The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  “Ebenezer Cooke, is’t?” he said by way of commencing the conversation. “Of Cooke’s Point, in Dorchester?” His voice, while still in essence forceful, had that uncertain flutter which betrays the onset of senility. Ebenezer bowed slightly in acknowledgment and took the chair indicated by his host.

  “Andrew Cooke’s son?” asked Charles, peering at his guest.

  “The same, sir,” Ebenezer replied.

  “I knew Andrew Cooke in Maryland,” reflected Charles. “If memory serves me rightly, ’twas in 1661, the year my father made me Governor of the Province, that I licensed Andrew Cooke to trade there. But I’ve not seen him for many years and haply wouldn’t know him now, or he me.” He sighed. “Life’s a battle that scars us all, victor and vanquished alike.”

  “Aye,” Ebenezer agreed readily, “but ’tis the stuff of living to fight it, and take’t by storm, and your good soldier wears his scars with pride, win or lose, so he got ’em bravely in honest combat.”

  “I doubt not,” murmured Charles, and retreated to the letter. “How’s this now,” he remarked: “Ebenezer Cooke, Poet. What might that mean, pray? Can it be you earn your bread by versifying? Or you’re a kind of minstrel, belike, that wanders about the countryside a-begging and reciting? ’Tis a trade I know little of, I confess’t.”

  “Poet I am,” answered Ebenezer with a blush, “and no mean one it may be; but not a penny have I earned by’t, nor will I ever. The muse loves him who courts, her for herself alone, and scorns the man who’d pimp her for his purse’s sake.”

  “I daresay, I daresay,” said Charles. “But is’t not customary, when a man tack some bunting to his name to wave like a pendant in the public breeze, that he show thereby his calling and advertise it to the world? Now, did I read here Ebenezer Cooke, Tinker, I’d likely hire you to patch my pots; if Ebenezer Cooke, Physician, I’d send you the rounds of my household, to purge and tonic the lot; if Ebenezer Cooke, Gentleman, or Esquire, I’d presume you not for hire, and ring in my man to fetch you brandy. But Poet, now: Ebenezer Cooke, Poet. What trade is that? How doth one deal with you? What work doth one put you to?”

  “ ’Tis that very matter I wish to speak of,” said Ebenezer, unruffled by the twitting. “Know, sir, that though ’tis no man’s living to woo the muse, ’tis yet some men’s calling, and so ’twas not recklessly I tacked on my name the title Poet: ’tis of no moment what I do; poet is what I am.”

  “As another might sign himself Gentleman?” asked Charles.

  “Precisely.”

  “Then ’tis not for hire you sought me out? You crave no employment?”

  “Hire I do not seek,” Ebenezer declared. “For as the lover craves of his beloved naught save her favor, which to him is reward sufficient, so craves the poet no more from his muse than happy inspiration; and as the fruit of lover’s labor is a bedded bride, and the sign of’t a crimsoned sheet, so the poet’s prize is a well-turned verse, and the sign thereof a printed page. To be sure, if haply the lass bring with her some dowry, ’twill not be scorned, nor will what pence come poetwards from his publishing. Howbeit, these are mere accidents, happy but unsought.”

  “Why, then,” said Charles, fetching two pipes from a rack over the fireplace, “I believe we may call’t established that you are not for hire. Let’s have a pipe on’t, and then pray state your business.”

  The two men filled and lit their pipes, and Ebenezer returned to his theme.

