The Crabtree Orations 1954-1994

THE CRABTREE ORATIONS 1954–1994 Edited by BRYAN BENNETT & NEGLEY HARTE

THE CRABTREE FOUNDATION

To the Immortal Memory © The Crabtree Foundation 1997 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention All rights reserved First published in 1997 by The Crabtree Foundation, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-203-21349-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-27037-1 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0 9529987 0 X (Print Edition)

The Portrait of Joseph Crabtree (1754–1854), presented to the Crabtree Foundation by Professor Sir James Sutherland, and believed by Sir William Coldstream to be the work of Sir Henry Raeburn.

CONTENTS

FRONTISPIECE PROLEGOMENON

vii

LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS

x

1

HOMAGE TO CRABTREE James Sutherland

1

2

TOWARDS A CRABTREE BIBLIOGRAPHY Arthur Brown

9

3

THE ICONOGRAPHY OF CRABTREE Terence Spencer

16

4

CRABTREE AND SCIENCE R.V.Jones

21

6

THE FAMILY CRABTREE Hugh Smith

29

7

CRABTREE IN FRANCE: 1791–1800 Leonard Tancock

35

8

CRABTREE AND THE SAGE OF PITTENWEEM William Armstrong

42

10

CRABTREE’S CHEMICAL AND COLONIAL CONNECTIONS R.S.Nyholm

49

11

JOSEPH CRABTREE, JEREMY BENTHAM AND LONDON UNIVERSITY Joseph Scott

54

12

JOSEPH CRABTREE AND MATERIA MEDICA Andrew Tay

60

13

CRABTREE AND THE STATUE David Wilson

64

v

14

JOSEPH CRABTREE AND HIS PUBLISHERS Bryan Bennett

70

15

JOSEPH CRABTREE AND THE NORTH Peter Foote

78

16

CRABTREE AND THE LAW J.A.C.Thomas

86

17

THE QUEST FOR CRABTREE Charles Peake

94

18

CRABTREE AND THE EAST Edwin Clarke

103

20

CRABTREE THE ONOMAST John Dodgson

118

21

CRABTREE AND FRENCH LETTERS Gordon Hall

131

22

CRABTREE COMES OF AGE: CRABTREE AND COUNTRY MATTERS Richard Freeman

139

23

CRABTREE AND THE SEA F.J.J.Cadwallader

146

24

CRABTREE: THE CREATIVE CRIMINOLOGIST Bernard Hargrove

153

25

THE CLEANSING OF CRABTREE Arthur Tattersall

158

26

JOSEPH CRABTREE: THE OLD LADY OF THREADNEEDLE STREET Nigel Bromage

166

27

CRABTREE THE ENGINEER Peter Rowe

175

28

CRABTREE AND GERMANY: CHAMELEON MEETS CHAMELEON W.H.A.Larrett

182

30

JOSEPH CRABTREE AND THE POLISH CONNECTION Frank Carter

191

31

THE SECRET LIFE OF JOSEPH CRABTREE Fred Gee

199

32

JOSEPH CRABTREE AND THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL Bartolomeu dos Santos

206

vi

33

CRABTREE’S THEOREM James Lighthill

214

34

JOSEPH CRABTREE AND THE KELTIC TWILIGHT Frank Delaney

222

35

CRABTREE AND POLITICAL ARITHMETICK Negley Harte

228

36

CRABTREE AND THE DEATH IN VIENNA John Foreman

238

37

CRABTREE’S CUDGEL James Graham-Campbell

246

38

CRABTREE AND NATURE PHILOSOPHY Roderick Fisher

254

39

CRABTREE’S VISION: AMBIVALENCE, ANGST, APOCALYPSE Peter Armour

263

40

CRABTREE’S MEASURES John Mullin

272

41

IN THE STEPS OF CRABTREE Tony Smith

280

Orations 5, 9 and 29 are missing from the Archives; see page vii LIST OF AUSTRALIAN AND ITALIAN ORATIONS

287

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

289

THE ORATORS

297

OFFICERS OF THE CRABTREE FOUNDATION

299

JOSEPH CRABTREE: CURRICULUM VITAE

301

INDEX

307

PROLEGOMENON

Much was known about Joseph Crabtree, poet and polymath, in the nineteenth century; much was forgotten or deliberately obscured in the twentieth century—until 1951. In that year it happened that, at one of Professor Hugh Smith’s weekly seminars for scholars of all disciplines or none, two or three of those present discovered a common interest in the life and work of the extraordinary great man, Joseph Crabtree. This interest grew and intensified until Hugh Smith and others at University College London were inspired to set up the Crabtree Foundation at the College. The first annual meeting of the Foundation, then numbering some twentyfour members, was held on February 17 1954 at University College London with Professor Hugh Smith as its first President. At this Centenary Celebration the President spoke of the aims of the Foundation: We are not unaware of the problems of Crabtree studies, nor are we afraid, by any methods at our disposal, to restore him to the high station that he deservedly holds in the history of English Literature. This is our purpose. The collaboration of members of this Foundation, scattered as they are over the face of the earth from the Fisher Library in Sydney to the Folger Library in Washington, from the Royal Library in Stockholm to the Public Library in Chipping Sodbury, is daily revealing new facts. Professor James Sutherland then delivered the first Oration—‘Homage to Crabtree’. This was not only a brilliant oration but has become a seminal work. Professor F.P.Wilson spoke of it as ‘an eloquent and wise address… beautifully phrased…It is an extraordinary tale.’ And Dr B.Ifor Evans— later Lord Evans of Hungershall—summed it up, ‘You felt really that on the one hand there was this sense of tense realisation that this new literary territory was conquered, and on the other hand that that sense was being subdued by the discipline of scholarship. It was a lesson to us all.’ Since then the membership has grown steadily to some four hundred, worldwide interest in Crabtree studies has flowered and each year the Oration has been given, either developing a particular aspect or

viii

introducing an hitherto unknown fact of Crabtree’s life and work Scholars and, in particular, Orators have worked diligently to help to achieve the purpose of the Foundation as outlined by Smith. All of the Orators have tried to emulate Sutherland’s original eloquence and wisdom, and some have succeeded. The ‘conspiracy of silence’ has been revealed for what it was and during the last forty-two years Crabtree has not only been elevated to his rightful station in English Literature, but he has also joined the Pantheon of polymaths as scientist, engineer, inventor, traveller, lawyer and mathematician. Friend, and sometimes enemy, of the great, he left almost no aspect of culture and thought untouched to some degree by his genius. There was, of course, a dark side and this is not hidden by these Orations. As the Foundation and its work blossomed, so new roots took hold in new soils. In 1975 the Australian Chapter was formed by Arthur Brown and Bryan Bennett. It is based at Monash University Victoria, and itself adds its distinctive contribution to Crabtree studies through its yearly Orations and correspondence with the parent Foundation. Then in 1994 Dr Maurizio Bossi of the Centro Romantico in Florence, with the full support of London, inaugurated the Sezione Italiana of the Crabtree Foundation. In its short life, it has added new dimensions to Crabtree studies and, as one would expect in Florence, it has drawn its members and its scholarship from Italy, France, Belgium, Austria, Yugoslavia and Switzerland. During the years of the Foundation’s existence, the activities of Crabtree scholars have found expression in a number of outlets. One of the most significant occurred in the pages of the Times Literary Supplement in 1973, when a lively discussion on the subject of Crabtree’s correspondence took place. This lasted from January to April and, apart from fresh revelations about Crabtree himself, demonstrated the new and intense interest in the Poet being shown in a number of universities in the United States. An example from the other side of the world appeared in the Monash Reporter, Victoria, in 1976, when Don Charlwood, himself a poet, revealed Crabtree’s early links with Australia, including some poems written by him in that country. In 1982 Joseph Crabtree was the subject of a BBC Bookshelf programme, and a new audience was found—still ‘fit’ but now not so ‘few’. The problem of ‘the conspiracy of silence’ was, to some extent, explained when James Sutherland edited The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes in 1975. Crabtree was, of course, to be included in this work until Sutherland discovered, from Crabtree’s Will in Somerset House, that the Poet had expressed his wish that no life or other biographical account of him should be published after his death. A poet was to be remembered by his works, and not by the weakness of the flesh. This poses a dilemma for all Crabtree scholars, to be resolved as individual conscience prompts.

ix

For some time, members of the Foundation and countless interested scholars from round the world have asked that the Orations be given a permanent form to allow for further and deeper study. This collection has endeavoured to do that. To make for convenience and portability, the Orations have been edited so that, for the most part, formal addresses and acknowledgements have been omitted and those passages which rehearse earlier findings have also been cut. The pure milk of scholarship remains. This volume contains the Orations given between 1954 and 1994; subsequent Orations will be published at more frequent intervals. Alas, even in this first volume the conspiracy is not yet completely defeated for three Orations are missing from the Archive. No text can be found for the fifth Oration, John Crow’s on ‘Crabtree’s Periodical Publication and its Meaning’, the ninth, Dr Macdonald Emslie’s on ‘Joseph Crabtree and the New College, Edinburgh’, or the twenty-ninth, Professor Mike Screech’s on ‘Joseph Crabtree and “Bert” Dawson’. All attempts to trace them have failed and to try and reconstruct them from memory was considered dangerous and inimical to true scholarship. Should any scholar in any part of the world discover any of the missing Orations, his duty is to send it to the Foundation’s Archivist. Our work in editing this collection of Orations has been aided by many scholars. We were first stimulated into action by the pressings of Arthur Tattersall and the late Professor John Dodgson, the former Living Memory of the Foundation, whose death has been much regretted by members of the Foundation. Crucial assistance in preparing his oration for publication came from Professor James Graham-Campbell and Murray Watson, both of whom provided other enthusiastic support, as did Dr Tony Smith. Stuart Laidlaw of the Institute of Archaeology photographed the Portrait for the frontispiece, and the other photographs were all taken for us by the Photography and Illustration Centre of University College London. For information about the Australian Chapter, we are grateful to Jim McGrath. We also wish to thank Barbara Smith for her help and advice in the production of this book. For the index we are greatly indebted to Professor Peter Foote. The Foundation owes much to Judge Bernard Hargove for his very generous support. Bryan Bennett Negley Harte January 1997

LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS

Paolo Albani P.A’vard Louis Alexander Robin Allan Dr Peter Andersen Professor Peter Armour E.J.Axton Major-General Ian Baker Dr Richard H.Bassett Lutz Becker Tim Bell Professor Peter R.Bell Bryan Bennett Dr M.I.Bird Jean-Louis Boehrer Dr I.D.L.Bogle Alessandra Bossi Dr Maurizio and Aurora Bossi Dr A.P.Boulton David Bowles John Braun Geoffrey Brice (2) N.A.Bromage Professor David Broome Professor Eric H.Brown Christopher Jonathan Brown (2) Berlinghiero Buonarroti Dr C.B.Bunker Professor A.R.Burgess Joachim and Veronika Burmeister Martin Butcher Professor P.H.Butterworth Professor John H.Callomon

xi

Jean Michel Carasso Dr F.W.Carter Fabio and Lucia Caselli Paolo Cesaretti Professor John Chalker D.E.C.Charlwood David J.Cheesm Professor Robin J.H.Clark Nicholas C.F.Clewley Professor Roy Collins Massimo A.L.Collu David Comins Galfrid S.Congreve (2) Dr C.K.Coogan Professor R.U.Cooke S.W.V.Coppinger Professor Alan Cornish Professor James G.A.Croll Giorgio Cusatelli Professor S.P.Datta Gordon Davies Dr M.A.B.Deakin Frank Delaney (2) Roberto and Lucia De Meo C.Desmarais Joyce and Sarah Dodgson Peter Dodgson Dr John R.Dodgson Professor Bartolomeu Dos Santos (2) Tim Elson Dr J.B.Enticknap Nicholas Esson Dr Michael Esten Dr Trevor Evans Professor Denys Fairweather Dr R.C.Fisher Paul Fisher Professor Peter Foote Professor John C.Foreman Piero Forosetti Dr J.W.Fox Julie L.Franklin Michael Freeman Dr D.C.Freshwater

xii

Anthony Fulford-Brown Professor Steve Gallivan Fred C.Gee Professor L.G.Gibilaro Jonathan Glanz Professor B.D.Gomperts Professor James Graham-Campbell Angus Graham-Campbell Professor Tony Grass Professor Sidney Greenbaum Professor T.Ceiri Griffith Alain Guyot Dr John A.Haight Sidney J.Hallet Professor E.W.Handley (2) W E.Harbord His Honour Judge Bernard Hargrove (5) Negley Harte Glynn Boyd Harte Franz Heymann G.Hopkins N.Hudson Dr Alan K.Huggins Dr W.L.Hutchinson Professor W.R.Jackson Professor H.S.Jacobs Professor Derrick James (4) Tim James R.T.Jenkins Dr W.Alan Jennings Professor Richard E.Jennings (2) Dr M.D.Johnson Dr Alan Johnston Roger F.J.Jones Professor R.V.Jones (2) Professor A.G.Jones Leslie Joseph Thomas S.Keane Philip Kogan Gerhard and Karin Kraft Professor D.G.Larman William Larrett Professor D.S.Latchman Roydelle A.J.Lawrence

xiii

Andrew D.E.Lewis Sir James Lighthi J.M.Lloyd Jones(3) Professor A.R.Lord Desmond Lynam Dr G.J.Lyons Ian MacPhail Paul Mahoney Kevin D.Mahoney Fosco and Mieko Maraini Mario and Italia Mariotti Howard Martin Dr Nigel J.Mason Professor A.P.Mathias Professor M.L.McGlashan J.F.McGrath Professor Peter McMullen The Lord McNally Bert and Laura Meijer Professor D.H.Michael Dr Anthony R.Michaelis Barnaby Milburn Professor David J.Miller R.Michael Miller Dr S.R.Montgomery Donald F.Montgomery Dr J.Mowbray Professor J.W.Mullin (2) Professor N.W.Murray Professor Brendan Neiland Dr W R.Newell Roy North Xavier North Helen E.O’Hara Professor Michael E.O’Neill P.T.O’Neill Simon Orrell Clive Orsborn W.J.Oxenbury H.J.Page K.J.Palmer Dr J.E.Parkin Professor Minoo H.Patel Michel Pierre

xiv

Geoffrey Piper Professor E.A.Power H.C.Prince William Pye R.J.Quinault D.A.Redston Isabelle Renard Major W.J.Richard Professor Roger W.Rideout Bill Rigby David A.Rigby Professor P.A.Riley Tim Rix Dr Peter W.Roberts Sir Derek Roberts (3) Dr M.A.Rosemeyer Professor Peter Rowe T.B.Ryves Professor David Saggerson Dr N.R.Sales Professor R.F.Sawyer Professor H.Schreiner Dr Francisco Seixas da Costa Professor Bob Sharples Sir Alfred Shepperd Robin Simon Dr W.A.Smeaton Dr A.C.H.Smith Alex Smith Andrew H.Smith Dr B. R.Smith Richard C.Smith Raymond L.Sparvell Arthur Spencer Mario and Miriam Spezi Dr W.Stephenson Dr R.Stevenson Dr Peter Strong Dr David Sturgen Professor Martin Swales Dr Gareth Symons Arthur Tattersall Professor R.H.Taylor Professor G.B.V.Taylor

xv

Stephen Tobin Dr John Took John Townsend Professor Tom Treasure Dr P.E.Trier R.W.Turner John R.Verrill Professor Claudio Vita-Finzi Dr Simon Waldram Professor Roger Walker John Wallace Philip Walters Murray Watson Peter J.Webb Dr T.F.West Dr D.J.B.White H.A.White Professor John White (2) Professor Gareth H.Williams Peter G.Williams Trevor Williams A.M.D.Willis Professor R.J.Willis Sir David Wilson Dr Joel Witz J.W.Woloniecki (5) Professor John G.Yates Kathleen Prentice Yorke

1 HOMAGE TO CRABTREE James Sutherland 1954

I need hardly say how deeply I appreciate the honour of being invited to deliver the first Annual Oration to the members of the Crabtree Foundation, and with what a lively sense of my responsibilities I approach the task of celebrating that great and neglected man of letters. The neglect into which the poet Crabtree has fallen—amounting, it sometimes seems to me, almost to a conspiracy of silence—is a matter for wonder, but also, I venture to submit, for reproach. When I reflect that not one single copy of his various works is to be found in the library of University College—this famous college with whose foundation he was obscurely but none the less effectively associated—and when I remind you that although our great National Repository does fortunately possess copies of most of his works, they have been absurdly attributed in the catalogue to William Joseph Crabtree (1773–1829), author of a deservedly forgotten work on Diseases of the Cow—when I recall those facts to your attention, you will agree with me, I hope, that though Crabtree has long found ‘an audience fit though few’, it is not fit that they should be so few as they demonstrably are. No article on Crabtree in the Dictionary of National Biography; not a word about him in the Cambridge History of English Literature! Let us hope that the Oxford History of English Literature (whose General Editor we are happy to see with us here tonight) will make some amends when the relevant volume of that history comes to be published. Of references to Crabtree in the first half of the twentieth century I have been able to discover only two. These are, however, sufficiently curious to deserve a passing mention. For the first of them I am indebted to my colleague, Dr. George Kane, lately Secretary to the Board of Studies in English in this University. Searching through the minutes of the Higher Degrees Sub-Committee one evening, Dr. Kane came upon the following minute, dated 1 April, 1913: Registration for the degree of M.A. External: Sarup Gopalachari, Second Class Honours in English, University of Calcutta. Registration approved. The candidate submitted as the title of his thesis: ‘The Life and Work of Joseph Crabtree: 1754–1854.’ The Committee were of

2 THE CRABTREE ORATIONS 1954–1994

opinion that the subject proposed by the candidate was much too extensive for the M.A. degree, and recommended that he should limit his field to some particular aspect of Crabtree’s work. They further recommended that he should consult the Advisory Service, and in the event of his so doing Professor W.P. Ker agreed to act. A careful scrutiny of the minutes failed to reveal any further developments; it can only be supposed that the candidate was discouraged by the Committee’s report, and abandoned a project that might well have become a millstone in Crabtree studies. The second reference to our poet occurs almost exactly ten years later, when a letter appeared in the Times Literary Supplement above the signature of an Assistant-Professor in the University of Western Nevada. As every scrap of biographical information pertaining to Crabtree must have some value, I venture to quote this letter in full: Sir, I am engaged in collecting materials for a biography of the English poet, Joseph Crabtree (1754–1854), and would be grateful for any assistance from your readers in the way of family letters, contemporary references, or other documents that may have some bearing on his life. I am particularly anxious to trace the manuscript of his Ars Salutandi, which was sold by Maggs Brothers in 1903, but has so far eluded my search. Kemper T. Guggenheim, Box 2986, Reno, Nevada.

Nothing appears to have come of Professor Guggenheim’s researches, and one is driven to conclude that the English owners of Crabtree manuscripts were either unaware of the priceless treasures in their possession, or else, as seems to me more likely, were unwilling to risk sending them across the Atlantic to the deserts of Western Nevada. Such, then, is the meagre tally of Crabtree scholarship in the first half of the twentieth century. In the past two or three years, however, the picture has been entirely transformed! Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the past three years have contributed more to our knowledge of Crabtree than the other 97 years that have elapsed since his death. Modest as have been my own personal contributions to the striking contemporary revival of interest in Crabtree, I shall always be proud to reflect that this revival has synchronised with my occupation of the Lord Northcliffe Chair of Modern English Literature in this college. At least I can claim that I did nothing to stop it, and, if I may be forgiven what may appear to be an indecent vanity, I would like to think that I have followed up, not altogether unsuccessfully, some of the clues so generously and spontaneously placed at my disposal by the President of the Crabtree Foundation and by other

JAMES SUTHERLAND 3

Crabtree scholars in this college, senior to me, if not in years, at any rate in Crabtree studies. Tonight it is my privilege to address my remarks to a distinguished gathering of the cognoscenti. It therefore seems to me that it would be a work of supererogation to trace in detail the life history of Joseph Crabtree, which must be familiar to most of you here. I shall accordingly pass over in silence the boyhood years at Chipping Sodbury, the drunken frolics of the Oxford undergraduate, and the satirical verses on his tutor which led to him being first of all gated, and then finally sent down in the Hilary term of 1773. There followed, as you know, one of the obscurest decades in Crabtree’s long life, when, after tasting the intoxicating pleasures of the Town, he appears to have retired to the country, and there for the first time seriously cultivated his Muse. It must be admitted, however (and here is one promising field for future scholars) we are not at this period on firm ground with Crabtree, and his biographer must fill in the gaps as best he may with cautious speculation and scholarly deduction. In the year 1783, however, Crabtree emerges, at least partially, from the obscurity which had enveloped him. In that year his uncle, Oliver Crabtree, was persuaded to find a place for him in the firm of Crabtree and Hillier, wine shippers of Orleans. At the risk of appearing egotistical, I would like to dwell for a few minutes on this period of Crabtree’s life. What little I have been able to add to our knowledge of Crabtree is mainly concerned with those early years in France, when, of course, there occurred that event which must always take a foremost place in the biography of our poet—his first meeting with Wordsworth. That they met in France is, of course, common knowledge. But how intimately the two poets were associated has not hitherto been realised, and I had myself no conception of the revelations that were in store for me when I followed up a hint dropped almost casually to me by the Provost of this college. Briefly, then, the story is this. Arriving at Orleans in 1783 Crabtree set himself with his usual tenacity of purpose to master the details of the wine trade, and he not unnaturally considered that he was serving the best interests of his firm by sampling as many of its wines as possible and becoming thoroughly familiar with the various vintages. With his uncle, a morose teetotaller and Methodist, he seems never to have been on friendly terms; but as his livelihood depended on his uncle’s good will he appears to have suppressed his natural feelings, as far as was compatible with his mercurial and poetic temperament. To this period, however, belongs his fine Ode to Claret, with its wellknown opening lines: No more, Pomona, let thy vot’ries chaunt The praise of Cyder; no, nor Ceres bring Her grain for beery clowns. Avaunt, avaunt! Bacchus is our undoubted Lord and King!

4 THE CRABTREE ORATIONS 1954–1994

Those and other convivial verses did nothing to endear the sprightly nephew to the severe and pragmatical uncle, and Crabtree always knew that his future in the firm was never better than precarious, and that one false step would lead to his dismissal. For some years after his arrival in Orleans he had stayed in his uncle’s house, under the watchful and disapproving eye of that petty tyrant; but in 1790, tiring at last of the gloomy atmosphere of this domicile, he had found more congenial lodgings in the home of one Paul Vallon. There, in the winter of 1791, he met Paul Vallon’s sister, Annette, and the young Frenchwoman appears to have fallen passionately in love with the English poet, now in his thirty-seventh year and at the height of his powers, both physical and spiritual. It was just at this time that the young William Wordsworth, hearing from an English acquaintance in Paris that the poet Crabtree was living in Orleans, determined to seek him out and pay his respects to one whose poetry he had long known and admired. The exact date of Wordsworth’s arrival in Orleans is not known; but when he knocked at the Vallon’s door and introduced himself to Crabtree he found the poet in a state of utter dejection. Wordsworth at first imagined that this was nothing more than one of those sudden revulsions of feeling to which all poets are subject; but a few days later Crabtree confided to his young admirer the reasons for his melancholy: Annette Vallon, as Wordsworth himself was to put it in Vaudracour and Julia, …wanting yet the name of wife, Carried about her for a secret grief The promise of a mother. (I may remark in passing that Crabtree’s sonnet, ‘When I consider how my strength is spent’, clearly refers to this event, and not, as used to be thought, to the advance of a general senescence.) In this extremity Wordsworth apparently suggested that Crabtree should marry the girl, but Crabtree explained that this was impossible. Should his uncle find out what had happened, he would undoubtedly dismiss him immediately from the firm and turn him on the streets; and as Crabtree— with that manly English independence which always characterised him— had never troubled to learn French, he would have found himself not only a stranger in a country already rent by revolution, but a stranger unable to speak the language of the country in which he was now destitute. Wordsworth retired to consider the situation and to feed his mind for some time in a wise passiveness. When he returned, it was to make a remarkable and generous proposal. This was nothing less than an offer to acknowledge

JAMES SUTHERLAND 5

himself the father of Annette’s unborn infant, and to accept all the responsibilities of paternity. This offer—after some equally generous hesitation—Crabtree accepted. But it was not so easy to persuade Annette, who had taken an intense dislike to Wordsworth from the first moment she set eyes on him—it was not easy, I say, to persuade her to agree to the proposed solution; and it was only after Crabtree had patiently explained to the foolish girl that she would not have to live with Wordsworth that she consented to the arrangement. The subsequent events are sufficiently well known to make it unnecessary for me to carry the story any further. But I like to think that Wordsworth was able, in this unconventional way, to repay something of the great literary debt he owed to Crabtree, even though he never acknowledged it in any of his published verse. I said advisedly in his published verse. It had long seemed to me surprising—and I know others have been as puzzled as myself—that there is not a single reference to Crabtree in the whole of Wordsworth’s writings. It was therefore with feelings which I will admit bordered upon excitement that I came across, only a few days ago, in a manuscript copy of one of Wordsworth’s best known poems, The Leechgatherer, two cancelled passages that referred to Crabtree, once actually by name. The copy in question had been made by Dorothy Wordsworth for Lady Beaumont, and is now in the possession of Adolphus Blake, Esq., who is apparently a direct descendant of Goody Blake. (I may be permitted to add that the family appears to have flourished since the early nineteenth century, for I found Mr. Blake very comfortably installed in a large flat in Portland Place. I am sorry he cannot be with us here tonight but he begged to be excused, as our proceedings coincided with Henry Hall’ s Guest Night, a programme which he has not missed, I think he said, for over ten years.) The manuscript copy of The Leechgatherer in his possession apparently represents an earlier stage in the composition of the poem than any hitherto known. Apart from one or two minor changes, however, it corresponds closely to the textus receptus, except for the all-important Stanzas VII and XVII. It was Stanza XVII that first caught my eye, owing to a marginal annotation that fairly leapt from the page. You will recall how Wordsworth, after hearing the Leechgatherer’s story, felt his former unreasonable depression returning as strongly as ever: My former thoughts returned: the fear that kills; And hope that is unwilling to be fed; Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills; And mighty Poets in their misery dead. Opposite that last line there appears in the margin the single word ‘Crabtree’. It is written in a different hand from Dorothy’s, and Miss

6 THE CRABTREE ORATIONS 1954–1994

Darbishire, to whom I was unable to submit the manuscript, has tentatively indentified it from my description as that of Sir George Beaumont. You can well imagine the thrill that ran through me at the unexpected discovery of this reference to our poet. But, I am prepared to be told, there is nothing here to show that Crabtree was in the poet’s mind when he thought of ‘mighty poets in their misery dead’: all that the annotation tells us is that Sir George Beaumont made a plausible guess at what was in the poet’s mind. If that were all, I would still claim that the annotation is of the greatest interest; for, as I have already insisted, owing to the paucity of references to Crabtree any mention of his name by a contemporary is of value. But fortunately that is not all. You will, I am sure, believe me when I say that I now turned back to the beginning of the poem and started to read it through with an increased attention. And when I came to Stanza VII, there was the confirmation I had been looking for, and, indeed, more than half expecting. In the printed version, you will remember, the first four lines of Stanza VII run as follows: I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy, The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride; Of Him who walked in glory and in joy Following his plough along the mountain-side. In the version that I was now reading there was a startling variant: I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy, The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride; Of Crabtree wrapt in glory and in joy Casting his fly along the river side. If I may venture upon an expression of my own personal feelings here, it is a matter of deep satisfaction to me that in his sole reference to Crabtree, Wordsworth should have recalled him as an angler. Here, then, was a notable proof of the sentiments which Wordsworth cherished for his old friend, Crabtree. But, of course, my discovery only raised a fresh problem. When the first flush of excitement had died down, I realised that however welcome Wordsworth’s allusion to Crabtree might be, it was in its way inexplicable. ‘Mighty poets in their misery dead.’ But in 1802, when this poem was written, Crabtree was very far from being dead. Had it been otherwise, we should not be sitting round this table tonight honouring the first centenary of his death, and the second of his birth. The more I thought of it, the odder Wordsworth’s allusion to a Crabtree who had apparently passed on appeared to be. Not unnaturally (though I hope I succeeded in concealing my suspicions from Mr.Blake) I began to doubt the authenticity of the manuscript. But as it seemed to me

JAMES SUTHERLAND 7

equally inexplicable that anyone choosing to forge a Wordsworth manuscript should insert the name ‘Crabtree’, my faith in its authenticity was quickly restored. And then suddenly I had a glimpse of a possible explanation. Could Wordsworth have been misled by a false report of his friend’s death into believing that he was in fact no more? There was only one thing to do, and I did it. If Wordsworth had seen a report of Crabtree’s death it must almost certainly have been in a contemporary newspaper, and I must make a search at Colindale. Fortunately, the composition of the poem is fully documented in Dorothy’s Grasmere Journal, and I was quick enough to see that the relevant date for me was not that on which Wordsworth began to compose the poem—in the Spring of 1802—but the day on which he actually met the Leechgatherer—Friday, 3 October 1800. And I had still another clue to facilitate my search. Just before recording the meeting with the Leechgatherer, Dorothy entered in her Journal the words: ‘Amos Cottle’s death in the Morning Post.’ So Wordsworth had just been reading a recent number of the Morning Post. Would there perhaps be something—dared I hope?—about Crabtree in that same number? I am not here, gentlemen, to garnish or embellish a tale. I am addressing scholars, and I will respect the idiom of the scholar. Was there anything about Crabtree in that number of the Morning Post? There was! I found it just under the report of Amos Cottle’s death Let me quote the actual words: And we hear from Orleans that Joseph Crabtree, Esq., of the wellknown firm of Crabtree and Hillier, wine shippers, is lately dead in that place of a pleuritic fever. That, as we know, was a false report, but poor Wordsworth must have accepted it as genuine—and on him the distressing news must have fallen like a thunderbolt. ‘What various ills,’ as Dr.Johnson observes, ‘the scholars life assail.’ And yet, at long intervals, we have our rewards; and, for my part, I will confess that in a life devoted to the slow and unspectacular labours of scholarship, nothing has pleased me more than the finding of this one small piece in the curious jigsaw that constitutes the pattern of Crabtree’s life Hitherto, I had always tended to associate the otherwise unaccountable depression which suddenly overtakes Wordsworth— Dim sadness—and blind thoughts, I knew not, nor could name— with the death of Amos Cottle. But without seeking to displace poor Cottle entirely, we may surely be permitted now to attribute Wordsworth’s distress to a more efficient cause. Much as he liked and respected Cottle, Wordsworth could never have thought of him as among the ‘mighty poets

8 THE CRABTREE ORATIONS 1954–1994

in their misery dead’. But Crabtree he could, and Crabtree, on the evidence of this first draft, he evidently did. Crabtree, as he must have believed, coughing out the last hours of his life in a foreign land, Crabtree the friend of his youth and in a peculiar sense his master—the death of such a brother-poet must have stirred Wordsworth to the depths. I confess, gentlemen—and I hope I betray no unmanly weakness—that one hundred years after the real death of the poet Crabtree, on this memorable anniversary, I find my own heart charged with emotion. With Pride, when I let my thoughts dwell on one of the greatest of England’s poetical sons; with Joy, when I reflect that the clouds which have so long obscured his unique achievement have at last parted, and the sun of his reputation now shines in full meridian splendour. And yet, mingled with these pleasurable feelings, there is an element of Fear: fear lest, as the years roll on, Crabtree may be allowed for a second time to slip back into that shadowy region of oblivion from which he has so signally emerged, and—if I may be permitted to adapt the words of a modern poet— And when we die, who shall remember Joe Crabtree of the West country? But I would not end upon a note of sadness: I would close rather upon one of assured confidence. Crabtree is with the immortals, in that serene country where the fluctuating winds of literary fashion die upon the listening air, and where, in the words of his great Augustan brother-poet, Still green with bays each ancient altar stands Above the reach of sacrilegious hands.

2 TOWARDS A CRABTREE BIBLIOGRAPHY Arthur Brown 1955

Scientific bibliography is scarcely yet removed from infancy, and as far as Crabtree is concerned it is, if I may be permitted to extend the metaphor, still in a pre-natal condition, or has been until this evening, and the birth pangs are likely to be long and arduous. The story I have to relate of the search for an occasional discovery of items which we may legitimately suppose to have come from the pen of Joseph Crabtree is far from being one of unqualified success. Bitter disappointments there have been, as for example in the now almost inevitable rejection from the canon of the hitherto uncritically accepted Ode to a Coral Insect, a unique copy of which exists in the Morgan Library; for, as my friend John Crow has pointed out with his customary acumen, the imprint, Printed by Amos White, S.J., Whimajoes St., East Romishwold. 1837, is open to the gravest suspicion, since both Amos White, S.J., and Whimajoes St. are in fact anagrams of Thomas J. Wise, and, still more sinister, East Romishwold an anagram of Thomas Lord Wise. Into what delusions of grandeur this unhappy man was led when he added Crabtree to his list of victims! We can ill afford to lose this work from the canon, yet the hard facts must be faced. My predecessor spoke with feeling of the conspiracy of silence which seemed to have surrounded hitherto the facts of Crabtree’s life; I will add that as far as his bibliography is concerned, the conspiracy seems to have been not only one of silence, but also one of deliberate fraud, forgery, deception and downright theft, and I hope to be able to show this evening that in this particular aspect of Crabtree studies, as in so many others, little can be taken as its face value. One or two previous attributions fortunately remain unchallenged, and should be mentioned before we pass to more controversial matters. Pride of place must undoubtedly be given to the Ars Salutandi, from which our past president has from time to time printed extracts, and it is earnestly to be hoped that an editor will soon be found capable of producing a definitive version from the four fragments of manuscripts—one apparently the author’s foul papers, two presentation copies but unfortunately preserving different sections of the work, and the fourth a piece of printer’s waste—and the three fragments of printed copies, none dated and all

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apparently consisting of a high proportion of uncorrected formes. It is a task which may well daunt a Bowers or a Greg, but without its completion we shall be unable to assess finally the full extent of Crabtree’s contribution to English letters. It will be seen, incidentally, from the textual situation here outlined, how much progress has been made in the discovery of Crabtree items since Professor Guggenheim’s reference, in his letter to the Times Literary Supplement in 1923, to a single manuscript only of this work. The Ode on Claret and the sonnet written immediately after his liaison with Annette Vallon have already been referred to by my predecessor, and need no more than a passing mention here; their position in the canon is as firm as anything is ever likely to be. Nor must we forget the inimitable drinking song, ‘We march we know not whither’, with its haunting single line refrain, ‘Great unaffected vampires and the moon’, which tradition has it was chanted by certain elements of Wellington’s army at Waterloo. But when these have been mentioned, we have for all practical purposes come to an end of the material which has so far been generally available for the student of Joseph Crabtree. To some extent Crabtree himself is to blame for this, for the habit of concealing all his out-of-business activities from his uncle, indeed from his family generally, led him either to disguise in some way or even to suppress entirely his name on any of his published works. And once this habit became known to a number of the less scrupulous members of the literary profession of the time, it was not long before they were taking for themselves credit for work which was far beyond their capacity. Crabtree, of course, was unable to protest, and the result has been catastrophic in all matters pertaining to the true attribution of poems written between 1763 and 1854. It may be objected that in 1763 Crabtree was, in fact, only nine years old, and therefore hardly likely to have been engaged in serious poetic activity. This, gentlemen, is seriously to underestimate the powers of our poet. My friend, Charles Peake has kindly drawn my attention to an item which shows that in this very year no less a man than Dr. Johnson himself was already taking notice, and not altogether friendly notice, of this young versifier. On July 1, 1763, Boswell reports him as remarking of the poet Churchill: ‘No, Sir, I called the fellow a blockhead at first, and I will call him a blockhead still. However, I will acknowledge that I have a better opinion of him now than I once had, for he has shown more fertility than I expected. To be sure, he is a tree than cannot produce good fruit; he only bears crabs. But, Sir, a tree that produces a good many crabs is better than a tree that produces only a few.’ Boswell tells us that this was said of Churchill, and he may be right; but I venture to suggest that we are here faced with what I may call a confusion of layers of reference in the mind of the great doctor, and that he was in fact thinking of the young Joseph Crabtree, whose fertility now, at the age of nine, as later, was to surprise so many people. For the bibliographer this remark by Dr. Johnson has great

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significance; it means that already by 1763 the young Joseph was startling the learned world with his tremendous output, and it means too that his actual period of poetic activity was much greater than that of the majority of his contemporaries. The field to be gleaned is a vast one indeed. We may well ask, then, what has become of all this material? I am of the opinion that most of it still undoubtedly exists, but has been either purloined by lesser poets, or attributed to them by scholars ignorant of the superior claims of Joseph Crabtree, or simply classified as anonymous by weary librarians. As a single illustration of some of the principles and methods involved and of some of the puzzles to be faced, I put before you now a group of poems hitherto completely misunderstood which I am able, with some confidence, to assert to be Crabtree’s Between 1773 and 1782, precisely the period of Crabtree’s lif about which we know least, between his departure from Oxford and his venture to France with the wineshippers, were published the following poems by a man who called himself Malcolm M’Greggor (with two g’s) of Knightsbridge: (1) An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers, ControllerGeneral of His Majesty’s Works, and author of a late dissertation on gardening. (2) An Heroic Postscript to the Public, occasioned by the favourable reception of the Heroic Epistle. (3) Ode to Mr. Pinchbeck upon his newly invented patent Candle-snuffers. (4) An Epistle to Dr. Shebbeare. (5) An Ode to Sir Fletcher Norton. (6) A Political Eclogue called The Dean and the Squire. These poems were at first attributed to the Reverend William Mason—for no one, significantly enough, seems to have taken the name ‘Malcolm M’Greggor’ seriously—although Mason himself denied that they were his, and one of his biographers, asserting that they cannot be his, even suggests that they might be Churchill’s, whose name, you will remember, was in Dr. Johnson’s mind inextricably tangled with that of Joseph Crabtree. There the matter seems to have rested until now, and now I believe I am in a position to identify Malcolm M’Greggor as no other than Joseph Crabtree. We know already that Crabtree was adept at disguising his name, and for very good reasons. I may perhaps be forgiven for reminding you of the discovery in Cambridge a few years ago of a manuscript bearing the enigmatic inscription ‘Radix Chancer’ (or ‘Regula Chancer’ as I believe some people prefer to read it); you will remember how one misguided scholar was led into the rash proclamation that his had something to do with Chaucer. We, of course, knew better, and with silent satisfaction noted yet one more example of the light-hearted punning on his own name so characteristic of our poet, this time during the brief period of his employment as a binder in the Cambridge University Library. With this habit of his in mind, I would ask you to consider the third of the poems I have just mentioned, the Ode to Mr. Pinchbeck. It is in the advertisement to this that the poet first gives his name as M’Greggor and says: ‘Ever since

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my first publication, the curiosity, not to say anxiety, of the world concerning my name, has been so great, that it has frequently given me pain to conceal what the world will now see it was not possibly in my power to disclose.’ He then explains this by reference to the cloud under which the clan M’Greggor had until recently been, and goes on to make so much play with the notion that he is what he is pleased to call ‘a Scotchman’ that one begins very soon to suspect that this is all still more elaborate disguising. That his own contemporaries also suspected this is clear from their ascription of the poems to Mason and others. But had they looked more closely at the title, the very odd title, let me add, of the second poem, An Heroic Postscript, bearing in mind Crabtree’s fondness for word play, they would have found that it was in fact a rough but none the less recognisable anagram of’ Ioseph Crabtree No Scot’; the omission of two unimportant vowels imate and common devices of scholarship, and need offend no ones and the easy substitution of p for b are, you will agree, perfectly legitconscience. Now the true significance of the phrase ‘it has frequently given me pain to conceal what…it was not possibly in my power to disclose’ is apparent; it really means very little for a name like M’Greggor, but young Crabtree knew that the revelation of his poet ical activities to his family would have meant serious trouble. He disguised himself well; but he also left clues for those who were intent on finding them. The anagram is one, and a second is the somewhat unusual reference to a Cocoa Tree in a note to The Dean and the Squire, while it is surely not too fanciful to see a third in a further note which begins, ‘Many trees, shrubs and flowers, sayeth Li-Tsong, a Chinese author of great antiquity, thrive best in low, moist situations’; the almost autobiographical touch here is too clear to be ignored. It is just possible that Thomas Wise worked out this identification, and that this tempted him into doing something rather similar in his attempt to pass off the Ode to a Coral Insect as Crabtree’s, but he certainly left no record of it otherwise. The scholarly bibliographer, of course, will not take too much account of internal and stylistic evidence from the content of the poems, but it is hard not to believe that the opening couplet from the Epistle to Dr. Shebbeare, O for a thousand tongues, and every tongue Like Johnson’s, arm’d with words of six feet long… is an attempt on Crabtree’s part to avenge the slight cast upon his childhood precocity by the great doctor. In this connection, too, I am inclined to suspect the hitherto unchallenged attribution to Soames Jenyns of the well-known epitaph on Johnson: Here lies Sam Johnson; reader, have a care, Tread lightly, lest you wake a sleeping bear…

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I draw your attention to the fact that Crabtree, under the pseudonym M’Greggor, dedicated The Dean and the Squire to Jenyns, so that there is clearly ground for suspecting confusion between them; also that Crabtree was perhaps more than most people inclined to shoot at Johnson on all possible occasions, an idiosyncrasy which no doubt a child psychologist could easily explain; finally, and most important, that Crabtree was the acknowledged writer of tombstone verses and epitaphs at this time—I feel sure that Professor Sutherland will agree with me that Wordsworth’s Essay upon Epitaphs is undoubtedly inspired by his friend’s prowess in this respect. However, the possible theft by Jenyns of verses by Crabtree, or simply the wrong ascription of these by later scholars, are matters which I leave for more detailed study by others; but it is certainly a promising line of research. For the moment let us return to Dr. Shebbeare, and hear the interesting lines which follow the couplet I have just read: …arm’d with words of six feet long In multitudinous vociferation To panegyricize this glorious nation, Whose liberty results from her taxation. O for that passive, pensionary spirit, That by its prostitution proves its merit! That rests on right divine all regal claims, And gives to George whate’er it gave to James! It may be thought that the addition of some half-dozen poems to the Crabtree canon is a particularly meagre contribution to his scholarship in the course of a year. I have had several factors in mind, however, not the least being the warning by my predecessor that in these affairs we must proceed with cautious speculation and scholarly deduction; so much damage has been done in the past to our poet’s reputation that we to whom the sacred trust has now fallen must always beware of rushing headlong into rash conclusions. Furthermore, I have had in mind the fact that this is an oration and not a lecture in the narrower sense, an occasion upon which we pay tribute to the poet primarily, and only as a secondary consideration deal with some of the fruits of that research which is going on all the time. For this reason I hope I may be allowed in my remaining few minutes to digress a little from my main theme to bring to your attention some interesting aspects of the influence of Crabtree in America; although I speak of this as a digression these aspects have, as you will see, some significance for future studies in the poet’s bibliography. Much of the material has reached me through the generosity of Mr. Lansing Hammond

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of the Commonwealth Fund in New York. During his vacation in Maine, Mr. Hammond spent a good deal of time investigating (if he will allow the word) a family of settlers in that neighbourhood by the name of Crabtree; he had access to both published and unpublished material, and it is clear from what he tells me of these people that they were undoubtedly of the same family as our poet, although the exact relationship has yet to be worked out. The first permanent settler in the vicinity of Hancock Point, Maine, was Captain Agreen Crabtree, who arrived there in 1764, only a year, you will notice, after Dr. Johnson’s reference to his precocious young relation. Agreen died in 1808 at the age of sixty-four, is known to have been a staunch supporter of the Mother Country, and during the War of Independence built a fort on his farm, and mounted there two brass cannons to defend himself if necessary against the rebels; it does not seem to be known whether he ever actually fired them. Agreen’s son, Deacon George (1771–1862), served in the First Baptist Church at Hancock and acted as Deputy Collector of Customs. The poetical strain in him is exemplified by one brief remark, which I am sure will appeal to my predecessor, and which also links up with Wordsworth’s reference to the Crabtree interest in angling; George, on being asked how the fish were biting, replied that ‘trout went after his fly like an angry god after sinners.’ Of George’s son, Ephraim, it is significant that one writer, knowing nothing of his connection with Joseph, said that he was not a poet, but was the kind of man about whom poetry was written. He had a reputation for taciturnity. He spent many months courting his wife, Maria, who steadfastly refused to accept his proposals. One afternoon he drove her across what appeared to be a shallow ford, but which was in reality the tidal strip which makes an island of what is now known as Crabtree Neck. He then asked, ‘If you and I were alone on an island, would you accept?’ She guessed she would, and on being told the true situation capitulated with good grace. Once married Ephraim said, ‘Do you love me?’ ‘Yes,’ was the reply ‘Well, I love you too, and now we know that, let’s say no more about it.’ Tradition has it that they never did, and at the reading of Ephraim’s will, which began conventionally ‘I do give and bequeath to my dearly beloved wife…’ Maria is reported to have muttered, ‘I guess it’s all right, but that don’t sound like Ephraim.’ Surely we have in Agreen, George and Ephraim blood relations of the poet Joseph; they are either poets themselves, however mute and inglorious, or they are the kind of men about whom poems were written. Their influence in the country of their adoption is apparent first in the place names of Maine, in Crabtree Neck, Crabtree Point, and the Crabtree Ledge Light at Hancock Point. More indirectly they have affected Folk Lore as far away as Los Angeles, where a strip cartoon in one of the Sunday papers, featuring the miraculous discovery of a new author, has him addressing ‘Crabtree Corner’s Literary Circle.’ All these matters, gentlemen, are of the greatest importance in our

THE CRABTREE ORATIONS 1954–1994 15

future researches. For who knows what precious family manuscripts, or even the earliest printed works of the young Joseph, were lovingly smuggled by Agreen into his chest when he set out for the new world, later to be affectionately pored over in that log cabin in Maine? No efficient search has yet been made for them, yet there are signs here and there in the United States of an influence which could have come from nothing else but the communication to friends and neighbours of the magic lines inscribed in them. Slight progress has been made, and it has been possible to indicate some promising lines of research; but Crabtree bibliographers of the future must realise that their efforts can no longer be concentrated on one side of the Atlantic only. I do not know what Byron would have said, but we may say with Chesterton that There is good news yet to hear, and fine things to be seen before we have accounted for all the work of Joseph Crabtree.

3 THE ICONOGRAPHY OF CRABTREE Terence Spencer 1956

The study of the portraiture of Crabtree is based upon the impregnable rock of the Sutherland picture, which, hanging before you and washed by the annual tide of scepticism, remains indisputable in pedigree and provenance. Yet many of us must confess to a certain feeling of dissatisfaction as we gaze at the portrait. It does not quite fulfil the high expectations we form of one whom Tennyson described in those eulogistic verses, The Poet, as Dower’d with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love. The figure in this picture appears, superficially at any rate, although not exactly stark, to be dowered with very little in the way of sensibility. And I can sympathise with that great critic who, gazing upon the portrait, uttered the sullen censure, ‘If Crabtree, the less Crabtree he!’ Precious to us would be a portrait of the poet in the glory of early youth—that he could come back into memory like as he was in the dayspring of his fancy, with hope like a fiery column before him, the dark pillar not yet turned; some pictorial image which would correspond to those verbal descriptions that we have of him, his poet’s eyes in a fine frenzy reeling, his characteristic pose, those powerful, nimble hands, the left habitually plunged into his waistcoat, ‘leaving his right hand free’, as one of his contemporaries nobly described it, ‘for the adornment of his discourse and for the manipulation of his liquor’. The invention of photography, which has in so many different ways increased the public stock of harmful pleasures, has yet bestowed one benefit upon the biographer of modern men of letters. It has given him a new sense of the Seven Ages of Man. Photographs are preserved and become available to the biographer. And, as we gaze upon those mechanical portraits which interleave the biographies of the great, we can observe how, from youth to senility, the human face divine is slowly and progressively tainted by strife, tarnished by misfortune, and ravaged by success. We can see Rimbaud in his first communion suit and pursue that

THE CRABTREE ORATIONS 1954–1994 17

unhappy countenance through care and corruption to his convulsive conclusion. We can see the sprightly and hopeful face of Thomas Hardy as a student at King’s College, London, and watch its metamorphosis into the tired and wizened old gentleman of Max Gate. Now although a few specimens of the early work of Fox Talbot in the Gernsheim Collection could tentatively be identified with Crabtree, the greater part of our poet’s life was passed in the age before photography, and his elusive personality was not often caught by the portrait painters, although several of them, expecting a return of their friendly advances, made every effort to do so. And it is unfortunate that the portraiture of Crabtree in his earlier and more interesting years derives principally from hostile, even from calumniating, sources. Unlucky in life and unlucky in death, Crabtree cannot be regarded as well served in the portraits which have been bequeathed to posterity. That he should be included, along with many other poets and men of letters of his age, in Benjamin Haydon’s great painting of Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem was to be expected. It is disappointing, however, to observe that it was for the figure of Judas that Haydon made use of Crabtree’s physiognomy. This is now common knowledge. Haydon’s joke (and we can only regard it as a joke in very bad taste) seems to have been known to a limited circle at the time. It was just one more of those little misfortunes or indiscretions which have befogged our Crabtree’s reputation and wrapped him in a cloud of unknowing from which he is at length beginning to emerge. I now wish to inform members of the Foundation about a modest discovery of my own, which has provided a new portrait of Crabtree and which throws light on the hitherto obscure quarrel between Crabtree and William Blake. And I must say, to begin with, that the evidence I am going to produce is something that I would very willingly have suppressed, had it been in my power to do so. But trained as we all have been from our early years in scholarly impartiality and a disinterested devotion to plausibility, we can learn to face whatever revelations or discoveries each year brings forth. To any members of the Foundation who may complain that I am not doing honour to Crabtree by bringing these facts to light, I can only reply that this hurts me more than it hurts you. As our poet himself has said in one of his fascinating though despondent gnomic verses: For want of me the world’s work will not fail; When all is said and done, we lie and rot. They say the truth is great, and shall prevail; But who cares, whether it prevail or not! It is in a comparable mood of manly disillusionment, gentlemen, that we should approach the biographical problems of the poet whom we honour tonight.

18 TERENCE SPENCER

There is no record to help us to decide when Crabtree and Blake first became acquainted. They were nearly of the same age, and it seems likely that the ripening of their friendship, and its putrescence, took place in that obscure decade between 1773, when Crabtree was finally sent down by his University, and 1783, the date of his departure for France. Two such vital personalities (however close their sympathies might be in some respects) were bound to clash eventually; the graceful condescension of Crabtree was unable to mollify the rugged plebeian independence of Blake, who soon began to write in his notebooks mildly satirical epigrams about his friend, such as: A petty sneaking knave I knew, O Mr. Crabtree, how do you do! Now Blake was, of course, decent enough to write in his notebook ‘Cr—’ for the name, and modern editors have filled in the blank with the name of Cromek, an obscure picture-dealer of the time. But, considering all the circumstances, knowing all the circumstances as we do, we can hardly doubt that it was Crabtree whom Blake had in mind. I now wish to draw your attention to a curious fragment of Henry Crabb Robinson’s Diary, hitherto misunderstood and mis-transcribed, eluding the interpretative scrutiny even of Professor Edith Morley. Crabb Robinson, you will recall, on several occasions between 1811 and 1827 visited William Blake and left records of his conversations with him. Among a series of miscellaneous notes of their discussions appears this strange statement: ‘Crabb Robins on flees ghost’. So I am aware, no satisfactory explanation has ever been suggested for these words. There seems to be no record of Crabb Robinson’s having run away from a spiritual presence of any kind. But an examination of the manuscript reveals that what the transcriber supposed to be written was ‘Crabb R. flees ghost’. And this supposed ‘R’ was expanded to ‘Robinson’. But the genuine reading (in which I have been confirmed by the palaeographical expertise of several of my former colleagues at University College) is unquestionably ‘Crabtree flea’s ghost’ and the second word is not a verb, as had been supposed, but a noun. That is to say, ‘Crabtree is the ghost of a flea’. Now The Ghost of a Flea is one of Blake’s most famous drawings, one of those fantastical ‘spiritual forms’ with which he amused and amazed his friends. Here, then, we have the remarkable piece of evidence that Blake admitted to Crabb Robinson that his drawing of The Ghost of a Flea (which can be dated approximately 1810) represented Crabtree. Armed with this piece of information, a glance at the original will dispel all doubt. Even apart from the documentary evidence, the likeness with the Sutherland portrait is indisputable. There is the same chin of doubtful direction. There is the same curious pouchiness about the lower left jaw, a

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sort of one-sided dewlap, with some censorious observers have attributed to the effects of apoplectic fits which afflicted our poet in his middle years— those recurring bouts so pathetically referred to in his beautiful sonnet beginning Another year, another deadly stroke…. Now it will not surprise us to find Crabtree referred to as a ghost. Indeed, it cannot be denied that there is something unsubstantial about Crabtree, whose wraith-like figure flits to and fro in the literary history of the great century from 1754 to 1854. A hostile critic might even suggest that not only was there something unsubstantial about Crabtree, but that all our Crabtree studies are immaterial. Nor, on the other hand, need we be disconcerted to hear Crabtree referred to as a flea. We are men of the world, and we know that settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea is one of the recurring, indeed abiding, problems of literary criticism; there is much discriminating work going on in all the Universities of the English-speaking world in order to decide literary problems of precisely that magnitude. No, we need feel no resentment at finding our poet referred to as a flea. But to have him described—not only described, but also cruelly caricatured—as the ghost of a flea, may be going too far. And I think that even the most lively historical imagination feels a certain withdrawal of sympathy from Blake at this moment, when he was willing to immortalize his old friend, to whom he owed so much in the way of poetic stimulus, in this savage way. But the facts speak for themselves; the argument is conclusive; the facial resemblance is indisput able. The judgment of Blake upon Crabtree must be regarded as yet another melancholy example of how one great man may misunderstand another. If we recall what Johnson thought of Gray, what Wordsworth thought of Keats, what Byron thought of Wordsworth, or what we think of one another, then we need not be surprised at what Blake thought of Crabtree. We have one further glimpse of Crabtree before the curtain falls upon his strange eventful history. You will perhaps recall that letter written by Edward Lear to Tennyson in his later years, in which Lear described some of the circumstances of his early life—those days in which he used to wander about the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park, making drawings for his great work on Tortoises, Terrapins, and Turtles. In that letter Edward Lear tells us how he and his companions were struck by the appearance of an elderly gentleman notable for the sweet melancholy of his expression, and for a nose prominent, multitudinous, incarnadine, a countenance at once bardic and Bardolfian; how they, with youthful irreverence, nicknamed this impressive, portentous figure, ‘The Dong’. It was a memory which lingered long in the mind of Lear, maturing by a dark

20 TERENCE SPENCER

inscrutable workmanship, and eventually inspiring him to an outburst of lyric poetry of unwonted glow and splendour. Crabtree (for it can have been none other than he) must have been at this time in his middle seventies: iam senior, sed cruda deo viridisque senectus. It is pleasant for us to remember how Crabtree, who began his poetical career by being castigated by Dr. Johnson, should have lived long enough to be the fit subject for one of the most profoundly romantic and, I may say, luminous poems of the nineteenth century. It is in this mood that I ask now to take leave of Crabtree and conclude my brief and, you may think, unworthy remarks on the physical form in which he lived and moved and had his being among his fellow-men. The moral of our Crabtree studies is the moral of all our studies. In the words of the sublime Burke, ‘Shadows we are, and shadows we pursue’. Whilst all melts under our feet, we may well grasp at an exquisite passion for this figure who somehow seems to have liberated himself from the confines of space, time, and probabilty. In our studies of Crabtree, between the idea and the reality, falls no shadow; between the desire and the potency, falls no shadow; between the conception and the creation, falls no shadow. And this is the reason why, for long years to come, Crabtree is the source whence we and our successors will unceasingly drink inspiration—that Crabtree who will retain his incomparable place in our regard as one of his contemporaries conclusively described him: The loftiest star of unascended heaven Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.

4 CRABTREE AND SCIENCE R.V.Jones 1957

Joseph Crabtree is no less unrecognized for his science than for his poetry, and it is therefore my first intention tonight to trace the impact of his intellect on the men of science of his generation. At the same time my researches have led me to a few fragments of his literary life which I believe have not previously been reported and which I offer with due deference for the attention of the scholars of our Foundation. Crabtree’s boyhood was spent in the town of his birth, Chipping Sodbury. We hear of him being called ‘Cuckoo Crabtree’, or more familiarly ‘Cuckoo Joe’ by his schoolfellows, who thus anticipated Wordsworth’s cogent observation that the child is father of the man; and although it is not easy to discern many details of this phase of his life, it is clear that his major interests were already beginning to develop. One scintilla from an early poem has been discovered by our friend Dr. C.K.Ogden in the library of the Athenaeum. Dr. Ogden says that his task was not made easier by the curious shelving system in the library which places Anaesthetics alongside Aesthetics, but he made his discovery while pursuing a suspicion that Sir Walter Scott had adapted some of Crabtree’s verses for his own poems. Scott’s parody can easily be recognized from Dr. Ogden’s original: One clouded hour of glorious wife Is worth a sage without a dame. For a century it was unsuspected that Scott had adapted these verses, but there is now no doubt that they were written before 1770, and Dr. Ogden has tentatively ascribed them to Crabtree. This is all the more credible when we realize—and we shall find more evidence for this—that Scott had a strong if unconscious partiality for Crabtree’s work. In the eighteenth century, so different from the present, it was still possible for a man to be a gentleman and a scientist; and the develop ment of Crabtree’s pubescent flair for amorous verse before he left school was already parallelled by an interest in natural science. He cherished a deep respect for Newton, not only because of his achievements as a scientist, but

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also because of his boyish tricks. Young Newton had scared his neighbours by hoisting a small lantern in a kite at night, giving rise to an early Flying Saucer report; Crabtree read of this escapade and repeated it with some success at Chipping Sodbury. It happened that the light frightened his schoolmaster, who was out poaching at the time, so much so that Crabtree thereafter had all the poaching to himself. Crabtree thenceforward became a fervent believer in everything that Newton said, and he sometimes took as gospel statements which Newton had intended only as guesses. One such surmise was to have a profound effect on Crabtree and indeed, through him, on the development of electricity. Newton, of course, is famous for his inverse square law of gravitation. It is not quite so well known that he tried to investigate the law of force between magnets, and surmised that the force between them must vary inversely as the cube of the distance between them. The power of gravity is of a different nature from the power of magnetism…. The power of magnetism in receding from the magnet decreases not in the duplicate but almost in the triplicate ratio as nearly as I could judge from some rude observations. Principia. Bk. III Newton was in fact right, but the forces between single magnetic poles, or between electrostatic charges, turn out to obey an inverse square law like that of gravitation. It is hardly to Crabtree’s discredit that his young mind should not have been able to distinguish between poles, which in any event are fictions, and whole magnets, and he grew up therefore in the belief that Newton had said that magnetism and electrostatic force were governed by an inverse cube law. Crabtree was coming to the end of his school years when he first saw Priestley’s History of Electricity, published in 1767, and he avidly read this History right through. Now when Priestley wrote the bulk of his great work, the law of force between poles and charges was still unknown, but he added an appendix of remarkable interest relating an experiment which had just been described by his friend Dr. Benjamin Franklin. This showed that there was no force on a charged pith ball inside a charged hollow conductor, and Priestley concluded with the brilliant surmise: May we not infer from this experiment that the attraction of electricity is subject to the same laws with that of gravitation, and is therefore according to the squares of the distances…? And we can vividly picture the young Crabtree writing in the margin: ‘No!’ It happens that in a copy of Priestley’s History in the Natural Philosophy Library at Aberdeen there is indeed a ‘No!’ pencilled in a youthful hand at

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this very point. Dare we hope that this copy was that originally read by Crabtree? If anyone thinks that this would be too much of a coincidence, let him contemplate that it is far less improbable than the coincidence that the moon should be of precisely the right size and in the right place to eclipse the sun with exactitude. Crabtree’s disbelief in the inverse square law was to have a profound effect on the development of electrical science, for his forceful wrath would descend on any man of science who dared to support the law of the inverse square. Even after Crabtree went to France in 1783 he felt so strongly that he returned to Birmingham in 1791 to foment the mob against Priestley, coupling the heresy of the inverse square, which they could not understand, with Priestley’s pro-Americanism, which they could. They wrecked Priestley’s house, and burned the History of Electricity. Priestley and his family escaped with their lives, and shortly afterwards emigrated to America. All this, however, lay twenty years in the future, and in the meantime another man of science had earned Crabtree’s enmity even before he left school. Edward Jenner, the renowned discoverer of vaccination, was a Gloucestershire man, and indeed was apprenticed to a surgeon, Mr. Ludlow, of Chipping Sodbury while Crabtree was completing his school days. The original cause of their rivalry is not altogether clear. Some Crabtree scholars have ascribed it to Jenner’s poking, fun at Crabtree in the title of his first paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society: The Natural History of the Cuckoo. While superficial chrronology might make this praiseworthy suggestion difficult to accept (the Cuckoo paper was published nearly twenty years after Crabtree left school), it is clear that Crabtree’s nickname stayed with him in later life, for Wordsworth immortalized his joy in 1802, on learning that Crabtree was not dead, by his poem To The Cuckoo: The same whom in my schoolboy days I listened to; that Cry Which made me look a thousand ways In bush, and tree, and sky. And I can listen to thee yet; Can lie upon the plain And listen, till I do beget That golden time again. Perhaps the two similarly strong characters of Crabtree and Jenner were bound to clash. The latter’s biographer says of him that in addition to being a man of science he was a fair musician and a poet, again reminding us of the liberal outlook of the eighteenth century gentleman. Perhaps Jenner supported the inverse square law. Perhaps he wrote a prettier poem

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than Crabtree. Perhaps he had a greater success with the wenches of Sodbury. Whatever the cause, the rivalry dogged Jenner’s career, and Crabtree had what we must admit was his unworthy way. While Crabtree was frolicking in Oxford, and diverting himself in France, Jenner was painstakingly feeling his way towards vaccination, and laying the foundations of his fame. Crabtree enviously saw his Sodbury rival rise to international recognition, and set to work to frustrate his greatest ambition, the Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians. Such was Crabtree’s power of intrigue and persuasion that he succeeded in 1813 in getting the authorities of the College to refuse a Fellowship to Jenner, already a world famous figure, unless he would sit an examination in classics. Now Jenner had been a good classical scholar at school, and would have been able to pass any examination easily, but he resented the affront to his dignity, and he refused to sit. The effect on English educationalists was deep: the fact that the College of Physicians attached so much importance to classics as to brook not even the exception of Jenner was a lesson not lost on Arnold of Rugby and Cardinal Newman. The martyrdom of Jenner was in vain and the English public schools were lost to the Humanities. But Jenner had the last word. When he heard of the success of Crabtree’s campaign he sent Crabtree a note with just a single sentence showing his command of Latin. It read ‘POX VOBISCUM’, which from the inventor of vaccination meant all that it said. While wine and women may have been Crabtree’s main preoccupations in Orleans, he still pursued his campaign against the inverse square law. He soon met and annoyed Coulomb, who worked at Blois, only forty miles away. Coulomb had not much to fear from Crabtree’s influence in France, but it was otherwise with Cavendish in England. Cavendish’s electrical researches were one of the gems of the eighteenth century. His discoveries anticipated by fifty years many of those published in the nineteenth century, but they remained unknown until 1879, when they were edited and published by Maxwell. Why did Cavendish suppress them? Could not the answer well be that he feared the consequences of publishing discoveries which contained or implied the inverse square law of electrostatics and magnetism? This, of course, applied to all his work in electricity. When we reflect on what befell Priestley, for even hinting at the inverse square law, the silence of Cavendish is a mystery no longer. He was a nervous man, quite unable to stand up with Priestley’s courage before a mob blindly infuriated by Crabtree reciting his poem that begins Infidel from Newton by whose hand The mighty inverse cube doth stand Who claims instead the square inverse Or inverse fourth or something worse.

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And so Cavendish chose silence and safety. Crabtree’s other anathema was the wave theory of light revived by Thomas Young, for the authority of Newton had been thrown on the side of the corpuscular theory. It is not widely known that the celebrated attack of Lord Brougham in the Edinburgh Review on Young and his theory was inspired by Crabtree. Young, however, seems to have been aware of the origin of the attack, for it entered into his subconscious mind to reappear in a dispute that he was having with Fresnel. Fresnel’s work, Young said, was to his own as the apple is to the tree. Young may have originally said ‘crab’ for ‘apple’, but decided that this would give unnecessary offence. Young became Professor at the Royal Institution, and Crabtree was wont to attend the Friday evening discourses afterwards made so popular by Faraday. Crabtree’s last contribution to science, unwwritting though it may have been, was indeed a memorable one. It was in 1846, when as an old man of 92 he sat with a venerable glare, in the front row of a Friday evening audience awaiting a discourse from Charles Wheatstone. It is curious that Wheatstone should now be famous for the bridge, which he did not invent, while few of us credit him with the mouth-organ, which he did. Wheatstone, like Cavendish, was nervous, and it is known that one Friday evening he absconded through fright when about to deliver a discourse on his electromagnetic chronoscope. Faraday, going into the lecturers’ room, found that he had disappeared, and delivered an impromptu discourse in his stead. Ever since that time a show is made of guarding the lecturer in the last few minutes before he enters the lecture theatre, so that the Wheatstone fiasco is not repeated. It seems clear that Wheatstone’s defection was not a normal loss of nerve—after all, even though nervous, he had lectured many times before. Knowing that he was going to lecture about one of his instruments, whose working was based on the inverse square law, and visualizing old Crabtree’s snowy but glowering head resting with clasped hands on his stick, can we not picture Wheatstone’s panic? Crabtree, though old, was still to be feared, and Wheatstone—like Cavendish—declined to face him. Wheatstone’s flight had interesting results, for Faraday filled in the gap by talking speculatively of his thoughts on ‘Ray-vibrations’. All this is well documented, both in the published discourse, and in Faraday’s letters (Researches in Chemistry and Physics, London, 1859). Whether Faraday would ever have published his thoughts except in such an emergency we do not know, but he certainly excused their unusually speculative nature on this ground: I do not think I should have allowed these notions to have escaped from me, had I not been led unawares, and without previous consideration, by the circumstances of the evening on which I had to appear suddenly and occupy the place of another.

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They were read by Maxwell, who afterwards acknowledged that they were what first led him to conceive of the electromagnetic theory and electromagnetic waves. Thus Crabtree became the unconscious midwife at the birth of electromagnetism. While I have outlined some of Crabtree’s influence on some aspects of natural science much remains to be traced by others. Crabtree’s fervent Newtonianism was well known to every man of science of his day. It is probably the fact that he did no experiments that has caused his name to sink into obscurity, for he rarely committed himself to paper. It may not be out of place to remark the parallel with Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, in the preceding century. Science for Crabtree was a matter of verbal disputation, perhaps to be supported by physical violence if necessary. Men of science of the Napoleonic era knew him for what he was, a man to be feared, and one of them, Sir Humphry Davy, entered into a strange deception with Coleridge. I made the discovery by accident when looking into the possibility that Crabtree had paid a visit to Scotland. Once again I found the annoying confusion between Crabtree and George Crabbe. Crabbe is given full credit by the Encyclopedia Britannica for a passion for the truth, naked and unashamed. ‘If’ it says, ‘he laid more stress on the seamy side of village life, it was because that side of it was more familiar to him’. Why does it fail to realize that this was given even more true of Crabtree? Crabbe, it appears, stayed with Sir Walter Scott in Edinburgh in 1822, when his visit was complicated by the fact that George IV went to Edinburgh at the same time. Lockhart, Scott’s biographer, gives a diverting account of some of the complications, but he seems to have no suspicion that Crabtree may have been mixed up with them. However, I believed that Scott must have had some contact with Crabtree, particularly in view of Dr. Ogden’s discovery, and so I continued to look for clues in Lockhart. It was thus that I found the surprising incident involving Coleridge. What occurred cannot now be exactly established, for we have two accounts of the episode, one by Coleridge himself, and the other by Lockhart, and they do not entirely agree. I therefore submit my own interpretation of the evidence, for the consideration of other Crabtree scholars; the accuracy of the facts can be checked by reference to Lockhart and Coleridge. Scott was visiting London in 1809, and was invited by Sotheby to a dinner party ‘with men of celebrity in science, or polite literature’. Coleridge and Humphry Davy were among the company. After dinner, Scott was invited to recite a poem and, fearing a hostile reception, promptly repeated one entitled Fire, Famine, and Slaughter which he had read in the Morning Post. Now the poem had been published anonymously, but Lockhart claimed that Scott suspected that it had been written by Coleridge. Coleridge in his version was positive that neither Scott nor anyone else, except Humphry Davy, suspected him of being the author, and

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indeed it is not easy to see why Scott should have recited one of Coleridge’s poems in the circumstances. I suggest that the reason that Coleridge could say so positively that few suspected him of being the author was that he knew quite well that he was not the author; that the poem was in fact Crabtree’s, whose robust style was so well known. The very title is uncharacteristic of Coleridge; it fits far better with Crabtree’s perpetual sense of impending doom. He may have been inspired by the last line of a play by Davenant, whom he much admired. However that may be, the company fell to criticizing the poem as soon as Scott had finished. At that point Coleridge saw a chance of killing several birds with one stone: he afterwards recorded that when the criticism mounted My voice faltered a little for I was somewhat agitated….At length I brought out these words: ‘I must confess now, Sir, that I am the author of that poem’. He thus succeeded in astonishing and embarrassing the company, in bewildering Scott, and of robbing Crabtree of what posterity would have recognized as one of his most famous poems. Now why should Coleridge thus cheat Crabtree? The answer is simple: Coleridge knew the truth about Annette Vallon, and he had always resented what he regarded as Crabtree’s imposition on their friend Wordsworth, who had confided in him about Annette. Here was a chance to teach Crabtree a lesson. Crabtree, of course, was unable to claim his own on this occasion, precisely because he knew that Coleridge could ruin him by telling how he failed to claim his own in Orleans. The whole incident, however, preyed on the sensitive mind of Coleridge. He felt that the world suspected him—so much so that when his poems were collected and published he included a special appendix to the first volume (p.274 of the 1836 edition) which provides what he calls ‘an apologetic preface’ to Fire, Famine and Slaughter. Obviously he was very worried about this poem, for none of the other one hundred and twenty two poems of the volume has any apology at all. Coleridge artfully claims that the poem describes the French Revolution in terms such that ‘neither the images nor the feelings were the result of observation, or in any way derived from realities’. Now everyone knew that Crabtree had been in France during the Revolution—which was why he wrote about it—and Coleridge wished by these remarks to dispell any lingering belief in Crabtree ’ s authorship Finally, Coleridge added a clear warning which Crabtree alone could interpret: But if it be asked why I republished it at all, I answer that the poem had been attributed at different times to different other persons; and

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what I had dared beget I thought it neither manly nor honourable not to father. This, we can see now, was a direct reproach to Crabtree for fathering Annette Vallon’s child on to Wordsworth, and a confirmation to Crabtree regarding the motives of Coleridge in this otherwise curious incident. Coleridge had made a full confession to Humphry Davy, but Davy— remembering Crabtree’s opposition to Jenner and other men of science— entirely approved. In return, Coleridge gratefully wrote of Davy in this same preface as a man who would have established himself in the first rank of England’s living poets, if the Genius of our country had decreed that he should rather be the first of its philosophers and scientific benefactors. We can only marvel at what the Genius of our country had mischievously decreed for Joseph Crabtree. For his activities were indeed rich, and any one Orator can lay bare only a few facets. If I have culled a few flowers of science from the garden of Crabtree studies, there are many more waiting for others to pick. I have been unable, for example, to say anything about Crabtree’s Theory of Levity or his ballooning adventures, and can merely remark the coincidence that the first balloon went up in Paris in 1783 within weeks of Crabtree’s arrival in France. I would also like to have discussed the intervention of Crabtree in the historic dispute between Chladni and the French Academy of Sciences, regarding the origin of meteorites. This could be an attractive research, since it has been hinted that the reluctance of the Academy to accept Chladni’s argument for a celestial origin was due in part to the suspicion that Crabtree had been improving the evidence by dropping hot stones from his balloon. I have not pursued his great dispute with Benjamin Franklin, or those spectacular defences of the phlogiston and caloric theories which culminated in Lavoisier’s perishing under the guillotine. These and countless other rarities await the attention of the Crabtree Orators to come.

5 THE FAMILY CRABTREE Hugh Smith 1959

It is the aim, the avowed duty, of each member of the Crabtree Foundation to bring his own discipline to the recovery of the Life and Works of Joseph Crabtree. It is of course recognised in some quarters that the creative imagination is as important a tool in criticism as it is in literature. It relieves the critic of the painful labour of producing facts, and yet it certainly permits the formation of splendid judgements. Whilst it would be false to the aims of the Foundation to admit the propriety of this view at least beyond the narrow limits of judicious illumination and inspiration, my own study must eschew it altogether. I confine myself to a brief and factual inquiry, topographical in its methods and documented from the best sources. I am encouraged to pursue this by the interest that my predecessors have from time to time aroused in the whereabouts of Joseph Crabtree and Joseph Crabtree’s writings. I propose to make a deviation northwards from the now well-established Sodbury-Orleans line to Yorkshire, whence came the great and numerous line of Crabtree. I shall note some of the early circumstances which coloured Crabtree’s mind, provided some of his earlier but essential experiences and perhaps conditioned his moral attitude. The seed of several Yorkshire families multiplied greatl y in the teenth and seventeenth centuries, and the patterns of their territorial spread from their centres of origin appear as certain well-known geometrical figures such as the isosceles triangle, the acute angle or the asterisk. The Crabtree pattern, on the other hand, is that of a setting sun, or, if you belong to the stellar theorists, the better half of a Brunswick cross. The focus of the Crabtree figure is the little hill-side village of Sowerby. Lying in the ultimate confine s of Yorksh between the deep wooded valley of the Calder and the heathercovered moors, it gives shelter to some 600 souls, whose backs are as resolutely turned on their degenerate neighbours in Lancashire as that of a Scotsman is to his native land when Fate and classical education direct his aspirations to a Professorship of English in the University of London. The district I take you to is, as John Crabtree wrote,

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an evil beyond the reach of police regulations; pregnant with mischief, it is the resort of the idle and the dissolute; in its beer shops, the haunt of the poacher and the thief at night, are planned in the daytime the succeeding night’s spoliations; such houses are too often made the receptacle of their plunder, and the tap is kept in a constant state of replenishment from the profit of their illicit depredations. In this region, cold, wet, gruesome and inhospitable in its scenery, one giving home to an outspoken, quarrelsome, keen and astute people, its moors and wooded dales the scenes of the fiercest religious controversies and the most horrible crime alike, the Crabtrees originated and here it was that a young Joe Crabtree appears to have arrived at the age of 12 in the year 1766. Scholarship, like Joseph Crabtree’s paternal grandfather himself, has shown a discreet wisdom in providing for the settlement of this branch of the family to which Crabtree the civil servant and Crabtree the poet were to belong, in the ancient parish of Chipping Sodbury in the southern Cotswolds of Gloucestershire, in a village far from the tribulations of a multitudinous family of inquisitive, critical, and disputatious uncles, aunts and cousins, as incisive in their language as the fruit from which the very family name was derived. Why the young Crabtree was sent on this 200 mile journey to find his early education in Yorkshire is a matter for conjecture, but certain facts of a general nature cannot be ignored. The family tie was indeed a strong one. As a civil servant in the Exchequer and one concerned with the Charities, Crabtree, the poet’s father was well informed of cheap educational resources and doubtless of the residential school established at Rishworth in the parish of Halifax by the will of John Wheelwright some 40 years earlier. By this will, the trustees were To pay the yearly sum of forty pounds to a schoolmaster for ever, sufficientl y instruct ed in the L ati n and Greek lan gua ge sound principles. To teach and instruct such boys as should from time to time become fit to learn the Latin and Greek tongues. To provide a lodging for the masters and the lodging boarding and entertainment of the boys. To pay for ever a sober, discreet and careful woman to be employed in the dressing of victuals, washing, bed-making and the other necessary looking after the boys. At the age of sixteen each boy to have £5 for the fitting him for some trade or occupation in the choice of the boy and his parents, except that one of the boys that should best be capable of University education should at the age of eighteen years be sent to Cambridge or

HUGH SMITH 31

Oxford, and should there be maintained out of the estate at the rate of £40 per annum for four years and no longer. The respectability was guaranteed by the rule that no child was admitted or retained ‘who should be evil or wickedly disposed or of lewd conversation’. Entry to this excellent establishment was by nomination of the local trustees, no fees were payable, doubtless the most encouraging feature in the Crabtree arrangements; and there was a very fair chance of the adequate pupil proceeding to a University. The evidence upon which Crabtree’s entry to this school is is the copy of a communication to a North Riding gentleman who had apparently objected to the veracity of the picture of a Yorkshire school in Nicholas Nickleby; in his enthusiasm this gentleman, Captain Ghaistrill, had asserted that such schools as Dotheboys Hall did not exist in North Yorkshire and Dickens must surely have had in mind as his model an infamous West Riding school called Rushworth. The Ghaistrill document, imperfectly preserved, lacks the opening lines and much else of the text, but is endorsed ‘Mr. Ghaistrill’; the subscription too has been badly mutilated by rats, presumably whilst stored with the Viking Society papers in a warehouse in Kendal, but the letters ‘Jos. C’ can clearly be deciphered on a sunny April day with the aid of an electron microscope. I shall not weary you with a summary of this long document, which in the main is a record of the aged man’s memories of his schooldays and life in the parish of Halifax, supplemented by some interesting adaptations of the journeys of Taylor the water poet and others. Indeed the brief though moving account of the lonely journey by coach of this twelve year old boy through Cheltenham, Tewkesbury, Birmingham, Matlock and Buxton to Oldham and his long and uncomfortable ride over the wild moors of Blackstone Edge with the badgers or packhorse man bears some verbal if not factual resemblances to the journeys made by Pickwick and other Dickens’ folk—or is it the other way round? His short stay with a cousin of his father’s at the village of Sowerby gave young Joe his first view of his northern relatives. What he thought of them we do not know except that for a time their hard speech was incomprehensible, and the rough games, football, knurr and spell, and the like, in which the girls also joined, appeared to him wild and savage compared with the gentler pastimes of the Cotswolds, all-in wrestling, shinkicking and back-biting. The new criticism, if I have been rightly informed of its methods, would restrict this Foundation to the close analysis of the very works of Crabtree —a task which we know and even Dr. Leavis himself would readily allow to be an almost impossible one despite the bibliographical advances made to us by the learned John Crow and the wily Arthur Brown. Our orators in turn have demonstrated the futility of the new methods through their

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imaginative use of traditional scholarship in determining the achievements of an original and scientific mind. The missing canon, the lost quires, the burnt books, the shifted leaf—what are these but an unassailable protection for Crabtree’ poetic virtue against the feeble pricks of the new critics, against the puny probings of these auto-coprophagous autopists. Let us not, however, overstate the other case. The history of literature does not reveal the persistence of genius as a family trait. What it does reveal is the importance of the early cultural milieu. It may not matter that other writers appear in the family Crabtree; it does matter that the family setting was one of active culture and one that provided rich and varied experiences to an observant and gifted youth. The Foundation will not wish to be wearied by a history of the family Crabtree. Its members, who are mostly likely to have moulded the mind of young Joseph, were as varied in character an occupation as they were prolific in generation. The probity of Crabtree scholarship debars one from suppressing mention of the deplorable Dick, as reported in The Leeds Mercury of 21 February 1738. The cloth-dealers of Yorkshire warned their fellows by public advertisement against a group of swindlers who called themselves ‘the Clay lads’, downright cheats who practise a cunning confidence trick on the dealers in Broad cloths, Shalloons and Calimancoes. Their leader was Richard Crabtree, cousin of the poet’s father. Nor should I spend time on another cousin, the Reverend William, that ‘burning and shining light’ of the Baptist chapel at Bradford. His biographer’s words incidentally strike a pertinent warning note in Crabtree studies: Some apprehensions have been entertained that many of Mr. Crabtree’s friends may have expected more particulars of the good man than are now laid before them. To such the author would say that Mr. C. kept no diary and but few district memorandums of what passed in his course through life, materials were far from abundant. Many accounts have been given from the memory of his friends, yet it is dangerous to venture on reports in a work which ought if possible to be in all particulars authentic. Born in Wadsworth in 1720 and living, like so many of the Crabtrees to a great age—he died in 1820—William was orphaned at 8 years. To use his own words, At 17 I became my own master; I was boarded in a wicked village, next door to hell itself; given to Sabbath-breaking, drunkenness, profane cursing and swearing, I learned all manner of wickedness.

HUGH SMITH 33

His conversion soon followed, flowering from ‘that tincture of early puritanism’ which is from time to time seen in the family of Crabtree through its long history. Nine years before the arrival of the young Joseph Crabtree in the district, William was established as pastor of the Baptist Chapel in Bradford. I pass quickly by another cousin, John Crabtree, gent., also a contemporary of Joseph’s, whose History of the parish of Halifax appeared in 1836, to an earlier member of the family, Henry Krabtree, in whom of the Crabtrees there first appeared those qualities of mind, that independence of judgment, that scientific curiosity and authority, that literary skill, and that avidity for experience that formed the basis of Crabtree’s culture, all this in a region where, to quote John Crabtree, ‘the march of intellect ascends but slowly up these mountain valleys’. Henry Krabtree was born in Sowerby and went to school with Tillotson (the Archbishop), but no more is known of his early life; he was admitted to the Chapelry of Todmorden at the Restoration, and there he lived for the remaining 30 years of his life. He married a rich local widow about 1675. His relevance to this Foundation is not as a contributor to the family Crabtree, but for the range of his other activities. Henry Krabtree’s famous Merlinus Rusticus appeared in 1685, a country almanack, embodying a great deal of rural love, scientific and theological observation, and a mass of contemporary astrology. Amongst many items of advice for the promotion of good are these: March. October. November. December.

This month’s for mutton; old sack no less. Always provided you avoid excess. The time now requires that you consult with your Taylor as well as with your Physician. Therefore a good suit of warm cloath is worth 2 purges and one vomit. The best exercise is hunting or tracing hares, but be sure that the park or lordship be your own, and then you need not fear an indictment nor a fine at the next sessions. The best Physick this month is good meat and the strongest drink you can get.

But this first man of Crabtree letters must ever attract admiration for his superb and acute necrologues. His register of the chapelry of Todmorden is the official record by law appointed of the births and deaths of his parishioners, but its unique interest springs from his commentaries upon the arid entries of such a document. Think of them as you will, the assessment of a man at his death, whether coloured at times by laboured humour, astrology, rustic love or prejudice and at others by high moral and intellectual standards, is a Crabtree custom and in Henry Krabtree’s

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register we may seek and find the germ of Joseph Crabtree’s splendid funeral verses. Let me cite but one of Henry’s from his register for 1667: John Bairstow of Hollow Pin, seeing both his daughter and his wife departed in peace, presently began to offer sacrifice unto Bacchus for joy. But he continued so long adoring of him that Apollo, the God of Wisdom and Physicks, was enraged at him and struck him with with a pestilential feaver, which thing when John felt it raging violently in him confessed his sin and humbly implored Apollo to cure him, which ye ingenious God presently did with I know not what cooling kinds of purging, and he cleansed his body of ye jugs of old ale and his throat of ye mutton stakes that stuck in it. But lo, as soon as he felt himself cured he forgot to return thanks to Apollo and began again pelmel day and night to worship Bacchus in honour of whom he sacrificed sheep and swallowed an ocean of old ale. But Apollo, seeing ye magnitude of his ingratitude, cause ye Sun to dry up all ye rivers, fountains, springs and streams of strong drinke, and then was all the Liquor-ladys, Alenymphs and Beer-brats lamentably left upon dry ground and so remained in a most pitiful posture, weeping and wailing. Which, when John Bairstow saw and heard and could find none of the decoction of malt to comfort ye cockles of his heart withall, he returned home to Hollow pin, being situated in barren and moutainous ground. It is to be supposed that being overcharged with immoderate sorrow, his heart burst for very griefe and he died in a rage for Want of Ale and came to Todmorden to be buryed ye 1 May 1667. Can we not see in the life and and writings an unbreakable link in the chain of literature, a bridge from Sir Thomas Brown to Joseph Crabtree himself.

