The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  “Did he not strike a great blow for the faith, against the Papists?” Sayer demanded.

  Ebenezer began to grow uncomfortable. “I know not where your sympathies lie, Colonel Sayer; belike thou’rt a colonel in Coode’s militia and will clap me in prison the day we step ashore in Maryland—”

  “Then were’t not the part of prudence to watch thy speech? Mind, I don’t say I am a friend of Coode’s, but for all ye know I may be.”

  “Aye, ’twere indeed the part of prudence,” Ebenezer said, a trifle frightened. “You may say ’tis not always prudent to be just, and I ’tis not always just to be prudent. I am no Roman Catholic, sir, nor antipapist either, and I wonder whether ’tis a matter ’twixt Protestants and Papists in Maryland or ’twixt rascals and men of character, whate’er their faith.”

  “Such a speech could get thee jailed there,” Sayer smiled.

  “Then ’tis proof of their injustice,” Ebenezer declared, not a little anxiously, “for I’m not on either side. Lord Baltimore strikes me as a man of character, and there’s an end on’t. It might be I’m mistaken.”

  Sayer laughed. “Nay, thou’rt not mistaken. I was but trying your loyalty.”

  “To whom, prithee? And what is your conclusion?”

  “Thou’rt a Baltimore man.”

  “Do I go to prison for’t?”

  “That may be,” Sayer smiled, “but not at my hands. I am this very moment under arrest in Maryland for seditious speech against Coode and have been since last June.”

  “Nay!”

  “Aye, along with Charles Carroll, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Edward Randolph, and half a dozen other fine fellows that spoke against the blackguard. I am no Papist either, but Charles Calvert is an old and dear friend of mine. May the day I fear to speak up against poltroons be the last of my life!”

  Ebenezer hesitated. “How am I to know ’tis not now thou’rt trying me, and not before?”

  “Ye can never know,” Sayer replied, “especially in Maryland, where friends may change their colors like tree frogs. Why, do ye know, the barrister Bob Goldsborough of Talbot, my friend and neighbor for years, deposed against me to Governor Copley? The last man I’d have thought a turncoat!”

  Ebenezer shook his head. “A man will sell his heart to save his neck. The picture looks drear enough, i’faith!”

  “Yet there’s this to say for’t,” Sayer said, “that it makes the choice a clean one: ye must hold your tongue with all save your conscience or else speak your mind and take the consequences—discretion goes out the window, and so doth compromise.”

  “Is this the Voice of Reason speaking?” Ebenezer asked.

  “Nay, ’tis the Voice of Action. Compromise serves well enough when neither extreme will let ye what ye want: but there are things men must not want. What comfort is a whole skin, pray, when the soul is wounded unto death? ’Twas I wrote Baltimore his first full account of Coode’s rebellion, and rather than live under his false Associators I left my house and lands and came to England.”

  “How is it thou’rt returning? Will you not be clapped in irons?”

  “That may be,” Sayer said. “Howbeit, I think not. Copley’s dead since September, and Baltimore himself had a hand in commissioning Francis Nicholson to replace him. D’ye know Nicholson?”

  Ebenezer admitted that he did not.

  “Well, he hath his faults—chiefly a great temper and a passion for authority—but his ear’s been bent the right way, and he’ll have small use for Coode’s sort. Ere he got this post he was with Edmund Andros in New England, and ’twas Leisler’s rebellion in New York that ran him out—the very model of Coode’s rebellion in Maryland. Nay, I fear no harm from Nicholson.”

  “Nonetheless, ’tis a bold resolve,” Ebenezer ventured.

  Sayer shrugged. “Life is short; there’s time for naught but bold resolves.”

  Ebenezer started and looked sharply at his companion.

  “What is’t?”

  “Nothing,” Ebenezer said. “Only a dear friend of mine was wont to tell me that. I’ve lost track of him these six or seven years.”

  “Belike he made some bold resolve himself,” Sayer suggested, “though ’tis easier to recommend than do. Did ye heed his counsel?”

  Ebenezer nodded, “Hence both my voyage and my laureateship,” he said, and since they had a long ride before them he told his traveling-companion the story of his failure at Cambridge, his brief sojourn in London with Burlingame and his long one with Peter Paggen, the wager in the winehouse, and his audience with Lord Baltimore. The motion of the carriage must have loosened his tongue, for he went into considerable detail. When he concluded with his solution to the problem of choosing a notebook and showed him Bragg’s ledger, Sayer laughed so hard he had to hold his sides.

