey to Petersburg or Constantinople paid him a neat profit of a hundred guineas.

This speculation turned out a bitter disappointment. I trusted to the promise of a relative to lend me some money, making, with what I possessed, sufficient for the undertaking. But he was himself disappointed of the money, and I clearly foresaw that an insufficient capital would infallibly cramp me in such a manner as to render all my efforts very uncomfortable and perhaps vain. I determined to make a short cut and get rid of it immediately, which I did at the end of six months at no further loss than of 100l. This was a lesson of some use to me at subsequent periods of my life, and taught me early to distinguish between certainty and probabilities.

The gentleman who assisted me in getting rid of this nuisance was a Mr. Yeldham. I am sure the reader will peruse with gratification the following letter (given in part):—

My correspondence with Mr. Harte continued. It gave me pain to find that his health greatly declined. He was a cripple at Bath, but the disorders of his body seemed little to affect the vigour of his mind. He spoke very flatteringly of the reception of my ‘Farmer’s Letters.’ ‘I am amazed,’ he writes, ‘that you have so soon and so easily acquired the hardest point in all writing—namely, perspicuity and ease of style.’ And elsewhere, ‘Your letter addressed to my Lord Clive on an experimental farm is new, spirited and pleasing, but I fear he has not a spark of the divina aura in him. I have shown your pamphlet to the best judge in England, my Lord Chesterfield, who is now here. He likes it extremely, and vows if he was young and rich enough he would carry your scheme into execution.’

From Samford Hall I moved, in 1768, to another farm at North Mimms, in Hertfordshire. I had scarcely settled here before my bookseller united with many correspondents in urging me to take another tour. I accordingly travelled through the north of England, registering so many observations, and noting the experiments of such a number of gentlemen, that the record of the whole, with the necessary remarks, filled four octavo volumes, and enabled me to present the public with interesting agricultural details never before published. I may assert this without vanity, because the real merit belonged to those who furnished me with the information; and the success of the work was so great that the first edition was sold almost as soon as it appeared. In the ‘Six Weeks’ Tour’ I visited but few gentlemen, and consequently witnessed but few experiments. On the ‘Northern Journey’ the case was very different, and the number of trials reported on a variety of soils were great and interesting. I spent some time with my friend, Mr. Ellerton, of Risby, in the East Riding; he accompanied me to York races and on a visit of several days to the Marquis of Rockingham, who had previously to the journey invited me to see him, and pointed out a number of persons proper for me to visit. Amongst the company at Wentworth was Mr. Danby, of Swinton, and his daughter,^[39] then in the full blaze of her beauty. My Lord Rockingham overheard her speaking to me and using the expression ‘amazingly fine turnips.’ ‘So, so, Mr. Young,’ said his lordship, ‘you are getting farming intelligence of Miss Danby; the lady must let us hear more of those fine turnips.’^[40] His lordship ordered me into an apartment, in a closet of which was a considerable collection of ancient and curious books on agriculture, which he pointed out for my amusement when I had time to consult them. There was one circumstance which seemed very awkward to me at Wentworth, the necessity of every person always having his hat under his arm, a hint of which Lord R. gave me on my arrival, and I saw the want of it in one or two new comers, who, when the horses were brought to the door, had a journey to make through the house before they could find their hats. From Wentworth I went to the Duke of Portland’s and others, and afterwards examined a great part of the county of York with much attention, everywhere being received in a very flattering manner.

This year I made many visits to my friend, Dr. Burney, in Poland Street, to whom my wife’s sister was married, and whose daughter Hester (by a former marriage) entertained, or rather, fascinated me, by her performance on the harpsichord and singing of Italian airs. I was never tired of listening to the ‘Ah, quelli occhi ladroncelli,’ and ‘Alla larga,’ of Piccini,^[41] and it is marvellous to me now to recollect that I was thus riveted to her side for six hours together.

During this year my daughter Bessy was born, and the second edition of my ‘Farmer’s Letters’ published.