7 CRABTREE IN FRANCE 1791–1800 Leonard Tancock 1960

With the memorable exception of Jones’s oration Crabtree and Science, all our explorations have been in the field of English letters. To me falls the honour of pioneering in the field of French… But a painful choice had to be made at the outset. Confronted with the long and eventful life of our poet, stretching, in terms of French History, from the age of Louis XV and Mme de Pompadour, of Voltaire, Diderot and the beginnings of the Encyclopédie, through the Revolution, the Empire, the Restoration, the reign of Louis-Philippe as far as the early years of the Second Empire, the mid career of Victor Hugo and the early career of Baudelaire I had to opt between an attempt to trace the various journeys and sojourns of Crabtree in France during the seventy years between his first voyage across the Channel in 1783 and his death in 1854, and a piece of more detailed investigation into a limited period. My struggle was brief and decisive. It seemed to me that the traditions of our Foundation demanded that I refrain from mere anecdotage and gossip in order to concentrate my efforts upon one small but scholarly piece of real research. I am convinced that all serious lovers of literature prefer depth to breadth, genuine evidence to hearsay, fact to conjecture. Nevertheless the attentive listener to my oration may notice from time to time a hypothesis, an assumption based upon circumstantial rather than documentary evidence. But when circumstantial evidence is cumulative to the point of being overwhelming it must be considered valid, even though a woman’s honour, already some what tarnished, may lose a little more of its brightness. A close study of earlier Orations enabled me to follow the gradual flowering of our poet from the little choirboy so dear to the curate of Chipping Sodbury through the years of triumph and disaster culminating in his intempestive departure from the University of Oxford in 1773, the ten years of unspectacular growth and spiritual consolidation leading to the seven years of thraldom in the wineshipper’s office at Orléans—years not without their poetic fruit, however, for out of them came the immortal Ode to Claret, and finally the unparalleled act of self immolation in the year 1791, when he relinquished all claims upon Annette Vallon and her

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and his unborn child that his friend William Wordsworth might find peace to his soul and body. Thereafter, silence until the false report in the Morning Post of the 3rd October, 1800 of the poets death in France. There was the challenge. Joseph Crabtree disappears (or rather until my researches was thought to have disappeared) from history in 1791, but is still in France nine years later. Could I hope to find how this man had existed in Paris or elsewhere during the years of the Terror, the Directory and the Consulate to the very threshold of the Empire? Such knowledge, I felt convinced, might cast light upon the later thirties and early forties of this slow-maturing genius, and hence upon the genesis of some of the immortal poems of his full maturity—immortal, that is to say, to a handful of cognoscenti, but still, alas, awaiting the definitive edition promised by the Athlone Press. I might have searched in vain had not curiosity—I blush to confess that it was a morbid and unhealthy curiosity—taken me last summer to the Château of Coppet, on the lake of Geneva. This regrettably prurient voyeurism of mine filled me with a desire to see the actual site, the actual rooms and furniture occupied for so many years by Mme de Staël, her friend the beautiful Mme Récamier and their bevy of men friends, including Friedrich Schlegel, Bonstetten, Sismondi and Benjamin Constant, whose amorous adventures in this very pace were distilled into the most perfect short novel in the French language, Adolphe. There came, of course, many visiting celebrities such as Byron and Chateaubriand to this house which for some twenty years was one of the intellectual meetingplaces of the nations of Europe. Why, then, Gentlemen, should a scholar be ashamed of what might to the vulgar seem prurient curiosity? Often Fate, in her inscrutable wisdom, leads us on from the apparently trivial and ridiculous to the weighty and sublime. Well, then, I went to Coppet to look at the bedrooms of Mme de Staël and Mme Récamier. When the visit was over I fell into conversation with the Gardien. Upon this worthy man’s discovering that, unlike the contents of a motor-coach recently poured out into the château, I not only understood French and could make myself understood in that language, but had already heard of Mme de Staël and had actually read some of her works, his enthusiasm knew no bounds, and he offered to show me some curious and interesting documents not usually shown to tourists. Gentlemen, it is not my intention to wander off along erotic bypaths, however attractive in themselves. But one document arrested my attention. It was a French poem, in manuscript, signed Joseph de la Pommeraye, 1796 and, in another hand almost certainly that of Germaine de Staël herself, the initials O.N. Seeing my excitement, the Gardien allowed me to copy out the poem. Here it is:

LEONARD TANCOCK 37

PASTORALE

La troupe sort; et chacun dans la plaine S’en va tresser des guirlandes de fleurs. Avec plus d’art mariant les couleurs, Déjà Talcis avait fini la sienne, Quand sa maîtresse, épiant le moment, D’entre ses doigts l’arrache adroitement, La jette au loin, sourit, et prend la fuite; Puis en arrière elle tourne des yeux Qui lui disaient: ‘Viens donc a ma poursuite.’ Il la comprit, et n’en courait que mieux. Mais un faux pas fit tomber la bergère, Et du zéphyr le souffle téméraire Vint dévoiler ce qu’on voile si bien. On vit, Eglé !…Mais non; l’on ne vit rien: Car ton amant, réparant toutes choses, Jeta sur toi des fleurs a pleines mains, Et dans l’instant tous ces charmes divins Furent cachés sous un monceau de roses. O.N.

Joseph de la Pommeraye 1796

Something in these verses reminded me of the inimitable lilt of the songs of the Swan of Sodbury. Could it be? But no, I reflected, the scholar must confine his work to demonstrable facts, or at least irresistible circumstantial evidence, and not let himself be carried away by mere emotional reactions. Besides, I reminded myself, is it not clearly stated in Sutherland that on the very eve of his tactful withdrawal in 1791 Crabtree with that manly English independence which always characterized him, had never troubled to learn French, he would have found himself not only a stranger in a country already rent by Revolution, but a stranger unable to speak the language of the country in which he was now destitute. How could an Englishman, destitute and with no French, acquire in five short years such mastery of the language of Racine, Bossuet, Voltaire, Diderot? Diderot! Once again, I beg you to note how apparently trivial and irrelevant things can be made to fall into place, nay, can be coerced into meaningfulness, by the determined researcher. Now Diderot died in 1784, but apart from some juvenilia, philosophical and critical works and, of

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course the Encyclopédie, his writings were not published in his lifetime. But with the fall of the ancien regime and the eclipse of the Church, many of Diderot’s more daring and subversive works were published and received with rapturous enthusiasm, notably the two novels, Jacques le Fataliste and La Religieuse, both of which were the bookselling sensations of this very year 1796. Jacques le Fataliste a long, rambling affair inspired by Tristram Shandy, contains an episode that can stand alone in much the same way as Manon Lescaut can be, and usually is, detached from Les Mémoires d’un homme de qualité. This episode of Madame de la Pommeraye is a powerful story of a scorned woman’s revenge on her erstwhile lover. Clearly the author of this manuscript poem had taken his pseudonym from the heroine (or, to be more exact, the villainess) of the year’s best seller, and called himself Joseph de la Pommeraye. You may ask why this was not simply the man’s real name. Since the publication of the Oration of Arthur Brown such a naive theory is no longer admissible. We also read in Brown another vital clue:…the lighthearted punning on his own name so characteristic of our poet. Here, then, was the pointer: the poem might well be attributed to some French poet, some Gallic jackdaw decked in the peacock plumes of one not only too modest to lay claim to these sublime verses, but also capable of throwing readers off the scent by signing in some pseudonymous or humorously punning manner. It was at this point that the full significance of the signature Joseph de la Pommeraye struck me. I trust, gentlemen, that you will bear for a moment with what might seem to some of you a needlessly pedantic and pedagogical discussion of French proper names. I will be as brief as is compatible with clarity. The essential point is that Crabtree cannot be translated into French as a proper name. Other fruittree names are common enough: M.Pommier, M.Poirier, M.Prunier yes. But the French for a crabtree is un pommier sauvage. And M Pommier Sauvage is as impossible in French as any compound fruit name would be in English. Mr Peartree, Mr Appletree, perhaps, but not Mr Cox’s Orange Pippin or Mr Worcester Permain. On the other hand, M de la Pommeraye is distinctive and memorable, it means ‘an apple orchard’ and so includes any kind of fruit, it sounds aristocratic and in 1796 it had the advantage of a ready-made literary celebrity. Not unexpectedly I found that here was another example of jackdaws decking themselves in peacock’s plumes, for this poem has been published among the works of a minor French poet, Parny. Moreover—and this should be a lesson to us all in caution and humility—even that most subtle and percipient of all critics, Sainte-Beuve, was deceived and included it in an edition of the works of Parny that he edited in 1862.1 hope to prove this evening that this poem is the work of Joseph Crabtree. But we must proceed cautiously It is a far cry from a rencontre of this kind to a certainty. My discovery appears at first sight to raise new and

LEONARD TANCOCK 39

even more baffling problems. How could one establish any connection between Joseph Crabtree and the Château de Coppet, Mme de Staël and, above all, how could the indigent and Frenchless Crabtree of 1791 be the same person as the brilliant French poet of 1796? As I pondered over this problem, determined to fin d a soluti on fair means or foul, I saw clearly in my mind’s eye the noble features of our poet. I do not allude to the picture reproduced in Spencer’s Iconography, with its unhappy resemblance to Palor irritans, but to the serene visage of the Sutherland portrait. Could there be some secret hidden behind those passionate eyes? Something that might have appealed to Mme de Staël, that shrewd judge of manflesh? Yes, the resemblance is clear. Talleyrand! Of course that was the connection. Talleyrand, who was born in 1754, and was thus an exact contemporary of Crabtree, had been the first lover of Mme de Staël while he was still a priest, before the Revolution. This greatest of all political Vicars of Bray left France in 1791 for England and America, where he lay low and intrigued until it was safe to return to France some years later. Early in 1792 (I have this information from unpublished diaries the whereabouts of which I am not free to divulge) a half-dressed (top half) Englishman was discovered sheltering from the cold in the porch of Mme de Staël’s town house in the Rue du Bac, having been discovered in an embarrassing position by a jealous husband. It is said that this is the origin of the epithet sans-culotte, but we must not descend into mere conjecture. Here then is the answer. It seems that he resembled Talleyrand closely in all respects, and not merely facially For years he occupied a position in the household of the most brilliant conversationalist in Europe, whose conversation, when she was staying at Weimar, was so brilliant and so sustained that Goethe retired to bed alleging serious cold and remained there until she had left the town. Crabtree’s position in the household was ambiguous, it is true (there is an obscure reference to her English butler Joe whom she brought in her train when she stayed at Juniper Hall, near Dorking at the time of the wedding of the émigré general D’Arblay to Fanny Burney) but what is certain is that he must have repaid his hostess’s kindness by comforting her in her lonely vigils during short and unavoidable recuperative absences of her gentlemen friends. It is to the eternal credit of Crabtree that in these unpropitious circumstances he assimilated such a mastery of the French tongue. If, gentlemen, you will bear with another short digression upon French literature, I can now explain the mysterious initials O.N. in the unmistakable hand of Mme de Staël on the MS I discovered. It furnishes an additional proof, if one were needed, of the identity of the French poet with the tutelary genius of our Foundation. O.N., in the hand of the writer of the immortal Corinne, can only refer to the hero of that novel, Oswald, Lord Nelvil. Oswald Nelvil, you will all of course remember, was the

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melancholy, splenetic but passionate and faithfless noble British lord (he was of Scottish parentage, but that was local colour put in out of deference to the Ossian cult), who betrayed Corinne and broke her heart. Who but Crabtree could be the prototype of the sad, romantic Oswald? I appeal to you, gentlemen, as men of the world, how could Joseph Crabtree be other than sad and morose, for what virile yet sensitive man could enjoy the position of being, if I may use an expressive vulgarism, an occasional standin for a passionate mistress? There may still be some sceptics in my audience. All this evidence, they may say, is circumstantial. I have saved the crowning revelation until the end. In a volume of Erotica I was fortunate enough to find recently in the Charing Cross Road I found the following short poem signed J.C., 1848. Imagine my delighted surprise when I saw that it was none other than the French poem of 1796 done into English verse. Of course J.C. could stand for Julius Caesar or even other authors whom I need not name, but I venture to suggest that only our immortal bard, still green and still stretching forth his crabby limbs in vigorous old age, could have found such astonishingly ecletic poetic language. Like all the greatest geniuses, like Beethoven, he gathers up all that has gone before and looks forward with prophetic vision down the uncharted vistas of the future. Here as you will doubtles perceive, we have in striking and challenging juxtaposition the diction of Pope and Dryden and modern locutions and metaphors foretelling the age of the internal combustion engine and the telly. Forth comes the troop; and issuing o’er the plain Each into garlands fragrant blossoms binds. Talcis, with subtler art assorted colours finds Long ere the rest he’d made his daisy-chain, When lo! his girl-friend gets him unawares, Snatches it deftly from him; off sh e tear Chucks it away and grins and does a flit, Then o’er her shoulder glancing as she ran Her eyes said clearly: ‘Catch me if you can.’ Twigging her meaning Talcis stepped on it. Alas, some stumblingblock capsized the maid: The naughty zephyr before all displayed What never should be seen by young men’s eyes. They saw, Egle! they saw your dainty prize! No, no, they didn’t, Talcis put things right; Handfuls of blooms on your fair form he strewed, And inches deep neath roses many hued Hid from rude gaze the source of man’s delight. J.C. (In Erotica Diversa, published privately, London, 1848)

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I do not wish to end my oration on a sad, even tragic note, but there is, alas, an alternative interpretation. It might well be that our poet, brought low in the evening of his days by poverty and infirmity, found himself in the humiliating position of having to supply to the trade the kind of verses considered suitable for enclosure in packets of art anatomical studies. What more natural, if such were the pass to which advancing years and public neglect had reduced him, than that this survivor from a glorious past should re-write in another tongue a poem inspired by the sumptuous form of Germaine? And who but a supreme artist could have displayed such virtuosity, and produced, at the age of 94, a little jewel outshining the lustre of its already remarkable model? Fellow members of the Crabtree Foundation: you will, I am convinced, have found my Oration tantalizingly brief. But alas, as our poet sang in the Ode to Claret: ‘Time, gentlemen, time please!’ Much remains to be discovered in this fascinating field of study. I would have liked to examine the suggestion put to me by Mr Jeremy Warburg that Crabtree went from France to Algeria in 1799 and there wrote the poem beginning: ‘Then up spoke the sheikh of Algiers.’ I had even obtained a research grant from the University, but all such work has had to be postponed owing to the disturbed state of that unhappy country in recent months. It remains for me to express the hope, nay, the confident belief, that some younger and more vigorous scholar will seize the torch from my failing hand and dissipate the shadows of ignorance. I end with a little known and seldom quoted remark of a grossly overrated contemporary of Crabtree named Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Light! more light!

8 CRABTREE AND THE SAGE OF PITTENWEEM William Armstrong 1961

In reviewing the state and needs of Crabtree studies, I came to the conclusion that much remained to be discovered about those crucial years in the seventeen-nineties after Crabtree had made that memorable decision to abandon Annette and their unborn child and to allow Wordsworth to pose as the childs’ father. Guided by some of my colleagues in the Department of French at King’s College, I read various autobiographies and memoirs covering the seventeen-nineties. I found that one of these works was worthy of particularly close scrutiny. It is Les Mémoires de la Comtesse de la Blague, published in a chastely illustrated edition by the Dockyard Press, Marseilles, in 1797. Some of the Comtesse’s most lively recollect ions concern an Englishman with whom she had an interesting encounter at Carcassone in the summer of 1792. This Englishman had little knowledge of French, a great liking for dogs, and a solemn, even disconsolate demeanour. The Comtesse vividly illustrates these characteristics in an anecdote which bears the marginal gloss, ‘Le fond du caractère anglais, c’est l’absence de Bonheur’. The Englishman, she tells us, had with him a greyhound, a female of the species, and was anxious to perpetuate the stock by finding a suitable mate for her. On being informed that the Comtesse possessed a male of the species, he decided to ask for the loan of this animal, and went to some pains to learn sufficient French to make his needs clear to her. After being presented to the Comtesse by a mutual friend, he blushingly asked her, ‘Vaudriez-vous Comtesse, me prêter votre chien pour—pour couvrir ma chienne?’ The Comtesse graciously assented; her dog was borrowed and duly returned. Shortly afterwards, on a particularly hot afternoon, the Englishman encountered her in the great square of Carcessone, and, removing his hat and sweating profusely, he thanked her in his halting French for the loan of her dog. Sorry to see him bareheaded and sweating so profusely on so hot a day, the Comtesse said, ‘Mais, monsieur, couvrez-vous !’ To the Englishman, however, ‘couvrez’ had only one meaning, and, a few seconds’ hesitation, he stammered out the words, ‘Oui, Comtesse, de temps en temps’ and then, with a deeply dejected air, stumbled across the square and out of sight, leaving the Comtesse, to use her own words, ‘très cusieuse et un peu

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piquée’. The question at once presents itself, gentlemen: was this Englishman Crabtree? And have we here a vital illustration of his ambivalent state of mind after departing from Orléans and Annette; interested on the one hand in dog-breeding, exhibiting on the other hand every sign of a guilt-complex when obliged to use the vocabulary which that interest made necessary? There is certainly an impressive array of evidence to support this inference. We know that Crabtree was in France at this time: we know that his knowledge of French was almost non-existent: we know of the emotional crisis which caused him to surrender Annette to William Wordsworth; and we know, too, from Wordsworth’s cancelled lines in The Leechgatherer ms, which describe Crabtree ‘wrapt in glory and in joy, casting his fly along the riverside’, that Crabtree was addicted to fieldsports. To clinch the matter, only one more item of evidence seemed necessary: was Crabtree a dog-lover and interested in grey-hound-breeding during the early seventeen-nineties? Revolving this problem in my mind, I made my way last summer to St. Andrews, that ancient university town in the ancient Kingdom of Fife. Here I heard news that at once aroused my curiosity. I was informed that the Fulbright Visiting Professor was Kemper T. Guggenheim of the University of Western Nevada, Reno, Nevada; that he had come equipped with the full apparatus of literary research, including a portable model of the Shinman double-cross-referencing and back-dating machine; and that he had recently discovered important documents at Anstruther Braes, the ancestral home of the Anstruther family in the ancient and picturesque village of Pittenweem. With mounting excitement I tried to recall where I had last heard the name Kemper T.Guggenheim, and suddenly it flashed upon me. It was in 1954 that Sutherland drew our attention to Guggenheim, the American scholar who was seeking the MS of Crabtree’s Ars Salutandi. Half-hoping (and half feeling) that Professor Guggenheim had at last salvaged the Ars Salutandi from oblivion, I at once sought him out and explained to him my special interest in Crabtree. Regretfully, Professor Guggenheim told me that he had not yet found the Ars Salutandi, but, with a voice tremulous with joy, he informed me that his Pittenweem discovery did prove beyond doubt that Joseph Crabtree had been in Scotlan d a nd had s p ent a Anstruther Braes. You can well imagine, gentlemen, the gratit ude which I received this precious piece of unformation, and the alacrity with which I began to subject it to some of those disciplines which have made modern criticism—what it is. For instance, as I pondered over this northern peregrination of Crabtree’s, it struck me how many significant literary precedents, parallels, and analogues there were for it. Ben Jonson had crossed the border to converse learnedly and scandalously with Drummond of Hawthornden: Doctor Johnson had been pleased to inspect some of the Western Isles with Boswell at his elbow: Wordsworth and Coleridge had sauntered in the

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Lowlands, keeping Dorothy Wordsworth two or three miles in front of them to make sure that board, lodging, warming-pans and other necessities of the poetic life were available for them at the end of the day. Not long afterwards Keats had followed a similar route. As these recollections multiplied, there rose before me the idea of Scotlan d as an archet ype fi t to e nga intellect of a Carl Jung or even a Maud Bodlia; an archetype of fabulous rest, recreation, spiritual and spiritous refreshments. Just as the ancients had their Elysium, the Middle Ages its Land of Cockaigne, the Renaissance its Utopia, the twentieth century its Shangri La, so, perhaps, Joseph Crabtree had his Pittenweem. I asked Professor Guggenheim upon what proofs he based the remarkable statement that he had just given me. He answered me in detail. Ever since an important MS by Boswell had been found in a stable, he told me, he had felt that it was his duty as a scholar not only to investigate the libraries of great houses but to explore every nook and cranny of the lesser buildings attached to them, no matter how humble or utilitarian they might be. So it was that he had found, in what it must enphemistically describe as one of the outhouses of Anstruther Braes, the notebooks of Hamish Anstruther, the sage and scholar who dominated the intellectual life of Pittenweem during the last four decades of the eighteenth century. These notebooks contain precious references to Crabtree’s visit to Pittenweem and invaluable quotations from his conversation with Anstruther. The dating of those portions of the MS. refering to Crabtree had been established with infallible accuracy by one of the rarest and most fascinating creatures of modern science. At this point, with a dramatic gesture, Professor Guggenheim drew aside a plastic cover and revealed to me The Shinman double-cross—referencing and back-dating machine in all its nickel-plated splendour. With its four strong legs, its unblinkin dials, its apertures and orifices of various shapes and sizes, and its numerous coloured push-buttons, the machine epitomized precision and efficiency. From a large blot on Anstruthers’ manuscript Professor Guggenheim had removed a spicule of ink and paper and had fed it into the appropriate aperture at the back-dating end of the machine. Here the spicule was dehydrated, emulsified, and eventually broken down into atoms of ink and paper. These atoms were then subjected to a process of electronic radiation which was focussed upon the appropriate dials of the machine. While these complex operations were going on, Professor Guggenheim withdrew to England for the weekend in case the apparatus exploded. He returned on the Monday and scrutinised the dials above the back-dating aperture. They revealed that Anstruthers’ paper had been manufactured in 1790 and that the ink of his record of Crabtree had dried on August 28th, 1793. As you will appreciate, gentlemen, this revelation of the precise date of Crabtree’s visit to Pittenweem obliged me to abandon, with some regret, my archetypcal interpretation of Crabtree’s visit to Scotland. In 1793, the

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storm and stress of his passing from Annette were too recent to allow this happy interpretation to be sustained; indeed, we must now be on our guard against those malacious critics who will claim that Crabtree’s visit to Scotland was a flight, not a quest; that his motives were utiliarian, not recreational; that he secretly fled from France to Scotland because of a gnawing fear that Wordsworth and Annette might break off the excellent arrangement to which they had consented and leave Crabtree holding the baby. The mind and motives of a Crabtree are not to be interpreted in so crude a fashion as this, as his conversations with Anstruther amply demonstrate. Before discussing these conversations, however, I must say something about the character and literary activities of Crabtree’s host, Hamish Auchtermuchty Anstruther. During the last forty years of the eighteenth century, no sojourn in Fifeshire was complete without a visit to Anstruther at his ancestral mansion in Pittenweem. Anstruther’s literary fame would be even greater than it is, had it not been for his selfless devotion to the rehabilitation of the ancient Kingdom of Fife, and his refusal to write in any language except Faffans, Faffans being his name for the illustrious vernacular of Fife, which he had painstakingly compounded out of the many dialects of the region. Envious critics were in the habit of asserting that Anstruther was the only person in Fifeshire who could understand Faffans, but he invariably silenced them by quoting Dante’s great dictum on the nature of the illustrious vernacular: ‘its fragrance is everywhere, its home is nowhere.’ Hamish was also the founder, the president, and the honorary secretary of the Pittenweem folk-lore, placename, and antiquarian society. Many were the hours that he spent brooding over local tumuli, dolmens, barrows, brochs, and cromlechs and over those tall, rough-hewn columns of granite, which, standing erect impart a distinctive atmosphere and lend a masculine charm to the coastal plain of Fifeshire. Several of these enthusiams of Anstruther’s figured prominently in his conversations with Crabtree. Professor Guggenheim is still hard at work transcribing the conversations and translating them from Faffans into English, but he has given me enough material to illuminate the state of Crabtree’s mind and art in August, 1793. Crabtree’s despairing sonnet of 1790, ‘When I consider how my strength is spent…’ makes clear what no literary critic worth his salt would hesitate to believe; that Crabtree’s mind was then in a traumatic state induced by a conflict between his super-ego (dominated as it was by the impervious father-figure of his Methodist uncle) and a pro-filial psychosis generated by Annette’s interesting condition. The 1793 conversations with Anstruther reveal a triumphant reassociation of Crabtree’s sensibility, finding expression in a style very different from that of 1790 and the 1780’s. His Ode to Claret, written in the seventeen-eighties, that happy product of carefree hours in the cellar of his uncle’s wine-shipping establishment in Orleans, is, you will remember,

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exquisitely Augustan in mood and technique; effortless in the care of its settled numbers, limpid and graceful in its personifications elegant in its apostrophies, urbanely content to sing what oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed. The conversations with Anstruther reveal a remarkable departure from these earlier themes and styles; a gnomic, teasing, and allusive spirit now invests Crabtree’s imagination; his imagery becomes ratiocinative, recondite, and witty; heterogeneous objects are yoked by violence together (here, no doubt, memories of Wordsworth and Annette are at work); and his sensibility begins to take an unprecedented delight in multiple levels of meaning, showing a strong preference for the first, the third, and the fifth of Professor Empson’s seven types of ambiguity The transcriptions from the Anstruther papers which Professor Guggenheim has allowed me to study show that Crabtree’s new mode of utterance sometimes caused moments of friction during his association with the sage of Pittenweem. There was the occasion, for instance, when they saw some of the happy peasantry of Pittenweem dancing down the main street of the village shortly after closing-time at the village dram-shop, and Hamish, in an access of patriotic zeal, indulgently described the spectacle as a ‘Bacchic revel’. ‘Sir,’ said Crabtree, ‘it is merely a considerable exuberance.’ The Johnsonian overtones of this retort were not apparent to Anstruther and an uneasy silence ensued. On another occasion, Hamish drew Crabtree’s attention to those tall rough-hewn columns which dot the landscape around Pittenweem and learnedly associated them with the male principle in the fertility rites of the ancient kingdom of Fife. ‘Popular fallacies’ was Crabtree’s only rejoinder, and again Anstruther failed to discern the fifth type of ambiguity and dourly changed the subject. My next item from the Anstruther Papers has a special relevance to the episode from Les Memoires de la Comtesse de la Blague which I recounted earlier this evening. One evening Anstruther outlined to Crabtree one of the main ideas advanced in a recently published treatise, Lord Monboddo’s Of the Origin and Progress of Language; namely, that the human race had evolved from the orang-utang, and that monkeys of this superior species could play the flute, and, if necessary, could efficiently undertake the duties of cabin boys. It was typical of Crabtree’s taste for saturnalian paradox at this time that he should have replied that he thought it more likely that the monkey evolved from the man than vice versa. What is more important, however, is that at this point in the papers Anstruther informs us that Crabtree had an inordinate affection for animals, and that he was constantly accompanied by two greyhounds, which (here I quote) ‘he had bred in France and which he called Vaudracour and Julia.’ Here, then, thanks indirectly to Lord Monboddo, we have a missing link which even he did not foresee—the last link in the chain of evidence which proves that it was none other than Joseph Crabtree who left the Comtesse de la Blague with such tantalizing memories of the hot summer at Carcassone in 1792.

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The fact that Vaudracour and Julia are also the names of two characters in a somewhat sentimental narrative in Wordsworth’s Prelude is also of some literary moment. The discovery of these names applied to greyhounds in the Anstruther Papers will obviously make the psycho-analytic study of Wordsworth an even more hare-raising activity than it has been in the past. Though there were occasions when the Sage of Pittenweem was ruffled by Crabtree’s cryptic comments, he was mollified by Crabtree’ keen interest in Faffans. It is clear that Crabtree listened attentively to Hamish’s incessant disquisitions on the subject. Though Crabtree could not be prevailed upon to learn by heart the various paradigms, declensions, conjugations, irregular verbs, and improper nouns which Hammish pressed upon him, he showed a singular aptitude for what Professor Guggenheim calls ‘The methodologies of linguistic science’, and sometimes astounded Hamish with his capacity for discerning connections between the dialects from which Faffans was being forged (I use this verb metaphorically, not literally), and for discerning and formulating laws governing the differences between cognate words. In a man of Crabtree’s genius, these intellectual endeavours were, of course, subordinate to the shaping spirit of his imagination. How well his imagination assimilated this philological diet is revealed by the longest extract from the Anstruther papers vouchsafed me by Profession Guggenheim. Anstruther had heard vague reports of a sport called cricket which had become popular south of the border. When questioned, Crabtree gladly gave him an account of it, and the following passage is part of his inspired description of the laws of the game. I quote: If there is a voiced appeal (howðat) the umpire must give a declension; if the appeal is voiceless (howÞat) no declension is necessary. He must give the batsman ablaut LBW if, at the moment of inflection, the batsman’s leg is in the inter-vocalic position, thereby preventing the ball from causing a breaking (whether monosyllabic or disyllabic) of the conjugation of stumps and bails; bearing in mind any possible syncopy of bat and pad, gradation of pitch, influence of nasals or any other factor that might inflect his declension. He will give the batsman ablaut by a raising of the initial stop-digit of the right hand; the batsman is then required to mutate himself to the pavilion, and the doubling of the batsmen occurs again by the arrival of the next man. If the umpire’s verdict is arrived at independently, it is known as an isolative declension; if in deliberate collaboration with the bowler and the fielding side generally, it is known as a combinative declension. There is no need to stress that the umpire (or ‘umlaut’ as the outgoing batsman is wont to designate him) must be firm and consonant in the application of laws, and that he must not indulge in too much assimilation of antevocalic liquids during stop-consonants.

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I am addressing an audience well versed in the sleights and expedients of literary criticism so there is no need for me to end this oration with a lengthy exposition of the merits of this remarkable passage, which exhibits Crabtree’s neo-metaphysical style in its maturity. I need only glance at the unerring instinct with which Crabtree find s objective correlative for his feelings about cricket in the mythology of linguistics, replete as it is with profound intimations of the mutatability of things. Nor is it necessary for me to elaborate the felicity with which his reassociated sensibility find s expressi on in the exqui counterpointing of disciplines as divers as those of Bradman and Sievers. Had I more time at my disposal I would be tempted to dwell on the local richnesses and disciplined awareness revealed by this passage; on its hint at the responsibilities of minority culture in the reference to ‘isolative declension’, on the austere control of emotion with which it envisages such calamities as the wrongful dismissal of a batsman or the intemperance of an umpire. Some of us, I have no doubt, are already marvelling at the miraculous way in which the diction of this passage anticipates the terminology of modern philology. Well we may! But let us humbly acknowledge that the workings of genius are inscrutable and that no genius has been less predictable than Crabtree. And let us acknowledge, too, that genius has its prophetic moments. Just as Tennyson’s ‘airy navies’ in Locksley Hall anticipated the aeroplane, just as Shakespeare’s great line about ‘cracking nature’s moulds, all germens spilling at once’ anticipated one of the basic principles of the Shinman double-cross-referencing and back-dating machine, so Joseph Crabtree, gazing into a glass darkly, foresaw the machinations of Grimm, Verner, and all their sect. Let me conclude this tribute, therefore, by extending Arnold’s famo us dic tu Keats to Joseph Crabtree: HE IS WITH SHAKESPEARE!

10 CRABTREE’S CHEMICAL AND COLONIAL CONNECTIONS R.S.Nyholm 1963

As a scientist, I am specially grateful to Professor R.V.Jones, orator in 1957, for the careful study which he made of the impact of Crabtree upon some men of science who were working during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Professor Jones dealt in particular with the relationship between Crabtree and certain famous physicists. I decided to examine in a little detail the connection between Crabtree and some of the chemists who were known to him. This has led by pure chance, and indeed how many discoveries of importance in science are made other than by pure chance, to certain information which I modestly suggest will prove of considerable importance for our understanding of the work and importance of our great poet. For me personally it had been doubly exciting to find that Crabtree had some connections with Australia. When one examines such of the life of Crabtree, as has been painfully elucidated by my predecessors, one is struck by the following problem. First of all, Crabtree was a highly intelligent creative individual, especially as a poet. The brilliance of his creative power was fully demonstrated in the all too small amount of published work found so far in various libraries, albeit frequently under the names of other authors. But perhaps the most obvious example of his abilities was displayed during his stay in France. You will recall that with appropriate encouragement from Annette Vallon, these creative powers were fully demonstrated. But one is tempted to ask whether Annette was entirely justified after receiving the seed of his genius to let it go forth into the world under the name of Wordsworth. The second important feature of Crabtree’s life was the studied deliberation with which he refused to publish anything but an occasional gem under his own name. Why did he display this reluctance to allow his name to be recognised in public—for excessive modesty can scarcely be considered as part of Crabtree’s makeup? This is a subject about which I feel we need to know a good deal more and warrants far more study in the future. One of the reasons may well have been the episode with his cousin discussed below. Jones refers in his oration to the contact between Crabtree and Davy and of the deep antipathy between them. It has been my good fortune, with the help of the library of the Royal Institution, to unearth certain details which

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perhaps help us to understand these feelings. There appear to be at least two main causes. Firstly, Crabtree was gravely offended by Davy in 1799 when the latter said in a public lecture, ‘One good experiment is worth more than the ingenuity of a brain like Newton’s’. Now Crabtree could have forgiven Davy for his partiality for experimental work; he was not averse to light-hearted experiments in the biological field himself, although he was frankly not very keen on the conceptions involved. However, he was pathologically devoted to Isaac Newton and he believed not only all that Newton wrote, but also, he took as ex cathedra all the tentative speculations of Newton. Therefore, any criticism of Newton was taken as a personal insult. Thereafter, he lost no opportunity of criticising Davy, and in particular, he pilloried him mercilessly whenever he detected a real or imagined experimental slip. He was present at the Royal Institution the night when the Safety Lamp for mines was announced by Davy. Now he was well aware of the fact that the Admiralty had been in close touch with Davy in connection with a new lamp for Nelson’s ships of the line. Crabtree claimed that the Safety Lamp was a fraud, being foisted upon the mine owners because of its total rejection by the Navy. He composed the following few lines on the spot and horrified the audience by quoting them in public: The experimental genius Davy Has invented a lamp for the Navy The performance is fine In the calm depths of a mine, But quite hopeless if windy or wavy. The second reason arises out of Davy’s relationship with Coleridge. Dr. Beddoe, a former Professor of Chemistry at Oxford, used to invite Davy to his home at Clifton, where he got to know the poets Southey, Wordsworth, Tobin and Coleridge, as well as the publisher, Cottle. Davy became very friendly with this group and, in due course, mentioned to them his discovery of nitrous oxide or laughing gas. Indeed, they were given practical demonstrations. Davy enjoyed walking and shooting in the countryside. He sometimes walked on the more sublime parts of the hills at Clifton, composing verse while breathing nitrous oxide from a bag, hoping that the gas might improve his poetry. One typical result was: Not in the ideal dreams of wild desire Have I beheld a rapture-wakening form; My bosom burns with no unhallow’d fire, Yet is my cheek with rosy blushes warm;

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Yet are my eyes with sparkling lustre fill’d; Yet is my mouth replete with murmuring sound; Yet are my limbs with inward transports fill’d; And clad with newborn mightiness around. The physiological interest of this composition is clearly greater than the poetical. You will recall that Coleridge has described how he composed Kubla Khan after taking opium to relieve pain; it appears that Davy hoped for a similar inspiration from nitrous oxide. As might be expected, Crabtree lost no time in writing a biting review of Davy’s gas inspired literary efforts. The gist of his comment was that if this was the result of experimental inspiration, thank God the Greeks, the Romans and the more distinguished English poets had no time for experimental work. Davy and Coleridge became close friends; on one occasion, Davy wrote the following concerning his colleague: His eloquence is unimpaired, perhaps it is softer and stronger. His will is probably less commensurate with his ability. Brilliant images of greatness float upon his mind. On the other hand, Coleridge said that: ‘If Davy had not been the first chemist, he would have been the first poet of the age.’—a comment which does more credit to Coleridge’s friendship than to his acumen as a critic. Such praise disgusted Crabtree, who innocently commented that ‘Davy and Coleridge are well suited to one another and clearly have much in common. No doubt they fit together well.’ The bitter antagonism between Crabtree and Davy continued until Davy resigned his post at the Royal Institution and travelled abroad. He died in Italy in 1829. I mentioned earlier a connection between Crabtree and Australia, which I stumbled on by chance at the Fisher Library in Sydney University last October. I asked the Librarian for permission to browse through the set of works presented by Jeremy Bentham to the University in the early 19th century Apologetically, he mentioned that there were included in the volumes a number of unsorted papers concerning Australia’s illiterate past. Amongst these papers, I found several scribbled sheets, on one of which was the barely decipherable signature ‘George Bernard Crabtree’. The writing appeared to be the ravings of a very bitter man but it was just possible to piece together a coherent story. It appears that George Crabtree was a cousin (on his father’s side) of our illustrious poet. Born within the sound of Bow-Bells, he was clearly a ne’er do well but whether that was the reason for, or the result of, his receiving a free passage to Australia, is not easy to decide. Joseph Crabtree was wont—in defence of his cousin—to say

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later that, like so many of the earlier migrants, his cousin had been chosen by one of the finest judges in England to play his part in the development of the colony It appears that the two cousins were partners in an ill founded import business and between Joseph’s lack of business acumen and George’s lack of honesty the business foundered in 1821. The two cousins were charged with conspiracy to defraud by the Duke of Bedford, who appeared to consider that he had been robbed of the actual sum of £2,500 being capital invested, and deprived of the potential sum of £25,000, being profit expected on the enterprise so enthusiastically advertised by George. With a characteristic self-effacing act, Joseph arranged that all responsibility fell on George’s shoulders. The worthy Duke was persuaded not to press the action for fraud on both partners, if George was sent to New South Wales for life. This great opportunity for George was accepted with alacrity on his behalf by Joseph; in any case, George was not at all keen that his other enterprises should be looked into. He died in Australia some time after 1850; it is of interest to note that a Joseph Crabtree graduated in science from Sydney University in 1925. I intended to look up Mr.J.Crabtree but was deterred by the fact that the average Australian is a shade modest about his ancestry. Many a new-rich Sydney merchant has discovered that, whilst it costs a mere £50 to look up his ancestry, it may then cost him more than £5,000 to hush it up! But I must return to George’s writings. There was a curious combination of irrelevant, irreverant ranting with some beautiful prose and verse. As an example of the former I read where Joseph had mentioned that Bentham had urged that the age of consent be raised to sixteen. George had scribbled in pencil ‘And then let’s make it compulsory’. The so-called great Australian adjective figures prominently in his comments, and in particular its insertion in the middle of words is noteworthy when, amongst the papers I found a copy of The Ode to Claret I have been tempted to guess what had happened. Although he was reluctant to publish under his own name in England, Joseph had been sending copies of some of his work to George—no doubt to cheer him up. George records these in between furious ramblings on his own fate. Two lines excited me immensely: By channels of coolness the echoes are calling, And down the dim gorges I hear the creek falling. Just two lines, no more! My mind went back at once to my schooldays— and to the poem by Henry Kendall (1859–1882). Now Kendall could only have been between ten and fifteen years of age when these lines were written. Even allowing for the stimulating environment of Australian sunshine and primaeval bush, it is difficult to believe that the juvenile Kendall was responsible for this beautiful couplet. What must we

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conclude? More competent investigators than this year’s Orator are required to find the answer, but I am tempted to suggest that George’s record of Joseph’s work must have led in whole or in part to the masterpiece now attributed to Henry Kendall. But there is a darker side. George lived in London and was much influenced by the cockney expressions which have enriched the Australian accent. Frequently, one finds in his writings bitter phrases such as: ‘Gird yer bloody loins up’ and similarly: ‘Upper cut and out the cow to Kingdom —bloody—come.’ Now these were clearly seized upon by C.J.Denn is (1876–1938 the basis for his famous ballad which attempted to stir up an Australian nationalism in the early 20th century. As you well know Australians are famous for their inherent sense of modesty and capacity for self-effacement. The poem shows how the effect of the cockney background of George influenced C.J.Dennis’ thinking. But I must apologise for having posed to-night more problems than I have answered. Might I presume to hope that the University of London will, in due course, see fit to establish a fund for Crabtree Studies to enable distinguished scholars to visit the places likely to yield information concerning Crabtree? This would be a fitting recognition for the tenth anniversary of our Foundation.

11 JOSEPH CRABTREE JEREMY BENTHAM AND LONDON UNIVERSITY Joseph Scott 1964 When I came to University College in 1954 I met Jeremy Bentham and at this Foundation in 1955 I met Joseph Crabtree. It is no exaggeration to say that I have lived with those two great men ever since. So much in common, so few known links between them! When Crabtree was born in 1754, Bentham was only six, at the turn of the century Bentham was 52 and Crabtree (hanging grimly on) was, at 46 still only six years younger. This remarkable parallelism in their ages persisted until Bentham’s relatively early death in 1832 at the age of 84. In a brief six years Crabtree caught up at last to achieve the same age in 1838. For 78 years between 1754 and 1832 they were alive together. Both went to Oxford. Both went to France. Both escaped marriage several times under dramatic circumstances— Bentham once by jumping out of a window. Both became the friends and confidantes of the educational reformers and scientists of the early 19th century. My first clue to any link between them was given at this foundation, when Geoffrey Tillotson in 1956 delivered a recruiting speech for The Lamb Society and later invited me to it. In reading Hazlitts Spirit of the Age I found the first evidence of the link between Crabtree and Bentham. As evidence, it was as solid as a rock. Indeed, as you shall hear, it was a rock! In his essay on Jeremy Bentham Hazlitt tells us of the ‘stone in the wall at the end of his garden (overarched by two beautiful cotton trees) Inscribed to the Prince of Poets which marks the house where Milton formerly lived’. I felt immediately that Crabtree was the only poet whom Bentham, who did not normally like poetry, would have enjoyed, and certainly the only one he would call ‘Prince of poets’. But let us, as our first Orator warned us ‘proceed with cautious speculation and scholarly deduction’. The long footnote on this ‘stone in the wall’ in P.P.Howe’s centenary edition of Hazlitt confuses the evidence. It repeats the claim of Hazlitt’s son that the stone was set up by his father, it mentions a sketch made by Bentham’s amansuensis, Doane, now at the Pennsylvania Historical Society, showing that the tablet clearly reads ‘Sacred to Milton, prince of poets.’ It also mentions an earlier sketch by J.W. Archer (the frontispiece of vol V of Howe’s edition) where no inscription can be seen on the stone at all! We also notice that Bentham’s

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statement on the back of Doane’s drawing (also quoted in the Howe edition footnote) says nothing of the wording of the inscription. Here was a mystery, were the words on the stone To the Prince of Poets’ (and therefore Bentham’s Tribute to Crabtree) or were they ‘Sacred to Milton, prince of poets’? My next evidence was Bowrings description of his first meeting with Bentham in his garden. This took place in 1820 when Bowring was 28 and Bentham was 72. Let me read it in full from Bentham’s Works (ed. by Bowring after Bentham’s death) at Vol XI, page 81. A usual phrase on the arrival of a visitor for dinner was ‘Let me whisk you round the garden. I always indulge in an ante-prandial circumgyration’. When he came to the corner of the garden in which is a fine sycamore tree, and behind it an obscure house, he suddenly stopped, and laying Dapple on my shoulders, shouted out, ‘On your narrow lanes I saw on a slab to which he pointed ‘Sacred to Milton, Prince of Poets’. It was Milton’s house, the house he occupied when he was secretary to Cromwell’. So Hazlitt’s son (when he published his father’s Literary Remains in 1836) and Bowring (when he published Bentham’s Works in 1843) both say that the words ‘Sacred to Milton’ were on the stone in the wall. But both carefully waited until after Bentham’s death in 1832 so that he could not give the lie to this fabrication. How wise of Jeremy not only to endorse Doane’s drawing, but leave on these two scraps of paper the same statement. You will notice it is dated 1821 the year immediately after Bentham’s first meeting with Bowring. However the case against Hazlitt and Bowring is overwhelming. There can be no doubt that Bentham set up the stone to Crabtree. Firstly, let us recall the internal contradictions in the two stories. Hazlitt speaks of two cotton-trees, Bowring of one sycamore tree. Hazlitt calls the house the cradle of Paradise Lost (1667), Bowring says he lived there as Cromwell’s secretary (a job which ended with the Restoration in 1660). But Milton lived in Bread Street until the plague drove him to Chalfont St. Giles in 1665 (his cottage still stands there) and was there after the publication of Paradis e Lost. So both Hazlitt and Bowring are wrong. We must remember (with the Cambridge History of English Literature): these were the years of the Milton legend; for sentimental legends grew as naturally around the blind Milton as about the deaf Beethoven. Secondly let us hear Bentham himself (at Works Vol. X, page 583) ‘I never read poetry with enjoyment. I read Milton as a duty’. Was such a man

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likely to call Milton ‘Prince of Poets’? Thirdly let us think about Hazlitt’s cotton-trees—a common 18th century term for cotoneasters. The word cotoneaster was invented by the botanist Gerson from the Latin words cotoneum quince and aster-wild. The wild quince tree! Not a bad shot at putting Crabtree into horticultural Latin! Fourthly let us look at Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journal. She records the journey to see Annette Vallon and young Charlotte which Wordsworth made in the August of 1802 immediately before he married Mary Hutchinson. Her entry for 30 August 1802 is full of interest. Landed at Dover at one on Monday the 30th. I was sick all the way. It was very pleasant to me when we were in harbour at Dover to breathe the fresh air, and to look up and see the stars among the ropes of the vessels. The next day was very hot. We both bathed, and sate upon the Dover cliffs, and looked upon France with many a melancholy and tender thought. We mounted the coach at ½ past and arrived in London at 6, the 30th August. It was misty and we could see nothing. We stayed in London till Wednesday the 22nd of September. The next entry is Sept. 24th. A month in London—and silence! We know from Sutherland and Jones that from 1800 until 1802 Wordsworth was full of grief supposing Crabtree dead. On this melancholy return from France, after seeing little Charlotte (surely Apple Charlotte?), Wordsworth must have visited Crabtree’s London friend Bentham to see the stone in the wall. Hearing the early forms of the Milton rumour, she noted that splendid sonnet (dated 1802) and so often mispunctuated by later editions: Milton?? Thou shoulds’t be living at this hour. But the fifth official piece of evidence to smash the Hazlitt/Bowring fabrication is found at Works: X, page 71 where we read: In the journal of Bentham’s father dated 1773, verses by a young gentleman of Oxford, in the report of a design to make barracks for recruits, of the building in St.James’ Park adjoining to the garden of Jeremiah Bentham (Jeremy’s father) in which is erected a temple to the memory of Milton whose house it was and where he lived when he wrote his immortal poem Paradise Lost. Peace to these shades! Where once our Milton trod— Where yet his spirit reigns, a guardian god! Far off let Mars his crimson standard rear

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Divine poetic peace inhabits here Where hireling troops with wanton license stray Milton’s free spirit won’t disdain to stay Hence thou stern god! other mansions choose Be these reserved for Milton and the Muse! Bowring says Bentham was probably the author of these verses airily ignoring the fact that it was ten years since Jeremy had left Oxford. Would a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn of ten years standing in the very year 1773 describe himself as a ‘young gentleman of Oxford’. 1773 was the very year when Crabtree was sent down, not for drunken frolics, but for his satirical verses on his tutor—the infamous Jacob Jefferson of Queens who only twelve years earlier had made Bentham’s life so wretched. Poor little dwarf he was only twenty years three months and thirteen days. What more natural for Crabtree, alone, penniless and in disgrace, than to seek out Jeremy (who had already become a legend at Queen’s). How reasonable that he should flatter Jeremiah Bentham’s obsession for Milton by penning eight easy lines for a temple which was to be pulled down! Bentham (we remember) never read poetry with enjoyment, and Milton only as a duty. He also asked of every book he picked up ‘Is it complete? Is it correct? Is it useful?’ Gradually Crabtree, after his first meeting in 1773, began to apply this same three-fold question, this Trident of Utility to his own verse, until to Bentham’s great joy, himself the first Utilitarian Poet. Indeed Bentham found some of his verses so useful that he embodied them into his own works. As at X p. 69 Bentham condenses his rules of composition under the heading of NOMOGRAPHY 1828, FEB 3RD

Eadem natura, eudem nomenclatura RULE

‘For thoughts the same, the same the words should be Where differ thoughts, words different let us see. REASON

Sameness of thought, sameness of words attests Take that half verse, then add who will what rests As also at Works, XI, page 71:

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A Hudibrastic Attack on Chancellor Brougham’s Defence of many-seated Judicatorie While lawyer craft sits still on high And men make law they can’t tell why Give me quoth Brougham ‘the prime judges For much I need the pliant drudges Reasons as prunes may plenty be No reasons shall you have from me The final couplet has the ring of a Crabtree code To accept Crabtree as a Utilitarian poet critically illuminates his whole corpus for the modern reader. His great Ars Salutandi and the Marching Song first mentioned by Brown were both written when England was beset by fears of invasion, and when the air was ringing with stuttering irregular sound of the marching and drilling of volunteer militia. What more useful at such a time than a military manual in verse or how to salute? With what consummate skill it was written (we now see) as an allegory on Crabtree’s life. For many can still remember that the secret of a good salute was (like Crabtree’s life) ‘the longest way up and the shortest way down.’ Equally the marching song We march we know not whither was still in the 20th century the finest poetic description of the Home Guard at drill, but at the time it was written looked back also to Cromwell’s military dictum ‘A man goes far who knows not whether he be going’. Obviously written for the use of the volunteers. Its haunting one line refrain which later carried our troops to Waterloo is Great Unaffected Vampires And The Moon. Why? What is the use of that? The initial letters of this refrain G.U.V.A.T.M. would remind the half-baked and half-trained volunteers whenever they forgot who they were that they were the Grand United Voluntary and Territorial Militia. Indeed his skilful utilitarian verse was one of his three great contributions to the foundation of the London University. Few of the educational reformers who founded college and none of our leading professors did not quote from his long-forgotten work, What is the use? or, a grammatico-ethical excursion of divertimathic instruction displayed, extended and fore-cast for the young and the younger. Many of these verses have been embodied into our national oral tradition. His second contribution to our foundation was the sale of our site Crabtree Fields. Bought, because he understood planning was approved for the erection of Carmarthen Square retained (with difficulty) after the bankruptcy of 1821 which our President recently described, sold with little profit to help us. Where the whole deal is stamped with Crabtree’s mark. The

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price rose from £22,000 to £30,000 in seven days and after the sale ‘the agent complained that Mr. Bevan the banker shabbily paid me only 50 gns. for my commission.’ His third contribution was his catering skill. Ten years’ training at an Orleans wine firm added to his inborn gifts had turned the promising trencherman of Oxford into the Cordon bleu of Bloomsbury—the inspired architect of glorious meals such as we have eaten tonight. Our foundation was planned and celebrated at ‘The King’s Head’, ‘The Crown and Anchor’, ‘The Freemason’s Taven’ and other public houses, and Crabtree had early realized that he amongst our founders must take over all arrangements for catering. Just as Brougham brought the Whigs in, just as Isaac Lyon Goldsmith brought the City of London in, just as the Duke of Norfolk brought the Catholics in, so Crabtree brought the food and drink in. In an indirect way his friendship with Bentham was a determining factor in Crabtree’s catering, just as it had been in developing his Utilitarian Verse, Crabtree had long known that Bentham’ s ide as food were odd and suffered enough meals at Queen’s Square Place to know that Bentham’s meals would not enhance these important academic occasions when good food and wine ‘Lay the Foundation’. Turning to a letter of Jeremy’s to his little brother Sam in B.M. Add. MS. 33537 written in 1773 (the year when our two men met) we read, I have now become a housekeeper and will give you a dinner. I have laid in a stock of crab apples, which your friend Mrs. Greene covers for me with a coat of rice—by the help of a fillip of wine and butter they make a very pleasant Bolus. Bentham did not improve with age. We find in the Works X, page 314 in a letter dated 1796 to Lord Landsdowne …my baker and butcher have humanely joined with a compassionate barrow-woman at the end of the lane in supplying me every Lord’s Day with a shoulder of mutton supported in a trivet and forming a dripping canopy distilling fatness over a mess of potatoes sufficiently ample to furnish satisfaction to the cravings of nature during the remainder of the week. It must have been meals such as these which made Crabtree say to Bentham after supper If the soup had been as hot as the claret, the claret as old as the bird, and the bird had had the breast of the parlourmaid it would have been a damned good dinner.

12 JOSEPH CRABTREE AND MATERIA MEDICA Andrew Tay 1965

As a pathologist I am more at home in the laboratory or by the mortuary slab than in the corridors of academic learning. I shall therefore confine myself largely to the medical aspects of Crabtree’ s li fe rat than to metaphysical profundities beyond my powers. In the field of Crabtree studies, false delicacy must not be allowed for one moment to prevent us from examining any aspect of our poet, straight in the face—as it were! Let us look at the portrait, for which we have to thank Professor Sutherland. Although some comments have been made already in Spencer s oration, some medical observations are not without interest. With certain exceptions, the process of natural childbirth involves one of two initial presentations to the world. Either the head appears first—or the breech. From a study of the head, even in later life, it is possible to determine which alternative took place. From the well rounded dome of the head seen in this portrait, it is clear to the trained eye that our poet presented his breech. It is tempting to ascribe to this fact some of his more scornful attitudes towards his contemporaries, but I am no psychologist and will resist the temptation of making such inferences. With the eye of faith, the early signs of gouty tophi can be seen. More certainly the complexion is pockmarked, the result of the lesser pox, possibly of congenital origin; so that when Jenner said to him in pique ‘Pox vobiscum’ he must have referred to the greater pox or morbus Gallici. In spite of its very great prevalence in those times, not a trace of it can be seen in the portrait. It is true that in its secondary stages baldness, can result (one of the reasons why wigs were often worn then) and Crabtree is somewhat bald in the portrait. There are however (some may be relieved to hear) other causes of baldness, and it would perhaps be unfair to attach too much importance to this phenomenon in our poet. It may not generally be remembered that among Crabtree’s circle of poets and men of letters, there were several who were practising physicians. Tobias Smollett, Erasmus Darwin and Thomas Bowdler were but a few. Erasmus Darwin was a founder of the Lunar Society which

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included among its members Joseph Priestley, of whose writings as Jones has made clear to us, Crabtree so strongly disapproved. But with Erasmus Darwin he had some things in common. Both were pockmarked, but Darwin had also lost most of his front teeth early in life. He was so fat that a semicircular hole had to be cut in his dining room table to accommodate him. Like Crabtree he was fond in his youth of sacrificing to Bacchus and Venus, but he soon discovered that he could not continue his devotion to both these deities without destroying his health and constitution. He resolved to relinquish Bacchus but his affection for Venus was retained to the last period of his life. There seems to be some doubt as to Crabtree’s preference, but we do know that he outlived Erasmus Darwin by nearly thirty years, from which we may draw our own conclusions. It is not difficult to imagine Crabtree listening to Erasmus Darwin expounding his views on evolution (formulated before his grandson Charles was even born). Crabtree, perverse as ever, produced a counter theory which we may call ‘Evolution in Reverse’, inspired no doubt by the retrograde method of his own birth. He even went so far as to initiate an experiment in which all the runts of the litter were selected and inbred up to four generations. He used greyhounds for this purpose, descendants of those bred in Carcasonne in 1792, and his aim was to produce dogs the size of mice. It was about this time that Crabtree became interested in materia medica and abandoned this experiment. He had fallen out with Jenner, as Jones told us in 1957. I have followed this up and found that Jenner had been preceded in his discovery of vaccination by a Dorset farmer named Benjamin Jesty. An inscription on his headstone in the churchyard at Worth Matravers in the Isle of Purbeck reads: He was born at Yetminster in this County and was an upright honest man, particularly noted for having been the first person (known) that introduced the Cow Pox by innoculation and also, from his great strength of mind, made the experiment on his wife, and two sons in the year 1774. This was twenty two years before Jenner first successfully practised vaccination. No wonder that Crabtree, scourge of the plagiarist, should have quarrelled with him. Perhaps because of this he was soured to the medical fraternity in general. Whatever the cause, he took to treating himself. In his lifetime, infestation with lice was no uncommon thing, among the rich as well as the poor. Although our poet, apart from a few twinges of gout, was hale and hearty, he nevertheless found to his dismay that the more hirsute areas in region of his pudenda were infested with these

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irritating parasites. He experimented with several medicaments and finally found that an unguent compounded of mercury in refine d sue t, to wh ic h it imp a rted a bluish colour, cured this distressing visitation. Although not mentioned in any official pharmacopoeia of the time, it was widely known as Crabtree ’ Butter. Later generations of the military dropped the eponymous title and to this day it is known as Blue Butter. I now turn to the period when Crabtree is thought to have been at Juniper Hall, near Dorking; in what capacity there seems some doubt, in spite of Dr Tancock ’ s researche s. At the ne arby p ar ish of Alb Rev. T.R. Malthus held the curacy for some time and expounded his views on the evils of overpopulation. Although a great fire destroyed many of his papers and diaries, some few escaped. These were later offered to the London School of Economics and subsequently to the Family Planning Association but both institutions declined the offer. Among them is one in which an entry in December 1797 reads: Suffering these last four days from great stubborness of the bowels, I was visited by a versifier recently returned from France, and interested in materia medica. He administered a clyster of oil of turpentine and molasses which gave much relief, and dispelled the tympanites. However it removed all thought of study for some days, keeping me well occupied. This reference to a poet ‘recently returned from France’, and who was interested in medical matters, must surely I submit be none other than Joseph Crabtree. He can be said also to have anticipated the oral contraceptive pill by more than 150 years, for in a subsequent entry Malthus wrote: This same versifier, following a discussion on overpopulation, propounded a remedy, a pill containing not only senna, calomel and colocynth but also oil of croton, the combined effects of which would, if taken at the onset of any feelings of desire to procreate, be so powerful as to sublimate those feelings into an entirely different channel. Today the thought of such catharsis fills us with dismay and even awe. But let it be remembered that in Crabtree’s time the armoury of the physician (as opposed to the apothecary) contained but four main measures; purgation, bleeding, blistering and sweating, all in heroic proportions. It is little wonder then that his questing mind should be receptive to the new theories of Hahnemann of Meissen, and later called homoeopathy.In a nutshell similia similibus curentur. Note the use of the subjunctive, like should be cured by like, in contradistinction to the earlier use of the

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indicative—curantur, like is cured by like, an expression which Crabtree well knew from earlier days as the hair of the dog… But the homoeopathists advocated greater and greater dilutions of their cures, an idea abhorrent to the author of Ode to Claret. I have given some thought to Crabtree’s longevity, which owes nothing to homoeopathy. By the kindness of Mr.MacSherry, of the London Skin and Lock Hospital I was allowed to examine some mss. written between 1790 and 1810. I little hoped to find anything concerningCrabtree, but I was struck by one paper which was curious for two reasons. First it was anonymous, which is very unusual in medical literature. Second, its title which was The Women of Bulgaria, a study of their anatomy and physiology! Try hard as I would I could think of no possible reason why the anatomy or the physiology of Bulgarian women should be any different from that of other Europeans, or even Asiatics. I immediately dismissed a schoolboy theory concerning Chinese women. And so I read on. There were some vital statistics of a revealing nature of no particularinterest, followed by some doubtful physiological observations of even less interest, but then followed a section of such import that I was transfused. The subtitle was ‘The Nature of their Longevity’, and there followed a description of how, not only the women of Bulgaria but the men also lived for over a hundred years by drinking a variety of fermented milk. From the dawn of civilisation man has made use of processes generally known as fermentation when the result was pleasant, or as putrefaction when it was not. In the case of milk acted upon by Bacillus bulgaricus, I prefer the term putrefaction, even though the great Russian pathologist Metchnikov recommended it in 1894, long after Crabtree’s death. As a lover of the juice of the grape, Crabtree can hardly have enjoyed either drinking fermented milk or commending it to his friends. If he did indeed write this paper, that may be why it was anonymous, but surely here is the most rational explanation of his longevity. It is a time honoured custom of this Foundation that post prandial comfort shall not be marred by an oration unduly prolix. I will therefore pass by the ailments and afflictions of our poets senescence. If he could by some miracle be with us here tonight, and know that even one of his prescriptions I have mentioned would be used with good effect by some of his faithful adherents, he would I am sure in his charming and modest way, flush with pleasure.

13 CRABTREE AND THE STATUE David Wilson 1966

When faced with Joseph Crabtree’s life and polymathic interests, it is difficult not to be embarrassed by the large field left to be studied. As an archaeologist I might have turned to his influence on antiquarian thought in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, for there is plenty of evidence of his influence on, if little of his direct contribution to, the muse of antiquity. I can find no record in the list of Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of the man from whom this Foundation takes its name, but I put this down to the influence of one of the Presidents of the Society of Antiquaries, the Earl of Aberdeen, of whom Crabtree had said ‘Aberdeen, Sir, comes from a long line of maiden aunts’, and who almost certainly removed Crabtree’s name from the rolls. But def–inite evidence of Crabtree’s membership of the Society is to be found in the more ephemeral publications of his day: I refer, of course, to that passage, well-known to all Crabtree students, describing a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries which appeared in The Intelligence for 31 October 1830. It records the minutes of the previous meeting and runs: Presented—first a Bow and Arrow Supposed the same with which the Sparrow Cock Robin’s bosom did transfix (See Mother Goose, vol. 1, page 6) Discovered underneath a Hay-rick in Herefordshire—by Dr. Mayrick Read the accompanying essay Some forty folios as I guess a Brief Statement, Luminous and Clear Of how ‘twas found and when, and where, With arguments of greatest nicety In favour of its Authenticity. There can be no doubt in the minds of Crabtree students that this paper was read by Dr Joseph Crabtree; German scholarship has exam ined the passage in depth at a recent seminar at the University of Göttingen and

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agreed that there can be little doubt that this wellknown passage does, in fact, reveal the title of one of Crabtree’s more important works. You will find a full and detailed synopsis of this in the symposium proceedings entitled ‘Crabtree und früh—und vor–geschichte’, published in Göttingen Jahrbuch der Crabtree Studien, vol. 26, part 2, pages 782–833. I should have liked to have expanded this theme tonight, but a matter of more serious moment has come to light which deserves closer and more immediate study. It is a matter which strikes at the very roots of our subject in fact at the very roots of academic discipline. I refer to what might almost be described as a Crabtree forgery The matter first came to my attention while browsing, as is my wont, through the pages of that splendid book, with which every scholar in this room will be familiar, The Cambridge Tart, which you will remember was published by James Smith, 163 Strand, in 1823. This opuscula was edited by a fellow of my own college, St. John’s, Richard Gooch, under the pseudonym of ‘Socius’. At p. 227 you will find ‘LINES by J.C. in answer to some recommending an observatory instead of a statue of Pitt’. LINES BY J.C IN ANSWER TO SOME RECOMMENDING AN OBSER-VATORY INSTEAD OF A STATUE OF PITT.

Say, sons of Granta, will ye persevere, Nor to that warning voice afford an ear? That friend to learning, but no friend to Pitt, Who an Observatory thought more fit, With classic architecture to adorn Some walk for study formed, or open lawn, Than that the statue of our statesman dead Should in the senate rear aloft its head; And what is worse, forewith, far worse than all, That fame for Pitt should from its basis fall. But see, she moves—the statue moves—behold She seems to speak—Hermione of old: ‘I yield,’ she cries, ‘to that respected form, Which pilot like, has weather’d oft the storm, When fell democracy, on English ground Dared, like a mildew, spread its influence round; Or Frenchmen threaten, with a mighty band, To hurl destruction on our happy land. What, tho’ no college rears its head sublime,

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To hail him founder in the lapse of time, Yet sure to prove it ask no scholar’s art, That he who guards the whole must guard the part. Oft as his form shall meet the student’s eye, The tears shall start, and heave the trembling sigh; Fir’d with the magic of the sculptor’s art, The genial glow shall vibrate thro’ his heart. Fancy shall almost learn with eager ear His matchless eloquence again to hear! Who, e’en when struggling in the arms of death Cry’d, ‘Save my country,’ with his parting breath. Then mourn not friend of science, at the zeal Which rears the guardian of the public weal In Granta’s Senate-house—what place more fit To pay just honours to the manes of Pitt Now it is important to the understanding of my argument that you know that in my own copy of this book there is a marginal note in pencil against the title which reads: ‘Joseph Crabtree, S.Joh.’ And at first reading it would seem reasonable to suppose that this was indeed one of the poems of our hero—the period is right, the style is right, we know, from Brown, that Crabtree was intimately connected with Cambridge. But, sir, the sentiments! Could a Whig, like Crabtree, the friend of Brougham, have penned these lines? Could Crabtree have reached such heights on such a subject? The answer sir, is ‘No’, a thousand times ‘No’. For Crabtree, sir, was an honest man; he could not fawn, he would not kowtow to any party or any current favourite. Was it not Crabtree, who when accosted by the Duke of Wellington with the words ‘Mr. Smith I believe’, replied to the Duke ‘If you believe that, sir, you will believe anything’? It was a strongman —a bold man—who could say such a thing to the Duke. This poem, therefore, can hardly be considered to be the work of Crabtree. However, it is necessary to examine in some detail its authorship, for it is nevertheless a gem of English literature and has been, in the past, associated with the fair name of Crabtree. At first sight it would seem possible that Keats was the author of this great masterpiece. Let us not belittle Keats in our study of a greater man, Mr. President, for Keats could write poetry. Consider for example those splendid evocative lines full of the most complicated imagery which adorn one of his later sonnets: My ear is open like a greedy shark To catch the tunings of a voice divine.

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Or consider his more lyric and romantic qualities as revealed in those famous lines on Oxford which start: The Gothic looks solemn The Plain Doric column Supports an old Bishop and crosier The mouldering arch Shaded o’er by a larch Lives next door to Wilson the Hosier These passages, I think you will agree, Mr. President, help to place Keats among the immortals and give him a claim to have written the poem in The Cambridge Tart. He cannot rank with Crabtree, sir, but I think we may call Keats a great poet. But alas it cannot have been Keats who wrote these lines. Keats you will remember was a dresser at Guy’s hospital, before he became too deeply involved with the Brawne woman, he was never at Cambridge; never, as far as I know, visited it, and was not interested in either Cambridge or Pitt. With Keats’s claims must go those of Byron (a Trinit man, and, believe it or not, a Whig), Shelley (who was sent down from Oxford and was a Whig), Blake (who was ill at the time and in any case was the son of a hosier), Shakespeare, who was dead, Thomas Campbell (who was educated at Glasgow University and lived at Sydenham, Coleridge (who went to Jesus College—and that is enough to condemn him), and so we may go on dismissing in like manner the poets of the period who could have written this effusion: Crabbe, Lamb, Landor, Tom Moore, Walter Scott, and Southey. We are left with the other immortal, whose name continually crops up in Crabtree Studies—William Wordsworth, M.A. of St. John’s College, Cambridge, High Tory, friend of Crabtree and the Jeremiah of the nineteenth century. Who else could have written this poem than William Wordsworth, the plain strands of whose life are inextricably entangled with the technicolour of Joseph Crabtree’s. It is in the works of Wordsworth that Crabtree is depicted as a fisherman. It is to Crabtree that Wordsworth’s thoughts were continually returning in old age when Broken in fortune; but in mind entire And sound in principle, I seek repose …when vain desire Intrudes on peace… Time and again references—albeit oblique or hidden—appear in Wordsworth’s poetry to ‘rare Joe Crabtree’, as Isaac Mackenzie described him.

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Sir, there seems little doubt that Wordsworth wrote The Cambridge Tart poem, but, although it at once leaps to the eye that Crabtree could not have written these lines, is it possible to understand why William Wordsworth borrowed Crabtree’s initials and, further, is it possible to discover who it was who forged the pencil inscription in my own copy of The Cambridge Tart , together with the solecism of ascribing Crabtree to St. John’s College? I will now attempt to answer these questions. Wordsworth was a man of little self-assurance. Despite the fact that he liked to think of himself as a he-man—seeking adventure in a negative and unsuccessful fashion in those twin homes of democratic liberty, France and the Isle of Man—he was basically unsure of himself. He was constantly visiting fellow poets, seeking praise, comfort, balm to the spirit. He wrote more poems about the other poets than any other poet: Shakespeare, Burns, Milton, Lamb, Crabtree, Scott, Crabbe, Coleridge, Chatterton, Tasso, Petrarch, Spencer, and many more figured in his work. He had, one might almost say, an unhealthy interest in poets derived undoubtedly from the most terrible inferiority complexes. Although he over-compensated in his relations with Coleridge, this inferiority complex shows itself in practically every relationship he had with Crabtree. At all times Crabtree helped him—helped his virility in giving him a daughter, helped his purse by interceding with Lowther on his behalf to obtain his civil service position, helped his muse by writing the odd poem or two when Wordsworth had a sick headache. Crabtree, the grand old man of English letters, was always only too willing to give a helping hand to a young and struggling, semi-psychotic poet like Wordsworth, fifteen years his junior and doomed to be remembered as poet laureate and tax farmer. Crabtree could afford to do so. His reputation, made while Wordsworth was still on the roof of that itinerant vehicle, was well founded. The Ode to Claret, with its limpid, lambent periods, its evocative sensibility and its lyric achievement stands as a monument to the genius of the man we honour today. Wordsworth’s greatest poetry (for example his sonnet to the retired Marine officer in the Isle of Man) can hardly be said to achieve the haunting heights of Crabtree’s most famous and most oft–quoted refrain ‘Great unaffected vampires and the moon’. Crabtree then was generous, even to the parsimonious Wordsworth, and it is my contention that he was willing to lend his poetical reputation, his very name, to Wordsworth. For the letters J.C. in The Cambridge Tart can stand for none other than Joseph Crabtree. Wordsworth, you will remember, had a brother. Also a rather unsatisfactory man; Christopher was a don and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Despite these drawbacks and social inconveniences Wordsworth was always very loyal to his rather difficult brother and never failed to stay at the Master’s lodge on his visits to Cambridge. They agreed

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on politics and particularly, according to Mrs Moorman, on University politics. This was, apparently, about the only thing they did agree on and talk about, for William once said of him ‘I am unacquainted with his pursuits and mode of life’. It was rather natural, therefore, that Wordsworth should volunteer to support his brother in Cambridge pamphleteering. Although a Tory, Wordsworth did not like Pitt very much and he also felt that his (Wordsworth’s) reputation was not sufficient to influence the voters of the Univeristy of Cambridge. Knowing, therefore, that Crabtree’s reputation was second to none among contemporary poets and knowing also the high esteem in which Crabtree was held in the University since the time our hero had been employed as a binder in the University Library, he presumably threw himself on his friend’s charity, borrowed his initials and wrote this major work, which I am sure was the chief reason for the marmoreal representation which delights all visitors to the Senate House to this day. Crabtree after all was a sage who had only to utter and a project would come to fruition. This is the only explanation which I can find for this poem’s existence. Who, then, wrote the pencil note in my copy of The Cambridge Tart? It would be easy to say that it was a dishonest bookseller, hoping to increase the value of the book. But it seems to me that it was a rather muddled admirer of the works of Joseph Crabtree, a man who took the, not unreasonable, attitude that almost all the most influential people in thought and letters had been at St. John’s. We may never identify him, this lowly clerk who had at least seen some of the light and who, like the rest of the University, had been taken in by the poem. This simple man enabled me, however, to enlarge upon Crabtree’s acknowledged generosity and stature. In these days, when hero-worship is unfashionable, it pleases us to remember with old-fashioned gratitude that man who stands head and shoulders in generosity, piety, learning and appetite above his great contemporaries. It is fitting that we should meet tonight on the feast of Crabtree, to eat his favourite food, to drink his health and remember in solemn manner his contribution to our life. By his works our lives are richer, by his thoughts our scholarship is deeper, in his poetry can be seen all that is austere and proud in our national heritage. I should like, therefore, to finish my attempts to reveal part of the giant’s work by quoting the final two lines of his tour de farce , the Ode to Claret, which epitomizes Crabtree’s credo: And so in brassy notes from our fair ALBION’S shore The hymn, in vino veritas, resound for evermore.

14 JOSEPH CRABTREE AND HIS PUBLISHERS Bryan Bennett 1967

In choosing as my subject Crabtree and his Publishers I hoped to pursue, and possibly attain, three objectives—which might or might not be said to be correlative. First I wished to view the Poet against the background of his accoucheurs. Secondly I hoped to discover some of the reasons which might account for what an earlier Orator has so accusingly called ‘a neglect amounting almost to a conspiracy of silence’. Thirdly I needed, partially at least, to vindicate those members of my trade who implicitly had come within the strictures meted out on those generations who had suffered the weeds of neglect to strangle and obscure for too many years the poetic blooms which sprang from Crabtree’s fertile soil. So far little is known of the Poet’s boyhood—it is particularly interesting then to find that one of his earliest friends was later to become his first publisher. James Lackington (1746–1815), bookseller and publisher, was born in Somerset. In 1760 he was bound apprentice to a worthy shoemaker near Chipping Sodbury. The Lackington family and the Crabtree family were very strict Methodists—in fact the Crabtree house was called Bethtappuah Lodge—a name which you will know comes from Joshu a 15.23 and is nearest translated as the House of The Crab-apples. Although Lackington was eight years older than Crabtree, the poet was, as we know, extremely precocious and the two became firm friends. Their friendship was cemented when both broke violently away from Methodism. This revolt was partly brought about because of the course of reading persuaded on Crabtree by Lackington which, in his own words, was: Plato and Seneca, and Plutarch and Epicurus, and other of the old pagan philosophers, and all the modern ones such as Voltaire, Tom Paine etc. It was also partly brought about by a compound of high spirits and winebibbing which gave rise to a series of clashes with the Minister and his

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Anglican counterpart—the Vicar of Chipping Sodbury. Such practices as keeping their angler’s bait in the font might have been for–given, but a succession of scenes of riot and dissipation caused the Methodist Minister to attack Crabtree and Lackington head on. On one never to be forgotten Sunday the Minister, in a last attempt to drive the pair back on to more seemly paths, was preaching on Isiah 5.11 and 28 7/8 Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning that they may follow strong drink. But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment. For all the tables are of vomit and filthiness. At that same moment in the Anglican Church the Vicar was in midsermon. A shot was heard outside. ‘Poachers! By God!’ exclaimed the vicar, and with vestments flying and followed by the entire choir and congregation he raced out in pursuit. It was poachers—their names Lackington and Crabtree! All this was too much for Chipping Sodbury. Crabtree was packed off to Oxford and Lackington moved hurriedly to London where he opened his premises in Featherstone St. Apart from the bookselling side of his business it was Lackington’s intention to publish the verse of young unknown poets. He had already in 1774 accepted a number of Crabtree’s early poems and bought others during the next few years in order to bring out what Crabtree described in a letter as ‘a small duodecimo volume of 128 pages’. Lackington, who prospered quite quickly, bought the copyright of these poems in order to give immediate pecuniary assistance to his friend whose way of life, first at Oxford and then in the Metropolis, was not calculated to ease the estrangement between the poet and his family. I am glad to say that Lackington was not ungenerous to his friend although he could not expect any return until he had collected sufficient poems for the 128 page volume. In one letter to Crabtree touching on money matters Lackington writes: Nothing is more common than to hear authors complaining against publishers for want of liberality in purchasing their manuscripts! Crabtree replies— I am of Dr. Johnson’s mind in this matter who once observed, ‘Sir, I always said the Booksellers were a generous set of men. Nor, in the

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present instance, have I reason to complain. The fact is not that they have paid me too little, but that I have written too much.’ All was set fair then for the appearance of a slim volume in the mid 1780’ s wh en Lacking ton under w ent a sud den and most reconversion to Methodism. The dissipation of his earlier days, constantly called to mind by reports of Crabtree’s present mode of life, rose spectrally before him. He began to preach, to visit the sick, relieve the poor, distribute tracts and expound the scriptures. Finally he began to endow chapels throughout the West Country—at Taunton, Chipping Sodbury and Buddleigh Salterton, where his remains now are. If he had renounced completely his former riotous life what was he to do about Crabtree’s poems which treated so lyrically if almost exclusively of the pleasures of venery and vinery? Alas! We do not know. Certainly the duodecimo volume did not appear. Nor did Crabtree, as far as I can discover, ever ask Lackington to relinquish the copyrights. It may be that the poet thought much of the work was in the nature of juvenilia and not worth pursuing—or it may be that his new occupation in the wine trade gave him no time to negotiate with Lackington until it was too late. There is a story that Lackington, in his new religious frenzy, distributed the early Crabtree poems among the tracts thrust on the deserving poor—nor would this have been a bad thing except for posterity. Before setting out for France Crabtree visited his home once more and spent some time in Bristol, where he soon found out Joseph Cottle, who was to achieve fame later as the publisher of Lyrical Ballads. Cottle opened his Bookshop in 1791 and on seeing some of Crabtree’s poems undertook to publish them when the poet had sufficient. It was odd that Crabtree should not then have pursued the Lackington poems—but if he did, there is no reference to them in Cottle’s correpondence. It is important to remember, however, that Cottle had seen some of Crabtree’s work and probably had bought certain pieces—for this fact is essential to the full understanding of the Vallon episode. An episode which Sutherland, with characteristic courage and wisdom, was the first to interpret correctly. Certain it now is that Annette Vallon’s ‘secret grief the promise of a mother’ was occasioned by Joseph Crabtree. But it is equally certain that Wordsworth’s assumption of the responsibilities of paternity also carried the assumption of the paternity of certain of Crabtree’s poems and ideas for other poems. I am not saying that Wordsworth actually demanded such quids pro quos but Crabtree’s was a generous spirit and he would not suffer his friend to take the rough without a certain amount of the smooth—and apart from some choice bottles of pre-phylloxera Loire wines he had only poems to offer.

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Wordsworth may not have intended to use these poems—and indeed he may not have done, but there are many evidences to the contrary. First there was the curious if sad scene when Crabtree was persuading Annette to agree to Wordsworth’s and his plan. Annette, as you know, at first refused—Crabtree grew agitated and in the argument meant to show that fathers, as well as mothers, have some rights in decisions affecting their joint offspring. He meant to say that the man is father of the child. In his cofusion he blurted out the Spoonerism, ‘The Child is Father of the Man’— Wordsworth took out his note book! Next there is the too ready assumption by Wordsworth that others are guilty of plagiarism—transference of guilt is the psychiatric expression I believe. A typical example is afforded by Rogers: I once read Gray’s Ode To Adversity to Wordsworth; and the line ‘And leave us leisure to be good’ Wordsworth exclaimed—‘I am quite sure that is not original; Gray could not have hit upon it’. Then there is the very revealing manner in which Wordsworth writes to Cottle: 12 April 1798. My Dear Cottle, You will be pleased to hear that I have gone on very rapidly adding to my stock of poetry. Of course it is very rapidly—it demands little time to sift through the manuscript sheets left him by Crabtree. Surely if such poems had been written by Wordsworth himself, he would have used some expression other than ‘my stock of poetry’. He might have said ‘written more poems’—or he might even have said ‘adding to the stock of my poetry’, where the begetter identifies himself with the work. But ‘my stock of poetry’ can only mean that the ownership of the stock is now his although the individual poems were not. In June 1799 Wordsworth writes to Cottle about Lyrical Ballads. If the volume should come to a second edition I would put in its place some little things which would be more likely to suit the common taste. Does ‘some little things’ sound like the Lyrical Poet writing of his own work? And did not Wordsworth recognize that Crabtree’s poetry was much more successful than his own and that it would therefore suit the ‘common taste’ more?

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Lastly, and irrefutably, we have the broadcast views of the publisher Cottle himself. In his Epistle to Lord Byron Cottle says: Who, bold with Hell’s vice regents war to rage, Brands the ‘Satanic school’ to every age; His visitings, Herculean, chief descending Upon the ‘Head and front of the offending’ Which verse shall Wordsworth ever blush to own? Gentlemen, we can answer that question. Wordsworth never did blush to own Crabtree’s verses! Cottle then had discovered the truth and such was the traumatic shock that he immediately sold his entire copyrights to Mr. Longman, and so that the world at large should be given an unequivocal indication of the true situation, the valuation of the Lyrical Ballads was set down at exactly nothing! As for the Crabtree poems in Cottle’s stock and passed Longman I can say nothing—except that the present heirs and successors of Mr. Longman are fully conscious that in neglecting to publish these poems and even more in subsequently losing them they have committed one of the gravest sins of all time against the cause of English Letters. For the next few years Crabtree’s contacts with publishers seem to have been exiguous—partly because he was going through a fallow period and partly because he was trying an interesting experiment in that he was anticipating by some 140 years the activities of the present day ‘Barrow Poets’. To encourage young poets Crabtree became a publisher and he, with one or two young fellows, would sell their broadsheet poems and ballads from street stalls. It was from this, perhaps slightly misguided, activity that the expression—later to be used pejoratively—the ‘Cockney School of Poetry’ sprang. Although no reviewer in Blackwoods or in the Quarterly ever dared openly to link the revered name of Crabtree with these lesser versifiers. It was in 1811 that, through Byron, Crabtree became acquainted with John Murray—an acquaintanceship which quickly developed into a firm and lasting friendship. Crabtree became one of the most regular and most distinguished figures in those frequent gatherings of giants held at 50 Albermarle St.—when such men as Byron, Scott, Moore, Crabbe, Southey, Lockhart and Washington Irving dined with John Murray. You will recall that in his mock epistle to Dr. Palidori, Byron makes Murray say—

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A party dines with me today All clever men who make their way Crabbe, Malcolm, Hamilton and Crabtree Are all partakers of my Pantry In one version of this a regrettable misprint occurred and instead of Crabtree it read Chantrey It was this heinous sin which prompted Byron to exclaim, that ‘I do believe the Devil never created or perverted such a fiend as the fool of a printer.’ It was in the famous drawing room of Murray’s house that Crabtree and Byron, as was the custom in those days, exchanged locks of hair. The present Mr. John Murray was kind enough to show me recently the silver casket in which Byron had placed his collection of such locks of hair. Each is carefully wrapped and documented—with one notable exception. It is a short brown curl and, as well as the date and the evidence of the oral tradition at Murray’s, comparison of the curl with the Sutherland portrait is quite conclusive—it is Crabtree’s. On the wrapping in Byron’s hand is written, ‘Whose this is I don’t recollect but it is of 1812’. Of course the methodical Byron recollected exactly whose lock it was but the author of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers could not resist a jibe even at a friend’s expense. Byron fully appreciated the unfortunate concatenation of events which had resulted in the appearance of so little of Crabtree’s work under his own name—and with this prophetic shaft Byron foretells the years of neglect and anonymity which Crabtree is to suffer. Crabtree, as you may suppose, readily forgave Byron and never lost his regard for the younger man. During this period John Murray was at great pains to sustain Crabtree and his poetic genius. Crabtree repaid him with countless valuable literary services—although, contrary to tradition, it was not Crabtree who persuaded Murray to reject Wordsworth’s proposal that he should become Wordsworth’s publisher. We can guess that a major reason for Murray’s refusing Wordsworth was his knowledge of Wordsworth’s earlier dubious dealings concerning Crabtree—for it was this certain knowledge that also gave rise to Byron’s intense dislike of the Lake Poet. One surprising task that Crabtree did undertake for Mr. Murray in the early 1820’s was to help with the editing of that august martial annual, The Army List, Militia List and Imperial Yeomanry List. And even here the sublunary genius of the poet cannot help but be at work. Open any of those Lists which Crabtree supervised and one perceives the quiddity, the ‘thisness’ of the Poet. One looks at random at the 2nd Dragoon Guards of 1821 and everywhere is the taut economy and ordered rhythm of Crabtree’s maturity.