  “Oh! Ha!” he cried. “That for your golden mean! Oh, ‘shodikins! Thou’rt a credit to your tutor, I swear!”

  “ ’Twas my first act as Laureate,” Ebenezer smiled. “I saw it as a kind of crisis.”

  “Marry, and managed it wondrous well! So here ye sit: virgin and poet! Think ye the twain will dwell ’neath the same roof and not quarrel with each other day and night?”

  “On the contrary, they live not only in harmony but in mutual inspiration.”

  “But what on earth hath a virgin to sing of? What have ye in your ledger there?”

  “Naught save my name,” Ebenezer admitted. “I had minded to paste my commission there, that Baltimore drafted, but it got packed in my trunk. Yet I’ve two poems to copy in it from memory, when I can. The one I spoke of already, that I wrote the night of the wager: ’tis on the subject of my innocence.”

  At his companion’s request Ebenezer recited the poem.

  “Very good,” Sayer said when it was done. “Methinks it puts your notion aptly enough, though I’m no critic. Yet ’tis a mystery to me, what ye’ll sing of save your innocence. Prithee recite me the other piece.”

  “Nay, ’tis but a silly quatrain I wrote as a lad—the first I ever rhymed. And I’ve but three lines of’t in my memory.”

  “A pity. The Laureate’s first song: ’twould fetch a price someday, I’ll wager, when thou’rt famous the world o’er. Might ye treat me to the three ye have?”

  Ebenezer hesitated. “Thou’rt not baiting me?”

  “Nay!” Sayer assured him. “ ’Tis a mere natural curiosity, is’t not, to wonder how flew the mighty eagle as a fledgling? Do we not admire old Plutarch’s tales of young Alcibiades flinging himself before the carter, or Demosthenes shaving half his head, or Caesar taunting the Cilician pirates? And would ye not yourself delight in hearing a childish line of Shakespeare’s, or mighty Homer’s?”

  “I would, right enough,” Ebenezer admitted. “But will ye not judge the man by the child? ’Tis the present poem alone, methinks, that matters, not its origins, and it must stand or fall on’s own merits, apart from maker and age.”

  “No doubt, no doubt,” Sayer said, waving his hand indifferently, “though this word merit’s total mystery to me. What I spoke of was interest, and whether ’tis good or bad in itself, certain your Hymn to Innocence is of greater interest to one who knows the history of its author than to one who knows not a bean of the circumstances that gave it birth.”

  “Your argument hath its merits,” Ebenezer allowed, not a little impressed to hear such nice reasoning from a tobacco-planter.

  Sayer laughed. “A fart for thy merit! My argument hath its interest, peradventure, to one who knows the arguer, and the history of such debates since Plato’s time.”

  “Yet surely the Hymn hath some certain degree of merit, and hath nor more nor less whether he that reads it be a Cambridge don or silly footboy—or for that matter, whether ’tis read or not.”

  “Belike it doth,” Sayer said with a shrug. “ ’Tis very like the schoolmen’s question, whether a falling tree on a desert isle makes a sound or no, inasmuch as no ear hears it. I’ve no opinion on’t myself, though I’ll own the quarrel hath some i
nterest: ’tis an ancient one, with many a mighty implication to’t.”

  “This interest is the base of thy vocabulary,” Ebenezer remarked, “as merit seems to be of mine.”

  “It at least permits of conversation,” Sayer smiled. “Prithee, which gleans more pleasure from thy Hymn? The footboy who knows not Priam from Good King Wenceslas, or the don who calls the ancients by their nicknames? The salvage Indian that ne’er heard tell of chastity, or the Christian man who’s learned to couple innocence with unpopped maidenheads?”

  “Marry!” Ebenezer exclaimed. “Your case hath weight, my friend, but I confess it repels me to own the muse sings clearest to professors! ’Twas not of them I thought when I wrote the piece.”

