The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  “Then look past him,” said the stranger with a smile, “to Aristotle himself, and where you find opposite extremes, seek always the Golden Mean. Thus Reason dictates: Compromise, Mr. Cooke: compromise. Adieu.”

  With that the fellow left, before Ebenezer could thank him or even secure his name.

  “Who was that gentleman?” he asked Bragg.

  “ ’Twas one Peter Sayer,” Bragg replied, “that just commissioned me to print him some broadsides—more than that I know not.”

  “No native Londoner, I’ll wager. What a wondrous wise fellow!”

  “And wears his natural hair!” sighed the printer. “What think ye of his advice?”

  “ ’Tis worthy a Chief Justice,” Ebenezer declared, “and I mean to carry it out at once. Fetch me a notebook neither too thick nor too thin, too tall nor too small, too simple nor too elegant. ’Twill be Aristotle from start to finish!”

  “Your pardon, sir,” Bragg protested; “I have already named my whole stock over, and there’s not a Golden Mean in the lot. Yet I think ye might purchase a book and alter it to suit.”

  “How, prithee,” Ebenezer asked, looking nervously to the door through which Sayer had made his exit, “when I know no more of bookmaking than doth a bookseller of poetry?”

  “Peace, peace!” urged Bragg. “Remember the voice of Reason.”

  “So be’t,” Ebenezer said. “Every man to his trade, as Reason hath it. Here’s a pound for book and alterations. Commence at once, nor let your eye drift e’en for an instant from the polestar of Reason.”

  “Very good, sir,” Bragg replied, pocketing the money. “Now, ’tis but reasonable, is’t not, that a long board may be sawn short, but a short board may not be stretched? And a fat book, likewise, may be thinned, but ne’er a thin book fattened?”

  “No Christian man can say you nay,” Ebenezer agreed.

  “So, then,” said Bragg, taking a handsome, fat unruled leather folio from the shelf, “we take us a great stout fellow, spread him open thusly, and compromise him!” Pressing the notebook flat open upon the counter, he ripped out several handfuls of pages.

  “Whoa! Stay!” cried Ebenezer.

  “Then,” Bragg went on, paying him no heed, “since Reason tells us a fine coat may wear shabby, but ne’er a cheap coat fine, we’ll just compromise this morocco here and there—” He snatched up a letter opener near at hand and commenced to hack and gouge the leather binding.

  “Hold, there! I’faith, my notebook!”

  “As for the pages,” Bragg continued, exchanging the letter opener for goose quill and inkpot, “ye may rule ’em as’t please ye, with Reason as the guide: sidewise”—he scratched recklessly across a half-dozen pages—“lengthwise”—he penned hasty verticals on the same pages—“or what ye will!” He scribbled at random through the whole notebook.

  “ ’Sbody! My pound!”

  “Which leaves only the matter of size,” Bragg concluded: “He must be smaller than a folio, yet taller than a quarto. Hark ye, now: methinks the voice of Reason orders—”

  “Compromise!” Ebenezer shouted, and brought down his sword upon the mutilated notebook with such a mighty chop that, had Bragg not just then stepped back to contemplate his creation he’d surely have contemplated his Creator. The covers parted: the binding let go; pages flew in all directions. “That for your damned Golden Mean!”

  “Madman!” Bragg cried, and ran out into the street. “Oh, dear, help!”

  There was no time to lose: Ebenezer sheathed his sword, snatched up the first notebook he spied—which happened to be lying near at hand, over the cash drawer—and fled to the rear of the store, through the print shop (where two apprentices looked up in wonder from their work), and out the back door.

  2

  The Laureate Departs from London

  THOUGH SEVERAL HOURS yet remained before departure time, Ebenezer went from Bragg’s directly to the posthouse, ate an early dinner, and sipped ale restlessly while waiting for Bertrand to appear with his trunk. Never had the prospect of going to Maryland seemed so pleasant: he longed to be off! For one thing, after the adventure in Bragg’s establishment he was more than ever disgusted with London; for another, he feared that Bragg, to whom he’d mentioned the Plymouth coach, might send men after him, though he was certain his pound was more than adequate payment for both notebooks. And there was another reason: his heart still beat faster when he recalled his swordplay of an hour before, and his face flushed.