  “Hire I care naught for,” he repeated, “but as for employment, there’s another matter quite, and the very sum and substance of my visit. You enquired a moment past, What trade is the poet’s, and to what work shall he be put? For answer let me ask you, sir, by’r leave—would the world at large know aught of Agamemnon, or fierce Achilles, or crafty Odysseus, or the cuckold Menelaus, or that entire circus of strutting Greeks and Trojans, had not great Homer rendered ’em to verse? How many battles of greater import are lost in the dust of history, d’you think, for want of a poet to sing ’em to the ages? Full many a Helen blooms one spring and goes to the worm forgot; but let a Homer paint her in the grand cosmetic of his verse, and her beauty boils the blood of twenty centuries! Where lies a Prince’s greatness, I ask you? In his feats on the field of battle, or the downy field of love? Why, ’tis but a generation’s work to forget ’em for good and all! Nay, I say ’tis not in the deeds his greatness lies, but in their telling. And who’s to tell ’em? Not the historian, for be he ne’er so dev’lish accurate, as to how many hoplites had Epaminondas when he whipped the Spartans at Leuctra, or what was the Christian name of Charlemagne’s barber, yet nobody reads him but his fellow chroniclers and his students—the one from envy, t’other from necessity. But place deeds and doer in the poet’s hands, and what comes of’t? Lo, the crook’d nose grows straight, the lean shank fleshes out, French pox becomes a bedsore; shady deeds shed their tarnish, bright grow brighter; and the whole is musicked into tuneful rhyme, arresting conceit, and stirring meter, so’s to stick in the head like Greensleeves and move the heart like Scripture!”

  “ ’Tis clear as day,” said Charles with a smile, “that the poet is a useful member of a Prince’s train.”

  “And what’s true for a prince is true for a principality,” Ebenezer went on, stirred by his own eloquence. “What were Greece without Homer, Rome without Virgil, to sing their glories? Heroes die, statues break, empires crumble; but your Iliad laughs at time, and a verse from Virgil still rings true as the day ’twas struck. Who renders virtue palatable like the poet, and vice abhorrent, seeing he alone provides both precept and example? Who else bends nature to suit his fancy and paints men better or worse to suit his purpose? What sings like lyric, praises like panegyric, mourns like elegiac, wounds like Hudibrastic verse?”

  “Naught, that I can name,” said Charles, “and you have quite persuaded me that a man’s most useful friend and fearsome foe is the poet. Prithee now, fellow, dispense with farther preamble and deliver me your business plainly.”

  “Very well,” said Ebenezer, planting his cane between his knees and gripping its handle firmly. “Would you say, sir, that Maryland boasts a surfeit of poets?”

  “A surfeit of poets?” repeated Charles, and drew thoughtfully upon his pipe. “Well, now, since you ask, I think not. Nay, in good faith I must confess, entre nous, there is no surfeit of poets in Maryland. Not a bit of’t. Why, I’d wager one might walk the length and breadth of St. Mary’s City on a May afternoon and not cross the tracks of a single poet, they’re that rare.”

  “As I reckoned,” said Ebenezer. “Would you go so far as to suppose, even, that I might be hard put to’t, once I establish myself in Maryland, to find me four or five fellow-planters to match a couplet with, or trade a rhyme?”

  “ ’Tis not impossible,” admitted Charles.

  “I guessed as much. And now, sir, if I might: would’t be mere gross presumption and vanity for me to suppose, that haply I shall be the absolute first, premier, unprecedented, and genuine original poet to set foot on the soil of Terra Mariae? First to pay court to the Maryland Muse?”

  “ ’Tis not in me to deny,” replied Charles, “that should there breathe such a wench as this Maryland Muse, you may well have her maidenhead.”

  “Faith!” cried Ebenezer joyously. “Only think on’t! A province, an entire people—all unsung! What deeds forgot, what gallant men and women lost to time! ’Sblood, it dizzies me! Trees felled, towns raised, a very nation planted in the wilds! Foundings, stragglings, triumphs! Why, ’tis work for a Virgil! Think, m’lord, only think on’t: the noble house of Calvert, the Barons Baltimore—builders of nations, bringers of light, fructifiers of the wilderness! A glorious house and history still unmusicked for the world’s delight! Marry, ’tis virgin territory!”

  “Many’s the fine thing to be said of Maryland,” Charles agreed. “But to speak plainly, I fear me that virgins are rare as poets there.”

  “Prithee do not jest!” begged Ebenezer. “ ’Twere an epic such a
s ne’er was penned! The Marylandiad, b’m’faith!”

  “How’s that?” For all his teasing manner, Charles had grown thoughtful in the course of Ebenezer’s outburst.

