ABSTRACT
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 studiesbetween the time when he was sent down from Oxford in the Hilary termindeed 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
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.