  “What a gesture!” he thought admiringly. “ ‘That for your damned Golden Mean!’ Well said and well done! How it terrified the knave, i’faith! A good beginning!” He laid his notebook on the table: it was quarto size, about an inch thick, with cardboard covers and a leather spine. “ ’Tis not what I’d have chosen,” he reflected without sorrow, “but ’twas manfully got, and ’twill do, ’twill do. Barman!” he called. “Ink and quill, if you please!” The writing materials fetched, he opened the notebook in order to pen a dedication: to his surprise he found already inscribed on the first page B. Bragg, Printer & Stationer, Sign of the Raven, Paternoster Row, London, 1694, and on the second and third and fourth such entries as Bangle & Son, glaziers, for windowglass, 13/4, and Jno. Eastbury, msc printing, 1/3/9.

  “ ’Sblood! ’Tis Bragg’s account book! A common ledger!” Investigating further he found that only the first quarter of the book had been used: the last entry, dated that same day, read Col. Peter Sayer, broadsides, 2/5/0. The remaining pages were untouched. “So be’t,” he smiled, and ripped out the used sheets. “Was’t not my aim to keep strict account of my traffic with the muse?” Inking his quill, he wrote across the first page Ebenezer Cooke, Poet & Laureate of Maryland and then observed (it being a ledger of the double-entry variety) that his name fell in the Debit column and his title in the Credit.

  “Nay, ’twill never do,” he decided, “for to call my office an asset to me is but to call me a liability to my office.” He tore out the sheet and reversed the inscription. “Yet Poet and Laureate Eben Cooke is as untrue as the other,” he reflected, “for while I hope to be a credit to my post, yet surely the post is no liability to me. ’Twere fitter the thing were done sidewise down the credit line, to signify the mutual benefit of title and man.” But before he tore out the second sheet it occurred to him that “credit” was meaningless except as credit to somebody—and yet anything he entered to receive it became a liability. For a moment he was frantic.

  “Stay!” he commanded himself, perspiring. “The fault is not in the nature of the world, but in Bragg’s categories. I’ll merely paste my commission over the whole title page.”

  He called for glue, but when he searched his pockets for the commission from Lord Baltimore, he found it not in any of them.

  “Agad! ’Tis in the coat I wore last night at Locket’s, that Bertrand hath packed away for me!”

  He went searching about the posthouse for his man, without success. But in the street outside, where the carriage was being made ready, he was astonished to find no other person than his sister Anna.

  “Marry!” he cried, and hurried to embrace her. “People vanish and appear to me of late as in a Drury Lane comedy! How is it thou’rt in London?”

  “To see thee off to Plymouth,” Anna said. Her voice was no longer girlish, but had a hard, flat tone to it, and one would have put her age closer to thirty-five than twenty-eight years. “Father forbade it but would not come himself, and so I stole away and be damned to him.” She stepped back and examined her brother. “Ah faith, thou’rt grown thinner, Eben! I’ve heard ’twere wise to fatten up for an ocean passage.”

  “I had but a week to fatten,” Ebenezer reminded her. During his sojourn at Paggen’s he had seen Anna not more than once a year, and he was greatly moved by the alteration in her appearance.

  She lowered her eyes, and he blushed.

  “I’m looking for that great cynical servant of mine,” he said gaily, turning away. “You’ve not seen him, I suppose?”
>
  “You mean Bertrand? I sent him off myself not five minutes past, when he’d got all your baggage on the coach.”

  “Ah, there’s a pity. I had promised him a crown for’t.”

  “And I gave it him, from Father’s money. He’ll be back at St. Giles, I think, for Mrs. Twigg hath a ferment of the blood and is not given long to live.”

  “Nay! Dear old Twigg! ’Tis a pity to lose her.”

  They stood about awkwardly. Turning his head to avoid looking her in the eye, Ebenezer caught sight of the wigless fellow of the bookstore, Peter Sayer, standing idly by the corner.

  “Did Bertrand tell you aught of my preferment?” he asked cheerfully.

  “Aye, he spoke of’t. I’m proud.” Anna’s manner was distracted. “Eben—” She grasped his arm. “Was’t true, what that letter said?”

  Ebenezer laughed, somewhat nettled at Anna’s lack of interest in his laureateship. “ ’Twas true I’d got nowhere at Peter Paggen’s, in all those years. And ’twas true a woman was in my chamber.”

  “And did you deceive her?” his sister asked anxiously.