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Reginald Stretton Spurrier Leslie St. Clair Cheape Edward Arthur Wenholt C.de Crespigny. That, gentlemen, is surely the poetic marriage of those philosophical antitheses—nominalism and realism. We are now approaching the final truly productive period of the Poet Crabtree. It is a period which has been bedevilled, as earlier orators have shown, from the paleographic confusion between Crabbe and Crabtree. When going through the manuscript notebooks at Murray’s which, for convenience only, are all in the Crabbe file, one is conscious that the truth can only finally be arrived at after the long awaited English Literary Hands is published. George Crabbe came to John Murray from Mr. Colburn in 1818 and Murray offered £3000 for the copyright of his poems. It was thought to be far too generous an offer since, as Moore pointed out, ‘even if the whole of the edition were sold Murray would still be £1900 minus’. Allowing for publishers’ endemic liberality, the explanation for this large sum also lies in the fact that Murray realised that Colburn had certainly mixed up some of Crabtree’s work with that of Crabbe. It will be for the scholars brilliantly and painstakingly to identify the complete Crabtree canon and I hope that this work can find its centre of studies in this College. I would, however, urge any scholar undertaking this great labour to study very closely those manuscript notebooks of poems not originally published with Crabbe’s other works. Some of these poems were published in 1960 as New Poems by George Crabbe edited by Arthur Pollard who, in Manchester, has been denied the benefits of recent Crabtree scholarship. One can therefore forgive him for perpetuating last century’s injustices. But I ask any of you who undertakes the re-examination of these manuscript poems—and surely this is a work of the first priority—to consider carefully the pencilled notes, written in the Publisher’s hand and completely overlooked by Pollard. Such phrases as ‘Not in the list’ and ‘Suppress’ are at the head of these poems precisely because Mr. Murray knew that they were not by Crabbe and should not appear under his name. I would suggest that in these so called ‘new poems’ there is a wealth of internal evidence which points to Crabtree’ s han For example the poem David Morris, which can only be regarded as an anagogical allegory of the Crabtree/Wordsworth complex, contains these lines: We know not what could lead him to despise The humble Profits that from Office rise But he contemptuous spoke of Customs and Excise.

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Who is this if not Wordsworth—long suspected of contraband practices with Crabtree himself when in Orleans? You will remember Coleridge reports on the local inhabitants’ view of Wordsworth when at Alfoxden. One local worthy speaks I know what he is. We have all met him, tramping away toward the sea. Would any man in his senses take all that trouble to look at a parcel of water! I think he carries on a smug business in the smuggling line, and in these journies is on the look out for some wet cargo. Now Crabbe could not possibly have known of this period in Wordsworth’s life—but Crabtree did! But these speculations I must leave for others. What, you may ask, of the present? What are publishers doing today to ensure that the elusive greatness which is Crabtree’s is no longer kept from the world at large? As a beginning, may I present to the Foundation this anthology. An earlier Oration finished with the words, ‘HE IS WITH SHAKE–SPEARE!’ HE IS and with Chaucer too, and Jonson and Pope and Blake—on pages 103 and 104 of A Book of Poetry!

15 JOSEPH CRABTREE AND THE NORTH Peter Foote 1968

It is a reasonable inference that Crabtree in his early years at Chipping Sodbury became acquainted with the world of Northern letters, simply because this was a subject much discussed in the periodical literature of the time. His interest would certainly have been aroused, for example, by reading an old number of The Monthly Review (1758), in which a writer pointed out that it was ‘mere calumny to accuse the Icelanders of addiction to brandy’. Later on it must have amused him hugely to see his own ornate and ceremonious version of a popular low ballad unceremoniously lifted by Mathias in his Runic Odes, published in 1781. Mathias printed, in what purported to be a translation from Icelandic, these lines: No more this pensile mundane ball Rolls through the wide aerial hall; Ingulphed sinks the vast machine— but Crabtree of course had used the plural, not the singular, in his Augustan exercise on this poem, which, as you will be aware, is otherwise only known to us in an insipid modernised text, often attributed to an anonymous aviator. In the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1786 a reviewer of Thorkelin’s Diplomatarium Arnamagnæanum speaks of the support the study of antiquities receives in Denmark while, as he says, ‘in Great Britain the best and most curious manuscripts are allowed to rot in silence’. Besides these words in the British Museum copy there is pencilled in, in a hand suspiciously like Crabtree’s, the additional words ‘and books’. I think we can only conclude that our poet, presumably in advanced years, had run into difficulties with material in locked cupboards in the Museum at the same time as he was continuing his studies in northern antiquities. More important still in thus briefly tracing Crabtree’s connections with northern literature is his acquaintance with the youthful Joseph Cottle whom, Bennett has shown, Crabtree met in Bristol as early as 1783 or 1784. For Cottle’s elder brother, Amos Simon, was already showing a precocious interest in northern poetry, an interest which bore fruit in his

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volume called Icelandic Poetry, published in 1797. A writer in the Critical Review for 1798 said that these poems offered any poet inspiration for images ‘peculiarly adapted for poetry by their novelty, their strangeness, and their sublimity’. It seems to me not too bold, gentlemen, to say that these three words, novelty, strangeness and sublimity, are peculiarly adapted for Crabtree’s own most moving line: ‘Great unaffected vampires and the moon’. And here, gentlemen, arises a problem which I cannot forbear from presenting to our skilled critics and bibliographers. For in pursuit of Crabtree and Northern Studies, I have come upon a variant of this line, which runs: ‘Great unaffected valkyrs and the moon’—valkyrs being a common English form (nowadays usually valkyries) for valkyrjur, the choosers of the slain of Germanic myth. In order to return to this I must first advance to William Herbert, third son of the first Earl of Carnarvon. This young gentleman was a person of some attainments but led the sheltered and studious life one would expect of the third son of a new Welsh earl, and which one would also expect of a man who one day was to become Dean of Manchester. Nevertheless, he seems to have sought Crabtree’s acquaintance about the year 1800. I suspect that he gained it through Amos Cottle, or perhaps through Walter Scott. Herbert was interested in Icelandic poetry too, and we can detect in his first publications in the field, two small volumes called Select Icelandic Poetry printed in 1804 and 1806, undeniable marks of Crabtree’s beneficent influence. I shall take only the most obvious instance of this to serve as a demonstration. There is a famous couplet in the twelfth-century romantic poem Krákumál in which the hero, Ragnar shaggy-breeches, exclaims that fighting that day was not like kissing a young widow in the hall’s seat of honour. This poem was particularly popular with foreigners in the eighteenth century, but the translators to a man missed the negative in the sentence and came out with renderings like: ‘The pleasure of that day was like kissing a young widow at the highest seat of the table’; or in the decorous words of the Rev. James Johnstone, published as late as 1802: ‘The scene was sweet as when I welcomed the youthful widow to my throne preeminent’. Now William Herbert got his translation right and put the negative in (‘Twas not like kissing widow sweet/Reclining in the highest seat’), and both in this piece of erudition and in a note on it elsewhere Crabtree’s hand is clearly seen. The note reads thus: What notion the learned translators entertained of kissing young widows I cannot pretend to say; but it is singular that they should have imagined…it like breaking heads with a broadsword. But we may ask: What notions could the callow youth, the future Dean of Manchester, Herbert himself, entertain about kissing young widows? Is it reasonable to suppose he had ever been near a young widow in his young

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life? Certainly not, gentlemen: for such a comment as this he needed the guidance of the author of an Ars salutandi, a friend of riper years and richer experience, of more enthusiastic passions and more passionate enthusiasm than could ever be looked for in the future Dean of Manchester. I have no hesitation in seeing this as yet another instance of the manifold services rendered by Crabtree, ever prodigal in his bounty, to younger poets. Herbert in this but makes one with Wordsworth. This introduction to Herbert allows me now in this brief disquisition to return to Crabtree’s superlative line, ‘Grea t unaffect ed vampi and the moon’, for in some later lines of Herbert’s own, in Helga (1815), there is, I am sorry to say, good evidence to show that the other version, ‘Great unaffected valkyrs and the moon’, not merely existed but had gained currency—and if we find this in Herbert’s writing, then I fear we must take it that the variant came to him from Crabtree himself. Herbert is describing a battle scene, where beside the doomed hero there appear six unearthly females—valkyries sent by Odin to bring the slain to his hall: So midly firm their placid air, So resolute, yet heavenly fair. But not one ray of pity’s beam From their dark eyelids seemed to gleam; Nor gentle mercy’s melting tear, Nor love might ever harbour there. Was never beauteous woman’s face So stern and yet so passionless! The description here is entirely built up on the most strikingly original of the words in Crabtree’s magnificent line, the word ‘unaffected’, and what Herbert gives us is indeed a picture of great valkyries completely unaffected by anything. This is not the time to pursue this subject, though it is of crucial importance to Crabtree criticism to know when and under what circumstances ‘valkyrs’ became ‘Vampires’; or—I hesitate to mention it— when ‘vampires’ became ‘valkyrs’. For ‘vampires’ might be thought the earlier, representative of his Gothick phase; ‘valkyrs’ the later, sig–nificant of his maturest, Icelandic period. It is interesting to recall, on the one hand, that Helga, Herbert’s poem, was published in 1815 and is undoubtedly based on ‘Great unaffected valkyrs—’; while, on the other hand, tradition has it, according to Brown, that the line ‘Great unaffected vampires and the moon’ was sung at Waterloo in the same year by some contingents of Wellington’s army. Now, Wellington’s conservatism needs no stressing; and one could well believe that he refused to accept Crabtree’s new-fangled version.

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I shall make no attempt to elucidate the whole range of our Poet’s connections with Northern scholarship and his love of Northern poetry. We can imagine the ways in which he and Sir Walter Scott encouraged each other’s interest in the past and the North. Crabtree was still active in the field in his last years, and among other things evidently encouraged Dasent’s translation of Rask’s Icelandic Grammer, published in 1843. In Dasent’s preface we find a statement of Crabtree’s great educational principle characteristically expressed in the phrase, ‘learning by suction’— but since the phrase is misapplied by Dasent, we may suspect that he did not properly understand his mentor’s sublime notion. But this I am sure is enough to make it clear that, come the 1820s, then if anyone in the kingdom was familiar with the Scandinavian past, it was Crabtree; and if anyone was eager to extend still further the range of his experience by a visit to a northern country, it was our mighty poet. And Joseph Crabtree, our great luminary, did in fact do so—and now I draw near the heart of my communication—he visited Norway and, as we should expect, he set his mark on the artistic and intellectual history of that noble nation in a way no other foreigner has ever done. The immediate circumstances belong to a hitherto obscure part of his career, the later 1820s. I must begin by mentioning a man who is first becoming as well known in Crabtree scholarship as he is in the history of British science—I mean Crabtree’s inveterate foe and detractor, Sir Humphrey Davy. A concise biographical notice of Davy, which appears to depend on a contemporary source, says among other things this: ‘A passionate angler. Invented system for protecting copper bottoms of Royal Navy ships. Proved his invention and assuaged his passion on a Naval voyage to Norway in 1824.’ He is further lauded as the first man to cast a fly in Norwegian waters, but as his own tedious account of his journey (in letters to his mother, published in his brothers Memoirs in 1836) makes clear, he never in fact took a salmon in Norway, except one he bought for two shillings—after it had been netted. He blamed this lack of success on the sawmills on the rivers. Crabtree had heard of Davy’s failure and enjoyed the news, but he too was a passionate angler—‘Of Crabtree wrapt in glory and in joy, Casting his fly along the riverside’—we remember Wordsworth’s lovely lines—longed, we may be sure, for an opportunity to succeed where Davy had cut so poor a figure. I must now introduce a newcomer in the Crabtree circle. George Warde Norman was born in 1793. As early as 1821 he became a governor of the Bank of England, and he was throughout the nineteenth century an influential thinker and writer on banking and financia subjects. He and his brother took over their father’s business and this had very close connections with Norway. They were timber importers and engaged in general investment and insurance. After the Napoleonic wars were over,

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there was a feverish time in Norwegian business circles; speculation was rife and many a good name was sucked down in the financial maelstrom. So bad was the situation that when George Norman first went to Norway in 1819, the debts he had to collect amounted to no less than £70,000. He went again on the same kind of business in 1826 and 1828: but note well, gentlemen, that he did not go in 1827. In 1827 he did not need to go, for he then did a far finer thing: he made it possible for Joseph Crabtree to see the land of whose antiquities he had read so much, and possible for him to cast a better fly than Davy in Norwegian waters. At the same time he seems to have entrusted the supervision of his business affairs to Crabtree, although this is not at all surprising when we recall that Crabtree, turned 70, was still at the height of his physical and intellectual powers; and we know what affection he regularly inspired in others. The circumstances of his attachment to Norman I have not been able to trace, but that Norman was a man entirely after Crabtree’s heart is shown by Norman’s own statement about his five years at Eton: Of Greek and Latin, the only subjects taught, I learnt little; but I learnt all the better to play cricket, football and other sports, in all of which I attained great proficiency. Crabtree went by Norman’s usual route, by packet from Harwich to Arendal and Christiansand, and so to Norman’s friends and business associates in Christiania, Drammen and Skien. It is probable that he travelled with J.W.Cowell, a friend of Norman’s and a keen angler; certainly there was an Englishman in the party besides himself. Norman in his visits had learnt some Norwegian but otherwise managed pretty well with English and French. Our poet’s linguistic attainments were no worse than Norman’s; and indeed, as we shall see, he also had opportunity to put his Chipping Sodbury Latin to good use. The journey and visit lasted some weeks and we have no full account of it. It is especially sad that we have no detailed record, though we need have no doubt, of Crabtree’s success with the fly Sufficient to say, however, that by Whitsun weekend he was in the busy little town of Skien and by then familiar with Norwegian ideas of hospitality. His chief connection in the town was Diderik Cappelen, one of Norman’s most important associates and one of the leading men in what Halvdan Koht has termed Skien’s ‘aristocracy’. It is in consequence not surprising that we find Crabtree present at a dinner party in the house of Cappelen’s nephew by marriage, Knud Ibsen, a thriving extrovert business man who just now was at the height of his prosperity The party was held on Monday, 18 June 1827, to celebrate the anniversary of Waterloo, and it was a party of the kind recalled by Dean Ramsay of Edinburgh, where boys were especially hired to go round loosening the neckties of the guests under the table.

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After the ladies had retired, there was more drink, more speeches, more toasts, and, as we should expect, Crabtree was the cornerstone of the festivitity. We know very well what his views on Waterloo and Wellington were because he had transmitted them to Byron who then watered them down to use in The Vision of Judgment and Don Juan, but Crabtree was not prepared to disturb his hosts by voicing those views at this time— genial and generous soul as he was, he would not be a spectre at the feast. So the hours passed. Now, I must admit, gentlemen, that what follows is to some extent a reconstruction, based upon a pencilled leaf, by Cowell—if Cowell it was— and upon a certain ineluctable event in what was then the future. Many hours of merriment had passed, until Crabtree finally looked around and found only one Norwegian in view, at least only one perpendicular Norwegian in view. This, needless to say, was the worthy pastor of Skien, and he was now on his feet and wagging a friendly finger in Crabtree’s direction and making a speech in his honour—a speech in Latin. When he came to an end, he drained his glass and joined his recumbent countrymen. Crabtree had spoken English and French that evening, but he had avoided making a speech: now he felt he had no choice, and he rose in reply to the prostrate pastor and he too spoke in Latin. The sonorous phrases flowed over the insensible assembly, but fortunately for us, Cowell was there—if Cowell it was—and he got his words down in a pencil scrawl hard to decipher. They are words which we now know to have been put to good use by Lord Dufferin in Iceland some 30 years later. I will not quote the whole speech. The solemn, modest humanity of the beginning—‘Viriillustres, insolitus ut sum ad publicum loquendum’— cannot be omitted; and Crabtree went on to praise good drink and Norwegian womanhood (indeed, all that Dufferin had to do 30 years later was to change the adjective ‘Norwegian’ to ‘Icelandic’ wherever it occurred). His words in praise of drinking are so much in keeping with the Ode to Claret that these we must certainly hear now: Bibere, res est quae in omnibus terris…requirit ‘haustum longum, haustum fortem, et haustum omnes simul’; ut canit Poeta, ‘unum tactum Naturae totum orbem fecit consanguineum’, et hominis Natura est—bibere. It is interesting to note, gentlemen, that, according to Dufferin, the Poet of the latter quotation was playfully identified by Crabtree as Jeremy Bentham. It may seem strange that the only reference to Waterloo in Crabtree’s speech should thus be a quotation of Nelson’ s wor ds at Nile, ‘Haustum longum’ and so on—‘A long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether’—but when we recall how Byron also comes thus obliquely at Waterloo and suchlike in The Vision of Judgment, we understand that Crabtree in his

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delicacy was prepared to go no further than this in hinting his real attitude towards the Duke (perhaps occasioned in part by Wellington’s postulated refusal to accept the emend–ment to ‘valkyrs’) in order to be sure of not offending his hosts and companions—quite apart from the fact, of course, that these by now were entirely oblivious of his words (this only enhances Crabtree’s del–icacy), with the sole exception of Cowell—if Cowell it was— and even he, to judge by his writing, succumbed just as Crabtree ended a grand period wishing health to the Norwegian nation in saeculo saeculorum. So Crabtree stood there alone and upright, in his eyes and bearing that mingling of dignity and compassion we know so well from the portrait, and surveyed the scene. Not a vertical Norwegian in sight. He went to the street door, in the mild, bright northern night of midsummer, as light as day —indeed, it was almost day by now—the air full of the stirrings of birds and the murmured roar of the waterfalls, but again—not a vertical Norwegian in sight. He went to the street door, in the mild, bright northern night of midsummer, as light as day—indeed, it was almost day by now— the air full of the stirrings of birds and the murmured roar of the waterfalls, but again—not a vertical Norwegian in sight. And he could be satisfied. He had outfished Davy, and he had outspoken him—for Davy when called on to propose a toast in Norway had been so gravelled that he could do no more than stammer out ‘Freiheit’ in German. As for the invention to do with copper bottoms, had he, Joseph Crabtree, not proved his invention to be infinitel y superi or j ust no w in that beau tiful Lat now it also came into his mind that it was said that Davy had ‘assuaged his passion’ in Norway: and could it be said that he, Joseph Crabtree, had done that? And at that moment, gentlemen, Crabtree must have forgotten the context, forgotten that it was Davy’s passion for angling that he had assuaged in Norway And, in truth, Crabtree at this moment was a little enflamed, partly with claret and partly with his own praise of Norwegian womanhood (well deserved indeed), and he sometimes found it hard to contain himself; like his young friend Byron he had not—not in any regular way—the ‘gift of continency’. Now, Crabtree’s hostess, Fru Marichen Ibsen, was not a light woman, far from it, but with Crabtree in his prime and, as his Latin showed, in such potent, creative mood, she really had very little say in the matter; and perhaps, who knows, she had some prophetic stirrings within her, longings that might well be termed immortal, some dim apprehension that, coupled with Crabtree now, her name would also be coupled with his for ever. Crabtree seems to have thought well of the experience himself, because it was in his fervour on this occasion that he let fall words that expressed the wish that the Norwegian night he was enjoying so much might last for centuries. This somehow became known but was, needless to say, garbled, and it gave rise to the curious notion in some nationalistic writers that

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Norway had actually lived through a night that had lasted for hundreds of years and it was time somebody did something about it. But that is another matter. Crabtree left Skien a day or two later and parted on the best of terms with his Norwegian friends and associates. He had cause to be satisfied with his visit, since he had so surely distinguished himself in all the pursuits in which he felt distinction worthwhile. He seems never to have returned to Norway but he left himself in that country all the same, for long and searching examination of the facts has led me to the conclusion that it cannot be merely fortuitous that 39 weeks and two or three days after Crabtree thus celebrated the anniversary of Waterloo in his own preferred fashion, Fru Ibsen gave birth to a son, a famous son, Henrik Ibsen, poet and dramatist, who came into the world, only a day or two later than expected, on Thursday, 20 March 1828. This discovery of mine opens so vast a field of enquiry that I shall not even begin to erect the signposts. What is most important for us is not that we can now approach Ibsen through Crabtree but that we can approach Crabtree, the more universal genius, through Ibsen; to use Crabtree’s own inadvertent line, the child in this case can for us be the father of the man. May I in ending, gentlemen, leave one admonition with you. If you read or hear the words of any person referring in any respect to Henrik Ibsen as the child of his age, let your reply be measured and resolute: ‘No, sir. Henrik Ibsen was the child of Joseph Crabtree’s prime.’

16 CRABTREE AND THE LAW J.A.C.Thomas 1969

To dilate upon Crabtree and the law required arduous research. At an early stage, I thought that I had struck gold. For I immediately traced an elusive but important—indeed indispensable—influence in the formation of our poet, his mother! When I took—as I am wont to do—the third volume of Atkinson’s Chancery Reports from the shelf, there at p. 680 in the year 1747 was the case of CRABTREE v. BRAMBLE. Mary Crabtree took out letters of administration to a certain estate and claimed rightfully that it should be hers. But Mrs. Crabtree’s petition was dismissed. Thus it was that Mrs. Crabtree—surely still a lady viripotens of 30 or so —was robbed of her entitlement. How the comfortably circumstanced young lady from Sussex first made the acquaintance of Crabtree senior of Chipping Sodbury a future Orator may reveal to us. I can only assert the known facts. However, who can doubt the repinings in the modest home at Sodbury? And is it likely that her first born failed early to note how the Law deprived his mother and thus acquired an early interest in that which snatched affluence from his home? Even without this family vested interest, of course, it would have been improbable that Crabtree remained indifferent to the law. And yet—and yet! After the fruitful discovery of Mrs. Crabtree, my first researches were barren. Still, it was impossible that our poet should have been wholly outside the law. Who else could have penned the couplet—so wholly in keeping with the didactic mission of Crabtree to which Scott adverted in his oration for 1964: Thoughts much too deep for tears subdue the Court, When I Assumpsit bring and, God-like, waive a tort? The company will immediately appreciate both that this magically epitomises the problem of the desirability of suing in contract rather than tort (or vice versa) which is still with us. A sound jurist no less than a peerless poet was needed to forge those lines—which appear anonymously

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in a farrago of 1830, The Circuiteers. Can any of this company fail to detect the easeful mastery of Joseph Crabtree? In the absence of irrefutable sources, however, how can he have been a consummate jurist no less than a poet of the first rank? It was here that I recalled the axiom more than once propounded by no less substantial, celebrated and (in his own limited field) real a genius than our poet, viz Mr. Sherlock Holmes, in his conversations with Dr. Watson: ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ The apparent silence of the Law Reports in re Crabtree quâ Crabtree was a minor problem. Our poet, alas!, predeceased the semiofFicial Law Reports series which began in 1865. We must remember also our poet’s love of anonymity or, alternatively, pseudonyms in giving the flowers of his genius to the world—why should he change his modus operandi in face of the law? No, there was little problem here! But, to face our queries, so far as possible, in their due order, how and where did Crabtree get his law, if he was not a member of an Inn of Court? Several anxious days of reflection suddenly produced the answer that should at once have come trippingly on the tongue. Mr. Holmes’s axiom made all blindingly clear. If he was not to be found in the Inns (with a capital—we know he could be found in lower case), he must have been a civilian, haunting Doctors’ Commons, where the business was wills, wives and wrecks. Accept that simple fact and the evidence all falls into place. Did not his first, childish interest in the law stem from his mother’s unsuccess–ful venture in Chancery? The memory of the family misfortune would itself turn him against so-called Equity: yet the friend of Bentham, that scornful critic of judge-made law, would scarce select a career centred on Westminster Hall. The trespasses and trovers, surrejoinders and surrebutters, all conducted in a bedlam (for a market ran through the centre of the Hall) and with the head inconveniently dressed with horsehair for the occasion! Moreover, it was dangerous! There was again the rapacity of the common law bar! Oh!, it is true that occasionally our poet was to look enviously at his brothers of the long robe —who can forget the plaintive poem, written in a fit of depression, which opens:— Would I were a Serjeant in the Common Pleas, Entering demurrers, earning princely fees! ? But, au fond, the avarice of the common lawyers was alien to the selfless nature of one who would give his all (and did give his daughter) to a friend.

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By contrast with the rude, greedy and perilous life of the habitués of Westminster Hall, the advocates of Doctors’ Commons qualified themselves by taking the degree of D.C.L.—which was even easier to obtain then than it is now—at Oxford (or LL.D. at Cambridge). They were thus educated in Roman law and its later developments— Roman Law, the perfect jurisprudence whose devotees can unerringly detect the flaws of lesser systems! A discipline, moreover, which required a mastery of the classics—and Crabtree’s life long devotion to the classics is attested by Jones in 1957. Th e aspira nt to advoc then procured a fiat of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Dean of Arches directing him to admit the candidate as an advocate at a session of his Court: thereafter, the new advocate had to observe a ‘year of silence’ attending the various civilian courts, before being able himself to practise. We shall see that, in fact, Crabtree never became an advocate, though he did enter the lower branch of the civilian profession as a proctor; but he did, in effect, observe his year of silence. And, though he could not speak, he could write—and who could make better literary use of his mute observance of the faults of England’s system? There is, indeed, proof. The Harvard Law Review for 1957 contains a poem (over the obvious pseudonym, Felix) smuggled across the Atlantic to be lost in the archives of that great dross heap, the Harvard Law Library, until its chance discovery led to its publication. The bold metre and free expression testify to Crabtree’s saeva indignatio witt the hazards of the British mercantile marine, which he silently observed unfolding in his first year in the Commons (Doctors, of course). It is a long poem of which I cite only an extract: When overloaded ships were wrecked, The owners bore the onus; But nonetheless they would collect A rich insurance bonus, As lawyers used what means availed To hide in legal tosh The fact that, when the vessel sailed, Its scuppers were awash. That poem, gentlemen, unquestionably came into the hands of Samuel Plimsoll—which explains its American publication. Plimsoll, entering Parliament in 1868, procured the passing of the Act to Amend the Merchant Shipping Acts 1876. But the source of his provision, I submit, is manifest in the biting second stanza of the extract. Seeking personal glory, Plimsoll suppressed the English copy of the poem and took to himself the credit that was another’s. But you and I, gentlemen, I know, will ever here after speak of the Crabtree line!

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But the most conclusive evidence of Crabtree’s true profession— unblushingly autobiographical and evincing his distaste for practitioners of the common law and equity—is a poem that I have long known and, in my previous ignorance, accepted as anonymous in a legal miscellany of 1830. Initiated into Crabtree studies, I now see—as you will recognise—that the masterly economy of line and translucent, artful simplicity proclaim our poet:— A lusty old grave and greyheaded sire Stole to a wench to quench his lust’s desire. She asked him what profession might he be: I am a civil lawyer, girl, quoth he. A civil lawyer, sir? You make me muse: Your talk is broad for civil men to use. If civil lawyers be such bawdy men, Oh what, I pray, be other lawyers then? Granted all this, you may still say, we wish to know how Joseph Crabtree fitted himself for Doctors’ Commons. The foundation was in truth already laid in the Oxford period of which we know, through his friendship with William Scott (later Lord Stowell and Judge of the Admiralty Court) and the latter’s younger brother John (later Lord Chancellor as Lord Eldon). William Scott—some 9 years older than Crabtree—was already a Fellow of University College when Joseph entered Queen’s, a classical scholar, deputy to the Professor of Civil Law and still to be Camden Reader in Ancient History. John Scott, born late in 1751, went up to University in 1767, graduated in 1771 and eloped with Bessy Surtees in 1772. That Crabtree should have gone for instruction to the brilliant young Fellow of University, when his own tutor Jefferson of Queen’s was so incompetent, need occasion no surprise. And William Scott urged him also to attend the lectures on English law of Professor Blackstone, the new (indeed first) Vinerian Professor. It was, however, through the younger brother John—still, like Crabtree, in statu pupillari—that there was forged between them the familiar and intimate friendship that was to last throughout their lives. In the aristocratic Oxford of those times, the son of the shoemaker of Chipping Sodbury would feel a natural bond with the sons of Newcastle coal-fitter and publican. It is of course possible that also Cuckoo Crabtree’s poet’s insight already told him that the elder Scott would become ‘Cranky Will’ before his death and the younger ‘Baggs’ Eldon. But, beside their lowly origins, they shared a common and fervent devotion to Bacchus. The pretext for Crabtree’s premature departure from Oxford we know. Could there have been two more congenial spirits with whom our poet might associate? I take it then that the seed of Crabtree’s legal

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learning was sown and—metaphorically—watered during his undergraduate days, under the influence of the Scott brothers. It is, indeed, indirectly through them, also, that Crabtree resolved in time to enter the law. I have already mentioned that in 1772 John Scott eloped with Bessy Surtees: he was, of course, short of money for the exploit and Crabtree, with his innate readiness to aid a friend, gave him nearly all he had. In consequence, when himself sent down the following year, Joseph needed to borrow for his own survival. And here I would modestly presume to believe that I can clarify the mystery of the origin of the coolness between Jenner and Crabtree which exercised Professor Jones. It was from Jenner that, relying on their youthful friendship at Chipping Sodders, Crabtree sought the loan of £100. Jenner made the advance but insisted on security—and Crabtree gave him a promissory note payable on demand for the sum. With the £100, Crabtree made his way to Cambridge, where he eked out a modest existence as described by Brown in 1955. Jenne r himsel f, s sequently finding himself in financial dificulties, in turn endorsed the note to one David on receipt of an advance. In 1780, David, having detected Crabtree under the pseudonym of M’Greggor, pressed him for payment. We shall see that it was our poet’s lot, almost uniformly, to be unsuccessful in his own encounters with the law. Against David, relying on the little law he had acquired at Oxford, Crabtree tried to claim that the note, issued 7 years earlier, was statute-barred. Judgment went again him, the King’s Bench holding that a note payable on demand never becomes overdue. He could not pay, of course, and was consequently committed as a debt or to the Fleet where he remained until rescued by Uncle Oliver in 1783 and packed off to France. Not that his time in the Fleet was profitless. Crabtree would have heard his barrister friend’s stories of Sjt. Davey, now a leading member of the Bar, who had turned to the law while he languished in the debtor’s prison after the failure of his grocery business in Exeter. The principle could be followed. He would take up the law! The objections to the common law and equity have already been recounted—but the Corpus Iuris Civilis (in Latin!) occupies little space even in a cell. And we may be confident that Crabtree fully utilised his time inside—while the subsequent exile in France, and especially at Orléans, seat of a mighty legal tradition, would give him access to the great civilian literature of the continent, from Jacques De Revigny for–wards (and backwards). That he was not overwhelmed by incarceration is, I think, evidenced by the fact that, between books of the Digest, his Muse still inspired him to deathless poetry. I can mention only one masterpiece which—quite apart from its intrinsic beauty and pathos—was to have an historic impact upon both the penal system and sanitation. I am endebted to my guest tonight for salvaging a defective scrap which, in its restored form, reads:

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Prisoner’s morning, Debtor’s day Here confined Fleet away; Inconvenience in lieu Of the comfort once we knew. The third line led to an immediate inquiry into the conditions of prisons. And Crabtree had given England the blessed euphemisms of ‘convenience’ and, in its corrupt form,‘loo’. Returning to Britain in 1802, Crabtree found William Scott a knight and Judge in Admiralty while John, now Lord Eldon, was Chancellor. Of course at their first dinner together, he explained his resolve and, of course, they approved and were eager to help. The trouble was, how? Crabtree had not taken a degree before leaving Oxford—and even that University required some preliminaries to a Doctorate. It was undoubtedly his old tutor Sir William who provided the solution. If Joseph could not become an Advocate, why not a proctor? Not till 1813 was Parliament to take steps to regulate that junior but respectable branch of the civilian profession. The usual requirements of articles could be dispensed with by the Judge (and that was Sir William Scott) and the Lord Chancellor would see that the Archbishop gave his fiat. This last would present no difficulty—the nephew of a Methodist teetotaller, the compliant chorister of Chipping Sodbury was no less a buttress of the Established Church than was his noble friend—so styled because, though a doughty supporter of the Church, he was never seen inside it. Of Crabtree’s civilian lore, they were satisfied; but, to give him some acquaintance with the practice of the courts, they procured his association for a year, as a supernumerary proctor, with an established respectable proctor, Mr. Shenlow and by 1805 Joseph Crabtree poet was also Joseph Crabtree, proctor. And so Crabtree made his entry into that court so different from the death-trap of Westminster Hall. His wide-ranging interests could find full scope in the wide range of business—from the misconduct of the clergy to collisions at sea; from criminal conversation (adultery) to the probate of wills. Here was indeed a spiritual haven for our poet, wherein his public spirit and critical attitude to the common law could express themselves in matchless verse. Some selections I have already ventured to cite; and no Crabtree enthusiast can fail to note the ease and freedom of the hero’s legal verse compared with the more purely literary Ode to Claret, for example, or Ars Salutandi; nowhere do we fin d a parall el to the diap ason of ‘Great una ffected vam the moon’: in legal poetry, Crabtree was wholly himself. But, by 1832, Crabtree was weary of practice. Already given for three years to wandering in the Zoo in melancholy solitude, Joseph decided now to quit practice, quit London and retire to the country—not to his native

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Somerset but to Devon where, having purchased a little property near Ashburton, he also invested the bulk of the remainder of his modest savings in the tin mining industry. Which brought him once again unsuccessfully into conflict with the common law that he had ever shunned. He was sued by a neighbour for trespass by digging a trench through to a watercourse and lost the case. Crabtree became almost penniless again and would henceforth have to rely upon the marketing of produce from his small-holding. Further disillusioned with the law of England, his own practice behind him, Crabtree penned his final verses—The Lawyer’s Farewell to his Muse. Unfeeling pseudo-scholars of the past have attributed this poem to Sir William Blackstone. There in a winding, close retreat, Is Justice doom’d to fix her seat; There, fenced by bulwarks of the law, She keeps the wondering world in awe: And there, from vulgar sight retired, Like eastern queens is much admired. Oh, let me pierce the secret shade Where dwells the venerable maid! In that pure spring the bottom view, Clear, deep and regularly true. It may be a very suitable debating point whether the lawyer takes leave of his Muse or whether she has already departed; but, gentlemen, we can surely see here Joseph Crabtree’s bitter complaint against the way that English law keeps Justice imprisoned and will not let her out among those whom she should govern. And the imagery is unquestionably his. For Crabtree, as we know, was a man of passion no less than parts. It is this that brings me to my proviso. Our concern hitherto has been the poet’s public life. But he had also his private life. There can be no doubt that, as he grew older, the members of the opposite sex that aroused his interest grew younger. Had the Offences against the Person Act of 1861 been already in existence, he must have committed a dozen offences a day. Still, in London, these matters could be arranged without difficulty or detection. Retirement to remote Devon did not quench his ardour—and this led to his last encounter with the English common law. Lacking the sophisticated company of the capital, he had perforce to seek solace in the untutored earthy enthusiasm of the country maids. Reared in rustic simplicity, seeing daily the processes of animal reproduction, duly respectful of the educated if elderly gentleman whose courteous addresses and seemingly inexhaustible store of sixpences were in pointed contrast with the aggressive directness of the Devon hinds, they usually accepted his

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advances. But one young woman, doubtless through ex post facto panic (it was the year of the Bastard Children Act—1839—the statute was repealed by the Custody of Infants Act 1873), laid a complaint which brought Crabtree sub nom. Crabb before the Devon Assizes at Exeter on a charge of rape. The prosecutrix gave her evidence succinctly—she had occasion to enter the prisoner’s garden and he had come out of his house and committed the offence alleged. In those days, prisoners were undefended— the theory being that the Judge was prisoner’s counsel. On the enquiry of Maule, J., Crabtree indicated that he did have questions to put to the girl and, through the judge, conducted the following cross-examination (which shows how skilled a common lawyer he could have been)—‘Had you been in my garden before?’ ‘Yes’. ‘Did you take my beansticks?’ ‘Yes’. ‘Did I tell you what I would do if you came and took my beansticks again?’ ‘Yes’. ‘Did you come into my garden again?’ ‘Yes’. ‘Did you take some beansticks?’ ‘Yes’. ‘Did I do what I said I would do?’ ‘Yes’. ‘No more questions, My Lord.’ Without leaving the box, the jury of yeomen returned a verdict of not guilty. Thereon the judge delivered himself of a homily which has passed into legal history:— Prisoner at the bar, the jury has seen fit to acquit you of this grave charge. It is thus my duty to discharge you—and discharge you I shall. But, before so doing, I must solemnly warn you will all the seriousness that I command that, if you persist in uttering threats of this character to young women like the prosecutrix, you will not have a beanstick left. Crabtree’s heart was both light and full. At last, even if possibly undeservingly, he had beaten the common law! He stepped, gentlemen, out of the dock into legal oblivion—but into literary history!

17 THE QUEST FOR CRABTREE Charles Peake 1970

We are met here to-night not primarily to investigate the private lives of the man, Joseph Crabtree, but to honour a great poet, a ‘blithe spirit’, whose art was ‘profuse’, if not ‘unpremeditated’. Yet to say this, confronts us with the grave lacuna in our studies. Of course we know of the Ode on Claret and of the Ars Salutandi. Five poems have been presented to this Foundation by earlier orators and one still has hopes of seeing the florilegium or wreath of commemorative verses, culled by our librarian himself, from the obituary columns of the provincial press—where Crabtree, having in his youth set the Romantic Movement on its feet, turned in his age to restore the spirit of the classical world, in epitaphs worthy of the Greek Anthology—and incidentally relieved the chronic poverty brought on by years of neglect. But is that neglect yet ended? Where is the long-awaited Collected Edition? And where the Crabtree Variorum? Where is an annotated edition for the use of schools? We all know how much Crabtree gave to Wordsworth, and to Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, and perhaps to Keats, and without question to Tom Moore, Mrs. Hermans and Martin Tupper. But who, if you will forgive the confused metaphor, has ploughed through the so-called editions of these authors to sift the wheat from the chaff? This, gentlemen, is the quest that lies before us—to recover from the hands of their putative fathers those offspring which Crabtree, out of his boundless fertility, so freely bestowed, in acknowledgement of services rendered or favours anticipated. There is, I daresay, not one member of this Foundation who does not rejoice in the possession of an inner light which would enable him to recognise the Crabtree jewels sparkling in their inferior settings. But if we are to have an edition, we must think of those who walk in darkness, of those not lit up from within. How are they to be compelled to acknowledge their blindness when, being blind, they cry out for tangible evidence. What we need is a match. It was to the search for such a small source of light that I turned my mind. First, was it likely, generous as he was, that Crabtree would have sold his birthright for some small pecuniary or other advantage, without leaving

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his signature for posterity to discover? Even the Baconians claim that Francis Bacon, though content to hide behind the mask of Shakespeare, left his mark in sundry codes and cryptograms. Had not Crabtree a motive every bit as strong as Bacon’s? I began to hear voices—the voices of earlier orators. I heard Professor Brown placing a poem firmly in the canon by virtue of a mutilated anagram of the words I Joseph Crabtree. I hea rd Profes Tancock identifying the poet beneath the initials J.C., appended to the verses in Erotica Diversa. But having heard these voices, I might just as well not have listened to them. Plainly the possibilities of introducing even mutilated anagrams of the name Joseph Crabtree were so severly limited; that, apart from the occasional jeu d ésprit, even the strongestbacked Pegasus would collapse under the burden. But in my bafflement, I seemed to hear again a passage in the second Crabtree oration, when Professor Brown read out Dr.Johnson’s slighting reference to the young Crabtree’s first poetic productions: ‘To be sure, he is a tree that cannot produce good fruit, he only bears crabs’. That cruel barb wounded the tender heart of the poet, but, in his usual spirit of gay defiance, he thereafter persisted, without medical or horticultural reference, in calling the fruits of his genius, ‘Crabs’. Was it possible that in this blunt monosyllable lay the key to the Crabtree canon? At once, I recalled how, some years ago, when idly turning over the pages of a collected Shelley, my eye was caught by a curious set of capitals running down the page. They occurred in the famous concluding chorus of Hellas, when after over a thousand lines of comparative mediocrity, the poem springs to life: The world’s great age begins anew, The golden years return. And there, shining upwards from the page was the acrostic CRAB, formed by the initial letters of the last lines of four successive stanzas: Calypso, for his native shore; Riddles of death Thebes never knew; All earth can take or heaven can give; But votive tears and symbol flowers. At the time, I had paid too little heed to this. After all, Crabtree’s authorship of the chorus to Hellas was apparent in the brilliant obscurity of the lines, and was too well-known to this Foundation to require confirmation. But now, under the pressure of my oration, I was seeing things in a different light. Could that simple acrostic be the end of a thread that would

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lead us through the labyrinth of Romantic poetry in our quest for Crabtree? I turned, not to Wordsworth—that territory, if not explored, has been initially mapped out—but to Coleridge, whose association with Crabtree has been known since Professor Jones revealed the true authorship of the poem, Fire, Famine and Slaughter. Nor was it necessary to turn over pages hopefully and await revelation. For Professor Jones had been helped to his identification by the singularly inept and apologetic preface which Coleridge had prefixed to the poem, in the hope of deceiving his readers. But there was another poem, also with a preface, and a preface of unmatched absurdity—the most implausible account of the composition of a poem that has ever been offered to the public—an account, not only ludicrous, but exhibiting such ignorance of the poem to which it is prefixed that even the most ardent Coleridgeans have been embarrassed by it. Let me read from Humphry House’s opening remarks on the poem in his Clark Lectures on Coleridge: If Coleridge had never published his Preface, who would have thought of Kubla Khan as a fragment? Who would have guessed at a dream? …Who would have thought it nothing but a ‘psychological curiosity’? Who, later, would have dared to talk of its ‘patchwork brilliance’? Who indeed? Could the man who had written the poem have spoken of it with such sublime ignorance of its nature? Could the genius who created what Mr. House calls its ‘essential integrity’ have sub-titled the poem ‘A Fragment’—when every first-year undergraduate is prepared to demonstrate its completeness. The witness of the critics is conclusive. As long ago as 1893, Joh Mackinnon Robertson declared that the poem was ‘abnormal to [Coleridge’s] whole previous technique, which ran to rhetoric and involution…whereas the uniques of the new work consists in the extreme concrete simplicity given to visions far aloof from experience.’ Such phrases—‘concrete simplicity’, ‘visions far aloof from experience’ remind us irresistibly of Crabtree’s characteristic manner. Even that most learned of Coleridgean scholars, Livingston Lowes remarks in The Road to Xanadu on ‘the gulf between Coleridge’s “new and great performance” and his “previous technique”.’ All these distinguished critics betray their uneasiness, all seem to hesitate on the brink of a downright assertion. ‘This poem is not Coleridge’s, whoever wrote it’. All lack the courage. On their behalf it might be said that they did not know of Crabtree, but it is questionable whether in such matters ignorance is a legitimate defence. What lay before them was the most cock-and-bull story about writing a poem in all the annals of literature. I need hardly remind this audience of the details—of the claim that the poem was written in 1797 in a lonely

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farm-house between Porlock and Linton to which Coleridge had retired from Nether Stowey because, as he informs us elsewhere, of an attack of dysentery. To remedy this complaint he took laudanum and, in the ensuing state of semi-consciousness, composed, he says, the poem. To-day we can check that story: to-day we have many poems, published on all sides, which have confessedly and manifestly been composed while their authors were under the influence of drugs and, sometimes, perhaps, of dysentery also, and the one certain thing that can be said of each and every one of them is that it bears not the faintest resemblance to Kubla Khan. A gleam of truth breaks in when Coleridge says, not that he composed, but that he had ‘the most vivid confidence’ of having composed some verses ‘without’, he says, ‘without any sensation or consciousness of effort’. But when he arose from his trance to commit these verses to paper, he was interrupted ‘by a person on business from Porlock’—after which he found himself unable to write more—unable to complete a poem about the completeness of which even critics agree. Of course, there was ‘no sensation or consciousness of effort’—of course he could write no more after his visitor’s departure—because we know who had walked to that lonely farmhouse, from Porlock, in the early summer of 1798—Coleridge, as E.H.Coleridge pointed out, had even got the date wrong. We know, too, on what business that person had come. In his 1965 oration, Tay provided the evidence of Crabtree’s pres–ence in England, late in 1797, armed with a formidable clyster or enema. The witness who so vividly recalls the effects of Crabtree’s medical ministrations (‘it removed all thought of study for some days, keeping me well occupied’) is hardly likely to have made a mistake about that memorable passage in his life. But London in 1797–8 was not a safe place for Crabtree: his involvement in the Birmingham riots of 1791, his prolonged absence in France during the years of Revolution had exposed him to accusations of Jacobinical sympathies, and, weary of travel, and in order to escape both his political enemies and those who had had the benefit of his medical attentions, he seems to have felt a natural urge to rest awhile upon his native health. But, as you may recall, in Chipping Sodbury he bore the nickname, ‘Cuckoo Joe’, and, although it has been charitably conjectured that the name was a reference to his performance in the chapel choir, one has to bear in mind that the cuckoo is also distinguished for its propensity for findin g itse lf in ot her bi nests. That the embattled farmers of the West Country adopted as their slogan ‘No Bed for Crabtree’ is merely an oral tradition, but there is no doubt that the traveller discovered that for every Annette Vallon in Orléans, there were five or six in Chipping Sodbury where the rural peace of the cornfields had been less subjected to untimely interuptions than had the war-torn fields of France. The resentment of the burghers is reflected in the fact that no stone in the churchyard

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commemorates Chipping Sodbury’s greatest son, though we take comfort in the knowledge that he is very much there in spirit, and by proxy. What more natural that in this hour of trial, rejected from his chosen place of refuge and suffering from his constitutional lightness of pocket, Crabtree should think of his friend, William Wordsworth— Wordsworth who owed him more than money could ever repay—then residing with his sister Dorothy at Alfoxden House, in North Somerset. The way was short, the roads easy Can one imagine Wordsworth’s emotions on seeing before him yet again that unruffled countenance? Yet there were complications. William and his sister had financial problems and it can hardly be thought that the arrival of Crabtree eased those problems. Moreover, during the previous year, they had been spied on by the Home Office, and observed by ignorant yokels, who suspected them of being French agents because they went for long walks and took notes on the scenery. Crabtree’s presence was an additional political embarrassment. And where was Crabtree to be housed? Could Wordsworth, knowing what he knew of Crabtree’s charm, invite his friend to share the same roof as his sister? Wordsworth must have foreseen unparalleled legal complications if Crabtree were to become not only the father of Wordsworth’ s chil but also of his sister’s. It was necessary that Crabtree be kept at a reasonable distance, and Wordsworth found a room for him at Porlock—not at the famous ‘Ship Inn’, used by Coleridge and Southey, but at a more private and select hostelry, alas long since destroyed by excise-men, conveniently situated close to Porlock Bay, and romantically named ‘The Happy Valley’, proprietor Mr. Alfred Cann,—a hostelry famed for the wide range of choice wines in its cellars, ‘those caves of ice’, and for the comeliness and hospitality of its maidservants. Wordsworth’s knowledge of French made him an invaluable intermediary between Mr. Cann and the French shippers, who found their way into Porlock Bay after closing hours. Consequently Mr. Cann was very ready to accommodate Crabtree, Wordsworth having described him as a gentleman with extensive experience in the French winetrade. There in ‘The Happy Valley’, Crabtree was installed with all that his lofty soul valued or required—there, as he later put it, he fed on ‘honey-dew’ and drank ‘the milk of Paradise.’ But too soon the day of reckoning came, and it was a reckoning beyond Wordsworth’s resources: it was not merely a question of ‘wine consumed on the premises’ but also of the landlord’s daughter, who having obtained the cellar key for the poet, felt entitled to share with him the joys and seclusion of the cellars, and whom, in playful allusion to the inn’s name, the poet christened his ‘Abyssinian maid’. Hidden now in the stables, he heard the voice of Mr. Cann, or as he was known to his customers, Alf —‘in ceaseless turmoil’, ‘prophesy–ing war’.

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It was at this moment that Wordsworth once again displayed his Northern shrewdness. Here at Porlock was Crabtree with his poetic genius and his clyster: there, not at Nether Stowey, but at the lonely farmhouse to which his illness had forced him to retreat, was Coleridge with his frustrated poetic ambitions and his dysentery. Might it not be that a meeting of the two would prove mutuall y be eficial? What followed is history. The very next day, Crabtree, guided by his friend, for he had not fully recovered from his exertions in the cellar, sought out Coleridge, and although he proved unable to persuade Coleridge that his enema of oil of turpentine and molasses would put a more radical end to his distress than the grains of opium he was administering to himself, he did prevail upon the half-drugged sufferer to accept, in exchange for a small sum, the fruits of his poet ical labours while in the stable—although Coleridge proved so incapable of appreciating the value of the work he held in his hands, that he delayed publishing it until 1816, and then did so with the absurd subtitle and preface which I have already described. Crabtree, determined to risk no more the enchantments and tumult of ‘The Happy Valley’, made his way to Bristol, where he renewed acquaintance with his old friend, Amos Cottle, checked the proofs of the Lyrical Ballads and Poems, and briefly disappears from view. But the poem! Could even Crabtree have been so careless of posterity as to hand that noble performance to another without leaving any trace of his authorship. The eye that searches for another acrostic searches in vain. Might there then be an anagram? Indeed there is, and I hope you will agree, gentlemen, with the poet’s own verdict that it was ‘a miracle of rare device’. For if an anagram of Joseph Crabtree presents almost insuperable difficulties for any prolonged performance, an anagram of Crab is so absurdly easy that it might be mistaken for an accident. If such an anagram were in itself to rank as sufficient evidence of Crabtree’s hand, then every poem which contained such words as ‘brachy ceptalic’ or ‘abracadabra’, every rhyme about a ‘prolific rabbit’ or a ‘public bar’ could lay claim to a place in the canon. Clearly if the anagrammatic Crab-signature was to be used, then it was necessary to spot light it, to remove the suspicion of accident. In Kubla Khan there is no need to search. There is a sign-post, and it bears a place-name, and, in all truth, it points nowhere. It is a placename on which every commentator has dwelt, and dwelt in vain. I refer, of course, to the famous conclusion where the poet recalls his Abyssinian maid, ‘Singing of Mount Abora!’ Mount Abora! Every critic, every editor has confessed his bafflement. Even Livingstone Lowes cries out in despair: ‘What was Mount Abora, unknown to any map, I think, since time began?’

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He recognises, as everyone recognises, that the place referred to is Mount Amara, the famous Abyssinian hill described and named in Purchas his Pilgrimage, the blissful garden named by Milton in Paradise Lost, named, too, by Dr. Johnson in Rasselas—Mount Amara, the site of the legendary Happy Valley of Abyssinia, celebrated by a thousand writers. It is this fame which so distresses the critics. For how could Coleridge who claimed to have just been reading Purchas, who knew his Milton through and through (and had recently filched some lines from that poet), who was unquestionably familiar with Rasselas— how could Coleridge, whatever his limitations, have committed a blunder of which every schoolboy would have been ashamed? Lowes does his best by bringing in the names of two rivers which remotely, very remotely, resemble Abora, but admits his argument is far-fetched, and exclaims desperately, ‘Why should hints from the names of two rivers have contributed a mountain to a dream?’ Fortunately there is no need for such over-ingenious guess-work. Crabtree no more than Coleridge could have confused Abora with Amara, the Happy Valley. But he plainly perceived that such an opparent blunder would create a literary crux of the first magnitude—one which could not escape attention, and, in which, sooner or later, someone would perceive his signature. It would thus serve as a signpost to the simple anagram of Crab which it conceals, and at the same time escape the drug-sodden perceptions of his client. The last four letters of Abora and the initial C of the next word provide the anagram—but why the superfluous o? This is the final stroke of ‘rare device’. For the sense of the line required, even demanded Amara, and the metre demanded a three-syllabled word. Yet Crab contains only a single vowel. Another must be added and there was only one that could be added without destroying the anagram—the vowel o, the cipher, the zero,—a solution employed by every cryptographer. And how beautifully the signature is made to link two units of syntax and sense, as Crabtree sadly recalled his lost happiness in the cellars of ‘The Happy Valley’ It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song To such a deep delight ‘twould win me That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome, those caves of ice. I do not propose to-night to pursue my quest much farther, and I leave The Ancient Mariner to younger hands. Yet let me warm them to temper their

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enthusiasm, nor jump to hastily to conclusions. Not every work entitled Bric-a-brac or Carbolic is from the master. Certainty can only be felt when the signature is clearly highlighte from its surroundings—as it is in the chorus to Hellas, as it is in Kubla Khan, as it is in a poem, The Age of Bronze, long mistakenly attributed to Lord Byron. There the anagrammatic signature is underlined by being repeated twice in a single line—each time in a word that it would be difficult to find elsewhere in the whole body of English poetry. His vivida vis animi is evident in the revolutionary spirit of the whole poem, but more especially in the vivid digestive metaphor in which the crucial line occurs—where Crabtree presents the distress of the Kings of Europe faced by a revolutionary populace, in terms of a disturbance in the royal bowels—a typically bold, anatomical figure, which bears the stamp not only of our poet’s genius, but also of the field of medieval studies in which he specialised. The line reads: ‘Hav Carbonaro cooks not carbonated each course enough?’ Even without the double signature—the voice is the voice of Joseph,—of a man whose masculine fires continued to burn when the feeble sparks of Wordsworth and Coleridge had been extinguished by the cold blasts of timidity and conformism. It is proper that Shelley (who of all the writers of the age was nearest and dearest to Crabtree) should have uttered the final truth about that divine genius. The two men were both lovers of liberty and prophets of permissiveness, and it was natural that in 1820, when Shelley wrote a verseepistle to his friend Maria Gisborne, recommending her to those people in London most likely to offer her satisfactory entertainment, he should have spoken of his guide and mentor. If you turn to modern editions, you will find the old foolishness—‘You will see Coleridge’. But why would Shelley send Maria Gisborne to Coleridge, a drug-taker, a political renegade whom Shelley had ridiculed only the year before in Peter Bell the Third, and a man unlikely to offer the young woman either entertainment or satisfaction. But turn to the original edition of 1824, where instead of the name ‘Coleridge’, there stands only the letter C, followed by a dash, and see for yourselves how, by all the laws of sense, metre, and gratitude the only name which should fill that blank is the name of the great man whose hooded gaze broods over us to-night. It was Crabtree, not Coleridge, to whom Shelley was indebted, Crabtree, not Coleridge, whom Shelley recognised among his contemporaries as an eagle among owls, Crabtree, not Coleridge, who had been compelled by politics, persecution and perjury to sit obscure, concealing his face beneath a hood of disguise and his name in acrostics and anagrams, Crabtree, not Coleridge, who could therefore be compared to a meteor hidden behind clouds, and Crabtree’s, not Coleridge’s face that haunted Shelley’s imagination and inspired him to some of the finest lines he ever composed by himself:

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You will see Crabtree—he who sits obscure, In the exceeding lustre and the pure Intense irradiation of a mind Which, with its own internal lightnings blind Flags wearily through darkness and despair, A cloud—encircled meteor of the air, A hooded eagle among blinking owls.

18 CRABTREE AND THE EAST Prakash Datta 1971

I shall for ever be grateful to you, Mr. President, for starting me out on my crash programme of research by drawing my attention to a hostelry in Erith Marshes known as ‘The Crabtree’. I visited this inn but, owing to lack of consideration by the local justices, I was unable to refresh myself there. The inn lies near the Thames at the end of a long, almost deserted road known as Crabtree Manor Way. It is surrounded by poor fields wherein The hungry cows look up, and are not fed, But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw, Rot, inwardly and foul contagion spread. Seeing no peasants in the neighbourhood I took myself to the Erith Public Library where I learnt from old documents that the name derives from this being formerly the manor of a disreputable trader named Crabtree. The word manor meaning the area of operation of a gang, the obverse, as it were, of Edgar Wallace’s use as meaning a police district. Was this perhaps the place from which the various nefarious trading activities of our hero were conducted? Allusion to these has been made in previous orations but not much detail given. Perhaps I was on the verge of discovering a whole new chapter in Crabtree’s life. My hypothesis that the Crabtree of this manor was indeed our sublime poet was strengthened by my finding in Erith churchyard the following characteristic verse on a gravestone errected to the memory of the Rev. James White, vicar of that parish, who died on 26 September 1804 at the age of 65: Farewell, vain world, I must be gone, Thou art no home, no stay for me; With faith and hope I’ll travel on Until another world I see. Now up, my soul, the distance view,

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Thy outstretched pinions try; Quit the dull earth, thy flight pursue, And seek thy native sky. Imagine, then, how my heart-rate (which is constantly monitored by radiotelelmetry by our Physiology Department) leapt, or is it leaped?, to 150 per minute when, a week or so later, returning to Hammersmith on a No. 11 bus after having had the satisfaction, a satisfaction which I am sure you, Mr. President, will forgive, of seeing Chelsea defeat Newcastle 1 nil at Stamford Bridge, I heard a fellow passenger say to his companion ‘I’m just going to the Crabtree, see you there later’. The speaker got off at the next stop and I follow he went South down the Fulham Palace Road and soon turned off towards the river along an alley which bears the name Crabtree Lane. At its end I found a large late 18th, early 19th century building on which was painted in huge letters the legend CRABTREE WHARF. Beside the wharf I found a riverside inn called The Crabtree’. Naturally I entered it and after the publican and I had consumed several Watney’s stingos he told me that there was formerly an older hostelry on the site and that he thought the name derived from a trader who imported spices and other exotic produce from India. As soon as possible I therefore went to the India Office Library in the Blackfriars’ Road where I had the good fortune to find a Mr. A.J. Farrington, a graduate of the Department of History of this College, who threw himself with energy, the energy, Mr. President, which is characteristic of our former students making up for lost time, into the search. Briefly he found that Joseph William Crabtree and his cousin George Bernard Crabtree were from time to time in Calcutta between 1800 and 1820, conducting the business of import—export agents, in defiance of the monopoly of the Honourable East India Company. They were what was known in Calcutta society as ‘box-wallahs’. In the merchandise which they shipped to Calcutta was, of course, claret with which Joseph was well familiar. They infiltrated their way into society and were protected from the wrath of the Company by bringing potable, nay even medicinal claret to Calcutta. Thus in the BENGAL GAZETTE of 1802 we read that ‘Sir John Royds had laid twelve days suffering under a cruel disorder wholly insensible, the doctors gave up all hope. Dr Hare said “It is impossible he can survive two hours more”. Whereupon all evening parties were cancelled and a Field Officer’s party ordered to be ready to attend the funeral. But Sir John disappointed them all. He was indebted to claret for his very unexpected recovery; during the last week of the disease they poured down his throat from three to four bottles of Crabtrees’ generous beverage every twenty four hours and with extraordinary effect’.

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Apart from gold, silver, silks and other normal merchandise the Crabtrees shipped Indian Hemp and powdered Rhinoceros Horn out of Calcutta to the West. As we know from Dr Tay’s research, Joseph Crabtree was interested in materia medica and he determined to include rhinoceros horn in his contraceptive pills, so as to maintain the libido in the face of the assault on that part of the spirit by the croton oil and other medicaments in them. No doubt, out of respect for Malthus’s cloth, his versifier never revealed this constituent to him. In the Victoria and Albert Museum can be seen an example of the boxes in which the Crabtrees sold their powdered rhinoceros horn in London. It is of Benares brass, round, about 1½ inches in diameter. On the lid is represented in relief a tumescent horn surrounded by Cicero’s line: STUPRUM IPS E VOLUPTA

On the underside of the box itself can be discerned the words ‘C & C, Erith, Fulham, Howrah’ and the representation of a crabtree. Though Albert may have known of this holding, it is doubtful if Victoria ever did. The Crabtrees were safe in Calcutta as long as the Earl of Mornington (Marquess Wellesley) was Governor-General of Fort William in Bengal. He was appreciative of the gifts of claret and just filed the complaints about the Crabtrees from his officers. At the end of July 1805, however, Wellesley was succeeded by the Marquess Cornwallis, appointed for a second term. Cornwallis, whose motto was VIRTUS VINCIT INVIDIAM, was a port and brandy man, believing that: Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy. This, as I have said, Mr. President, was the Governor-General’s second term and he felt himself every inch a hero. The Crabtrees were low in brandy at the time and most unfortunately the only stock that they had at their disposal in Calcutta had been shipped in a second-hand rum cask. It was therefore tainted. As soon as the liquor touched Cornwallis’s tongue he shouted: ‘Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.’ All the subhadars and punkka-wallahs came flocking to see what was wrong with the great sahib and the Crabtrees escaped in the confusion. They went into hiding and soon George Bernard Crabtree went on a ship to China to develop the business and Joseph took passage in an Indiaman for England, assuming the alias Joseph Blacket. He no doubt reached Erith but was advised to lie low since word had come from Cornwallis of his treachery. We next find Joseph Blacket, from an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, reaching Seaham in County Durham in a ship in 1807

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and settling in the house of one John Dixon, gamekeeper to Sir Ralph Milbanke of Seaham and Halnaby in Yorkshire. Sir Ralph’s wife, Lady Judith Milbanke was the daughter of Edward Noel, Lord Wentworth of Kirkby Hall where much valuable Crabtreeiana is preserved to this day. In 1807 the Milbankes had an only daughter, Anne Isabella, who was then 15 years old. Sir Ralph was MP for County Durham and therefore spent part of the year in London. He was fond of poetry, a liking which Anne Isabella shared and they versified together. The daughter, whose other pastime was shoemaking, soon struck up an acquaintance with Joseph Blacket who encouraged her muse. Anne Isabella liked the country and the company of Josep h so m so that in her diaries for 1809 we read: ‘Arrived at the age of 17. I was anxious to postpone my entrance into the world.’ We cannot be surprised at this because Joseph had infiltrated himself into Sir Ralph’s household and spent most of the time he was not drinking with Sir Ralph, versifying and shoemaking with Anne Isabella, so much so that he became known to the Milbankes’ circle of friends as the cobbler poet. We cannot doubt that by this time Joseph was playing Mellors to Anne Isabella’s Connie. This accounts for her not wishing to go to London. We cannot say what part wild flowers played in their passion but we may assume that Joseph was well provided with rhinoceros horn and that he had brought an illustrated copy of the Kama Sutra with him from Calcutta. Through the good offices of Sir Ralph, Mr. Pratt was induced to publish a volume entitled Specimens of the Poetry of Joseph Blacket in 1809. The baronet was less than honest in this, substituting between Seaham and London some of his own inferior verses for those of Joseph. The book was adversely received by Byron who, in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers wrote: When some brash youth, the tenant of a stall, Employs a pen less pointed than his awl, Leaves his snug shop, forsakes his store of shoes, St. Crispin quits, and cobbles for the muse, Heavens! how the vulgar stare! how crowds applaud! How ladies read, and literati laud! When in 1810 Joseph heard what had happened and also that two further volumes of Sir Ralph’s compositions were about to appear under the name Blacket, he thought it wise for Blacket to disappear. He therefore arranged to meet Anne Isabella in London in the next year and bribed the vicar of Seaham with the Kama Sutra to bury the next pauper who died as Blacket. Byron was in Malta when he heard of Blacket’s death and composed an epitaph to him of which I quote a few lines:

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Stranger! behold, interred together, The souls of learning and of leather. Poor Joe is gone, but left his all: You’ll find his relics in a stall. His works were neat, and often found Well stitched, and with morocco bound. Annabella, as she was now known, had her first season in London in 1811 during which she stayed at Lady Gosford’s. Her letters give the impression that she had a quiet time but from some letters found in Kirkby Hall we know that much of the time was spent with Crabtree. In 1812, after reading the two extant stanzas of Childe Harold, she first met Byron at Melbourne House. After that meeting she wrote to her mother: I did not seek an introduction to him, for all the women were absurdly courting him, and trying to deserve the lash of his Satire. I thought that inoffensiveness was the most secure conduct, as I AM NOT DESIROUS OF A PLACE IN HIS LAYS. We know why she wrote that, she was, Mr. President, without doubt assured of a constant place in another’s lays and she had no desire to be the object of Byron’s satyriasis. We need not rehearse that long and complex story of her wooing by Byron but just remember that they finally went through the ceremony of marriage at Seaham on 2 January 1815 and that a girl, Augusta Ada, was born to Annabella on 10 December of the same year. Calculating back, using the usual astrological tables well-beloved of obstetricians, we find that conception must have taken place about 10 March. History tells us that after a short honeymoon Annabella and Byron were staying in Sir Ralph’s house in Seaham at the beginning of March 1815 and that they left there on 9 March for Six-Mile Bottom, the house of Augusta Leigh. Byron wanted to go alone, for reasons of his own which are too well-known to be discussed tonight. There was also the reason that Annabella was very bad-tempered, no doubt because Crabtree had taken offence at her marriage. In an attempt to a reconcilliation Annabella had written to Crabtree suggesting a meeting at the Haycock Inn in Wansford on 11 March and her letter included the following verse: Let my affection be the bond of peace Which bids thy warfare with remembrance cease. Blest solely in the blessings I impart,

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I only ask to heal thy wounded heart; Then, with the wild horn that spreads its semen wide, Do graft a crab in Bella, and then, inside, Behold that scion from the tree of life Expand its branches and cause her belly strife, And hope—believe, its fruits will ripely bloom With the same sun that brightens o’er my womb. Because of this assignation Annabella insisted on leaving Seaham with Byron on that 9 March. It was not a happy party which set off in the carriage and Byron’s temper grew worse and worse. They spent three nights on the journey and, according to Ethel Mayne, ‘At Wansford, the last stopping place, she had her reward’. What a reward that was, Mr. President! Byron had not noticed the other guest at the inn and went to bed early after much brandy. Before retiring he said to Annabella ‘I hate sleeping with any woman, but you may if you choose’. She did indeed choose, not to sleep with another woman but with Crabtree. From a letter from Joseph to George, which Mr. Farrington found in the India Office Library, we learn that Joseph’s pills had been stolen by a potman at an inn he stayed at on the way to the Haycock, but he had forgotten this loss until after he had partaken of the contents of the Benares brass box he always carried in his waistcoat pocket. It was, Mr. President, indeed a passionate night, and some feeling of its activity comes through in the letter found by Mr Farrington. Many years later while yarning on the beach at Bondi with fellow non Papuan migrants, cousin George spoke of the exploits of Joseph and, having picked up the local argot, used to comment ‘he fucked her like a rattlesnake.’ Thus it was, Mr. President, that Augusta Ada Byron’s genes were determined, those of the future Lady Lovelace and, through her, of Lady Anne Isabella Noel, Mrs. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, the only female among the queens of the Crabbet Club. In his account of Lady Byron’s campaign against Byron after the separation, G.Wilson Knight writes: ‘Consideration for the child does not account for Lady Byron’s actions. THERE WAS SOME SECRET which she and her advisers were terrified of coming out.’ We, Mr. President, know that secret. To conclude I would like to give the Foundation a scrap found on the back of an order to Crabtree and Crabtree from the Prince Regent for bhang, or trodden Indian hemp, it is dated 1819 and is preserved in some commercial papers in the India Office Library:

PRAKASH DATTA 109

I was a poet and she was a child, In that kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than due To the horn from rhinoceros hide.

19 CRABTREE’S MEDICAL MILIEU Edwin Clarke 1972

The Crabtree Orator, Sir, whilst paying tribute to Crabtree must at the same time reveal, with impeccable precision, new areas for study which can then be assiduously explored at greater depth by succeeding workers. Rather than dissecting our poet’s pathology, I prefer to commemorate him by scrutinizing some of the environmental agencies fabricating his medical milieu, how they repercussed upon him and his response to them. In a brief address I shall, understandably, be unable to present all the data I have gleaned, and in any case would not wish to bore you with the minutiae of my researchers. Manifestly, my theme, the external pressures and forces which combine to mould and make, or break, a man and which determine the tone and texture of his conceptions, is of the most vital consequence. It is to this that I shall now direct my attention. There are four influences upon which I shall deliberate: opium eating, mesmerism, phrenology, and temperance, each of which, except the last, had a wide following amongst literary men and women. It is common knowledge that all the English Romantic poets except Wordsworth partook of opium; Byron, Keats, Lamb, Charles Lloyd, Tom Moore, Walter Scott, Shelley, Southey, each for a different reason, although they were not chronic addicts like De Quincey, Coleridge, Wilkie Collins, and Crabbe. I can now reveal that Joseph Crabtree was similarly ensnared. You may marvel that this has not been made known earlier, but let me assure you, gentlemen, that in certain individuals the detection of opium addiction is by no means easy, even during their lifetime. Concerning Crabtree, it is known that in the first year of life he suffered from the weaning illness of infants, and was treated with opium, as proposed in a book published the year before, 1753, by George Young, A treatise on opium, founded upon practical observations. In later childhood Crabtree, being a boisterous, high-spirited child, was given a tranquilizing medicament, Mother Bailey’s Quietening Syrup. Now this, like other pacifying balms, contained a high proportion of opium and it was because of its illiberal use that Joseph, like other children, was led to addiction.

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At Oxford he encountered a book which was required reading amongst a certain set of undergraduates. It was by Dr. John Jones, entitled, The mysteries of opium revealed, and herein are mentioned certain effects Crabtree had already experienced and had made good use of. The author makes some statements, such as, ‘Opium increaseth seed in some measure’, ‘It causeth a great promptitude to venery, to vene–real dreams, venereal fury, nocturnal pollution, and priapism. Like puberty opium causeth a growth of the membrum virile! I shall not dilate on this theme, except to note that from now on Crabtree’s daily consumption of the drug was increased. His devotion to it accounts in part, I believe, for the youthful escapades of which we have often been informed. But we are also indebted to opium for his precociousness as a poet and for some at least of his adult poetic effusions. It is not for me closely to analyse Crabtree’s poems in the light of my discovery. I shall but contend that the strange and sinister beauty of some of them, full as they are of arcane mysteries, and the occult associations engendered, for example, by that exquisite line ‘Great unaffected vampires and the moon’, revealed to us by Brown, must surely be of opiate origin. The evidence I have uncovered for Crabtree’s opium addition is irrefutable. To begin with there is his Ode to opium, usually ascribed to Coleridge, and brought to our notice by Foote. Like the Ode to claret, it could only have been conceived by a devotee of the commodity eulogized. Some years ago Professor Wilson discovered a book containing lines incorrectly ascribed to Crabtree and entitled, The Cambridge tart, which, surprisingly enough, is an anthology of verse and not of prose. Tonight, gentlemen, I wish to acquaint you with its Oxonian counterpart of contemporary vintage. I refer, as I am sure you have surmised, to The Oxford sausage; or selected poetical pieces, written by the most celebrated wits of the University of Oxford. It is odd that both titles refer to comestibles, although perhaps carnal and morphological allusions, respectively, are intended. The Oxford sausage is a curious, anonymous compilation the contents of which range from excruciating and tortured doggerel to verse of rare lyrical beauty worthy of hyperbolic praise. Circumstances suggest that our poet’s work is included amongst the latter. Is it not pos–sible, gentlemen, that he was the author of A panegyric on Oxford ale, for did not Swift say: ‘All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy’? The iambic style is replete with polished grace, the compound epithets with energetic power and it opens with those elegant lines, which give promise of the Ode to Claret, yet to come: Balm of my cares, sweet solace of my toils, Hail juice benignant…

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and later: I quaff the luscious tankard uncontrol’d, And thoughtless riot in unlicens’d bliss… But there is also the following potent passage: …but if friends Congenial call me from the toilsome page, To Pot-house, I repair, the sacred haunt… Here must be one of the first, if not the first, references to ‘pot’ and this is substantiated by the lines: …as if the leaden rod Of magic morpheus o’er mine eyes had shed Its opiate influence… A clear reference to personal experience with opium. Drug taking and alcoholic excesses, as indulged in by the clients of the pot-house, merely hastened Crabtree’s inevitable expulsion from Oxford. But hypothesis and assumption based on circumstantial evidence alone will not satisfy this Foundation’s justifiably stringent criteria of scholarship. My final evidence is therefore the most important, for it is documentary. It resides in a treatise on poisons, published in 1832 by Professor Robert Christison (1797–1882) the famous Edinburgh toxicologist. There we encounter the following: An eminent literary character, now above 70 and in good health, has drunk laudanum to excess since an early age; and his daily allowance has sometimes been a quart of a mixture consisting of 3 parts of laudanum and one of alcohol. This person’s identity, like that of others cited, is not disclosed but Christison’s MS. is preserved in the Royal College of Physicians and there in brackets after this entry is written ‘J.Crabtree, Esq.’ I am indebted to the Librarian for permission to cite this significant discovery. Apothecaries for Crabtree were unconscious ministers of celestial pleasures, of portable ecstasies, and of cloudless serenity. In Orléans, he therefore soon established friendly relations with them, firstly in order to procure his opium and secondly on account of the therapeutic application of the wine he and his uncle purveyed. He was therefore invited to attend the quinquennial, public preparation of the notorious compound, Theriac, thought to be a universal antidote and panacea, for one of its many

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ingredients was opium and it was usually washed down with wine. It was at this ceremony in 1784, and at the paralysing banquet which followed it, that he first met Dr Bertholet, the private physician of the Duke of Orléans, and from him learned of a remarkable man then in Paris. This was the German, Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), discoverer of animal magnetism, later called mesmerism or hypnotism. Crabtree, of whose wideranging scientific interests we are well aware, was fascinated, especially when he read the report prepared in 1784 by the King’s commissioners, amongst whom were included Benjamin Franklin, Lavoisier, and also Dr. Guillotin, whose incisive comments were exceeded in sharpness only by the instrument of execution named after him. The fact that it denounced mesmerism merely intrigued Crabtree further, as did the following passage: The man who magnetises has the knees of his female patient, often young and attractive, enclosed between his own: all inferior parts of the body are consequently in contact. The hand is applied to the hypochondric regions, and sometimes over the ovaries. Touch is exercised over a large extent of the surface and in the neighborhood of the most sensitive parts of the body. And so it continues. The manual component of the procedure was termed a ‘pass’, from which no doubt is derived our modern phrase, ‘making a pass’. Let me hasten to state, however, that although this feature of mesmerism aroused Crabtree’s opium-flavoured curiosity, as it would that of any man of his temperament and passion, he was equally fascinated by its possible scientific aspects, just as he was in the case of other contemporary issues ranging from homeopathy and balloon-flights to phlogiston and research on electricity. In the last decade of the Ancien Regime, these innovations created a challenge to the imperfect arrangement of the thoughtful man’s beliefs, a challenge to the Church, to scientific bodies, and even to the Government. They appealed to the pre-Revolutionary radical mentality, with which our poet sympathised. Mesmerism became a cause célèbre and flourished in provincial French cities even more than in Paris. This was certainly so in Orléans and Crabtree was undoubtedly responsible for some of this popularity. After all, as with Mesmer himself, it was an activity in which he could successfully indulge, despite his limited knowledge of the French language. There is also a link here with Madame de Staël who was influenced by mesmerism, and whose intimacy with Crabtree has been established beyond doubt by Tancock. The spread of mesmerism in England was in part due to Crabtree on his return from France, and to other non-medical exponents but unfortunately reports are few and attenuated. It was at first dismissed however in The

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Quarterly Review as ‘a debasing superstition, a miserable amalgam of faith and fear’. It was not, in fact, until the 1830 ’ s th it became widely popular in Britain. Thereafter it intrigued, amongst others, many literary figures, as it had done Crabtree: the Brownings, Coleridge, Dickens, Hallam, and others. Crabtree’s interest in mesmerism was renewed in the winter of 1837 by events which, however, led to his ultimate disillusionment with it. I refer, of course, to the well-documented encounter with Dr John Elliotson (1789– 1868) who in 1831 had been appointed the first Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in this College. He resembled Crabtree in many ways. He had a strange unnatural appetite for the marvellous, in particular mesmerism and as his motto was ‘Onward’ he was much-enamoured of Crabtree’s drinking song, We march we know not whither. Crabtree attended Elliotson’s demonstrations of this so-called science, here in University College Hospital. These were remarkable spectacles, described as ‘diverting but degrading scenes’, when young hysterical women were hypnotized and bizarre, and occasionally unethical, events took place. Thus, our poet was present when the hystero-epileptic housemaid, Elizabeth Okey, previously one of Edward Irving’s ‘unknown tongues’, demonstrated her impudent familiarity and iconoclastic, vulgar behaviour when mesmerized. A few passes from Dr. Elliotson and she instantly fell into the lap of Joseph Crabtree. She called upon the devil, thus outraging the ecclesiastical gentlemen present. She tried to tell funny stories of such a nature that Elliotson found it necessary to cut them short. The College Council, despite its traditional liberalism and toleration, requested Elliotson to cease these unprofessional activities, but he persisted and eventually in December 1838, had to resign his chair. Meantime, however, Crabtree had dissociated himself and, wishing to demonstrate his concern with the advancement of legitimate science, sought the respectability of the British Association meeting to be held in Newcastle upon Tyne in August 1838. As we know, he had several links with this city, one he held to be the most handsome and friendly of all provincial towns, and where so many persons devoted attention to scientific matters. He therefore joined Harriet Martineau and her party which set off by boat from London. She described the group thus, A curious company of passengers went to Newcastle by sea. Sound scientific men; a literary humbug or two; a statistical pretender or two; and few gentlemen, clerical or other. We are left to speculate into which category our poet was placed. Unfortunately the weather was exceedingly inclement and he was soon assailed by motion sickness. Seeking for relief, he recalled Mesmer’s advice to Lafayette on his voyage to America in 1784. This was to grasp the ship’s

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mast which would act as a mesmeric pole. Unfortunately, its base was coated with tar and it is recorded that Crabtree spent at least two days removing it from himself and his clothing, a pre-occupation which diverted his attention from all thoughts of emesis. Arriving in Newcastle, Crabtree met Dr. Michael T. Greenhow, the brother-in-law of Miss Martineau and Secretary of Section E (Medical Science) of the forthcoming Association meeting. Despite Crabtree’s continuing aversion to medical men, they struck up an immediate friendship for it transpired that Greenhow was reading a paper to the Association on the use of opium and mercury. He was also keen to have Crabtree’s opinions and advice concerning mesmerism, which had not yet become popular in Newcastle, due perhaps to the robust independence and healthy scepticism of the Geordie. Dr. Greenhow, in addition, was a devotee of phrenology, a subject with which our Poet was already well acquainted, mainly through Elliotson. I need hardly remind you that phrenology is a method of assessing character by measuring and palpating the cranium, for each moral faculty is precisely localized on it. It thus had wide application, including the selection of parliamentary representatives, and perhaps a social Utopia could be achieved by the purposeful moulding of children’s heads, to suppress evil and foster good. Crabtree first heard of phrenology from Crabb Robinson, who in 1805 had attended lectures given by Gall, its founder, in Jena. Moreover our poet’s practice of law had acquainted him with the first instance in which phrenology was brought into a court of justice as evidence. This was a Coroner’s inquest on a skeleton found in Lincoln’s Inn, and reported on by The Weekly True Sun of the 30 October 1836 thus: ‘The phrenological development of the skull indicates that the person possessed more of the animal than the intellectual desires.’ This Crabtree discovered was because of an excessive bulging of the back of the head, due to enlargement of the brain below it, the cerebellum, which for the phrenologist was, and still is, the seat of physical love, or, as they put it more delicately—amativeness. Over-activity in this direction produces bulging, under-activity the reverse. Some may suggest phrenologizing our poet by means of the Sutherland portrait. Unfortunately, we are unable to see the back of his head and in any case he grew his hair long there—as some of us do today—perhaps to conceal this diagnostic sign. In Newcastle last summer I was granted the privilege of examining the Ms records of the Literary & Philosophical Society. It appears that in 1838 interest in phrenology was at its peak in Newcastle and when it became known that a distinguished literary gentleman from London and a former acquaintance of Elliotson was in town, the President of the Phrenological Society, founded in 1835, begged Crabtree to address his members. In this he acquiesced, but only if anonymity, upon which we know he always

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insisted, would be preserved. And so it was, for the Society’s records state that the lecturer ‘…is so disguised in the Committee’s report that his own mother would not have known him’. His talk was well received by an attentive and gratified audience, described as ‘a very crowded and miscellaneous gathering’. Only one person dissented, an elderly gentleman who contended that cranial bumps ‘…rise like blisters on a pie-crust, from the heat and bother within’. There is disagreement amongst Crabtree scholars concerning his alleged associations, in his declining years, with the temperance movement of the 1830’s. Dodgson maintains that he was a founder-member of the Independent Order of Rechabites, mustered at Salford in 1835, but Peake refutes this. It seems that both are in part correct. It was, in fact, the Newcastle Teetotal Society formed in the very same year, 1835. It is understandable that Crabtree should have been concerned with the curtailment of alcoholic intake. Quite apart from his Methodist upbringing and his remorse for youthful illiberalities and the cavalier fashion in which he had scorned the well-intentioned admonitions of his teetotal uncle, his association with phrenology led him to it. The tree of phrenology was, in fact, rooted in social redress. In the early 19th century phrenology, temperance, Graham crackers, dress reform, sex hygiene, and the water cure formed a united front with vibrant overtones. Sobriety, virtue, chastity and self-improvement were the keys to the good life, and Crabtree wished to contribute to this crusade. Not that he renounced alcohol entirely, nor his opium for that matter, but rather he preached moderation and was firmly opposed to the imbition of ardent spirits, which he termed liquid lunacy, fluid ferocity, and distilled damnation. And he certainly was no water addict, for he often quoted from a book of 1805 by William Lambe, as follows: ‘Drinking of the lambent stream, vulgarly called water, is the sole cause of man not arriving at any decent state of longevity’ Our poet was surely living proof of this contention, and Dr. Lambe’s further comments concerning water were equally acceptable to him: …Is this [water] not the very daemon, which, for so many ages, has tortured mankind, and which, usurping the sensorium, has corrupted, under a thousand forms, both mind and body? The evil spirit, which has augmented the wants of mankind, while it has diminished his enjoyments? Crabtree’s Newcastle contacts and his concern with social reform had led him to support the Newcastle Society and it was most appropriate that he should be invited to one of its meetings. The main speaker gave tongue to the following well-known Biblical text, subsequently highly prized by our poet. It was delivered, of course, in that splendid dialect of which there is no equal.

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Which on yis got woes? Which on yis got sorras? Which on yis got wounds with nee carse? We’s got blood-shot eyes? Them what stay ower lang suppin’ booze. Them what gan lukin’ for booze. Divvn’t luk at the booze when it gis its kulor in the glass; when it slips doon proper champion. At the last it bites like a serpent and y’buggarma’, it stings like a bloody adder. Crabtree, although not subscribing wholeheartedly to these sentiments, said a few words in praise of moderation. But concerning whisky and gin, he submitted that all of it in Newcastle should be tipped into the River Tyne, delighting the crowd by adding his benediction to the latter in the local idiom—‘The Tyne, the Tyne, the coaly Tyne, the Queen of all the Rivers’. That the closing hymn turned out to be Shall we gather at the River was unfortunate to say the least. Rather than taking our leave of Joseph Crabtree under these circumstances, I prefer to picture him in the twilight of his days as he bade farewell to the North Country. Standing on the Roman Wall at Borcovicium, observing the August sun going down over the whole breadth of Northumberland, he must have presented a noble and distinguished figure, silhouetted against the evening sky. A venerable, respected, and modest gentleman, whose contributions to English letters were yet to be unveiled in all their celestial and mellifluous glory. While the evening breeze tossed his hair in confusion, he was musing on his richly productive and variegated past. He was at peace with himself and with the world. Memories of neglect, adversity, anonymity, and plagiarism, no longer disturbed the tranquility of his exalted and sublimely philosophic spirit. He was secure in the conviction that one day his worth would be revealed.

