The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  These remarks aroused Father Smith’s curiosity, and he entreated Burlingame to explain the mystery before departing.

  “Think not you’ll see us go so soon!” Henry replied, but their attention to the history having dispelled the general ill will among the three, he went on to say that though his name was Timothy Mitchell he was but a foster child of Captain William Mitchell, and had reason to suspect that Sir Henry Burlingame was in some wise his ancestor. He then favored the priest with a full account of his researches and the fruit they had borne thus far, but despite this general cordiality he insisted that Father Smith be released only long enough to relieve himself under careful guard, after which the unfortunate priest was obliged to spend the night bound upright in his chair while the two visitors shared his bed.

  Nevertheless, before the candle had been extinguished for half an hour, Ebenezer was the only man in the cabin still awake. Never an easy sleeper, he was additionally distracted this night by the presences of his friend and his unwilling host—specifically because the former (in sleep, it is to be presumed) held his hand in a grip from which the poet was too embarrassed to pull free, and the latter snored; but more generally because he could not as yet reconcile and assimilate all the aspects of Burlingame’s character to which he had been exposed, and because Father Smith’s apparent connection with the French and Indians, while it did not in itself reflect discredit on Lord Baltimore, nevertheless cast a new and complicated light upon that gentleman’s endeavor. Nor were these troublesome reflections the sum of his diversion: never far from his mind was the image of Joan Toast. Despite Burlingame’s skepticism, Ebenezer was confident of Susan Warren’s veracity; he fully expected to find his beloved waiting for him when he arrived at Malden. When, after such a harrowing odyssey as his—and who knew what peregrinations of poor Joan’s?—they were at last reunited on his own estate-to-be, what would ensue? There was fuel to fire a poet’s fancy!

  In short, he could not sleep, and after an hour’s unpleasantness, he summoned courage enough to leave the bed. From the wood-coals on the hearth he lit a new candle, and making free with the sleeping Jesuit’s ink and quill, he spread out his ledger-book to ease himself with verse.

  But for the sober thoughts that filled his head he could find no fit articulation; what he composed, simply because he had previously entered on the opposite page certain notes upon the subject, was nothing more sublime or apropos than two score couplets having to do with the Salvage Indians of America. The feat afforded him no solace, but at least it wearied him through: when he could hold his eyes open no longer he blew out the candle, and leaving the bed to Burlingame, laid his head upon the ledger-book and slept

  26

  The Journey to Cambridge, and the Laureate’s Conversation by the Way

  WHEN MORNING CAME, Burlingame freed Father Smith from his bonds and took it upon himself to prepare a breakfast while the priest exercised his aching limbs. All the while, however, he kept the Journal near at hand, and despite the Jesuit’s disclaimer of any further intent to stop them, he insisted that the priest be bound again when the meal was finished and they were ready to depart, nor would he listen to Ebenezer’s pleas for clemency.

  “You infer the rest of mankind from yourself,” he chided. “Because you would not try farther to obstruct me if you were in his position, you believe he would not either. To which I reply, my reasoning is identical to yours, and I would have me back the Journal ere you reached the Choptank River.”

  “But he will perish! ’Tis as much as murthering him!”

  “No such thing,” scoffed Burlingame. “If he is a proper priest he will be missed at once by his parishioners, who will seek him out and have him loose ere midday. If not, they will repay neglect with neglect, as his God would have it or rather, his Order.”

  This last he directed with a smile to Father Smith, who sat impassively in his chair, and added, “We are obliged to you for bed and board, sir, and your unimpeachable Jerez. You may look to see John Coode in trouble soon, and know that you have done your part, albeit reluctantly.” He ushered Ebenezer to the door. “Adieu, Father: when you commence your holy war, spare my friend here, who hath pled in your behalf. As for me, Monsieur Casteene himself could never find me. Ignatius vobiscum.”

  “Et vobiscum diabolus,” replied the priest.

  Thus they left, Ebenezer too ashamed to bid their host farewell, and, after saddling their horses, struck out along a road that, so Burlingame declared, curved southward in wide arc to the Choptank River ferry, whence they planned to cross to Cambridge, inquire the whereabouts of William Smith, and then proceed to Malden. It was a magnificent autumn day, brisk and bright, and whatever the Laureate’s mood, Burlingame’s was clearly buoyant.