1769.—My son Arthur born. The whole of this year I passed at North Mimms, very well received and visited in that thronged neighbourhood. The Duke of Leeds, who lived in the parish, condescended to make overtures with a view to my acquaintance. Sir Charles Cocks, afterwards Lord Somers, if I do not mistake the year, did the same, and often drank tea with me; also Dr. Roper and his wife Lady Harriet. He was a man of great learning, and she a most amiable woman, free from all pride and affectation. I also often met Lady Mary Mordaunt at two or three houses, and her sister Lady Frances Bulhely, with whom she lived; with the former I had something of a flirtation and lent her many books; she was rather handsome and very agreeable. I was elected member of a dining club at Hatfield, and became acquainted with Samuel Whitbread, Esq. M.P.,^[42] and Mr. Justice Willes from East Barnet. I was very well received by Mrs. Willes, a fine lady, and rather fantastical. They were both vain people, and I remember one day at dinner Judge Willes saying to his wife, ‘My dear, I think we are rather scant in servants’—yet there was one to every chair and some to spare. She was making an ornamental path round the homestead, and asked my advice in several difficulties. During this year Prince Massalski, Bishop of Wilna, wrote me a long French letter on the agricultural prosperity of England. He afterwards passed two days with me in Hertfordshire, an agreeable, well-instructed man, who much lamented the miserable state of his own country.

1770.—What a year of incessant activity, composition, anxiety and wretchedness was this! No carthorse ever laboured as I did at this period, spending like an idiot, always in debt, in spite of what I earned^[43] with the sweat of my brow and almost my heart’s blood, such was my anxiety; yet all was clearly vexation of spirit. Well might my dear mother write to me as she did. I trusted in an unparalleled industry, but not in God; and see how He brought it all to nought, as if to convince me of my supreme folly and infatuation. My old Suffolk bailiff was the channel through which I ran into debt to the Bury banker by a series of drawing bills, one to pay another, till the plan became so obvious that he cut short and refused to accept any more. I had run near a thousand pounds into his debt, and it was necessary for me to go over directly to Bury to see what could be done to pacify him. He was at his country seat at Trosston. Thither I followed him, and, with great difficulty, persuaded him to have patience, under a promise that I would make arrangements to pay him very speedily. This I did with difficulty, and I scarcely recollect how. I shall, in the first place, note that the Eastern Tour was accomplished, the journal of which was afterwards published in four volumes. In the preface I returned thanks to those who contributed to my information, and in the number were many most distinguished personages amongst the nobility and gentry in the counties through which I travelled, with numerous distinguished farmers.

It is necessary here to pause a little in order to examine the object and the effect of the three tours I made and published. They have, by the very best judges, been esteemed highly useful to practical agriculturists, and unquestionably they are equally so for the information they afford in political economy: they have accordingly, in these views, been celebrated^[44] in almost every language of Europe. When a work appears, the object and execution of which are equally novel and unexampled, it is not surprising that a certain measure of success should attend such a work. Nothing in the least similar to it had before appeared in the English language; for though there had been a tour of Great Britain, and other tours through great part of the kingdom, yet all these works agreed in one circumstance—that of the authors confining their attention absolutely to towns and seats, without paying any more thought to agriculture than if that art had no existence between the towns they visited. Indeed my work was admitted on all hands to be perfectly original. In regard to the practical husbandry of the farmers, and the experimental observations of the gentlemen I visited, the utility of these could not be doubted. When a Lord Chancellor of England, amusing himself with husbandry, read the English works on that subject for information, and burnt them as affording him nothing but contradictions, without doubt he complained that these writers did not describe the common management of the farmers, and on that management founding their propositions of improvement. But the fact was, and it must be, in the nature of things, writers confined to their closets, or, at most, to a single farm, could not describe what it was impossible for them to know; and before the appearance of my tours there was scarcely a district in the kingdom described in such a manner as to convince the reader that the authors had any practical knowledge of the art; for a man to quit his farm and his fireside in order to examine the husbandry of a kingdom by travelling above four thousand miles through a country of no greater extent than England was certainly taking means sufficiently effective for laying a sure basis for the future improvement of the soil. To understand well the present state of cultivation is surely a necessary step prior to proposals of improvement. This I effected; and in the opinion of some very able agriculturists now living, the greatest of the subsequent improvements that have been made during the last forty years have, in a great measure, originated in the defects pointed out by me in the detail of these journeys.