20 CRABTREE THE ONOMAST John Dodgson 1973

The study of place-names has reached a point where it may help to reveal yet another trace of Crabtree. I have devised my discourse upon three topics: the toponymic riddles in the marginalia to folio 75 recto in the Anyon MS; Hazlitt’s essay My First Acquaintance with Poets; and Wordsworth’s Poems on the Naming of Places. The Anyon MS. is not yet published and perhaps not yet known to some members of the Foundation (see page 318). It is, of course, the remnant of a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century paper notebook—apparently of a clerk at law. We are not concerned with the text preserved in these papers—a copy of the Parliament Roll for the tenth year of the reign of King Henry VI. However, we are concerned with certain marginalia—in a rather cramped italic which could belong to the latter years of the eighteenth century. For the purposes of this discourse I shall call the writer of these marginalia ‘X’. I say nothing here about X’s comments on Entry No. 43, a petition of the wine-merchants of England against the swindles practised by the wineshippers of Bordeaux, in 1432, beyond the observation that, in a couple of words, X indicates that he is knowledgeable about, and is interested in, the ancient regulations of the Bordeaux wine trade and it might seem to members of the Foundation, as indeed it occurs to me, that—since Crabtree’s career began in the Bordeaux wine trade—these annotations might be such as such a man might have made. This conjecture led me to examine the marginalia which follow. Item 42 in the Anyon MS. is a long petition on behalf of the Burghers of Calais for a subsidy, in order to pay for sea-defence works, in divers places about the towne and marches of Caleys, and, amonges other, the Jetties of the Haven and a place there called Paradys, full needfull of great reparaciouns and mendment in hasty time. On folio 75 rector is a passage about le dit lieu de Paradys. And hereupon is the footnote:

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W.shd have took Paradise for his naming of places as Countesbury wch—or the Shinglewell in Hasted: nearer—a Rig-Maiden wd have no Bonus of a Stone-Willey. This footnote obviously alludes to Wordsworth’s Poems on the Naming of Places which X thinks might have been the better for the inclusion of some other items in addition to—or instead of—those which were included. But the real significance of the note emerges from the realization that X is also rather curious about place-names and their etymology. And he goes in for riddles and puns of the naughtier sort, sparked off by the place-name Paradise—the name of a garden outside the town wall beside the inner harbour of medieval Calais. This word paradise, a common element in English minor placenames, means: ‘a sheltered, enclosed area or garden’ and also ‘a pleasure-garden, a heavenly place, a blissful spot, the Garden of Eden, etc’. X plays upon these meanings and suggests that there is a ‘paradise’ at or in or to be identified with Countesbury. That Countesbury is paradise. He is riddling on the old spelling of the name Countisbury, of the place in North Devon. The riddle is not hard to solve. We are all familiar with Shakespeare’s toponymic nonceformation Lipsbury Pinfold (King Lear Act II, Scene ii) coined as a kenning for the teeth in the mouth—that is to say, the paddock or the fence of teeth forming the pinfold which belongs to, and is situated in, the borough of the Lips—and so ‘the pinfold in Lipsbury’. X, here, interprets the place-name Countisbury as if it were such a formation as Lipsbury: ‘the bury—the borough, the stronghold—of the female private parts’. The English Place-name Society’s Placenames of Devon, and Ekwall’s Dictionary of English Place-names both assert that the first element in the place-name Countisbury is not the Middle English word, count(e), for the female private parts, but X is using his own amateur etymology upon the current form of the name Countisbury for the sake of a sexual toponymic riddle. However, X’s next remark—‘Or the Shinglewell in Hasted’—indcates that he was aware of at least one placename in which the Middle English word for the female private parts does, historically, appear. The Shinglewell in Hasted is a place-name mentioned by E. Hasted in The History and Topographical Survey of Kent, Vol. I. Hasted identifies it with an alternative name-form which, however, he garbles. X has obviously read, and has corrected, his Hasted—either from his own researches or from a perceptive reconstruction of Hasted’s material—and has recognised that the ancient alternative name for Shinglewell, in Ifield, Kent, was Shavecountewell. Why otherwise, in the making of the sexual riddle, should he have adduced Shinglewell as a parallel to his misconstruction of Countisbury?

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X anticipates by more than 130 years the proof of Shavecountewell by J.K.Wallenberg in The Place-Names of Kent, where he discusses name as follows: The final part of the name is clear, but what is Shavecunt–? It is tempting to etymologize this as a compound connected with OE scafan ‘to scrape, to cut off’ and ME counte, cunte, ‘vulva’, respectively…Was perhaps Shavecunte originally equivalent to ‘penis’? He goes on to speculate: Of course, the element discussed may just as well indicate topographical features…From a base of this meaning, streamnames and names for protuberances of the ground have been formed. If Shavecunt is a designation for a topographical feature, it is to my mind most likely that it refers to a stream—i.e. Shavecunt =‘penis’=‘water-producer’… It seems hardly necessary to continue, for enough has been said to show up the important principle which is at work in this place-name riddle by X and which Wallenberg struggles to express—the anthropomorphism of natural features, of landscape, of scenery. This is a principle which we see again in Wordsworth’s Poems on the Naming of Places, in which we are concerned with that aspect of this is morphism which is elsewhere reflected in the use of the word for the female private parts, to denote clefts, nooks, bushy dells, secluded hollows, hidden springs and fountains and streams of water. We must avoid, as no doubt did X, Wallenberg’s ungraceful and embarrassed fumbling of the subject; but we must not be shy of handling it. We must not be diverted by the word’s appearance in the common medieval street-name Gropecuntlane (nowadays euphemised to Grape Street or some such) which occurs in Reading, Windsor, London, Oxford, York, Northampton, Peterborough and many other places. We are more concerned with such other, topographical, instances as, for example, the Lancashire place-name Cunliffe, or the Derbyshire Cuntelowe, and not least the Cheshire place-name Swillinditch, anciently Swillcuntditch—this being a match for the Kent name Shavecuntwell—named, perhaps, from Anglo-Saxon local custom as well as topography. We have already seen that X seems to have thought Wordsworth ’ Poems on the Naming of Places might have been done better; but, more important, it may now be perceived that the first part of this footnote, ‘W.shd have took Paradise’ and so on, could indicate that our X had submitted a piece on ‘paradise’ and other toponymic themes, to Wordsworth, which Wordsworth had rejected—and could show us X as a

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disappointed and rejected would-have-been contributor and collaborator in the toponymic poems. What sort of poem would X have liked Wordsworth to include, on placenames like Paradise, Countisbury and Shinglewell? What point is he making? That such ideas would, indeed, be quite conformable to what Wordsworth had in fact produced? Certainly, X seems to have an insight into what Wordsworth’s poems are really about. This insight is revealed also by the second riddle in the footnote: ‘a Rig-Maiden would have no Bonus of a Stone-Willey’. This second riddle, of a Rigmaiden and a stone-willey, is obviously another place-name puzzle. This place-name was anciently spelt Rigmaiden and is of the type called an inversion compound, in which the qualifier follows the denominative in a back to front fashion; Rigmaden, formerly Rigmaiden, means ‘Maiden’s ridge’. X has repeated upon Rigmaden the trick which he played upon Countisbury; he is canting upon the form; he has taken the Rig-prototheme as the Modern English word rig, ‘a wanton girl’ (OED 1575). The joke is compounded, of course, by the antithesis of rig and maiden. Such a hot and loose piece would, the footnote says, have ‘no Bonus’ (no benefit? no profit?) ‘of a Stone-Willey’. What is a stone-willey? Or where is it? The toponymic answer will emerge, as an inversion-compound, from our reading of The Poems on the Naming of Places. For the time being, however, let us assume, quite simply, as the footnote text requires, that it is some sort of dildo. ‘Willey’ in the old, homely, country sense ‘a phallus’ or the male member regardless of phase. My second topic, Hazlitt’s essay, My First Acquaintance with Poets, includes another mention of Wordsworth’s Poems on the Naming of Places and it omits to mention by name not only Countisbury but also Crabtree. Such an omission is always to be viewed with suspicion. See Hazlitt, here, trying to establish something about these Wordsworth poems: I remember…stopping at an inn where I sat up all night to read Paul and Virginia. I recollect a remark of Coleridge’s upon this very book, that nothing could show the gross indelicacy of French manners and the entire corruption of their imagination, more strongly, than the behaviour of the heroine in the last fatal scene, who turns away from a person on board the sinking vessel, that offers to save her life, because he has thrown off his clothes to assist him in swimming. Was this a time to think of such a circumstance? I once hinted to Wordsworth, as we were sailing in his boat on Grasmere Lake, that I thought he had borrowed the idea of his Poems on the Naming of Places from the local inscriptions of the same

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kind in Paul and Virginia. He did not own the obligation, and stated some distinction without a difference in defence of his claim to originality. Observe how Hazlitt hints at Wordsworth’s plagiarism, how he suggests that these poems are not altogether Wordsworth’s. Observe how cleverly Hazlitt associates Wordsworth’s poems with Paul and Virginia which he has already associated with a ridiculous and unhealthy sexual attitude. And look how defensive Wordsworth was. There’s irony in Hazlitt’s hint—and supposition—that Wordsworth had taken the idea of the toponymic poems —with whatever sexual suggestion they contain—from the moral and priggish Bernardin de St. Pierre. Is it not already obvious that the idea and, for that matter, some of the content, could just as well have been taken from someone like our X? In this passage, Hazlitt is roasting Wordsworth, but he is not giving the game away. Hazlitt, even Hazlitt, is a member of the great conspiracy—to silence, and keep silent about, our Immortal. Hazlitt’s part in the conspiracy shows up in various ways. First, he does not press home a charge against Wordsworth, the plagiarism he suspects. Hazlitt’s suspicions would be derived from that discussion, of the origin of these poems, with Coleridge, to which this passage refers: At Linton…there is a place called the Valley of Rocks (I suspect this was only the poetical name for it) bedded among precipices overhanging the sea…Coleridge told me that he and Wordsworth were to have made this place the scene of a prose tale, but they had relinquished the design. Here is revealed the fact that Coleridge and Wordsworth began by planning a toponymic piece in prose—one of the proposed toponyms being Valley of the Rocks (this must be Coleridge’s name for the place; Wordsworth’s was, significantly, Valley of the Stones), the name was of ‘poetical’ character and probably invented by them for the valley near Linton in North Devon. And, it is revealed, something had caused Coleridge to abandon the project. Wordsworth, however, obviously continued, but in verse instead of prose, about places far removed from North Devon—places nearer home at Grasmere—doubtless the allusion of the word ‘nearer’ in the footnote? So it emerges that, as it was originally conceived, the work which eventually came out as Wordsworth’s Poems on the Naming of Places might have been a collaboration of Wordsworth and at least one other person, and the places and place-names involved were to have been in North Devon, and perhaps in other districts such as Kent, but certainly not exclusively in Westmorland.

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Again, Hazlitt conspires to conceal; in such a passage as this: Thus I passed three weeks at Nether Stowey and in the neighbourhood…It was agreed, among other things, that we should make a jaunt down the Bristol Channel, as far as Linton. We set off togethe on foot, Coleridge, John Chester, and I. No mention of Crabtree! Hazlitt has much to say in this essay about the adulating John Chester, but nothing about that other ‘J.C.’, although we know from Peake that Joseph Crabtree was in the vicinity at this time. And now it looks as if he may be connected with the famous walking-party from Nether Stowey to Linton; regard such a clue as this, in the passage where Coleridge, Chester and Hazlitt are at the inn at Linton: In the morning of the second day, we breakfasted luxuriously in an old-fashioned parlour on tea, toast, eggs and honey…It was in this room that we found a little, worn-out, copy of The Seasons, lying in a window-seat, on which Coleridge exclaimed: ‘That is true fame’. Could we not hazard a guess to recognize the presence here, at this inn? Someone, perhaps, who—having taken early breakfast, avoiding company which had grown too disdainful, enjoying the quiet perusal of his beloved Thomson in a window looking out upon the garden—was suddenly disturbed by the descent of Coleridge and his itinerant audience, leaving the room in haste, without his book. Hazlitt conspires, most significantly, to hide Crabtree by the handling of the place-names in the itinerary of this walking-tour. I quote: We passed Dunster on our right, a small town between the brow of the hill and the sea…we had a long day’s march…through Minehead and by the Blue Anchor and on to Linton, which we did not reach till near midnight. Hazlitt gives us a few place-names as if at random—as if to generalize an itinerary of a long walk. But, look at the map—and we fin that the order of places, from east to west along the Bristol Channel, is: (1) Blue Anchor—(2) Dunster—(3) Minehead—(4) Porlock— (5) Countisbury—and (6) Linton. Hazlitt omits Porlock and Countisbury, whereas, for a random list, he might more usefully have omitted Blue Anchor or Minehead. And then, in an attempt to disguise the omission of Porlock and Countisbury, he preposterously inverts the order of itinerary, so as to produce an incredible zig-zag course: (2) Dunster—(3) Minehead— (1) Blue Anchor—(6) Linton. Why does Hazlitt take such pains to omit Porlock and Countisbury? The omission of Porlock would be out of deference to Coleridge, for Porlock

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was indelibly associated with Crabtree and the Kubla Khan disaster. Why, then, omit Countisbury? Could it not be for the same or a similar reason? That this place-name, also, was distasteful, in some way, by association with Crabtree? Does it not, now, become a transparent possibility, if no more, that this X, whose footnote regrets Wordsworth’s omission of Countisbury as a place-name on which to base a poem of sexual topography—that this could be Crabtree? Crabtree—whose association thus with Countisbury—that of a man who saw sexual significance in the name—might have been so shocking to Coleridge, as to cause Hazlitt to erase not only Crabtree from the record, but also the place-names which evoked him—to erase man and toponymics from this essay as thoroughly as Wordsworth rejected the Crabtree poem from the toponymic work in progress—rejected the poem whilst, nevertheless, borrowing the basic anthropomorphic metaphor of natural scenery which X—or Crabtree?—would appear to have been developing in his own toponymic studies. So now to my third topic, and the nub of the business: Wordsworth’s Poems on the Naming of Places, the poems referred to by the Anyon MS. footnote and the Hazlitt innuendo. If we look through these poems, we soon see what our friend X was getting at, in his footnote. It begins in Wordsworth’s Advertisement which prefaces the things: …many places will be found un-named or of unknown names, where little Incidents must have occurred, or feelings been experienced, which will have given to such places a private and peculiar interest. From a wish to give some sort of record to such Incidents, and renew the gratification of such feelings, Names have been given to Places by the Author and some of his Friends, and the following Poems written in consequence. Then follow five poems, of which three concern women. The ‘incidents’ and ‘feelings’ took place at five different places. Let us now look at the ‘little incidents’, the ‘gratification of such feelings’ which were to be re-lived in these reminiscences. In poem No. 1, which we could entitle Emma’s Dell, the first 36 lines do well enough as a typical Wordsworth nature scene if we take them at face-value. But we are not to be deceived by this. We discern the suggestion behind: The Rivulet, delighting in its strength, Ran with a young man’s speed…

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We notice the real shape of the topography of the dingle in which the poet walks, a topography half obscured, in the lines …Green leaves were here; But ‘twas the foliage of the rocks—the birch, The yew, the holly, and the bright green thorn, With hanging islands of resplendant furze… even though this imagery suggests the scene of a prickly encounter. We discern all this. And if we did not, then we should be alerted to our mistake by the bathos of the dedication which follows the descriptive passage: I gazed and gazed, and to myself I said, ‘Our thoughts at least are ours; and this wild nook, My Emma, I will dedicate to thee’. You will observe that Wordsworth does not here define, precisely, the association of this place with his Emma. What happened to Emma in this place? Or what did she do, which Wordsworth enjoys recalling in order to ‘renew the gratification of such feelings’? The chief feature of Emma’s Dell is a waterfall and a running stream in a valley. This topography—the flow of water in a secluded valley with bushy growth about the slopes—is anatomical. The anatomical image behind the natural scenery is also discerned in poem No. 5—which we can call Mary’s Nook (the name of the place which is the subject of the poem). Listen to this camouflage: Our walk was far among the ancient trees: There was no road, nor any woodman’s path; But a thick umbrage… …of itself had made A track, that brought us to a slip of lawn, And a small bed of water in the woods. It needs little enough penetration to know what it is that Wordsworth is describing, in what appears to be just so much natural scenery. Here again he gives us the image of water in the hidden place—not this time the gushing vital torrent but rather the still waters, the secret pool in the secluded glade. One might be forgiven for a suspicion that these poems are not so much Poems on the Naming of Places as Poems on the Description of Parts. So, we ask for the second time: if poems like Emma’s Dell and Mary’s Nook are acceptable to Wordsworth, why not have Somebody’s Paradise, or a poem about Countisbury? The answer, apparently would be, that X may not have been devious enough for Wordsworth’s liking. X, probably, had

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not sufficiently disguised the sexual allusions which his imagery would contain—trees, streams, pools, cloughs, hollows, and hills and all the rest of the clap-trap landscape furniture used by Wordsworth to hide his object. More directly, Wordsworth would not like X, because, as X’s footnote shows, X could see through this nature-imagery screen behind which the voyeur Wordsworth crouched to evoke his remembered gratifications, his emotion recollected in tranquillity. And strange gratifications they are— such as he evokes in poem No. 2 of the series which he inscribes TO JOANNA, but which we can call Joanna’s Rock. This is a poem about a place where a girl called Joanna burst out laughing at something which befell Wordsworth when they went for a walk up the glen together. In an advertisement at the head of this poem, Wordsworth writes: ‘the effect of her laugh is an extravagance’. The effect for which he apologizes is indeed an exaggeration. He describes how her laugh, uttered beside the river Rotha in Grasmere Vale, echoed and reverberated from all the mountains, crags and scars in Lakeland for miles and miles about, and brought on a thunderstorm among the fells. In this rhetorical hyperbole, Wordsworth is describing his own feelings when she laughed. He felt as if the whole of Nature was laughing with her —at him. He is recording the astonishment and shock which a severe embarrassment brought upon him. Let us look for it in the story. In lines 23–24, the vicar asks: How fares Joanna, that wild-hearted Maid? And when will she return to us? The girls been away for at least eighteen months now, and nobody’s been to have a word with the vicar about it. But the story which Wordsworth tells the vicar is peculiar—more peculiar than even the long-suffering vicar had feared; lines 35–50 tell how he walked Joanna up the glen by the river to the foot of a cliff: …As it befell, One summer morning we had walked abroad At break of day, Joan na and mys —’Twas that delightful season when the broom, Full-flowered, and visible on every steep, Along the copses runs in veins of gold. Our pathway led us on to Rotha’s banks; And when we came in front of that tall rock That eastward looks, I there stopped short—and stood. Wordsworth is suddenly brought to a stop; and stands, amazed. His story is that the view has amazed him. And there he is, staring into space,

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oblivious of the girl on hand, the purpose of the expedition, everything— well, that’s what he says. The whole thing is odd. We are not told why the poet and the girl are up the glen at daybreak. Have they been up all night already? Or has the poet some queer thing about dawn assignations? We are used to odd behaviour in Wordsworth. He had a thing about daffodils, we recall. And he himself owns, concerning his early youth, in the preface to one of his poems: ‘I was an impassioned Nutter…’ But, the catastrophe is more clearly realized: When I had gazed perhaps two minutes space, Joanna, looking in my eyes, beheld The ravishment of mine, and laughed aloud. The tell-tale word here is ‘ravishment’. It was he, not she, who had experienced this ‘feeling’. She is hardly laughing out of amusement—the laugh is not that sort. What we have here is something more like hysterics. And see, now, even as she stands before him while the echoes of her wild laughter ring and thunder in the fells: …while we both were listening, to my side The fair Joanna drew, as if she wished To shelter from some object of her fear. What ‘object of her fear’? Why suddenly dart aside? Does it not appear that the impetuous poet had been brought to an unpremeditated crisis, whereby the girl was brought to a fearful hysteria of frustration? I take it, and I hope that we shall all be persuaded, that this hysteria and frustration which Joanna suffered, could be the object of X’s riddle in the Anyon MS. Might not Joanna, ‘that wild-hearted maid’ as the vicar calls her, be the Rig-Maiden who would ‘have no Bonus of a Stone-Willey’? Then, might not the stone-willey represent the petri–fied Wordsworth at whome she laughed? This brings us to Poem No. 3. Here one mystery is dissolved in the solution of another. The place-name which is the point of this story is not stated in the text of the poem. One has to guess it. We are given that a peak or crag, which rears itself up over the poet’s home, has been re-named— presumably by his sister Dorothy: There is an Eminence,—of these our hills The last that parleys with the setting sun; … And She who dwells with me, whom I have loved With such communion, that no place on earth

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Can ever be a solitude to me, Hath to this lonely Summit given my Name. The expected form of place-name here would be something like William Hill, or William’s Knott, even William’s Old Man—at any rate, some typical Lakeland Hill-name. There is nothing to fit this in The Place-Names of Westmorland, or Cumberland. The clue actually occurs in the preface which Wordsworth inserted in a later edition of the poem, in which he confesses that the original name of the hill was Stone Arthur. It is, in fact, still called Stone Arthur to this day The name is an inversion compound like Rigmaden: it means Arthur’s Rock. But if Dorothy Wordsworth wanted to give it a ‘fun-name’, to commemorate a certain aspect or feature of brother William, she would make the obvious modification. She would merely insert a Willie where Arthur had been. She would name the hill Stone-William or Stone-Willey—depending on how she was looking at her brother. Wordsworth would be too prudish to print such a name. The Anyon MS. footnote seems to make a play upon this; it makes what appears to be an unmistakable allusion to poems 2 and 3 of Wordsworth’s series: to Stone William or Stone Willie, the mountain, and to Stone Willie, the petrified Wordsworth and the overtaken dildo which exasperated the luckless Joanna. Poem No. 4, the poem about a place named, unconformably, Point Rash Judgement, describes a walking party, Wordsworth, Dorothy, Coleridge, idling along the shore of Grasmere, doing nothing in particular, amusing themselves with trifles, with no thought of toponyms, or Crabtree, in mind. And then, as they were enjoying that feeling, that everybody but themselves is hard at it, doing something useful—just as they are savouring this—suddenly they see a man whom they take to be a peasant loafer, angling his rod at the water’s edge on the end of a promontory, when all the rest of the neighbourhood are hard at it in the cornfield, reaping. In an outrage of bourgeois righteousness they condemn his idleness, but their condemnation proves unjust and pointless. When they approach him they find him far gone in a wasting ailment—we do not learn much about the disease save that it has done something funny to his knees, and has barely left him enough strength for his lonely pastime, never mind the industrious violence of the cornfield. And note how ‘tactfully’ they approach him: Thus talking of that peasant, we approached Close to the spot where with his rod and line He stood alone; whereat he turned his head To greet us…

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Here we notice very clearly that the whole poem is poorly got up. It is full of an appearance of detail and incident—but the essential information is omitted. We are not told two things: (1) what the man said when he heard them talking about him; and (2) who he turned out to be, when at last they saw his face. But Wordsworth chooses NOT to name the man. Who are we to suppose this fisherman was? To my mind, there can be little doubt: the figure which Wordsworth mocks could very well be an unkind portrait of Crabtree; may we not see, here, a picture of an unexpected meeting with Crabtree beside Grasmere? Might this not be another instance of Crabtree haunting those who have used him ill? Again we think of the person from Porlock and the Kubla Khan disaster, the other man at the Linton inn, the reasons for the omission of Porlock and Countisbury, and Hazlitt’s innuendo about plagiarism from Paul and Virginia. And we can see why Hazlitt would choose the occasion of a boattrip on Grasmere to try for a confession from Wordsworth about the true origin of the toponymic poems—he could have been trying to remind Wordsworth of that unexpected fisherman who had shamed him by that lake. Now, farther than this, at the present state of knowledge, we cannot go. We have done enough to show, I think, that it is very likely that Crabtree had something to do with the inspiration of Wordsworth’s Poems on the Naming of Places. Let me conclude now with a summary of the connection that is essential to this discourse—it turns on the identity of X, the writer of the footnote. First: there appears to be a connexion of allusion common to the footnote in the Anyon MS.; Wordsworth’s Poems on the Naming of Places; and Hazlitt’s essay My First Acquaintance with Poets. Second: although complicated, and sometimes inferential, the connexion is such as to show that the person X who wrote the Anyon MS. footnote, which is closely involved with these other works, might have been Crabtree; and this is indicated by the third point namely the way that X uses the toponym STONE WILLEY—to represent a place-name and a dildo, and to mock the nonce-formation StoneWilliam omitted from Wordsworth’s poem. This shows that X was one of the few people who were closely acquainted with the toponymic project which Coleridge and Wordsworth had planned—and from which Crabtree was excluded. The Rig-maiden allusion to Joanna’s Rock underlines the intimate knowledge which X had of the biographical background to the poems. The few people who could have been so involved were: 1. Coleridge and 2. Wordsworth (obviously); 3. Crabtree (as appears by inference from what has now been brought to notice);

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4. Dorothy Wordsworth (who knew all about all of them); and 5. Hazlitt (as our discourse has now revealed). The handwriting of X in the Anyon MS. footnote is not that of Wordsworth, Dorothy, Coleridge or Hazlitt. We are left with the equation: X=Crabtree.

21 CRABTREE AND FRENCH LETTERS Gordon Hall 1974

No period seemed more inviting to me personally and to promise more interesting discoveries than the one which Crabtree spent in the city in whose main square stands a magnificent statue of Jeann e Bonne Lorraine, to whom further reference will be made later, the beautiful city of Orléans, the period 1783 to 1792. Of these 9—or 10 years inclusive—all that we knew 12 months ago— and for this valuable but—it must be admitted—scanty knowledge we are indebted to our first orator Professor Sutherland. Now, I was greatly intrigued by a number of questions raised by Sutherland’s rare facts. Was it only the gloomy atmosphere of his Uncle’s domicile which drove Crabtree ‘chez Paul Vallon’? If so, why did it take him 8 years to decide upon the move—or were there perhaps more efficient causes? Was his state of dejection due solely to the condition in which Annette Vallon found herself, or were there deeper, more personal and intimate reasons? Apart from his Ode to Claret and the sonnet which, we are told, he wrote immediately after his liaison with Annette, had nothing survived of the works which this most fertile and productive of poets must have surely composed during this period? Where, for example, were those poems of venery and vinery, about which Bennett waxed so lyrically in his oration of 1967? What, in any case, did Crabtree have to do with hunting and greenhouses for grapes?—unless, of course, interpreting the word venery in its other sense, the reference here is to Crabtree’s penchant, like Lloyd George’s, for chasing women and seducing them in hothouses! And so, Mr. President, determined to fin d answe rs to th questions, I took the only possible course of action open to me: I went off to Orleans in the summer of 1973, there to do ‘on-the-spot’ research, and ‘installed myself’— a delightful Gallicism—for an indefinite stay in a little tavern called Le Petit Godet, rue Mouffetarde. I am sure you will be enchanted to learn that I had a stroke of great good fortune, a stroke which does not come by chance but as a result of persistent and assiduous effort: I found in the city of Orléans itself descendants of Annette Vallon, through whose kindness and willing cooperation I was able to make the kind of discoveries that I had been

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hoping for and which it will be my purpose to reveal to you this evening. I have come to the conclusion that whatever the content of this oration is to be, it can have no other title than Crabtree and French Letters: anterior and posterior influences. First, I think that you should know that Annette Vallon’s real name was Marie-Anne Vallon. The girl child of her union with Joseph Crabtree was christened Anne Caroline on the 15th of December 1792, and 24 years later, in 1816, Anne Caroline married a certain Jean Baptiste Martin Baudouin. The descendants of Anne Caroline and Jean Baptiste, and therefore of Marie-Anne (or Annette) and Crabtree, still live in Orleans. This I discovered after weeks of research in the Archives départementales—and also after consulting the local telephone directory, and I was thus able to trace the history of the Baudouin family from 1816, the year of the marriage, to the present day. An introduction to the great-great-grandson of Marie-Anne and Josep Crabtree, a fine old man of some 70 years, M.Jean Guillaume Baudouin, brought me an immediate invitation to the family home, now at no. 23, rue Saint André, Orleans, and this house all you amateurs de Crabtree could certainly go and visit—provided, of course, that it is still standing. As elsewhere, there has recently been a great deal of property development in Orleans. With characteristic generosity the Baudouins gave the freedom of the establishment, permitting me to roam wherever I liked and to examine everything from basement to attic. And wonder of wonders—to the average Englishman, perhaps, but not to me who am accustomed to the hoarding habits of the French—I found in an attic room a number of ancient trunks containing the most extraordinary collection of odds and ends, for which the French have the delightful word bric-à-brac. I rummag ed thro them and I would not even think of wasting your time and mine with a long list of the things I found; suffice it to say that one article in particular caught my attention. It was an old frock-coat, in a state of total disrepair, I’m afraid, but what struck me about it was that it seemed to me to be of English origin in its material, cut and style. I examined it with the utmost care, then consulted my friend Ian Tregarthen Jenkin of the Slade School of Art, who promptly and most kindly sent on to me a magnificent volume entitled A History of Costume in the West by one Francois Boucher. I checked through it carefully, and to my intense delight discovered on page 322 a picture of an 18th century English frockcoat. It was similar in every respect to the one which I had found in the Baudouin trunk. I went back to the coat to examine every square inch of it, inside and out, and came upon, picked out in silk on the right inside pocket, the initials J.C. My excitement, as you can well imagine, mounted. With no little apprehension and anxiety, I showed the coat to my newlyfound friend M.Baudouin. ‘Oh yes, he said (in French, of course, but I thought I’d best translate his actual words into English for reasons of clarity and intelligibility). ‘Oh yes, I’ve known about that coat (he called it

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une redingote, a charming French distortion of the English word riding-coat) ever since I was a boy and used to play up there in the attic on rainy days’. Then, with a twinkle in his eye and a broad wink, he added: ‘There’s a story in the family that it belonged to that famous English poet William Wordsworth, who stayed with us during the early years of the Revolution’. Obviously, whatever it was that the wily old M. Baudouin knew or suspected, it was clear that he had never happened upon the initials J.C. on the inside right-hand pocket of the coat, otherwise he might have asked some penetrating questions. For reasons of discretion I refrained from disabusing him; it seemed to me that to explain the nature of my findings to him would take far too long and would, in any case, have probably been incomprehensible to him. As far as I was concerned, there could be no doubt as to the true identity of the original owner of the coat: it was our very own Joseph Crabtree. Now, I do not regard the discovery of Joseph’s coat as in any way remarkable; from the Bible onwards, history tells us such finds are frequently made. But what was remarkable by any standards was what I found stitched into the very pocket on which the initials J.C. appeared: it was a piece of paper which I was able to remove only with the utmost difficulty. On it I descried some very faded writing which looked for all the world like a copy of a poem. Could it be by Crabtree? In a state of intense excitement I rushed to the Bibliothèque d’Orléans where I was furnished with special intra-red ray equipment and I proceeded as calmly and coolly as I could to decipher the words. Judge of my astonishment, Gentlemen, when I realised that here was no poem by Crabtree but a poem from the quill of the 15th century French poet Francois Villon, a poem known as the Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis. But how on earth, I asked myself, as I am sure you are now asking yourselves, had Crabtree become acquainted with the work of the first great modern French poet, of the man who before any other had bared his soul for all to see in his lyrical outpourings, his intensely personal verse, how had Crabtree achieved this when I knew that it was not until the 19th century that any serious notice had been taken of Villon and his work? The answer did not take long to find. Though Clément Marot had made a brave attempt in 1533 at a critical edition of Villon, few people paid any attention to him, but then, in the late 17th century, an extraordinary man of letters called Bernard le Bouvier de Fontenelle, Fontenelle for short, extraordinary not only from the point of view of his literary interests and versatility but also because, like Crabtree, he lived exactly 100 years—from 1657 to 1757—published in 1692 a book of poems entitled Recueil des plus belles pieces des poètes francois, tant anciens que modernes, depuis Villon jusqu’à M.Benserade, ‘A Collection of the finest pieces of French poets, both ancient and modern, from Villion to M.Benserade’. The collection opens with nine of the best known ballades of Francois Corbueil, dit Villon. Now Crabtree may not have had at that

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time, nor indeed at any other time, intimations of immortality, but he most certainly had intimations of longevity and it would appear that when he obtained a copy of Fontenelle’s book—in circumstances which I will explain later—he was greatly intrigued by the compiler, a writer who had lived a whole century; after all, was he not himself already secretly entertaining such an ambition? We have been told by earlier researchers that Crabtree had not troubled to learn French until his affair with Mme. de Staël in 1792, but I must at once correct this misapprehension, since a person as sensitive as he could not possibly have long resisted the linguistic atmosphere in which he lived, and after 8 years in Orléans where perhaps the best French is spoken—at any rate, the Orléanais claim it—it is inconceivable that he should not have been completely fluent orally and well able to understand and appreciate written French. Let us admit, gentlemen, that no-one could have acquired that mastery of the French tongue analysed for us by Tancock in his presentation of the Crabtree/Pommeraye poem Pastorale in the bedroom of that man-eater Germaine de Staël. But whatever the case, one thing is abundantly clear: Crabtree was so overwhelmed by the beauty of the very first poem in the centenarian Fontenelle’ collection, Villon’s Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis, that he did what only one other writer to my knowledge has ever done, that is, to have sewn into his clothing, for posterity to find, a certain piece of writing. The other man to whom I refer is the great 17th century French scientist, mathematician, religious thinker and writer Blaise Pascal. Crabtree did not do anything quite as remarkable as Pascal; religious fervour seems to have passed him by, and no wonder when one considers that he had kinsmen like his Uncle Oliver. No, all he did was to copy down a poem that had obviously affected him deeply, the first ballade in the Fontenelle collection, and as it is one of the most beautiful and most moving poems ever written in any language, and as I know that some of you will already have a vague but no real knowledge of it, and as I also know that you must all be by now extremely anxious to become acquainted with it and hear it no doubt as much as I, and as I am very concerned that I should have at least one bright jewel in the dull setting of my oration, and at the same time reveal to you the kind of poetry that was influencing Crabtree at this stage in his life, I feel that I must now recite to you the poem which I can describe only in Crabtree’s well-known phrase as ‘a thing of beauty and a joy for ever’. What many of you will recognise is its oft-quoted one-line refrain ‘Mais où sont les neiges d’antan’?—‘Where are the snows of yesteryear’?—a procédé poétique which Brown informed us in 1955 Crabtree used to such good effect in his inimitable drinking song, We march we know not whither, with its haunting single-line refrain ‘Great unaffected vampires of the moon’. So now to the Ballade des dames du Temps Jadis, the ballade to the ladies of Yore, found in Crabtree’s redingote:

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Dictes moy où, n’en quel païs, Est Flora, la belle Romaine, Archipadès, ne Thaïs, Qui fut sa cousine germaine, Echo parlant quant bruyt on maine Dessus rivière ou sus estan, Qui beaulté ot trop plus qu’humaine. Mais où sont les neiges d’antan? Où est la très sage Helloïs, Pour qui chastré fut et puis moyne Pierre Esbaillart a Saint Denis? Pour son amour ot ceste essoine. Semblablement, où est la royne Qui commanda que Buridan Fust geté en ung sac en Saine? Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan?

La royne Blanche comme lis Qui chantoit a voix de seraine, Berte au grant pié, Bietris, Alis, Haremburgis qui tint le Maine, Et Jehanne la bonne Lorraine Qu‘Englois brulèrent a Rouan; Où sont ilz, où, Vierge souvraine? Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?

Prince, n’enquerez de sepmaine Où elles sont, ne de cest an, Qu’à ce reffrain ne vous remaine: Mais où sont les neiges d’antan? To change one word in this poem, Gentlemen, would be to destroy its perfect beauty; to change them all, and into a foreign language too, which is, after all, what translating means—no more and no less—would be an act of sacrilege. I will not translate. One question, I know, you are bound to ask: how did Crabtree obtain a copy of the Fontenelle recueil? And this brings us to the very heart and centre of my researches. These revealed that in order to escape from the gloomy atmosphere of his Uncle’s domicile, Crabtree, after a day’s work in the wine-shipper’s warehouse, found refuge in a near-by tavern known as the Pomme de Pin. This was not an uncommon name for a tavern in the 18th century, nor indeed in earlier centuries, for had not Villon, much to Crabtree’s delight when he learnt it, frequented a 15th century Pomme de Pin in Paris, as he tells us in his Testament. And an interesting, yet cautious speculation, do you not think that it could have been his affection for his local combined with the obvious pun that could be made on his own name Crabtree that led him to choose, as Tancock pointed out 13 years ago, the aristocratic-sounding name Pommeraye for his poetic pseudonym? I certainly feel that the name Pomona in the opening line of his Ode to Claret: ‘No more, Pomona they Vot’ries chaunt’ is not entirely without significance here, but what I regard as of infinitely greater significance is Crabtree’s extensive use of proper names in this very poem. As the distinguished exponent of stylistics Leo

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Spitzer pointed out in his study of Villon’s Ballade, Etude ahistorique d’un texte: Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis, published in 1940, proper names have a poetry of their own, for they are less ringed about with grammatical considerations than are other words, and it seems clear to me that Crabtree must have felt, must have appreciated their poetic value, then like Villon in his Ballade and elsewhere in his work, exploited them as these well-known lines demonstrate: No more, Pomona, let they vot’ries chaunt The praise of Cyder; no, nor Ceres bring Her grain for beery clowns. Avaunt, avaunt! Bacchus is our undoubted Lord and King. But to get back to the Pomme de Pin. The patron, Pierre Brasseur, was a most engaging person, interested not only in his trade, which meant his wine, spirits and his customers, but also in literature. He took a strong liking to the shy, somewhat lugubrious but always polite young Englishman, and wishing to assist him in his efforts to learn French and to interest him generally in aspects of French culture, he lent him a number of books, one of which was the Fontenelle collection. At the same time he introduced Joseph to several of his regular customers, among whom was a certain Paul Vallon. Now you do not need to be reminded that as a writer Crabtree was passionately interested in words, and as a poet in the sounds of words, and he was particularly intrigued by the way in which speech sounds are produced and the mechanism that produces them. Was it not he, for example, who was the first to realise that production, of speech sounds I mean, was determined not only by the shape and size of the orifice through which they come but also by the slackness or tautness of the organs, the speech organs that is, an idea which one of the outstanding experimental phoneticians of the day, Professor George Straka of the University of Strabourg, is still exploiting. In 1790, of course, Crabtree’s knowledge and understanding of linguistics were extremely limited but he was constantly on the look-out for material, especially in the field of phonetics, and he was very taken by the similarity of the sounds in the name Villon, pronounced [vi o] in the 18th century, and the sounds in the name of his new friend Paul Vallon. Actually there is not the slightest connection between the two names but that did not really matter. What did matter was that a close friendship quickly sprang up between them and when Paul realised that, like Francois Villon, Crabtree could say: ‘Povre je suis et de povre extrace’—‘Poor am I and of a poor family’—he invited him to stay as a non-paying guest in his house. Crabtree had, in fact, remained with his Uncle for 8 years for the simple reason that he could not afford to move. A year later he met Annette, whom I prefer to call Marie-Anne since that was her real name,

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and we know what happened then. When Wordsworth came to Orleans in 1792 he noted Crabtree’s dejection, first attributed it to the malaise that often affects poets, then learned from Crabtree that it was really due to MarieAnne’s condition. Gentlemen, this was only partly true. The facts are that he truly loved Marie-Anne, as we shall see in a moment, and he would have happily married her, had it not been for his poverty—he was paid only a pittance by his skin-flint of an Uncle—and had it not been for his responsibilities to his family in England—he regularly sent them half of his miserable wages. And there was something else! Before he met MarieAnne in 1791, he had become entangled in a clandestine affair with the rich but blousy widow of his Uncle Olver’ partner in Orleans, a lady—if one can call her such—who rejoiced in the egregious name of Eadie Hillier. Given all these circumstances, it was impossible for Joseph to extricate himself from Eadie’s clutches: she would have created unimaginable difficulties for him; and so, with deep sorrow and regret, Crabtree accepted Wordsworth’s offer to acknowledge himself the father of Marie-Anne’s unborn child, and shortly thereafter he departed from Paul Vallon’s house to go we know not where: to live with Eadie? to tour France? (was it not about this time he met Mme. de Staël?) or to return to England? We simply do not know what he did and some young and vigorous scholar should set about finding out for us. And what, gentlemen, you may well ask, is my evidence for all this? And the answer is the results of my research mainly from the archives départementales, backed up by a poem which I found in one of the trunks in the Baudouin household last summer, a poem signed J.C., a poem about which I would like to say a few words before reading it to you. Crabtree’s poetic greatness has already received far more meaningful tributes than I could ever pay. The depths of his emotions, his tenderness and universal sympathy, his never-ending wrestle with words, meanings and sounds, his constant striving after perfection, his versatility, in short, his complete mastery of his art and his craft, all these qualities of his have been highlighted for us by previous scholars. But it must never be forgotten that Joseph Crabtree was a man, a mortal man with a mortal man’s weaknesses, thank God, and though he could and did write like an angel, he was also capable of writing, and did write some pretty indifferent stuff, especially a bad kind of confessional verse which Roy Fuller, lately Professor of Poetry at Oxford, in his lecture The Two Sides of the Street published in his recent book Professors and Gods, strongly condemns as ‘maniac poetry’. The poem which I am about to read to you I regard as typical, and it reveals what even Crabtree could produce, regrettably not destroying it later when the mood had passed. Here it is:

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Marie-Anne I truly love, A charming blue-eyed beauty, Sweet and gentle as a dove, To marry whom it is my duty. But sadly I’m involved with Eadie, Who is as rich as she is seedy; I simply do not have a chance To rid myself of this romance; I must despairing say goodbye To Marie-Anne and all my joy, For though I’ll love her till I die, It’s Eadie with her gold alloy Who’ll call the tune to which I’ll dance Which Villon says ‘vient de la pance’. Crabtree is thinking here of the famous line in Villon’s Testament, significantly numbered line 200 in modern editions ‘Car la dance vient de la pance’, and it is interesting to observe that he believes that the English dance rhymes with the French pance! There then, Mr. President, lies the true explanation of Crabtree’s dejection. It was not so much a mistake, if mistake it was, that he was unwilling to repair. No, it was the harsh, cruel, financial facts of life which prevented him from fulfilling his heart’s desire to marry MarieAnne, and like Villon before him, in a fit of self-disgust and with bitter cynicism, he wrote that kind of trashy verse, surely as an act of penance. At this stage in my oration it was my intention to give you another example of Crabtree ’ s confession al ver se, rela ti ng t o that famou in Norway, about which Foote spoke so eloquently in 1969, when Crabtree fathered Henrik Ibsen; I was then going to discuss the second part of my title, Crabtree’s posterior influence, that is, the influence which his poetry had upon succeeding generations of poets, chiefly French poets, the Romantics such as Hugo, Lamartine, de Musset, de Vigny, Théophile Gautier, on Baudelaire and the Parnassiens, on Verlaine and the Symbolistes, and so-called modern, if not contemporary, poets such as Eluard, Guillaume Apollinaire, Charles Péguy—to mention but a few. Finally, I had intended to present some aspects of Crabtree’s achievements in Linguistics, to analyse the contribution which he made to our knowledge of phonetic change, especially on sound laws, and incidentally to demonstrate scientifically—and to your complete amazement—how, for example, by reference to perfectly normal sound laws, the name Crabtree is no more than a phonetic variant of my own Christian name Gordon. But these matters I will leave to others to investigate and present to you, for my time has passed.

22 CRABTREE COMES OF AGE: CRABTREE AND COUNTRY MATTERS Richard Freeman 1975

I am going to give two orations. The title of my first oration is Crabtree comes of age, and it is more in the nature of a true story than an oration. Last year Dr. Hall referred briefly to the coming of age of the Foundation, but this year two hundred years ago, and it was Tuesday in Septuagesima, Joseph Crabtree himself came of age, and I feel that the matter needs treating in some depth. This is a difficult period in Crabtree studies— between the time when he was sent down from Oxford in the Hilary term— indeed on his birthday, which in that year was sexagesima Sunday—and his placing in the firm of Crabtree and Hillier, wine merchants of Orleans ten years later, we know little of his whereabouts, except for his brief employment in the bindery of the Cambridge University Library. We can I think assume that he would have been, if at all possible, back in his home village for his coming of age. In Crabtree’s case the day would have been no more than a ritual—he had come of age in all senses long before, but he would have been there to please his mother if for no better reason. But what do we know of ritual coming of age in the County of Avon 200 years ago. In 1958, the late John Crowe of King’s College gave an oration entitled Crabtree’s periodical publication. Like much work published in obscure journals, no copy survives. One phrase from it however has always stuck in my mind. Crowe spoke, at the beginning of his oration of ‘the three keys to manhood’. He said no more, and assumed that we all knew what he meant. Of course, I know, indeed we all know, of the three keys edict of Henry II in 1166, and the supporting papal bull of Innocent III in the reign of John, but those keys referred to Crusade Church chests and the three estates of the realm—nothing at all to do with coming of age. What then could the three have been? The first was clear, the key to the door of the family home, a custom which survives to this day. In this case it was a metaphorical key because Crabtree, as we know, had been climbing out of the window of his father’s study since his earliest teens, and he had no need of it. The second also presents no difficulties—they key to his father’s winecellar—again metaphorical, because as Peake has told us, Crabtree had early acquired the key to the cellar—he was speaking of the Happy Valley

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Inn at Porlock, but we may be sure that the future vintner and author of the Ode to Claret would make certain of this key wherever he lived. But what of the third key? Here I was stuck. I went to the FolkLore library—there were plenty of books on the subject—Coming of age in Samoa, Growing up in Guatemala, that sort of thing, but not a word about Chipping Sodbury or about three keys. I tried the old ladies who infest the place, some of whose memories might well take them back to Crabtree’s time, but all to no effect. There was nothing for it but that I must go to Chipping Sodbury, and to Chipping Sodbury I went. I had not been there since the year 1925, when I served behind a stall at the Vicar’s fête. Alas Gentlemen, Chipping Sodbury is not what it was. My first port of call was the pub on the green, but there were spitoons in the bar and the landlord came from Leeds. He knew nothing of local custom, but was friendly, and in the end helpful, as we shall see. Refreshed, I walked across the green to the church, Holy Trinity—because men of the cloth are often the last repositories of the arcane secrets of village life—but the Vicar of Holy Trinity came from Wakefield and had a high collar. I asked him about Crabtree and about the keys. He told me that there had been another man enquiring about him an American, and I sensed the presence of Professor Kemper T. Guggenheim, who hunts Crabtree so assiduously but to so little effect. It was clear that this Vicar knew something about the keys but all that he would say was that ‘there were some local customs of pagan origin into which it was better not to enquire’. I was walking disconsolately back to my car when I heard a pattering of feet behind—I turned and saw a little girl of some fourteen summers running towards me, and a very pretty little girl at that. ‘Please Sir, my mother says I’m to tell you about the third key, but I don’t rightly know as how I should’. It turned out that she was the daughter of the barmaid at the pub, Joan Downie by name. I jollied her along, telling her not to be shy, but she started to blush. It was Charles Darwin who, in 1867, sent a printed circular to a number of overseas missionaries asking them if members of their dusky flocks blushed, and if they did, please to observe how far down they blushed. He got some very dusky answers. Young Miss Downie suddenly blushed crimson, probably down to her navel, and blurted out ‘Oh’. please Sir, you see Sir, it’s us’. With that she took to her heels and ran. And I had my answer staring me in the face all the time—a metaphorical chastity belt for the third key to open. But, alas, even this key must have been a mere symbol to Joseph Crabtree, for we know he was a precocious boy, and not for nothing was he called cuckoo at school. There, thought I, was the end of my mission. But no, Miss Downie was coming back—no blushes now but every inch a woman. ‘Please Sir, Mum says I was to give you these’ and, reaching down to where young women used to keep their handkerchiefs, she produced a grubby piece of blunder twine on which were tied three keys. ‘Mu says that as I haven’t got a

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brother she wont be wanting them again’. I thanked her in the only way one can thank a pretty girl of fourteen summers, and returned to the pub. The grubby piece of binder twine I have discarded, but here, Gentlemen, are the keys, rusty as they came to me, and I give them to the Foundation as a remembrance of a small episode in the life of Joseph Crabtree which took place 200 years ago tonight. My second oration is entitled Crabtree and country matters—a quotation which one of our most distinguished scholars has described as ‘one of Shakespeare’s asides to keep the pit happy, and later to gladden Dr. Bowdler’s shears’. But it is to Dame Nature, and not to human nature, that I refer. In studying the works of Crabtree, and in reading what has been written about him, I have been struck often by the number of lacunae that there still are—whole periods of his life of which we know little or nothing. Where was he?—What was he writing?—What company was he keeping?—nothing. It is about one of these periods that I wish to speak— between his coming of age and his becoming a wine shipper. This is a period in which Coleridge was still in dresses at Ottery St. Mary, doubtless frilled with Honiton lace, and Wordsworth was a mere schoolboy. One thing that we do know about this period was that he became acquainted with Erasmus Darwin, and, if not a recorded member, at least a visitor to the Lunar Society and to the Botanical Society of Lichfield, a Society which had only three members, and helping no doubt in their major work, the translation of the Sexual System of Linnaeus into English. We know also that he had been at school with another distinguished natural historian, Edward Jenner, and the episode of the milkmaid had occurred at Chipping Sodbury in 1770. Crabtree may well have had smallpox, but the milkmaid had not. Furthermore he had the entrée to the salon of Sir Joseph Banks. Banks, only 32 when Crabtree came of age, and already a Fellow of the Royal Society for nine years, gathered at his house in Soho Square all the natural historians and antiquaries of Europe. Why then was the young Crabtree given a welcome there? I can think of two reasons. For the first, a very personal one, I have little evidence—a possibility only—for the second there is something more. When Banks went, as a naturalist, on Cook’s first voyage in 1768, he took with him not only artists and draughtsmen and his own personal valet, but two flute boys. They are not named in the ship’s complement of the Endeavour, only their trade is given, but then no more was the valet. Is it just possible that they were Joseph and his young brother George? George, as Nyholm has shown us, was to end up in Botany Bay, a place named by Banks, in much sadder circumstances. Of course, Crabtree’s instrument was the dulcimer, but, to be a flute boy on one of King George III ships of war, it was not necessary to be able to play the flute. I have often been much surprised by the knowledge that Coleridge had of the fauna of southern latitudes as shown in the Ancient Mariner. It is usually attributed

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to his reading Shelvocke’s earlier voyage, but I suspect that the information came from nearer to hand. Banks was asked by Cook to go on the second voyage in 1772, but the Captain stipulated no flute boys, so Banks refused and took his entourage to Iceland instead. The next person to be asked curiously enough was Jenner, but he refused on the grounds that he was about to invent vaccination. In the end, a couple of Germans, called Forster, went. It is perhaps relevant that on his return from this voyage Cook was elected to the Royal Society, and received its highest award—the Copley—in the same year. But then Banks was not yet President. However that may be, it is certainly true that Crabtree, influenced by Erasmus Darwin, Banks and Jenner, was a serious naturalist at the time, and not only a love of nature, but a knowledge of it stayed with him for the rest of his life. Even well into his 90’s, as Scott has told us, he was attending meetings of the Metropolitan Red Lion Club, and perhaps helping in the composition of their drinking songs. The Red Lion Club was one of those typically English sodalities, which had some slightly whimsy post-prandial customs. Theirs was for one member to stand on the table and sing some zoological ballad. The dredging song, which I will not sing, was the most famous. It was written by Edward Forbes, then Professor of Botany in the Strand, and even young Thomas Henry Huxley took to the table at times. The song, the ballad of the red tape-worm, slight though it is, seems to me to show the touch of a more nature hand. The more important reason why Crabtree was welcome at Banks’ table was that he was one of the few men in England who had met Linnaeus. Banks himself had not, although his secretary Solander, the inventor of the Solander case beloved of botanists, had been his pupil, and only the older generation could remember his visit to England in 1736. But the old man was still alive and honoured throughout Europe, except in Paris where the great buffoon still held sway, as the compleat naturalist and Prince of botanists—anyone who had spoken with him was an ever welcome guest. It is not known, or at least not known to me, why, or indeed exactly when Crabtree went, but it must have been about 1776. Had Crabtree been a rich man he would have made the grand tour, but a brief visit to Sweden and the Low Countries was probably all that he could afford at the time. His first thoughts on planning the trip must have been how to get a smattering of colloquial Swedish and what to take the old man as a present. I am grateful to Professor Foote for pointing out to me that there was only one phrase book available at the time, and that unluckily was the wrong way round, clearly however Crabtree would have had to use it. This was Ifvar Kraak’s English grammar for Swedes of 1748. It is one of those books known to collectors of such things as a ‘postillion book’ from the famous command in a Russian-English one ‘Stop Coachman, the postillion has been struck by lightning’. My two favourites in this one are from the

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traveller’s visit to Oxford—‘What will you drink. Anything that is wet’ and ‘You are the Warden, you will clean my boots’. The question of the present and the answer to it, are the reasons why we know that Crabtree went at all, for the present survives. Whisky was out, because Linnaeus’ drinking habits were well known, beer only which he drank in prodigious quantities, always draining his pot at one go. So was tobacco for he never smoked anything except some revolting stuff with a strong whiff of reindeer which he imported from Lapland. What he did choose was characteristic of his impish and sometimes slightly immodest sense of humour. Linnaeus gave a superficial appearance of hauteur and coldness, as became a Professor and a Knight of the Pole Star, but he too had the same style of humour, although he clothed it, for the sake of his four daughters, in the obscurity of the Latin tongue. If he had before him a plant or an animal whose form reminded him of those parts which modesty demands that we keep hidden, he would indicate the analogy in the scientific name which he bestowed upon it. The best known of these is that of the common beadlet anemone of our shores—he named it Actinia equina because of its resemblance at rest to the sphincter ani of the horse. Priapus, Priapulus, Phallusia Mentula Mutinus are amongst his more obvious, and, of course, he took over Orchis from the herbalists with pleasure. With the genera Venus and Cypraea, both shells, he made great play, Venus mercenaria and Cypraea gigas are amongst his more patent. But the clearest of all was that which he bestowed on the common stinkhorn fungus of our woods. This handsome plant starts its reproductive stage as a fawn coloured ovoid, about the size of a goose’s egg, at which stage it is delicious eating, halfway between a puffball and a truffle. What happens next is well described by the Victorian lady botanist Margaret Plues in her Flowerless plants of 1864, ‘The stalk elongates very greatly in the course of a few minutes, tearing the veil and carrying the cup upwards. It is a process of expansion rather than of growth. Later the cap liquifies, carrying the spores with it and finally the whole structure collapses.’ ‘The plant has a dignified and imposing appearance, and might well be accounted a desirable ornament for a gentleman’s pleasure ground, but for its all pervading odour.’ Whence its common name, the Stinkhorn. Here then was Crabtree’s choice. He had a model made in coloured glass. To carry it safely by packet and chaise must have presented some difficulty, but probably his clean linen and spare merkin sufficed, for get there it did, and it survives to this day in the collections of the Linnean Society of London—those same collections which Sir James Edward Smith bought from Linnaeus’ relict. Thanks to the kindness of Mr. Roberts and

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his staff, I have been able to have a copy made, and present to the Foundation Phallus impudicus of Linnaeus. But there was a snag in the fulfilment. Nobody had told Crabtree that Linnaeus had just suffered a severe stroke. And, although, in the best traditions of Universities he still retained his chair and his emoluments, he was completely gaga. The unfortunate Joseph would have had to present Phallus impudicus to Fru Linnaea—a sour and prudish termagant who would ill have appreciated the joke, and anyway had no Latin. However it must have gone off somehow because he duly received his present in return. I have been surprised, indeed surprised more than twenty times, that Crabtree, a man of good taste in food and drink should have been so fond of Swede turnip. The soused herring and the boiled mutton were, of course, the staple food of the Swedes, but a chance encounter with a history of agriculture showed me that the Swede turnip was first introduced into England from Sweden in about 1776 and first on the market here in 1781. Perhaps the seed that the parsimonious Fru Linnaea gave to Crabtree in return was amongst the first to arrive here, and tonight we have partaken of its lineal descendants. Gentlemen, for the past twenty-two years we have been re-enacting the very supper to which sat down the beer-swilling Carolus, his wife, his pretty youngest daughter Sophia—the only one left at home—and Crabtree, almost 200 years ago. Of Crabtree’s relationship with Erasmus Darwin, I have little to add. It was Dr. Tay who brought their friendship to our notice and he suggested that the poetic teeth were perhaps first cut on heroic couplets. The Loves of the plants, indeed the whole of the Botanic garden, was anonymous and Erasmus never acknowledged it as his, for fear it is said that, like Mark Akenside, it might damage his practice, but more likely because it was by several hands. The Loves of the plants should, I feel, be studied by those better qualified than I am to recognize the hand of Crabtree when they see it. But attending salons and visiting the famous, like the Committee work of today, is not in itself science. Nullius in verba. Have we any evidence that Crabtree actually went out into the field and observed, and having observed published, or at least tried to publish. I think that we have. Life was much simpler in those days—no Biological Abstracts, no Science Citation Index, or other expensive toys—there was only one journal in England, and if you wanted to publish anything you had it printed as a book or a pamphlet or you sent it to Phil. Trans. Professor Jones has searched Phil. Trans. for the relevant period and found nothing, and I have done the same and also drawn blank. But what I have done, and Professor Jones has not is to search a remarkable file kept at the Royal Society called R.R.—readers’ reports. If the Society published a paper, they threw the RR away, but if they did not then they kept the

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reports—and they go way way back. Luckily for some of us, there is a fifty year rule on this file. I could not find any RR on why they rejected Jenner’s paper on vaccination in 1798, but I did find one in the late seventies which is of considerable interest. It is signed W.P., D.D . w ho e lse but the vener ab le if cr ippled Arc of Carlisle, William Paley. He rejects the contribution out of hand on the grounds that if the facts are true then they do not show the power, wisdom or goodness of God as manifested in the works of the creation, therefore the facts cannot be true and he advises the writer to observe again. He also notes that the author cannot have the courage of his convictions since he hides his identity under the initials of ‘the undivided middle of the triune God’. Fortunately the good Archdeacon summarizes the facts before he ridicules them, and it has been amply shown since that Crabtree was right, or almost right, and that God, or rather Paley’s idea of God was wrong. The paper concerns some small flies which anyone can watch flying in thousands over every small ditch or pond in the summer. If you watch carefully, you will see that the males catch smaller flies and give them, like chocolates, to their mates. The females will not accept the males unless they get their chocolates, and reject them as soon as they having finished eating. Crabtree also observed that some of the males, actually belonging to another species, wrap the chocolate up in a thin web of silk before presenting it. The female has to unwrap the silk before she can start on the fly, thus prolonging his pleasuring. Further still, there is a third kind, and this I think is the bit which the Archdeacon did not like. This kind makes a very elaborate and strong silk chocolate box, which, like modern packaging, takes ages to open. But he fails to put anything inside.

23 CRABTREE AND THE SEA F.J.J.Cadwallade 1976

Fluellen Crabtree, cobbler of Chipping Sodbury and former master mariner one night in 1753 stealthily regained his breeches, girded on his sword and bade a silent farewell to the now submisive subsiding form of Mary, his wife. Fluellen’s need to depart arose from that pre–science which was the curse of all the Crabtrees. For he knew that in two and a half short years the Seven Years War would erupt and that England would need all her seamen. What then of Mary when, on the dawn, she regained herself only to discover the empty bed and that her captain, being discharged of his mutinous semen, had cast them adrift to make what way they might within that narrow vessel. Her thoughts and words are unfortunately lost to posterity, but that she had been blest by the fruits of the sea she was soon to realise and in 1754 at Beth Tapullah lodge in the township of Chipping Sodbury there was safely brought to birth Joseph William Crabtree. So conceived, it would have been an affront to nature had Crabtree not made a mark upon the sea, and it is to Crabtree and the Sea that I address myself this evening. The first eight years in the life of Crabtree passed largely without incident. With the passing of but one year more, however, as we are told, he became aware of a thrusting virility unusual in nine year olds even in those more forward days. But how to gain knowledge of these new afronts, certainly the little town of Chipping Sodbury was not noted as a centre of experimentation. I can now supply the answer to this problem. The year is of course the clue, 1763, the end of the Seven Years War. What patriotic lad could help but make his way to the port of Bristol where, free now from the fears of possible impressment, he might join the seething mass of celebrating humanity and go aboard those mighty men of war. I do not doubt but that it was here some town beauty, captivated by the already obvious qualities of this precocious nine year old, led him up the rope ladder of the main mast to the place which later Victorian morality was to corrupt from its original designation, the crew’s nest. There, high above the old port, stays belayed, futtocks furled, did Crabtree become a man.

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Alas, that gilded aerial maiden who chose so to open his horizons was only slightly better than she should have been and her personal hygiene less so. When we fin d Johns on comment ing obliq uely him at that time in the following vein: ‘To be sure he is a tree that cannot produce good fruit; he bears only crabs’, the remarks reflected not only on Crabtree’s literary ability; they were somewhat more encompassing. There is one further piece of Crabtree’s future which was to stem from that night. Remember that this was but a boy of nine and surely even Crabtree’s heart must have quailed slightly as he began that per–ilous journey up to the rigging of fulfilment. To what could he turn in aid at such a time but to that quintessence which we know had sustained him in his infant weaknesses, that elixir which had seen him through his schoolboy doldrums, that tranqualizing medicament with its high proportion of opium, Mother Bailey’s Quietening Syrup. Here it was, air born, with the squared yet opiate-distorted majesty of sails silhouetted against the luminous night, that the first tortured thoughts surged in Crabtree’s brain, thoughts which would later yield to the world that infinite piece commencing with the immortal line ‘Great unaffected Vampire and the Moon’. For the next few years, Crabtree was to content himself with occasional visits to Bristol, and it was in the course of one such visit that he was to come into contact with James Lind, the man later to become known as the ‘father of nautical medicine’. Lind was in a dispirited state, his treatise on the use of lemons as the cure for the curse of scurvy having received scant respect from their Lordships of the Admiralty and chances to rectify this somewhat few. Between Lind and Crabtree there developed a mutual respect and thus it was that Crabtree agreed to help Lind obtain the information he required. This he did by persuading his cousin George to accompany him aboard The Endeavour, signing on as flute boys, for Cook’s first great voyage. You will remember that last year’s Orator forgot to mention the reason for their being there. In the list of provisions you will find included 1,200 gallons of beer and 1,600 gallons of spirits, but not a lemon in sight. That lemons were in fact on board was only admitted much later, but now those responsible for their admission stand revealed. Thus it was, nightly during the long voyage, Joseph and George stole to the newly prepared grog and administered one tablespoonful of lemon juice for each member of the ships company. No man died of scurvy on that trip, though some discerning souls did complain about an odd taste to the grog. Lind, regretfully, was later to take full credit for continuing to press the cause of the lemon against seemingly all the evidence. On leaving Oxford in 1773 Crabtree was free to reflect upon the nature of seaman’s ailments and, having now learned a little from the now bolstered up Lind, he was moved into experimentation on his own behalf. The first matter to which he gave his attention was not unnaturally the

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discomfort which he had encountered at the age of nine. Pediculosis pubis, delicately defined by one naval doctor as ‘little pattering feet on private parts’ was, and I fear still is, a matter of some concern to seamen. Seamen of the Crabtree era were bound to find it an occupational hazard, for it must be remembered that whilst in port and even on short journeys between home ports, sailors were free to have on board what women they chose, suitably passed by an officer of course. For details of Crabtree’s cure, to become known as Crabtree’s butter, I am indebted to a former Orator. Between 1776 and 1780, our knowledge of Crabtree is not too well documented. I was convinced, however, that it would be during this period also that Crabtree’s mind and pen would return to the sea and I was therefore delighted to hear last year that in 1776 Crabtree made off on a tour of Sweden and the Low countries. I therefore made my way to Holland in order to seek out possible Crabtree works. It was only after considerable research that I came across a truly horrific tale of the sea which I knew could not have failed to tempt the pen of Crabtree. It is as follows: The Zwarten Haen, a Dutch ship, was in 1673 attacked by Barbary pirates who, having ransacked the ship, set her adrift with her crew. The abandoned and helpless ship was eventually brought up on Sanday Island in The Orkneys. Here, marooned for 17 weeks with food gone, the crew were forced to resort to cannibalism. Thus fortified by their fellows, the remnant were apparently able to repair the ship and finally made a landfall at Kinsdale in Ireland. Diligent searches for a manuscript in Holland revealed nothing but, on going through a pile of old manuscripts at Greenwich one Sunday morning, I came across an epic account of that grim saga, dated 1780, and bearing the unmistakable stamp of Crabtree —‘Anonymous’. With trembling hands, I lifted up the manuscript, convinced that it was genuine, but I could be wrong, and then I remembered those splendid words of Charles Peake: There is, I daresay, not one member of this Foundation who does not rejoice in the possession of an inner light which would enable him to recognise the Crabtree jewels sparkling in their inferior settings. In that moment, I knew. Let me recite but one verse of this new Crabtree treasure: Wy dreeven door den wind, op Gods genade heen, o schrikkelyk ellend al waer myn hert van steen van yzer of metael

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nog zou het moeten sehreyen, want ik y enns verhael, ons druk en de groot leyen. I see from your faces gentlemen that that inner light is glowing bright in the many of you who recognise instantly in this simple dog dutch the hand of Joseph William Crabtree. There are another twenty one verses and the whole thing was once set to music but this, I fear, is lost. Also the manuscript has been marked as 1780, this is obviously wrong and should be 17 It was, oddly enough, in 1778 that Crabtree was to renew his acquaintanceship with Jonas Hanway, merchant, do-gooder, general busybody, and forerunner of today’s sociologist. They had first met in 1767. Hanway had been responsible for the setting up of a Maritime school so that they might be adequately trained for naval service. Crabtree’s influence, however, was to take Hanway into wiider pas–tures, and it is due to the effect of Crabtree’s influence and, I suspect, the results of Crabtree’s pen, that provision was made for the proper regulation and running of the Magdalen House for Repentant Prostitutes, the rules for which were published in 1768. This remeeting was again to prove beneficial for Hanway. For Crabtree, still remembering the difficulties experienced on that early voyage, provided Hanway with the notes he had made and, as a result, later in the year Hanway was to publish, under his own name, The Sea Lad’s Trusty Companion. It is quite clear that Hanway’s knowledge would not have been sufficient for him to compile such a work. It was whilst Crabtree was engaged in the wine business, and indeed during a wine tasting, that James Lind introduced Crabtree to Gilbert Blane, later to become Sir Gilbert Blane, who was personal surgeon to Admiral Rodney and who was to have a most profound effect on naval health and medicine. Blane liked a drink himself, but destested the evil effect of drink in the Navy, particularly through the agencies of beer and grog. Crabtree, never slow when business loomed, immediately persuaded Blane of the purity of wine and its lack of the demon qualities so readily apparent in rum and beer. To such good effect was this done that for a short time it is a true, if little realised, fact that wine was available as an alternative to grog in the Navy, until the dark clouds of prejudice stifled this piece of opportunism and the wine trade suffered a slight recession. Even when Crabtree left the wine business, his love of good wine and good food was to continue and was at a somewhat later time to be the saving of Admiral Dillon. In his Journal, Dillon recalls that he has been suffering from violent headaches and had approached his personal surgeon, William Beatty, for a cure. Beatty, as well as being totally useless at the death of Nelson, was also a bleeder. Dillon appears to have put up with this for a while, with no noticeable effect save an interesting pallor. When

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Beatty advised that it would be necessary to try bleeding from the jugular vein, Dillon, in his own words, ‘Took other advice’. When one learns that this advice was to drink and eat as he wished, there can be little doubt as to the source. The headaches disappeared and brightness returned to the eye, though in one aspect Dillon erred from the advice, for he admitted to drink a pint of port a day as part of the cure, whereas one can be sure that the prescription read: ‘one pint claret—to be taken daily’ Editing Murray’s Army List procured for Crabtree a free passage on the East Indiaman troopship, The Kent, as one of only 20 private passengers permitted to travel in her for her voyage from England bound for Bengal and China on 19 February 1825. She was never to arrive. The ship was lost as were 81 of the 641 souls aboard her. Thankfully, Crabtree was saved and in a long letter, which he addressed to one ‘My Dear E’ and which he signs so openly—‘A Passenger’—the full terror of that fated voyage is recorded. This letter was later returned to Crabtree who showed it to Walter Scott who insisted that it be published. Crabtree refused at first, but then agreed, as long as it appear under a pseudonym, and what better than that one used so long ago, M’Greggor. When the volume finally appeared, other letters concerning the voyage became added to it and the authorship had become attributed to a MacGreggor who had been aboard the ship at the time. The mystery of ‘My Dear E’ must be left to a later Orator. In 1829 news reached Crabtree that the despised Humphry Davy was doing quite well on steamships. That such news could infuriate Crabtree is apparent, and it is self-evident that he, being now seventyfive years old and at the pinnacle of his exceptional powers, would not rest until he had bettered it. I am pleased to report that such was indeed the case. Deep in the archives of such things, lost among a collection of bizarre ships of the nineteenth century, is to be discovered a perfect example of Crabtree design and engineering. Those familiar with the Siamese engine will recall that it was somewhat unusual in steamships of the early 1840s, the ship and engine designed by Crabtree is even more unusual and there is no evidence that it was ever copied. Specifications are available for those who wish them. Does this mean that Crabtree’s name appears on ship or engine? No gentlemen, he was now far too old to depart from the practices of an ordinary lifetime, but let us look at the immediate facts. In respect of the ship, we find only the name of the person for whom the ship was built and that of the builder, there is no record of the name of the designer of ship or engine. With these facts, and my inner light glowing nicely, I approached the National Maritime Museum. The launching date of 1843 appeared, and my wick moved up another inch, and then gentlemen came the name of the ship and the evidence became complete and incontrovertible and I became incandescent. The Helen MacGregor. Helen, so obviously in memory of that maiden who had launched him into manhood what may well have been eighty years ago to the day, and the anniversary of which it

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would be so like him to celebrate in this fashion; and, of course, MacGregor, possibly his last farewell to that name under which he had chosen to conceal some of his undeniable genius, save from those who seek after truth. At that moment, his triumph over Davy must have indeed been sweet, but Davy, mean to the very end, even then contrived to sour it, for aware that he must necessarily be overtaken, he had deliberately died some fourteen years earlier. I turn now to my last and, to my mind, perhaps the greatest contribution of Crabtree to the sea. In the course of all my researches, I became more and more aware that a man of Crabtree’s mental stature and virility would surely have sought to give to the sea one in his own image, possessed of those qualities of steadfastness and bravery. I found myself, therefore, reflecting upon that night in 1790 at the ‘Inn of the Happy Valley’ at Porlock when Crabtree admitted the landlords daughter to the subtleties of that mystery practised by sailors the world over and known affectionately by its lower deck as una amore nox transitorius. Was it possible that this had been a barren union, one to be accepted as an admission of failure? This I refused to believe. Obsessed now with the conviction that of this awesome union a male child dedicated to the sea must have been created, I made my way to Porlock. Nothing. The old records, alas, proved no help at all. Next I began to search the Naval Lists, but the naval lists of 1810 onwards brought only bitter disappointment. Then, belatedly, I recalled that a much earlier time must be investigated. Young men then began their careers somewhat younger than the postgraduates of today. Was not Horatio Nelson but 12½ when a friend exclaimed: ‘What has poor Horace done that he above all the rest should be sent to rough it out at sea?’ Refreshed by these thoughts, I returned to the Naval Lists commencing at 1800 this time. No Crabtree emerged, but, wait, here is a Crabbe, a Crabbe with no apparent family background or relatives, a Crabbe admitted midshipman in 1803 when 13 at the most. From the record I then had in front of me, we find that he then rose to lieuten–ant in 1809, a brave young man, always in the van of battle, always favourably mentioned in reports. That Crabtree would have no difficulty in procuring a midshipman’s rating for such a son is clear; that he had frequently used the name of Crabbe we know. But was this enough, could further evidence be found so that the high standards of this Foundation might be maintained? Gentlemen, it could and it was. Calling for Byrne’s Naval Biographical Dictionary, I turned with trembling fingers to Crabbe and there, gentlemen, was the proof that was to turn hope into certainty, for there for all to see, standing out almost in letters of gold to my now flooding eyes, was the name JOSEPH WILLIAM CRABBE. Crabtree at surely his most transparent as if even he feared that we might otherwise miss this one great gift.

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Why then did not the career of this dashing young officer continue to flourish, having promised so much, why do we find no later rec onciliation between father and son, no grandchildren to soften the occasional leaden time of Crabtree in his last few years? This, gentlemen, is where the sea exacted a cruel and bitter excise for the bounty she had already bestowed. On 10 January 1810, whilst pursuing an armed ship and convoy off Toulon, Lieutenant Crabbe received a lan–gridge shot in the groin, a shot which the same naval commentator melancholily records ‘was never extracted’. For those who do not know the make up of a langridge, its most usual form is a piece of metal of an irregular shape, normally heavily spiked, a number of them being fashioned together and fired from a cannon at one time. Joseph William Crabbe did not die, indeed he continued in service for another year when ill health forced him to the shores and thus was he to remain until 1851, regretful owner of a tripartite sac, impossible progenitor, and on half pay. In 1851, a grateful country advanced him to the permanent rank of Commander and permitted him to retire. Neither father nor son ever again sought the company of the other, for between two strong men words would have been an interruption and their tears become a river. Thus in this one strand foundered the Crabtree line. I am in a position to add one further sacred remnant to the Crabtree collection. May I say that this has only been possible through money received from countless donations, through the Friends of University College, the National Maritime Museum and the Victims of Trafalgar Benevolent Fund. Had they all not so gallantly subscribed, this exhibit would certainly have been on its way to the proposed Crabtree Room in the Washington museum. Chairman, gentlemen, it is with a pleasure, not untinged with sadness, that I present before you a purchase made from the direct descendant of that landlord at Porlock and left to the family on the death of Commander Crabbe— that which sought such spiteful refuge in the flesh which the questing seed of Crabtree once begot Gentlemen—The Langridge shot.

24 CRABTREE: THE CREATIVE CRIMINOLOGIST Bernard Hargrove 1977

My study of Crabtree, the creative criminologist, of necessity required consideration of the appointment of the great man as Reader in Criminology in the year 1809 at Oxford University. It is true that until 1958 the University concealed the existence of the Readership. In the light of subsequent appointments, the prior concealment became understandable. But in 1809 the post was still one of academic merit, unlike the position into which it declined after 1880 when the appointment became a mere sinecure without duties or position, granted by those in power to their toadies of a woolly-minded liberal disposition; very similar to our own Equal Opportunities Commission. How did Crabtree qualify for this honour, for he had none of the three requisites for an Oxford appointment: namely, a poor palate for wine, two dubious publications in an Oxford journal and a homosexual relationship with the Warden of All Souls? However, as Professor Thomas reminded us in 1969 in his distinguished address Crabtree and the Law, Crabtree had a powerful friend in Lord Eldon, the then Lord Chancellor. We can deduce that either at Eldon’s residence at 27 The Steine, Brighton, or at the nearby wine-shop (later to be called ‘Crab’s Wine Shop’ as it is today) amid the heavy potations of claret, the subject of the appointment must have been broached. It is slightly puzzling to understand why Crabtree actually accepted this appointment, until one remembers the oft proven comment that one accepts appointments at Oxford when one is either insane or insolvent. It was the latter problem which beset the great scholar. Eldon’s letter of recommendation was certainly forceful, even though it lacked somewhat in clarity. For example, and I quote, the second paragraph reads: Mr. Crabtree has carried out extensive studies of criminals of all classes and has made detailed examinations of prison conditions This was no less than the truth, omitting only the fact that such studies and examinations had been carried out whilst Crabtree himself was in the Fleet Prison as a debtor.

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The acceptance of the recommendation may have been attributable entirely to the respect due to Eldon, but one suspects that a small element may be accounted for by the fact that Lord Eldon in the House of Lords was about to hear a case involving a senior member of the Appointments Board who was being sued by a young lady called ‘Skittles’ Somerville who alleged that she had been assaulted in the Carfax. Returning therefore to Queens in the Michaelmas Term of 1809, Crabtree threw himself into criminological research of the highest calibre. He brought his volatile mind to bear upon the problem ‘what causes a man to be a criminal’. Almost immediately he discerned a valuable field of research. He realised that then, as now, virtually all major crime was committed by males. What was it therefore, he asked, which was present in the male and either entirely absent or vestigial in the female? Like previous great scientific discoveries, the answer to the problem had occurred to him whilst he was in the bath and brought with it a further question. Would research into the major difference give an indication of a tendency or otherwise towards criminality in the male? Taking the major element firmly in hand Crabtree and his research team set out to take measurements of this major difference from a representative sample of the population throughout the breadth and particularly the length of Britain. As soon as the results of these first experiments in clinical measurement began to arrive in Oxford, disturbing trends were discernable. The extraordinary virility of the men of Falmouth was an example. Theories, ranging from the close proximity of the Helston oyster beds to the after effects of the Bloody Assize, were put forward. The whole fabric of these theories, which had been erected around the statistics, collapsed when it was discovered that Crabtree, with his customary liberality, had employed an attractive female research student in that town, so causing some distortion in the subject’s parabolic curves. More serious, however, were the allegations of racialism which were levelled against Crabtree following some of his early findings. A group of West African and West Indian students had agreed to participate in the study, but the resulting figures from this group showed measurements so minute that, on the basis of them, two population statisticians forecast that within a generation the Black Continent would be depopulated. And one eminent Roman Catholic theologian drew attention to the vast number of virgin births which must be occurring. Naturally the students were infuriated. Demontrations against Crabtree and alleging racialism occurred in the street outside Queens College, culminating in the arrest of a young Ashanti for indecent exposure, as he hammered on the first floor window with the pulsating proof of the inaccuracy of the figures. A rapid check by Crabtree revealed all. One researcher had failed to master the difference between the proximal and distal points on an organ (which he should have been measuring) and in the case of these coloured

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students had been measuring the distance from the distal end of the organ to the ground thereby producing such minute figures. One aspect of the research programme had long lasting social effects. Whether by accident or design, the figures returned from the students of the University of Cambridge were considerably inferior in all dimensions to those produced by the University of Oxford. Crabtree made the unguarded comment, over his claret, that the Cambridge students would be ‘no good with whores’. The Oxford accent has never been a good method of communication. The comment was misunderstood by the students of Cambridge to reflect upon their boating ability confusing ‘whores’ with ‘oars’. It is difficult to understand how even Cambridge men could have believed that there was any correlation between virility and nautical ability, but then Cambridge has never had a first-class school of physiology. One must remember that until this time all boats had been propelled upon the water either in the manner used by the gondoliers or in the manner of a Pacific Ocean war canoe. In other words, in each case the rower faced the line of progress. The reaction to Crabtree’s comment is chronicled in The Putney Courier dated Easter Sunday 1810 which reads as follows: In answer to Mr. Crabtree’s comments, eight gentlemen of Cambridge University, facing backwards to the line of progress, pr pelled their boat through the water from Putney to the Brewery at Mortlak e whi le na ked and trai ling the ir cox behin d th were followed at a discreet distance by some water-borne gentlemen from Oxford University waiting for the gentlemen of Cambridge to appreciate their error. This procession with Cambridge being followed by Oxford has become an annual event. Victorian prudery required the clothing of the rowers and the installation of a child-like figure in the stern of the boat indicating the emphasis on procreation rather than virility in that era. At that time, 1810, Crabtree accepted as one of his research workers a young man who had recently returned to the country after his capture by the Napoleonic army, but he was released upon Napoleon’s abdication. He was Alexander Maconochie. This young man was entrusted with the final draft of this great research work entitled by Crabtree The Coefficient of Criminal Linear Expansion. Maconochie was a disreputable character. He is often referred to as the father of Australian criminology and there can be no greater condemnation of man than that. He decamped with the transcript and sold it some years later to an Italian from Verona named Cesare Lombroso. Thinly disguised under the heading Anthropometry of Four Hundred Venetian Criminals Lombroso plagiarised the great man’s work. Fortunately for academic purity Lombroso misunderstood the

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translation and attributed the measurements to the cerebellum of the prisoners. He is now rightly regarded either as a dubious academic or a straight pervert. Crabtree’s work was not confined to clinical measurement. Noting that inadequacy in virility led to criminality (and thereby pre-empting the work of both Freud and Jung), he discovered the bisexual or amoe–bous syndrome, whereby a patient believed that he was both, at one and the same time, male and female; acute cases complained that they could not with propriety be left by themselves, alone, together. On this work Kleinfelter based his XXY theory and Kleinfelter’s Syndrome theory. Crabtree’s fame reached as far as Whitehall and by 1812 his advice was sought on numerous matters of legislation. When asked to advise on particular problems, he was diligent in carrying out extensive research. For example, the Disorderly Houses Act of 1828, which controlled brothels in the Metropolis, was produced only at the end of fifteen years exhausting research in the city by the great man. However, the initial request that he should give advice on the drafting of a Sexual Offences Act, was misunderstood by Crabtree to be a request for an indication of sexually offensive acts. The result was the production of an illustrated booklet which still ensures, around the Charing Cross Road, extensive profits and equally extensive slipped discs amongst American tourists in the Soho area. Crabtree’s international understanding of the problems of crimi–nology enabled him to warn the government of the day to avoid error in the enactment of proposed legislation to deal with the practice of necrophilia. Crabtree was able to point out that certain problems would arise in proving the malice aforethought required. He was able to cite the case of The State against Dubois, from the district of Orléans where, as we know, he had gone as a young man. Dubois was accused of having intercourse with a woman following her death. By his defence Dubois admitted the act concerned but he prayed in aid that he had known the woman while she had been alive, but that she was an Englishwoman and that it was impossible to tell during inter–course whether an Englishwoman was alive or dead. He was a acquit–ted. The English government, noting the problems which the legislation produced, very rightly abandoned the Bill. In the area of research into the punishment of the offender he was no less diligent. Some, however, alleged that his interest in the topic was solely due to a misconception on his part as to the real meaning of the term peneology This is a phallus which must be exploded. His deep scholarship included a study of capital punishment and transportation. His aphorism that it was the duty of the Courts to despatch the felon to the new world or the next was widely followed and produced considerable economies in the prison building programme. His dire warnings against the repeal of the City of London Sheepstealing Act were well founded. That Act had provided for capital punishment for stealing of a live sheep in the City of

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London. The abolition of the death penalty for this offence has resulted in the position which we see today where not a single live sheep remains in the City of London. He spoke strongly against the influence of Elizabeth Fry who sought to introduce the alien concept of teetotalism to prison life. Never a man to mince his words, Crabtree described her as the only woman who, within a generation, had managed to corrupt the British taste for both chocolate and Quakerism. He sought to encourage the rehabilitation of prisoners by allowing them to express their feelings in works of art and architecture. He organised a course of building therapy for the homosexuals and insane— this produced Keble College. His alliance with ‘Skittles’ Somerville led to the foundation of the establishment for fallen women which still bears her name and carries on her traditions. It is in this area of prison reform that we can see this evening a direct legacy of the great man’s work. Practising lawyers, unlike their academic brethren, have to produce evidence to support their theories. This I now propose to do. In 1813, at the Spring Oxford Assizes, Augustus Taylor was convicted of being a pickpocket and stealing a silver nut-dish, the property of one Crabtree. His account was that the nut-dish had fallen off the back of a stage-coach. Both his hands were amputated and he became a reformed character, at least there is no further account in the records of his activities as a pickpocket. The silver nut-dish has recently come into my possession and I have it with us tonight. It is inscribed Joseph Crabtree, 1811, and is hall-marked for that year. It states that it is presented to him by the inmates of the Oxford House of Correction. In presenting this nut-dish to the Foundation may I draw attention to the words which were inscribed thereon as a mark of respect to the great man for his work for the amelioration of relationship between prisoners and warders. The prisoners have inscribed a famous line from Ovid’s Ars amatoria Book IV and it is a fitting epitaph on those fine years which Crabtree spent at Oxford. It reads: Nec custoden commodum amice spernere debes Literally translated it reads ‘Friend, do not despise a worthy warder’ or, in the prison parlance of the day: Never neglect a good screw.