  “I did,” Ebenezer said. Anna turned away and caught her breath.

  “Stay!” he cried. “ ’Twas not at all in the way you think. I deceived her inasmuch as she was a whore that came to me to be employed for five guineas; but I took a great love for her and would neither lay nor pay her on those terms.”

  Anna wiped her eyes and looked at him. “Is’t true?”

  “Aye,” Ebenezer laughed. “Haply you’ll judge me not a man for’t, Anna, but I swear I am as much a virgin now as the day we were born. What, thou’rt weeping again!”

  “But not for sorrow,” Anna said, embracing him. “Do you know, Brother, I had come to think since you went to Magdalene College we no longer knew each other—but it may be I was wrong.”

  Ebenezer was moved by this statement, but a trifle embarrassed when Anna squeezed him more tightly before releasing him. Passersby, including Peter Sayer on the corner, turned their heads to look at them: doubtless they looked like parting lovers. Yet he was ashamed at being embarrassed. He moved closer to the coach, to prevent too gross a misunderstanding, and took his sister’s hand, at least partly to forestall further embraces.

  “Do you ever think of the past?” Anna asked.

  “Aye.”

  “What times we had! Do you remember how we used to talk for hours after Mrs. Twigg had turned out the lamp?” Tears sprang again to her eyes. “I’faith, I miss you, Eben!”

  Ebenezer patted her hand.

  “And I thee,” he said, sincerely but uncomfortably. “I remember one day when we were thirteen, you were ill in bed with a fever, and so Henry and I went alone to tour Westminster Abbey. ’Twas my first whole day apart from you, and by dinnertime I missed you so sorely I begged Henry to take me home. But we went instead to St. James’s Park, and after supper to Dukes Theater in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and ’twas far past midnight ere we reached home. I felt ten years older for the day’s adventure and could not see for the life of me how I’d e’er be able to tell you the whole of’t. I’d had my first meal away from home, been to my first theater, and tasted my first brandy. We talked of nothing else for weeks but that day, and still I’d remember trifles I’d forgot to tell you. ’Twould give me pain to think of them, and at length I came to regret ever having gone and told Henry so, for’t seemed to me you’d ne’er catch up after that day.”

  “I recall it as if ’twere but last week,” Anna said. “How many times I’ve wondered whether you’d forgot it.” She sighed. “And I never did catch up! Query as I might, there was no getting the whole story. The awful truth of’t was, I’d not been there to see!”

  Ebenezer interrupted her with a laugh. “Marry, e’en now I recall something of it I forgot to tell you! After supper at some Pall Mall tavern on that day, I waited a half hour alone at the table while Henry went upstairs for one reason or another—” He stopped and blushed scarlet, suddenly realizing, after fifteen years, what in all probability Henry Burlingame had gone upstairs for. Anna, however, to his relief, showed no sign of understanding.

  “The wine had gone to my head, and everyone looked odd to me, none less than myself. ’Twas then I composed my first poem, in my head. A little quatrain. Nay, I must confess ’twas no slip of memory: I kept it secret, Heav’n knows why. I can e’en recite it now:

  Figures, so strange, no GOD design’d

  To be a Part of Human-kind:

  But wanton Nature… .

  La, I forget the rest. ’Sheart,” he said, resolving happily to record the little verse in his notebook as soon as he boarded the carriage, “and since then what years we’ve spent apart! What crises and adventures we each have had, that the other knows naught of! ’Tis a pity all the same you had a fever that day!”

  Anna shook her head. “I had a secret too, Eben, that Mrs. Twigg knew, and Henry guessed, but never you nor Father. ’Twas no fever I was bedded with, but my first monthly troubles! I’d changed from child to woman that morning, and had the cramp of’t as many women do.”

  Ebenezer pressed her hand, uncertain what to say. It was time to board the coach: footmen and driver were attending last-minute details.

  “ ’Twill be long ere I see you again,” he said. “Belike you’ll be a stout matron with half-a-dozen children!”

  “Not I,” Anna said. “ ’Twill be Mrs. Twigg’s lot for me, when she dies: an old maid housekeeper.”

  Ebenezer scoffed. “Thou’rt a catch for the best of men! Could I find your equal I’d be neither virgin nor bachelor for long.” He kissed her good-bye, forwarded his respects to his father, and made to board the carriage.