  “One more portion of Smith’s history to find!” he cried as their horses ambled down the road. “Only think on’t: I may soon learn who I am!”

  “Let us hope this William Smith is less refractory,” the poet replied. “One may acquire more guilt in learning who he is than the answer can atone for.”

  Burlingame rode on some minutes in silence before he tried again to begin conversation.

  “Methinks Lord Baltimore was ill-advised on the character of that Jesuit, but a general cannot know all of his lieutenants. There is a saying among the Papists, Do not judge the entire priesthood by a priest.”

  “There is another from the Gospels,” said Ebenezer. “By their fruits ye shall know them…”

  “Thou’rt too severe, my friend!” Burlingame showed a measure of impatience. “Is’t that you did not sleep enough last night?”

  The Laureate blushed. “Last night I had in mind some verses, and wrote them down lest I forget them.”

  “Indeed! I’m pleased to hear’t; you have been too long away from your muse.”

  The solicitude in his friend’s voice removed, at least for the time, Ebenezer’s perturbation, and, though he suspected that he was being humored, he smiled and with some shyness said, “Their subject is the salvage Indian, that I am much impressed by.”

  “Then out on’t, I must hear them!”

  After some hesitation Ebenezer consented, not especially because he thought Burlingame’s eagerness was genuine, but rather because in the welter of conflicting sentiment he experienced towards his friend, his poetic gift was the only ground that in his relations with his former tutor he felt he could stand upon firmly and without abashment. He fished out his notebook from the large pocket of his coat and, leaving his mare to walk without direction, opened to the freshly written couplets.

  “ ’Twas a salvage we saw yesterday morning that prompted me,” he explained, and began to read, his voice jogging with the steps of his horse:

  “Scarce had I left the Captains Board

  And taking Horse, made Tracks toward

  The Chesapeake, when, giving Chase

  To flighty Deer, a horrid Face

  }

  Came into View: a Salvage ’twas—

  We stay’d our Circumbendibus

  To look on Him, and He on us.

  O’ercoming soon my first Surprize,

  I set myself to scrutinize

  His Visage wild, his Form exotick

  Barb’rous Air, and Dress erotick,

  His brawny Shoulders, greas’d and bare

  His Member, all devoid of Hair

  And swinging free, his painted Skin

  And naked Chest, inviting Sin

  With Ladies who, their Beauty faded,

  Husbands dead, or Pleasures jaded,

  Fly from Virtues narrow Way

  Into the Forest, there to lay

  }

  With Salvages, to their Damnation

  Sinning by their Copulation,

  Lewdness, Lust, and Fornication,

  All at once…”

  “Well writ!” cried Burlingame. “Save for your preachment at the last, ’tis much the same sentiment as my own.” He laughed. “I do suspect you had more on your mind last night than jus
t the heathen: all that love-talk makes me yearn for my sweet Portia!”

  “Stay,” the poet cautioned at once. “Fall not into the vulgar error of the critics, that judge a work ere they know the whole of it. I go on to speculate whence came the Indian.”

  “Your pardon,” Burlingame said. “If the rest is excellent as the first, thou’rt a poet in sooth.”

  Ebenezer flushed with pleasure and read on, somewhat more forcefully:

  “Whence came this barb’rous Salvage Race,

  That wanders yet ’oer MARYLANDS Face?

  Descend they all from those old Sires,

  Remarked by Plato and such like Liars

  From lost Atlantis, sunken yet

  Beneath the Ocean, cold and wet?

  Or is he wiser who ascribes

  Their Genesis to those ten Tribes

  Of luckless Jews, that broke away

  From Israel, and to this Day

  Have left no Traces, Signs, or Clews—

  Are Salvages but beardless Jews?

  Or are they sprung, as some maintain,

  From that same jealous, incestuous Cain,

  Who with twin Sister fain had lay’d

  And whose own Brother anon he slay’d:

  Fleeing then Jehovah’s Wrath

  Did wend his cursed, rambling Path

  To MARYLANDS Doorsill, there to hide

  In penance for his Fratricide,

  And hiding, found no liv’lier Sport

  Than siring Heathens, tall and short?