25 THE CLEANSING OF CRABTREE Arthur Tattersall 1978

Sir, I have sadly concluded that, after the purity of the scholarship which we enjoyed in the first flush of Crabtree studies, we have in more recent times been subjected to a growing coarseness, a salacious crudity, a shameful degree of innuendo and double entendre, unworthy either of our revered poet or of the College in which his portrait reposes. Let us once more raise the standard of morality, in Literature as well as life. It is for this reason, as well as for its subject-matter, that I have chosen as a title for tonight’s offering The Cleansing of Crabtree. And I intend to live up to this title. Any entendre in this oration is guaranteed single. Of course I have had to face the problem which has faced other Crabtree Orators—where does one go in the Quest for Crabtree, the search for authentic evidence about a man who, with really sublime modesty, covered his tracks so well, and allowed others, from Wordsworth down to Joseph Blacket, to take credit for his productions? The task is not easy. The internal evidence of the poems themselves is scanty, and that field is now well tilled. In my own case, the only course seemed to be to consult the papers, published and unpublished, of Crabtree’s known associates in literary circles. The names of, for instance, Leigh Hunt, Southey, Horace Smith, J.H.Reynolds, Keats, Shelley, Scott, beside the more obvious ones of Wordsworth and Coleridge, crop up in the records; and we have noted the Byron connection. Trails open up, but sometimes peter out. Hazlitt, in his Essay on the Conversation of Authors, write Wordsworth sometimes talks like a man inspired on subjects of poetry —Coleridge well on every subject—Godwin on none. Mrs. Montague’s conversation leaves a flavour like fine green tea, Leigh Hunt’s is like Champagne, Crabtree’s like his own claret, Northcote’s like anchovy sardines. Haydons is like a game at trap ball; Lamb’s like snapdragon; and my own (if I mistake not) is not unlike a game at ninepins.

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On reading this one’s hopes rise; but one searches in vain for further references by Hazlitt to our revered poet. Nevertheless, Crabtree did move in literary circles, we know, aided no doubt by his friendship with Wordsworth and Coleridge and by the link with Annabella Milbanke. It was at one such party that Crabtree, having experienced a mental block, and unable for some months to do more than toss off some overblown facetiae, jestingly remarked that he was suffering from mental constipation. His inveterate enemy, Sir Humphrey Davy, hearing of this, said ‘Of course, those who suffer from cerebral haemorrhoids must find a big idea too painful to pass.’ This in turn prompted Wordsworth to write the Sonnet which begins Open your gates, ye everlasting Piles. One is tempted to seek amongst the papers of those who were clearly influenced by Crabtree. Keats, for instance: who could doubt that the Ode to Claret is the source of inspiration of lines such as: O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth? Keats’ papers yielded nothing. Fitzgerald was another possibility; among many stanzas in the Rubaiyat which proclaim his debt to Joseph Crabtree let us select but one: The Grape that can with Logic absolute The two-and-seventy warring Sects confute: The subtle Alchemist that in a Trice Life’s leaden Metal into Gold transmute. Again, no clue. The journals of Dorothy Wordsworth seemed promising, but were a little disappointing. They showed that in 1819 Wordsworth and Crabtree visiting Austria, attracted by a country that could call a river the Inn. At Pörtschach, on the Wörthersee, a favourite haunt of musicians, they met a young musician from Vienna called Franz Schubert, who shared Crabtree’s passion for fly fishing. Together they went after trout; and Crabtree drew Schubert’s attention to a poem Die Forelle, by Schubart, which Schubert at once set to music. Crabtree then pointed out that the melody was eminently suited to the variation form, and suggested that Schubert should write an extended work for piano quintet, unorthodoxly including a Double Bass, with its main movement based on the song. We

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can thus thank Joseph Crabtree for one of the happiest works in the chamber music repertoire. Next I thought of Byron. Now, Byron besides being almost every sort of four-letter word, was a very uncertain and erratic judge of poetry. He preferred the insipid Rogers to Coleridge and Wordsworth; he spoke of Keats’ ‘pissabed poetry’ and called him ‘the self-polluter of the human mind’ and his verse ‘drivelling idiotism’ Byron saw in Keats a greater talent than his own, and envied it. He saw Crabtree in the same light: characteristic of Byronic malice is the couplet The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, But Crabtree never deviates into sense. Nevertheless, the connection, not least through Annabella, is strong. Hobhouse knew Crabtree; Byron knew Mme de Stael; and he had met Crabtree often. Now, a hoard of papers left behind by one Scrope Davies, a friend of Byron’s, in a trunk in the vaults of his bank, and recently rediscovered, has proved to contain a veritable bonanza of material for scholars of early XIXth Century English Literature. A hint from my colleague, Mr. Hugh Prince, put me on the track. What did I find? Scrope Davies was a more than usually dissolute Fellow of King’s College Cambridge, who was appointed his Executor by Byron in the 1811 will, and was Byron’s companion in many an outrageous episode. For instance, in March 1814, at the ‘Cocoa Tree’, he and Byron drank a bottle of champagne and six bottles of claret between 6 p.m. and midnight. Byron, as we have noted, married Annabella in 1815, was promptly cuckolded by Crabtree, and soon turned savagely cruel to his young bride. One can only presume (it is a charitable presumption) that he had learnt of Crabtree’s exploit at Wansford; any other explanation would presuppose an inordinate degree of sadism on Byron’s part. Indeed, Byron’s trouble really was more like masochism. About this time he wrote the lines: I’ve seen my bride another’s bride— Have seen her seated by his side— Have seen the infant which she bore Wear the sweet smile the mother wore. Commentators have always maintained that this passage referred to his first love, Mary Chaworth, his ‘Morning Star’, who rejected him and married another. Sir, we now know better, as I will shortly prove: the lines relate to Crabtree’s intervention, and his fathering of Augusta Ada Byron. There were moments when Byron enjoyed the smart of self-inflicted mortification.

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What, you will say, is the relevance of this? We pretty well suspected this much already. Sir, in the Scrope Davies papers I found a letter in Byron’s hand, dated May 1821. Byron had made London too hot for him by 1816, and went abroad—followed, for slightly less disreputable but not too dissimilar reasons, by the Shelleys in 1818. In 1821 they met in Pisa, and the letter in question bears a Pisan address. I quote from it: My dear Scrope, I have been staying in Pisa some little time with Percy and Mary Shelley and Edward Trelawney, and re-living with them the old days. We have heard the chimes at midnight, have we not? Today, however, there reached us news of the death of young Keats in Rome last February, on the way to visit Shelley here. Shelley was much moved—he had known Keats well in Hampstead four years ago, and thought highly of him as a poet. There is no accounting for tastes! I found Keats namby-pamby and lacking the incisiveness one would have hoped for in a medical student. But Shelley was prompted by the news of Keats’ death to tell me a story about him and that villain Crabtree which put me into an unconscionably good humour. It was as follows: In 1816, when Keats was a medical student at Guys, he was just beginning to get a toehold in the literary monde. He met this fellow Crabtree in Hampstead (you’ll remember Leigh Hunt printed some of Keats’ early work in the Examiner?). Keats was rather goodlooking in a romantic, effeminate sort of way, and a remark by one of the others present gave Crabtree the impression that Keats might be open to a suggestion or two. The impression was wrong—how could a young man whose sister and sweetheart were both called Fanny be that way inclined? Be that as it may, Crabtree made quite a nuisance of himself to Keats, and tried the effect of strong drink on him, in a hostelry called the ‘White Hart’, in the Borough High Street. Alas, Keats had an even stronger head than Crabtree, for all the latter’s apprenticeship as a vintner ; and Crabtree was soon reeling. Keats, to escape, innocently said that he had to go on duty at Guys; but that at half an hour before midnight, if Crabtree cared to visit him in his room at Guy’s, he (Crabtree) could see his (Keats’) etchings, of which he had a collection he was proud of. Keats was sure that Crabtree was so drunk that he would sleep where he sat till the morning. Crabtree however was a tenacious character. He sat in the ‘White Hart’, with another two bottles of claret, till the appointed hour; staggered to the Porter’s Lodge at Guys Hospital; announed thickly ‘I’ve come to have it off with Mr. Keats’ and col–lapsed in total stupor on the floor. At that moment, who should come by but the Senior Surgeon, a scalpelhappy person by the name of Sir Lancelot Pratt. ‘What s this?’ said Sir Lancelot, prodding Crabtree’s recumbent form with his cane.

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The Porter answered, simply and in good faith, ‘He says he’s come tae have it off wi’ Mr. Keats, Sir’. ‘Have it off, eh?’ said Sir Lancelot. ‘Well, we’re always ready to oblige. Send for Mr. Keats, and get this fellow ready for the Table’. Getting a patient ready for the Table was part of the Porter’s duties, and consisted simply in getting a bottle of gin down the patient’s throat in quick time. Crabtree had saved him a certain amount of trouble already; but the Porter got half a bottle into Crabtree, drank the rest himself, sent a message to Keats, and carried the totally insensible Crabtree up to the Operating Table. By the time Keats arrived, Sir Lancelot was poised for the act; and before one poet could come to the rescue of the other, Sir Lancelot’s scalpel flashed brightly, and there, lying in the sawdust, was Crabtree’s manhood. Stifling a groan, Keats did his duty as a dresser, and Crabtree was wheeled away. Next morning Crabtree woke with an aching forehead and a throbbing groin. Keats sat with him, fearing that the revelation of this catastrophe might turn his brain. And indeed at first this seemed likely However, one must admit that, whatever else Crabtree lacked, at this or at any other time, it was not courage and it was not resource. He had long been fascinated by the story of Teiresias, the seer of Thebes, who in middle life had been changed by the Gods from man to woman, and by the fact that Teiresias, when asked, as one who knew, which of the two sexes had the greater pleasure in sexual intercourse, had said, after brief reflection, The woman’. Crabtree pondered this long, and saw a way of turning the misfortune that had struck him into gain—of having it both ways. He got Keats to arrange a consultation with Sir Lancelot, and asked the surgeon whether he could complete for him a sex change operation. Sir Lancelot Pratt, who had, as it happened, been studying this problem intensively, opined that he could. The procedure with the gin bottle was repeated; Crabtree was again wheeled up to the Theatre. A few deft slashes, a couple of neat folds, some stitches and dressings; and Josephine Crabtree was born. You may imagine, my dear Scrope, that this was a fate that I would not readily have wished on my worst enemy—not even on the man who usurped my place in bed one night at Wansford six years ago, and gave Annabella more than she bargained for. But I swallowed my sympathy when I thought of what he had done to me. May I suggest that you keep an eye on Crabtree’s career? I should be interested to know whether, while I have been abroad, she has continued to wear men’s clothing or has acknowledged her change of life; I am so out of touch with the literary gossip. Write and give me the news. Ever your devoted friend, George Gordon Byron

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As I brush away an involuntary tear, I can judge, from the horrified silence with which you have received this hideous recital, how deeply shocked you all are. When we have recovered from our consternation, we shall have to ask ourselves two questions: the first, is the story true; the second; if it is, what are its implications for the future of Crabtree Studies? As to the first, well, Byron was of course a romancer by nature, and the story is his version of what Shelley said Keats told him. And Keats was dead, and his tale could not be checked. But there was no reason why Keats should have made up a tale like this, which in fact did not do him much credit. Shelley had no axe to grind. Nor did Byron, though he took a malicious delight, for understandable reasons, in Crabtree’s misadventure, have reason to invent such a story, which sur–passes in strangeness the Arabian Nights. As to the tale itself, it is in fact inherently probable. Sexual deviations, present from earlier days, tend to reassert themselves, so the psychoanalysts tell us, in late middle age. Keats was a young man of epicene elegance and beauty, as the Severn portraits show. The chronology all fits exactly. I have gone over it with a toothcomb, and cannot fault it in any detail. The attendant setting, and the personal contacts involved—in fact, the whole literary ambience—tally precisely with the known facts. Hateful though one finds the story, it carries conviction. What then of its impact on our field of scholarship? First, of course, we have now to get used to speaking of Josephine Crabtree, of her and hers, not of him and his, in respect of any events after mid-1816. Byron’s own question, of course, about transvestism, is answered by what we ourselves know; namely, that Crabtree, for reasons of her own, continued to wear male costume in public. No doubt it was simpler for her. But it is certain that her intimates were aware of her changed condition. Moreover, knowing what we do know of her, and of her unquenchable thirst for experience, we cannot doubt that she continued to live a full life. Indeed, one may add one’s own speculations to Byron’s. The Teiresias argument is convincing enough in itself; but it is probable that Crabtree’s own male libido was flagging a little by 1816. He had not spared himself in earlier days, and was so to speak, heavily overdrawn at the bank. He had reached the Grand Climacteric. So the switch to femininity suited her well, and we may surmise that her account was soon back in credit, particularly as she was now on the receiving end. Incidentally, there is the well-authenticated case of Dr. James Barry, who, after a long career as an Army Surgeon, died in 1865, and was then found to have been a woman all the time. One who knew of, and welcomed, the change, of course, was Wordsworth. He had always looked up to Crabtree; and he had lost his own mother at the age of eight. At last he had a mother figure, in the form of his dearest friend, who could take the place of the parent whose loss he deplores so movingly, yet with such restraint, in The Prelude.

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We have observed before the versatility of Crabtree: how he was all things to all men, and most things to most women: A man so various that he seemed to be Not one but all mankind’s epitome. The proleptic and prophetic truth of this remark is enhanced by the fact that Josephine Crabtree spent her last 38 years as a member of the other half of humanity, seeing how it lived. Perhaps we should now turn to our final speculation: how do these momentous events repercuss on the findings of other scholars about Crabtree’s life from 1816 onwards? The first year of significance is 1821, when the bankruptcy occurred. Crabtree was at this time very hard up once more; she had written nothing for years, her literary inspiration having been lost along with her male drive. The Ars Salutandi had been published in 1820, but had of course been written before the watershed had been crossed; and alas, it did not sell. She faced the expense of acquiring a female wardrobe, for wear in the privacy of her own home and the presence of a few chosen friends like Wordsworth. Hence her involvement in slightly shady financial transactions. More important is the trip to Norway in 1827, during which Foote claimed that Crabtree fathered Ibsen. This, Sir, becomes manifestly impossible. Yet the loss is not total. Foote showed that Crabtree’s motivation on this trip was to do as her foe Humphrey Davy did, and ‘to assuage his passion’ under the midnight sun. When Crabtree had drunk the rest of the company under the table, and was the only person left standing, she was perfectly capable of going to bed with Fru Marichen Ibsen and assuaging the passion of both of them; and she did. Little Henrik, born about nine months later, was his father’s son; but his upbringing owed much to his mother’s memories of the passionate Englishwoman with whom she spent the most rapturous night of her life. Of course, when she returned to Queens College, Oxford, there was no problem at all, and nobody noticed any difference. The voyage to Newcastle in 1838, with Harriett Martineau, with whom she shared a Cabin, takes on a new complexion, but a no more dubious one than the old. Finally, Sir, what of the occasion when the 92 year old Crabtree frightened Wheatstone out of lecturing at the Royal Institution? This is now easily accounted for: Crabtree had been dabbling in witchcraft since she reached the age of 80, and she had no difficulty in putting the evil eye on Wheatstone. No one has yet shed light on the death of Crabtree. It happened in 1854, of course, and it happened like this. Crabtree’s tombstone can be seen, in

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the churchyard of Haworth, in Yorkshire, just below the South door of the Church—the Brontes’ church. How did she come to be buried there? Well, in her new guise, Josephine Crabtree cultivated the society of female poets, seeing herself as the Sappho of Sodbury. You will recall the lines of Sappho: As the sweet apple reddens on the bough, Out on the farthest bough: the pickers missed it. —Nay, they forgot it not, but could not reach it. Crabtree saw any eponymous acerbity in her former character as having been dulcified by her transformation; and she set out to create a school of sweet singers—poetesses of genius—under her own leadership and matronage. Of course the three Bronte sisters were glad to join our revered poetess as members of this new school. The two younger ones predeceased Crabtree; but she visited Charlotte in 1854 at Haworth, a year before Charlotte’s own death, having just celebrated her hundredth birthday. The wintry journey was too much for her: she choked on a piece of tripe offered to her by Charlotte, and died.

26 JOSEPH CRABTREE: THE OLD LADY OF THREADNEEDLE STREET Nigel Bromage 1979

I have a tale to tell tonight of intrigue, passion, petty jealousy and shame— and all within the apparently sober confines of the Bank of England in the Threadneedle Street! To whet your appetites, Gentlemen, I can tell you that I have found evidence linking Crabtree, in a business sense, with the Browning family and in the most intimate sense with the Hood family; and I have seen proof that T.S.Eliot is indebted of our Founder for at least two significant passages of The Waste Land. Most important of all, however, and I think it only right to establish this from the beginning, I have been able to restore Crabtree’s manhood to him. I should not wish anyone to be misled, in this respect, by the title of my oration, which I will explain to you in due course. Tattersall claimed last year that in 1816, when Crabtree was 62, he underwent a sex change operation, the initial stages of which, at least, were accidental. I will never forget the communal sharp intake of breath in this room which followed this intelligence. Each and every one present instinctively felt for his founder member and, to judge by the occasional look of pleasure, some succeeded in their quest. The operation was primitive—what is known in the building trade as removing debris and levelling off, with provision for drainage. Further, more sophisticated, surgery followed and it was Tattersall’s claim that, from then on, Josephine Crabtree was the name. Sir, I could not make that jump across the divide. I could not straddle that chasm like a Colossus. I am not challenging the authority of the letter from Lord Byron to Scrope Davis describing events (after all Arthur Tattersall has seen it and read it). But here, surely, was yet another case of an envious rival, Byron with the help of Scrope Davis, putting about malicious gossip in the hope of belittling a man—I repeat a man—of genius. I can now say this with confidence for I have found strong indications (I hesitate to say proof before such a demanding academic audience) that Joseph Crabtree, to all intents and purposes waving the banner of his male gender, was alive and well and living in the West Country many years later. Explanation of this will follow, Mr. President, but I wished to reassure our distinguished audience on this particular

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aspect. For me it was a basic starting point. Not tonight Josephine but Joseph again. The scene chosen for Crabtree’s alleged attempt to debauch Keats was ‘the hostelry called the White Hart in Borough High Street’. We know why Keats should have been in the area—but Crabtree? On the assumption that, as with most scurrilous tales there was a firm basis of fact, I decided to investigate this further, and, Sir, the scales fell from my eyes. At the Bank of England, we have a museum and a collection of archives dating back to the Bank’s foundation in 1694. Between them they provide a fascinating insight into not just the financial scene but the social mores of those early years and the mores were merrier. I already knew that the Governor and Company of the Bank of England had had an active interest in Thomas Guy and his Hospital and it was, I confess to it, my curiosity to see whether by any chance Crabtree had featured in the Bank’s correspondence with the hospital that I entered there. How one clutches at straws in the hope of making bricks. I entered our museum, therefore, and while waiting to ask the curator, Eric Kelly, who is with us this evening and to whom I am most indebted for so much of the historical fact behind this oration, was gazing idly at a painting which I had seen many times before. Suddenly I felt a wrinkling of the skin across my scalp: there was something in the set of the head, the look in the eyes, the line of the brow and the chin of one of those in the painting that put me instantly in mind of our Founder. The painting is well known: ‘The Presentation of Colours to the Bank of England Volunteer Corps’ by Thomas Stothard. The Bank, some of you may say typically enough, took its time about deciding whether or not to form a unit of volunteers during the war with France. I can only plead that, as usual, it was the Chancellor who misled the Bank rather than vice versa as is usually imagined. Pitt imagined it would be a short war and so the Bank only got round to forming the Bank Volunteers in 1798—five years after the war started —but when we did, ‘twas in style—506 of a total staff of 572. And they received their colours in 1799, presented to them on Lord’s cricket ground and Stotherd recorded the occasion. I enquired whether the names of those present at The Presentation were recorded anywhere. They were. It was minutes only before I was staring with incredulity at the name of Grenadier Joseph Crabtree. I had to sit down as the full significance of my discovery began to dawn upon me: our founder had obviously at some stage been employed by the Bank. In what capacity? How long for? What would our records show? My mind was racing ahead, Sir, and I could hardly quell my impatience. His being regularly employed would certainly supply an answer to a question which had long puzzled me. As a banker I had long been intrigued by where Crabtree’s money came from, an issue to which the don-orators, altogether less wordly men than I, had rarely seemed to apply themselves.

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The study of the Bank records has helped to explain a great deal. Crabtree was, we know for a fact, employed by the Bank from 1790 to 1799 and again from 1827–30. There is also good reason to suspect that he may have been in the Bank’s pay for considerably longer. At first, looking at the early dates, I thought there must be some mistake: his taking lodgings with Paul Vallon and fathering a child on Annette, his visits to Madame de Staël, his meeting with the Comtesse de Blague and his visit to Pittenweem had all been adequately recorded; and they all fell within this period. Gentlemen, I nearly abandoned the scent at this stage but, accustomed as I was from my student days to the fact that those more erudite than I could as often confuse as help me, I pressed on. And what I discovered was highly significant. I realised that Crabtree must have come into the Bank on special terms since he was 36 at his date of entry. We know that he obtained the Director’s nomination that it was essential for him to have, from one William Manning, a banker and a merchant, who eventually became Governor of the Bank in 1812. He was, incidentally, father of Cardinal Manning, who was the first Cardinal who had been a convert to Popery. But was there something significant in the fact that Manning only became a Director in 1790, the very year that Crabtree joined the Bank? I think there was. We know that Manning’s banking business, which had grown from his merchanting interests, had strong continental links, not all of them totally above board, and at that period it was extremely important to keep in touch with what was going on in France. My contention is, gentlemen, that Manning had met Joseph Crabtree in France early in 1790 when, as Sutherland has established, Crabtree was living with Paul Vallon. Manning conceived the idea of introducing Crabtree into the Bank. You’ll remember that in that year Crabtree had been in Germany, France, Switzerland and Italy with Wordsworth. The idea was to have an under-cover agent to look after his affairs on the continent—Manning did not, I am pleased to say, share Wordsworth’s sympathy for the Revolution. He obviously had no difficulty in selling this notion to the Governor who, while supporting what was going on in France, nevertheless saw some merit in keeping an eye on things. His judgment proved sound and Crabtree’s role would have become even more important following the outbreak of war with France in 1793. But I’m sure Crabtree served more than one master. Manning and the Bank Governor, of course. I have a shrewd suspicion that Crabtree also had contact at the highest level politically. William Pitt’s cousin, Josiah Pitt, was also a member of the Bank Staff (more of him later) and I think it more than likely that Crabtree, with his ability to play the sides against the middle, managed to find some contracts for which he was paid by Government money. This, I must admit, is conjecture; but what is certain is that our founder spent considerable periods of time abroad. Not all the dates are absolutely clear, but we know from his colleagues’ reaction that

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he had much more time off than they were prepared to tolerate without protest. Even in those somewhat more relaxed times, Crabtree’ s absens caused raised eyebrows—and he could only have achieved his excess leisure with a nod and a wink from an eminence grise. Crabtree, of course, with that instinctive sense of where the grass was greenest, had the support not only of the Governor but also of a Director and a Governor to be. No sooner, however, had he arrived at the Bank than he found himself in trouble. For once the cause was men, not women; and the reason social not sexual. Crabtree was assigned to the Bank Stock Office where his Principal was the irascible Robert Browning, grandfather of the poet. It is not clear what was at the root of their total incompatibility but we have in our records a formal letter of complaint about our founder from his boss. My immediate reaction was to wonder what could have sparked off this almost paranoiac dislike that Robert seemed to feel for him. It did not take me long to discover. The Browning family have long had associations with the Bank. Not only the poet’s grandfather but also his father (another Robert) and his great-uncle Ruben all worked in the Bank between 1769 and 1853. Grandfather Robert was, of course, well established when Crabtree entered the Bank but (and I am sure this is significant) his brother Ruben joined in the same year as our hero. Add to this the fact that Crabtree seemed to achieve preferment to Ruben—limitless time off to travel abroad, sometimes with the Governor, sometimes with his benefactor Manning— and the suspicion that, through his father, Crabtree owned a sizeable slice of Bank stock (I am still researching this point)—and you have a potentially explosive situation. When I later discovered that Robert junior, father of the poet, was from 1790 to 1803 (when he joined the Bank) serving out an apprenticeship with Manning’s merchant firm Porcher and Co. of Fenchurch Street out in the West Indies (and hating every minute of it, the heat, the flies and the slave trade), then it needed only a small spark to set things off. Now, as you know, Crabtree never did things in a small way and he provided not a spark but a blowlamp. In the Bank’s files there is a letter to Manning accusing Robert and Ruben Browning of moonlighting at the Lottery Office (a tit-for-tat for accusations about time off), ill treatment of staff and cowardice (I‘ll tie that yellow Ruben on the old oak tree). The letter was not anonymous; it was signed Malcolm McGriggor, an alias which, thanks to the researches of previous orators, we know Crabtree used on several occasions. The address was also interesting—Borough High Street—the significance of which I will explain later. The Brownings, of course, strongly suspected Crabtree as the perpetrator of these calumnies and never forgave him. The outbreak of war with France in 1793 led to more regular visits abroad, mostly cloaked in secrecy. But the war, indirectly, changed his job

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at the Bank. Inflation led to an immense increase in demand for notes, and in 1797 Crabtree was moved to the office where he was given the task of signing notes. The signer’s responsibilities were set by denomination and, although we can see Browning’s hand in limiting Crabtree to £1 notes, we can only guess at whether or not this was a true reflection of his potential. I have a copy here, Sir, of one such note which will go into the archive. The task itself, the actual signing, is of little importance to us tonight but the job method certainly was. In order to record the Bank notes he issued by number and date, Crabree, like the other clerks, had a series of note books. These were discovered—we know which serial numbers had been allocated to Crabtree—tucked away in the corner of a vault in our subbasement with hundreds of others. I have spent hours going through them. Gentlemen, I need not describe to you the thrill of handling books which the master had touched. That thrill approached the orgasmic when I noticed that he occasionally scribbled words and lines and sometimes drawings on the backs of pages. It proved almost impossible to put the books into precise date order but we can draw certain conclusions about what he was writing and when. For example, it looks as though, in early 1798 he was proposing some revisions to the Ode to Claret. The two passages are clearly identifiable: Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many Signs short and infrequent were exhaled. And each man fixed his yes before his feet Flowed up the hill and down King William Street To where St. Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine (‘Burial of the Dead’) And then later from the ‘Fire Sermon’. O City city I can sometimes hear Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street The pleasant whining of a mandoline And a clatter and a chatter from within Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the wall of Magnus Martyr hold Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold. But these revisions paled into insignificance when I came to his book number 19 which, as far as I could estimate, he was probably using in the

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second half of 1797. This book had the usual endorsal scribblings but it had clearly been tampered with—on several pages the words had been covered in a sort of thick yellow paint or ink, apparently many years after they were originally written. Fortunately, Bank black (as our home-made ink is known) is strong stuff and, in parts, it had forced its way through its covering. I was able, therefore, to make out some words here and there. Unreal city—brown fog—St. Mary Wollnoth; dead sound and later whining of a mandoline—splendour of Ionian white and gold. I again experienced a prickling of the scalp. Eliot, of course. But how could Eliot have Crabtree’s jottings? And having seen them, and used them, why not acknowledge the fact in the famous ‘Notes’. Two significant facts. First, Eliot could have had access to the notebooks. By sheer luck, I have traced the husband of a female cousin’s of Eliot to our Secretary’s Office in the period 1918–22. Eliot, we know, worked with Lloyds Bank from 1917 to 20—so there was an overlap period when it would have been perfectly feasible for John Wright (his relative by marriage) to have invited the poet in to look at some of the Bank’s papers (this was the area in which Wright worked). Obviously I have no clear proof of this but I submit that it is reasonable conjecture. Second, I have discovered from the records at St. Mary Woolnoth Church that the clock was sent away for extensive repair and overhaul in 1829. In the letter from the repairers, Cousins of Eastcheap, there is reference to a fault in the striking mechanism, which explained a long delay in returning the clock and the size of the bill (enormous in those days) of over £30. And also from the records it would appear that the clock which hung in Lombard Street in the 1920s had no chime at all! So, the dead sound on the final stroke of nine could only have been heard in Crabtree’s day. We know that Crabtree was in lodgings in Borough High Street and was describing his journey to the Bank. We also know that Lower Thames Street was a haunt of his. So here I would normally rest my case on Eliot but the significance of my next discovery was such that I felt I had to share it with you even at the risk of later looking a fool. Notebook No. 20 is missing. Now this may mean nothing at all but it could also mean that a lot more of The Waste Land owes its origins to our Founder—but we may never know just how much. But what puzzled me was why there was no attribution made in the famous ‘Notes’. Even Eliot’s worst enemies, who never hesitated to accuse him of plagiarism, would not have denied that, in the case of The Waste Land, he was more than generous with his allusions to the work of others. You are, I am sure, aware that when this poem first appeared in the Criterion in October 1922 and in the following month in Dial, there were no notes. These only appeared in the Faber and Faber edition which came out at the end of the year and where the notes, ironically enough, were the

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consequence directly of the technological fact that books were printed in multiples of 32 pages. Eliot found himself asked to fill up space—some thing unknown to you Gentlemen in the academic world. Let me move now to the title of my oration; ‘The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street’. For years scholars have been perplexed as to how this title for the Bank of England became adopted so widely. I think I have discovered the truth; again it is connected with our Founder and again we need to go back to the Browning vendetta. From reference made in complaints from the Browning family to Manning, it would appear that they were undoubtedly putting the story round that Crabtree was a homosexual. They referred to him, in one particular letter, as ‘the old queen’, one of the earliest usages of the expression I have been able to find. They attributed his motives in wishing to join the Bank Volunteer Regiment to the existence of drummer boys and the known habits of guardsmen. Somehow the story grew out of all proportion and the question of the Bank’s morals was raised in the House of Commons. Sheridan, then an MP, made reference in 1798 to ‘a certain old lady in Threadneedle Street.’ This euphemism almost certainly gave rise to the famous cartoon by Gillray, which showed an ‘old lady’ being seduced by William Pitt, then Prime Minister. This cartoon has always been held to be entirely politically orientated. But I strongly suspect that it has had us all fooled for all these years and I will explain why. On the Bank’s Staff at that time, and a colleague of Crabtree’s both at work and later in the Bank Volunteer Regiment was one Joshua Pitt, cousin to William. He was known by the nickname to most of ‘the Politician’ but I found that Crabtree, in one of his scrawlings had dubbed him ‘The Bottomless Pitt’. Now I leave you to judge, Gentlemen, whether this epithet applied by our Founder merely reflected, as has been suggested to me the fact that Pitt was a fundamental nihilist or, as I strongly suspect, the fact that Pitt resisted his homosexual advances. Pitt bore apparently a remarkable physical resemblance to his distinguished cousin and I suggest to you all that Gillray’s cartoon is an in-House joke, depicting a reversal of roles which would have appealed immensely to those in the know. It may be the Browning aversion at work again. The cartoon shows Joshua Pitt making advances to Joseph Crabtree—and not vice versa. Under the microscope the initials JC show up quite clearly on one of the notes. Here we see him depicted in the guise of an old lady (queen), sitting on a chest (throne) decorated by the Bank notes he was known to sign. It is easy from there to see how the ‘old lady’ image could have become distorted into the scurrilous story of a sex change operation which we had reported here last year and which we know originated from that slander perpetrated by Lord Byron in his letter to Scrope Davis. But I believe that my version of the facts not only explains the origins of that particular

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slander but also accounts for the speed with which the expression ‘the old lady of Threadneedle Street’ became accepted so widely in the City. Gentlemen, that is the extent of the completed researches I am prepared to share with you at this stage. I have discovered some other facts, however, which you should know and some other fascinating leads which must be followed up in the interests of scholarship. Three important facts: (1) Crabtree was officially dismissed from the Bank (late in 1798) as a result of an incident—fully reported—when a tunnel he was in under the Garden Court collapsed and he emerged, covered in earth and debris, under the horrifed eyes of the entire Court of Directors. He could not satisfactorily explain what he was doing under ground—the snake in the tunnel argument did not get him very far—so Manning had no alternative but to dismiss him. (2) He was still present, nevertheless, on the occasion of the presentation of the Colours at Lord’s Cricket Ground the following year. (3) He served as Sub-Agent for three years at our Branch in Exeter many years later, where he is thought to have brought in several good accounts many of them through his contacts with the Coleridges. (His time at Execter was from 1827–1830 when Coleridge, as you know, had left the West Country and was living with Dr. James Gillman in Highgate.) By an extraordinary coincidence, the Exeter Branch closed in the year of Coleridge’s death (1837). I found these facts extremely perplexing. If Crabtree had been dismissed with ignominy, then why was he allowed to appear, shortly afterwards, in the prestigious ceremony at Lord’s? Why was he reengaged many years later as Sub-Agent at Exeter? And what on earth was he doing in the tunnel in the first place? The first two questions are probably most sensibly answered if we assume (and it is a reasonable assumption) that his presence in the Bank owed a great deal to his role as a spy or agent. If this role was to be continued, it could be argued that it made sense at this stage for the Bank to be seen to dismiss him: the Brownings had drawn too much attention to him; and the Gillray cartoon episode had perhaps proved the last straw. In that case, was the tunnel episode perhaps merely a convenient blind—one might say an engineered incident? That was my first assumption, but I now think very differently. I went back to the note books. Amongst Crabtree’s scrawlings there are several doodles of a woman’s hand which occurred more and more frequently around this time—Elizabeth Hood. I remembered then that her name also featured in one of Robert Browning senior’s letters of accusation about Crabtree’s lack of morals. He was accused of an improper relationship with her. I had dismissed this notion earlier—there were so many accusations—but now I decided to follow it up. I have only recently had a reply from the Guildhall Library. In the list of Hoods which the library supplied, there was one Thomas, born son of a farmer at Errol

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in the Carse of Gowrie and apprenticed to a bookseller in Dundee. He went to London, joined a publishing firm and married one Elizabeth Sands. They lived at 31, Poultry in the City of London, a stone’s throw away from the Bank. And their house (you may find this hard to believe, Gentlemen) featured in one of the more spectacular stories circulating in the mid 1800s about secret passages leading between private dwelling houses and the vaults of the Bank. But what if that story were true and Crabtree had discovered a way into the house? Had he discovered a way (and here I must choose my words carefully) of going into Mrs. Hood from underneath? Had he found a crack in her external protection? That would be more like our hero: if not the snake in the tunnel, certainly the snake in the grass. But more significantly still, Gentlemen, Elizabeth Hood gave birth to a son on May 23rd 1799, at 31 Poultry, who, if my theory is correct inherited some of his fathers poetic genius. Yes, Gentlemen, Thomas Hood the poet. His impending birth would have given Crabtree very good reason for getting clear of the City early in 1799; and, as always, things fell out more or less exactly as he had planned. I would like to leave you with another possible lead. The literary connections of the Bank of England have not yet been exhausted, nor has the influence of those connections of Joseph Crabtree. A certain Kenneth Grahame, you will recall, was employed as Secretary of the Bank from 1898 to 1908. From his desk he looked out on to the Garden Court when sitting through long and tedious meetings of the Court of Directors. He would, of course, have known of Crabtree’s tunnel episode (vigorous oral tradition had ensured the survival, and doubtless embroidery, of this striking event) and I like to think that the mental picture of Crabtree emerging blinking into the light following the collapse of his earth works inspired Grahame when writing his masterpiece, The Wind in the Willows, written mainly, I suspect, in Bank time and was the basis of the character of Mole.

27 CRABTREE THE ENGINEER Peter Rowe 1980

With great joy I have discovered that Crabtree was no less an engineer than a poet. Although there are a few hitherto over-looked clues amongst the recorded researches of the Foundation’s scholars, my main discovery came about by sheer chance. You will all remember in your ‘O‘level physics text books reference to the Bramah press—not a Hindu newspaper but a kind of hydraulic lever, the principle that activates the brakes of modern motor vehicles. An oriental discovery you may think but it is named after its alleged inventor, Joseph Bramah. A curious name—the off-spring of a wayward missionary? Not a bit of it! Joseph Bramah was the son of a Yorkshire farmer. It may not seem an unusual name in present day Bradford but this man was born in April 1749, 5 years before Joseph Crabtree at Stainborough near Barnsley in the West Riding and it was curiosity about his improbable name that led me to exciting discoveries, for Bramah was christened Jerimiah Postlethwaite and it was through Joseph Crabtree that he subsequently adopted the more exotic name by which he is known to posterity. The story begins in that balmy October of 1772 just after Joseph had gone up to Queen’s. Oxford appeared an exciting and sophisticated city to the country youth from Chipping Sodbury who, in spite of his visits to Bristol and his long adventurous voyage with Captain James Cook, was still little acquainted with the fashionable world. Oxford rather went to his head and we all know of the vigour and enthusiasm with which he neglected his studies and the diligence and perseverance with which he annoyed his tutor, the odious Jacob Jefferson. Joseph early met and became enamoured of a bonny bookbinder’s daughter, one Bessie Goodlay, but her parents were somewhat disapproving of this precocious 18 year old poet so obviously intent on interesting their daughter in more than just metre and rhyme. One day in late October Joseph proposed a picnic with the sweet Bessie. The weather was fine and unusually warm that autumn and Crabtree hired a phaeton for a short drive into the country. They trotted west in happy mood, crossed the river at Eynsham, picnicked near Stanton Harcourt and thence on to

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Bablock Hythe to recross the river by ferry. Not 200 paces from the Chequers Inn and the ferry boat disaster struck when the carriage leather brace broke and rendered further riding impossible. Here they were all of six miles from Oxford and Bessie’s suspicious father, expected home within two hours. Not very hopeful of help in this remote spot, Joseph went in search of the innkeeper. The innkeeper and his wife were in fact away at market in Oxford leaving the inn and ferry in charge of the ferryman, ostler and general handyman, no other than Jerimiah Postlethwaite. Indeed, Jerimi ah only been in Bablock Hythe for two weeks having hurriedly left Barnsley where he had been apprenticed to a cabinet maker, a month earlier pursued by an angry master and tearful daughter. He hadn’t stopped moving until he fetched up near Oxford feeling himself now reasonably safe from a shotgun wedding. It had been a quiet day, there had been no callers and so Jerimiah decided to wash his one and only pair of breeches and dry them in the unseasonably warm sun. When he saw the agitated Crabtree approaching, he hastily flung a white horse blanket around himself. Postlethwaite was dark and still bronzed from the summer and on first seeing him Crabtree not unreasonably mistook him for an Indian, a mistake reinforced by Jerimiah’s broad Yorkshire accent that was quite incomprehensible to Joseph. Largely by sign language Crabtree indicated his predicament and that remarkable handyman Postlethwaite in no time at all repaired the brace with ingenious improvisation, ferried all across the river and received a guinea from the grateful Crabtree. Joseph and Bessie trotted back across the water meadows to Oxford and home. Our poet felt very pleased with himself after the successful accomplishment of his amorous adventure and at supper that evening described the incident to a fellow undergraduate. He told of the strange Hindu who had been so helpful and resourceful. ‘He was surrely an educated man in spite of his lack of English. I think he must be a high caste holy man on a pilgrimage to foreign lands. They call them Brahmans, you know. Yes, I am sure he was a Brahman.’ Thus Postlethwaite became known at Queens as. ‘Joseph’s Brahman’ and there was much merriment when his true origins became known. At least once during November Joseph re-visited Bablock Hythe for he spent a day fishing with Jerimiah when he was further impressed by the Yorkshire youth’s uncanny skill with his hands and his inventive use of whatever was to hand. Before Christmas Postlethwaite had moved to the Mitre Tavern in the High and a close friendship developed between him and the young undergraduate at nearby Queens. He saw in Crabtree an influential and educated patron who might advance his fortunes and thus

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began a fruitful and ambivalent association that was to continue for thirty years or more. As we all know Crabtree was sent down from Oxford on his 19th birthday and although his movements thereafter are not well known, he was certainly in London for some time and Postlethwaite followed him there. Later in 1773 the two were living in Denmark Street, St. Giles, now in the shadow of Centre Point, where Joseph’s Brahman had a small workshop and the imaginative Crabtree set about developing ideas that would make use of his friend’s talents and support them both. His first idea was for a beer pump. As an Oxford undergraduate Crabtree had frequently been irritated by the long thirsty wait for the pot boy to bring beer from the depths of the cool cellar. The concept of a pump came naturally to his rich fertile mind and his resourceful Brahman soon translated the idea into copper and brass. The machine that today draws your pint of real ale, Gentlemen, that pump is the direct descendant of Crabtree’s invention fully described in Patent No. 2196 dated 31st October 1773. Now, the inventor named in this patent is not Crabtree but Joseph Bramah for the canny Yorkshireman already aware of Crabtree’s feckless nature and unbusinesslike manner took the precaution of registering the patent in the name he had newly adopted partly to conceal his broken apprenticeship in Yorkshire and partly from admiration of his inspired partner. There is no evidence that Bramah intended to deceive Crabtree but he was well aware of the poet’s weaknesses. Beer pumps were made by the dozen by the industrious Bramah who began to employ assistants whilst Crabtree sold them—the pumps, that is. Some idea of our poet’s unsatisfactory nature as a business partner comes from an incident in 1775. Crabtree had apparently collected several hundred pounds from the sale of beer pumps, many month’s output from the Denmark Street workshops. Feeling rich with so much money in his pockets he embarked on an orgy of luxurious living and spent the lot in a matter of days. There is a rueful letter from Crabtree to Bramah who was pressing for money to pay his assistants and buy materials. ‘The money I collected is all gone, my dear Bramah. Most of it I spent on women, on wine and on gambling. For the rest, I just wasted it.’ Bramah realised if their business was to succeed he must protect it against the folly of his mercurial partner and took good care to register everything in the name of Bramah. This, of course, explains why Crabtree’s role as an inventor has been overlooked for so long. Further inventive ideas poured from Crabtree’s fertile mind throughout his long and fitful association with Bramah. The famous water closet patented 21st January 1778 (No. 1177) 6,000 of which were to be made before the end of the century, an invention that adds significance to Professor Thomas’s discovery that Crabtree introduced the words ‘convenience’ and ‘loo’ into the English language. The tumbler lock,

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forerunner of the present day Yale, was registered on 23rd April 1784 (No. 1430), the lock spoken of by Sam Weller’ s fath when warning his son of predatory women—‘…if I was locked up in a fire proof chest with a patent Brahmin, she’d find means to get at me, Sammy’ Patents were taken out for a fire engine pump, the famous hydraulic press, a wood planing machine, a ship’s block making machine, a paper making machine and, significantly, a banknote numbering machine for the Bank of England. In 1809, the year Crabtree was appointed Reader in Criminology at his old university, a patent was taken out for the fountain pen and so named in the description. I could go on for some time listing these Crabtree inventions exploited by the diligent Bramah and registered in his name but I have surely described enough to make you realise how much our material society owes to this careless genius we honour tonight. Bramah never forgot his indebtedness to Crabtree. In Walker’s well-known engrav–ing ‘Men of science living in 1808’, Bramah appears with his back to the onlooker. This was because Bramah knew that the face should be Crabtree’s (see page 319). Whilst the industrious and steadfast Bramah was exploiting the brilliant ideas of his inventive partner, Crabtree, as we all know, was struggling to make his name as a poet and seems to have treated his association with Bramah as a trivial matter that occasionally provided him with money. It is almost as if he was ashamed of his interest in material things. Brown has described how Crabtree under the pseudonym Malcolm M’Greggor published amongst other things, ‘An heroic epistle to Sir William Chambers, Controller General of His Majesty’s Works’. This so pleased Sir William that he gave the young poet a letter of introduction to the Inspector General of Commerce to Louis XVI, one Pierre Samuel du Pont who lived in the village of Chevannes in the district of Nemours, some 45 miles north east of Orleans. Naturally Crabtree visited the Du Ponts and there met the two teenaged sons, Victor Marie and Eleuthère Irènèe. The boys were intrigued by the romantic poet who would speak only English and took the opportunity to learn the language from him. It was with the younger son that Crabtree formed a deep and lasting friendship. Prompted by his older friend (Crabtree was 17 years his senior) Eleuthère was apprenticed to Lavoisier then Chief of the Government Powder Works at Essonne. The du Ponts suffered many ups and downs (mainly downs) during those turbulent years in France towards the end of the 18th century and we all know what happened to Eleuthère’s employer. Pierre Samuel lost his state appointments and influence and, for a period, helped by Crabtree, set up as a book publisher in Paris. Eleuthère managed the print works and even printed paper money for the Republic in 1793. It was this experience in helping his young friend that led Joseph to the Bank of England and to his later invention of the banknote numbering machine.

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By 1799 the du Ponts had had enough of the new France and decided to emigrate to America. They sailed from Le Havre on 2nd October 1799 and, of course, Crabtree went with them. The voyage on the ill-manned ‘American Eagle’ was a disaster. They met bad weather, the sailors got out of hand and looted the passenger’s baggage, everyone was seasick and discouraged except, according to the historian Dutton, Joseph Crabtree who, I quote, ‘paced the deck, joked at hardship and wrote poetry for everyone’s amusement’. Eventually after 91 days at sea, they made landfall at Newport, Rhode Island on 1st January 1800, journeyed south and later that month lodged with Victor Marie near Philadeliphia. Some weeks later when recovered from their ordeal Joseph and Eleuthère were out hunting in the woods and after some hours of sport ran out of powder. They managed to buy some locally but Crabtree was scandalised by the poor quality and high price of this local product. It was that evening that Crabtree realised how the young du Pont should make his fortune in the New World. Gunpowder! Eleuthère’s experience at Lavoisier’s powder factory coupled with machinery devised by Crabtree and realised by Bramah would make a product in short supply and high demand in this pioneering new nation. The du Ponts were soon fired with Crabtree’s enthusiasm. Negotiations began to acquire Broom Farm on the Brandywine River where water power was readily available to drive the Crabtree mills and in the spring of 1800 Crabtree returned to France to raise capital for this new and exciting adventure. During the long return voyage our very English poet began to have disturbing doubts. Could he really encourage the manufacture of gunpowder by truculent Americans who had already had the impudence to flout English authority? During that long voyage he had ample time to wrestle with his conscience. Loyalty to a friend was almost as important as to his country but before the ship made landfall Crabtree knew where his duty lay. The poet who only a few years later was to inspire the Grenadiers at Waterloo with his haunting phrase ‘Great unaffected vampires and the moon’ was first and foremost an Englishman. As his ship dropped anchor off Le Havre, Crabtree quietly slipped across to an English packet and returned to his native land. No doubt it was this rather irregular disappearance that led to the false reports of his death in 1800. Crabtree, of course, wrote to Eleuthère to explain his defection and the du Ponts had to manage without further material help from the man who visualised and inspired their venture, but the strength of his initial impetus is all too apparent in that vast present day American chemical company and explains why it is known today as E.I. du Pont de Nemours and not as Crabtree and du Pont as would be more just and fitting. Crabtree continued to correspond with Eleuthère throughout his life and we know of the letter first discovered by Professor Cadwallader written after his shipwreck in the Bay of Biscay in 1825 and beginning ‘My Dear E

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— —’—Eleuthère, of course, for Crabtree could never spell that grotesque French name. As my researches progressed and more was discovered of Joseph Crabtree’s inventiveness as an engineer I became increasingly aware of a strange and bewildering anomaly Here was a man of supreme assurance and ability and yet so much hitherto known about him points to someone wracked by self doubt and tortured by insecurity Could they be the same man? There are some incidents in Joseph’s young life that no doubt a psychologist would use to explain this inner insecurity. To be savaged by the great Dr. Johnson at the tender age of 9 must have left a deep scar on his poetic soul. His Methodist background, his early sexual experiences, the tragic death of his friend and hero, Captain Cook, on Crabtree’s 25th birthday and we must remember he was a Thursday’s child. All this may explain much but contrast it with the confident boy of 14 who undertook that long and hazardous voyage of exploration, the young man who travelled to argue with Linnaeus, the Crabtree that returned from France to Birmingham in 1791 to foment the mob against Priestley, the vigorous defender of Newton, the Crabtree that hounded Jenner, his long and bitter arguments with Humphrey Davy, his hostility to Thomas Young, the young man who annoyed Coulomb, the man who launched the du Ponts, the prolific inventor and the man who in old age just with a withering glare caused Wheatstone to flee the Royal Institution in terror. This is a man of supreme almost unreasonable confidence, cocksure—at least before Sir Launcelot got at him. To set the events in contrast in this way at once reveals the pattern. As poet and artist Crabtree was riddled with self doubt and despair. As a scientist, engineer and inventor he was assured, resolute and absolutely convinced of his ability and reason. Much of this is illustrated by a little incident in 1806 when Crabtree was 52. Humphrey Davy had been invited to give that famous first Bakerian Lecture on 20th November before the Royal Society. The President then was Sir Joseph Banks who had sailed with Crabtree on Cook’s first voyage of discovery and who invited his old friend and shipmate to hear this lecture ‘On some chemical agencies of electric ity’. This was the lecture in which Davy with great insight said ‘that chemical and electrical attractions were produced by the same cause acting in the one case on particles and in the other on masses’, a concept of great significance in the advance of scientific knowledge. Crabtree listened with growing hostility to his old antagonist until at question time he leapt to his feet and demanded to know if Davy still believed in the inverse square law. When Davy agreed that he did, Crabtree shouted triumphantly ‘Then why in electrolysis do the results not depend on the distance between the electrodes?’ Davy recognised his adversary’s lack of logic and explained the point in such a way as to make

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Crabtree look foolish. But that intrepid, convinced and unhesitating man of applied science and engineering stopped Davy in his tracks with the devastating ‘I know you believe you under–stand what you think I said but I am not sure you realise that what you heard was not what I meant’. Crabtree lacked both the logic and the patience to be a great pure scientist but the poet in this complex character shines through with his flashes of insight and vivid imagination that, coupled with unshakeable confidence, led to the many inventions and practical ideas he so carelessly passed on to mankind. The creative vision he yearned to express in poetry appeared so effortlessly in his many inventions.

28 CRABTREE AND GERMANY: CHAMELEON MEETS CHAMELEON W.H.A.Larrett 1981

What of things German in Crabtree studies hitherto? There is very little indeed. The only reference of any insight (it must have been one of those intuitive perceptions with which Crabtree orators are sometimes blessed) came right at the end of Tancock’s oration in 1960, and I find it amazing that 21 years should have to pass before its true significance was realised. Tancock finished his revelations concerning Crabtree in France between 1791 and 1800 with the words: I end with a little known and seldom quoted remark of a grossly overrated contemporary of Crabtree named Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Light, more light! Perhaps, for the sake of the record, two initial remarks are necessary: Goethe was a great poet, his greatness diminishes only when set beside that of Joseph Crabtree. The ‘seldom quoted remark: light, more light’ is an oft misquoted version of Goethe’s dying words. It was felt more appropriate to have Goethe’s last words radiant with transcendental promise: ‘Mehr Licht’—more light, but others closer to the great man’s dying breath claimed that the sentence, barely audible, went on beyond the first two words and was: ‘Mir liegt der Leberkäs schwer am Magen’—the liver sausage is lying heavy on my stomach. My point is, Gentlemen, that Tancock unwittingly put his finger on the one man in Europe at that time who, despite Tancock’s disparaging tone, can stand beside Crabtree and together with him enjoy a bond of mutual respect and friendship, at least up until 1810, when I fear the publication of Goethe’s Theory of Colours, which was an attack on Newton, will have put an end to the friendship. But setting this aside, where else, save in these two giants, will you find a similar wealth of prose and passion in all fields of human endeavour assembled in one man? Let me remind you briefly of the facts of Goethe’s life. He was born in 1749 in Frankfurt am Main and died in Weimar in 1832, already a life span that rivals Crabtree’s. His complete works run to hundreds of volumes. He was poet, novelist, dramatist, scientist. He was a

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capable minister at the court of Weimar, where he went in 1775 at the invitation of the young duke, and where he stayed, apart from his travels, for the rest of his life. He was a man who could deal with the prose of ordering breeches for the recruits in the Duke’s small army, and with the passion of, for instance, falling deeply in love in 1825 in Marienbad at the age of 76 with a young girl of 17, an experience, which was distilled into one of the most moving of European love poems ‘Die Trilogie der Leidenschaft’ (The Trilogy of Passion). Is it therefore so surprising that this many faceted man should have known and have associated with another of similar multifarious ability such as Joseph Crabtree? The answer is plain enough, but why does he go to such lengths to conceal it? We confront once more that conspiracy of silence, but this time I believe we can point to a different, more subtle, form of subterfuge. Hence my title: Chameleon meets chameleon. Whilst you will all see the appropriateness of the chameleon image to Crabtree, you may wonder how it can apply to a man like Goethe, one whose life was so public in so many ways. An Olympian in his own time, the amount of biographical information we have is enormous. His reputation was such that no one who either met him or corresponded with him failed either to keep the letters or to note verbatim the course of a conversation. The public face was, however, in part a deliberately assumed mask behind which Goethe hid himself. He was very adept at adapting himself to his surroundings. There is something iridescent about his character, and this he knew and revelled in. He preferred the implicit to the explicit, he delighted in the veiled and the oblique, the veil being an image central to his work, an image which combines the twofold function of concealing and revealing; the veil of poetry is the conveyor of truths and the imparter of sacred mysteries. He loved to don disguise, to assume a false identity, to travel incognito. In 1796 he confessed to Schiller that he was rather like an accountant, who after doing all the difficult arithmetic, deliberately makes a mistake in the final addition to reduce the total. His poetry of 1815 to 1820 exploits the interplay of private and public, the lovers delight in code and cipher. One poem begins: In tausend Formen magst du dich verstecken, Doch, Allerliebste, gleich erkenn’ ich dich, (You may hide yourself in a thousand forms, and yet, beloved, I recognise you at once.) Isn’t this what we are trying to do here, to recognise the face of the Master behind the many masks of modesty?

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That such a propensity was fundamental to his nature was recognised by Goethe at an early age (a mental precosity similar to Crabtree’s) for he wrote in a letter dated 2 June 1764 (he was still 14 at that date): Alexis is one of my best friends and I have asked him to render you a truthful account of all my vices and virtues, but, clever as he is, he may not see everything. I am rather like a chameleon. And one should not hold it against Alexis, if he hasn’t seen me from all angles. This illuminating statement appears in the letter Goethe wrote by way of an application to join a young men’s secret society in Frankfurt, The Arcadian Society of Phylandria. It was generally a time when secret societies flourished and the fascination they hold for Goethe reflects this. His association with Crabtree, secret for so long, testifies to his abiding respect for the demands of brotherly anonymity. I intend to focus on their friendship and collaboration between 1779 and 1783, between 1786 and 1788, and to follow some surprising consequences of this in the years 1788 and 1791. In the course of my researches I have stumbled upon a very tangled web, for as other orators have experienced before me, whilst pursuing one opening, one is often taken aback by a thrust from a totally unexpected quarter. Of the obscure decade 1773 to 1783 we know very little, but I believe that for at least part of this time Crabtree was with Goethe in Weimar. How this came about I cannot be quite certain. What is certain is that Goethe in his love of secrecy used various symbols to conceal the identity of his friends in his diary entries, usually astrological signs, all but two of which have been identified. One of the remaining ones is c (circle containing cross, followed by a ‘c’). The hitherto enigmatic entry for 16 June 1776 reads: ‘Lit. c.’ Now it seems obvious that this can only mean that he read something by Crabtree on this day, which immediately kindled his interest and imagination. The next fact we have is the arrival in Weimar in 1779 of an Englishman, said to be a Yorkshireman, with the name Batty, who had apparently been recommended by one of Goethe’s friends as an expert in drains, irrigation and the like. Had it not been for last year’s oration in which Rowe proved the link between Joseph Bramah and Joseph Crabtree and the latter’s inventiveness with pumps, pipes and water closets, I would not have been able to see the flushed face of Crabtree behind Batty. However, there is more substance to the supposition that Batty is Crabtree than a merely prosaic reflection upon land drainage. There are other letters and diary entries which reveal Goethe’s deep admiration and affection for the said Batty. On 13 May 1780 he writes: ‘Letter from Batty. He is my only dear son in whom I fin d pleasur For as long as I live, he shall lack nothing, neither food nor drink.’ In the previous month (1 April) there is the

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thought-provoking entry: ‘Have drunk no wine for three days. Now have to be wary of English beer.’ Does this suggest remorse and abstinence after a binge with Batty? Other references all express the love and concern Goethe has for Batty, but the one which provides conclusive proof, such as this Foundation requires, is to be found in a letter Goethe wrote to Frau von Stein on 14 September 1780. He is away on business with Batty, and after praising his work and even quoting one or two of Batty’s maxims, he exclaims, ‘O thou sweet poetry!’, and that is not my translation, the exclamation is in English, after which Goethe enters upon a rather confused image of fountains, cascades, watermills, irrigation channels, and bungs in barrels, to illustrate the demonic nature of lyrical creativity. Isn’t this the very mark of Crabtree, poet and engineer? The odd thing is, Batty now disappears from Goethe’s writings of the time, odd, in view of the high regard in which Batty was held, but, as I hope to demonstrate, Batty is replaced by a new persona, Tischbein. The hunch that Tischbein might conceal Crabtree was one of those inexplicable notions coming from I know not where, but I decided to follow this impulse, whether devilish or divine, and made my way to the reading room of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, where helpful, friendly, but somewhat bemused staff allowed me to see the folio volumes of Tischbein’s engravings, published in Naples in 1791, engravings which faithfully recorded the designs on Sir William Hamilton’s second collection of Greek vases. Imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered right at the end of the first volume, very carefully and precisely attached to the last blank page, a smaller double sheet hand-written in French, but without any signature or other indication as to the writer’s identity. Nor was there any date. But the text provided a clue. The writer says, Tischbein left Naples in 1790, taking with him some 90 other drawings of the vases, which have never seen the light of day (qui n’ont jamais vu le jour). How then could the writer know this, one asks? He goes on to say some copies were published by a pupil of Tischbein’s in 1808/10 in Paris, but the writer concludes with the words: ‘En les comparant avec les gravures correspondantes de Tischbein, on obsenvera, outre des differences assez importantes, une supériorité marquée dans le stlye du Maître.’ The last word says it all, Gentlemen, Maître—Master, written with a capial M. Crabtree was presumably the first owner of the BM copy, wishing to reveal his hand, however, only to the eyes of the initiate few. The staff could offer me no information about the hand-written sheets. I do not believe the BM was aware till then of their presence. You will see how the pieces suddenly fell into place: Tischbein is supposed to have gone to Rome in 1783, in that year Crabtree goes to Orleans; Tischbein leaves Naples in 1790, in which year Crabtree finds

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‘more congenial lodgings in the home of Paul Vallon’. What I shall show is that Crabtree’s uncle’s eye was not so watchful, even if just as disapproving, as we once assumed between 1786 and 1790, during which time he was in Italy, for a while in Rome but mainly in Naples; from 1786 to 1787 with Goethe and from 1787 to 1790 mostly with Emma Harte, who was later to become Lady Hamilton when she married Sir William in 1791. The more sceptical amongst you may well be asking, why Tischbein? why not some other name? Informed speculation verging on inspired revelation suggests that the appropriateness of the name ‘Tischbein’ (which means table leg) may have struck Crabtree after an especially intense night of study devoted to claret. Upon regaining consciousness, a table leg will have been the first object his eyes, still proclaiming through their colour the subject of his devotions, will have lighted upon. The Christian names Johann Wilhelm provide another tantalising clue to the real identity. The alliterative and rhythmic parallels really speak for themselves: Joseph William Crabtree/ Johann Wilhelm Tischbein. In 1786 Goethe kept his intention to travel to Italy totally secret, only revealing it to Karl August at the very last minute, asking permission to be granted indefinite leave in order to ‘lose myself in a world where I am unknown’, the chameleon wish to remain undetected. He left Karlsbad in secret on 3 September 1786, reaching his longed-for goal, Rome, where he is met by Crabtree-cum-Tischbein on 29 October. There Goethe chose to retain the mask of the merchant Möller and both he and Crabtree exploited to the full their novel liberty as harlequins in the ‘commedia dell’arte’ that is life. It is for this reason that Goethe’s letters and diaries of this time speak of his arrival in Rome as a rebirth. On 22 February the pair left for Naples, arriving on 25th., but the important date for Crabtree studies is 15 March 1787 when the two friends met Sir William Hamilton (British envoy at the court of Naples) and his companion Emma Harte. They spent two evenings in their company and saw two performances of Emma’s famous ‘Attitudes’. At this point I should refresh the memories of those of you who are less familiar with Lady Hamilton. Emma was born Amy Lyon in the village of Ness on the Wirral peninsula, possibly in 1761. In 1778 she went to London where her great beauty secured her employment in the Temple of Health run by a quack, Dr. Graham. It was a kind of high class brothel-cumpeepshow. Rejected by her lover Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh, she passes into the hands of Charles Greville, who installs her in his home in the rural district of Paddington, where she becomes known as ‘the fair tea-maker of Edgware Road’. Charles Greville plays Professor Higgins to Emma’s Eliza, teaching her many graces and imparting to her an appreciation amongst other things of fine engravings. In 1783 Charles Greville’s uncle Sir William Hamilton,

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now a widower, returns to London from Naples where he has been envoy since 1764. Sir William, a great connoiseur of beauty was immediately taken with Emma. When Sir William subsequently returned to Naples, his nephew thought his uncle might welcome the solace of Emma in his declining years—he also thought it would keep Uncle amused but unmarried and thus protect his inheritance. Emma was duly dispatched to Naples in 1786, where in the following year she was to meet the most illustrious of her lovers, Joseph Crabtree alias Johann Tischbein, artist, engraver (possible originator of the invitation to ‘come up and see my etchings’). Whilst being appreciative of her beauty of form, Goethe was less charmed by Emma’s person, finding her without wit or depth, depth of mind that is. Crabtree was less bothered by this absence of spirituality. This was not the time for the monk but for the beast. On 19 March, just four days after meeting Emma for the first time, he decides to stay on in Naples. The day of this decision was, as Goethe revealingly points out in his account, the Feast of St. Joseph. The cultural consequences of this decision were twofold: the partial truth of one has been known since the 1790s, i.e. the publication of the engravings, though the hand of Crabtree was not recognised; the other was the writing of a cycle of the freshest, frankest, and most beautiful love poems in the English language, a fact unrevealed before this evening. As far as a continuing relationship between Emma and Crabtree is concerned, there are only hints for the later years. Hamilton died in 1803, Nelson was killed in 1805. In 1813 Emma was sent to prison for debt, was released on bail by someone bearing the unlikely name of Joshua Jonathan Smith, who helped her to escape to France, where she died on 15 January 1815. We know however, that she lived out her last days sustained by ‘partridges, turkey, turbot and good Bordeaux wine’. I refrain, Gentlemen, from drawing your attention to the obvious conclusions. What I shall do instead is to read you something which was given me only last Sunday in Parkgate on the Wirral, Emma’s early home. It is the text of a poem so far handed down by oral tradition and one with which the name of Amy Lyon has been connected, Who is Crabtree? What is he? That all the swains adore him. Oh, he is fayre and he is bright, And the spectre of Crabtree Haunts the knight… Whence cometh Crabtree? Whither goeth he? Gaunt of aspect, sickly his followers,

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Frail as the leaf on the aspen tree… Oh, the holy grail of the Crabtree trail Daunts all but the staunchest breast, In the quiet shades of such hallowed glades Lies broken many a hest. Then wives and sweethearts, who’er ye be, Abandon hope in the name of Crabtree! Lay yourselves down, in sable gown, And pray that your lovers be once more free… But to conclude, Gentlemen, we must return to the cycle of poems already alluded to, a cycle of poems which was eventually published in Germany in 1795, of which you have some extracts before you. Goethe returned to Weimar from Italy in 1788, leaving Crabtree in Naples. The poems in question were written between 1788 and 1790 and the German manuscript bears the title ‘Erotica Romana’. What we have here is, I now believe, not an original work but an extremely skilful translation of an unfortunately lost original by Joseph Crabtree. These poems, a cycle as published comprising 20 elegies cast in elegaic couplets, are not autobiographical quite in the sense hitherto assumed. Goethe’s friends advised him against publishing them in view of their contents, and their eventual publication did cause some shock. They seemed shockingly out of character. Let us consider the text in the light of what we now know. Are not these lines clearly the product of someone who knew how to live life to the full? and did not Goethe himself remark in his diary on the very day that he and Crabtree met Emma for the first time: If in Rome one can delight in study, here [Naples] one only wants to live and for me it is a strange sensation to be in the company of people who know how to enjoy themselves. (16 March 1787) In Elergy V, don’t we see the hand of Crabtree beating our hexameters on the back of Emma Harte? Is it not more likely to be the painter Crabree who better understands the marble through comparison with the texture and curves of Emma’s body, a knowledge further enhanced by her imitation of classical poses and positions in the ‘Attitudes’, those tableaux vivants for which she was famous? I believe these were published by Goethe as a tribute to his friend’s genius. In order to save his friend from malicious gossip and spiteful reprisals, Goethe accepted here paternity, as Wordsworth was later in France to accept a different kind of paternity The nearest Goethe comes to an admission of a different and English authorship came many years later in 1824, when he confided to his secretary,

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Eckermann (25 Feb.): ‘If the Roman Elegies had been cast in the tone and rhythms of Byron’s Don Juan, they would have been obscene.’ That the poems contain a secret is acknowledged in the last elegy, which begins: If strength adorns the man, and a free courageous spirit, So becomes him even more the keeping of some profound secret. And ends with the words: And you, beloved poems, grow and flourish, cradled in the gentlest breath of mild loving breeze And betray at last like those gossiping reeds the beautiful secret of a happy pair. The love of disguise, the delight in the oblique and the opaque, were common to both Crabtree and Goethe, both chameleons. The chameleon image is, however, one which contains a note of warning for all Crabtree scholars. In an early poem, written at about the time of his first acquaintance with Crabtree, though not published until 1789 after his return from Italy, a poem entitled ‘Die Freuden’ (Joys), Goethe cautions us as follows: About the spring flits The iridescent dragonfly. I have long delighted In her being now bright, now dark, Like the chameleon Now red, now blue, Now blue, now green. Oh that I could see her colours Close at hand. She darts and hovers, resting never, But still, she has alighted on the willow. I have her, I have her! Now I can observe her closely, And find only a dull dark blue. This then is your fate, dissector and analyst of your joys! Gentlemen, elusiveness and brilliant iridescence are the very substance of our beloved poet, Joseph Crabtree. Let us therefore heed this note of caution and be on our guard against too zealous a scholarship that would pin him lifeless to the setting-board. Like Goethe, we must always show due respect and reverence for the mystery that lies at the heart of all greatness.

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30 JOSEPH CRABTREE AND THE POLISH CONNECTION Frank Carter 1983

Possible knowledge and interest by Joseph Crabtree in Eastern Europe, and Poland in particular, may have been aroused in his late teenage years. We know from Rowe that it was in 1773, at the age of nineteen, that Crabtree came to live in London with Joseph ‘Bramah’ Postlethwaite. They resided in Denmark Street, St. Giles. As Crabtree strolled around Soho, he must have walked down Poland Street, off Oxford Street, not a stone’s throw from the workshop, and wondered about its name. In fact he discovered the street was named to honour the exploits of King Jan Sobieski, who hurled back the Turks from the gates of Vienna in 1683. This street, then in a very exclusive part of London, was first mentioned as Poland Street in 1689. We know from Tancock that Crabtree was present at the wedding of Fanny Burney to the émigré général D’Arblay at Juniper Hall, in Dorking, in 1793. She would have been forty one at that time and Crabtree thirty nine. He well remembered her when she was twenty one and he nineteen; they lived so near to each other, he in Denmark Street and she in Poland Street. She was Crabtree’s secret love at that time. Mr. Postlethwaite must have wondered why Joseph spent so much time scribbling anonymous love letters addressed to her at No. 50, Poland Street. This was Crabtree’s first usage and romantic connection with the name ‘Poland’. Moreover, this unrequited love might explain why Crabtree preferred to be disguised as Mme. de Staël’s butler Joe at Fanny’s wedding in 1793. Two other personalities were to sharpen Crabtree’s image of Poland in his early years,—Joseph Banks and Jeremy Bentham. We are all aware that Banks, well-known naturalist, went on Cook’s first voyage in 1768, and took with him two flute boys—Joseph Crabtree and his younger brother George. In March 1777 Banks bought the ‘Elegant and Spacious Leasehold House’ known as 32 Soho Square. It seems quite natural that, when in London, Crabtree would visit not only his old haunts in Soho, but also his old friend Banks. In the Anglo-Russian ‘rapprochement’ of 1793, Catherine II sought a collection of garden plants from George III of England, but the war with Revolutionary France delayed any action until 1795, when the King

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commanded Banks to select plants from the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. Crabtree could easily have eavesdropped on discussions concerning this transaction; Bank’s correspondence from this period refers to Charles Whitworth, 1st Earl Whitworth, envoy-extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary at Warsaw from 1785–1793, and later in St. Petersburg, Crabtree would have learnt through Banks of Britain’s attitude to Polish affairs, which on the whole was insensitive and aloof to Catherine’s successive interventions in that luckless country. Letters arriving at Bank’s house from the botanist Anton Hove in St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1795, when plants from Kew were settling in their new hot-houses, would have told Crabtree of the disruption to Hove’s work in Poland, due to the partition of that country, and the destruction of his collections. Crabtree would also have met Edward Forster jr. in 1795 at Bank’s house, a future President of the Linnaean Society, for Bank’s consulted him on the ways and means of transport to St. Petersburg; his father’s business specialized in the Russia trade, with headquarters in Threadneedle Street. The other source for Crabtree’s early awareness of Poland came through Jeremy Bentham and his brother Samuel. Samuel Bentham left England in 1779, first to work in Siberia and after in 1784 to live on Prince G.A.Potyomki’s estate at Krichev in White Russia. Jeremy himself decided early in 1786 on a prolonged visit to Krichev, and his impressions are to be found in Jeremy’s correspondence. The information, gained in conversations with the Benthams after their return to England in the early 1790’s, was of value in enlightening Crabtree of the Polish lands. The region in which Krichev was located was steeped in Polish tradition, and had been under the Polish flag for the previous four centuries. Besides evidence on this area from the Bentham brothers, Crabtree may also have read the travel journal of Sir Richard Worsley This English traveller paid a visit to Krichev in the summer of 1786 and was moved to describe the town as ‘a considerable place’. According to one of Samuel Bentham’s English associates, it was a thoroughly polygot community of immigrants, where Polish, German, Yiddish and the Ukrainian dialects were as much in evidence as the Russian language itself. For Crabtree the foundations of knowledge were being laid for an important episode in his life that occurred during the first decade of the nineteenth century. A key figure in what I have called Crabtree’s ‘Vilna’ episode was a man who in later life was to be intimately connected with the foundation of University College London—namely Thomas Campbell. The early 1790s were exciting years to be in Scotland, for one could meet all the distinguished Scots in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Walter Scott studied law at Edinburgh University, Lord Henry Brougham was there and two future prime ministers, Palmerston and Russell, along with the son, Adam Jerzy, of a Polish Prince, A.K.Czartosryski. He was sent to Edinburgh in 1789 to

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study Politics, Constitution and to observe the structure of British industry. In 1793 he met the promising young poet Thomas Campbell. Scottish interest in Poland was aroused in 1794 by the Kościuszko insurrection, its failure, and fina partition of the country between Prussia, Russia and Austria the following year. Thomas Campbell was deeply moved by the Poles heroic struggle and in his first book of poetry published in 1799, Pleasures of Hope echoes of the Polish insurrection in Cracow flowed from his pen: Hope for a season bade the world farewell, And Freedom shrieked—as Kościuszko fell. It was well received in Poland, especially by the Czartoryski family. Whilst at Edinburgh, Campbell met the first Lord Minto, who in 1801 took him to London as his occasional secretary We know from Jones that Crabtree inspired Brougham to attack Young’s lecture on light in the Edinburgh Review of 1803, and it was through Brougham in that year Crabtree first met Campbell. They immediately found a common bond—Poland, Crabtree through his romantic attachments to the name, and Campbell through his links with the Czartoryski family and sympathy for the country’s political situation. The following year (1804, when Crabtree was 50 and Campbell 27) was to have Slavonic connotations for both of them. In January 1804, Campbell was offered the Regents’ Chair at the University of Vilna. This was an attractive proposition, providing him with a permanent income rather than the irregular financia l gai from his literary talents in England. Prince Czartoryski jr. strongly supported Campbell’s candidacy. The Scottish poet was certainly attracted to the idea, but in the end decided against taking the post. Campbell remained in London and was regularly employed on the Star newspaper, for which he translated foreign news. He regularly met Crabtree and mentioned that the post in Vilna was again vacant. Crabtree needed little encouragement to apply; he was successful, and for the first time since Oxford days was to enter once more the portals of academia. He arrived in Vilna, early in 1808, and was determined to learn Polish. This improved on trips away from Vilna, to those areas nearby, like Krichev, first described to him by the Bentham brothers. He found Prince Czartoryski most helpful. Crabtree was keen to visit central Poland, especially the old Polish capital of Cracow; Czartoryski organized contacts for him at the Jagiellonian University there, as well as a stay en route at his family seat in Puławi. Much to Crabtree’s sorrow this trip was never made, for he heard that he had been appointed Reader in Criminology, at Queen’s College, Oxford, start–ing in the Michaelmas Term of 1809. Meanwhile Crabtree’s active interest in Poland was to recede for a while, until the third decade of the nineteenth century, except for one small incident in 1816. From Tattersall we learn that Crabtree met Keats in

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Hampstead in 1816. In that year Keats was just beginning to gain acceptance in the literary world and some of his early work was published in The Examiner. Closer perusal of this source reveals that a poem To Kosciusko, written by Keats in December 1816, was published in The Examiner on the 16th February 1817. As you may know Tadeusz Kościuszko (1746–1817) was a Polish patriot admired by English liberals, who led his countrymen in their rising against Russia between 1791 and 1794. Of course Gentlemen, this poem resulted from conversations Keats had with Crabtree, who, with his knowledge of Poland, was able to give Keats the necessary background material which inspired him to pen the immortal lines: ‘Good Kosciusko, thy great name alone/is a full harvest whence to reap high feeling’. During the early 1820s Crabtree’s connections with Poland were to be rekindled once more, this time centred on the Poles in Edinburgh. In 1820 Prince Adam Czartoryski, jr. decided to send his sixteen year old nephew, Konstanty, for further education in Edinburgh along with his tutor Krystyn Lach Szyrma. The chief librarian of the family archives, Karol Sienkiewicz was also in Edinburgh. While en route for Edinburgh, Lach Szyrma and Konstanty met Crabtree in London during late August. The meeting was arranged by Thomas Campbell, who had recently returned from a stay in Paris, to accept the editorship of the New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal. Crabtree was able to obtain the latest news on events in Poland and information on the situation at Vilno University. Edinburgh at this time had a high European reputation for teaching the sciences and philosophy and attracted many foreign students. The main reason why young Polish aristocrats were sent there, was Czartoryski’s belief in the value of studying the works of Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations), and David Ricardo’s Corn Law theories, for furture Polish statesmen. The most able lecturer on these subjects was the economist and statistician, John Ramsay McCulloch, who was later to accept the Professorship of Political Economy at University College London i n 182 Crabtree’s knowledge of Poland and things Polish prompted Lach Szyrma to invite him to Edinburgh for a prolonged stay in 1821. Crabtree soon felt at home with the small band of Polish students, but he was also in demand elsewhere in the city. We know that he met Walter Scott there in 1822; in that same year Scott’s poem The Lady of the Lake appeared in Polish (Pani Jeziora). Although officially translated by Karol Sienkiewicz, it was Crabtree who helped translate the various nuances and subleties of the work; similarly, McCulloch’s Discourse on the Rise, Progress, Peculiar Objects and Importance of Political Economy, (London 1824), had a Polish version, translated officially by Sienkiewicz, published in Warsaw in 1828, but again with the unmistakable signs of Crabtree’s hand. Perhaps Crabtree’s greatest achievement during this Edinburgh episode was his previously unproven connection with Blackwood’s Magazine. The

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majority of articles in this magazine were published anonymously, most probably because of various literary and political battles between the Whigs and Tories. The authorship, therefore, of many articles in Blackwood’s Magazine has been, and continues to be, one of the most exciting problems for scholars interested in this particular subject. In the National Library of Scotland, the Blackwood’s Contributors Book, contains some 5,300 articles published in the magazine for the later period 1826–1870, of which a mere one hundred authors remain to be deciphered. The earlier period 1817–1825 is much more difficult. Professor Strout has published a bibliography for this earlier period, in which 2,025 articles are ascribed to authors; the authorship of four hundred articles remain unidentified. Tonight, Gentlemen, I believe this number can definitely be reduced. Certainly some of them belong to Lach Szyrma, Crabtree’s Polish friend in Edinburgh. I wish, however, to draw your attention to one article in particular. This article appeared in June 1822 and lacks any signature. It is a review of Wincenty Krasiński’s book Guide du Voyageur en Pologne et dans la République de Cracovie published in Warsaw, in 1820. It is a lengthy contribution, eight pages of small print, detailed information and long quotations from the original text. Professor Strout ascribes this article to John Cay (spelt with a ‘C’ not a ‘K’) a frequent contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine. Cay was noted for his occasional poetry and satire, but never a review. It is known that Lach Szyrma referred to Crabtree as ‘J.C’ and Strout has obviously mistaken these initials to mean John Cay. Further evidence to support Crabtree’s authorship is not difficult to find, although we know of his desire for modesty and anonymity. Krasiński’s book was in French, a language Crabtree knew well. It also covered a part of Poland— the Cracow region—where my earlier evidence from 1809 has shown, he never managed to visit, and still regretted. Here was a chance to partially redeem that omission and obtain more knowledge about Poland’ former capital. There is perhaps another reason why the article lacks Crabtree’s signature. Obviously, Crabtree wished to disguise his associations with such a Tory monthly as the Blackwood’s Magazine. The final ‘coup de grâce’ in Crabtree’s favour comes from the begin–ning of the review itself which states, ‘Poland, however, interesting as that ill-fated kingdom is, has never been sufficiently described in works of a superior class;…On stating my grievance to a Polish friend, he was kind enough to send me this Traveller’s Guide, with some valuable information of his own, of which I shall avail myself in the course of my remarks’. Crabtree never forgot Lach Szyrma’s help concerning this review, and was able to repay his kindness in several ways. When Lach Szyrma completed his book Letters Literary and Political on Poland, it was Crabtree, through his contacts, who persuaded Archibald Constable, Walter Scott’s famous publisher, to print it in 1823. Furthermore, Crabtree

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sent a copy of the book to Campbell in London, who favourably reviewed it in the April 1823 edition of his new monthly magazine. At the same time Crabtree knew of John Bowring’s interest in Slavonic literature, especially Polish. Crabtree had previously met Bowring through Jeremy Bentham. He thought Letters Literary and Political on Poland would be of interest to Bowring. Indeed, Gentlemen, this resulted in Bowring’s anthology of Polish, published in 1827, the first of its kind in the English language. Not until our poet heard of the luckless November Uprising of 1830 in Warsaw against Russian occupation, did his now ageing mind turn once more to thoughts of helping the less fortunate survivors of that event. The hub of this activity was to be centred in London, after 1830, when Crabtree helped in a positive way those who had fled from Poland, and who looked to Paris and London as possible havens of refuge. In 1830 Crabtree was already seventy six years old, but still mentally active and aware of contemporary problems. After the collapse of the November insurrection, the Polish political, ideological and cultural centre moved abroad. The emigration represented an élite of the nation and counted among its members, some of the greatest names in Polish literature, history, music and political thought. Certainly Polish romanticism rose to its full stature in the emigration. Paris, where many of the émigrés settled, became a veritable headquarters of Polish national life, in which Prince Czartoryski jr. was declared the ‘unofficial’ King of Poland. Joseph Crabtree naturally expressed concern for Poland; his exchange of letters with Prince Czartoryski jr., led in the summer of 1831 to the visit of the Polish poet Niemcewicz, to England, to enlist sympathy for the Polish struggle. Crabtree arranged through Campbell, an interview with the Prime Minister, Palmerston. Niemcewicz found little encouragement from the British leader, and noted, ‘Palmerston found me too hot, and I found him colder than ice’. Crabtree advised Niemcewicz to ask leave to present a letter from Prince Czartoryski jr. to William IV, but again Palmerston advised the King to refuse its acceptance. Crabtree and Campbell then put pressure on another contact from those early student days, Lord John Russell, but he too adopted a negative, if milder, attitude than Palmerston. Czartoryski, Campbell and Crabtree were disgusted with Palmerston, and the Polish supporters in Britain were even more angry. In December 1831, at the personal invitation of Crabtree and Campbell, Czartoryski visited London, but inspite of several meetings with Palmerston, made no further progress. It was clear Palmerston would not go to war with Russia to help Poland. He told Czartoryski, ‘We are a simple and practical nation, a commercial nation; we do not go in for chivalrous enterprises or fight for others as the French do’.

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Czartoryski, disillusioned, left for Paris, although he often visited London later, and thanks to the efforts of people like Crabtree and Campbell, met and was very popular in London society. One outcome of Czartoryski’s visit to London, was the increased interest in Polish affairs. The influence and efforts of Crabtree and Campbell led to the foundation of The Literary Association of the Friends of Poland, established in 1832; the group consisted entirely of British members, and had its headquarters in Duke Street, St. James. Crabtree was offered the Presidency of this new association, but modestly declined, suggesting his old friend Campbell as the obvious choice, which was agreed. Crabtree, however remained active in editing its magazine, Polonia or Monthly Reports of Polish Affairs, Campbell’s resignation from the Presidency may explain why Crabtree’s interest in Polish affairs waned after 1833. His lively mind and endless curiosity turned to other things. His friendship with Lach Szyrma however, continued; whilst on a visit to Crabtree’s Devonshire home in 1839, Lach Szyrma met Sarah Somerville, daughter of a Royal Navy Captain. They married and set up home in 1841 at Devonport, near Plymouth, in order to be near his parents and to Crabtree himself. Crabtree’s last involvement in things Polish occurred in 1848, when he was already ninety four years old. In that year Crabtree was party to arrangements for Chopin’s visit to England and Scotland. The opening refrains of revolution echoed through Paris in March 1848; at the suggestion of his pupil, Miss Jane Stirling, Chopin decided to leave for London the following month. He arrived to be met by Crabtree, and various dignitaries from Polish émigré and musical circles. Although Crabtree’s greatest achievements were in literature, appreciation of music came from early choir boy days, and his acquaintance with Schubert in 1819. Miss Stirling’s obvious love for the Polish composer was plainly evident; Crabtree suggested she should take Chopin on a tour of her native Scottish countryside, and they left for Edinburgh in early August. An appreciative letter from Chopin was received by Crabtree in mid-August, thanking him for suggesting the trip and the names of contacts in Edinburgh. Along the margin however Chopin wrote The people here are ugly, but, it would seem good. As compensation there are charming, apparently mischievous cattle, perfect milk, butter and eggs’. Here may I also mention the curious monogram on Chopin’s letter seal: three C’s in the form of horns intertwined—perhaps symbolic for the names Czartoryski, Chopin and Crabtree. The circumstances of Crabtree’s sad, but not unexpected death in 1854, have been described to us by Tattersall. I should like to add, however, a rather touching postscript to that memorable event. Members of the Polish émigré associations in Britain, on reading his obituary in The Times, decided to honour this great friend of Poland in their own particular way.