  “Nay, ye mistake me,” Sayer said. “ ’Tis no mere matter of schooling, though none’s the worse for a little education. Human experience is what I mean: knowledge of the world, both as stored in books and learnt from the hard text of life. Your poem’s a spring of water, Master Laureate—’sheart, for that matter everything we meet is a spring, is’t not? That the bigger the cup we bring to’t, the more we fetch away, and the more springs we drink from, the bigger grows our cup. If I oppose your notion ’tis that such thinking robs the bank of human experience, wherein I have a considerable deposit. I will not drink with any man who’d have me throw away my cup. In short, sir, though I am neither poet nor critic, nor e’en a common Artium Baccalaureus, but only a simple sot-weed planter that hath read a book or two in’s time and seen a bit o’ the wide world, yet I’m confident your poem means more to me than to you.”

  “What! That are neither virgin nor poet?”

  Sayer nodded. “As for the first, I have been one in my time and look on’t now from the vantage-point of experience, which ye do not. For the second, ’tis but a different view ye get as author. Nor am I the dullest of readers: I quite appreciate the wordplays in your first quatrain, for instance.”

  “Wordplays? What wordplays?”

  “Why, chaste Penelope, for one,” Sayer said. “What better pun for a wife plagued twenty years by suitors? ’Twas a clever choice!”

  “Thank you,” Ebenezer murmured.

  “And Andromache’s bouncing boy,” Sayer went on, “that was pitched from the walls of Ilium—”

  “Nay, ’tis grotesque!” Ebenezer protested. “I meant no such thing!”

  “Not so grotesque. It hath the salt of Shakespeare.”

  “Do you think so?” Ebenezer reconsidered the phrase in his mind. “Haply it doth at that. Nonetheless you read more out than I put in.”

  “ ’Tis but to admit,” Sayer said, “I read more out than you read out, which was my claim. Your poem means more to me.”

  “I’faith, I’ve not the means to refute you!” Ebenezer declared. “If thou’rt a true sample of my fellow planters, sir, then Maryland must be the muse’s playground, and a paradise for poets! Thou’rt indeed the very voice and breath of Reason, and I’m honored to be your neighbor. My cup runneth over.”

  Sayer smiled. “Belike it wants enlarging?”

  “ ’Tis larger now than when I left London. Thou’rt no mean teacher.”

  “For fee, then, if I’m thy tutor, ye may pay me out in verse,” Sayer replied. “The three lines that occasioned our debate.”

  “As you wish,” Ebenezer laughed, “though Heav’n only knows what you’ll find in ’em! ’Twas once in a Pall Mall tavern, after my first glass of Malaga, I composed them, when all the world looked queer and alien.” He cleared his throat:

  “Figures, so strange, no GOD design’d

  To be a Part of Human-kind:

  But wanton Nature…

  In truth, ’tis but two and a half; I know not whither it went from there, but the message of the whole was simply that we folk were too absurd to do credit to a Sublime Intelligence. No puns or wordplays, that I know of.”

  “ ’Tis a passing cynical opinion for a boy,” Sayer said.

  “ ’Twas just the way I saw things in my cups. Marry, that last line teases my memory!”

  Sayer stroked his beard and squinted out the window. A dusty country lad of twelve or thirteen years, wandering idly down the road, stepped aside and waved at them as they passed.

  “Figures, so strange, no GOD design’d

  To be a Part of Human-kind,”

  Sayer recited, and turned to smile mischievously at Ebenezer:

  “But wanton Nature, void of Rest,

  Moulded the brittle Clay in Jest.

  Do I have’t right, Eben?”

  3

  The Laureate Learns the True Identity of Colonel Peter Sayer

  “NAY, I’GOD!” Ebenezer blinked, and shook his head, and craned forward as if seeking a message on his companion’s face.

  “Yes, ’tis I. Shame on you, that you failed to see’t, or Anna either.”

  “But ’sheart, Henry, thou’rt so altered I’ve still to see’t! Wigless, bearded—”

  “A man changes in seven years,” Burlingame smiled. “I’m forty now, Eben.”

  “E’en the eyes!” Ebenezer said. “And thy way of speaking! Thy voice itself is different, and thy manner! Are you Sayer feigning Burlingame, or Burlingame disguised as Sayer?”

  “ ’Tis no disguise, as any that know the real Sayer can testify.”