I shall venture to insert one anecdote which occurred in the Northern Tour. At Mr. Danby’s, at Swinton in Yorkshire, I met a very uncommon instance of extraordinary industry in a collier, who improved some waste moors by the labour of his own hands beside his common hours of working in the colliery. He had so animated a spirit of improvement that I thought it a great pity that he should be left without better support; and therefore I proposed a subscription for him, which raised in all about 100l., and Mr. Danby, his landlord, releasing him from his colliery, he was enabled to extend his improvements with much more comfort to himself. After a few years he died, leaving his farm for the benefit of his family. He shortened his life, poor fellow, by his industry.

This year I was obliged to decline an invitation from Lord Holdernesse to accompany him to Hornby Castle. Upon informing my mother of the refusal, she, with her ever watchful kindness concerning my interests, wrote thus: ‘I am extremely sorry that you refused Lord Holdernesse’s invitation; it was an opportunity you may never have again, for when favours that great people offer are refused, they seldom, if ever, make a second; it is very extraordinary indeed if they do. He is as likely to be one in the Administration as any other, for since Lady H. is one of the Ladies of the Queen’s Bedchamber it is not likely that he [Lord H.] will be long out of post; and who knows? you might have found favour in his sight. I fear as long as my poor eyes are open I shall never want for something relating to your welfare to vex me extremely, which I must own is a great weakness. As to the regard of this world, thank God I do often reflect on the shortness of every earthly felicity, a misery compared with the duration of hereafter, and I am fully convinced that on God all events depend. I can’t help transcribing a few lines out of a book you know little of. [Here follow scriptural texts.] Thank God, I don’t owe five pounds in the world, not that I brag of being free from debt as owing to any merit to me, for I am far from thinking anything like it; no, it is to the mercy and goodness of God who has given me a comfortable provision for the situation I am in, and in a better I don’t desire to be, for a little with God’s blessing goes much farther than a great deal without it. You may call all this rubbish if you please, but a time will come when you will be convinced whose notions are rubbish, yours or mine.’ I here insert another letter from my mother, at the risk of being taxed with personal vanity:—

‘I had a letter yesterday from your brother, in which was a paragraph that I think will give you a little pleasure. It is as follows: "I find that Arthur has printed lately a pamphlet on the ‘Exportation of Corn.’ A gentleman who came from the Drawing Room yesterday told me that the King asked him whether he had read Mr. Young’s pamphlet on the subject, and commended it." Oh, dear! how pleasing it is to have the approbation of a King, even though we never get sixpence by it. And yet how few are desirous of the approbation of the King; yet they may be sure of it if they sincerely try, and can never fail of being well rewarded, both in this world and the next. Oh! Arthur, with what capacities are you endowed—with what advantages for being greatly good! But with the talents of an angel a man may be a fool if he judges amiss on the supreme point.’

1771.^[45]—The same unremitting industry, the same anxiety, the same vain hopes, the same perpetual disappointment. No happiness, nor anything like it.

This year I published the third edition of the ‘Farmer’s Letters,’ the second edition of the ‘Northern Tour,’ the ‘Farmer’s Calendar,’ my ‘Proposals for Numbering the People’—the occasion of which was the Earl of Chatham’s words: ‘When I compare the number of our people—estimated highly at seven^[46] millions—with the population of France and Spain, usually computed at twenty-five millions, I see a clear, self-evident possibility for this country to contend with the united powers of the House of Bourbon merely upon the strength of its own resources.’ I conceived that to draw such political principles for the national conduct from a mere supposition of population was a doctrine tending to very mischievous errors. I therefore was convinced that an actual enumeration of the people ought to take place. Nothing, however, was done at the time, but thirty years afterwards^[47] the Legislature was of the same opinion, and not till then were the numbers ascertained.ascertained.

This year I began my correspondence with Mr. John Baker Holroyd,^[48] afterwards so well known for his literary productions as Lord Sheffield. In his first letter, dated March 1771, he mentions his wish that I should forward some cabbage seed, and hopes that I may be the means of introducing the culture of cabbages into that neighbourhood (Sussex), but adds—what must now appear singular—that the very extraordinary scarcity of hands cramps him very much. ‘All the lively, able young men are employed in smuggling. They can have a guinea a week as riders and carriers without any risk; therefore it is not to be expected that they will labour for eight shillings a week until some more effectual means are taken to prevent smuggling.’