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In 1855, a plaque was placed near the South door of Haworth Church in Yorkshire, not many yards from where our beloved poet lies buried. It states simply:— Joseph Crabtree

Czy ty jestes synem Anglii— Nie tyś dzieckiem świata! Geniusz twój poza metę Plemienna wylata. (Are you a son of England— No you are a child of the world! Your genius It knows no bounds)

31 THE SECRET LIFE OF JOSEPH CRABTREE Fred Gee 1984

Over the years many scholars have come to this room to reveal for the first time that some glorious passage in a work hitherto ascribed to a lesser Master was either plagiarised from an original Crabtree composition or cribbed wholesale in the vernacular or translated to another language. Yet no folio has been found to authenticate the original and year after year we are left with the tantalising ‘proof by induction’ which is so popular with teachers of mathematics and so unreliable in the hands of policemen and lawyers. Clues there are in plenty but so there are in crosswords and unless you can unlock the devious mind of the designer you are better to register your answers with a pencil than a fountain-pen! ‘Even Bacon left his mark in sundry codes and cryptograms although content to hide behind the mask of Shakespeare!’ So said Peake in 1970. He searched deeply for the code which could betray the hand of Crabtree and imagined he had found it when he observed that four consecutive lines in Shelley’s ‘Hellas’ began with the letters C, R, A, and B, but his doggedness was unrewarded: there was no tree! Confronted with what seemed an intractable problem, I remembered the advice of the Chief Constable of Essex and decided to take a deep breath and look for another vehicle. Seeing that this is the 31st oration I am going to cheat a little and take advantage of the well established 30 year rule and quote from a hitherto unrepeated statement made in this room by the very first orator when he came to address the Foundation from the Presidential Chair:— Some weeks ago the Vicar of Chipping Sodbury received a cable from America, signed ‘Hoffman’, requesting permission to excavate the Crabtree family grave. Hoffman alleged that Crabtree had been in the pay of the English Government and had been a spy in France working against the young Republic. Now it seems that the vicar was more distressed at Hoffman ’s further allegation that Joseph Crabtree had had homosexual relations with the younger Pitt and the matter of spying was not pursued. (Not for the last time in British history a clear lead was allowed to dangle!)

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In fact, the idea was not taken up again until Bromage suggested that Crabtree had been an undercover agent for the Bank of England; that is until his cover fell in while he was creeping along a tunnel connecting the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street to a young lady in The Poultry: a lady he was about to impregnate with half the future Thomas Hood. Nobody here is likely to rejoice at the thought of our revered poet being described as a spy. There was a book published in 1895 which expressed it rather well:— The very term spy conveys to our mind something dishonourable and disloyal. A spy in the general acceptance of the term is a low sneak who, from unworthy motives, dodges the actions of his fellow beings, to turn the knowledge he acquires to his personal account. His underhand dealings inspire us with such horror that we would blush at the very idea of having to avail ourselves of any information obtained through such an agency That, I suspect, is how you will feel about it. But, if in place of ‘spy’ substitute ‘heroic intelligence agent’ it sounds a lot better. And, after all, gentlemen, he would be in good company among the poets of history: Daniel Defoe, Chaucer, Marlowe…Edgar Allen Poe…to name but a few. On what evidence, other than that scandalous Tale of Hoffman, do I base the suggestion that Crabtree was a spy? Let us look back at the record. In the very first oration Sutherland spoke of a ‘conspiracy of silence’, a point echoed by many who followed. Nyholm spoke of ‘the studied deliberation with which he refused to publish anything but an occasional gem under his own name.’ Tancock drew our attention to the famous portrait which hangs again before us tonight: ‘Could there’, he said, ‘be some hidden secret behind those passionate eyes?’ One by one, clues have appeared which in retrospect we should have recognised to be indicative of the undercover man. I do not, of course, refer to Joseph’s numerous amorous adventures which took place between the sheets, for they were merely what, in other circumstances, might be termed the ‘tip of the iceberg’! There are two tell-tale clues by which you can usually recognise a spy. And I do not mean a cloak and dagger! One is ‘living above one’s income’, which Crabtree had been doing while he was at the Bank of England. The other is ‘making impetuous journeys’—and there has hardly been a year since our researches began when Crabtree has not turned up in some unlikely and hitherto unrecorded spot. Take, for example, his sudden dash in 1793 from the warmth of Mme. de Staël’ ménage to the cold mist of a Scottish castle to rendezvous with the Sage of Pittenweem. Even M.I.5 would have thought that suspicious! Then there was all that name-

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dropping he did—dropping the Crabtree and calling himself McGreggor… de Pommeraye…Blacket…Batty…Tischbein… And let’s have another look at that idea of Charles Peake about codes and cyphers. Did Crabtree perhaps use poetry as a form of cypher to convey messages across hostile frontiers? Suppose we start with the very first poem we know him to have written: his ‘ODE TO CLARET’. Juggle with those letters, my friends, and you will find they spell out a stern command: CLEAR ODETTO. What, in fact, could be clearer than that? (Unless, of course, it meant ‘CODE O’ to be used by someone called ‘RATTLE’.) We can well imagine how Crabtree first came to be hooked by the ‘craze of cryptography’ as it was fast becoming at that time. It has already been established that his family were Methodists. To the young Crabtree Methodism was a revolutionary movement about which he would have wanted some inside information. Once within their plain looking meeting house he would surely have been convinced that this was, in fact, a front organisation which had nothing to do with religion. Then on seeing a series of numbers on a board by the side of the speaker he would have recognised the cleverness of it all. Here was a code from which the indoctrinated would take their instructions from under the eyes of the congregation. We can guess at the fruitless hours he would have spent trying to uncover the meaning of those three digit groups, and the irony of findin g o ut t hat nu mbe r 320 sto ‘Art thou weary, art thou languid?’ Of course, he would soon have realised the usefulness of this ecclesiastical code: b y mere ly saying’ he could rouse his companion with the exhortation ‘beloved, let us love’, and if he were lucky he might get the reply ‘554’ which meant ‘O come and dwell in me.’ It is difficult to believe that Crabtree would not have exploited such a system to the full! This prompts me to recall to your attention what is probably the most often quoted of all the historical events in Crabtree’s life: the occasion when Wheatstone ran out on Faraday at the Royal Institution because, as Jones told us, he saw Crabtree in the audience. What he did not tell us was why this should have provoked such a torment in the mind of a Professor of Experimental Philosophy at King’s College who would surely have been accustomed to findin strange looking folk in his audience. At the risk of betraying what may still be an official secret I will tell you. Sir Charles Wheatstone was a skilled decipherer of cryptograms and the sight of Crabtree, whom he recognised as a kindred spirit, reminded him suddenly that he was due to decode a message which had come in that afternoon for Lord Palmerston—a message that turned out to say the Americans and Canadians had just discovered the 49th Parallel. Not all cryptographers were as good as Wheatstone. And just as today a machine is only as good as its operator, so it was in Crabtree’s day! When Pitt heard that Napoleon was massing ships and troops along the

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Mediterranean he ordered a signal to be sent to Nelson ‘to look after the French’. Unfortunately there was a slight error in the coding or transmission and the message was received by Nelson as an instruction to look after the wench. Being a fine patriotic fellow, Nelson put his country first, as you well know, and pressed on to the Nile but on his way back he remembered the directive and put into Naples to find Lady Hamilton. If you are doubting all this let me read you a passage from Nelson’s own diary on the day he arrived in the Bay of Naples:— A very clever young man came on board the Vanguard and was provided with letters recommending him to the British Consuls, Vice Consuls and merchants on his route to Bombay and authorising him to draw upon the East India Company for his expenses. We can tell from Datta’s revelations that this ‘clever youngman’ was Joseph Crabtree ostensibly on his way to India. Yet that must have been a cover story because shortly afterwards we hear of him returning to Naples where he had already made the acquaintance of Lady Hamilton in one of her ‘Attitudes’. Fascinated, as others had been, by her—shall we say, exhuberance,—Crabtree resolved to see more of her. That he got there shortly ahead of Nelson was perhaps fortunate for England’s destiny as much as Emma’s but he was soon to realise, as some present-day historians are beginning to discover, that Emma was not exactly a ‘push-over’. In fact she made it clear to Crabtree that she was now a Lady and in waiting for Nelson. This led Crabtree, who was not usually rebuffed in this way, to sulk and to wonder if her enthusi asm for the one-armed, one-eyed hero of Aboukir might possibly be a blind. Might she, he conjectured, be angling to squeeze secrets out of the newly promoted Admiral in return for something like perfume from the French. Crabtree decided to put his theory and Nelson’s security-rating to the test. To do this he concealed himself on the canopy over a four poster bed which Emma and Nelson were sharing and watched through a hole in the tapestry as Emma set about the act of seduction. Now, gentlemen, what Crabtree had reasoned was this: if, after their moment of ecstasy had passed, Emma were to roll her lover over on to his left side he would have neither an eye to see her with nor a hand by which to steer. He would therefore be entirely at her mercy for whatever mischief she might have in mind. I need hardly tell you, of course, that both Emma and Horatio passed their test, with Nelson coming out on top. As Sam Weller might have said: ‘He got a positive vetting!’ Another characteristic of the spy is his insatiable curiosity. We have ample evidence that Crabtree was inquisitive: his quest for knowledge led him to practise as vintner, banker, locksmith, proctor, binder, doghandler, opium-taker,—even alleged-rapist. It was curiosity that led him to follow

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up a report that a young German gentleman had been discovered using numbers in such an unauthodox manner as to be suspected of inventing a new cypher. It turned out that the German gentleman was called Carl Friedrich Gauss and that he was working on a new theory of ‘complex numbers’. Since every schoolboy in England has instinctively regarded all numbers as complex, it was difficult to persuade Crabtree that there was nothing sinister in the letter ‘i’ and that it did not stand in some way for something to do with intel–ligence. No spy would survive for long without the protection of a ‘safehouse’ and a ‘dead-letter-box’. That the houses of Uncle Oliver, the Vallons and Mme. de Staël were ‘safe’ should not be doubted. But what, I can hear you say, is a Dead Letter Box? No, it has nothing to do with the Post Office or a Sanitary Basket! It is simply a place to which one party in a conspiracy brings an article or message for another to pick up later, so that the two parties don’t meet and can’t compromise each other. There is a bizarre example of how Crabtree came to use a Dead Letter Box in the year 1796. This I found at the bottom of an old water butt in the courtyard of a Tyrolean monastery when I was looking for somewhere to throw our CocaCola tins while on holiday with the family last summer. It was a report in code from a British agent in Austria addressed to the British Ambassador in Berlin who some years previously had personall y spi ed on the Amer ican revolution aries to win support from the Emperor of Prussia. Using my special ‘Infa-fred’ apparatus I was able to decipher the report and what I am about to disclose will probably shock and surprise you. It should certainly explain why the report was censored and consigned to the bottom of the barrel. Napolean had just married Josephine. France was at war with almost everyone. Russia, Prussia and Austria were more interested in carving up Poland than taking on Napoleon. Pitt was at the helm in England wondering whether his allies weren’t more trouble than his enemy. Anxious, therefore, to know if his old allies, the Austrians, were more likely to attack Prussia, his new ally, than defend themselves against the French, Pitt called for a special agent to collect some ‘on the spot’ intelligence. The British spymaster in Vienna at that time was a Count Pishtov. (The ‘h’ was often silent, and so frequently was one of the ‘o’s’.) The count, as we had better call him, had arranged for a message from the Emperor’s court to be left with the Baroness von Liechtenstein by a courier known only by the code name Fritzie. Unfortunately Fritzie and the Baroness were in the habit of communicating their secrets in the only place where the Baroness felt secure, her bedroom. On this particular occasion, unknown to either of them, the Baron von Liechtenstein decided to seek an audience of his wife before going to his own room for the night. Such was their consternation on being caught inflagrante delicto that the first place Fritzie could think of

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to hide the offending capsule with the secret message was the avenue that had just been opened to him for a rather different purpose. And there it remained after the luckless Fritzie was thrown out by the furious Baron. Distraught at the loss of so useful an agent, and unsure what the Baroness would do with her precious contraband, Pishtov quickly sent in another courier to recover the capsule. This time the courier met the Baroness in a haystack on the outskirts of Innsbruck and quickly got to grips with her predicament. Unfortunately—and here I must warn any of you who may have a sensitive disposition, or be of a squeemish nature, to turn off your imagination for a moment, for the courier’s reach fell a little short of what was required to retrieve the article and he had to be replaced by a bigger fellow. It was at this point that Crabtree came to the rescue! Armed (if that is the right word) with a ladies silk handkerchief he presented his credential in a firm and confident manner and was received with the utmost pleasure by the reclining Baroness. It was a ticklish problem for which Crabtree had the perfect solution. What the adhesive was that he used on the end of the handkerchief must remain a trade secret! Tay, in 1965, claimed that Crabtree had anticipated the use of the oral contraceptive. I submit, sir, that we can now believe he also anticipated the condom! It was probably the recollection of this incident that led to the rumour which Byron put about and deceived Tattersall into believing Crabtree had been ‘emasculated’ at Guys Hospital in the year 1816. What actually happened according to unpublished records which I was shown on my first day in the Foreign Office is that in that year news of Pitt’s intention to repeal the law on income tax was leaked to the Spectator and Crabtree was suspected of being a Mole. His rooms were searched and when no incriminating evidence was found it was thought he might have used his famous Tyrolean trick to conceal rather than retrieve a missing document. He was subjected to a vigorous body search by the Matron of Guys Hospital. She reported to Sir Lancelot, the surgeon, that he had stood up well to her examination but had failed to produce anything of importance. Perhaps it was then that Jeremy Bentham coined his famous phrase, ‘What use is it?’ Gentlemen, it has been my good fortune to uncover some hitherto unsuspected skills of the man who was clearly much more than an ordinary poet—you might even say, a prototype Walter Mitty But I would not have you believe that all my researches over the past year have led to successful discoveries. Alone among your Orators I will freely admit that I have had my failures. Knowing that Thomas had told us of Crabtree’s retirement to Devon in 1832, I set out to Ashburton, overshot, and found myself in Cornwall. I had not long been in Cornwall when I came upon Truro Cathedral and a glance in the Give-Away Guide Book led me to believe for one glorious moment that I had stumbled on yet another of our poet’s

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hiding places. But it was not to be. A second reading of the page which had caught my eye told me that it could not possibly have referred to our Mr. Crabtree. ‘The small organ,’ it said, ‘in the East Wing was donated by Isabella Crabtree in memory of her husband.’ Thanks to the diligence of Professor Sutherland, and 29 others who have followed him, there is no longer any danger of the memory of Joseph Crabtree being diminished and I sincerely hope you will not interpret my disclosures this evening as damaging to the integrity of this man we so admire. That I have called him a spy must not offend you! He did not spy AGAINST us. He was recruited at Oxford in 1773 not at Cambridge in 1933! Rustication was only a ruse to confuse! Far from leaving the upper reaches of the Thames in disgrace he was floated away to embark upon a career of poetic patriotism, pioneering many of the methods and devices by which espionage was to progress from the ignominous to the glorious, from the disreputable to the respectable, from the crude ‘double-cross’ to ‘007’. His methods may seem to us now to have been at times indecent but we judge them with hindsight, 200 years away, and hindsight, gentlemen, is often not a pretty sight! On the evidence I have put before you tonight I suggest that we can recognise the work of a man who covertly worked for his Kings, as some of you may have done for University College. If, on the way, he improved himself a little financially, and added to his pleasures and comforts in life, who are we to cavil? I submit, sir, that the works of Joseph Crabtree were concealed from his contemporaries quite deliberately in the interests of national security and now that his selfsacrifice—like so many more of his qualities—has been exposed we should rejoice in his liberation and find for him a place among the giants of our literary heritage—in that part of our great cultural cathedral at Westminster known as Poets’ Corner.

32 JOSEPH CRABTREE AND THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL Bartolomeu dos Santos 1985

Among the unexplored areas in our poet’s life, the year 1787 attracted my attention. The year 1787, when Crabtree, then in Naples, was entrusted with a mission to Portugal. But before I develop my main line of research, allow me to quote to you from two texts written by British travellers to Portugal, as this will enlighten you on the degree of reciprocal understanding between the natives of our two countries. Wrote James Bruce in his still unpublished ‘Journal’, when in 1757 he visited Portugal with the professed object of being present at the vintage of the year: There are many particular customs in Portugal, all of which may be known by this rule, that whatever is done in the rest of the world in one way, is done in Portugal by the contrary, even to the rocking of the cradle, which, I believe, in all the rest of the world is from side to side, but in Portugal from head to foot. I fancy it is owing to this early contrariety that their brains work so different a manner all their lives after. While George Borrow, in his Bible in Spain, published in 1842, gives the following suggestions to any of his compatriots wishing to learn Portuguese: ‘Those who wish to make themselves understood by a foreigner in his own language, should speak with much noise and vociferation, opening their mouth wide’. It was to this country called Portugal that Crabtree was about to arrive from Italy in the year 1787. But why Naples? Why Portugal? Why the year 1787? In order to explain this sudden move from one country to another by our great poet, we have to go back in time to the year 1779, when in Weimar, and under the pseudonym ‘Batty’, Crabtree first made the acquaintance of Goethe. Larrett has demonstrated not only that Crabtree is ‘Batty’ in Germany, but also that under the pseudonym ‘Tischbein’ he and Goethe made the acquaintance of Sir William Hamilton and Emma Harte, the future 2nd Lady Hamilton, in Naples in the year 1787. The first stay of Crabtree in Naples lasted no more than two months, although it is possible that after his stay in Portugal, which lasted six months, he returned to Naples. We

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know that Crabtree/Tischbein decided to stay in Naples, after meeting Emma for the first time. If the friendship between Crabtree and his colleague Goethe has been proved past any doubt, I nevertheless question the suggestion, that Crabtree and Emma carried a less than platonic relationship under the very eyes of Sir William Hamilton, without the diplomat making at least a remark of reproach to express his displeasure and dissatisfaction with the goings on between the poet and the actress. If the frenzied relationship between Crabtree and Emma was to be stopped, in order to ensure the proper flow of History, which in this case included a future marriage as well as a victory at sea for Britain, Sir William would have to act, and act fast. And so he did. Meanwhile, a few thousand miles away and to the North West of Naples, another great Englishman, William Beckford of Fonthill, the dilettante of dilettantes, the collector, the eccentric, the richest man in England, was leaving Falmouth, on a planned visit to his plantations in Jamaica. The date of this departure? You guessed it right, Gentlemen!! March the 15th 1787, the very same day that Crabtree was introducing himself to Emma Harte in Naples! A coincidence? No Gentlemen! It was in fact Fate preparing the ground for these two great Englishmen to meet on that most Western of European countries, Portugal. At this point allow me to refresh your memories about William Beckford, also known as the Caliph of Fonthill. He was born at Fonthill on September the 29th 1759, which made him five years younger than Crabtree, and after a long minority inherited one million in cash, as well as one hundred thousand a year. This made him by far the richest man in England, not to say the world. If from his father’s side he could trace his ancestry to a Thomas Beckford of London, mentioned in Pepys’s Diary, his mother Maria was the daughter of the Hon George Hamilton, M.P. for Wells, and grand daughter of the 6th Earl of Abercorn. This means that Sir William Hamilton and Beckford were cousins!! Like Crabtree, Beckford was a precocious child in the fields of artistic creativity, although our poet, by Writing poems at the age of nine was beating the dilettante by eight years, Beckford’s History of Extraordinary Painters having been written in 1776. 1776 was also the year when Mozart was brought to Fonthill to instruct Beckford in five fingers exercises, and when the young composer took the opportunity of ‘borrowing’ from his pupil an aria that he had then improvised and which later Mozart used in Le Nozze di Figaro. So, we are facing a man with a wide range of interests, literary as well as musical, anxious to widen and develop these interests and with the financial capacity to do so. But was Beckford no more than a rich young man interested in the Arts? No Gentlemen! In fact, Beckford was the archetypal Romantic, a French decadent ‘avant la lettre’, with his Oriental obsessions, which he so well expressed in his History of the Caliph Vathek, not to mention his earlier book Dreams, Waking Thoughts and

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Incidents. If to Beckford’s un-English attitude to life we add a heart as sensitive as a windvane in a Biscay gale, the notorious Lady Craven, who called him ‘étrange arabe’, and a long and scandalous relationship with young William Courtenay, which his marriage to Lady Margaret Gordon didn’t stop, we can understand why, in spite of a marriage, and two ‘Grand Tours’, his tutors, as well as his Mother, were ready to despatch young Beckford to far away Jamaica. But this Oration is only about Beckford in as much as he crossed the path of Joseph William Crabtree, a man with a mode of behaviour and a lifestyle totally in opposition to that of Beckford. While Beckford was an extrovert, at least judging by English standards, and travelled across Europe with a large retinue and in an almost theatrical fashion, Crabtree moved across Europe and the World modestly and silently, like a ‘light cloud by the moon’, to quote a famous verse that Byron once stole from our great poet! This modesty, this avoidance of the limelight, if it is regarded as an attribute of the truly great, has nevertheless created such a vacuum of information, that the Crabtree Foundation had to be created, to throw light into the darkness that to this day still fluctuates over our poet’s life. Since that day, sparkling academic activity as well as controversy has been the hallmark of this House! Before starting my research on this complex subject, I carefully studied Crabtree’s ‘Curriculum Vitae’, that F.Carter compiled, and which proved to be an invaluable tool in my research. I also approached the History Department on a promising lead, which unfortunately took me nowhere. But above all, I took note of the wise counsels of my forerunners on how to come to terms with the difficulty of finding the man behind the mask…In Towards a Crabtree Bibliography Brown said, ‘he disguised himself well; but he also left clues for those who are intent on finding them’. Spencer stated ‘there is something unsubstantial about Crabtree’, while Cadwalleder goes even further, ‘I came across an epic account of that grim saga, and bearing the unmistakable stamp of Crabtree—Anonymous’. And so, armed with these precious counsels I started digging. We are now finally back in Falmouth and on board the Julius Caesar. Beckford, surrounded by a large retinue of assistants and servants, says farewell to England. The Julius Caesar raises anchor and starts on the first leg of its long trip to Jamaica. By the time it arrives in Lisbon nine days later, Beckford refuses to proceed, having been seasick most of the time. And so he disembarks in Lisbon, and by doing so says goodbye to Jamaica. His stay might have been very short, for Robert Walpole, the British Minister, aware of his reputation and under pressure from friends in England, refused to receive him or present him to the Queen of Portugal. This automatically excluded Beckford from official functions and from English society. But, by one of these twists of Fate, he is introduced to the Marquis of Marialva, the Queen’s favourite, a man twenty years his senior.

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And so Beckford stays in Lisbon, and close by Sintra, for eight months, on what was going to be his first of three trips to Portugal. But news travels fast, and no doubt, very soon after his departure from Falmouth, his cousin, Sir William Hamilton, with whom Beckford had stayed in Naples in October 1780, gets wind that Beckford is in Lisbon and already having problems with the local English residents. Was he going to behave in the same way as he had behaved in England, Sir William must have asked himself! Was he, going to behave once again as the true libertarian he was, and by doing so, rock the boat of the English Establishment? What to do? Gentlemen, the answer to this question was transparently clear! By sending Crabtree to Lisbon, he would not only separate our poet from Emma, and by doing so redress the course of History, but also be able to control the behaviour of his rich cousin through Crabtree’s powerful influence! And so, in one stroke Hamilton would kill two birds with the same stone! Predictably Beckford started a diary, only two months after disembarkation in Lisbon. Meanwhile Crabtree must have arrived in Lisbon, and so the stage is set for one of the literary world’s greatest pieces of censorship! But did Crabtree arrive in that fair city under his own name? Research on that line proved negative. Under an alias? Most certainly so, as this would befit not only with the poet’s modesty, but also with an old habit he had evolved due to his Uncle Oliver’s strictness towards him. And so, with great thoroughness I studied the first completed and uncensored edition of Beckford’s Diaries in the Peninsula, published as recently as 1954, by Rupert Hart-Davis, entitled The Journal of William Beckford in Portugal and Spain, 1787–1788, with a very complete study on the subject by Boyd Alexander, based on the original Diaries which are in the Hamilton Archives. Keeping in mind the recommendations made by Arthur Brown, I started looking for ‘those clues’ which he left ‘for those intent on finding them’. I sifted laboriously through the 256 names mentioned in the Diaries, to find only one name not worth a biographical note by Boyd Alexander. The name, Gentlemen, was that of Berti…Berti, the unknown assistant who appears suddenly on the 14th of June 1787, to be mentioned for the last time on the 21st of November, of the same year, just before Beckford departed to Madrid. Berti, ‘tout court’! Crabtree/Berti? I do believe so. Remember Crabtree/Batty in Weimar? Berti, Batty, very similar names! The same number of letters, the same B at the start! Using an English name in Germany, since he had arrived in Germany from England. Using a German name in Italy, since he had arrived in Italy from Germany. Logically using an Italian name in Portugal, since he had arrived in Portugal from Naples! But what about his mission? To act as a counsellor to the young Englishman, but also, if so required, to go further, and to delay, obstruct and undermine Beckford’s plans…to be a

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spanner in the works, to be an inquisitorial censor. And this Crabtree did with intelligence as well as with grace. By the time Crabtree arrived in Lisbon, probably on board the brig ‘Voador’ under the command of Lt. Daniel Thompson, Beckford was already entangled with one of the daughter’s of the Marquis, Dona Henriqueta, whom the Marquis was hoping he would marry, as well as with her younger brother, D. Pedro, aged thirteen; and of the two he preferred the latter. Arrives Crabtree, first mentioned in the Diary on an entry for the 14th of June. Beckford writes: I was wondering at this Jericho fashion of besieging one’s door, and starting at a rocket which shot up under my nose, when Berti entered with a crucifix on a silver salver and a mighty kind message from the nuns of the convent. There is no question that Crabtree had positioned himself in such a way, that by living in the house he was in an ideal position to observe, and so control the goings on of the young aristocrat. As for the Diary, Crabtree started censoring it straight away, and turning a compromising but unquestionably lively piece of literature, into a safe and emasculated one. And all this to pay for his sins with Emma! If in the quote that I just read, and which is from the original manuscript, the name Berti is clearly mentioned, in the first edition of the Diaries, published much later in 1834, Berti is simply mentioned as ‘a servant’. Crabtree’s meticulousness was such that even his own alias was omitted from the highly censored first edition! His name, which appears eight times in the manuscript is totally omitted from the printed work! Not surprisingly, in his preface to the 1834 edition Beckford makes a sardonic reference to ‘some justly admired author’. Who else could this author be except Crabtree? The thoroughness of Crabtree at ‘cleaning’ the original manuscript went to such an extreme, that even simple and inoffensive passages like the one I will now quote, were absent from the first edition. Writes Beckford while visiting the great convent of Mafra: ‘Two shabby looking Englishmen, Mr. Burn, the codfish merchant, and Sir John Swinnerton-Dyer confounded amongst the rabble watched all my motions’. Why omit the name Swinnerton-Dyer just because he looked shabby, confounds me! On the entry for the 16th of October Beckford writes: Berti, alias Twiddleman, is a severe clog upon active proceedings. He never gets up till half-past eight and diffuses his slugishness and stupor over my whole family. Owing to this double distilled spirit of slothfulness, the cook, instead of getting up at six was only getting-up in order to depart at ten, so I am obliged to dine here instead of going to Sintra.

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Crabtree, alias Berti, having gained from Beckford, Twiddleman as a new alias was successfully slowing down Beckford’ s activitie s, making any meeting difficult between his Master and D. Pedro, then in Sintra. On Saturday, the 11th of August the dilettante has to borrow Mr. Horne’s carriage due to ‘Berti having taken his arrangements for my departure so wretchedly’. And next day he complains about Berti’s ‘Indolence’. Crabtree’s obstructionism of Beckford’s activities was such that it was still remembered, seven years later, at the time of Beckford’s second visit to Portugal, by the mother of Dona Francisca, a young lady whose charms attracted Beckford during his first visit to Portugal. Speaking to Beckford she provides us with one of those ‘clues’ mentioned by Arthur Brown. Beckford is walking along a back street of the convent town of Alcobaca, when he hears a languid Brazilian tune being sung and played on a guitar: It only can be Dona Francisca! He shouts for her, and a latticed window is opened, ‘by a lovely arm—a well known arm’. Beckford runs up the steps, only to be confronted ‘not by the fascinating songstress, but by her sedate though very indulgent mother’. I know whom you are looking for, said the matron; but it is in vain. You have heard, you are not to see Francisca, who is no longer the giddy girl you used to dance with; her heart is turned…turned, I tell you, but turned to God. A most holy man, a saint, the very mirror of piety for his years—he is not yet forty, operated this blessed change. You know how lighthearted and almost indiscreetly so, my poor dear heart’s comfort was. You recollect hearing, and you were terribly angry, I remember, that the English padre told the Queen’s Lady-inWaiting it was shameful how rapturously my poor dear girl rattled her castagnets, and threw back her head, and put forward every other part of her dear little person, at the Factory ball—SHAME ON HIM, SCANDALOUS OLD CRABBED HERETIC! Although with the passing of time Francisca’s Mother confused Crabtree with the English padre, as they both spoke English and dressed in black, do you want a more blatant allusion to our poet than the expression ‘Crabbed heretic’? But in spite of all this the relationship between the two writers must have improved as on his last mention of Berti, on November the 8th, Beckford writes: ‘wax torches that Berti had set most loyally a-blazing’. What lead to this ‘volte face’ on our poet’s part? I believe the answer to this is clear. Imagine, Gentlemen, two aristocrats together; one, the aristocrat of the ‘Belles Lettres’, the other, the aristocrat of poetry, more precisely of underground poetry This common platform, this natural understanding between two people with a dedication to literature and writing, was bound to be a cause of ‘raprochement’ between the two great men. Add to this,

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the need that Crabtree had, of some help with a translation from the German, as we shall very soon see, as well as a common interest in the byproducts of the vine, and it will be easy for us to understand why, by the end of his stay in Portugal, Beckford employs the word loyal when referring to Crabtree. There are strong reasons to believe that Crabtree, assisted by Beckford, translated into English, while in Portugal, Johann Karl August Musaus’ collection of folk stories Volksmärchen der Deutschen. As you all know, Musaus was born in Germany in 1735 and by 1763 was Master of the Court pages in Weimar and was accepted as Professor at the Weimar Gymnasium in 1769. He was the author of a number of books, including Physiognomische Reisen written in the manner of Sterne during the years 1778/9. 1779 was of course the year when Crabtree was in Weimar. Would it be conceivable that in such a small town Goethe wouldn’t have introduced Crabtree to such an important person as Musaus? A man who had been ‘Master of the Court Pages’! They must have met! Later on, Musaus published in eight volumes (remember that he was German), his Volksmärchen der Deutschen; the years of publication were from 1782 to 1786, the year that Crabtree met Goethe in Rome. Suddenly the pieces of this puzzle fall together! Crabtree is asked to translate into English the Volksmärchen, the request being made via Goethe who hands over to Crabtree the eight recently published volumes. Crabtree goes to Naples, and from there to Lisbon for reasons already explained. There he meets Beckford, who was an expert linguist, as he spoke six languages fluently including the German language. And so Crabtree, who only spoke his own language well, not an unheard of phenomena among the citizens of the British Isles, uses Beckford expertise to translate the work of his friend. The English translation was published by Murray in 1791. The translation is anonymous and has traditionally been attributed to Beckford. Zillah M. Watts, in his Talisman, or the English Keepsake which he published in 1832 writes: ‘A considerab le deg re e of cu ity has attached to these volumes in consequence of them having been attributed…to the pen of the author of The Memoirs of the Caliph Vathek’. And Guy Chapman in his Travel Diaries of Willia m Beckfo rd af quoting Zillah M. Watts, adds: ‘Sir John Murray was kind enough to turn up the records of his house for me but was unable to discover any trace of the book’. Obviously this remarkable translation is not of the responsibility of Beckford or he certainly would have claimed its authorship. Instead, everything, even its anonymity, points out to the translator being the same man who later on in 1791 wrote the immortal Ode to Claret. What could be more natural that the two friends entered into joint ventures in the discovery of the local wines? Especially the famous ‘Colares’, a wine with

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characteristics similar to Claret, and produced in the Sintra area and the ports also to be found in the cellars of the Marquis of Marialva? Was the experience gained by Crabtree at his Uncle’s business in Orleans going to be wasted? Certainly not, Gentlemen! And proof of this lies in two separate pieces of information which until today never have been interpreted in their true meaning. First: Don Jose de Sousa Botelho, Lord of Mateus, invited Beckford on the 4th of September 1787 to visit his properties in the North, but that Beckford declined and asked Crabtree to go in his place. That it was due to Crabtree’s expertise and flair during a wine tasting that lasted until sunrise, and that is still remembered in the neighbouring town of ‘Vila Real’ as the ‘Night of the Englishman’, that Don Jose Mateus first realised the potential of his Estate’s Rosés as suitable for the English palate. Also that Crabtree, by advising on the practical way of removing some obstructing rocks from the upper Douro river, as mentioned in The Wine Trade, by A.D.Francis, helped to increase the export of port to Britain from 31,770 pipes in 1787, the year he was there, to 48,136 in 1792. Second: The limerick still recited today by the descendants of eighteenth century English families during the cold nights in Sintra, when they warm themselves with bottles of Colares and port, doesn’t refer, as tradition suggests, to the visit of Lord Byron to that town in the year 1809, but instead reminds us of a visit over two centuries ago, of the greatest of English poets. There was a young poet from England Who came to old Sintra disguised. His favourite sport Was Colares and Port. He was happy but no more the wise.

33 CRABTREE’S THEOREM James Lighthill 1986

Mingling reverentially over the years amongst all the awe-inspiring depth of Crabtree scholarship in its literary, linguistic, artistic, historical, legal, medical, pharmaceutical, electromagnetic and divers other modes, a mere mathematician has felt the impossibility of ever making a contribution that could stand alongside the imposing monuments to our poet raised by the giants of the discipline. Ineluctably, one of your Foundation’s members was conscious, beside those massive erections, of an unaccustomed sense of impotence. With Joseph Crabtree, of course, as with that comparably polymathic genius Francis Bacon, it could be seen as tempting to go far beyond the legitimate bounds of historicoliterary speculation and attribute hastily, without proper scrutiny of evidence to the contrary, works of genius of hitherto accepted provenance to an age’s most widely-ranging mind. But no!—Crabtree scholarship has always firmly set its face against any such trifling with the inexorable dictates of our precious scource material in all its majestic albeit tantalising sparseness. Mere speculation could never find a place alongside the established works of rigorously analytical definition and exegesis of the Crabtree oeuvre. And so over the years I reconciled myself to my inactive posture as a naïf imbiber of all the scholarly nectar decanted from deep reservoirs of wisdom in those whom I felt fortunate to call colleagues but whom I could never aspire to emulate. Then the blind workings of stochastic serendipity, for which no individual scholar can claim any credit at all, brought me gradually amongst the company of those dedicated to identifying that part within the historical development of the human consciousness which had been played by our polymath’s hitherto unrecognized insights. There was no one moment encapsulating this change of direction of my scholarly activity. I had rather been led towards a reluctant acknowledgment of the inevitability of gradualness in the progress of research as I contemplated the extraordinary depth of the dilemmas facing me in my work as wouldbe historian of the Decline and Fall of Classical Algebra. But here I must seek if at all possible to shun what Smith, quoting Mark Twain, called ‘that gravity, that profundity and that impressive

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incomprehensibility which are so proper to works of solemn scientific inquiry’. Being most firmly of the opinion that higher algebra is accessible to everyone I will just remind you of some facts which may no longer be in the forefront of all your minds but have long been known without exception to the proverbial ‘every schoolboy’ including without doubt the precocious Joseph Crabtree as he browsed in the school library during his boyhood years in the Cotswold village of Chipping Sodbury. I make no apology for venturing to set forth from what some may feel to be the all too familiar jumping-off groun d of QUADRATIC EQUATIONS, called quadratic because of the presence of the x squared term in an equation such as The young Joseph was of course fully familiar with this elementary equation and with its standard solution requiring us to extract the square root of . All this and more had been needed for the brilliant thirteenyear old to carry out that devastatingly enlightening critical juxtaposition of some of the more extreme concepts propagated by his namesake Joseph Priestley in an otherwise sound History of Electricity with the conservative doctrines of Newton’s Principia upon which Jones has riveted our collective attention. The algebra text which will have found its place alongside these last-named works of physics in the Chipping Sodbury school library must have been the standard De Algebra Tractatus of John Wallis, reprinted in so many editions in the eighteenth century; indeed, the most arduous Sodburian researches pursued with rigour and devotion have never even suggested that this indispensable tome was absent from the school’s copiously stocked shelves. We can be certain that its early sections on the theory of the quadratic equation did indeed imprint themselves on the receptive though critical mind of Joseph Crabtree because later on he was to need that material in order to comprehend in its totality Thomas Young’s wave theory, which he was able to subject to such penetratingly perceptive criticism. Nothing, of course, could have been more natural than for our inquisitive young scholar to be simultaneously tasting at two separate branches of the Pierian spring, wooed not only by the muse of amorous poetry, Erato, but also by that austere Pythagorean Queen of the universe, Mathematics. Profound insight was shown by the great nineteenth-century mathematician Karl Weierstrass, when he wrote, ‘A mathematician who is not also something of a poet will never be a complete mathematician’; and so it was with Joseph Crabtree. Tay demonstrated how Erasmus Darwin’s lectures led Crabtree into evolu? tionary questions, while at the same time generating in him a healthy scepticism towards unproven assumptions in this as in many other areas; which must be a lesson to us all. No doubt the Swan of Sodbury had been drawn to those lectures by an instinctive

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sympathy towards a fellow poet-scientist; one, indeed, whose later works such as The Loves of the Plants have been shown by Freeman to stem from Crabtreaceous roots. And this brings us back to the extraction of roots which, with regard to quadratic equations, plays so fundamental a role in that general solution (with its emphasis on the square root of b2–4ac) which had fascinated Crabtree. From his dearly loved De Algebra Tractatus he must have known how in an exactly similar way the extraction of a cube root comes into the general solution of a cubic equation (that is an equation including not only x squared but also x cubed) published in 1539 by Cardano. This will have drawn him on to the case of a general quartic equation (including x to the power of four) with its solution also disclosed by Cardano in his profound treatise the Ars Magna; an equation whose general solution requires, not perhaps surprisingly the extraction of fourth roots. Now in all likelihood there may be some in the audience who are expecting me to reveal that the young Crabtree (for, indeed, mathematics has been truthfully designated by the late G.H.Hardy as ‘a young man’s game’) may have simply gone on from cubics and quartics to the case of a quintic equation (one bringing in x to the power five) and found a solution in the shape of formula involving a finite sequence of operations of addition, multiplication, division and extraction of roots. Such a relatively pedestrian discovery, while not perhaps worthy of stigmatization in.the words of the Royal Society’s Standing Order No. 42 as ‘mere accumulation of detail’ and therefore unworthy of publication by the Society, would nevertheless have lacked the characteristics that make it suitable for concentrated historical analysis in front of a great learned Foundation two centuries later. It is indeed even probable that Crabtree, like another precocious genius Niels Henrik Abel studying in Oslo four decades later, may have temporarily believed he had cracked this problem which had been specified in Wallis’s Tractatus as unsolved. Abel was to submit his ‘solution’ for publication; but soon afterwards to withdraw the paper after finding a serious error in it and before a referee had reported. Crabtree, noted for what a predecessor characterized as ‘the studied deliberation with which he refused to publish anything but an occasional gem under his own name’, will have refrained from exposing himself in so puerile a fashion. Yet on finding the mistake he may have been spurred, unlike Abel, to ask the much more fundamental question whether it is indeed possible to express the solution of a general quintic in the shape of a formula involving a finite sequence of opera? tions of addition, multiplication, division and extraction of roots. As every mathematician now knows the answer is in the negative and the proof that no such formula is possible was only able to be achieved by abandoning as insufficient all the weapons of Classical Algebra and putting on instead the whole armour of Groups, Rings and Fields; that armour

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with which our modern algebraists sally forth to win their Fields Medals! If, indeed, all this panoply of new ideas came from the fertile mind of the young Crabtree, he certainly did not allow any of them to filter out into the literature for many decades; indeed, not until 1832. This was the year when, as Thomas demonstrated, Crabtree chose to abandon the legal practice he had long pursued in London; yet it may have been more than simply an old man’s disgust with the Reform Bill that led him to shake off those shackles. He may rather, in 1832, have felt drawn to make yet another visit to his beloved France now that the revolutionary excesses of 1830 were over; that France with which our savant interacted continuously from, as Tancock was to put it, the age of Louis Quinze up to the beginning of the Second Empire. But he could have had a rather special motive for making this visit. Within the England (and even in the Scotland) of the first third of the nineteenth century there was absolutely no pure mathematician of standing. The days of Wallis and Newton and Maclaurin were over and the centre of gravity of mathematical development had moved to France and Germany. If Joseph Crabtree had at last decided to reveal epoch-making new ideas in algebra to the world, there was no chance of their being taken seriously as coming from the British Isles, ‘Das Land ohne Mathematik’ as it seemed then to Carl Friedrich Gauss. In fact every paper sent to Germany was simply suppressed by Gauss who took the view that any interesting discovery in mathematics must merely duplicate one of the numerous existing works that he had carried out as a young man but never had time to publish. In these circumstances what could have been more natural than for Joseph Crabtree to turn to France and to attempt to father his own boyhood insights on some young Frenchman who might then die in romantic circumstances which would appeal to the French and cause them to take seriously the ideas of their deceased compatriot; determined as they still were in 1832 that Paris was the intellectual centre of the world so that revolutionary discoveries in mathematics were clearly ten times as likely to have been made in Paris as in all other locations put together. These are the conclusions to which decades of study of the entire primary source material on the birth of Modern Algebra, a birth leading as I put it earlier to the Decline and Fall of Classical Algebra, have inexorably led me. Nevertheless I am obliged to convince my audience, and to this end I must first give a true summary of that primary source material which is mainly to be found in an article by Auguste Chevalier in the Revue Encyclopédique for 1832. This purports to be an Obituary of a friend of M.Chevalier named Evariste Galois who at the age of 20 was killed in a duel employing pistols at 25 paces. The object of the article is to insinuate that Galois was the inventor of all the ideas and discoveries in Modern Algebra to which I have alluded; and, indeed, this is the view which the

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world of mathematics has generally accepted, utilising phrases such as Galois Fields and Galois Extensions and supposing that such a fundamental definition as that of a simple group is due to the youthful Galois. Yet Chevalier’s own account is riddled with inconsistencies. He states that there is no record of mathematical talent on either side of Galois’ family. (How different from that of Crabtree whose ancestor Henry Krabtree has been singled out by Smith for his scientific curiosity and authority!) Again, the young Evariste Galois received no teaching except from his mother till he was 12 years of age. Then he entered the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. There his work was reported as equally mediocre in Latin, Greek and mathematics, while his conduct is stated to have been contemptibly dissipated. Later he is said to have browsed superficially in the works of Adrien Marie Legendre and our old friend Niels Henrik Abel, and to have put on some airs affecting ambition and originality. We all know those students! Both in 1827 and in 1829 he failed the examination for entry to the Ecole Polytechnique, being so frustrated during the oral on the latter occasion that he threw an india rubber at his examiner’s face. He affected ambition to the extent of submitting a paper to the great AugustinLouis Cauchy but whatever that paper was it was rejected by Cauchy; who has been regarded by history as a fair-minded man. Chevalier goes on to strain our credulity with a story of another brilliant manuscript submitted to the Académie des Sciences for the Grand Prize in Mathematics and of a sequel in which the Secretary to the Academy dies suddenly ‘without having had time to look at’ a submission of which no trace is subsequently found among his papers! Later, the distinguished mathematician Siméon-Denis Poisson, also known as a fair judge, is said to have rejected contemptuously a Galois paper. By then Galois was spending most of his time participating in the 1830 revolution as an artilleryman of the Garde Nationale. Later, the artillery was disbanded and Evariste was brought to trial for drinking Louis Philippe’s health with an open pocketknife in his hand. He was acquitted after pleading that he had been cutting up his dinner with the knife; but then he was rearrested and imprisoned for six months for contumaciously continuing to wear his artilleryman’s uniform. On his emergence from prison he is stated to have been amorously entrapped and indeed ‘initiated’ by an individual described as ‘quelque coquette de bas étage’. What a contrast to those far more civilised initiations described by Freeman in Crabtree and Country Matters! The Galois liaison led directly to his fatal duel about which he wrote ‘I die the victim of an infamous coquette’. Finally, Chevalier asks us to believe that the last twenty-four hours of Galois’ life were devoted to writing out a complete prospectus for all of the subsequent developments in modern algebra, a process during which he kept breaking off to scribble in the margin the words ‘I have no time! I have no time!’

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It is impossible to stress too strongly how unlikely the story by Chevalier may appear to anyone who knows the complexity of the new ideas expounded in that so-called ‘scientific last will and testament’. Time and again, I have studied Chevalier’s implausible account and mused about what the truth must have been. Evidently Galois was ideal material for use by a genius of exceptional modesty who had spent a lifetime perfecting original ideas which he (the genius) had fashioned first of all in the brilliance of his youth and now sought to launch on a sceptical world in his old age in a manner that would ensure their acceptance. Galois was ambitious (nay, desperate!) for mathematical recognition. Here was a chance, with his pathetic young life just about to reach its end, for him to win that posthumously. Half understanding the theory described to him he will have begun feverishly copying from his mentor’s manuscripts conscious as the moment of the duel approached that there was no time, no time to complete the copying process. Yet I have long been aware that none of these conjectures revising the history of algebra could have any chance of acceptance, unless an identity for that hidden mentor could be discovered and unless some substantiation could be given for some of the ideas having existed long before Galois was born. Here my historical researches must have been influenced, unconsciously at least, by all I had imbibed from the scholarly activities of this Foundation. Nevertheless it was hard indeed to complete the puzzle by identifying reliably who might have been the ‘onlie begetter’ of what we traditionally call the Galois theory, with its power to transform an entire branch of human knowledge. And then, surprisingly, it was none of my colleagues in this Foundation who gave me the ultimate clue which I needed; rather, it was John Keats. In pondering how I could identify someone capable of changing the face of algebra I suddenly thought of Keats’s sonnet which begins, ‘Great spirits now on earth are sojourning’. Keats knew Crabtree of course; and Tattersall has traced the powerful influence of our poet’s Ode to Claret on Keats’s uncharacteristically derivative passage beginning, O for a draught of vintage that hath been Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth. Yet in the octet of the ‘Great Spirits’ sonnet he chooses to allude first to Wordsworth and then to Leigh Hunt. Then the association of ideas perhaps, with Leigh Hunt and Joseph Crabtree having both served spells in prison, seems to lead him to make an unmistakable choice within the sestet where he writes,

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And other spirits there are standing apart Upon the forehead of the age to come; These, these will give the world another heart, And other pulses. Here ye not the hum Of mighty workings from wise Joseph’s art? Listen awhile, ye nations, and be dumb. Later of course, probably in response to Crabtree’s protests regarding the confidentiality of their conversations in the field of Algebra, he was to suppress the conclusion of the line beginning ‘Of mighty workings…’ It was impossible to match the rhyming felicity of the phrase ‘…from wise Joseph’s art’ although one of Keats’s notebooks shows that he tried the rather weak ‘…in some distant Mart’ from which he was discouraged by Benjamin Robert Haydon. Finally he was to adopt the aposiopesis which we know today: …Hear ye not the hum Of mighty workings?— Listen awhile, ye nations, and be dumb. Yet to us in the Crabtree Foundation the omitted words shout just as loud as if they had been printed. Crabtree appreciated being bracketed by his young friend Keats with Wordsworth and Leigh Hunt, and he seems to have seen Byron too as a kindred spirit, not only because of a common devotion to the muse Erato, but also because of his penchant for swimming. Visiting that small Channel Island Sark, I found ancient records in the vile Sark patois, so much rougher than its kindred Guernsey dialect, which seemed to refer to a poet-mathematician ‘qui nageoit atour de lisle’ and the local suggestion that it was Byron (who was practicall innumerate) must be rejected in favour of the far more plausible Crabtree. Often our poet must have meditated on the quincunx of seminal poets Byron, Crabtree, Keats, Leigh Hunt and Wordsworth, to give them in alphabetical order; and then he will have permuted the orders in accordance with various different kinds of criteria, generating several different permutations. Suddenly, in the course of these meditations, he must have come across the fundamental fact which, in the language of group theory, prevents the quintic equation being soluble in terms of extractions of roots. It is the fact that the group of even permutations of any five individuals is a simple group without normal subgroups. Immediately the last splendid link in the great chain of deductive inference leapt into place and he abandoned his legal practice and set off for Paris where he found Galois all ready to be tempted by the offer of posthumous glory. Crabtree with that partial

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medical background, which he shared with Keats, was no doubt successful in offering his medical services for the duel at 25 paces in order to ensure that the ambitious young man should not be barred by any unwanted physical survival from the scientific immortality which his acquiescence had earned him. Crabtree afterwards could retire to Ashburton in Devon and peacefully enjoy the consciousness of having transformed an entire branch of mathematical knowledge. As Larratt indicated in another context, ‘final proof eludes us’; always a distressing matter to a mathematician. Nevertheless, I have to confess that I for one do now feel fully justified in abandoning, within all of my future writings in the field of algebra, misleading designations such as Galois Fields and Galois Extensions in favour of the much more roundly sounding, and historically based, Crabtree Fields and Crabtree Extensions; and above all I shall always refer to the theorem that the solutions of a quintic equation cannot be expressed through a formula involving a finite number of additions, multiplications, divisions and extractions of roots as CRABTREE’S THEOREM.

34 JOSEPH CRABTREE AND THE KELTIC TWILIGHT Frank Delaney 1987

My oration is entitled ‘Joseph Crabtree and the Keltic Imperative’. In translation, the title becomes ‘Seosamh Mac an Crann Ull Beag agus Pog Mo Hone’. As Wittgenstein put it in section 1 of his Philosophical Investigations, ‘Words are Deeds’—therefore I had intended, Mr. President, with your permission, to deliver the entire oration in Gaelic. However I have, in the event of the kind of protestation I feel you are about to make, included a translation. And therefore I will deliver it instead. By the Keltic Imperative, I mean the energising which Yeats and to a lesser extent, James Joyce, derived from the presence of Joseph Crabtree. You will notice that the order paper this evening spells Keltic with a ‘C’, thereby inviting some of you to pronounce it Seltic. This is wrong, let me explain. The original Mediterranean word for these European migratory tribal peoples, first found in Herodotus, was attached to a single tribe or perhaps a group of tribes in Iberia. They were called ‘Keltoi’—a name which may be taken to mean ‘outsiders’, or ‘strangers’, that is to say nonMediterraneans. On the other hand, one particular etymological reference suggests that they took their name from a small metalworker’s chisel, in use at the very end of the Bronze Age, and developed by the ironworking Europeans whose imperative we are here to have illuminated, and that chisel was known as a ‘selt’, with an ‘S’. The great poet, William Butler Yeats, whose work illuminates my Oration this evening, understood this problem and explained it by reversing it. He was, he claimed, greeted by an American who embraced him, much to the great man’s distaste, and who said, ‘Gee, Mr. Yeats, I am so pleased to meet you. I am such an admirer of your poetry. And I am of Scottish descent, with a little Welsh blood, so I am so delighted to be related to you, we are both Selts, Mr. Yeats.’ The great poet looked carefully at him and said, ‘No—I am a Selt, you, sir, are a Sunt.’ Crabtree had the most profound impression and influence upon Yeats and he is, I believe, directly responsible for the Keltic Imperative, that is to say, the legendary and mythological connotations deployed to such great

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effect in Yeats’s work. Crabtree may have directly inspired Yeats’s last great poem, Under Ben Bulben, a reference which might be taken to mean Pitt. No, Mr. President, no gentlemen: Under Ben Bulben did not connect in any euphemistic way with the Crabtree/Pitt relationship, neither did Yeats have a relationship with a gnarled man from Sligo called Ben Bulben. I will come to the poem later. And how, you must ask yourselves, how did Yeats, in his occult period, put his hand enquiringly into Madam Blavatsky’s box, and what did he find in there? In Yeats’s play The Player Queen (not a reference to Pitt) Septimus says to The First Countryman, the Second Countryman and the Big Countryman. Did I hear somebody say the Unicorn is not chaste? It is a most noble beast, a most religious beast. It has a milk-white skin and a milkwhite horn and milk-white hooves, but a mild blue eye and it dances in the sun. I will have no one speak against it, not while I am still upon the earth. It is written in the Great Beastery of Paris that it is chaste, that it is the most chaste of all the beasts in the world. That he was mythically moved in the same way as Crabtree is undoubted. In 1967 Bennett reported that Crabtree was trying an interesting experiment in that he was anticipating by some 140 years the activities of the present-day Barrow Poets. To encourage young poets Crabtree became a publisher and he with one or two young fellows would sell their broadsheet poems and ballads from street stalls. This shrewd scholarship opens the Yeats file. Yeats’s mother was a Pollexfen from County Sligo. Now regard the word. (Sligo has a penchant for odd nomination. The Yeats family solicitors, still there at Teeling Street Sligo, called Argue & Phibbs.) Dwell on the word ‘Pollexfen’. Pollex seems, though a little changed etymologically, seems clear enough. ‘Fen’, in this context, is a corruption of the Galeic word, ‘Fionn’, meaning white or silver in colour, usually of hair. Pollexfen, therefore, means in its most traditional form, silvery pubic hair. You can, gentlemen, anticipate me. One of Yeats’s most famous poems is The Song of Wandering Aengus. It begins, as you know, I went out to the hazel wood Because a fire was in my head And cut and peeled a hazel wand And hooked a berry to a thread.

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You see, already it begins to appear, hazel wand, meaning ‘cudgel’. The poem then describes how the poet caught a trout which changed into a glimmering girl, ‘with apple blossom in her hair/Who called me by my name and ran/And faded hrough the brighening air.’ Are you not reminded immediately of the Wordsworthian lines, which we have so often had the wisdom to question, ‘Dim sadness and blind thoughts, I knew not nor could name,’—Because our Keltic bard ends with the lines I will find out where she has gone And kiss her lips and take her hands, And walk among long dappled grass And pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon the golden apples of the sun. There, gentlemen, you have it. Pollexfen, Crabtree, the Munster poets and their influence on Yeats, remember the euphemistic use of Crabtrees. Now we have Pollexfen, silver pubic hair, the silver apples of the moon. And here above all is the point. Yeats’s great uncle on the Pollexfen side was a close friend of John Murray, and he also had a great interest—he was an amateur veterinarian—in male sterility. In 1811, Crabtree met John Murray; the painting hanging in Albemarle Street shows a variety of young and middle aged men in various positions, and in 1816, in that extraordinary operation in Guy’s Hospital at the hands of Sir Lancelot Pratt. Yeats’s great uncle Pollexfen was present. The Yeatses and the Pratts were closely connected. And the Pollexfen uncle brought home to Sligo a selection of Crabtree’s poems which the young Yeats later discovered and plagiarised as shamefully as he plagiarised the French writers from whose work he translated the famous poem, which begins ‘When you are old and gray and full of sleep’. Would that Yeats had only followed my good friend Wittgenstein when he says, ‘No one can think a thought for me in the way no one can don my hat for me.’ It gets worse: remember James Lackington’s course of reading for Crabtree, in our august commemorand’s own description, ‘Plato and Seneca and Plutarch and Epicurus, and other of the pagan philosophers, etc.’ Well, I ask you, listen to this, From Yeats’s last poems; His chosen comrades thought at school He must grow a famous man. He thought the same and lived by rule. All his twenties crammed wih toil; What then, sang Plato’s ghost, what then?

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And, indeed, what are we to make of the similarities between Crabtree and Mlle Vallon and Yeats and Maude Gonne? I take the view that Yeats relationship with Madam MacBride had a lot that was fraudulent in it. But listen to this, the much disputed lines of Wordsworth, ‘wanting yet the name of wife, carried about her for a secret grief the promise of a mother.’ When Yeats wrote Prayer for My Daughter, how much did he plagiarise? Some random lines. ‘I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour’ and ‘It is certain that fine women eat A crazy salad with their meat’ and ‘Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone’. Clearly a reference inspired by Crabtree’s operation. And—‘May she become a flourishing hidden tree’. And one more—a reference to Mlle Vallon and Wordsworth. Have I not seen the loveliest woman born Out of the mouth of Plenty’s Horn Because of her opinionated mind Barter that horn and every good By quiet natures understood For an old bellows full of angry wind. Wordsworth was intensely disliked by Annette Vallon. Crabtree was in his thirty-seventh year when he met Paul Vallon’s sister in Paris, the very same year of his, aged 37, and place, Paris, in which Yeats was later to have claimed that Maud Gonne refused to consummate their relationship. ‘My Willie’, she cried, she was the first of the feminists, ‘Oh my Willie. Do not marry me and out of my Willie will pour great poetry.’ We come now to the business of the monkey gland. By which means we finally arrive under Ben Bulben. The operation had, as we know, a profound effect upon Crabtree. Tattersall puts it very poignantly. How Crabtree reflected upon Teiresias, the seer of Hebes, who was asked which of the two sexes derived the greater pleasure from sexual intercourse— Yeats called it ‘Carnival Knowledge’—had said after brief reflection, ‘the woman’. I quote Tattersall. ‘Crabtree pondered this long, and saw a way of turning the misfortune that had struck him, into gain—of having it both ways. He got Keats to arrange a consultation with Sir Lancelot and asked the surgeon whether he could complete for him a sex change operation’ and Tattersall concludes, ‘A few deft slashes, a couple of neat folds, some stitches and dressings; and Josephine Crabtree was born.’ In his plays, in his great seminal spiritual work, A Vision, where he venures ever deeper into Madam Blavasky’s box, and above all in his poems,

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Yeats asks that he find the strength to ‘re-make himself again and again’. The greatest of Yeats’s Celtic poems, The Wanderings of Oisin, summarises the Crabtree Keltic Imperative and Inheritance. Oisin or Ossian, as you may prefer, meets Parick on the shore, in a most moving scene. Ossian descends and in a flash all the three hundred years he has lived in the Land of Eternal Youth are upon his shoulders. But Yeats in a reference to Crabtree—as he later acknowledged to Lady Gregory, who had a pathological interest in Crabtree’s operation—wrote these lines. Why do you wind no horn, she said, And every hero droop his head? The hornless deer is no more sad That many a peaceful moment had. Here in the very fountain of Celtic mythology, the legends of Finn MacCool and the Fianna we find Crabtree’s influence on Yeats. And furthermore, in his ‘Helen Walked’ poem, even the Homeric reference is not free from allusions to topless towers. I am overcome. I will conclude. There are two families of Crabtree in the west of Ireland, one in Newmarket-on-Fergus, one in Limerick. Both families have blood relatives in Orleans, one is in fact a wine importer, the other worked for a time with Gerry Cottle’s Circus. The Limerick branch has in its possession a strange letter or it may be a copy, dated to the Spring of 1837, and written by a woman called Marichen Ibsen. I refer you to Joseph Crabtree and the North by Peter Foote. The letter clearly asks for an address for this man of the same name, and reference is made to his ‘versatility’, his ‘capacity to be allround pleasing’, I am translating, ‘to a woman’. The other family, in Newmarket-on-Fergus, was visited by Yeats in 1935, just before he contemplated leaving Ireland for ever; he died, as you will remember, in Antibes. He asked very carefully whether they had any literary ancestors and they produced for him some papers they had, entitled Broadsheets and Parodies. On it he found this ballad. Under bare Ben Bulben’s prick Of discomfort, in the graveyard Called Drumcliff I laid a local girl To rest while the great balls Of fire which burnt my mind ran To thoughts of Pollux And Castor, and Pollexfen. I came and came upon my own mortality, And looked up its uncertainties. I carved for myself an epitaph

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Which would immortalise my descendants. Cast a cold eye, On life, on death, May you live as long as you want to, May you want to as long as you live; Bees do it and die, Kings do it and sigh: I can’t do it and I’ll tell you why; I have a love and I promised to be true, But I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll lie still and let you. This was later plagiarised and translated into Gaelic by the playwright, Brendan Behan, who tried to pass it off as one of the verses written by the poets of the Maigue who invented the limerick.

35 CRABTREE AND POLITICAL ARITHMETICK Negley Harte 1988

I chanced upon the theme which I hope will be found to be important enough to lay before the Foundation tonight while reading the inscription on a relatively obscure tomb, a source which scholars in this Foundation will readily recognise as being of almost equal importance to the deciphering of apparently cryptic dedications in books, the teasing out of previously unperceived acrostics in works of poetry, and the careful scrutiny of overlooked erratum slips, in the advancement of Crabtree studies. The tomb was in that City church named after St. Benet—a church, I should say, not named after a distinguished earlier orator—and the tomb was that of Gregory King. As the inscription on the tomb has it, Gregory King, who lived from 1648 to 1712, was ‘a skilful herald, a good accomptant, surveyor, and mathematician, a curious penman, and well versed in political arithmetick…’ Among economic and social historians in recent years, Gregory King has come to occupy the leading place he deserves among the precursors of numeracy in the study of society. We now know that in the 1690s he was the first contemporary ever to attempt to calculate more or less reliable population figures for England and Wales, over a century before the first formal census. His demographic data for family size and household structure lay the basis for our knowledge of what the French demographic historian Louis Henry has otherwise called ‘the pre-statistical past’. Gregory King’s ‘Scheme of the Income and Expense of the Several Families of England calculated for the Year 1688’ lays the basis of national income accounting perceived historically, and all modern attempts to explain the origins of economic growth start with Kings figures. His contemporary William Petty coined the term ‘political arithmetick’ in the 1670s to refer to the numerical study of social facts, and it was John Graunt’s Natural and Political Observations on the London Bills of Mortality which in 1662 pioneered a fundamentally new and original approach to what can legitimately from the late seventeenth century on begin to be called the social sciences. The ‘scientific revolution’ of the seventeenth century is wellknown. The parallel revolution in the social sciences however is sometimes lost to view.

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The pioneering work of Graunt, Petty and King in the late seventeenth century is often seen as petering out in the eighteenth century, not to be revived until the Victorian statistics-gatherers of the mid-nineteenth century recreated in various statistical forms what the late seventeenth century has known as ‘political arithmetick’. In the existing literature, there is a puzzling gap between the political arithmeticians of the late seventeenth century and the social statisticians of the nineteenth century, by which time the scientists of the Royal Society had begun to focus exclusively on the easy and straightforward observation of the natural world rather than the infinitely more complex study of man in society. It is my thesis, Mr. President, that this puzzling gap is to be explained by the conspiracy of silence which grew up around Joseph Crabtree. Crabtree, gentlemen, is in fact no less than the missing link between the political arithmetick of the late seventeenth century and the social sciences as we have known the field in the last hundred and fifty years or so. My researches have thrown important new light on our whole perception of social thought in Crabtree’s lifetime, and the history of this College and Crabtree’s role in it, on which I have things to say that might almost amount to revelations, but for the moment I wish to address myself to the question you will be asking yourselves: how did Crabtree come to be connected to political arithmetic? And why has this crucially important theme not been previously drawn to the attention of scholars? Over twenty years ago, Tay noted Crabtree’s connection with Malthus and Crabtree’s propounding of the precursor of the oral contraceptive pill in 1797, and Tay also perceptively identified Crabtree as the author of the famous paper on the anatomy and physiology of Bulgarian women in 1804, but he did not develop the theme or answer the question I hear you all asking. I am able to suggest an answer. A turning-point in Crabtree’s life— there were many, but I am almost inclined to argue the turning-point— occurred in 1769, when he first met Richard Price. Richard Price, the great dissenting minister who was a Fellow of the Royal Society and who spoke and wrote extensively on issues of morality, politics and economics, was then living at Newington Green—the Hampstead, as it were, of his day —and he gathered around him the most advanced and liberal thinkers of the time. Crabtree’s entrée to the society in which to move for the rest of his life was achieved through Richard Price, to whom he was probably introduced by Joseph Banks, soon after returning from his voyage with Captain Cook. Crabtree was a precocious and receptive fifteen, and he was evidently captivated by the sophisticated conversation of Price’s circle at Newington Green after the crudities of shipboard life so well described by Freeman. Richard Price himself was somewhat taken by the young Crabtree, and was soon having him running messages. Soon after Crabtree went to live at Newington Green, in April 1769, he was entrusted with the task of

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delivering to Benjamin Franklin the letter which Price had addressed to Franklin and which was subsequently published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society as Price’s famous paper entitled ‘Observations on the Expectations of Lives, the Increase of Mankind, the Influence of Great Towns on Population, and particularly the State of London with respect to Healthfulness and Number of Inhabitants’. Crabtree—one of nature’s historians—had long been in the habit of reading other people’s correspondence, and had long mastered the art of opening letters without breaking the seal. Assuming that Price’s letter to Franklin would afford him as much private pleasure as other correspondence he had intercepted, Crabtree eagerly found an early opportunity to open the letter, and I do not exaggerate when I say that what he read was to revolutionise his life. Expecting intimate disclosures of a sort to which he was already well attuned, Crabtree found instead a careful consideration of life expectancy, of birth-rates and marriage rates, comparative figures for immigration rates into London and Paris and Breslau and Rome, as well as Norwich and Northampton, all matters which appeared to an impressionable adolescent uniquely to connect the general and the individual and about which over the next few weeks he found himself dreaming dryly. Thus it was that Crabtree discovered his life-long passion for political arithmetick. ‘Only connect’, Larrett has suggested is the motto for Crabtree scholarship, and in the years after 1769 Crabtree found himself making the sort of connections that were to lay the basis for the scientific study of what to less perceptive minds was mere individual variety. In the following years Crabtree was responsible for a great many advances in knowledge, in terms both of empirical research and of theoretical developments, for which at the time he had to allow others to take the credit. Let me give just one example. The studies which Crabtree embarked on under the inspiration of Richard Price were of most obvious practical application to the actuarial calculations of the burgeoning life insurance companies of the time. The life insurance companies had various rules of thumb on which they operated, but before Crabtree they were working in the dark. Annuities were calculated on a basis that general usage would describe as ‘random’, but which in fact was anything but statistically ‘random’. The only tables of lifeexpectancy were not fully reliable, and the effects were financially disastrous. The subject was not put on a proper basis until the publication in 1771 of Richard Price’s Observations on Reversionary Payments in which for the first time the number of people who might have lived to a given age was accurately calculated, based on introducing the concept of ‘fictitious lives’. ‘The combination of two or more real lives’—I quote—‘will be very near the same as the combination of so many corresponding fictitious lives, and therefore an annuity granted

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upon one or more real lives is nearly the same value as an annuity upon a fictitious life’. The revolutionary concept of ‘fictitious lives’ is usually ascribed either to Price or to Abraham De Moivre, the Protestant French mathmatician who settled in England after 1688, famous in early eighteenth-century coffeehouses for his devastating ability at calculating odds for gamblers. De Moivre died in 1754, the year of Crabtree’ birth, and along with Gregory King, he became one of Crabtree’s heroes. Both De Moivre and Price are accredited with suggesting the actuarial calculation of ‘fictitious lives’, but which of us can doubt that this concept was in origin Crabtree’s? It is true that direct evidence is lacking, but everything surely points in Crabtree’s direction. The circumstantial evidence is strong. ‘Billy, do you know anything of mathematics?’, Price said to his nephew William Morgan in 1771. ‘No, uncle, but I can learn’ was recorded as Billy’s famous but improbable reply. William Morgan became well-known as ‘Actuary Morgan’, the man who made the reputation of the Equitable. The imbecile Billy was clearly a cipher for Crabtree, the intellectual master of political arithmetick and the éminence gríse of insurance, the true father of old age pensions. The brilliant conceptualisation of ‘fictitious lives’ was to prove extremely profitable for Crabtree, despite the intellectual credit having been denied him for so long. Crabtree’s actuarial contribution was privately amply acknowledged: half-yearly, from 1771, for the rest of his life, he was to receive agreeable slips of paper headed ‘Bank of England’, which went on to mention the sum of 500 guineas. Gentlemen, 1000 guineas a year from the associated insurance companies, regularly paid for the rest of his life— how were they to know that the formulator of the concept of ‘fictitious lives’ was himself to live to be 100? It was this agreeable annuity which enabled Crabtree to undertake so much that has otherwise appeared difficult to explain or to comprehend. Crabtree’s meeting with Richard Price in 1769 also throws light on other episodes in Crabtree’s life which previous orators have partially illuminated. At Newington Green, Crabtree met a man who was to become one of the closest friends of his life, Price’s friend known when Crabtree met him as Lord Shelburne. Through Shelburne, Crabtree was to become a friend of the younger Pitt, as has been recorded, and it was also through Shelburne, as Gee’s researches failed to show, that Crabtree was recruited as an undercover government spy. Shelburne, attracted by the youthful Crabtree as well as by the growing mastery of his contributions to political arithmetick, introdued Crabtree to many of the leading political figures of the time. Crabtree was dazzled by Shelburne, who he soon came to realise was the great-grandson of William Petty who was one of the founders of the supposedly almost forgotten ‘political arithmetick’ of a century before, the William Petty who had

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indeed created the very term. Crabtree took up Shelburne soon after he met him at Newington Green as eagerly as Shelburne took up Crabtree. Crabtree, it cannot be disguised, was especially taken by Shelburne’s formal changes of name, and this could well have been a powerful influence on him. Shelburne was born William Fitzmaurice; in 1751 he took the name of William Petty, in 1761 he became Lord Wycombe and in 1764 he succeeded his father as Earl of Shelburne. In 1784 he named himself after a suburb of Bath when he took the title of Marquess of Lansdown. Fitzmaurice: Petty: Wycombe: Shelburne: Lansdowne: five legitimate names that provoked Crabtree to an agitation of jealousy. It is this, surely Mr. President, that exlains Crabtree’s penchant for pseudonyms and aliases and noms-de-plume that appears to dog his life. When Crabtree went to Germany in 1779, to the well-known meeting with Goethe recorded by Larrett, Crabtree is mentioned as Batty, surely a poorly transliterated varient of Petty, the name he was affecting as that not only of his influential friend, but also of the great grandfather he had come to revere of the friend he had come to admire. Germans in pronounciation can notoriously not distinguish between P and B and so Petty inevitably came to be recorded as Batty. This surely confirms Larrett’s argument, as it does the brilliant thesis of dos Santos, who perceptively noted that Crabtree was recorded in Portuguese sources as Berti. After Crabtree in Naples in 1787 met Emma Harte, my distinguished kinswoman, the Germanisation of Petty into Batty became Italianised into Portuguese as Berti. Soon after Crabtree returned from Germany in 1779 he introduced into English the word ‘statistics’, a word the first use of which is usually mistakenly ascribed to Sir John Sinclair in 1798, but this was, as Karl Pearson put it, ‘a bold, bare-faced act of robbery’ committed by the Scotsman. Crabtree was of course familiar with the work of Gottfried Achenwall and the Göttingen school of political economists who introduced into German the word Statistik for the science of reasoning about the state in the 1750s, but Crabtree himself always preferred the good old English term ‘political arithmetick’, and it is ironic that during his lifetime the word ‘statistics’ which he himself had introducted into English, but rejected, came increasingly to be used for the field which he shaped. It was Crabtree who was responsible for publishing Gregory Kings autobiography, unassumingly tucked away in J. Dalloway’s Inquiries into the Origin and Progress of the Science of Heraldry in England published at Gloucester in 1793 by an old school friend of Crabtree’s. It was Crabtree who arranged for the first proper publication of Gregory King’s pioneering calculations in George Chalmers’s Estimate of the Comparative Strength of Great Britain in 1804. Crabtree felt an affinity with Gregory King, who published nothing under his own name during his lifetime, and did his best to restore King to his rightful importance alongside William Petty as one of the master minds of modern times.

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It was Crabtree too who was responsible for turning one of Gregory King’s dreams into reality. In the 1690s, King had realised that in order to provide a proper empirical basis for systematic political arithmetick it would be necessary to conduct a full census of the population. Crabtree, working behind the scenes with Shelburne and the younger Pitt, was able to overcome all the reactionary objections to a census and he was able to arrange for the first national census to be held in 1801. It was in 1797 when Crabtree was single-handedly conducting the pilot census at Porlock in Somerset that he was surprised, questionnaire in hand, to find himself calling on his friend Coleridge, who was so taken aback by being asked how many persons he lived with, and how many children he had, that he notoriously used Crabtree’s visit as an excuse for not finishing Kubla Khan. It is not ironic, gentlemen, that Crabtree, himself no mean poet, should have been responsible for the symbolic triumph of Social Science over Art? Coleridge could not complete Kubla Khan, but Crabtree had done the groundwork that enabled the first census of 1801 to go ahead. Crabtree’s subsequent work on the censuses of 1811, 1821 and 1831, much of it ascribed to his minion John Rickman, was to lay the foundations of demography as a discipline. All this meant that when this College, at the time of its foundation in 1826 as the University of London, announced that among the chairs it proposed to establish was one of political arithmetick, Crabtree’s claims on it were not to be easily overlooked. Crabtree, ever unwilling to step into the limelight, had his reservations about accepting. It is true, as Carter has shown, that in 1808 he accepted a chair at Vilno University in Poland, but he accepted on the basis that there were to be no duties whatsoever attached to the post. In the following year, 1809, as Hargrove has revealed, he was persuaded to accept the newlyestablished Readership in Criminology at Oxford, but he accepted on the basis that the duties were to be even lighter than those at Vilno, a stipulation that the University of Oxford found entirely acceptable. But the new University of London was a different matter. Crabtree was very concerned that the establishment founded by his friends Campbell and Brougham, and supported by his old friend Bentham, should be a success. He played, as Scott has shown, a notable part in its foundation. Moreover, Crabtree in his years of maturity was very concerned that political arithmetick should thrive and grow as a subject. Gentlemen, Crabtree accepted the chair of political arithmetik here on the basis that as little publicity as possible should be given to his appointment. There was in any case a good deal of opposition to the appointment of so controversial a figure, and it was in everyone’s inter? est that Leonard Horner, the first— and, as it transpired, the only— Warden, decided that Crabtree should become the first Professor of Political Arithmetick in petto, as popes had sometimes created cardinals whose appointment it would be unwise to

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disclose. Mr. President, Crabtree’s appointment as Professor of Political Arithmetick in petto has remained undisclosed to this day. I regret to have to say that I have not been able to trace a copy of Crabtree’s inaugural lecture, strikingly entitled ‘Sex among the Dead’, but it evidently created something of a stir among the fashionable audi?ence to whom it was addressed in 1828. The classes in ‘applied political arithmetick’ which Crabtree subsequently arranged did little to disarm his critics. The College carefully avoided any mention of Crabtree’s activities in its official publications, but some of Crabtree’s researches were so seminal that a degree of notoriety was inevitable. In 1830 the problems boiled over, and when the College attempted to sack both Crabtree and Granville Sharp Pattison, the Professor of Anatomy, the first student riot and the attendant polarisation of opinion among the professors provoked a crisis, only papered over by the resignation of Leonard Horner as Warden. Crabtree’s role in these troubled times was suppressed by Hale Bellot, and I was persuaded by John North that the matter was too sensitive to be dealt with in Harte and North. After 1830, Crabtree’s position in the College was increasingly equivocal. He had been appointed Professor of Political Arithmetick in petto, in Horner’s breast, but Horner had had to go. He had no successor. Crabtree’s classes, despite not being listed in the Calendar, were attracting embarrassing numbers of students, keen students of ‘applie political arithmetick’ in its various aspects, but they were increasingly a potential threat to the College’s attempt to re-establish its insecure reputation. Rumours leaked out that persons of the female sex began to be involved. John Elliotson, Crabtree’s choice as Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine from 1831, began to toy with experiments in mesmerism, as Clarke has shown, and Crabtree’s activ? ities with the Okey sisters became the subject of widespread disapproval. At all events, by then Crabtree had undergone a change which it is my final duty to reveal to you. No oration in recent times has created so much controversy as that delivered ten years ago by Tattersall, when he revealed that Crabtree underwent an unhappy operation in 1816. I do not wish to dwell on the painful experience which followed. Not all scholars have accepted what Tattersall claimed Byron told Scrope Davies Shelley had told him Keats had said about what happened to Crabtree. Nevertheless, there is a certain amount of evidence to suggest that Crabtree’s restless sexuality was obliged to flow in alternate channels after 1816. The evidence is that the flow was not unabated, but it seems likely that Crabtree, especially when conducting his ‘applied political arithmetick’ classes after 1826, found himself somewhat restricted in being a sort of footnote to Malthus’s otherwise limited varieties of ‘positive checks to the increase of population’.

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Crabtree found himself increasingly musing about Jeremy Bentham. It was well-known in Benthamite circles that Bentham proposed to leave his body for ‘the greatest good of the greatest number’. Bentham had long declared his intention that ‘mankind may reap some small benefit in and by my decease’. His will directed his medical disciple, Southwood Smith, to ‘take the requisite and appropriate measures for the dispersal and preservation of the several parts of my bodily frame…’ Gentlemen, Crabtree knew what parts he was interested in. When Bentham eventually died in 1832, Crabtree knew that he had to get Southwood Smith to move fast. Bentham had directed that his skeleton was to be formed into an ‘autoicon’ and dressed appropriately, while his organs were ‘to be preserved in whatsoever manner may be conceived to render their preservation the most perfect and durable…’rabtree was home, if not dry Gentlemen, in June 1832, Southwood Smith performed the first known unrecorded organ transplant operation. It was done, Mr. President, without the benefit of your own professional expertise: alcohol played its part, as it did throughout Crabtree’s life, but other forms of anaesthetics were as yet unknown. In Southwood Smith’s published account of the dissection of Bentham’s body, any reference to Bentham’s most vital organ is entirely omitted. The omission is striking. Which of us can therefore doubt that Crabtree’s hand cannot have been far away? When pre? sented with a copy of Bentham’s Table of the Springs of Action, Byron had said: ‘What does the old fool know of springs of action? My—has more spring in it’. Crabtree, it is true, might well have wished that his own ‘small benefit in and by my decrease’, as Bentham had put it, might have been larger. But after 1832 Crabtree was re-enabled to play a part in his own way of acting on the principle of felicity, his own way of spreading the greatest happiness to the greatest number. In his later years, Bentham had been in the habit of employing a succession of young men to sleep in his chamber to act as amanuenses in case he needed to make a note in the night. There is no suggestion, Mr. President, that Bentham’s organ was much exercised, or indeed ever exercised. But Crabtree’s reputation after 1832 suggests that it was still in working order. The absence of proof does not in this case mean proof of absence. There are two further pieces of confirmatory evidence that in 1832 Crabtree had a Reform Act of his own. First, there was that sudden outburst of creative algebraical energy to which Lighthill so brilliantly drew our attention. Secondly, after 1832 there closed one of the most notorious if poorly documented of those secretly influential locales in the louche environs of Cleveland Street behind UCH, the establishment known since 1816 as ‘Your Dildo or Mine’. No further references are to be found, Mr. President, of this establishment after 1832. Crabtree’s reputation, however, became more dubious than ever.

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The increasing rate of absences of references to Crabtree in the surviving writings of his friends after 1832 becomes more and more evident. The historian cannot but pick up the scent of a cover-up, perhaps begun by well-intentioned friends with his own best interests at heart. Sutherland, in 1954, wondered whether the neglect of Crabtree amounted to a ‘conspiracy of silence’. How true his words were. As an earnest drive for Victorian respectability settled on the College, Crabtree seemed to many to be left over from an earlier, more raffish period, and a potentially unpredictable source of embarrassment. There can be no doubt that there was an orchestrated campaign to marginalise Crabtree, and it began, I regret to have to say, in this College. A glimpse of how Crabtree was treated can be obtained by looking at what happened to that famous dining club which Crabtree had established together with Richard Price and Lord Shelburne in 1788 after Price’s sermon before the Society for Commemorating the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The club’s convivial annual meetings provided Crabtree with some of his happiest moments. In 1838 he joyfully arranged its jubilee meeting at Unversity College, but the occasion was subsequently banned by the College authorities, and the club was driven underground by the hard cold shoulders of the College. No further recorded meetings were held until, in the more tolerant climate of the early 1950s, open meetings could be resumed. As president of this Foundation, Sir Ifor Evans once spoke of the time when W.P.Ker nearly referred to Crabtree in a lecture. One could add references to the two or three occasions when Karl Pearson nearly referred to him. I believe that forensic evidence would show that it was Sir Gregory Foster’s scissors which early this century excised all reference to Crabtree from the College archives. Neither A.F.Pollard nor R.W.Chambers ever consciously referred to him. Indeed, in his memorable centenary lecture in 1927, Chambers could define the humanities as ‘those studies which have no affinity with mathematics’. Mr. President, it was Crabtree’s darkest hour. Crabtree was in many ways his own worst enemy. One regrettable byproduct of the campaign against Crabtree was that an unspecific odour of disrepute gathered around political arithmetick and spread to the social sciences more generally. Dare I suggest, Mr. President, that in some quarters of this College traces of this disparagement survive? But which of us does not feel that the social sciences should be approached in Crabtree’s grand manner, that linking of the literate and the numerate, which transcended the Arts and the Sciences? Which of us does not regret that stamping out the Crabtree tradition here lead to the foundation of the London School of Economics by that lesser meaner-minded midget Sidney Webb, a very non-Crabtree sort of person?

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I have stuck to the facts that are firmly based in the sources. But I end with a question. While reading the Annals of the Royal Statistical Society to see with what skill Bonar and Macrosty had written Crabtree out of the Society s history, I came across this photograph with its caption (see page 319) which strongly suggests that it is indeed a photograph of Crabtree, a vigorous but not unequivocal figure, gentlemen, then in his late 90s. I hope, Mr. President, a historian may be allowed an occasional moment of speculation to relieve the burden of gathering so many facts. So as I resume my seat I ask: do we not see before us a picture of Crabtree, the greatest of political arithmeticians?