  “The Marylandiad!” repeated Ebenezer, and declaimed as from a title-page: “An epic to out-epic epics: the history of the princely house of Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore and Lord Proprietary of the Province of Maryland, relating the heroic founding of that province! The courage and perseverance of her settlers in battling barb’rous nature and fearsome salvage to wrest a territory from the wild and transform it to an earthly paradise! The majesty and enlightenment of her proprietors, who like kingly gardeners fostered the tender seeds of civilization in their rude soil, and so husbanded and cultivated them as to bring to fruit a Maryland beauteous beyond description; verdant, fertile, prosperous, and cultured; peopled with brave men and virtuous women, healthy, handsome, and refined: a Maryland, in short, splendid in her past, majestic in her present, and glorious in her future, the brightest jewel in the fair crown of England, owned and ruled to the benefit of both by a family second to none in the recorded history of the universal world—the whole done into heroic couplets, printed on linen, bound in calf, stamped in gold”—here Ebenezer bowed with a flourish of his beaver—“and dedicated to Your Lordship!”

  “And signed?” asked Charles.

  Ebenezer rose to his feet and beamed upon his host, one hand on his cane and the other on his hip.

  “Signed Ebenezer Cooke, Gentleman,” he replied: “Poet and Laureate of the Province of Maryland!”

  “Ah,” said Charles. “Poet and Laureate, now: ’tis a new bit of bunting you’d add to your name.”

  “Only think how ’twould redound to Your Lordship’s credit,” urged Ebenezer. “The appointment would prove at a single stroke both the authority and the grace of your rule, for ’twould give the Province the flavor of a realm and the refinement of a court to have a bona fide laureate sing her praises and record in verse her great moments; and as for the Marylandiad itself, ’twould immortalize the Barons Baltimore, and make Aeneases of ’em all! Moreover, ’twould paint the Province as she stands today in such glowing colors as to lure the finest families of England to settle there; ’twould spur the inhabitants to industry and virtue, to keep the picture true as I paint it; in sum, ’twould work to the enhancement of both the quality and the value of the colony, and so proportionately ennoble, empower, and enrich him who owns and rules her! Is’t not a formidable string of achievements?”

  At this Charles burst into such a fit of laughing that he choked on his pipe smoke, watered at the eyes, and came near to losing his campaigner: it required the spirited back-thumping of two body servants, who stood nearby, to restore his composure.

  “Oh dear!” he cried at last, daubing at his eyes with a handkerchief. “An achievement indeed, to ennoble and enrich him who rules Maryland! I’m sorry to say, Master Poet, that that fellow already maintains himself a laureate to sing him! There’s no ennobling him beyond his present station, and as for enriching him, I venture I’ve done my share of that and more! Oh dear! Oh dear!”

  “How is that?” asked Ebenezer, all bewildered.

  “My good man, is’t that you were born yesterday? Know you naught of the true state o’ the world?”

  “Surely ’tis thy province!” exclaimed Ebenezer.

  “Surely ’twas my province,” corrected Charles with a wry smile, “and the Barons Baltimore were her True and Absolute Lords Proprietary, more often than not, from the day she was chartered till just three years ago. I get my quit-rents yet, and a miserable bit of port-revenue, but for the rest, ’tis King William’s province these days, sir, and Queen Mary’s, not mine. Why not take your proposal to the Crown?”

  “Marry, I knew naught of’t!” said Ebenezer. “Might I ask for what cause your Lordship retired from rule? Was’t haply your desire to spend quietly the evening of life? Or belike ’twas sheer devotion to the Crown? Egad, what spaciousness of character!”

  “Stay, stay,” cried Charles, shaking again with mirth, “else I must summon my man again to pound the lights out of me! Hey! Ha!” He signed deeply and beat his chest with the flat of his hand. When he had regained control of himself he said, “I see you are all innocent of Maryland’s history, and will plunge into a place not knowing the whys and wherefores of’t, or who stands for what. You came to do me a favor, so you declare, and—by Heav’n!—enrich and ennoble me: very well, then, permit me to do you one in return, which may someday haply save you another such wasted hour: by your leave, Mister Cooke, I shall sketch you shortly the history of this Maryland, which, like the gift of a salvage, was first bestowed and then snatched back. Will you hear it?”

  “ ’Tis my pleasure and honor,” answered Ebenezer. who, however, was too crestfallen to relish greatly a lesson in history.