I had also a letter from the deservedly celebrated philanthropist, John Howard, with a basket of his American potatoes, afterwards known under the name of ‘the Howard and cluster potatoes.’ He added: ‘Permit me, sir, to offer my thanks for the entertainment of your very ingenious and useful labours, and the honour you did me in the mention of my name.’

1772.—Published ‘Political Essays on the British Empire,’ ‘Present State of Waste Lands.’ A third edition of the ‘Six Weeks’ Tour’ was also published.

This year I attended very much the meetings of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts,^[49] Manufactures and Commerce, as well as the Committee of Agriculture,^[50] of which I was Chairman. In a letter from Mr. Butterworth Bayley, he lamented the want of a respectable publication by the Society of Arts, and called on me to think of some means of remedying the misery (sic). When I became Chairman of the Committee of Agriculture, I was the first to propose that annual publication which afterwards took place. This proposition was at once acceded to, and Valentine Green, the engraver, had the impudence to assert that it originated with him.

This year I visited Samuel Whitbread, Esq., at Cardington, in Bedfordshire, and as Mr. Howard, who afterwards became so celebrated for his philanthropy, lived in the same parish, Mr. W. took me to call upon him one morning. He was esteemed a singular character, but was at that time quite unknown in the world. He was then only famous for introducing a new series of potatoes into cultivation. We found him in a parlour, without books or apparently any employment, dressed as for an evening in London—a powdered bag wig, white silk stockings, thin shoes, and every other circumstance of his habiliments excluding the possibility of a country walk. He was rather pragmatical in his speech, very polite, but expressing himself in a manner that seemed to belong to two hundred years ago. I asked Mr. Whitbread if Mr. Howard was usually thus dressed and confined to his room, for he was as intimate with Whitbread as with anybody. He had never seen him otherwise, he said, but added that he was a sensible man and a very worthy one.

At this time I published my ‘Political Essays on the Present State of Affairs in the British Empire,’ also the third edition of the ‘Six Weeks’ Tour.’ Comber’s ‘Real Improvements in Agriculture on the Principles of A. Young, Esq.,’ was likewise printed. Comber was afterwards deeply engaged in the ‘Monthly Review,’ and belaboured me with all the abuse he could accumulate. I published also a tract entitled ‘The Present State of Waste Lands in Great Britain.’

In March, Mr. Allen, my wife’s brother, an alderman of Lynn, applied to the Earl of Orford to procure for me an establishment in some public office, and his Lordship wrote to Lord North on the subject. In his reply the latter spoke of me as one ‘whose very ingenious and useful writings point out as a very proper object of notice and reward.’ It was an application for a King’s waiter’s^[51] place, a sinecure.

At this time I was so distressed that I had serious thoughts of quitting the kingdom^[52] and going to America. Surely the three last years ought to have convinced me, had I not been worse than an idiot, of the vanity and folly of my expenses, and how utterly all comfort and happiness must fly such pursuits. Feeling a force and vigour of mind in myself erroneously, I trusted in them. As to God, I lived without Him in the world, and had not a companion that could bring me to Him. But my mother, my ever dear mother, wrote in vain to me; her advice was not listened to. She tried to bring me to a right sense of religion, which would have conferred that peace and content which flew before my vain pursuits.

Dr. Hunter,^[53] of York, wrote to me this year on the Georgical Essays, and on carrots and their conversion into a confection for the use of seamen, of which he entertained great expectations. ‘I received much pleasure,’ he wrote, ‘from the perusal of your Eastern Tour, and could not help expressing uneasiness at the rancorous treatment of the monthly reviewers. We are all open to fair and candid criticism, but when there is the least spark of resentment seen it then ceases to be criticism, and deserves another name. I propose to finish the Georgical Essays, with two more volumes, in 1773. My own natural avocations will not permit me in future to be anything but an editor; I wish I had leisure to prosecute so agreeable a study. I have, however, some satisfaction in seeing the art (of agriculture) improve under your hands, and hope that nothing will prevail upon you to withdraw yourself from the public. I have, this year, a large experiment with onions and carrots. These vegetables have not hitherto been cultivated in the field in this country. Besides the application of carrots for horses and hogs, I am persuaded that they may be converted by a cheap process into a confection for the use of seamen. This, and the last year’s experiments, convince me of the practicability of the scheme, and next year I propose to ship a considerable quantity for the above purpose. The expense is small, and my expectations are great.’