  “Yet I knew the real Henry Burlingame,” Ebenezer said, “and were’t not that you knew my quatrain I could not say thou’rt he! I told the poem to none save Henry, and that but once, fifteen years past.”

  “As I was fetching thee home from St. James’s Park,” Henry added. “ ’Twas past midnight, and the Malaga had oiled thy tongue. Yet you were asleep ere we reached St. Giles, with your head on my shoulder, were you not?”

  “Marry, so I was! I had forgot.” Ebenezer reached across the carriage and gripped Burlingame’s arm. “Ah God, to think I’ve found you, Henry!”

  “Then you do believe ’tis I?”

  “Forgive me my doubt; I’ve ne’er known a man to change so, nor had thought it possible.”

  Burlingame raised a tutorial finger. “The world can alter a man entirely, Eben, or he can alter himself, down to his very essence. Did you not by your own testimony resolve, not that you were, but that you’d be virgin and poet from that moment hence? Nay, a man must alter willy-nilly in’s flight to the grave; he is a river running seawards, that is ne’er the same from hour to hour. What is there in the Maryland Laureate of the boy I fetched from Magdalene College?”

  “The less the better!” Ebenezer replied. “Yet I am still Eben Cooke, though haply not the same Eben Cooke, as the Thames is Thames however swift she flows.”

  “Is’t not the name alone remains? And was’t Thames from the day of creation?”

  “Marry, Henry, you were ever one for posing riddles! Is’t the form, then, makes the man, as the banks make the river, whate’er the name and content? Nay, I see already the objection, that form is not eternal. The man grows stout or hunchbacked with the years, and running water cuts and shapes the banks.”

  Burlingame nodded. “ ’Tis but a change too slow for men to mark, save in retrospect. The crabbed old man recalls his spring, and records tell—or rocks to him who knows their language—where the river ran of old, that now runs such-a-way. ’Tis but a grossness of perception, is’t not, that lets us speak of Thames and Tigris, or even France and England, but especially me and thee, as though what went by those names or others in time past hath some connection with the present object? I’faith, for that matter how is’t we speak of objects if not that our coarse vision fails to note their change? The world’s indeed a flux, as Heraclitus declared: the very universe is naught but change and motion.”

  Ebenezer had attended this discourse with a troubled air, but now he brightened. “Have you not in staring o’er the Precipice missed the Path?” he asked.

  “I do not grasp your figure.”

  “How is’t you convinced me thou’rt Henry Burlingame, when name and form alike were changed? How is’t we k
now of changes too nice for our eyes to see?” He laughed, pleased at his acuity. “Nay, this very flux and change you make so much of: how can we speak of it at all, be it ne’er so swift or slow, were’t not that we remember how things were before? Thy memory served as thy credentials, did it not? ’Tis the house of Identity, the Soul’s dwelling place! Thy memory, my memory, the memory of the race: ’tis the constant from which we measure change; the sun. Without it, all were Chaos right enough.”

  “In sum, then, thou’rt thy memory?”

  “Aye,” Ebenezer agreed. “Or better, I know not what I am, but I know that I am, and have been, because of memory. ’Tis the thread that runs through all the beads to make a necklace; or like Ariadne’s thread, that she gave to thankless Theseus, it marks my path through the labyrinth of Life, connects me with my starting place.”

  Burlingame smiled, and Ebenezer observed that his teeth, which had used to be white, were yellow and carious—at least two were missing altogether.

  “You make a great thing of this memory, Eben.”

  “I’ll own I’d not reflect ere now on its importance. ’Tis food for a sonnet, or two, don’t you think?”

  Burlingame only shrugged.

  “Come, Henry; sure thou’rt not piqued that I have skirted thy pit!”

  “Would God you had,” Burlingame said. “But I fear me thou’rt seduced by metaphors, as was Descartes of old.”

  “How is that, pray? Can you refute me?”

  “What more refutation need I make of this god Memory, than that thou’rt forgetting something?”

  “What—” Ebenezer stopped and blushed as he realized the implication of what his friend had said.

  “You did not recall sleeping on my shoulder on the way home from Pall Mall,” Burlingame reminded him. “This demonstrates the first weakness of your soul-saving thread, which is, that it hath breaks in it. There are three others.”

  “If that is so,” Ebenezer sighed, “I fear for my argument.”