  “Stay!” Anna said impulsively.

  Ebenezer hesitated, uncertain of her meaning. Anna slipped from her finger a silver seal ring, well known to the poet because it was their only memento of their mother, whom they had never seen; Andrew had bought it during his brief courtship and had presented it to Anna some years past. Equally spaced around the seal were the letters A N N E B, for Anne Bowyer, his fiancée, and in the center, overlapped and joined by a single crossbar, was a brace of beflourished A‘s signifying the connection of Anne and Andrew. The complete seal looked like this:

  “Prithee take this ring,” Anna entreated, and looked at it musingly. “ ’Tis—’tis my wont to alter its significance somewhat… but no matter. Here, let me put it on you.” She caught up his left hand and slipped the ring onto his little finger. “Pledge me…” she began, but did not finish.

  Ebenezer laughed, and to terminate the uncomfortable situation pledged that inasmuch as her share of Malden was a large part of her dowry, he would make it flourish.

  It was time to leave. He kissed her again and boarded the carriage, taking the seat from which he could wave to her. At the last minute the wigless fellow, Peter Sayer, boarded the coach and took the opposite seat. A footman closed the door and sprang up to his post—apparently there were to be no other passengers. The driver whipped up the horses, Ebenezer waved to the forlorn figure of his twin at the posthouse door, and the carriage pulled away.

  “ ’Tis no light matter, to leave a woman ye love,” Sayer offered. “Is’t thy wife, perhaps, or a sweetheart?”

  “Neither,” sighed Ebenezer. “ ’Tis my twin sister, that I shan’t see again till Heav’n knows when.” He turned to face his companion. “Thou’rt my savior from Ben Bragg’s, I believe—Mr. Sayer?”

  Sayer’s face showed some alarm. “Ah, ye know me?”

  “Only by name, from Ben Bragg.” He extended his hand. “I am Ebenezer Cooke, bound for Maryland.”

  Sayer shook hands warily.

  “Is Plymouth your home, Mr. Sayer?”

  The man searched Ebenezer’s face. “Do ye really not know Colonel Peter Sayer?” he asked.

  “Why, no.” Ebenezer smiled uncertainly. “I’m honored by your company, sir.”

  “Of Talbot County in Maryland?”

  “Maryland! I’f
aith, what an odd chance!”

  “Not so odd,” Sayer said, “since the Smoker’s Fleet sails on the first. Anyone bound for Plymouth these days is likely bound for the plantations.”

  “Well, ’twill be a pleasant journey. Is Talbot County near to Dorchester?”

  “Really, sir, thou’rt twitting me!” Sayer cried.

  “Nay, I swear’t; I know naught of Maryland. ’Tis my first visit since the age of four.”

  Sayer still looked skeptical. “My dear fellow, you and I are neighbors, with only the Great Choptank between us.”

  “Marry, what a wondrous small world! You must pay me a call sometime, sir: I’ll be managing our place on Cooke’s Point.”

  “And writing a deal of verse, did I hear Mr. Bragg aright.”

  Ebenezer blushed. “Aye, I mean to turn a line or two if I can.”

  “Nay, put by your modesty, Master Laureate! Bragg told me of the honor Lord Baltimore did ye.”

  “Ah well, as for that, ’tis likely he got it wrong. My commission is to write a panegyric on Maryland, but I’ll not be laureate in fact till the day Baltimore hath the Province for his own again.”

  “Which day,” Sayer said, “you and your Jacobite friends yearn for, I presume?”

  “Stay, now!” Ebenezer said, alarmed. “I am as loyal as you.”

  Sayer smiled for an instant but said in a serious tone, “Yet ye wish King William to lose his province to a Papist?”

  “I am a poet,” Ebenezer declared, almost adding and a virgin from habit; “I know naught of Jacobites and Papists, and care less.”

  “Nor knew ye aught of Maryland, it seems,” Sayer added. “How well do ye know your patron?”

  “Not at all, save that he is a great and generous man. I’ve conversed with him but once, but the history of his province persuades me he was done a pitiful injustice. I’faith, the scoundrels that have fleeced and slandered him! I am confident King William knows not the whole truth.”

  “But you do?”

  “I don’t say that. Still and all, a villain is a villain! This fellow Claiborne, that I heard of, and Ingle, and John Coode, that led the latest insurrection—”