36 CRABTREE AND THE DEATH IN VIENNA John Foreman 1989

Wherefrom comes my title and wherefore does it lead? Being myself of mystical tendency, I was struck by the fact that this is the thirty-sixth Crabtree Oration in the year 1989. Thirty-six is four times nine and 1989 contains three nines—one plus eight being nine for those already losing my thread. Nine is three times three and it was this symbolism which turned my attention to 1791—again the nines reappear, seven plus one plus one being nine—but this time there are only two nines or soixanteneuf if one be inverted! The cothurnal event of 1791 was the passing from this world in Vienna on 5 December of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. But was it a mere passing or was there some pushing, and what is the nature of the coition of Crabtree with Mozart? My discourse then, gentlemen, will be in the nature of an inquisition to which I will add corroborative detail, as needed, to provide verisimilitude to what I trust will not be a bald and uninteresting narrative. The seminal questions are to the cause of Mozart’s death and the part of Crabtree in this exitial affair. In contemporary times much has been made of Salieri’s involvement in Mozart’s death, but, as I shall seek to disclose, the prima facie evidence together with a modicum of circumstantial evidence points more to Crabtree. It is indeed quite astounding that Shaffer overlooked Crabtree when researching and writing his Thespian masterpiece: Amadeus. Mozart was one of seven children born to Leopold and Maria Anna Mozart. Only Wolfgang Amadeus and a sister, Nannerl, survived. It has been said that Mozart himself was beset throughout his life with chronic illness and that his early and untimely death could have been predicted. On the other hand, close examination of Mozart’s medical history suggests that for most of his short life, Mozart was afflicted with symptoms of a relatively mild and temporary nature: the most commonly occurring problem being fever and joint pains. Some observers have chosen to interpret this in terms of repeated attacks of rheumatic fever but a more plausible explanation is, in my view, Reiter’s syndrome: one of the diseases of Venus. In fact, sources are clear that until August or September 1791

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Mozart was, as we in the medical profession would say: as well as could be expected. It was after all 18th century Europe. Little doubt remains in the minds of many, and indeed in Mozart’s own mind, that he was poisoned. Mozart himself is on record as saying: ‘I know I must die. Someone has given me aqua toffana and has calculated the precise time of my death—for which they have ordered a Requiem, it is for myself I am writing this.’ It is my thesis that Mozart expressed in this statement great insight into his own demise and I put it to you that contemporary research has taken too little account of the full meaning of his statement. Aqua toffana, or manna of Saint Nicholas di Bari, is, in fact, a concoction containing arsenic and is so called after a Latin woman who used it to destroy a lover. Why was Mozart so specific about the nature of the poison? Perhaps he knew more than was ever revealed—until now that is! Crabtree’s interest in Mozart dates back to January 1791 when Crabtree met Haydn at a meeting of the Grand Lodge in London. Joseph Haydn was familiar with Mozart’s affairs from a farewell party in Vienna given for Haydn and at which Mozart was present. Haydn left for London on 15 December 1790, the day after that party and arrived here on 1st January 1791. As I said, the Grand Lodge was the venue for the meeting between Crabtree and Haydn. Haydn himself was a member of the Lodge Zür wahren Eintract (True Concord) and Mozart, of great fame and standing in Austria but less well known in England, was a topic of conversation in and around the Grand Lodge meeting where Haydn and Crabtree met. Haydn’s stories of the great Mozart and his music inspired in Crabtree a resolve to travel to Austria and meet for himself the great genius whose art was sweeping other parts of Europe into a musical revolution. Although fascination with Mozart was a major factor causing Crabtree’s sojourn in Austria, other contributory factors must have been Crabtree’s predeliction for travel and for German literature so ably explored for us by Larrett, dos Santos, and Bromage. Moreover, Crabtree was probably also keen to be at the coronation of Emperor Leopold II in Prague, though as yet, no source has revealed whether Crabtree did, in fact, attend the coronation. We do know, of course, that Crabtree was in Europe in the latter part of 1791 and spent some time in France, particularly at Orleans. It is worthy of note at this juncture that Crabtree travelled widely in Europe, not only in 1791 but also on several other occasions and he seems to have been afflicted with that most painful of conditions of the perineum associated with the prolonged sitting and the constant jolting of coach travel: haemorrhoids or piles. Crabtree must have been cogniscent of the dictum of John of Arderne (1370): ‘the common people call them piles, the aristocracy haemorrhoids, the French call them figs—what does it matter what you call them so long as you can cure them’. Crabtree was painfully conscious that apart from postural factors, piles are exacerbated by

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straining at stool—a charming medical euphemism—and he was a student of purgation, observing in his poetic style: If it looks like clover, the trouble is over If it looks like a dahlia, it’s surely a failure. Of course, in 1791, modern conservative palliation in the form of Lord’s procedure or the eight finger stretch was not in widespread use. However, I digress, albeit on a fundamental issue of Crabtree’s being. Let us return to the higher planes of life in Austria: the year 1791. Crabtree, upon arriving in Austria, was not formally introduced to Mozart in court circles but doubtless saw him at the Lodge Zür Wohltätigkeit (Beneficence) where Mozart was a master mason, and Crabtree also heard some of his performances. For Crabtree it was love at first sight—though possibly not for the first time—when he met Constanze Mozart. German musicologists have described Constanze as a sex-kitten, a woman of extraordinary decolleté and a silly woman incapable of understanding Mozart himself. Let us reflect for a moment on her predicament. Constanze had had six children under conditions of near poverty, for Mozart had never enjoyed much more reward for his music other than personal ecstacy and public acclaim: the ducats did not flow into the coffers, and when they did he was an extravagant spender. Mozart was also often away from home performing, conducting, indulging himself or negotiating some new commission, and when he was at home he was taking pupils or composing. The taking of pupils also cast a shadow on his fidelity and is a further indication of why Constanze was disenchanted with her earlier romantic affliction to Wolfgang Amadeus. When Crabtree arrived in Vienna, Constanze was, then, for the reasons just cited eine Strohwitwe—a straw widow—and Crabtree seized this opportunity to form a liason with Constanze to fulfill his desires for the woman upon whom he had rapidly come to dote. Mozart remained besotted with Constanze as his letters show but he appeared insensitive to the void developing between them, although we should note that Mozart himself was not faithful and there are several references to him having his pleasures elsewhere: recall also that he probably suffered from Reiter’s syndrome. Constanze reciprocated Crabtree’s advances and went to Baden with him in July 1791. In Baden Constanze and Crabtree consumated their new found love. Constanze was a frequent visitor to Baden and up until this time her genuine reason had been to take the waters for her health. It gave her respite from the toils at home with Mozart which, as I have already illustrated, were a considerable strain upon her. Mozart had, therefore, no reason to be suspicious and he wrote to her, often more than one letter a day, whilst she was there. Not long after the beginning of the affairs of the heart had reached their climax between Crabtree and

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Constanze did Crabtree discover an awful consequence. The Gallic Disease had reared its ugly head. Constanze too was dismayed and ridden with shame and guilt for she knew that the source of Crabtree’s affliction was probably Mozart and she the courier of the evil. From the later recollection of Constanze, we learn that when she told Crabtree of her guilt he was enraged and being preoccupied with his diseased pudenda cited the immortal words of Lucretius from De Rerum Natura: ‘One man’s meat is another man’s poison’. This was, naturally, metaphoric language, but it is worthy of speculation that this is the point in time where the seeds were sown for the plot that was to deveop in the minds of Constanze and Crabtree to see Mozart out of this world and into the next. It was most likely that Crabtree was instrumental in devising the means, since you will recall from that great oration by Tay on Crabtree’s knowledge of materia medica, that Crabtree was later to describe the unguent compound of mercury and suet which would become known as Crabtree’s Butter or later Blue Butter. Crabtree knew, well before the formal description of the Butter, of the properties of mercury from Hunters book on venereal diseases and also from the poem of Hieronymus Fracastorius (1483–1553) Syphilis sive morbus Gallicus. Whereas Crabtree devised the means to poison Mozart by buttering his bread, Constanze saw an opportunity for pecuniary gain. The plot conceived by them was to deceive Mozart into writing a great work as part of a commission: the work then being sold off afte his death. This, was the beginning of the Requiem Commission. The plot established, Crabtree had to flee Baden because Mozart arrived to take Constanze back to Vienna. Shortly after Mozart’s return to Vienna he was to complete arguably his best-loved operatic work: Die Zauberflöte. He was also preparing for the journey to Prague for the coronation of Leopold and it was at this time that he received the commission for the Requiem. Accounts vary on the form that the commission took. Niemetschek indicates that the initial contact requesting Mozart to write the Requiem was made in writing but Rochlitz speaks of the arrival in person of a stranger who delivered verbally to Mozart the commission for the Requiem, and this version was, of course, incorporated into the film Amadeus. Mozart is known to have started work on the Requiem almost immediately but work on it was interrupted and fragmentary Indeed there continues considerable controversy on the order in which various parts were written and how it was completed. In this context my researches on Crabtree have shed further light, and I shall return to the completion of the Requiem in due course. The greatest mystery lies, in fact, in the types of paper used for writing the Requiem. Although the Requiem was begun in July or August 1791, Mozart had to go to Prague at the end of August for the coronation and it is, therefore, very unlikely that any further progress was made until after those festivities

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which included a performance of La Clemenza di Tito and numerous chamber concerts. Constanze accompanied her husband to Prague but the whereabouts of Crabtree at this time I have been unable to discover though he too could have been at the coronation. Mozart and his retinue returned to Vienna in the middle of September 1791 and it is important to my thesis to note that throughout the period in Prague, Mozart remained in good health. Indeed he was well upon his return to Vienna. On September 30th 1791 the first performance of Die Zauberflöte took place in Vienna, with Mozart conducting. At this point the plot to murder Mozart assumed a new and awesome dimension, for the opera offended the Ancient and Venerable Order of Free Masons. So much was the offence caused that many members of the Lodge saught Mozart’s death for the ultimate heresy: the revelation of the ritual. Not only does the Magic Flute reveal the ritual, in the eyes of many it mocks it. Thus was the Craft set on a course for the extinction of Mozart because they believed he had betrayed Free Masonry. Crabtree, himself a Mason you will recall, was to play a part in the deliberations of Zur gekrönten Hoffnung (Crowned Hope) though the Lodge knew nothing at this time of his affair with Constanze, and he used this opportunity to elevate his stature in the Lodge. He already had a plan to do exactly what the Masons wished to achieve. Hence Crabtree became the instrument of the Craft in the execution of Mozart: traitor to the Craft. Why did the Magic Flute offend the Masons? The libretto contains the words: Es siegte die Stärke, und krönet zum Lohn Die Schönheit und Weisheit mit ewiger Kron. Weisheit (Wisdom), Schönheit (Beauty) and Stärke (Strength) are words from the St. John Masonic ritual and they also form the central triangle of the thirty third degree of the Scottish Ritual of the Masons. Not only the words but also the music contains Masonic reference. The slow semiquaver, minim, minim phrase repeated three times in the Overture represents the three triple knocks of the ritual, and the dotted form seems to refer directly to the ritual of the Great Orient in Paris: just on the point of having its light extinguished in Revolutionary France. The opera is principally in the key of E flat major—three flats and it has three boys and three ladies as characters interjecting in the main plot. Tamino develops from a Profane to a Seeker and thence through the degrees to Master Mason. The play of darkness against light pervades the whole plot and Sarastro, the Worshipful Master in the Lodge is accompanied by 18 priests who sing ‘O Isis und Osiris’: exactly eighteen bars long. It has been said

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that Tamino is Mozart himself trying to release Marie Antoinette (Pamina) from her Masonic captors. I must also remind you at this point that apart from the general offence to the brothers, Mozart was accused by one bother Mason of adultery with his wife, Magdalena Hofdemel, and Hofdemel himself also had a motive, therefore, for entering the conspiracy to murder Mozart. Crabtree, in order to fulfill his own desires to be free with Constanze and to achieve the task he accepted from his brother Masons had to arrange the opportunity to apply his Butter to Mozart’s bread. Records, including Mozart’s own letters at the time reveal that he—Mozart—had during the final few months of his life a manservant who brought in food while he was working on the Requiem— a servant was necessary for Constanze was away for some of the time in Baden again. The servant’s name was Joseph and he was referred to familiarly by Mozart as ‘Primus’: a play on the name of the Emperor: Josephus Primus of Austria. Since Mozart had never been formally introduced to Crabtree in the past, it was not difficult for Crabtree, with modest disguise, to infiltrate the Mozart household as the servant Joseph; and once there he set to work with the Butter. In a letter to his wife dated 8 October 1791 Mozart wrote ‘What do I smell? Why here is Joseph Primus with cutlets. Che gusto! Now I am eating your health.’ What awful irony this was, for within weeks Mozart’s own health was to become abruptly much worse. There was a significant and sudden worsening of Mozart’s health after the Lodge meeting on 18th November where, in fact, Crabtree’s Butter was potentiated in its effect by an additional dose. On 20th November 1791 we learn that Mozart took to his bed where he was to remain until his death. Mozart’s final illness was characterised by two incontrovertible signs: generalised swelling of his body and a generalised exanthem. In addition he suffered nausea, diarrohea and vomiting, and was generally (hardly surprisingly) very weak: a condition described as partial paralysis. These are the symptoms and signs of heavy metal poisoning and although Mozart himself believed it was arsenic (aqua Toffana), the mercury of Crabtree’s Butter is entirely compatible with the data on Mozart’s terminal illness. Mozart was near to death on the evening of 4th December and Dr. Closset was sent for. The good doctor was in the theatre and, in the timehonoured fashion of the medical profession, remained there until the performance was ended before going to attend to Mozart. As it was, all that Closset could do was to apply comfort in the form of cold compresses until the early hours of 5th December 1791 when Mozart suffered a convulsion and died—the incomplete Requiem strewn all over his bed. What happened after Mozart’s death presents to any contemporary view a set of circumstances.of a profoundly bizarre nature. The distressed Constanze climbed into her husband’s death bed in an attempt to inseminate herself—with the cause of his mortal illness. Of

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course, she well knew the true cause: poisoning and so her behaviour must be interpreted as a device to divert attention from her complicity in the murder or as a manifestation of complex and confusing emotions arising from guilt and some true grief. Constanze was taken, Nissen tells us, to Herr Bauenfeind (literally enemy of peasants) or Joseph von Bauernfeind who was none other than Crabtree. Harte has accurately drawn our attention recently to Crabtree’s penchant for pseudonyms and in the circumstances surrounding Mozart ’ s dea they were important and handy devices. Dr. Closset consulted a senior physician at the hospital, Dr. Mathias von Sallaba, and declared the cause of Mozart’s demise to be hitziges Frieselfieber or acute miliary fever—a vague and non-specific diagnosis. No death certificate was issued and no autopsy was held. Within little more than twenty four hours after death the body was destroyed, for Mozart was thrown into a pauper’s grave: a simple pit full of lime—a receptacle for numerous corpses. Nobody was present at the burial which took place on 6th December. The funeral arrangements and burial were prepared by Baron von Swieten, a Mason who had known Mozart for many years and who had on occasion helped him. Von Swieten knew, of course, of the circumstances of Mozart’s death and by this time it was also known in the Lodge that Constanze had been having an affair with Crabtree and was implicated in the murder. Von Swieten may well have disapproved of the murder plot but was bound by the discipline of the Masons. The funeral arrangements and their all too swift execution were, then, a means of sealing the secret of the conspiracy of Constanze, Crabtree and the Craft to cause Mozart’s death. Notice again the three parties involved. One unforeseen consequence remained, however, the Butter had done its work a little too swiftly. Mozart had died before completing the Requiem, and for Constanze to benefit from its sale, it had to be completed. Sussmayer, a long standing associate of Mozart and one who had been close at hand during the writing of the Requiem has come to be the person accredited with the completion of the Requiem, not the least reason being that his handwriting was very similar to Mozart’s and Sussmayer actually forged Mozart’s signature on part of the autograph score of the Requiem. However, close examination of records of Constanze’s later description of events, indicate that she actually gave the incomplete Requiem score to one Joseph Eybler, and contemporary musicologists are now inclined to believe that whilst Sussmayer may have played a part, Eybler was a principal contributor. Eybler (eine Eiber—a yewtree) was one of Crabtree’s less subtle pseudonyms from this period. The fact that Crabtree writing under the pseudonym Eybler completed the Requiem is all the more plausible because it offers for the first time some explanation of the paper riddle. As I mentioned above, the Requiem is written on two quite different types of paper with different water markings and yet what is known about the

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order in which various parts of the Requiem were completed does not fit with the type of paper on which these parts were written. Of course, Crabtree under the earlier guise of Joseph Primus had access in Mozart’s home to the paper supplies and could easily have kept some for his personal use, possibly with the intention of copying the Requiem after Mozart’s death. The completed Requiem was sold, together with other of Mozart’s works on 7th February 1792 to Mason Baron von Jacobi, Ambassad of the Prussian Court and who was acting for Friedrich Willhelm II of Prussia. Constanze received 800 ducats for the sale to the Prussian, and through Baron von Swieten Constanze also commissioned a performance of the Requiem in the Jahn Rooms on 2nd Januar y 179 the proceeds of which brought her another 300 ducats. Whilst Constanze was now a free woman and making substantial sums from the Requiem and other of Mozart’s works, her affair with Joseph Crabtree was at an end. We cannot be too certain about the reasons for this but Constanze’s guilt may have so persecuted her mind that she could not continue to consort with Crabtree. Also, it was likely that the Lodge was concerned about the possible implication of the Craft and decreed that the couple should have no further liason. Perhaps the major factor in Crabtree’s departure from the scene was the growing suspicion amongst people at large that Mozart had indeed been murdered. Despite the attempts to conceal the truth, the very circumstances of the funeral—die Grabfrage (the burial question as it has come to be known) drew attention, comment and gossip. Gossip that was to last for centuries and was to point the accusatorial finger at numerous possible murderers including, as we all know, Salieri. Attempts to conceal the truth were continued under the direction of the Free Masons. Many still say that Salieri murdered Mozart. I have no time to lay before you the evidence against this. Gentlemen, Salieri did-not murder Mozart but we know who did!

37 CRABTREE’S CUDGEL James Graham-Campbell 1990

Crabtree’s Cudgel has been my labour this year and my discoveries in libraries and archives, the length and breadth of two countries, form the substance of my Oration. A cudgel, gentlemen, is defined as ‘a short thick stick used as a weapon’ and cudgel-play ‘the art of combat with cudgels’. So how came Crabtree by his Cudgel—by this silverbound, blackthorn stick, with its zoomorphic head that might have been modelled on the prow of a Viking ship? In 1966, our then President, Professor Foote, suggested the following lines as Crabtree’s own: Long while this branch of Odin’s stem Was the stout prop of Norway’s realm; Long while King Olaf with just pride Ruled over Westfold far and wide. At length by cruel gout oppressed, The good King Olaf sank to rest: His body now lies under ground, Buried at Geirstad, in the mound. Might the Cudgel serve to authenticate this verse that purports to be a translation from the Icelandic? Might not Crabtree have brought the Cudgel from Norway to remind him of his meeting with Ibsen’s mother in 1827, when he was aged 73. Tay has revealed how the early symptoms of gout were evident in our beloved poet’s portrait—a portrait which curiously contains no Cudgel, significantly or otherwise as the case may be. It is also a fact that the one and only reference to Crabtree’s Cudgel in the accumulated biographical revelations that constitute the hardcore of our Foundation’s archive—the only reference is that of Jones in his description of Crabtree ‘in 1846, when an old man of 92, he sat with a venerable glare, in the front row of a Friday evening audience…at the Royal Institution…resting with clasped hands on his stick’. So there we would appear to have it, gentlemen, Crabtree’s Cudgel, a Scandinavian souvenir and an asset to his old age, recalled by him in verse as ‘this branch of

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Odin’s stem’ that was ‘the stout prop of Norway’s realm’ before it became a comfort to his ‘cruel gout’. But, gentlemen, I detect your disbelief and Professor Foote’s in particular. How right you are, for there are insurmountable objections to such a facile solution to our problem. We must let the Cudgel speak for itself. All in due course, however, for it is my duty first, as current Keeper of the Cudgel, to record such little information as is known of its history in the twentieth century. How came the Foundation by this priceless relic? It was to the Honorary Living Memory that I made my way to seek an answer. The Memory both knew and didn’t know—you will recall, gentlemen, the occasional confusions that characterised his considerable contributions to our deliberations—but he was persuaded by me in the customary manner to recall, to recall the presentation of the Cudgel to the Foundation by Professor Smith, on the occasion of its third meeting in 1956. This much has been confirmed for me by the then Secretary, Kenneth Palmer. Mr. Palmer has, however, a sorry tale to tell of how his year of office ended: ‘In March 1956 my room was entirely destroyed in the Foster Court fire, and any records I held went with that. Carlyle, Sir Isaac Newton, and the Librarian of Alexandria had similar problems.’ The lines of Crabtree quoted by Scott after the Oration in 1956 (when incidentally members dined off Roast Beef, which says little for some supposedly sacred traditions), are: and hast Thou crossed the Irish Sea to speak us thus? Oh, but ‘twas rarely done, my pretty boy! Scott selected these words to honour that evening’s orator, Profesor Terence Spencer, following the unveiling by Sutherland of Crabtree’s portrait the previous year. But what was really in Crabtree’s mind? I suggest to you to-night, gentlemen, that it was his Cudgel that had crossed the Irish Sea and that it was as a ‘pretty boy’ himself that he had been a ‘rare’ exponent of the art of cudgel-play. One has only to hold the Cudgel in one’s hands to realise that the distribution of its numerous nodules bears a passing similarity to the disposition of the mountains of Mayo, so thus it can speak to us of its Irish origins. The Cudgel has an encircling band of silver that forms a collar around the neck of its animal head, the head of some bog monster, no doubt, from one of Delaney’s tales. This band is now graced with three initials in a fine late eighteenth-century Neo-Gothick hand, which read J.W.T. And ‘Who’, I hear you ask, ‘is he?’ It was this very question that the Late-Living Memory posed on that scrap of paper in 1978, the year of his Presidency— that question posed but never yet answered.

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In his Oration in 1981 Larrett borrowed for our Foundations neverending work, E.M.Forster’s exhortation ‘Only connect’. If Larrett had only made the connection himself in 1981, he would have recognised in this relic a vital piece of evidence in the establishment of his case that when Crabtree met Goethe in Italy it was under the alias of Tischbein’. It was then in 1786 that J.W.C. became J.W.T. So it is clear that when Joseph William Crabtree became Johann Wilhelm Tischbein he re-engraved the band on his Cudgel with the requisite initials that would lend support to his new identity (as well as serving to remind him of it on occasions of claret-induced confusion). Larrett posed the question why ‘Tischbein’—meaning table-leg—rather than some other name. By way of an answer, he suggested that Crabtree adopted it ‘after an especially intense night of study devoted to claret, when a table leg was the first thing that his eyes lighted on, when regaining consciousness’. I have always felt this to be an inadequate explanation. Rather, I feel sure that it was Crabtree’s fully alert eye falling upon his Cudgel (which is in appearance much like a certain type of rustic German table-leg) that gave rise to this idea in his fertile brain. The elegant initials on the silver plate had to be altered, but such presented Crabtree with no problem, for it was, after all, the role of artist and engraver that he was adopting in Italy, a role that proved his passport to Emma Hamilton. We can conclude therefore from the Tischbein episode that the Cudgel was in Crabtree’s hand before he reached the age of 32, but how much earlier may that have been? Here, I am most particularly indebted to our fellow scholar, Mr. Peter Forster of the Malaprop Press, for the discovery of a large number of copies of a hitherto unknown wood-engraving by Thomas Bewick. In bringing this engraving to my attention, Mr. Forster wrote: That this is a portrait of the Crabtree cudgel, taken from life, can, on a count of the knobs alone, be hardly in doubt. The odds against there being two cudgels so exactly similar would be a coincidence remote beyond the wildest dreams of Crabtree scholarship. Yet it will be observed that the silver plate bears the initials ‘S.J.’, and not the existing ‘J.W.T.’ So, gentlemen, apart from this one detail, you can now see on page 320 this relic of our poet and polymath, a rendering of Crabtree’s Cudgel—his massive weapon that all too few of you have had the pleasure of taking in hand. We must now consider the Bewick enigma of the original initials S.J. and his text describing the Cudgel’s discovery on the Isle of Mull in 1773. I am indebted once again to Mr. Forster who drew my atten–tion in correspondence to the account by James Boswell of Samuel Johnson’s loss

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on Mull, in October of that year, of a stick which he had brought with him from London to assist his progress during their Tour of the Hebrides. If fina l proof eludes us, as is usual in most branches of Crabtree studies, we have at least established a connection. Sometime after 1773, but before 1786, Crabtree acquired the finest Cudgel of his life (ex-Ireland, exJohnson, ex-Mull)—a Cudgel so treasured by him and revered by his contemporaries that it has descended into the care of our Foundation. It is a venerable relic indeed. Today, St. Valentine’s Day, is the anniversary both of Crabtree’s birth in 1754 and of his death exactly one hundred years later in 1854. It is less well-known, although revealed to us by Freeman, that today is also the anniversary of the day on which Crabtree was sent down from Oxford in 1773—that is on his nineteenth birthday—in only his second term, having followed ‘drunken frolics’ with the writing of ‘satirical verses’ on his tutor, Jacob Jefferson. Well, gentlemen, I know little of Oxford and would be happy to leave it that way, but, in accordance with the highest principles of Crabtree scholarship, I have forced myself on your behalf to ponder the question: ‘Why did Oxford admit Crabtree in 1772, at the age of eighteen, if his formal schooling had indeed ended at the age of fourteen?’ Precocious Crabtree undoubtedly was in all manner of things and, supposing that his Cook’s tour had been intended by his parents to give him a year or so out between school and university, why did he not go up as soon as he got back—as a teenage prodigy? Smith revealed that Crabtree’s early education had been furthered at a boarding school at Rushworth, in the parish of Halifax, where he was sent aged 12, in 1766. This school was established by the will of John Wheelwright which made provision ‘that one of the boys that should best be capable of University education should at the age of eighteen years be sent to Cambridge or Oxford’. But as we know, thanks to Freeman, it was only two years later that Joseph and his brother George went to sea as flute boys. But did he run away to sea? Or was he sent? If so, why should he have abandoned his formal schooling so young? However and whatever the arrangements that were then made, Joseph Crabtree set sail on Captain Cook’s Endeavour—in August 1768—at the ripe age of fourteen. He was to be back in England, according to Harte, in time to participate in certain events in Newington Green in April 1769, events that supposedly included what Harte was so bold as to identify as arguably ‘the turning-point’ in Crabtree’s life. Alas, poor Harte, for he has failed to check his Crabtree sources. Not even Crabtree could have been delivering letters in London in April 1769 when still in the South Seas. For it was only on the thirteenth of April 1769 that the Endeavour sailed into Tahiti, for the observation of the transit of Venus—an event that Crabtree would never have missed. Indeed, she was not to reach England again until the twelfth of June 1770, by which time

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Crabtree was past his sixteenth birthday. So what became of him then? It is no secret that Banks was himself an Oxford man and there is little doubt in my mind that it was he who arranged Oxford admission for his protégé, but something first had to be done about Crabtree’s Latin and Greek in which he can never have been well-grounded whilst in Yorkshire and which had in any case grown rusty on his world tour, much though his sciences had benefited. Banks was an Old Etonian (having given up on Harrow at the age of thirteen), and had been a boy at Eton under the headmastership of Dr. Edward Barnard who had subsequently become that College’s Provost. This suggested to me an avenue of exploration and, accordingly, I took myself off to Eton’s College Library. I was, at first, spurred on by the discovery that Crabtree was not mentioned in Edward Creasy’s Memoirs of Eminent Etonians, even though published in 1850, so soon after Crabtree’s death. For Edward Creasy was then Professor of History, here at University College London, an historian better known for his once popular Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World (1852). Negley Harte has described, in his history of history teaching at this College, just how casually Creasy treated his duties—whilst practising at law. But there is no doubt that Creasy would have belonged to that ‘orchestrated campaign to marginalise Crabtree’ which had begun, according to Harte, in this very College. Creasy would have been obliged to participate in that ‘conspiracy of silence’ which is the burden of successive orators. In addition, it was more than likely that Creasy, in researching his Eminent Etonians, would have struck the name of Crabtree from all the records in order to further the obliteration of his life and achievements. I feared to fin my way forward already closed a hundred and forty years ago. I was left with one hope—supposing Crabtree had adopted an alias at sixteen (for he was certainly using that of M’Greggor at nineteen). If so, my way forward was clear after all, for then it only remained for me to scrutinise the school records for 1770 to 1772, bringin g to b on them the full knowledge of Crabtree’s behaviour, accumulatee so assiduously by my predecessors, to see if I could detect the presence of a boy whose academic career and extra-curricular activities would reveal that Crabtree had indeed then been at Eton. It was not long before my labours bore fruit and there was Crabtree rising once again before me—and a cudgel not far behind. Such revelations may surprise you, gentlemen, but wait—wait please until you have heard the full, unedifying story and then make your minds up for yourselves. The 1760s and 1770s represent one of the lowest periods in Eton’s history. In 1765, through Barnard’s influence, a young assistant master, Dr. John Foster, was appointed his successor as head-master. In Barnard’s time there has been several attempts by the boys at rebellion, but these he had overcome ‘with the vigour and tact of a statesman’ and in his days the

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number of boys at Eton rose from 326 to over 500. Foster lacked his discretion and in the autumn of 1768 there took place ‘the most serious rebellion that is ever known to have occurred at Eton’. It has been said of Foster that ‘being unable to control the boys by his personal influence, he had recourse to terrorism, which soon rendered him extremely unpopular’. Not surprisingly, the number of boys fell by more than half in eight years; it would not have been difficult for Banks to have obtained a place for his sixteen yearold protégé by 1770. By 1773, Foster was so ‘broken down in health and spirits’ that he resigned, aged only forty-one. It would appear that Crabtree played no little part in the breaking of Foster. Public birchings formed part of Foster’s reign of terror and one such is recorded in the Reminiscences of Henry Angelo, who was a celebrated fencing master at Eton between 1766 and 1774. One Sunday evening after Church, the boys were assembled in Upper School and the block brought in. Then, ‘in an imperative voice’, the Doctor shouted ‘Burke! ‘A burly Irish boy of about eighteen came forward and knelt down to be flogged, amid solemn silence. When the dotor had administered three cuts, he bade him stand up again and said—‘Now I expel you the School.’ He immediately retired with his Assistants, without explaining any further. Had the boy known he was going to be expelled he would never have suffered himself to be flogged. It appeared afterwards that Burke had been ‘lampooning the Head Master in the London newspapers’. Gentlemen, do you not detect a pattern here? Crabtree sent down from Oxford for writing scurrilous verses about his tutor; Burke expelled Eton for lampooning his headmaster. Could Burke be Crabtree? Was anything known of this Burke that might prohibit this identification? I consulted The Eton College Register, 1753–1790 wherein there is recorded only one Burke who entered the school some years earlier, in 1759, and of whom nothing more is known; it cannot have been him who Angelo saw birched and expelled. There is only one conclusion left for us to draw: all records of Burke the lampoonist have been deliberately suppressed. So, despite ‘the conspiracy of silence’, Crabtree stands revealed to us once more. It is not surprising that Crabtree sought anonymity at Eton, in an Irish alias, for had it been known to his contemporaries that he had sailed the world as Banks’s bumboy, it is not hard for us to imagine the fate that would have befallen him—or why, even then, he would have needed a cudgel for his protection. Whilst dipping the other day into Fanny Burney’s diary, I came across this account of an Old Etonian being presented to George III at Windsor: ‘You were an Etonian, Mr. Bryant,’ said the king, ‘but pray for what were you most famous at school?’ We all expected from the celebrity of his scholarship, to hear him answer, his Latin exercises; but no such thing! ‘Cudgelling, Sir: I was most famous for that.’

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Who can but doubt that Fanny’s memory played her false as to the Old Etonian’s identity that evening; for surely only Crabtree could have boasted so of his cudgel-play. Games-playing of many kinds formed an important part of an Etonian’s life in the 1770s, even if most of his time was spent in the study of Latin and Greek, including of course verse composition. It is interesting to note, however, given Lighthill’s revelations concerning Crabtree’s mathematical prowess, that Fifth Form boys were taught algebra (and might move on to Euclid) for this was a subject, together with Geography, held to be ‘indispensably necessary in making a scholar’. French, on the other hand was only available as an ‘extra’, deemed merely ‘a polite accomplishment’, along with drawing, dancing and fencing. It is scarcely surprising then that French is known to have been a language with which Crabtree was never to bother himself. On the other hand, ancient and obscure languages seem to have retained an abiding interest for Crabtree and his researches formed part of his general influence on the muse of antiquity, influences noted but not enlarged on by Wilson, my only archaeological predecessor as Orator. Wilson observed, however, how Crabtree’s name had been removed from amongst those of the Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London, although the reason why eluded him. On this, I would like, Sir, to make you a suggestion tonight. Is it not sufficient, gentlemen, that our founder Orator, Professor Sutherland, should have selected to be no. 155 in his Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes an account of a medieval forgery in 1789 by that Shakespearean annotator, George Steevens? Steevens had engraved some Anglo-Saxon letters on a block of marble and passed it off as ‘the tombstone of Hardecanute’. It was engraved by Basire and published in the Gentlemen’s Magazine. Samuel Pegge, falling into the trap, read a paper on the inscription before the Society of Antiquaries on 10 December 1789, but the deception was discovered before the disquisition was printed in the Archaeologia. An acrimonious correspondence between Steevens and those he had hoped to dupe followed in the daily and monthly journals. Steevens finally committed the stone to the custody os Sir Joseph Banks, and it was regularly exhibited at his assemblies in Soho Square. As sure as night follows day, the Banks connection reveals to us the hand of Crabtree in this delicious deception of the London Antiquaries who were so clearly not amused that Crabtree was no longer welcome to their Fellowship. In order to pursue his linguistic and antiquarian interests Crabtree had perforce to direct his attentions north of the Border, where he was to travel in pursuit (amongst other things) of ‘Stone-Willies’—a

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concern of Crabtree’s revealed, but not definitively explained by Dodgson in his Oration. So many other areas of Crabtree’s life remain to be explored, but time runs out. Let me finish with Shakespeare’s injunction: ‘Cudgel thy brains no more’.

38 CRABTREE AND NATURE PHILOSOPHY Roderick Fisher 1991

In June 1693 Jeremiah Horrocks, a young curate of Hoole and a self taught astronomer visited his old friend William Crabtree a draper at Broughton, near Manchester and acquired a copy of Galileo’s Astronomical Dialogues. He had predicted the Transit of Venus across the Sun for November 24th and told Crabtree about it. Horrocks might never have made his world renowned observation, had not Crabtree corrected his outdated tables of calculation and kept watch on that cold winter Sunday while Horrocks was on duty in Church, until the Transit occurred at 3.30 pm, conveniently between Matins and Evensong. The qualities of mind, curiosity and judgment that we all know and value appeared in yet another curate and cousin, Henry Krabtree whose famous book on Yorkshire Astrology Merlinus Rusticus achieved a certain notoriety in 1685. Over the years the conflicting Demands of Drapery and the Calling of the Cloth became separated; and it was a descendant of the former, an itinerant clothing merchant whose wanderings took him from Manchester to the Welsh Marches, progenitor of Fluellen Crabtree, the cobbler of Chipping Sodbury who fathered Joseph William. Now the Transit of Venus was to play an important role in Crabtree’s formative years as it had done for his forbear. His personal and precocious Transit took place in 1763 during the celebrations at the end of the Seven Years War. Four years later and on a more public platform the Royal Society planned an expedition to measure the Transit in 1769, and so it was that the Royal Society Voyage to the South Seas was mounted with James Cook as Captain of the Endeavour and Joseph Banks as Naturalist and Observer. As we know Banks took with him two flute boys—Joseph Crabtree and his younger brother George and there is no doubt that this early contact with Banks kindled Crabtree’s interest in the Natural World and continued bis personal biological education. On arriving at Rio de Janeiro in November 1768 the Viceroy forbade Cook to land. Banks was furious and determined to collect specimens, so on 26 November he took the two boys, lowering them on a rope from a cabin into a boat and went ashore in the dark to collect plants. Thus Crabtree was involved in the first and possibly the last recorded

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Commando raid undertaken by a biologist. The Endeavour sailed on and landed at Tahiti to observe the Transit of Venus, which had been predicted for June 3rd 1769. On Tahiti the Promotion of Natural Knowledge seems to have been a continual battle between the scientists, the flies and the Tahitian ladies. In the woods and on the shore Mrs. Boba, Mrs. Eteree and Mrs. Toaro were prominent in the lives of Banks’ colleagues. One by one (and even two) they all succumbed to their charms. ‘Yes even Shyboots Parkinson…’ as the botanist Solander recalled to Charles Blagden ten years later. Young Crabtree learned much from his elders during the voyage which he was to deploy again at Oxford. Later in 1772 Cook had asked Banks to accompany him on his second voyage but stipulated ‘no flute boys’. Banks countered by proposing to take two horn players instead. Cook retorted that, good sailor as he was, he had no intention of sailing that close to the euphemistic wind, and they parted company. Released from having to learn the intricacies of the French Horn, Crabtree went up to Oxford instead, but was sent down again almost immediately for offending his tutor. Whilst I naturally sympathise with the tutorial view, the Town and Country Magazine of the year recorded it rather differently: To relate his juvenile feats of gallantry while still at the University would carry us beyond the lines we prescribe for these memoirs. Oxford echoed with his amours, and the bedmakers of The Queen’s College have given the world some testimonials of his vigour. Unable to afford a full Tour to the Continent and being determined to meet Carl Linnaeus before he died, Crabtree set out on a tour of the Low Countries and Sweden in 1776. Half a century earlier the imagination of the adolescent Linnaeus had been vividly struck by the sexuality of plants, having been lent Vaillant’s Sermo de Structura by his local doctor, whom he had approached for more practical advice. Crabtree had come across Linnaeus’ Sexual System of Plants with its startling classifications (Diandria —two husbands in the same marriage, Polandria—twenty males in the same bed with the female, a state of affairs enjoyed by the Poppy and the Lime). Crabtree visited Linnaeus in Uppsala in the summer of 1776. Linnaeus was aged and infirm after two strokes and even described himself as ‘decrepid and broken’. Even so Fru Linnea had persuaded him to act as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine for the Autumn Term. And so it was that when Crabtree arrived bearing as a present a model of that unmistakably shaped fungus, the Stinkhorn Phallus impudicus, Linnaeus was out, but his youngest daughter Sophie was in, and able to entertain him. Freeman claimed that Linnaeus was ‘gaga’ at the time and couldn’t communicate coherently. No Sirs, the apoplexy was caused when Linnaeus, returning home exhausted by Faculty business, found Crabtree in his kitchen, cack-

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handed as ever, waving that lewd, erect vegetable at his daughter. We owe our boiled turnips tonight to the first pair Linnaeus found in his rage to hurl at the young Englishman. The blushing Crabtree accepted them as a compliment and beat a hasty retreat, taking them as a gift returned in exchange for his Phallus. On returning to England he recognised the importance of re-establishing his connection with Banks, who by now was Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society and creator of a personal Interdisciplinary Research Centre at his home, 32 Soho Square. Not only had Banks amassed his own very large natural history collection and library, but it was constantly being enlarged by donations from other naturalists and travellers. In 1780 Banks received a letter from a man offering him a pair of unicorn horns. Who else, Gentlemen, could it have been but Crabtree, who knew that it would not only secure a speedy reply but perhaps an invitation to Banks’ famous early morning Thursday breakfasts at Soho Square. Banks welcomed Crabtree to his table, not as the ambitious but frequently flat flute boy on the Endeavour, but because he was one of the few men in England who had actually met Linnaeus, and recently at that. His botanical secretary, Solander who had toted his famous ‘Solander Botanical Collecting Case’ all round the South Seas with Banks had of course been Linnaeus’ favourite pupil, but that was years before and the link had been lost. I bring this to your attention tonight because of Crabtree’s unrecognised but pivotal role in abducting the Linnean Collections from Sweden and which led to the formation of the Linnean Society of London in 1788. In 1783 Crabtree was in Orleans, but he returned to London for Christmas, bringing with him some pressed plant specimens for James Edward Smith (another failed medic from Edinburgh but a budding Botanist and future President of the Linnean). Thus it was that both Smith and Crabtree were seated at Banks’ breakfast table on 23 December 1783 when a letter arrived from Dr. Acrel in Uppsala announcing that Linnaeus’ son had died and that the Collections were now offered for sale. Banks sorely wanted some of Linnaeus’ books, but being rich and well known was reluctant to enter the bidding in person, and suggested that Smith should make an offer himself. Smith, aged only 22, saw his chance for fame and Crabtree with his natural prescience joined him in the plot which followed, knowing the success it would bring them both. Eventually the money, 1,000 guineas, was put up by Smith’s father who was very reluctant to lend it and made every excuse not to. Now the acquisition of the Collection took on many of the features of a plot and we may be certain that Crabtree was involved. First there was the Navy. Admiral Sir John Jervis helped him persuade the Treasury to allow the collection to be imported without Import Duty. Then despite serious claims from Germany, Austria and Sweden, all 25 cases of the Collection

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were loaded aboard an English brig, the Appearance on 17 September 1784, and which promptly disappeared bound for Norwich, Smith’s home city. What then was Crabtree’s involvement? As Cadwallader has revealed he had the acquaintance of one Jonas Hanway who ran a Maritime School or Agency which prepared and trained boys for the rigours of naval service. It was this connection which enabled Crabtree to meet and furnish a crew for the aptly named brig. And so it was that Crabtree left Stockholm aboard the Appearance pursued by a Swedish Frigate on command of King Gustav who, like Linnaeus, had carelessly been out (in Italy) when Crabtree bore his prize away. Gentlemen, you will I am sure have noticed the unmistakable stamp of Crabtree upon this affair. The Captain of the Brig had a thinly disguised name for the occasion, Axel Sweder. The brig was flying an unidentifiable flag, certainly not the red ensign, unlike the Swedish man of war with its huge national flag. And even the Linnean Society now claims the event to be apocryphal, despite the delightful evidence of the engraving held in its own Library, made in 1800. However, this episode was to have a more lasting effect on Crabtree than he had supposed when he set out, for it stimulated his curiosity about Natural History and Natural Philosophy and led almost directly to an association with Plants and with Minerals that can only be described as sinister, and which led, I venture to suggest to Coleridge’s early poetic success on the one hand, and to the ignominious defeat of Nature Philosophy on the other. But which hand was which has yet to be revealed. Banks had not forgotten the agile youth of the Tahitian days who could climb trees and crags to collect any remotely curious plant and especially those with certain pharmacological properties. Even during his brief sojourn in Oxford Crabtree had read Dr.Jones The mysteries of Opium revealed which mentioned certain effects that he had already experienced and made good use of. Now Banks had established a large conservatory and garden at his country house Spring Grove at Hounslow where his head gardener John Smith was adept at cultivating rare plants with unusual properties. This contact enabled Crabtree to establish what has remained a clandestine relationship with the Romantic Poets and their publisher Joseph Cottle in Bristol. Coleridge, a known enthusiast for pharmacology and keen to establish his ‘Pantisocracy’ in rural seclusion where he could write poetry and grow unconventional vegetables had selected a veritable Golden Triangle in Somerset, bounded by Alfoxden, Nether Stowey and Adscombe. He proposed to Poole that he should live in a beautiful country where: Sublime of hope I seek the cottaged dell Where Virtue calm with careless step may stray And dancing to the moonlight Roundelay The Wizard passions weave an Holy Spell.

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Clearly it was Coleridge’s intention to cultivate Indian hemp for the flighty Pantisocrats and which he had already begun to receive through Joseph Cottle, with whom Crabtree had established the beginnings of a retail outlet in the Bristol Docks as early as 1784. By 1796 Crabtree was back in England after his exhausting sojourn in France at Mme. de Staël’s stud farm in Carcassonne. He had invented his now famous ‘Butter Compound’ as a specific against the attention of Pediculis pubis. Members of the Foundation will perhaps be relieved to know that Crabtree’s encounters with flies in Tahiti and lice in Bristol are his only entomological connections that I have been able to establish. I except his Ode to a Coral Insect of 1837, which as you all know is a Coelenterate and not an Arthropod, on the grounds that he was 83 at the time and his experience of collecting in the South Seas was 68 years behind him. Crabtree’s lethal unguent was also to be retailed through Cottle’s back door and it must have been then that he first made the acquaintance of Coleridge, for in April of the same year Coleridge had moved to Kingsdown, Bristol and started work in Cottle’s shop as editor and proof reader of The Watchman. Seeing a ready opportunity to expand his trade and to maintain his link with Banks, Crabtree was all too willing to comply with Coleridge’s requirements. Coleridge later told Poole that ‘I took Laudanum almost every night to sleep, when worrying about Sarah’s threatened miscarriage, but also on the problem of Evil in the world’. In February 1803 Coleridge wrote to Banks directly for a large supply of Indian hemp from the Hounslow garden, and it arrived at Nether Stowey via one ‘Samuel Purkis’, an alias new I think to Crabtree’s burgeoning collection of pseudonyms. Coleridge was delighted and wrote:…‘We will have a fair trial of it. Do bring down some of the Hyoscyamine pills, and I will give you a fair trial of Opium, Hensbane and Nepenthe’. His interest in Chemistry it seems was purely medicinal, although Coleridge enthusiastically compared the Chemist to the Poet ‘as one searching through a multiplicity of forms for unity of substance’. Crabtree’s encounter with Linnaeus’ collection of minerals was to lead, I would suggest, to the argumentative paths of Nature Philosophy and to its demise in Paris in 1830. It is, gentlemen, an involved story and a tortuous route which has taken me through the collections of minerals, to learned libraries in London and Edinburgh and to the Proceedings of the Académie Francaise. In 1806 Crabtree was the guest of Banks at the Royal Society to hear Davy’s lecture. This rekindled his interest in conventional chemistry and also in what was rapidly becoming socially fashionable, Mineralogy. He was already acquainted with Werner’s Treatise on the External character

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of Fossils which held that all rocks had originally been laid down in water, and thus adherents to this view were known as ‘Neptunists’. James Hutton in his Dissertation on different objects of Natural Philosophy, 1794 invoked Volcanic action and headed the opposing band of ‘Vulcanists’, claiming that geology revealed no vestige of a beginning to the world, nor prospect of an end, a continuum which alarmed the Clerics as much as it delighted Crabtree. Crabtree’s own interest in Vulcanology and crystal formation had been sparked off during his visit to Naples in 1787 with Goethe, as Larrett has related. When they ascended Vesuvius Crabtree found its powerful effluxion reflected his recent encounter in town with Sir William Hamilton and especially with Emma Harte. Curiously Larrett omits to tell us that Crabtree and Goethe travelled on to Sicily to inspect Mount Etna together. This event is recorded by Spallanzani in his Travels in the two Sicilies whe re he illustra tes the two philoso poets together on the very rim of the volcano, peering into the abyss. You will be intrigued to know that on this occasion Crabtree let his cloak of anonymity fall for a moment, for one figure is labelled on the engraving ‘G’ and the other, unmistakably ‘C’. Aflame with the recollection of Fusion in Naples and Eruption on Etna, Crabtree was keen to pursue his new found love and therefore examined Hall’s crystals minutely at a meeting of the Wernerian Natural History Society to which he had been introduced by its founder, Professor Jamieson in Edinburgh in 1802. There he recognised that some of the Quartz crystals exhibited could take two forms, left and right handed—palpably the same but mirror images, the one of the other. At once he seized on its implications. If a crystal could take on one of two forms, it could change and therefore evolve…thus confirming at a stroke the Romantic Philosophy of Evolution in the tradition established in Germany by Oken and Goethe and in Paris by Lamarck and Geoffroy. This was but a natural step for Crabtree for he was, as I have only lately recognised and can reveal this evening, left handed. Small wonder Mr. President that only fragments of his poems are left to us. ‘The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on…’ only to smudge the immortal lines with the fustian Georgian cuff. It has long been recognised that Crabtree’s gift for prescience far outstripped his proficiency in the scientific method. Thus while the left hand is a mirror image of the right, they cannot be superimposed except in a mirror. This then I suggest was the foundation of his genius, by which he was able to induce the truth from alternatives, a dangerous propensity which enabled him to anticipate events and reveal the truth but only by destroying those with whom he associated in the process. His dispute with Benjamin Franklin, despite their mutual interest in hot air balloons in Paris and the feasibility of manned gliders which he later witnessed with Sir George Cayley in Yorkshire in his last year, his brush with Coulomb over

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the Inverse Square Law and his deliberate frightening of Wheatstone as an old man in 1846 are all examples of this. It was Goethe’s renewed interest in Geoffroy St. Hilaire’s ideas in the growing disagreement with Cuvier in Paris, together with a fascination with Serres and Geoffroy’s work on the Philosophy of Monsters and its evolutionary implications that drew Crabtree to Paris early in 1830. The connections with Lamarck and Geoffroy were actually of long standing. Lamarck had led a bohemian life in Paris from 1778–93 where he had almost certainly met Crabtree when he broke his journeys to Orleans for refreshment on the Rive Gauche. After the Revolution the National Convention created two professorships in Zoology in Paris. One was given to Lamarck, the other was given to Geoffroy St. Hilaire, aged 22 who had made a large collection of minerals which obviously qualified him to take responsibility for the harder animals, the Vertebrates. The older man and his younger disciple rapidly developed the Philosophie Zoologique which was to have a seminal effect on Nature Philosophy Lamarck’s famous Theory of Life Fluid naturally appealed to Crabtree with what was described as ‘I’ orgasme vitale’ which maintained the molecules of the soft parts of the body in a definit e positi and thus enabled the organs to expand and contract. Cuvier was of a different mould. As tutor to a Protestant family in Normandy he found his only intellectual stimulation in marine biology on those bitter shores. Then on the strength of his zoological drawings alone he was appointed Professor of Comparative Anatomy in Paris. As one who later insisted that the ‘object of Science is to be an exact knowledge of natural phenomena’, he was unsympathetic to Geoffroy’s Fluid Philosophy. Crabtree, taking the opportunity to meet the Fluid Philosopher in person attended the Académie meeting on 15 February 1830, when the affair of the Inkfish erupted. Geoffroy claimed that the anatomy of the inkfish or squid provided the clinching evidence for his views and would conclusively demonstrate the encompassing Unity of Organic Composition, and produced a paper to prove it, adding that—‘When facts do not suffice, recourse to analogy and induction is the right and property of genius’. He argued that if a vertebrate be bent backwards so that the nape of the neck was attached to the buttocks, then its internal anatomy would compare directly with that of this clever Mollusc. Cuvier cavilled instantly and jumped up to make a blustering reply. Crabtree had taken an instant dislike to the prosy, insistent Cuvier. ‘Which means, mon petit choux, that the arse is where the mouth is’ muttered Crabtree in a deliberate stage whisper. This was too much for Cuvier and he flew into attack. Geoffroy lost his nerve, and his account of the meeting which had appeared in the proofs was mysteriously lost and never appeared in the printed Proceedings. The rest is history.

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Despite its attraction for him, Crabtree had demolished Nature— Philosophy and Lamarckian Evolution single-handed. Cuvier had triumphed; his methods of comparative anatomy dominated Biology for the rest of the Century and established the anatomical basis of Darwinian evolution. But the Inkfish had triumphed too; discharging his puff of ink with its unique ability to confuse critics and obfuscate fields of research, and yet when the water clears leaves only clues to his presence and influence for others to guess at. The study of chirality in minerals spurred Crabtree in his later years into Natural Asymmetry that had become so obvious to him ever since he started dining in public and was forever knocking over his neighbour’s claret glass. He had first heard of Phrenology from Crabb Robinson who had attended lectures by Gall, its founder, in Jena. By 1809 Crabtree had become Reader in Criminology at Queens College Oxford and had been interested in its application to the diagnosis of criminal tendencies among his charges. Many have suggested that this was only an excuse because his real concern was to examine the phrenological claim to assess ‘amativeness’ by the degree of bulging at the back of the cranium, for to the Phrenologist the Cerebellum was the abode of Venus. The popularity of phrenology was due to the enthusiasm of Romantic critics to concentrate on the analysis of character, but it was also a component of the Free Thought Movement, to which we all know that Crabtree was a life long subscriber. In 1838 he was asked by the President of the Phrenological Society to address his members at a meeting held at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society in conjunction with the British Association meeting there. Crabtree accepted at once for he had been present at the inaugural meeting of the Lit. and Phil. when he was on his way to visit Hamish Anstruther in Pittenweem in 1793 and had an affection for its aims. From the beginning the Lit. and Phil. had established the tradition of members reading papers to each other and discussing them at length and in comfort, the very core of Crabtree’s intellectual life. His friendship with Banks and Smith at the very hub of natural science activity and gossip in London ensured him a warm welcome and the fact that he had sailed with Cook, made him all the more welcome. Indeed it was in gratitude at this reception that Crabtree arranged for the first Wombat and Duck-billed Platypus to arrive from Australia in 1799 to be sent to the Lit. and Phil. museum. It can come as no surprise then to know that he chose the occasion of that meeting in 1838 to elaborate his Theory of Intellectual Asymmetry, by which the left dominates intellectual thought and thus, by complementarity generates the true path of understanding and the advance of intellectual endeavour. Now some may think that Crabtree had been anticipated in this by Duncan’s 1824 account of Dr. Hirnschadel’s ‘ologies of the Cranon and Phren’, but that is seriously to underestimate the simplicity of Crabtree’s

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concept which he had applied so successfully in advancing science by deliberately antagonising its most distinguished men. The lack of contemporary acclaim of what we must now recognise is one of Crabtree’s most enduring creative acts resolved me to examine the records myself. The Librarian of the Lit. and Phil. was most helpful. The arrival of the Wombat and its congener was fully documented, though it was noted in the margin of the manuscript that they were not in the peak of condition on arrival. The records are abundant, but not in the best of order, so you can understand my reac tion when on opening the last box for 1848 I found a faded portrait and a poem. The portrait, a pencil drawing is signed and dated ‘J Wilson 1845’ and bears on the back the faded initials ‘JC’. Its provenance can only be guessed at, but I was allowed to make a copy which I would like, Sir, to present to the Foundation (see page 321). Comparisons are odious I am told, but it will not escape your notice, I am sure, that both the Portrait and this drawing are made from the Left. The poem was copied onto a single manuscript sheet and bears the explanatory note ‘Written in the Pocket Book of a Scientific Friend’ and dated 1786, the year Crabtree met Goethe in Rome. Shall each frail transitory hand That folly, vice or interest frame To friendship’s sacred fires pretend Or dare usurp her hallowed name. Let Virtue only form the tie Which binds two sympathetic friends While SCIENCE waves her laurels high And honour on her nod attends.

39 CRABTREE’S VISION: AMBIVALENCE, ANGST, APOCALYPSE Peter Armour 1992

A year ago I was given the truly awesome task of providing what in 1988 Harte called ‘the long-overdue revisionist interpretation’ of Joseph Crabtree’s poetry. In attempting this task I have come across some new findings and some re-interpretations which I put before you. It is said that Joseph William Crabtree was born in Chipping Sodbury on 14 February 1754, but it is known that the parish registrar there had never really accepted the adoption of the Popish Gregorian Calendar in England two years earlier, and it seems very likely that the actual date of the rearfirst delivery was eleven days before, namely 3 February. Be that as it may, the child showed his poetic talent from a very early age, and his nickname ‘Cuckoo Joe’ was given to him. As his fame spread, the poet Michael Bruce was inspired to write his tribute, To the Cuckoo, containing this delightful portrayal of the rapidly maturing Joe: The schoolboy, wand’ring through the wood To pull the primrose gay, Starts, the new voice of Spring to hear, And imitates thy lay. Indeed, Joshua Reynolds was so moved at hearing of the young Sodburian’s precocity that he painted a delightful allegorical image of our budding poet set against what is recognizably the countryside of Chipping Sodbury and identified as Crabtree by the C formed by the boy’s hoop, of which I present a copy to the Crabtree Archive this evening (see page 322). The subject and attribution only came to light recently when the Courtauld Institute moved from Portman Square to the Strand, and behind a radiator in the Director’s office was discovered this photocopy with ‘J.C. by J.R.???’ pencilled on the back in the unmistakable cryptographic hand of Anthony Blunt. A crucial experience in the formation of Crabtree the poet and visionary were his contacts with Italy, and I am happy to contribute my meagre knowledge of the Italian connection in our poet’s life. Dos Santos believes that Crabtree-Berti may have returned to Naples towards the end of 1787.

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I can reveal that there is the evidence of the scrap of paper found in a Neapolitan downpipe after the archives of the Compagnia Marittima delle Due Sicilie were destroyed by allied bombing in 1943. From this it appears that a mysterious Englishman, with a knobbly cudgel and a trunk full of papers and bottles of a strange viscous liquid, disembarked at Alexandria in late 1787, where he hired a guide called Ali and a camel called Ahmed— or it may have been a guide called Ahmed and a camel called Ali—and disappeared into the desert. One other occasion when Crabtree is known to have been in Italy is documented by this notice in the ‘Foreign Varieties’ section of The New Monthly Magazine of March, 1822: A society of literary men and distinguished artists met together on the 14th of September last, to keep the anniversary of the death of Dante, in remembrance of that illustrious poet. The ceremony of the day was mingled with libations, and literary discourses relative to the occasion, in the manner of the Saturnales of Macrobius. Obviously, Crabtree would not have missed a celebration such as this which involved libations. Carter has demonstrated conclusively and exhaustively Crabtree’s later support for the cause of Polish freedom, and it was in Italy above all that his lifelong dedication to liberty began. In Milan he associated with the major Enlightenment circles of the reforming period of the Emperor Joseph II, although he could never entirely accept a movement whose journal was called Il Caffe, for, as all Crabtree scholars know, coffee was a drink much despised by the oenophile celebrant of claret. He read Cesare Beccaria’s much acclaimed work on crime and punishment, Dei delitti e delle pene, at a time, however, when his knowledge of the Italian was still somewhat rudimentary, and, confused on the number and gender of the article, he appears to have believed that the title meant, On crimes and penises—a simple and understandable error which was to bear fruit in later years in his meticulous penolog ical studies on the correlation between the two factors, described by Hargrove in 1977. In Italy, Crabtree would certainly have mixed with the revolutionary underground which was to produce those early champions of Italian liberty, the Carbonari. Now the name ‘Carbonari’ is usually assumed to refer to the glowing charcoal from which great fires are born, but this explanation is so manifestly ludicrous that I was compelled to search the archive for any earlier mention of this movement in Crabtree studies. My search was rewarded, for in 1970 Peake convincingly identified the double Crabtree signature in the lines attributed to the despicable Byron:

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Have Carbonaro cooks not carbonadoed Each course enough? What Peake appears not to have realized is that the very name ‘Carbonaro’ was adopted as a tribute to our indefatigable libertarian, with the anagram of ‘Crab’ mingled with ‘arbor’, ‘tree’, plus an extra few letters as a further necessary disguise. This discovery was confirmed for me when I walked along from the British School in Rome to the Pincio Hill. Along the pinelined avenues and yew-hedges of this park, the founders of newly unified Italy erected busts of famous Italian artists, scholars, and patriots. My eye lit upon one such bust. Vandals had removed its nose and daubed its lips with red paint; graffiti obscured the inscription on the pedestal which at first I thought read ‘Gioberti’, that is, the writer of the unreadable Primato morale e civile degli Italiani. But something in the noble lines of the brow and the visionary gaze of the piercing eyes called to mind a younger version of the portrait we see before us tonight, and a close inspection revealed to my delirious joy the name, ‘G.G.Berti’—Giuseppe Guglielmo Berti, our own glorious Joseph William, hero of the Italian Risorgimento. While in Rome with Goethe, masquerading as the engraver Tischbein, Crabtree the pre-romantic was curiously moved by life in the eternal city during the pontificate of Pius VI. He was particularly fascinated by such traditions as the sedia testiculatoria, on which, it was said, ever since the time of Pope Joan, a newly elected Pontiff was required to sit for the verification, and possibly gratification, of his manhood at the hands of the papal chamberlain; Crabtree was, however, refused permission to try out this device himself with the young and aristocratic Mother Superior in charge of the papal kitchens. However, his Methodist and libertarian spirit was somewhat shocked by the ostantatious wealth and self-seeking ambition of some of the Cardinals and prelates of the Church, and it was at a reception given by the Cardinal Duke of York on Boxing Day, which he and Goethe attended, that he picked up the malicious little verse about an ambitious Monsignore which he was to send, many years later, to Robert Browning. The verse ran: Monsignore vorrebbe avere La cardinalizia tonaca, Ma prima gli daranno La fica di santa Monaca. Crabtree’s version ran as follows:

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Tis said they will give him a Cardinal’s hat: They sooner will give him an old nun’s twat! Poor Browning, despite or perhaps because of the fact that he was married to the sickly Elizabeth Barrett, concluded that a twat was something which a nun wore on her head and so was led to compose his delightful fantasy on ‘owls and bats, Cowls and twats, Monks and nuns, in a cloister’s moods’, and so on, with which you are all familiar. Critics have tried to excuse the blunder by blaming Furnivall. We, however, can easily recognise here the hand of Crabtree, taking an affectionately playful revenge for his persecution by Robert and Ruben Browning during the time he worked at the Bank of England. It was in Milan, however, that I made a small discovery to contribute to the Crabtree Italian connection. This was while attempting to trace our hero’s activities in that city where he was to sow the seeds of the later revolutions. Obviously, he would have found time to study in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, probably in his obsessive lifelong search to unearth a manuscript of Aristotle’s lost writings on comedy. What actually happened, on that day in the autumn of 1786, is a matter for some judicious speculation, but the outline of the event is simple to reconstruct. Browsing, as one could in those days, through the bulky manuscript collection of that library, he must have taken down by chance the great Codex Atlanticus, those drawings by Leonardo da Vinci which had been glued onto pages by Pompeo Leoni in the 16th century. Now there is no reason to believe that Crabtree had any particular interest in Leonardo da Vinci, a genius so inferior to his own, and he must have needed some paper to jot down notes on Aristotle, or perhaps he was suddenly moved to compose an ode or sonnet to freedom, or the like. At all events, with his pocket-knife he removed the two parts of folio 48 from the book of uninspired drawings. Then, with one of those characteristic changes of mood to which his genius was prone, as his pen was poised over the blank reverse side of the papers, he was suddenly seized by other preoccupations —the looming prospect of having to spend months in the company of Goethe, sex, and other matters. Gentlemen, you have before you copies of the results of that autumn afternoon in the library at Milan (see page 323). The fluidity of the artistic line and the plasticity of the elegant neo-classical composition could have come from no other than the skilled hand of Crabtree-Tischbein in the caricature of the insufferable Goethe and in the playfully animated versions of the Stone-Willeys which so preoccupied the annotator of the Anyon manuscript, as Dodgson revealed to the Foundation in 1973. And the mechanical problem on which the two inventors had been working was none other than the velocipede, which with a sudden flash of inspiration Crabtree sketched upon this paper which was so conveniently to hand. At this point, however, disturbed by the steps

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of the librarian approaching the Reading Room, he hastily turned the two leaves back into their original position and glued them back into the manuscript. Until the Library gives us permission to subject the folio to a chemical analysis, we can never be sure about this supposition. Crabtree’s drawings remained hidden for nearly two hundred years until they caused a sensation during the remounting of the Codex Atlanticus in the 1970s. Scholars evolved the most truly crack-brained theories to explain the presence of these consummate designs on the reverse of some dull Renaissance doodles, and they eventually agreed that Leonardo’s pupils must have executed them in the 1490s and that the name Salai written above the more forward of the willies referred to a pupil, model, and bodyservant of that much-overrated homo universalis. Gentlemen, is this theory credible? The fact that ‘Salai’ is a simple anagram of ‘alias’ proves beyond all doubt that the drawings can only have been made by our own ever modest and retiring Crabtree, the so much greater artist and engineer. Having lost the result of his sudden inspiration, Joseph was never able to solve the problem and become the inventor of the bicycle. True, in about 1818, he introduced to the streets of his native town the contraption (see page 323), but the priapic design caused truly cyclical experiences of tumescence followed by pain to the riders, and the experiment was abandoned. ‘In the midway of this our mortal life’. Crabtree had reached his thirtyfifth birthday in 1789, and from 1800, after his return from America, he assisted Henry Cary in the incomparable translation of The Vision of Dante which earned Cary, but not Crabtree, a memorial in Westminster Abbey. Poor Cary had been having trouble with his translating since 1792, when the abrasive Anna Seward wrote to him: I confess I cannot perceive the high value of the simile you were so good as to translate for me from Dante. It is undoubtedly a natural description of the manners and habits of a flock of sheep;but what truth, what sublimity, what beauty can you see in comparing a crowd of spirits, or ghosts, to them, I cannot conceive…I can discern no apposition in this vaunted simile, without which a simile is but on a level with his, who said, ‘even as a wheelbarrow goes rumble rumble, even so that man lends another sixpence.’ All Crabtree scholars will recognise here a barbed allusion by the bitchy Swan of Lichfield to one of the serene Swan of Sodbury ‘s ’s acute and apposite verses. How Cary must have welcomed the assistance of Crabtree and how the translator and his mentor must have been amused by the sly self-referential version of the Inferno, canto 15, lines 65–66 (‘for amongst ill-savour’d crabs/It suits not the sweet figtree lay her fruit’), and by the

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tactful pun with which Thomas Bowdler’s future adviser solved the problem of the source of the devilcaptain’s bugle call at the end of canto 21 (‘Which he with sound obscene triumphant gave’). Crabtree’s dedication to Dante was to last for the rest of his life. In 1825 Crabtree contributed the entry on Dante to the Universsal Historical Dictionary of his third nearnamesake, George Crabb without an ‘e’. In 1828, of course, Crabtree gave his inaugural lecture upon his appointment to the Chair of Political Arithmetick at University College London, and although the lecture itself has been lost—or, more probably, suppressed—its title, ‘Sex among the Dead’, was discovered by the brilliant and courageous researches of Harte in 1988, from which it is clear that its subject was an examination of statistical and legal problems raised by Dante’s examples of the souls of the lustful in canto 5 of the Inferno. Before resuming my interrupted survey of Joseph Crabtree’s prolific poetic vision, it is my sad obligation to announce to you that there has been a leak. Our precious Crabtree Archive has been plundered withn the last few years by a previous member of staff of this College, a member, moreover, of the fair sex, or so I am led to believe, and from this purloined material the lady in question proceeded to mount the most scabrous attack upon the sacred memory of Crabtree, for which a naive and illiterate jury awarded her the Booker Prize in 1990. Some of you may have had the misfortune of reading this pseudo-novel. In this so-called original book, Joseph William Crabtree appears thinly disguised under the name of Randolph Henry Ash, and much tiresome allusion is made to the names of other trees. He is provided with a wife almost as long-suffering as the reader, and with a mistress called Christabel LaMotte, a minor poetess, in whom is indubitably satirized Crabtree’s metaphorically paternal relationship with the young and virginal Christian Rossetti. Various eminent Crabtree scholars are mercilessly depicted, worst of all, the late, great Kemper T.Guggenheim, doyen of Crabtree scholarship at the University of Western Nevada in Reno, who is portrayed as a predatory American academic scalp-hunter called Mortimer Cropper. As for the rest, to discuss the endless pages of inept pastiche of Crabtree’s poetry which constitute much of this embittered work is too painful, and it is with joy and relief that I turn back to the ineffable verse of the man himself. The first decade of the new century was an immensely productive period for Crabtree, particularly with regard to his cobbler’s role as Joseph Blacket (1809), and it is at this time that he must have refine and polished the most metaphysical of all his works, the drinking song, We march we know not whither, with which Wellington’s army so confused the enemy on the battle field at Waterloo. Indeed it is easy to understand how the poem’s 123 tercets, with their virtuoso variations on rhymes with ‘moon’ (the terrifying ‘We’ll stick it up ‘em before it’s noon’, the plaintive, ‘We’ve boiled our eggs, but we have no spoon’, and so on) encapsulate the

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Weltanschauung of the ordinary soldier’s sheer grit and determination to stick it out, up, in, under, anywhere, ‘he knows not whither’. At this point, I must unfortunately indicate a slight blemish in Graham-Campbell ’ s magnifice Oration in 1990. You will remember that he ascribed Crabtree’s immortal, nay proverbial line, ‘Great unaffected vampires and the moon’, to the Ars Salutandi, whereas it is, of course, the ‘haunting single line refrain’ of the soldiers’ song under discussion. Orators before me have lavished upon this supreme example of Crabtree’s verse words of eloquent praise and passion with which I cannot compete. The echo of the almost as sublime Dante is clear to all readers, as is the wickedly intertextual backreference to one of Crabtree’s own earlier visionary odes: The Leech drops off whe n satura te of blo The Vampire flies, gorged with the crimson flood; But these when feasted more in hunger rave, And their foul food with fiercer fury crave. It is well-known that Crabtree’s ambivalent intertextuality led him to provide later variations on this unforgettable line: ‘Great unaffected valkyrs and the moon’, when he was going through his Nordic phase, and ‘Great unaffected umpires and the gloom’ in his magnificently moving series of poems celebrating cricket, published posthumously as The Bat and the Balls. Throughout this period, as I have already mentioned, Crabtree was deeply engrossed in his indisputable masterpiece, the Ars Salutandi. Published by Lackington in 1820, it did not sell well, and a disastrous fire in the warehouse has made it virtually unobtainable today. The priceless manuscript was last heard of in 1903 when it was sold by the Maggs Brothers, after which it disappeared. The finger of suspicion inevitably points to the then Provost of University College London, remorselessly pursuing his institution’s implacable vendetta against the genius who was simply too far above them to be accepted. Some fragments from canto I, stanzas 12 and 28, and from canto VIII, stanzas 3 and 84, have, of course, survived and are so well-known to you that I need not quote them here. The famous Tombstone Verses have been identified, though I think dubiously, as an appendix to the Ars. It only remains to add that it is now generally accepted that Crabtree himself composed the Ars Osculandi, so unfortuantely mistranslated by Peake, with its pungent epigraph, ‘The longest way up and the quickest way in’. Crabtree indubitably derived his titles for both these works from his intimate knowledge of Cardano’s Ars Magna, as attested by Lighthill in 1986. The Ars Salutandi marks a watershed in Crabtree’s development from his neo-metaphysical phase into the full Romantic apocalypticism of his late maturity. From time to time, during his years of productive

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retirement in Devon, Crabtree visited University College London in disguise to give Italian lessons and instruction in Dante to Henry C.Barlow, who acknowledged his master by insisting on the C which preserved the anagrammatic ‘crab’ in his name. Gentlemen, the triennial lectures held in this College under the title of the Barlow Lectures on Dante should by rights be renamed the Crabtree Lectures forthwith. Crabtree’s cottage at Ashburton became a centre of pilgrimage for Italian exiles: for Antonio Panizzi, for whom Crabtree had been instrumental in obtaining the first Chair of Italian at University College London but who repaid him so despicably by expunging his name from the catalogue of the British Museum Library; and for Gabriele Rossetti who forgave Crabtree for supporting Panizzi when he landed a much more congenial professorship at King’s, and who used to entertain the company with his renditions of Neapolitan songs. Precocious little Christina Georgina Rossetti was a particular favourite of Crabtree’s, and she was clearly madly in love with the old man for a while: You took my heart in your hand With a friendly smile, With a critical eye you scann’d, Then set it down, And said, ‘It is still unripe, Better wait awhile; Wait while the skylarks pipe, Till the corn grows brown.’ Despite this uncustomary abstinence on the part of our 99-year-old poet, the astute Gabriele refused to allow his daughter to return to Ashburton that autumn or ever again, and of course in the following year Crabtree went to pay court to the more mature Brontës with fatal consequences. It was in these final years that Joseph produced many of his most deeply personal works: ‘For want of me the world’s work will not fail’; ‘Another year, another deadly stroke’; ‘I should have been a pair of ragged claws’; the extended romance, The Extra Inch, rich in nostalgia and powerful masculine endings and rhymes (‘falls’, ‘totem’, ‘lick’, and so on); the intricate Fishing Lines, celebrating that love of angling which Crabtree bequeathed to his descendant J.R.Hartley, whose memoirs, Fly Fishing, show many features of the inimitable prose-style of his forebear. It was time for him to sum up his life, which had produced all those masterpieces which had appeared under the names of others: Kubla Khan, sold to Coleridge; the chorus to Hellas; Crabbe’s David Morris; Erasmus Darwin’s The Loves of the Plants; and all the best bits of Wordsworth and of the treacherous scandal-monger, Byron (The Prophecy of Dante, The Fanny of Rimini, and so on). Crabtree spent the dying embers of his genius

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composing his songs for the Metropolitan Lion Club, which included The Ballad of the Red Tape-worm, but we know that to his mind images from his Methodist childhood, from the Book of Revelation, and from Dante kept recurring, and that he was struggling to body forth one final consummatory masterpiece, on the millennium of human achievement in the age of the woman clothed with the sun and the stars, and that he was held up in this daunting project merely by being unable to decide which European monarch or President could convincingly be represented allegorically in the role of Antichrist, and whether it was really poetically apt to cast the amply endowed Mrs. Throckmorton, the squire’s wife, as the great harlot, the scarlet woman whose name is Babylon. I can conclude in no more fitting way than to quote the last words which Joseph Crabtree ever wrote, from his great unfinished, inde hardly started, masterpiece, The Revelation of Joseph the Supine, or Crabtree Expos’d in terza rima: In this our mortal life’s late afternoon, Sleepless I dream and dreamless see. Fate, undetected, scampers ‘neath the moon… ‘Qui’, gentlemen, ‘il maestro depose la penna’; here, the master laid down his pen. Fate, undetected, did indeed step in, for the next day he travelled to Haworth, and the vocal muse of Cuckoo Joe, now a hoary centenarian Swan, was cruelly cut off by a piece of tripe.

40 CRABTREE’S MEASURES John Mullin 1993

Joseph Crabtree’s father was identified by Cadwallader in his 1976 Oration as ‘Fluellen Crabtree, a cobbler’. There are, I believe, two minor errors here. First, his name may well have been pronounced ‘Fluellen’ b y monogl ot Englishm en, but his true nam e was ‘Llewe Secondly, although he was undoubtedly ‘very much into leather’, to use the modern idiom, he was not a mere cobbler. Smith informed us in 1959 that he was a civil servant, and that was nearer the mark. Llewellyn Crabtree in fact was a Conner, or to be more precise an Aleconner, a person who was both an excise man and an expert in assessing the quality of ale by utilizing the physical properties of leather. It was a highly respected profession: Shakespeare’s father held such an office in 1557 in Stratford-upon-Avon. Ale conners, or ale inspectors, gustatores cervisiae, were officially appointed after swearing an oath, which originated from the days of Henry V, updated periodically to keep pace with inflation. An early form of the oath ran: ‘You shall swear that you shall know of no brewer, cook, or pie-maker in your ward who sells a gallon of best ale for more than three ha’pence, and not otherwise than by measure sealed and full of clear ale’. The analytical procedures normally adopted by an ale-conner were rather unusual. He would first call for a full measure of ale, pour a quantity of it on a wooden bench, and sit in the puddle whilst wearing his official leather breeches. He would then check the brew for clarity and flavour, a much more agreeable task, after which the volumetric capacity of the tankard would be checked, by the simple expedient of filling it up again. When this part of the test had been completed he would then attempt to rise. If his breeches had stuck to the bench, the ale was demonstrably sugared and therefore adulterated. Ale brewed from pure malt was not supposed, on evaporation, to be adhesive. Although the office of ale-conner was not without its compensations, since innkeepers would not be slow to offer generous refreshment, it also had its disadvantages since it was often difficult for these servants of the Crown to maintain a sense of equilibrium in the course of their duties.

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Progressing from one tavern to another, a conner could feel very much like Colombus and his voyage to the New World: When he set out he didn’t know where he was going. When he arrived he didn’t know where he was. When he got back he didn’t know where he had been. It would not be at all surprising, therefore, if young Joseph Crabtree accompanied his father from time to time, if only to show him the way to go home, and it is more than likely that he would also be called upon to assist in the test procedures. While Crabtree Senior was conscientiously fulfilling the tasks which involved sitting still, Crabtree Junior would most probably be entrusted with checking the volumetric capacity of the empty tankards. In this way he would soon learn that not all quart pots held a full quart of liquid, and this experience would help to explain his subsequent interests and achievements which I shall describe in a moment. At the age of 12, Joseph Crabtree was sent to Yorkshire, to continue his education at a boarding school at Rishworth in the parish of Halifax. But Crabtree only remained at his new school for two years because at the age of 14 he was sent, or perhaps ran away, to sea. The reason for his sudden departure from the school, which had a reputation for preparing pupils for admission to Oxford or Cambridge at the age of 18, has not so far been established, although our attention had already been drawn to one of the School Regulations, and I quote: ‘that no child was to be admitted or retained, who should be evil or wickedly disposed or of lewd conversation’. Crabtree was admitted, of that there is no doubt, but he was not retained, at least not beyond the age of 14. Now I must admit that what follows is to some extent a reconstruction, but I believe that I can throw some light on the matter. You will remember that, at the tender age of 9, on a visit to the port of Bristol, ostensibly to wave at some ships, Crabtree was lured by some unidentified voluptuous maiden up to the crow’s nest of a man o’ war where, rising to the occasion, he was deprived of his virginity. The experience had a marked effect on this hand-reared callow youth. In fact, it had several, but I have no intention this evening Mr. President, of discussing Crabtree’s medical problems. They have already been described in excruciating detail by several of my predecessors, together with the formulations of the vile unguents that were prescribed to relieve the squalid complaints. However, at school, during one particularly intense bout of his hard-won affliction, Crabtree asked the headmaster if he could be excused classes. His request was refused, and he was told to stick it out until lunchtime, which he did, interpreting the advice literally, and was promptly expelled for lewd conduct.

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In 1768, young Crabtree went to sea with Joseph Banks the naturalist, on Captain Cook’s first voyage to the South Seas. On their long voyage together in hot climates, Banks took quite a liking to Crabtree admiring his immense latent intellect, amongst other things. It was Banks who introduced Crabtree to Richard Price, the renowned political economist and financial adviser to national governments. Price, who had risen from humble origins in rural Wales, probably saw in the bright young Crabtree something of a reflection of his own youth. Price introduced Crabtree to one of his close friends, Joseph Priestley, who at that time was investigating the chemical and physical properties of various gases. It is perhaps worth recalling at this point that we were informed by Jones in 1957 that Crabtree had earlier taken an active dislike to Priestley after reading about his belief in the application of the inverse square law to electrostatic attractions, mistakenly thinking that this conflicted with Newton’s views on the subject. But it is very difficult to understand how such a relatively minor disagreement could possibly account for the intense animosity which culminated in Crabtree’s return from France in 1791 to lead a riotous mob against Priestley’s house in Birmingham, an act which eventually drove the famous chemist to emigrate to the United States. I shall now reveal the real cause of the conflict, Mr. President. When Priestley and Crabtree first met at Price’s house in 1772, Priestley had recently found that when he dissolved carbon dioxide in water he obtained an interesting sparkling drink. He proposed to call it ‘impregnated water’. Crabtree was given a sample to taste, but he was not impressed and told Priestley that it needed a bit more work done on it, and in any case with a name like that it wouldn’t sell. Experimenting on his own Crabtree found that if he dissolved a small amount of sodium bicarbonate in carbonic acid aqueous solution the mixture assumed remarkable properties. When used in moderation, it could, for example, even make whisky palatable. Crabtree had invented soda-water. When Priestley heard about this remarkable discovery, he told all his friends, never once mentioning Crabtree’s vital contribution, dashed off a 120-page paper to Philosophical Transactions and was awarded the Copley medal of the Royal Society. Crabtree never forgave him. After his brief sojourn at the University of Oxford, to which he went up and from which he was sent down in double-quick time, Crabtree returned to London. We know that during 1773 he was in partnership with Jeremiah Postlethwaite, who for some strange reason had changed his name to Joseph Bramah, a worthy artisan whose technical skills were described by Rowe in 1980. Bramah had a small workshop in Denmark Street, St. Giles, and Crabtree had invented a beer pump that was fabricated and patented by Bramah, with or without Crabtree’s permission. But why a beer pump? That is the interesting question. There

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must have been a very good reason why Crabtree’s inventive powers should have turned towards the development of such a specialized contraption. Surely it would indicate that he had more than a passing acquaintance with taverns and their technical problems? I believe, Mr. President, that I have found the connection. I have discovered that a branch of the Crabtree family owned a tavern here in this part of London, and Crabtree himself resided there during 1774 carrying out trials with the prototype of his invention. Furthermore, the tavern still exists, at least in modified form. Crabtree’s uncle, his Uncle Dewi I am led to believe, was landlord of an ale-house called The Crabtree, situated on the eastern side of a meadow called Crabtree Field, on the boundary between the parishes of Marylebone and St. Giles, close to the intersection of the roads to Oxford and Tottenham Court, respectively. This clearly cannot be the same Crabtree Field as that referred to by Scott in 1964 since that was identified as being part of the proposed Carmarthen Square site, now part-occupied by UCL. It is possible that the Crabtree family could have owned and named more than one plot of land in this part of London, although I have not been able to confirm it despite diligent searches through the estate maps and land registrations of all the parishes concerned. The Crabtree tavern itself can no longer be seen. It was rebuilt in the late eighteenth century and renamed The Blue Posts, on account of two blue posts that stood in the forecourt as an advertisement for a local fleet of blue-shafted sedan chairs. The Blue Posts tavern does still exist, at number six Tottenham Court Road, although the original building was destroyed by enemy bombing in 1941 and later rebuilt in the style that can be seen today. It would seem to me, Mr. President, that the wall of The Blue Posts at least deserves consideration as a location for a commemorative Blue Plaque. Several previous Orators have expressed doubts that because Joseph Crabtree came from a Methodist background, any alleged contact with the brewing trade must be mistaken. Nothing could be further from the truth. The oldest brewery in Wales, a land noted for beer as well as for song, is named after a Methodist minister, the Reverend James Buckley, who married the daughter of Henry Child, maltster, brewer, staunch Methodist and frequent host, at his home in Llanelli, to John Wesley during his evangelical tours of Wales. Crabtree met Wesley at Child’s house in August 1779 and was amused by the description of what Wesley called The Jumpers, persons who were moved to near ecstacy under the powerful influence of a good rousing hymn. As Wesley had recorded earlier in his Journal for August 1775: Some of them leaped up many times, men and women, several feet from the ground. They clapped their hands with the utmost violence;

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they shook their heads; they distorted their features; they threw their arms and legs to and fro in all variety of postures; they sang, roared, shouted and screamed with all their might, to the no small terror of those that were near to them. This behaviour, of course, is not all that unusual nowadays, particularly with members of the younger generation stimulated by certain types of secular music. It was during their meeting at Llanelli that Crabtree challenged Wesley over the alleged efficacy of prayer, pointing out that in England at least no one had prayers for a long and healthy life said on their behalf more frequently than the Monarch and his family, and that did not seem to have had much effect. The argument could be settled, he suggested, by conducting a quantitative survey to establish the average length of life of different population groups, and comparing the data with those of members of the Royal Household. It was close on 100 years later, however, before Sir Francis Galton, founder of the Eugenics Laboratory here in Gower street, made his notable statistical study which provided the quantitative evidence to support Crabtree’s thesis. Indeed, Galton’s enquiry showed that members of the Royal Household had the lowest life expectancy of all the groups studied, and the clergy were not all that far behind either. Not surprisingly, many of the large breweries of Great Britain in the eighteenth century were linked by family ties. Henry Child’s grand father had owned the Anchor Brewery at Southwark which was later inherited by Henry Thrale, regular host to Samuel Johnson. Acting on behalf of Child, Crabtree attended the Anchor Brewery auction sale after Thrale’s death in April 1781 when, as reported by Boswell, Johnson was observed bustling about like an excise man exclaiming ‘we are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich, beyond the dreams of avarice’. Last year, Mr. President, in the archives of Buckley’s brewery in Llanelli, I was shown a faded beer-stained receipt, faintly countersigned with what appeared to be the initials ‘JC’, relating to the purchase at that sale of two small vats for the sum of £284 6s 8d. The vats, I regret to say, could no longer be identified. In 1783, Crabtree joined his Uncle Oliver’s wine business, Crabtree and Hillier, in Orléans where he stayed for several years, making frequent visits back to England to keep in touch with his ever widening circle of friends. On one of these excursions, in the spring of 1789, Crabtree attended a meeting at Westminster where Sir John Riggs Miller, member of parliament for Newport in the County of Cornwall, was explaining his deep concern about the unreliability of the various so-called standard measures kept in and around London. He had found, for example, that the two brass rod standard yards kept at the Exchequer were both bent and

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even when straightened out they did not agree with one another. At Guildhall he found that two measures of the standard pint did not quite fill the standard quart. Crabtree offered the suggestion that the standard yard itself should be abolished. It was, he said, a quite irrational unit of length, being based on the distance between the nose and outstretched finger tip of King Richard the Lionheart. It would be more logical, he argued, to replace it with the metre, recently proposed in France, a much more sensible unit of length equal to one ten millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator on a line passing through Barcelona. From first-hand experience, Crabtree was able to explain some of the problems with volumetric units in the wine and ale trades. Ale was sold in bulk by the barrel, sub-divided into the kilderkin (half barrel) and firkin (quarter barrel). Wine, on the other hand, was sold by the tun, sub-divided into the pipe or butt (half tun), firkin (one third tun), hogshead (quarter tun) and barrel (one eighth tun). However, a barrel of ale was larger than a barrel of wine, and a firkin of wine was larger than a firkin of ale. To make matters worse, a barrel of ale was smalle than a barrel of beer. It was no better with the units of weight, or mass as it is called nowadays. Here again different trades and professions had their own variations. Apothecaries and goldsmiths, for example, preferred ounces and grains (sub-divided into scruples, drachms or pennyweights, according to taste). But their ounce was larger than the more common variety which measured 16 to the pound, 14 of which made a stone, 8 of which made a hundredweight, 20 of which made a ton. And this ton, bear in mind, was not as heavy as the wine tun which measured 252 gallons or 1008 Winchester quarts. And you also have to remember that the Winchester quart had nothing in common with those large cylindrical narrow-necked bottles, familiar to all who have ever visited a chemical laboratory, because those Winchesters held more than two standard quarts. It was all very confusing. Crabtree knew that France had similar difficulties with their weights and measures and he had often discussed the subject with the -French statesman Talleyrand, an old acquaintance with whom he had once shared a ladyfriend—the hyperloquatious Madame de Staël, no less. The problems, in fact, were international. And it was then that Crabtree had a blinding flash of intuitive insights. The prime objective, he suggested, should be to replace all national units with a new set of international units, one of which could be the metre, if only to please the French, and at the same time to align them with a decimal system. And while they were at it, Crabtree continued, national currencies could also be subjected to the same treatment. Crabtree was thus the first to propose an international programme of metrication and decimalisation. Miller was impressed with Crabtree’s arguments and asked him to contact Talleyrand to see if he could be persuaded to work towards a common objective. Talleyrand replied with a letter of support which Miller

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flourished in a House of Commons debate in April 1790. In April 1792, Talleyrand contrived to get himself sent on a diplomatic mission to London and asked Crabtree if he could arrange a meeting with the Younger Pitt to discuss standardization matters. They met, but did not apparently get on very well together, which is perhaps not surprising since neither was what you might call effusive. Pitt, ‘had a smile like moonlight glinting on the brass plate of a coffin’, whereas Talleyrand was known to have extraordinary control over his features. It was said ‘that if, while one was conversing with him, he would receive a kick up the backside, one would never be aware, from any expression of his, of the indignity he had just suffered’. Apparently, Talleyrand’s poker face did not even change during that frequently cited incident in 1809, when Emperor Napoleon ranted, raved, hurled abuse and called him ‘a load of shit in a silk stocking’. Talleyrand, who had never suffered from mural dyslexia, the inability to read writing on a wall, quickly got the message that his future as Grand Chamberlain looked bleak, so he tactfully resigned. Whatever actually transpired at the meeting between Pitt and Talleyrand we will probably never know, but so far as the international standardization of units was concerned, Britain proceeded to develop the Imperial system and France the metric. France decimalized its currency in 1795, but was beaten to it by the United States which had decimalized theirs three years earlier. But the seed sown by Crabtree did germinate, and some 200 years later the arguments are nearly over. Crabtree’s measures have been adopted internationally and we take it all for granted. We now instinctively know our weight in kilograms, our height in centimetres and find it difficult to distinguish between a quart and a litre, even when sober. We would now never dream of describing a piece of wood, for example as say 6ft of 3×2, although what we would need to ask for, to guarantee a sensible response from a vendor when attempting to purchase such an item, is still anyone’s guess. Crabtree was fascinated by measurement and quantification and was fond of saying ‘When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind’. William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, repeated these words, without quoting the source, in a lecture to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1863, and is often mistakenly credited as the original author. Crabtree conveyed his enthusiasm for numerical expression to Wordsworth during their several walking tours together. In 1798, for example, Wordsworth gratefully changed the opening of Lines on Tintern Abbey from a somewhat pensive ‘How long is it?’, which Crabtree pointed out could so easily be misinterpreted, to the much sharper ‘Five years have past; five summers with the length of five long winters’, which is now

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generally regarded as going a bit over the top. But after that you couldn’t stop Wordsworth, as in The Thorn written in the same year: There is a fresh and lovely sight A beauteous heap, a hill of moss Just half a foot in height According to his notebook it was actually just under 5½ inches, but even when unconventionally he rounded it up to six he still couldn’t fit it in. And then a few verses later comes this gem: And to the left, three yards beyond You see a little muddy pond I’ve measured it from side to side Tis three feet long and two feet wide. Which brings tears to the eyes. And now I must draw to a close. None of us here tonight needs to be reminded that Joseph Crabtree was a man of many talents. For proof that he was highly respected as a man of achievement, there is no need to go any further than the National Portrait Gallery where you can see an engraving entitled ‘Distinguished Men of Science (see page 324). Amongst the notables in the group are Telford, Brunel, Watt, Cavendish, Dalton, Davy and Banks. Crabtree stands on the right, with his back to the viewer, characteristically preserving anonymity. He appears to be engaged in conversation with Richard Trevithick, possibly asking him how much he made out of his experimental circulartrack passenger railway in 1808, located in what was later to become the UCL quadrangle. Many have tried to guess the identity of this enigmatic figure in the picture, and one at least has suggested that it could be Joseph Bramah. But we know better than that. Bramah, whose real name was Postlethwaite, was undoubtedly a skilled artisan, the fabricator of a beer pump and later, so we have been informed, a water closet. But would these ‘achievements’ have warranted his inclusion in his ‘Top 50’ group? Would he have been accepted in such distinguished company? No, this is not Joseph Bramah. It is Joseph Crabtree and immediate steps should be taken to end any uncertainty.