  Still others hold, these dark-skinn’d Folk

  Escap’d the Deluge all unsoak’d

  That carry’d off old Noahs Ark

  Upon its long and wat’ry Lark,

  }

  And drown’d all Manner of Men save Two:

  The Sailors in Old Noahs Crew

  (That after all were but a Few),

  And this same brawny Salvage Host,

  Who, safe behind fair MARYLANDS Coast,

  Saw other Mortals sink and die

  Whilst they remain’d both high and dry.

  Another Faction claims to trace

  The Hist’ry of this bare-Bumm’d Race

  Back to Mankinds Pucelage,

  That Ovid calls the Golden Age:

  When kindly Saturn rul’d the Roost.

  Their learned Fellows have deduc’d

  The Salvage Home to be that Garden

  Wherein three Sisters play’d at Warden

  Over Heras Golden Grove,

  Whose Apples were a Treasure-Trove:

  That Orchard robb’d by Hercules,

  The Garden of Hesperides;

  While other Scholards, no less wise,

  Uphold the Earthly Paradise—

  Old Adams Home, and Eves to boot,

  Wherein they gorg’d forbidden Fruit—

  To be the Source and Fountainhead

  Of Salvag’ry. Some, better read

  In Arthurs Tales, have settl’d on

  The Blessed Isles of Avalon,

  And others say the fundamental

  Flavoring is Oriental,

  Or that mayhap ancient Viking,

  Finding MARYLAND to his liking,

  Stay’d, and father’d red-skinn’d Horsemen:

  One Part Salvage, One Part Norsemen.

  Others say the grand Ambitions

  Of the restless old Phoenicians

  Led that hardy Sailor Band

  To the Shores of MARYLAND,

  In Ships so cramm’d with Man and Beast

  No Room remain’d for Judge or Priest:

  There, with Lasses and Supplies,

  The Men commenc’d to colonize

  This foreign Shore in Manner dastard,

  All their Offspring being Bastard.

  Finally, if any Persons

  Unpersuaded by these Versions

  Of the Salvages Descent

  Should ask still for the Truth anent

  }

  Their Origins—why, such as these,

  That are so damned hard to please,

  I send to Mephistopheles,

  Who engender’d in the Fires of Hell

  The Indians, and them as well!”

  “Now, that is all damned clever!” Burlingame exclaimed. “Whether ’twas the hardships of your crossing or a half year’s added age, I swear thou’rt twice the poet you were in Plymouth. The lines on Cain I thought especially well-wrought.”

  “ ’Tis kind of you to praise the piece,” Ebenezer said. “Haply ’twill be a part of the Marylandiad.”

  “I would I could turn a verse so well. But say, while ’tis fresh in my mind, doth persons really rhyme with versions, and folk with soak’d?”

  “Indeed yes,” the poet replied.

  “But would it not be better,” Burlingame persisted cordially, “to rhyme versions with dispersions, say, and folk with soak? Of course, I am no poet.”

  “One need not be a hen to judge an egg,” Ebenezer allowed. “The fact of’t is, the rhymes you name are at once better and worse than mine: better, because they sound more nearly like the words they rhyme with; and worse, because such closeness is not the present fashion. Dispersion and version: ’tis wanting in character, is’t not? But person and version—there is surprise, there is color, there is wit! In fine, there is a perfect Hudibrastic.”

  “Hudibrastic, is it? I have heard the folk in Locket’s speak well of Hudibras, but I always thought it tedious myself. What is’t you mean by Hudibrastic?”

  Ebenezer could scarcely believe that Burlingame was really ignorant of Hudibrastic rhyme or anything else, but so pleasant was the reversal of their unusual roles that he found it easy to put by his skepticism.

  “A Hudibrastic rhyme,” he explained, “is a rhyme that is close, but not just harmonious. Take the noun wagon: what would you rhyme with it?”