1773.—Here began a new career of industry, ill-exerted, of new hopes and never-failing disappointments, labour and sorrow, folly and infatuation, which it is scarcely possible for a man, turned into the world without business or profession, to escape, and it affords a most impressive lesson to all parents to be almost as ready to hang their children as to bring them up without a regular profession. If I had been a country curate with 50l. a year, in addition to the income I possessed, and had lived in a quiet parsonage, the probability of happiness would have been far greater. The business of my farm at North Mimms was insufficient to keep me employed, and the intercourse I constantly had with London I considered as a means which should be turned to some account in the increase of a most insufficient income; in fact, I was in a most uncomfortable state, which induced me to listen to the proposals of a gentleman I met with—I have quite forgotten whom—who informed me that the ‘Morning Post’ proprietors were in great want of some person to report the debates in Parliament. In consequence of this information I applied at their office, and they very readily engaged me for a trial, to see if I was able to perform the business they required. This was done, and as they were well satisfied with the manner in which the work was executed, I continued it at a salary, as well as I can recollect, of five guineas a week. Every Saturday I walked seventeen miles to my farm, and back again on the Monday morning. This year I published my observations on the present state of waste lands, which contained a new idea of extreme importance in the mode of working any great and effective improvement. In most of the attempts that have been made by individuals to accomplish these meritorious works, there generally appeared a weakness of effort and insufficiency of means, which prevented anything considerable being effected, and the cause I justly explained to be, a want of proportion between the means and the end, not so much in a want of money as in a most erroneous method of applying it. To raise a set of buildings for a farm, with gradual additions to the whole, and enclosing from the waste, field after field for improvement, with views merely of forming a large farm, and keeping the whole in hand, demands so large a capital that the succeeding languor of the exertions has been evidently owing to want of money, the capital being insufficient for the two distinct objects of farming and improving. The novel idea struck me that the whole capital in such cases should be appropriated to improvements alone; that no other buildings should be raised than exactly sufficient for such a small farm as lets most readily in the district—and this, usually, is little more than a cottage, and ten or twenty acres of grass round it. Hence I proposed that an entire new farm should, after one course of crops, be formed, and let, sold, or mortgaged every year. In this mode of proceeding the farming would be entirely subservient to the improvement, and the capital would be constantly moving to fresh land. I showed that a small sum of money, thus employed, would gradually improve a great and increasing breadth of waste; whereas, if the same money was employed in the common manner of farming and occupying a larger farm, the space improved, after fifteen or twenty years, would be trifling, and the profit very inferior. My explanation of this system carries conviction with it; but the work appearing at a period when the rapidity of my publications satiated the world, little or no attention was paid to it.

1774.—I, this year, published on my own account my political arithmetic, one of my best works, which was immediately translated into many languages, and highly commended in many parts of Europe. Judges of the subject here, as well as abroad, have considered it as abounding in valuable information and the justest views; but, unfortunately, as in the case of my work on waste lands, it followed so many other of my publications that little attention was paid to it, except by the few who saw the importance of the subject, or who were able to judge of the merit of the work.

The winter was passed in London in the same employment as the preceding; but I had become known to so many men of science that several hinted to me the propriety of my being a candidate for election as a Fellow of the Royal Society, and my recommendation as such being garnished with some respectable names I was accordingly elected, which adds the F.R.S. to my name. Once in conversation with Dr. Burney on these elections, he said, ‘No matter, for that we have got our ends of them.’ This year I was elected an honorary member of the Palatine Society of Agriculture established at Mannheim, also of the Geographical Society of Florence.

1775.—This winter I spent in London. From 1766 to 1775 being ten years, I received 3,000l., or 300l. a year.