  10

  A Brief Relation of the Maryland Palatinate, Its Origins and Struggles for Survival, as Told to Ebenezer by His Host

  “ ‘TIS TRULY SAID,” Charles began, “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, inasmuch as Envy and Covetousness are ne’er satisfied. Maryland’s mine by law and by right, yet her history is the tale of my family’s struggle to preserve her, and of the plots of countless knaves to take her from us—chief among them Black Bill Claiborne and a very antichrist named John Coode, who plagues me yet.

  “My grandfather, George Calvert, as you may know, was introduced to the court of James I as private secretary to Sir Robert Cecil, and after that great man’s death was appointed clerk to the Privy Council and twice Commissioner to Ireland. He was knighted in 1617, and when Sir Thomas Lake was sacked as Secretary of State (owing to the free tongue of his wife), my grandfather was named to replace him, despite the fact that the Duke of Buckingham, James’s favorite, wanted the post for his friend Carleton. I have cause to believe that Buckingham took this as an affront and became the first significant enemy to our house.

  “What an ill time to be Secretary of State! ’Twas 1619, remember: the Thirty Years’ War had just commenced; James had emptied our treasury; we hadn’t a single strong ally! ’Twas a choice ’twixt Spain and France, and to choose one was to alienate the other. Buckingham favored Spain, and my grandfather supported him. What could seem wiser, I ask you? Marrying Prince Charles to the Infanta Maria would bind Spain to us forever; Maria’s dowry would fill the treasury; and by supporting the King and Buckingham my grandfather would prove his loyalty to the one and shame the resentment of the other! The match was unpopular, to be sure, among the Protestants, and Grandfather was given the odious chore (I think at Buckingham’s) of urging defending it to a hostile Parliament. But ’twas the part of wisdom: no man could have guessed the treachery of King Philip and his ambassador Gondomar, who lured us to alienate France, alienate the German Protestant princes, alienate even James’s son-in-law Frederick and our own House of Commons, only to break off negotiations at the last minute and leave us virtually helpless!”

  “He was a wretch, that Gondomar,” Ebenezer agreed politely.

  “That, of course, together with his conversion to the Church of Rome, ended Grandfather’s public career. Despite the King’s entreaties he retired from office, and as reward for his loyalty James named him Baron of Baltimore in the Kingdom of Ireland.

  “From then till his death he devoted himself to colonizing America. In 1622 James had patented him the southeastern peninsula of Newfoundland, and my grandfather, deceived by lying reports of the place, put a good part of his fortune into a settlement called Avalon and went to live there himself. But the climate was intolerable. What’s more, the French—with whom, thanks to Buckingham’s statesmanship, we were at war—were forever snatching our vessels and molesting our fishermen; and as if this were not trouble enough, certain Puritan ministers spread word in the Privy Council that Popish priests were being smuggled into Avalon to undermine the Church of England there. At length my grandfather begged King Charles for a grant farther south, in the dominio
n of Virginia. The King wrote in reply that Grandfather should abandon his plans and return to England, but ere the letter was received Grandfather had already removed to Jamestown with his family and forty colonists. There he was met by Governor Pott and his Council (including the blackguard William Claiborne), all of ’em hostile as salvages and bent on driving Grandfather away, for fear Charles would grant him the whole of Virginia out from under ’em. They pressed him to swear the oath of supremacy, knowing well that as a good Catholic he would refuse. Not e’en the King had required it of him, but demand it they did, and were like to set bullies and ruffians upon him when he would not swear’t.”

  “Inequity!” said Ebenezer.

  “Iniquity!” Charles amended. “So hardly did they use him, he was forced to leave wife and family in Jamestown, and after exploring the coast for a while he returned to England and asked Charles for the Carolina territory. The charter was drawn, but ere ’twas granted who should appear in England but Master Claiborne, who straightway commences to scheme against it. To avoid dispute, Grandfather nobly relinquished Carolina and applied instead for land north of Virginia, on both sides of the Bay of Chesapeake. Charles tried in vain to persuade him to live at ease in England and labor no more with grants and colonies, but Grandfather would have none of such idleness and at last prevailed upon the King to make the grant, which he would name Crescentia, but which the King called Terra Mariae, or Mary-Land, after Henrietta Maria, the Queen.”