  “Why, now, let’s see,” Burlingame mused. “Methinks flagon would serve, or dragon, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Not at all,” smiled Ebenezer. “ ’Tis too expected; ’tis what any poetaster might suggest—no offense, you understand.”

  “None whatever.”

  “Nay, to wagon you must rhyme bag in, or sagging: almost, you see, but not quite.

  The Indians call their wat’ry Wagon

  Canoe, a Vessel none can brag on.

  Wagon, brag on—do you follow me?”

  “I grasp the principle,” Burlingame declared, “and I recall such rhymes as that in Hudibras; but I doubt me I could e’er apply it.”

  “Why, of course you can! It wants but courage, Henry. Take quarrel, now: The Man and I commenc’d to quarrel. What shall we rhyme with it?”

  Burlingame pondered the problem for a while. “What would you say to snarl?” he ventured at last.

  “The Man and I commenc’d to quarrel:

  I to grumble, he to snarl.”

  “The line is good,” replied the Laureate, “and bespeaks some wit. But the rhyme is humorless. Quarrel, snarl—nay, ’tis too close.”

  “Sorrel, then?” asked Burlingame, apparently warming to the sport.

  “The Man and I commenc’d to quarrel

  Who’d ride the Roan, and who the Sorrel.”

  “E’en wittier!” the poet applauded. “ ’Tis better than Tom Trent could pen, with Dick Merriweather to help him! But you’ve still no Hudibrastic. Quarrel, snarl; quarrel, sorrel.”

  “I yield,” said Burlingame.

  “Consider this, then:

  The Man and I commenc’d to quarrel

  Anent the Style of our Apparel.

  Quarrel, apparel: That is Hudibrastic.”

  Burlingame made a wry face. “They clash and jingle!”

  “Precisely. The more the clash, the better the couplet.”

  “Aha, then!” cried the tutor. “What says my Laureate to this?

  The Man and I commenc’d to quarrel

  Who’d ride the Roan and who the Dapple.”

  “Quarrel and dapple?” Ebenezer exclaime
d.

  “Doth it not jangle like the brassy bells of Hades?”

  “Nay, ’twill never do!” Ebenezer shook his head firmly. “I had thought you’d caught the essence of’t, but the words must needs have some proximity if they’re to jangle. Quarrel and dapple are ships in different oceans: they cannot possibly collide, and a collision is what we seek.”

  “Then try this,” Burlingame suggested:

  “The Man and I commenc’d to quarrel

  Whose turn it was to woo the Barrel.”

  “Barrel! Barrel, you say?” Ebenezer’s face grew red. “What is this barrel? How would you use it?”

  “ ’Tis a Hudibrastic,” replied Burlingame with a smile. “I’d use it to piss in.”

  “B’m’faith!” He laughed uncomfortably. “ ’Tis the pissingest Hudibrastic ever I’ve heard!”

  “Will you hear more?” asked Burlingame. “I am a diligent student of jangling rhyme.”

  “Piss on’t,” the poet declared. “Thy lesson’s done!”

  “Nay, I am just grasping the spirit of’t! Haply I’ll take up versifying myself someday, for’t seems no backbreaking chore.”

  “But you know the saying, Henry: A poet is born, not made.”

  “Out on’t!” Burlingame scoffed. “Were you not made Laureate ere you’d penned a proper verse? I’ll wager I could rhyme with the cleverest, did I choose to put my nose to’t.”

  “No man knows better than I your various gifts,” Ebenezer said in an injured tone. “Yet your true poet may have no other gift than verse.”

  “Only try me,” Burlingame challenged. “Name me some names, and hear me rhyme.”

  “Very well, but there’s more to verse than matching words. You must couple me a line to the line I fling you.”

  “Fling away thy lines, and see what fish you hook on ’em!”

  “Stand fast,” warned Ebenezer, “for I’ll start you with a hard one: Then did Sir Knight abandon Dwelling.”

  “That is from Hudibras,” Burlingame observed, “but I forgot what Butler rhymed with’t. Dwelling, dwelling—ah, ’tis no chore at all:

  Then did Sir Knight abandon Dwelling,

  Which scarce repay’d the Work of Selling.”