41 IN THE STEPS OF CRABTREE Tony Smith 1994

Mr. President, 40 years ago to the day on 17th February 1954, my late father Hugh Smith presided at the first meeting of the Crabtree Foundation. It gives me much pleasure and pride to follow my family heritage of Crabtree studies standing before you this evening. Some three years ago, James Sutherland wrote to me ‘Hugh and I never thought the little acorn we sowed all those years ago would grow to such a spreading oak tree’, and added with typical sublety, ‘or chestnut would be a better metaphor.’ The Foundation owes much to those two men, and to many others also, who will not be forgotten. In serving for five years as your Secretary, I thought I had done enough to avoid ever being called as Orator, but it was inevitable that sooner or later a virgin Secretary of the Foundation would be called. It happened to Arthur Tattersall who managed to hang on as Secretary for ten years. The title of my oration might well be ‘In the steps of Crabtree Orators’, for it indicates my intention to expand on existing research rather than to explore new ground that has not been trodden before. Others more illustrious than I have already addressed Crabtree’s contributions to the sciences. Nevertheless, there are some small fissures in their researches that I hope to fill. However, let me first turn to Joseph Crabtree’s early years in rural Chipping Sodbury. His playgrounds were the gently-sloping buttercupfilled fields of the South Cotswolds. His interests were the birds and flowers and his young female companions. In this pastoral environment, his growing poetic and musical talents naturally took in the surroundings with which he was familiar. We can picture him there, much as he appears in the cherubic illustration attributed to Joshua Reynolds (Armour 1992, see page 322), or clad in his littl leather ale-conner’s breeches (Mullin 1993). Peter Armour has suggested that Crabtree’s nickname ‘Cuckoo Joe’ marked his poietic as well as his vocal gifts. Who other could have been the composer of that well-known Gloucestershire folk song Buttercup Joe, from which Crabtree took his nickname after his voice broke? I am indebted to Mr Bob Arnold of Burford for the original words:

THE CRABTREE ORATIONS 1954–1994 281

Chorus

For I can drive a plough And milk a cow And I can reap or mow. I’m as fresh as a daisy as grows in the field And they calls I Buttercup Joe

Notice the clever use of the characteristic Gloucestershire pronoun ‘I’ and the singular verb ‘calls’ to aid local understanding. This chorus is accompanied by four verses, quite an achievement for a 9-year-old. Could this delightful early poem have been the subject of Dr. Samuel Johnson’ s remark in 1763 (Brown 1955) calling Joseph Crabtree a ‘blockhead’? Yes, gentlemen, it most certainly was. The fifth and sixth lines of the first verse read: Some folks calls I Bacon Fat And others Turmut Head Dr. Johnson would not have understood or repeated the Gloucestershire ‘turmut’, meaning turnip, and he replaced it with ‘block’. What more likely theatre for the young Crabtree to perform his compositions than the Gloucestershire public houses, where he followed and assisted his father as ale conner after his retirement from the Civil Service and from the sea? Joseph Crabtree left Chipping Sodbury to go to school at Rishworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where he had relatives, when he was twelve years old (Smith 1959). He was old enough to travel on his own and it would have been on horseback since he had few belongings. At Cheltenham he was advised to avoid Tewkesbury with its 53 pubs, a den of drinking and evil ways. At the end of his first day’s ride he would have stayed at the Hobnails Inn near the northern border of Gloucestershire. He sang Buttercup Joe for his supper. In the morning, the view of Bredon Hill to the north-west inspired him to write those few lines of poetry nowadays attributed to our own A.E. Housman, Summer-time on Bredon. I have reconsidered Fred Gee’s thesis that Joseph Crabtree was a secret agent of the British Government. He made an excellent case, but the evidence provided in subsequent orations since 1984, not always recognised, confirms Gee’s conclusion beyond doubt. Allow me to elaborate. The visit to Vienna and Prague in 1791 when he met Mozart (Foreman 1989) is interesting. The primary reason for the visit was an instruction to attend the coronation of the Emperor Leopold II in Prague, to mingle with the rulers and political leaders he would meet and generally to pick up information. The opportunities in such a jamboree were too good to miss. Crabtree’s stopover in Vienna was secondary, but while there he realised something very significant for his intelligence work. Hidden in Mozart’s

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prodigious musical output, which was being sent to all the courts and centres of government in Europe, were coded messages. This had to be stopped and the only way was to destroy the coding machine, that is, Mozart himself. The revenge for the pox that Crabtree caught from Mozart, via his wife Constanze, was only incidental, just one of the hazards of the job, and was not the main reason for Crabtree’s assassination of Mozart. His rapid departure back to London, after completing Mozart’s Requiem, was to report back to base. Next, would a visit to Sweden and the Low Countries really be an acceptable alternative to the Grand Tour (Fisher 1991)? I think not. Crabtree was sent to visit Linnaeus specifically to obtain seeds of the remarkable Brassicus Rutabaga or Swede Turnip. These were troubled times in Europe and British troops needed to be fit, strong and wellfed to defend our interests at home and abroad. Good reports had been received of the high nutritional value, good keeping characteristics and ease of transportation of the swede. It was vital to introduce it to Britain for mass cultivation. A visit to Linnaeus was the answer and Crabtree, with his youthful experience of ‘turmuts’, was the best person to go. We are told (Fisher 1991) that the mission failed because Linnaeus returned home to find his daughter fondling the phallic model of the stinkhorn fungus that Crabtree had brought as a gift. Linnaeus threw two large swedes at Crabtree who accepted them as a gift in return. However, Freeman (1975) tells how the sour-faced Fru Linnaea presented Crabtree with the seeds of the Brassica Rutabaga and moreover that she and Sophie entertained Crabtree to a supper of boiled swedes and mutton, similar to this evening’s excellent fare, gentlemen. Clearly after throwing the swedes, Linnaeus was pacified by his daughter, who explained how much she had enjoyed playing with Crabtree’s gift. The two accounts are thus compatible. Crabtree brought the seeds back to London and promptly propagated some of them in the gardens of his friend, Sir Joseph Banks, at Hounslow. Others he sent to his Uncle Agreen in Maine, that staunch supporter of British colonialism, for him to develop the mass production of the swede, or rutabaga as it is known there, for feeding the British troops in North America. Mr. President, here from the Crabtree archive, to illustrate the event I have just described, is the glass model of the Phallus Impudicus presented to the Foundation by Richard Freeman, identical to that in the Linnaeus collection. It has lain unused, as far as I know, except by the Keeper of the Archive, since 1975. I have taken post-secretarial executive action in arranging for it to be modified for another purpose, additional to what at first may appear. Its shaft has been skillfully cut by Mr. Brian Humm so as to form two claret glasses for the use of the President and the Orator at this and future dinners of the Foundation.

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Crabtree’s connection with Joseph Bramah has been described by Rowe (1980), but there was a more sinister side which Rowe did not mention. Their association while living and working together between 1773 and 1783 in St. Giles was certainly productive; the Bramah lock, the Bramah press, the water closet, beer pump, fire engine and humble fountain pen were all Crabtree’s invention’s patented and manufactured by Bramah. All was not well financially and when Crabtree departed for France to join his uncle in the wine shipping trade, matters got worse and Bramah ceased all payments to him. This led to an irreparable rift between them and in Crabtree’s case a desire for revenge. Crabtree was not a man to cross on scientific matters, as we have previously heard from the burning of Joseph Priestley’s house at Birmingham (Jones 1959). Thus, in 1796, Crabtree was delighted to appear as an expert witness in the court case brought by Matthew Boulton and James Watt for infringement of Watt’s patent for a condensing steam engine. Bramah was to appear at the chief witness for the defendants. Crabtree rushed back from his intelligence assignment with the Baroness Liechtenstein on a haystack in Austria (Gee 1984) to appear in court. The court was hot, crowded and noisy. Bramah, called to give evidence, was verbose and much affected by the ‘alkalescent and morbific exhalations of the large and close assembly’ and the court became impatient. Crabtree’s chance came as Bramah described the repetitive up and down action of a greasy piston in a well-lubricated channel, with its sexual connotations. Crabtree started the barracking, shouting ‘fool’, ‘blockhead’ (note the same insult as used by Dr.Johnson on Crabtree), ‘shoemaker’, and, worse, ‘shit-house maker’. The proud and conceited Bramah was not allowed to continue his exposition and was thoroughly discredited, much to Crabtree’s pleasure. The case was won by Boulton and Watt, but Bramah would not give up so easily and wrote a 91-page letter of complaint, with more evidence, to the judge. On page 82 he quite unreasonably criticises the patent for proposing to lubricate and seal the piston of the engine with, among others, ‘fat of animals, quicksilver’. It is notable that quicksilver (or mercury) and animal fat (or suet) were the ingredients of Crabtree’s Butter, which Crabtree had formulated, as described by Tay (1965), to relieve the itching of his pudenda from a persistent infestation of crab lice, and which, incidentally, he used to poison Mozart. Undoubtedly he had discussed the itching problem with James Watt in his stay at Birmingham as Watts’s guest, and had experimented with ingredients to hand in Watts’s laboratory. Crabtree was there behind the scenes through an exciting age of scientific discovery and engineering invention, not to mention revolutions. Joseph Priestley inspired and typified the spirit of the age in intellectual enquiry. In 1780 he was a Presbyterian minister in Birmingham, but coupled this with studying the fundamental nature of air and water. James Watt, also then settled in Birmingham, was also much interested in the same subject for

284 TONY SMITH

applications to steam power. Watt, Priestley and others in the area with scientific interests formed the Lunar Society, which met at full moon for scientific discussions. Members included Erasmus Darwin, Wedgwood, Galton, Small and, later, Crabtree. Although their purpose was scientific, the discussions were also politically liberal and even revolutionary. In 1789 the group hailed the French Revolution as a Victory for liberty and reason’. Priestley was the leader in these political activities. Crabtree was asked by his spymaster to infiltrate and investigate the Lunar Society, which he was able to do under the pretext of an interest in the nature of water. Both Priestley and Watt had established by 1783 that oxygen and hydrogen (not identified as such at that time) could be combined to form water in an explosive reaction. Watt invited Crabtree to visit his laboratory in Birmingham to join him in some experiments to see if the reverse reaction could be initiated, that water could be split up into oxygen and hydrogen. Crabtree’s brilliant suggestion (attributable to his wide interdisciplinary knowledge so ably revealed by previous orators) was that the water in the experiment should be passed through a human body, which in any event is a powerful chemical reactor, and that the gaseous emissions at the exit end should be tested for their explosiveness by the application of a flame. The experiments were carried out in Watt’s laboratory one afternoon in 1783 after Crabtree had offered his own body as the necessary chemical reaction vessel and elected to consume 10 pints of beer, mainly water of course, even in 1783. Success was limited, although a small explosive reaction was observed. Crabtree naturally had to remain standing for some days following this experiment, but, on the positive side, his persistent rearend ailment was at least temporarily cured by the cauterisation from the explosion. The experimenters were of course mistaken on the nature of the anal gas, which was mainly methane, but the result was sufficiently interesting to offer a demonstration to the Lunar Society. The results were sent to Priestley who, it was intended, would submit a paper to the Royal Society with the offer of a further demonstration. But Henry Cavendish had recently made a similar discovery (in a less spectacular manner) and had hurriedly presented his work already. This sparked off a heated controversy between Watt and Cavendish, undoubtedly provoked by Crabtree, whose posterior had been so painfully maltreated for no gainful purpose. Crabtree, through his now close connection with Watt, was able to attend meetings of the Lunar Society and to observe its dangerous revolutionary tendencies. Unknown to Watt, it was Crabtree who fomented the ‘Church and King’ riots in 1791, which were directed against members of the Lunar Society on the occasion of a blatant celebration of the second anniversary of the French Revolution. Priestley’s two Presbyterian meeting houses and his own house containing all his scientific works and those of Crabtree and Watt were destroyed by fire. The Lunar Society survived at a

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lower key, but Priestley fled to America. It was to be some years later in 1799 that Crabtree was sent by his masters to America to check up on Priestley’s anti-British activities. In 1843, an incident occurred that bore a remarkable resemblance to the burning of Priestley’s scientific works. The Bramah factory and the adjoining house in Pimlico were virtually destroyed by fire. Joseph Bramah himself had died long before, but his engineering designs and papers had been stored in the house. Evidence was found that the counting house had been burgled and the fire had been started deliberately. Gentlemen, I suggest that the intruder and incendiary was Joseph Crabtree himself, intent on recovering the money due to him and, at the same time reeking a fearsome revenge on his former partner, even 28 years after his death, for the theft among other things of the design of a fire engine. Such was Crabtree’s character. Joseph Crabtree left France for America in 1799, starting once again a new phase of his life (Rowe 1980). He was already enrolled as an agent of France, but he was also acting on the orders of the British Government to set up an intelligence network in this now-independent country. While in Philadelphia, he formed an institute somewhat along the lines of the Lunar Society, outwardly for scientific discussions, but covertly for his intelligence operations. He named it, quite appropriately and for want of anything better, the Crabtree Institute of America. The Institute survived after Crabtree left Philadelphia in 1800 but was infiltrated by American men of science who quickly recognised it as a front for espionage and handed the administration over to the United States Government. In order to avoid printing new headed notepaper, the initials C.I.A. were retained, as they are to this day, the organization grew and eventually moved to the new capital, Washington D.C. Naturally, the early records of the C.I.A. are now inaccessible to the public. It will remain for American scholars of Crabtree to penetrate the archives at C.I.A. Headquarters to substantiate this account. It must be, Mr. President, a matter of great pride for the scholars of the Crabtree Foundation that Professor Reg Jones our distinguished IVth Orator, was presented with a C.I.A. medal in this past year. We send him our warmest congratulations and also add our congratulations to the C.I.A. for at last recognising its roots. From Philadelphia Crabtree rode south along an Appalachian track that has become known as the Blue Ridge Parkway. He left his mark and spread his seed as you might expect. I am indebted to Mr. Leslie Joseph for the information that the Crabtree Falls in North Carolina are named after our traveller. It is understood that the native Indians were so impressed by the massive post-luncheon urination of the Englishman following his customary eight pints of beer that they renamed their local waterfall in memory of his visit. Further down the trail in Eastern Tennessee Crabtree would have rested at Ball’s Fort near present-day Knoxville. There he may

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have comforted the widow of the late Matthew Ball, recently murdered by Indians. The resulting offspring she blessed with the name Crabtree. This poor little bastard, growing up in the lee of the Great Smoky Mountains, never knew of the heritage he had missed from never knowing his illustrious father. However, the seed was sown, the genes were passed on, and the Crabtrees of Eastern Tennessee are today a thriving race. In the Anderson County and Roane County telephone directories alone, can be counted 60 Crabtrees, including Joe W.Crabtree, Joe W. Crabtree Sr. and Joe W.Crabtree Jr. This small area happens to contain the Oak Ridge laboratory, where mankind, most probably including many of Joseph Crabtree’s descendants, first separated uranium isotopes for the benefit and destruction of mankind. Finally, Mr. President, I have to reveal some regrettable news. We have had high hopes that the Foundation would gain access to the large portfolio of Crabtree research material, including an extensive data-base, amassed by the late Kempter T.Guggenheim, that ‘doyen of Crabtree scholarship’ as Armour (1992) described him, of the University of Nevada at Reno. You will recall his letter in The Times Literary Supplement in 1923 (Sutherland 1954) appealing for Crabtree material including a copy of the Ars Salutandi, that in 1954 he applied under the pseudonym of Hoffman to the Vicar of Chipping Sodbury for permission to open the Crabtree family grave, and that in 1975 he bothered the Vicar once again. I have just received from the University of Nevada at Reno a most distressing Facsimile message in answer to my recent enquiry as follows: The complete research works of the late Professor Kemper T. Guggenheim, Crabtree scholar of this university, were committed to floppy-disk storage after his death. I regret to tell you that during the recent testing of the new multiply-charged ion accelerator, the stray magnetic field completely erased all of the Crabtree diskettes. What a tragedy sir that this archive has been lost forever. We may hope that the forthcoming publication of the Crabtree Orations which I understand will be marketed in the U.S.A. by the University of Nevada Press, will stimulate an explosion of Crabtree research in that country which will dwarf the accidentally-deleted work of the late Kempter Guggenheim.

ORATIONS DELIVERED TO THE AUSTRALIAN CHAPTER OF THE CRABTREE FOUNDATION, 1975–1996

Year

Orator

Title of Oration

1975

Bryan Bennett

In Praise of Joseph Crabtree and in Condemnation of those who Seek to Belittle or, Worse, Ignore His Creative Endeavour. Crabtree’s “Ode on the Return of Governor Phillip from New South Wales” Crabtree: the Obscure Decade and After Crabtree: the Road to Charliegrark Lux Gentium Lex Crabtree the Indomitable Something Borrowed, Something Blue Crabtree—the Political Scientist Crabtree and Education: Facilis descendus Averno Joseph Crabtree—Ingenieur Extraordinaire Joseph Crabtree—the Einstein Connection Knowing Crabtree: Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit Crabtree—the Practical Man Joseph Crabtree—the Metaphysical Dimension Crabtree’s Erotic Poetry Joseph Crabtree and Historical Hazards Crabtree and the Art of Technology Crabtree Unmasked Erotic influences on Crabtree’s Musical Contribution to the Chinese Pizza Industry Crabtree at the Sources of the Nile and in the Mountains of the Moon Crabtree in the White House A Short History in Rhyme of the Turbulent Life of Joseph Crabtree

Don Charlwood 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982

Don Charlwood Keith Bennetts Patrick Kilbride Leonard Dommett Professor David Bradley Dr Clive Coogan Richard Belshaw

1983 1984 1985 1986 1987

Nicholas Hudson Dr Logan Francey Gordon Taylor Professor Roy Jackson Howard Deakin

1988 1989 1990 1991 1992

Philip Martin Dr Phillip Law Professor Noel Murray Sidney Ingham Jim McGrath

1993

Professor Martin Williams

1994 1995

Professor John Salmond Professor Peter Darvall

288 THE CRABTREE FOUNDATION, 1975–1996

Year

Orator

Title of Oration

1996

Professor Rob Willis

The First Coming of Crabtree

ORATIONS DELIVERED TO THE SEZIONE ITALIANA OF THE CRABTREE FOUNDATION, 1994–1996

Year

Orator

Title of Oration

1994

Michel Pierre

1995

Paolo Albani & Berlinghiero Buonarroti

1996

Piero Forosetti

Joseph Crabtree et le Concept de l’Italie comme Pendule de l’Equilibre Européen en Méditerranée Joseph Crabtree e la Scoperta del Linguaggio Endofasico o Fasigrafia delle Grappiste di Monteluco Fra il Conte di Cagliostro e la Contessa di Castiglione: Joseph Crabtree e l’Esperienza della Poesia Neopitonica

LIST OF ILLUSTRATION

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

The Anyon MS A Crabtree Photograph Crabtree’s Cudgel A Drawing of Crabtree The Young Crabtree Crabtree’s Drawings Crabtree’s Contraption Distinguished Men of Science Distinguished Members of The Crabtree Foundation

290 291 292 293 294 295 295 296 297

290 THE CRABTREE ORATIONS 1954–1994

Folio 75 recto in the Anyon MS: a petition of the wine-merchants of England against the wine-shippers of Bordeaux in 1432, with the important marginal note identified by Dodgson; see pp. 131–132

ILLUSTRATIONS 291

This photograph of the early 1850s was possibly taken by Crabtree’s friend Roger Fenton. The whereabouts of the original are unknown, but the photograph is reproduced in Annals of the Royal Statistical Society, 1834–1934, a work which studiously omits any reference to Crabtree’s role in founding the Society. The original caption identifying only Newmarch and Guy strongly suggests that standing on the right is Crabtree himself; see p. 261.

292 THE CRABTREE ORATIONS 1954–1994

Crabtree’s cudgel; see pp. 273–274.

ILLUSTRATIONS 293

A pencil drawing, dated 1845, believed to be of Joseph Crabtree, found in the muniments of the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society; see p.288.

294 THE CRABTREE ORATIONS 1954–1994

The young Joseph Crabtree, identified by the C formed by the hoop, painted at Chipping Sodbury by Sir Joshua Reynolds; see p. 289

ILLUSTRATIONS 295

Crabtree’s drawing of stone-willeys and a velocipede, sketched on to a page of Leonardo da Vinci’s manuscripts in the Codex Atlanticus in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan; see pp. 292–293.

Crabtree’s contraption, as introduced into Chipping Sodbury in 1818; see p. 293.

‘Distinguished Men of Science’, as portrayed in 1807–08, engraved by Sir John Gilbert, William Walker et al. The figure on the right with his back turned can be identified as Joseph Crabtree; see pp. 196, 307

296 THE CRABTREE ORATIONS 1954–1994

‘Distinguished Members of the Crabtree Foundation’, as photographed in 1996, on the occasion of the fourth dinner for surviving orators and elders of the Foundation. Standing (left to right): Mike Freeman (1995 Orator), Gee, Lighthill, Foote, David Latchman (Orator Elect for 1997), Larrett, Derrick James (former President), Carter, Datta, Delaney, Graham-Campbell, Crabtree (portrait), Mullin, Peter McMullen (1996 Orator), Foreman, Wilson, Bromage, Tony Mathias (former President). Seated (left to right): Fisher, Harte, Armour, dos Santos, Rowe. Lying: Bennett.

ILLUSTRATIONS 297

THE ORATORS

The late Professor Sir James Sutherland was Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at UCL from 1951 to 1967. The late Professor Arthur Brown was Professor of English, 1962–69, and Professor of Library Studies, 1969–73, at UCL, and subsequently Professor of English at Monash University in Australia. The late Professor Terence Spencer taught English at UCL before becoming Professor of English and Director of the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham. Professor R.V.Jones was for many years Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen, and for a time Director of Scientific Intelligence at the Ministry of Defence. The late Professor Hugh Smith was Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at UCL from 1949 to 1967. The late Dr Leonard Tancock taught French at UCL. The late Professor William Armstrong was Professor of English at King’s College, London. The late Professor Sir Ronald Nyholm was Professor of Chemistry at UCL from 1954 to 1972. The late Joseph Scott was the Librarian of UCL from 1954 to 1982. The late Dr Andrew Tay was a pathologist at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith. Sir David Wilson taught medieval archaeology at UCL, becoming Professor of Medieval Archaeology in 1971; in 1977 he became Director of the British Museum. Bryan Bennett was a Director and subsequently Vice-Chairman of Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd from 1960 to 1987; a Director of UCL Press sinc e 199 Professor Peter Foote was Professor of Old Scandinavian, 1963–74, and of Scandinavian Studies, 1974–83, at UCL. The late Professor J.A.C.Thomas was Professor of Roman Law at UCL from 1965 to 19 The late Charles Peake taught English at UCL.

299 THE ORATORS

Professor Prakash Datta was Professor of Medical Biochemistry at UCL from 1966 to 1985, and Vice-Provost of the College, 1973–7 The late Dr Edwin Clarke taught the history of medicine at UCL from 1966 to 1973, before becoming director of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. The late Professor John Dodgson taught English at UCL, becoming Professor in 1985, and was also Dean of Students at the time of his death in 1990. The late Dr Gordon Hall taught French at UCL and for many years was Warden of Ramsay Hall and Senior Treasurer of the Union. The late Richard Freeman was for many years Reader in Taxonomy at UCL. The late Professor F.J.J.Cadwallad er tau ght la w a t UCL before b Professor of Maritime Law at University College, Cardiff. His Honour Judge Bernard Hargrove QC taught law at UCL before becoming a circuit judge. Arthur Tattersall was the Secretary of UCL from 1964 to 1978. Nigel Bromage worked for the Bank of England for many years. Professor Peter Rowe was Ramsay Professor of Chemical Engineering at UCL from 1965 to 1985. W.H.A.Larrett is Senior Lecturer in German at UCL. Dr Frank Carter teaches geography at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Fred Gee was in the foreign Office for several years before becoming a consulting engineer and is a former President of the UCL Union and of the UCL Old Students’ Association. Professor Bartolomeu dos Santos taught printing-making for many years at the Slade School of Fine Art. Sir James Lighthill, formerly Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, was Provost of UCL from 1979 to 1989. Frank Delaney is well-known as an author and broadcaster. Negley Harte is Senior Lecturer in Economic History at UCL, and Public Orator of the University of London. Professor John Foreman is Professor of Immunopharmacology and Dean of Students at UCL. Professor James Graham-Campbell is Professor of Medieval Archaeology at UCL. Dr Roderick Fisher is Senior Lecturer in Biology at UCL. Professor Peter Armour is Professor of Italian at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College Professor John Mullin was Ramsay Professor of Chemical Engineering at UCL from 1969 to 1990, and Vice-Provost of the College, 1980–86. Dr Tony Smith is Reader in Physics at UCL.

OFFICERS OF THE CRABTREE FOUNDATION

PRESIDENTS 1954 Professor A.H.Smith 1955 Sir Ifor Evans (later Lord Evans) 1956 Professor James Sutherland 1957 Professor George Kane 1958 Professor R.V.Jones 1959 Professor Terence Spencer 1960 Professor Bernard Wright 1961 Professor Arthur Brown 1962 J.W.Scott 1963 Professor Frederick Norman 1964 Professor Sir Ronald Nyholm 1965 Professor Bruce Pattison 1966 Professor Peter Foote 1967 Professor Sir William Coldstream 1968 Professor S.P.Datta 1969 E.Benedicz 1970 R.B.Freeman 1971 Dr Cyril Dodd 1972 Professor P.N.Rowe 1973–75 Professor D.W.James 1976 U.Enegren 1977 Professor Sir David Wilson 1978 Professor John Dodgson 1979 Professor J.A.C.Thomas 1980 A.Tattersal 1981 Professor A.P.Mathias 1982 Professor Cadwallader 1983 N.A.Bromage 1984 Dr John Enticknap 1985 Sir Kenneth Christofas 1986 Fred C.Gee 1987 Bryan Benne

301 THE CRABTREE ORATIONS 1954–1994

1988 Peter Verill 1989 Sir James Lighthill 1990 Professor Dennis Fairweather 1991 David Bowles 1992 Dr Alan Huggins 1993 Professor Barto dos Santos 1994 Dr Roderick Fisher 1995 Major-General Ian Baker 1996 Judge Bernard Hargrove 1997 Professor John Mullin SECRETARIES 1954 Arthur Brown 1955 Professor George Kane 1956 Kenneth J.Palmer 1957 Charles Peake 1958 Geoffrey Needham 1959 Peter Goolden 1960 Jeremy Warburg 1961 John Chalker 1962 Tony Petti 1963 Dr Macdonald Emslie 1964 Peter Goolden 1965 David Wilson (later Sir) 1966 Professor Randolph Quirk (later Lord Quirk) 1967 Professor Derrick James 1968–77 A.Tattersall 1978–81 J.W.Scott 1982–87 J.M.Watson 1988–93 Dr A.C.H.Smith 1994–Negley Harte KEEPER OF THE ARCHIVES 1984–Dr Frank Carter KEEPER OF THE CUDGEL 1988–Professor James Graham Campbell KEEPER OF THE PURSE 1995–Dr Tony Smith

JOSEPH CRABTREE: CURRICULUM VITAE

303THE CRABTREE ORATIONS 1954–1994

JOSEPH CRABTREE: CURRICULUM VITAE 304

305 THE CRABTREE ORATIONS 1954–1994

JOSEPH CRABTREE: CURRICULUM VITAE 306

307 THE CRABTREE ORATIONS 1954–1994

INDEX

THE INDEX IS IN FOUR PARTS: 1 People, 2 Places, 3 Learned and other institutions, 4 Realia et theoretica INDEX I. People Abel, Niels Henrik 216, 217 Abercorn, Earl of 206 Aberdeen, Earl of 63 Achenwall, Gottfried 232 Acrel, Dr., of Uppsala 256 Ahmed (a camel or guide) 263 Akenside, Mark 144 Albert, Prince Consort 104 Alexander, Boyd 209 Ali (a guide or camel) 263 Angelo, Henry 250, 251 ‘Anonymous’ (=JC) 147 Anstruther family 42 Anstruther, Hamish Auchtermuchty, the Sage of Pittenweem, 43–47, 200, 260 Apollinaire, Guillaume 138 Archer, J.W. 54 Aristotle 265 Armour, Peter 279, 286 Arnold, Matthew 48 Arnold, Thomas 23 Bacon, Francis, Lord Verulam 94, 213 Ball, Matthew 285 Banks, Sir Joseph 141, 142, 180, 190, 191, 229, 249, 250, 252–84, 260, 273,279, 281 Barlow, Henry C. 269, 270 Barnard, Dr. Edward 249, 250 Barry, Dr. James 163 Basire, James 252

Batty (=JC), friend of Goethe 183, 184, 200, 205, 209, 231, 232 (variant of Petty) Baudelaire, Charles 34, 138 Baudouin, Jean Baptiste Martin, son-inlaw of Annette Vallon 131 Baudouin, Jean Guillaume, great grandson of Annette Vallon 131, 132, 137 Bauernfeind, Joseph von (=JC) 244 Beatty, William 149 Beaumont, Sir George 5 Beaumont, Lady 4 Beccaria, Cesare 263 Beckford, Thomas 206 Beckford, William 206–35 Beddoe, Dr. John 49 Bedford, Duke of 51 Beethoven, Ludwig van 39 Behan, Brendan 226 Bellot, H.Hale 234 Bennett, Bryan 78, 130, 222 Bentham, Jeremiah 56 Bentham, Jeremy 50, 51, 53–55, 58, 59, 83, 86, 190, 191, 193, 195, 204, 233, 234 Bentham, Samuel 191 Bertholet, Dr., of Orléans 112 Berti, G.G. (=JC in Portugal and probably in Italy) 209–33, 232, 263, 264; cf. Twiddleman 307

309 INDEX

Bevan, Mr., banker 58 Bewick, Thomas 247, 248 Blacet, Joseph (=JC) 105, 106, 157, 200, 268 Blackstone, Sir William 88, 90 Blagden, Charles 254 Blague, Comtesse de 41, 46, 167 Blake, Adolphus 4, 6 Blake, Goody 4 Blake, William 16–19, 66, 76 Blane, Sir Gilbert 149 Blavatsky, Mme. 222, 225 Blunt, Anthony 263 Boba, Mrs., a Tahitian lady 254 Bodlia, Maud 43 Bonar, James 236 Bonstetten, Karl Viktor von 35 Borrow, George 205 Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne 37 Boswell, James 9, 10, 43, 248, 276 Botelho, Don Jose de Sousa, Lord of Mateus 213 Boucher, François 132 Boulton, Matthew 282, 283 Bowdler, Thomas 60, 140, 267 Bowers, Fredson 9 Bowring, Sir John 54–56, 195, 196 Bradman, Sir Donald 48 Bramah, Joseph (name adopt Jerimiah Postlethwaite, derived from JC’s ‘Brahman’) 174, 176–97, 183, 190, 279, 282, 284 Brasseur, Pierre, of Orléans 135 Brawne, Fanny 66 Bromage, Nigel 199, 238 Bronte, Charlotte 164 Brontes, the 164, 270 Brougham, Lord Henry 24, 57, 58, 65, 192, 233 Brown, Arthur 31, 37, 57, 65, 80, 89, 94, 110, 134, 177, 207, 209, 210, 280 Browne, Sir Thomas 33 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett 113, 265 (1) Browning, Robert, father of Robert Browning (2), 168, 169, 265 (2) Browning, Robert, father of Robert Browning (3), 168, 169

(3) Browning, Robert, poet 113, 265 Browning, Ruben 168, 169, 265 Brownings, the 165, 172, 172 Bruce, Michael 262 Brunel, Sir Marc Isambard 279 Bryant, Mr., a mistake for Mr Burke, q.v. 251 Buckley, Rev. James 275 Burke, Mr. (=JC at Eton) 250, 251 Burke, Edmund 19 Burn, Mr., codfish merchant 210 Burney, Fanny 39, 190, 251 Burns, Robert 67 Byron, Augusta Ada, Lady Lovelace (her mother Anna Isabell a Milbanke, JC her putative father) 106, 108, 160 Byron, Lord George Gordon 15, 19, 35, 66, 74, 75, 82–84, 93, 101, 105–20, 109, 157, 159–80, 165, 172, 188, 204, 207, 213, 220, 234, 234, 264, 270 Cadwallader, Francis 179, 208, 256, 271 ‘Caliph of Fonthill’: see William Beckford Campbell, Thomas 66, 192, 193, 195– 17, 233 Cann, Alfred, landlord of The Happy Valley, Porlock 98, 152 Canterbury, Archbishop of 87, 90 Cappelen, Diderik 82 Carbonaro (a ‘signature’ of JC) 101; Italian Carbonari named after him 264 Cardano, Jerome 215, 269 Carlyle, Thomas 246 Carnarvon, Earl of 78 Carter, Frank 207, 233, 263 Cary, Henry 267 Catherine II, Empress 191 Cauchy, Augustin-Louis 218 Cavendish, Henry 23–25, 279, 284 Cay, John (mistaken for JC) 195 Cayley, Sir George 259 Chalmers, George 232 Chambers, R.W. 235

INDEX 310

Chambers, Sir William 178 Chapman, Guy 212 Chateaubriand, François René de 35 Chatterton, Thomas 5, 6, 67 Chaucer, Geoffrey 11, 76, 199 Chaworth, Mary 159 Chester, John 122 Chesterton, Gilbert Keith 15 Chevalier, Auguste 217, 218 Child, Henry 275 Chipping Sodbury (Holy Trinity), Vicar of 139, 198, 199, 286 Chladni, Ernst Florens Friedrich 28 Chopin, Frederick 196 Christison, Robert 111 Churchill, Charles 10, 11 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 104 Clarke, Edwin 234 Closset, Dr., of Vienna 243, 244 Colburn, Henry 75 Coleridge, Ernest Hartley 96 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 25–27, 43, 49, 50, 66, 67, 76, 93, 95, 99–13, 109, 113, 121, 123, 128, 129, 140, 141, 157–77, 172, 232, 233, 256–84, 270 Coleridge, Sarah 258 Collins, Wilkie 109 Columbus, Christopher 272 Constable, Arthur 195 Constant, Benjamin 35 Cook, Captain James 141, 146, 174, 180, 190, 229, 249, 253, 254, 260, 273 Cornwallis, Marquis Charles 104, 105 Cottle, Amos Simon 6, 7, 78, 99 Cottle, Joseph 49, 71, 78, 257, 258 Coulomb, Charles Augustin de 23, 180, 259 Courtenay, William 207 Cowell, J.W. 82, 83 Crab (=JC) 94, 95, 100, 101; cf. Crabb, Crabbe Crabb (=JC before Devon Assizes) 92; cf. Crab, Crabbe Crabb, George 267 Crabbe, George 25, 66, 67, 74–76, 109, 270

Crabbe, Joseph William (son of JC, his mother the daughter of Mr Alfred Cann, q.v.) 151, 152 Crabtree: cf. also Anonymous, Batty Bauernfeind, Berti, Blacket, Burke, Carbono, Cuckoo, Crab, Crabb, Crabbe, Josephine Crabtree, the Dong, Eybler, Joe, Joseph Primos, Krabtree, M’Greggor, Pommeraye, Purkis, Joshua Jonathan Smith, Swan of Sodbury, Tischbein, Twiddleman, X Crabtree families in Ireland 225 Crabtree families in Eastern Tennessee 285 Crabtree, Captain Agreen 13, 281 Crabtree, Dewi (JC’s uncle) 274 Crabtree, Ephraim 14 Crabtree, Fluellen or Llewellyn (JC’s father) 145, 253, 271, 272 Crabtree, Deacon George 14 Crabtree, George Bernard (JC’s cousin) 51, 52, 103, 105, 107, 108, 141, 147, 190, 249, 253; cf. Crabtree and Crabtree, the Crabtrees Crabtree, Isabella (not related to JC) 204 Crabtree, John (cousin of JC) 29, 32, 85 Crabtree, Joseph, a 1925 graduate of Sydney University 51 Crabtree, Josephine (alleged surgical mutation of JC in 1816, variously acccpted, ignored or denied by subsequent scholars; in any case his manhood was restored by an organ transplant in 1832) 161–84, 234 Crabtree, Maria 14 Crabtree, Mary (JC’s mother) 85, 145 Crabtree, Oliver (JC’s uncle) 2, 3, 45, 89, 90, 116, 130, 134–51, 185, 202, 208, 212, 276; cf. Crabtree and Hillier Crabtree, Richard (cousin of Fluellen Crabtree) 31

311 INDEX

Crabtree, William, draper of Broughton (a forbear of JC) 253 Crabtree, Rev. William (cousin of Fluellen Crabtree) 31, 32 Crabtree, William Joseph (1773–1829; confused by librarians with JC) xv Crabtree and Crabtree, the Crabtrees=JC and his cousin, George Bernard 104, 105, 108 Crabtree and Hillier, wine-shippers 2, 7, 138, 276 Craven, Lady 207 Creasy, Edward 249 Cromek, Robert Hardey 17 Cromwell, Oliver 54, 57 Crow, John 8, 31, 138 Cuckoo or Cuckoo Joe (JC’s nickname) 20, 22, 89, 97, 262, 270, 279 Cuvier, Georges 259–87 Czartoryski, Prince Adam J. 192–14, 196, 196 Czartoryski, Prince Adam K. 192 Czartoryski, Konstanty 193 Dalloway, J. 232 Dalton, John 279, 283 Dante Alighieri 263, 267–98 Darbishire, Helen 5 D’Arblay, General 39, 190 Darwin, Charles 60, 139 Darwin, Erasmus 60, 140, 141, 144, 215, 270, 283 Dasent, Sir George Webbe 80 Datta, Prakash 201 Davenant, Sir William 26 Davey, Serjeant-at-law 89 David (a creditor of JC) 89 Davis, Scrope 159, 160, 165, 172, 234 Davy, Sir Humphry 25, 49, 50, 81, 84, 150, 158, 164, 180, 258, 279 Defoe, Daniel 199 Delaney, Frank 247 Dennis, C.J. (Australian poet influence by G.B.Crabtree) 52 De Quincy, Thomas 109 Dickens, Charles 30, 113 Diderot, Denis 34, 37

Dillon, Admiral Sir William 149 Dixon, John 105 Doane, Jeremy Bentham’s amanuensis 54 Dodgson, John 115, 266 Dong, the (a nickname for JC) 19 Dos Santos, Bartolomeu 232, 238, 263 Downie, Joan 139, 140 Drummond, William, of Hawthornden 43 Dryden, John 40 Dubois, a man acquitted of necrophilia at Orléans 156 Dufferin, lord 83 Duncan, Andrew 261 Du Pont, Eleuthère Irénée 178, 179; cf. 149, 150 (JC’s ‘My dear E.’) Du Pont, Pierre Samuel 178 Du Pont, Victor Marie 178 Du Ponts, the 178–99 Dutton, historian 178 E:see Eleuthère Du Pont Eckermann, Johann Peter 188 Ekwall, Eilert 118 Eldon, Lord: see John Scott Eliot, Thomas Stearnes 165, 170, 171 Elliotson, Dr. John 113–28, 234 Éluard, Paul 138 Empson, William 45 Eteree, Mrs., a Tahitian lady 254 Evans, Sir Ifor (=the Provost) 235 Eybler, Jose ph (=JC) 244 Faraday, Michael 24, 25, 200 Farrington, A.J. 103, 107 Fetherstonehaugh, Sir Harry 186 Fisher, Roderick 281 Fitzgerald, Edward 158 Fitzmaurice, William: see Lord Shelburne Fontenelle, Bernardle Bouvier de 133–50 Foote, Peter 138, 142, 163, 225, 245, 246 Forbes, Edward 142

INDEX 312

Foreman, John 281 Forster, the name of two Germans with Captain Cook 141 Forster, E.M. 247 Forster, Edward, jr. 191 Forster, Peter 247, 248 Foster, Sir Gregory 235 Foster, Dr.John 250 Francis, A.D. 213 Francisca, Dona (and her mother) 210, 211 Franklin, Benjamin 21, 28, 112, 229, 259 Freeman, Richard 146, 215, 218, 229, 248, 255, 281, 282 Fresnel, Augustin Jean 24 Freud, Sigmund 155 Friedrich Wilhelm II, King 244 Fritzie, code-name for an anonymous courier 203 Fry, Elizabeth 156 Fuller, Roy 137 Furnivall, Frederick James 265 Galileo 253 Gall, Franz Joseph 115, 260 Galois, Evariste 217–44 Galton, Sir Francis 275 Gauss, Carl Friedrich 202, 217 Gautier, Théophile 138 Gee, Fred 229, 280, 282 Geoffroy (Saint-Hilaire), Étienne 259, 260 George III, King 13, 141, 191, 251 George IV, King 26 Gerson, botanist 55 Ghaistrill, Mr. (his document) 30 Gillman, Dr.James 172 Gillray, James 172, 172 Gioberti, Vincenzo 264 Gisborne, Maria 101 Godwin, William 157 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 39, 181–09, 205, 206, 212, 231, 247, 258, 259, 261, 264–93; cf. Möller Goldsmith, Isaac Lyon 58

Gonne, Maude (Mrs. MacBride) 224 Gooch, Richard 64 Goodlay, Bessic 174, 175 Gopalachari, Sarup (registered in 1913 for the London M.A. with a proposed dissertation on the life and work of JC) 1 Gordon, Lady Margaret 207 Gosford, Lady 106 Graham, Dr.James 116, 186 Graham-Campbell, James 268 Grahame, Kenneth 173 Graunt, John 227, 228 Gray, Thomas 19 Greenhow, Dr Michael T. 114 Greg, Sir Walter W. 9 Greville, Charles 186 Grimm, Jakob 48 Guggenheim, Kemper T. 1, 9, 42, 47, 139, 268, 286 (as a would-be resurrectionist using Hoffman as a pseudonym) Guillotin, Dr. Joseph Ignace 112 Gustav III, King 256 Guy, Thomas 166 Hahnemann, Christian Friedrich Samuel 62 Hall, Gordon 138 Hall, Henry (his Guest Night) 5 Hall, Sir James (his crystals) 259 Hallam, Henry 113 Hamilton, Lady Emma 185–08, 201, 202, 206, 208, 210, 232, 247, 258 Hamilton, George 206 Hamilton, Maria 206 Hamilton, Sir William 184–07, 205, 206, 208, 209, 258 Hammond, Lansing 13 Hanway, Jonas 148, 256 Hardy, G.H. 215 Hardy, Thomas 16 Hargrove, Bernard 233, 264 Harte, Emma: see Lady Hamilton Harte, Negley 244, 249, 262, 267 Hartley, J.R. 270

313 INDEX

Hasted, Edward 118, 119 Haydn, Joseph 238 Haydon, Benjamin Robert 16, 157, 220 Hazlitt, William 53–55, 117, 120, 128, 129, 157, 158 Hazlitt, William, jr. 54 Helen (the maiden who launched JC into manhood) 150 Hemans, Mrs. Felicia Dorothea 93 Henriqueta, daughter of the Marquis of Marialva 209 Henry II, King 138 Henry V, King 271 Henry, Louis 227 Herbert, Dean William 78, 79 Herodotus 221 Hieronymus Fracastorius 240 Hillier: see Crabtree and Hillier Hillier, Eadie (widow of Hillier of Crabtree and Hillier) 137, 138 Hirnschadel, Ernst 261 Hobhouse, John Cam 159 Hofdemel, Freemason in Vienna, and Magdalena, his wife 242 Hoffman, 198, 199; cf. 286 Holmes, Sherlock 86 Hood family 165 Hood, Elizabeth (née Sands, mother of Thomas Hood, poet, probably by JC) 173 Hood, Thomas, from Errol (putative father of Thomas Hood, poet) 173 Hood, Thomas, poet 173, 199 Horne, Mr. (in Portugal) 210 Horner, Leonard 233, 234 Horrocks, Jeremiah 253 House, Humphrey 95 Housman, A.E. 280 Hove, Anton 191 Howe, P.P. 53, 54 Hugo, Victor 34, 138 Humm, Brian 282 Hunt, Leigh 157, 160, 219, 220 Hunter, William 240 Hutchinson, Mary 55 Hutton, James 258

Huxley, Thomas Henry 142 Ibsen, Henrik 85, 163, 164, 245 Ibsen, Knud 82, 164 Ibsen, Marichen 84, 85, 164, 225 (where a letter alleged to be from her is quoted), 245 Innocent III, Pope 138 Irving, Edward 113 Irving, Washington 74 Jacobi, Baron von 244 James II, King 13 Jameson, Robert 259 Jeanne la Bonne Lorraine 130 Jefferson, Jacob (JC’s Oxford tutor) 56, 88, 174, 248 Jenner, Edward 22, 23, 27, 59, 60, 140, 141, 144, 180 Jenyns, Soames 12 Jervis, Admiral Sir John 256 Jesty, Benjamin 60 Joan, Pope 264 Joanna (addressed by Wordsworth in To Joanna) 125–41 Joe, Mme. de Staël’s English butler (=JC?) 39, 190 John, King l53 John of Arderne 239 Johnson, Dr Samuel 7, 9–13, 19, 43, 71, 94, 99, 104, 146, 179, 248, 276, 280, 282 Johnstone, Rev.James 78 Jones, Dr.John 110, 257 Jones, R.V. 34, 48, 49, 55, 60, 87, 95, 144, 192, 201, 214, 245, 273, 282, 285 Jonson, Ben 43, 76 Joseph II, Emperor 263 Joseph, Leslie 285 Joseph Primus, Mozart’s servant (=JC) 243, 244 Josephine, Empress 203 Judas 16 Julia (in Wordsworth’s Julia and Vaudracour, reported also as the name of JC’s greyhound bitch) 3, 46

INDEX 314

Jung, Carl 43, 155 Kane, George xv Keats, John 19, 43, 48, 65, 66, 93, 157–80, 166, 193, 219, 220, 225, 234 Kelly, Eric 166 Kendall, Henry (Australian poet influenced by JC) 52 Ker, William Paton 1, 235 King, Gregory 227, 228, 230, 232 Kleinfelter (his theories) 155 Knight, G.Wilson 108 Koht, Halvdan 82 Kosciuszko, Tadeusz 192 Kraak, Ifvar 142 Krabtree, Henry, incumbent of Todmorden 32, 33, 217, 253 Lackington, James 69–71, 223, 224, 269 Lafayette, Marquis de 114 Lamarck, Jean Baptiste A.P. M. de 259, 260 Lamartine, Alphonse Marie Louis de 138 Lamb, Charles 66, 67, 109, 157 Lambe, Dr.William 116 Landor, Walter Savage 66 Lansdowne, Marquis of: see Lord Shelburne Larrett, W.H.A. 221, 229, 231, 232, 238, 247, 258, 259 Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent 28, 112, 178 Lear, Edward 19 Leavis, Dr.F.R. 31 Legendre, Adrien Marie 217 Leigh, Augusta 107 Leonardo da Vinci 265, 266 Leoni, Pompeo 265 Leopold Ii, Emperor 238, 241, 281 Liechtenstein, Baron of 203 Liechtenstein, Baroness of 203, 204, 282 Lighthill, Sir James 234, 251, 269 Lind, James 146, 147, 149

Linnaea (Linné), Fru 143, 144, 255, 281 Linnaeus (Linné, Carl von) 140, 142–59, 180, 254–82, 258, 281 Linné, Sophie 144, 255, 281 Li-Tsong, Chinese author 12 Lloyd, Charles 109 Lloyd George, David 130 Lockhart, John Gibson 26, 74 Lombroso, Cesare 155 Longman, Thomas Norton 73 Louis XV, King 34, 216 Louis XVI, King 178 Louis-Philippe, King 34, 218 Lovelace, Lady: see Augusta Ada Byron Lowes, L. Livingstone 96, 99, 100 Lowther, William, Earl of Lonsdale 67 Ludlow, Mr., surgeon of Chipping Sodbury 22 Lyon, Amy: see Lady Emma Hamilton MacBride, Mrs.: see Maude Gonne MacCool, Finn 225 Mackenzie, Isaac 67 Maclaurin, Colin 216 Maconochie, Alexander 155 Macrobius, Ambrosius Theodosius 263 Macrosty, Henry W. 236 MacSherry, Mr. 62 Malthus, Rev. T.R. 61, 228, 234 Manning, Cardinal Henry 167 Manning, William 167–87, 172, 172 Marialva, Marquis of 208, 212 Marie Antoinette, Queen 242 Marlowe, Christopher 199 Marot, Clément 133 Martineau, Harriet 114, 164 Mason, Rev. William 11 Mathias, Thomas James 77 Maule, Mr.Justice 92, 93 Maxwell, Clerk 24, 25 Mayne, Ethel 107 Mayrick, Dr. 63 McCulloch, John Ramsey 194

315 INDEX

Mesmer, Franz Anton 112–27 Metchnikov, Elias 62 M’Greggor, Malcolm (=JC) 10–12, 89, 149, 150 (MacGreggor), 169 (McGriggor), 177, 200 (McGrcggor), 250 Milbanke, Lady Judith 105 Milbanke, Sir Ralph 105–20 Milbanke, Anna Isabella (known as Annabella), Lady Byron 105–21, 158, 159, 162 Miller, Sir John Riggs 276, 277 Milton, John 53, 67, 99 Minto, Lord Gilbert 192 Mitty, Walter 204 Möller (=Goethe in Rome) 185 Moivre, Abraham de 230 Monboddo, Lord James 46 Montague, Mrs. Elizabeth 157 Moore, Thomas 66, 74, 75, 93, 109 Moorman, Mrs. 68 Morgan, William (known as Actuary Morgan) 230 Morley, Edith 17 Mornington, Earl of 104 Mozart, Constanze 239–70, 281 Mozart, Leopold 237 Mozart, Maria Anna 237 Mozart, Nannerl 237 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 206, 207, 237–70, 281, 283 Mullin, John 279 Murray, II, John 74, 75, 77, 212, 223 Murray, IV, John 212 Murray, VI, John 74 Musäus, Johann Karl 211, 212 Musset, Alfred de 138 Napoleon I, Emperor 155, 201, 203, 278 Nelson, Lord Horatio 49, 83, 149, 151, 187, 201, 202 Nelvil, Lord Oswald (=O.N.) (chief character in Mme. de Staël’s Corinne modelled on JC) 36, 39 Newcastle, Duchess Margaret of 25 Newman, Cardinal John Henry 23

Newton, Sir Isaac 21, 49, 180, 181, 214, 216, 246, 273 Norfolk, Duke of 58 Niemcewicz, Julian 196 Niemetschek, 241 Nissen, Georg Nicolaus von 244 Noel, Lady Anne Isabella (Mrs. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt) 108 Noel, Edmund, Lord Wentworth 105 Norman, George Warde 81, 82 North, John 234 Northcote, James 157 Nyholm, R.S. 58, 141, 199 Ogden, C.K. 20, 26 Oisin 225; cf. Ossian Oken, Lorenz 259 Okey, Elizabeth 113, 234 (with her sister) Orléans, Duke of 112 Ossian 39, 225; cf. Oisin Paley, Archdeacon William 145 Palmer, Kenneth 246 Palmerston, Lord 192, 196, 201 Panizzi, Antonio 270 Parkinson, Sydney 254 Parny, É.-D. de Forges, Vicomte de 38 Pascal, Blaise 134 Patrick, St. 225 Pattison, Granville Sharp 234 Peake, Charles 9, 110, 115, 122, 139, 148, 198, 200, 264, 269 Pearson, Karl 232, 235 Pedro, son of the Marquis of Marialva 209, 210 Péguy, Charles 138 Pepys, Samuel 206 Petrarch, Francesco 67 Petty, William sr. 227, 228, 231, 232 Petty, William jr.: see Lord Shelburne Pickwick, Samuel 30 Pishtov, Count 203 Pitt, Josiah or Joshua 168, 172

INDEX 316

Pitt, William, the Younger 64, 66, 68, 166, 168, 172, 199, 201, 203, 204, 222, 231, 232, 277, 278 Pittenweem, the Sage of: see Hamish Anstruther Pius VI, Pope 264 Plimsoll, Samuel 87, 88 Plues, Margaret 143 Poe, Edgar Allan 199 Poisson, Siméon-Denis 218 Pollard, Arthur F. 76, 235 Pollexfen (maiden name of W.B.Yeats’s mother) 222, 223 Pommeraye, Joseph de la (=JC) 36–38, 133, 135, 200 Pommeraye, Mme. de la (character in Prévost’s Jacques le Fataliste) 37 Pompadour, Mme. de 34 Poole, Thomas 257, 258 Pope, Alexander 40, 76 Portugal, Queen of 208 Postlethwaite, Jerimiah 173–94, 190, 274; cf. Joseph Bramah Potyomki, Prince S.A. 191 Pratt, Samuel Jackson 105 Pratt, Sir Lancelot 161, 180, 204, 223, 225 Price, Richard 228–55, 235, 273 Priestley, Joseph 21, 22, 24, 60, 180, 214, 273, 282–13 Prince, Hugh 159 Prussia, Emperor of 203 Purchas, Samuel 99 Purkis, Samuel (probably JC) 258 Racine, Jean 37 Ragnar shaggy-breeches 78 Ramsay, Dean Edward Burnett 82 Rask, Rasmus 80 Récamier, Mme. 35 Revigny, Jacqu es de 90 Reynolds, John Hamilton 157 Reynolds, Sir Joshua 262, 263, 279 Ricardo, David 194 Richard I, King 276 Rickman, John 233

Rig-maiden (of a person) 127; cf. Index II. Rimbaud, Jean Arthur 16 Roberts, Mr., of the Linnean Sociey 143 Robertson, John Mackinnon 95 Robinson, Henry Crabb 17, 18, 114, 260 Rochlitz, Friedrich 241 Rodney, Admiral Lord George 149 Rogers, Samue 164, 159 Rossetti, Christina Georgina 268, 270 Rossetti, Gabriele 270 Rowe, Peter 183, 190, 274, 282, 285 Royds, Sir John 103, 104 Russell, Lord John 192, 196 St.Pierre, Bernardin de 121 Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustin 38 Salieri, Antonio 237, 244 Sallaba, Dr Mathias von 244 Sappho 164 Sappho of Sodbury (of alleged Josephine Crabtree, q.v.) 164 Sarastro (in Die Zauberflöte) 242 Schiller, Friedrich 182 Schlegel, Karl Wilhelm Friedric 35 Schubart, Christian Daniel 158 Schubert, Franz 158, 196 Scott, John, Lord Eldon 88, 152, 153 Scott, Joseph 85, 141, 233, 246, 274 Scott, Sir Walter 20, 26, 66, 67, 74, 78, 80, 109, 149, 157, 192, 194, 195 Scott, William, Lord Stowell 88 Serres, Étienne Renaud Augustin 259 Severn, Joseph 162 Seward, Anna 267 Shaffer, Peter 237 Shakespeare, William 48, 66, 67, 76, 94, 118, 140, 198, 271 Shelburne, Lord 231, 232, 235 Shelley, Mary 160 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 20, 66, 93, 94, 101, 101, 109, 157, 160, 162, 198, 234 Shenlow, Mr., a proctor 91 Shelvocke, George 141

317 INDEX

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley 172 Shinman, inventor (his machine) 42, 43, 48 Sienkiewicz, Karol 193, 194 Sievers, Eduard 48 Sinclair, Sir John 232 Sismondi, Jean C.L.S.de 35 Small, Robert 283 Smith, Adam 194 Smith, Albert Hugh 214(?), 217, 246, 248, 271, 279, 280 Smith, Horace 157 Smith, James 64 Smith, Sir James Edward 143, 255, 256, 260 Smith, John 257 Smith, Joshua Jonathan (probably JC) 187 Smith, Southwood 234 Smollett, Tobias 60 Sobieski, Jan, King 190 Socius (=R.Gooch) 64 Solander, Daniel 142, 254, 255 Somerville, Sarah 196 Somerville, ‘Skittles’ 153, 156 Sotheby, William 26 Southey, Robert 49, 66, 74, 98, 109, 157 Spallanzani, Lazaro 259 Spencer, Terence 59, 207, 208, 246 Spenser, Edmund 67 Spitzer, Leo 135 Staël, Mme. Germaine de 35, 36, 38–40, 113, 133, 137, 159, 167, 190, 200, 202, 257, 277 Steevens, George 252 Stein, Frau von 184 Sterne, Laurence 212 Stirling, Jane 196 Stothard, Thomas 166, 167 Stowell, Lord: see William Scott Straka, George 136 Strout, Alan Lang 194, 195 Surtees, Bessy 88, 89 Süssmayer, Franz Xaver 244

Sutherland, James 12, 36, 42, 53, 55, 69, 71, 130, 168, 198, 199, 204, 235, 246, 252, 279, 286 Swan of Lichfield=Anna Seward, q.v. Swan of Sodbury (JC) 36, 215, 267 Sweder, Captain Axel 256 Swieten, Baron von 244, 244 Swift, Jonathan 111 Swinnerton-Dyer, Sir John 210 Szyrma, Krystyn Lach 193–15, 196 Talbot, Fox 16 Talleyrand, Charles Maurice 38, 277, 278 Tamino (in Die Zauberflöte) 242 Tancock, Leonard 61, 94, 113, 133, 135, 181, 190, 199, 216 Tasso, Torquato 67 Tattersall, Arthur 165, 193, 197, 204, 219, 224, 225, 234, 279 Tay, Andrew 96, 104, 144, 204, 215, 228, 240, 245, 283 Taylor, Augustus 156 Taylor, John, the Water Poet 30 Teiresias 161, 163, 225 Telford, Thomas 279 Tennyson, Lord Alfred 15, 19, 48 Thomas, J.A.C. 152, 177, 204, 216 Thompson, Lt. Daniel 209 Thomson, James 122 Thomson, William, Lord Kelvin 278 Thorkelín, Grímur Jónsson 77 Thrale, Henry 276 Throckmorton, Mrs., apparently of Ashburton 270 Tillotson, Geoffrey 53 Tillotson, Archbishop John 32 Tischbein, Johann Wilhelm (=JC) 184–06, 200, 205, 206, 247, 264, 266 Toaro, Mrs., a Tahitian lady 254 Tobin, John 49 Tregarthen-Jenkin, Ian 131 Trelawney, Edward 160 Trevithick, Richard 279 Twain, Mark 214 Twiddleman (alias of JC as G.G.Berti, q.v.) 210

INDEX 318

Vaillant, Sébastien 254 Vallon, Annette or Marie-Anne 3, 4, 9, 27, 35, 41, 42, 44, 45, 48, 55, 71, 72, 97, 130, 131, 136, 167, 202, 224; her daughter by JC called Charlotte on p. 62 but on p. 145 said to have been baptized Anne Caroline Vallon, Paul 3, 130, 136, 137, 167, 168, 185, 202, 224 Vaudracour (in Wordsworth’s Julia and Vaudracour, reported also as the name of JC ‘s greyhound) 3, 46 Verlaine, Paul 138 Verner, Carl 48 Victoria, Queen 104 Vigny, Alfred de 138 Villon, François 132, 133, 135, 136, 138 Voltaire 34, 37, 142? Walker, William 177 Wallace, Edgar 102 Wallenberg, J.K. 119 Wallis, John 214, 216 208 Warburg, Jeremy 40 Watson, Dr John 86 Watt, James 279, 282–13 Watts, Zillah M. 212 Webb, Sidney 236 Wedgwood, Josiah 283 Weierstrass, Karl 215 Weimar, Duke Karl August of 182, 185 Weller, Sam 177, 202 Weller, Tony 177 Wellesley, Marquis Richard: see the Earl of Morningto

Wellington, Duke of 9, 65, 80, 82, 83, 268 Werner, Abraham Gottlob 258 Wesley, John 275 Wheatstone, Sir Charles 24, 25, 164, 180, 200, 201, 259 Wheelwright, John 29, 248 White, Rev. James 102 Whitworth, Earl Charles 191 William IV, King 196 Wilson, David 110, 252 Wilson, J. 261 Wise, Thomas J. 8, 12 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 221, 223 Wordsworth, Christopher 68 Wordsworth, Dorothy 4–6, 43, 55, 97, 127–43, 158 Wordsworth, Mary 55 Wordsworth, William 2–4, 6, 7, 12, 14, 19, 20, 22, 27, 35, 41–46, 48, 49, 55, 66–68, 72, 73, 75, 76, 79, 81, 93, 95, 97, 98, 101, 109, 117–43, 132, 136, 137, 140, 157–77, 163, 168, 188, 219, 220, 224, 270, 278 Worsley, Sir Richard 191 Wright, John 171 Wycombe, Lord: see Lord Shelburne X, a hand (JC’s) in the Anyon Manuscript 117–35, 123, 125, 127, 129 Yeats, William Butler 221–50 Young, George 109 Young, Thomas 24, 180, 192, 214

319 INDEX

INDEX II. Places

Aboukir 202 Adscombe 257 Albemarle Street 223 Albury, Surrey 61 Alcobaca 210 Alexandria 246, 263 Alfoxden (House) 76, 97, 257 Algeria 41 Amara, Mt. (becomes ‘Abora’ in Kubla Khan) 99, 100 America, U.S.A., New World 13, 14, 38, 114, 178, 198, 272, 273, 278, 282, 284, 286 Anstruther Braes 42, 43 Antibes 226 Arendal 82 Ashburton 91, 204, 221, 270 Atlantic Ocean 15, 87 Australia 48, 50, 51, 260 Austria 158, 203, 238, 239, 256, 282 Avon, County of 138 Bablock Hythe 175, 176 Babylon 270 Baden 240, 241 Ball’s Fort, nr Knoxville, Tennessee 285 Barcelona 276 Barnsley 174, 175 Ben Bulben 222, 224 Bengal 104, 149 Berlin 203 Beditappuah or Beth Tapulla Lodge (the Crabtree home in Chipping Sodbury) 69, 145

Birmingham 22, 30, 97, 180, 273, 282, 283 Biscay, Bay of 179, 207 Blackfriars’ Road 103 Blackstone Edge 30 Blois 23 Bloomsbury 58 Blue Anchor 122, 123 Blue Ridge Parkway, Tennessee 285 Bombay 201 Bondi Beach 107 Borcovicum 117 Bordeaux 117 Borough High Street 160, 169, 171 Botany Bay 141 Bow 51 Bradford 31, 32, 174 Brandywine River 179 Bredon Hill 280 Brend Street 54 Breslau 229 Brighton 152 Bristol 71, 78, 99, 145, 146, 174, 257, 272 Britain, British Isles 90, 153, 191, 196, 206, 212, 216, 278, 281 Broom Farm 179 Broughton, Lancashire 253 Budleigh Salterton 71 Bulgaria 62 Buxton 30 Calais 117, 118 Calcutta 103–18 Calder River 28

INDEX 320

Carcassonne 41, 60, 257 Carfax, Oxford 153 Carlisle 145 Carmarthen Square, 58, 274 Chalfont St. Giles 54 Charing Cross Road 155 Chekenham 30, 280 Chevannes 178 China 105, 149 Chipping Sodbury (birth-place of JC) 2, 20–23, 28, 29, 34, 69–71, 82, 85, 89, 90, 97, 139, 141, 145, 174, 214, 253, 262, 279, 280 Christiania 82 Christiansand 82 Cleveland Street 235 Clifton 49, 50 Cockaigne, Land of 43 Coppet, Château de 35, Cornwall 204 Cotswolds 29, 31, 279 Countesbury (Countis-) 118, 120, 123, 125, 128 Crabtree Falls, North Carolina 285 (JC the eponym) Crabtree Field(s) 58 (Carmarthen Square), 274 (on boundary between parishes of Marylebone and St. Giles) Crabtree Lane, Fulham 103 Crabtree Ledge Light (on Hancock Point) 14 Crabtree Manor Way, Erith 102 Crabtree Neck, Maine 14 Crabtree Point, Maine 14 Crabtree Wharf, Fulham 103 Cracow 193, 195 Cunliffe, Lancashire 119 Cuntelowe, Derbyshire 119 Denmark Street, St. Giles 176, 190, 274 Devon 91, 92, 118, 122, 204, 269 Devonport 196 Douro River 213 Dover 55 Drammen 82 Dundee 173

Dunster 122, 123 Durham County 105 Edgware Road 186 Edinburgh 26, 111, 192–14, 196, 258, 259 England 7, 23, 38, 44, 57, 91, 96, 105, 117, 137, 142, 144, 145, 192, 196–18, 201, 203, 206, 208, 209, 216, 227, 230, 238, 249, 262, 275, 276 Equator 276 Erith (Marshes) 102, 104, 105 Errol, Carse of Gowrie 173 Essonne 178 Etna, Mt. 259 Europe 142, 190, 207, 238, 239, 281 Exeter 90, 92, 172 Eynsham 175 Falmouth 153, 206, 208 Featherstone Street, 70 Fenchurch Street 169 Fife(shire) 42, 44–46 Fonthill 206 Fort William, Bengal 104 France 2, 17, 22, 23, 34, 38, 41, 44, 46, 53, 55, 61, 67, 71, 89, 90, 97, 137, 166–87, 178, 180, 181, 188, 191, 198, 216, 217, 242, 257, 273, 276–06, 282, 284, 285 Frankfurt am Main 182, 183 Fulham Palace Road 103 Geneva, Lake of 35 Germany 168, 187, 209, 211, 216, 217, 231, 232, 256, 259 Glasgow 192 Gloucester(shire) 29, 232, 280 Grasmere (Lake, Vale) 121, 122, 125, 128 Great Smoky Mountains 285 Greenwich 147 Gropecuntlane 119 Guernsey 220 Halifax 29, 30, 248, 272 Halnaby 105

321 INDEX

Hammersmith 103 Hampstead 160, 193, 229 Hancock, Maine 14 Hancock Point. Maine 13, 14 Harwich 82 Haworth 164, 197, 270 Hebrides 248; cf. Western Isles Helston 153 Highgate 172 Holland 147 Honiton 140 Hoole 253 Hounslow 281 Iberia 221 Iceland 83, 141 Ifield, Kent 119 India 201 Inn River 158 Innsbruck 203 Ireland 147, 225, 226, 248 Italy 168, 185, 187, 205, 209, 247, 256, 263, 264 Jamaica 206–30 Jena 115, 260 Juniper Hall, nr Dorking 39, 61, 190 Karlsbad 185 Kendal 30 Kent 119, 122 Kingsdown, Bristol 258 Kinsdale 147 Kirkby Hall 105, 106 Krichev 191, 193 Lakeland 125, 127 Lancashire 28 Le Havre 178, 179 Leeds 139 Limerick 225 Linton 96, 121–37, 128 Lisbon 208, 209, 212 Llanelli 275 Lombard Street 171

London (and City of) 52, 55, 70, 91, 92, 97, 104–19, 119, 155, 156, 173, 176, 186, 190–13, 196, 196, 206, 216, 229, 238, 248, 249, 252, 255, 258, 260, 274, 276, 277 Lord’ s Cricket Ground 167, 172 Los Angeles 14 Low Countries 147, 254, 281 Lower Thames Street 171 Lowlands (of Scotland) 43 Madrid 209 Mafra 210 Maine, U.S.A. 13, 14, 281 Malta 106 Man, Isle of 67 Manchester 76, 253 Marienbad 182 Marylebone (parish) 274 Matlock 30 Max Gate 16 Mayo 246 Mediterranean Sea 201 Meissen 62 Melbourne House 106 Milan 263, 265, 266 Minehead 122, 123 Mortlake 154 Mull, Isle of 248 Naples 184–08, 201, 205, 206, 208, 209, 212, 258, 259, 263 Nemours 178 Ness, Wirral 186 Nether Stowey 96, 98, 122, 257, 258 New South Wales 51 Newcastle upon Tyne 89, 114–30, 164 Newington Green 229, 231, 249 Newmarket-on-Fergus 225, 226 Newport, Cornwall 276 Newport, Rhode Island 178 Nile (and the Battle of the) 83, 201 Normandy 260 North Country 117 North Pole 276 Northampton 119, 229 Northumberland 117

INDEX 322

Norway 80, 81, 84, 85, 138, 163, 245 Norwich 229, 256 Oldham 30 Orkney Islands 147 Orléans 2, 3, 7, 23, 27, 28, 35, 42, 45, 58, 76, 90, 97, 112, 113, 130, 131, 133, 136, 138, 178, 185, 212, 225, 238, 255, 260, 276 Oslo 20 Ottery St. Mary 140 Oxford 110, 111, 119, 138, 142, 175, 254; cf. Oxford University in Index III Oxford Street, 190, 274 Paddington 186 Paradise (as place-name) 118, 120 Paris 3, 28, 35, 113, 142, 178, 194, 196, 196, 217, 220, 224, 229, 242, 258–86 Parkgate, Wirral 187 Peterborough 119 Philadelphia 178, 285 Pimlico 284 Pincio Hill, Rome 264 Pisa 160 Pittenweem 42, 167, 200, 260 Plymouth 196 Pörtschach 158 Poland 190–16, 197, 203, 233 Poland Street 190 Porlock 96, 98, 123, 128, 139, 151, 152, 232 Portland Place 4 Portman Square 262 Portugal 205, 206, 208–33 Poultry, City of London 173, 199 Prague 238, 241, 280, 281 Prussia 203 Pulawi 193 Putney 154 Queen’s Square Place 58 Reading 119

Rig-Ma(i)den (as place-name) 118, 120, 129 Rio de Janeiro 254 Rishworth, Halifax parish 29, 30, 248, 272, 280 Roman Wall 117 Rome 160, 185, 186, 188, 212, 229, 261, 264 Rotha River 125, 126 Rue du Bac, Paris 38 Russia 191, 193, 196, 203 St. Benet’s Church, City of London 227 St.Giles (parish) 274, 282 St.James’ Park 56 St. Mary Woolnoth (church) 170, 171 St. Petersburg 191 Salford 115 Sanday Island 147 Sark 220 Scotland 25, 43, 44, 192, 196, 216 Seaham 105–20 Shangri-La 43 Shinglewell (earlier Shavecountewell), Kent 118, 119, 121 Siberia 191 Sicily 259 Sintra 208, 210, 212, 213 Six-Mile Bottom 107 Skien 82–84 Sligo 222, 223 Sodbury: see Chipping Sodbury Soho (Square) 141, 155, 190, 191, 255 Somerset 69, 91, 97, 232, 257 South Seas 249, 253, 255, 257, 273 Sowerby 28, 30 Spring Grove, Hounslow 257, 258 Stainborough 174 Stamford Bridge, Fulham 103 Stanton Harcourt 175 Stockholm 256 Stone Arthur 127 Stone-Willey (as place-name) 118; cf 252, 266

323 INDEX

Stone-William, Stone-Willey (as placename alluding to William Wordsworth) 127, 129 Strand 262 Stratford-upon-Avon 271 Sussex 85 Sweden 142, 144, 147, 254, 256, 281 Swillinditch (earlier Swillcuntditch), Cheshire 119 Switzerland 168 Sydenham 66 Tahiti 249, 254, 257 Taunton 71 Teeling Street, Sligo 222 Tennessee (Eastern) 285 Tewkesbury 30, 280 Thames 102, 205 Thebes 161, 222 Threadneedle Street 165, 171–91, 191, 199 Todmorden 32, 33 Tottenham Court (Road) 274 Toulon 151 Truro (cathedral) 204 Tyne River 117 United States of America: see America Uppsala 255, 256 Utopia 43 Vesuvius, Mt. 258

Vienna 158, 190, 203, 237–64, 280, 281 Vila Real 213 Vilna 192, 193 Wadsworth 32 Wakefield 139 Wales 227, 273, 275 Wansford, Cambs. 159, 161 Warsaw 191, 194–16 Washington, D.C. 285 Waterloo (and the Battle of) 9, 57, 82, 83, 85, 179, 268 Weimar 39, 182, 183, 187, 205, 209, 212 Wells 206 Welsh Marches 253 West Country 71, 166, 172 West Indies 169 West Riding 174 Western Isles 43; cf. Hebrides Westminster (Abbey) 205, 267 Westmorland 122 Windsor 119, 251 Worth Matravers, Purbeck 60 Wörthersee 158 Yetminster 60 York 119 Yorkshire 28–30, 164, 197, 249, 259, 272, 280

INDEX 324

INDEX III. Learned and other institutions

Aberdeen University 22 Académie des Sciences 28, 218, 258, 260 Admiralty 49, 146 All Souls, Oxford 152 Anchor Brewery, Southwark 276 Arcadian Society of Phylandria, Frankfurt 183 Archives départementales, Orléans 131, 137 Argue and Phibbs, solicitors, Sligo 222 Athenaeum 20 Bank of England 165–87, 171, 177, 178, 199, 200, 265 Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan 265 Bibliothèque d’Orléans 132 Blue Anchor, inn (and place-name) 122, 123 Blue Posts, tavern, earlier The Crabtree, Tottenham Court Road 274, 275 British Association 114, 260 British Museum (and Library) xv, 77, 184, 184, 185, 270 British School, Rome 264 Buckley’s Brewery, Llanelli 276 Cambridge University 11, 30, 66, 68, 87, 89, 138, 154, 205, 248, 272 Chancery 86 Chelsea F.C. 103 Chequers Inn, Bablock Hythe 175 Cocoa Tree 159 Colindale (Newspaper Library) 6

Compagnia Marittima delle Due Sicilie 263 Courtauld Institute 262 Cousins of Eastcheap, clock-smiths 171 Crabbet Club 108 Crab’s Wine Shop, Brighton 152 Crabtree, tavern, Erith Marshes 102 Crabtree, tavern, Fulham 103 Crabtree, ale-house, Tottenham Court Road 274 Crabtree Corner’s Literary Circle, Los Angeles 14 Crabtree Foundation xv, 2, 16, 20, 28, 31, 32, 34, 40, 52, 53, 63, 63, 93, 95, 108, 111, 117, 138, 140, 143, 174, 184, 207, 213, 215, 219, 220, 227, 245–73, 257, 266, 279, 282, 286 Crabtree Institute of America, or the C.I.A. 285 Crown and Anchor, London tavern, 58 Doctors’ Commons 86–88 Dotheboys Hall 30 East India Company 103, 201 Ecole Polytechnique, Paris 218 E.I. du Pont de Nemours 179 English Place-name Society 118 Equal Opportunities Commission 152 Equitable Life Assurance Society 230 Eton College 81, 249–77 Eugenics Laboratory (Sir Francis Galton’s), Gower Street 275 Exchequer 276

325 INDEX

Family Planning Association 61 Fleet Prison 89, 153 Folk-Lore Library, University College London 139 Freemasons, Ancient and Venerable Order of, or the Craft 241, 242, 244, 244 Freemasons’, London tavern 58 Gernsheim Collection 16 Glasgow University 66 Göttingen University 64, 232 Grand (Masonic) Lodge, London 238 Guildhall (and Library) 173, 276 Guy’s Hospital 66, 160, 161, 166, 204, 223 Happy Valley, inn, Porlock 98, 99, 139, 150, 151 Harrow School 249 Harvard Law Library 87 Haycock, inn, Wansford 107 Hobnails, inn, North Gloucestershire 280 House of Commons 172, 277 House of Lords 153 India Office Library 103, 107, 108 Institution of Civil Engineers 278 Jagiellonian University, Cracow 193 Jesus College, Cambridge 66 Keble College, Oxford 156 King’s Bench 89 King’s College, Cambridge 159 King’s College, London 16, 41, 138, 201, 270 King’s Head, London tavern, 58 Lamb Society 53 Lichfield Botanical Society 140 Lincoln’s Inn 56 Linnean Society (of London) 143, 191, 255, 256 (Red) Lion Club, London 141, 270

Literary Association of the Friends of Poland 196 Lloyds Bank 171 London School of Economics 61, 236 London Skin and Lock Hospital 62 London University xv, 29, 41, 52, 57 Lottery Office 169 Lunar Society 60, 140, 283–14 Lycée Louis-le-Grand, Paris 217 Magdalen House for Repentant Prostitutes 148 Maggs Brothers, booksellers 1, 269 Mitre, tavern, Oxford 176 Morgan Library, 8 National Library of Scotland 194 National Maritime Museum 150, 152 National Portrait Gallery 279 Newcastle F.C. 103 Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society 115, 260, 261 Newcastle Teetotal Society 115, 116 Oak Ridge Laboratory, Tennessee 286 Oxford Assizes 156 Oxford House of Correction 157 Oxford University 2, 10, 17, 23, 30, 34, 49, 53, 56, 58, 66, 70, 87–90, 147, 152–71, 176, 177, 193, 205, 233, 248, 249, 251, 257, 272, 274 Pennsylvania Historical Society 54 Petit Godet, tavern, Orléans 130 Phrenological Society 115, 260 Pittenweem Folk-lore, Place-name and Antiquarian Society 45 Pomme de Pin, tavern, Orléans (and Paris) 135 Porcher and Co., merchants of Fenchurch Street 169 Queen’s College, Oxford 56, 88, 153, 154, 164, 174, 176, 193, 254, 260 Rechabites, Independent Order of 115

INDEX 326

Rishworth (school), Yorkshire 29, 30, 248, 272 Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew 191 Royal College of Physicians 23, 111 Royal Institution 24, 49, 50, 164, 180, 200, 201 Royal Society 141, 144, 180, 215, 228, 229, 253, 255, 258, 274, 284 Royal Statistical Society 236 St Andrews University 42 St John’s College, Cambridge 64–68 Ship Inn, Porlock 98 Slade School of Art, University College London 131 Society of Antiquaries (of London) 63, 252 Society for Commemorating the Glorious Revolution of 235 Strasbourg University 136 Sydney University 50, 51 Temple of Health (Dr James Graham’s) 186 Trinity College, Cambridge 66, University College Hospital 113, 235 University College London (founded as the University of London) xv, 2, 18,

53, 57, 75, 103, 113, 152, 192, 194, 205, 228, 233, 234, 235, 249, 267–97, 274, 279 University College, Oxford 88 Victims of Trafalgar Benevolent Fund 152 Victoria and Albert Museum 104 Viking Society 30 Vilna University 192, 194, 233 Washington Museum 152 Weimar Gymnasium 212 Wernerian Natural History Society 259 Western Nevada, University of, Reno 1, 42, 268, 286 Westminster (Hall) 86, 87, 91, 276 White Hart, tavern, Borough High Street 160, 161, 166 Whitehall 155 Zoological Gardens, Regent’s Park 19, 91 Zur gekrönten Hoffnung (Masonic Lodge, Vienna) 242 Zur wahren Eintract (Masonic Lodge, Vienna) 238 Zur Wohltätigkeit (Masonic Lodge, Vienna) 239

INDEX IV. Realia et theoretica

Aqua toffana 238, 243 Attitudes (tableaux vivants presented by Lady Emma Hamilton) 186, 188 Blue Butter: see Crabtree’s Butter

Brassicus Rutabaga or Swede turnip 144, 281, 282 Codex Atlanticus 265, 266 Copley Medal (of the Royal Society) 141, 274

327 INDEX

Crabtree Lectures (on Dante) 270 Crabtree Line 88 Crabtree’s Butter 61, 147, 240, 242–69, 257, 283 Crabtree’s Principle of Learning by Suction 80 Crabtree’s Theorem 221 Crabtree’s Theory of Intellectual Asymmetry 261 Crabtree’s Velocipede 266 Faffans (the vernacular of Fife) 44–46 Masonic rituals 242 Mother Bailey’s Quietening Syrup 110, 146 Nut-dish (silver), inscribed ‘Joseph Crabtree 1811’ 157 Reiter’s syndrome 238, 240 Stinkhorn fungus or Phallus impudicus 143, 281, 282 Stone-Willeys 266; cf. Index I and II Works of art: Anonymous oil painting of JC, usually referred to as ‘the Sutherland portrait’ (after James Sutherland, its retriever) 15, 18, 38, 59, 74, 115, 157 Blake’s drawing, ‘The Ghost of a Flea’ 18 Haydon’s painting. ‘Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem’ 16 Stothard’s painting, ‘The Presentation of Colours to the Bank of England Volunteer Corps’ 166, 167 Walker’s engraving, ‘Men of Science iving in 1808’ 177, 279