The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  “Too close,” said Ebenezer. “Give us a Hudibrastic.”

  “Your Hudibrastics will break my jaw! Howbeit, if ’tis a jangle you wish, I shall shudder the ears off you:

  Then did Sir Knight abandon Dwelling,

  Riding like a demon’d Hellion.

  Are you jarred?”

  “It fills the gap,” Ebenezer admitted. “But the difference ’twixt poet and coxcomb is precisely that the latter stops gaps like a ship fitter caulking seams, merely to keep the boat afloat, while the former doth his work as doth a man with a maid: he fills the gap, but with vigor, finesse, and care; there’s beauty and delight as well as utility in his plugging.”

  “ ’Sheart, my friend,” Burlingame said, “you go on like the gods themselves! How would a Laureate poet fill this gap, prithee, that yawns like the pit of Hell?”

  Ebenezer replied, “ ’Twas filled by Sam Butler in this wise—observe the art, now, the collision:

  Then did Sir Knight abandon Dwelling,

  And out he rode a Colonelling.”

  “Ah, stay!” cried Burlingame. “This is too much! A Co-lo-nelling! ’Tis a fabrication—aye, a Chimaera! Co-lo-nelling, is’t! Why did not Mister Butler, if he was so enamored of his unnatural word, call it kernelling, as’t should be called, and rhyme from there?”

  “Why not indeed? What would you rhyme with kernelling, Henry?”

  “ ’Tis naught of a chore to me,” Burlingame scoffed. “To rhyme with kernelling—— Well, kernelling——” he hesitated.

  “You see,” smiled Ebenezer. “In his inspiration the poet chose a rhyme for dwelling that is at once a rhyme and a Hudibrastic, and so avoided your quandary. Yield, now; there is no rhyme for kernelling.”

  “I yield,” Burlingame said with apparent humility. “I can get me the first line—Then went Sir Knight a kernelling—but can’t rhyme the infernal thing.”

  The two travelers exchanged glances.

  “Out upon’t,” Ebenezer muttered, “the lesson’s done.”

  But Burlingame was delighted to see his unintentional coup de maître; he went on to declaim theatrically from his horse:

  “Then went Sir Knight a kernelling,

  Pursuing all infernal Things,

  Inflam’d by Hopes eternal Springs

  Through Winterings and Vernallings

  (As testify his Journallings

  And similar Diurnallings,

  Not mentioning Nocturnallings)…”

  “Desist!” Ebenezer commanded. “Spin me no more of this doggerel, Henry, lest I heave my breakfast upon the highway!”

  “Forgive me,” Burlingame laughed. “I was inspired.”

  “You were baiting me,” the Laureate said indignantly. “Be not puffed up o’er such trifling achievement, the like of which we poets must better fifty times a page! You have a certain knack for rhyming, clear enough; but think not you can rhyme any word in Mother English, for a poet will name you words that have not their like in the language.”

  “Ha! Oh! Ha!” Burlingame cried with sudden glee. “I have hatched more! I’God, they crowd my fancy like the shoats to Portia’s nipples!

  Now lend me, Muse, supernal Wings

  To sing Sir Knights Hibernalings,

  His Doublings and his Ternallings,

  His Forwardings and Sternallings;

  To sing of his Hesternallings,

  And also Hodiernallings,

  Internal and external Things,

  Both brief and diuturnal Things,

  And even sempiternal Things,

  His dark and his lucernal Things,

  Maternal and Paternallings,

  Sororal and Fraternal Things,

  His blue and red Pimpernellings,

  And sundry paraphernal Things——”

  “You do not love me!” Ebenezer said angrily. “I’ll hear no more!”

  “Nay, I beg you”—Burlingame laughed—“fob me not off so!”

  “Sinful pride!” the poet chided, when he had recovered something of his composure.

  “ ’Twas but in jest, Eben; if it vexed you, I am contrite. ’Tis you who are the teacher now, not I, and you may take what steps you will. In truth you’ve taught me more than erst I knew.”

  “ ’Tis clear your talent wants snaffle and curb in lieu of the crop,” said Ebenezer.

  “Will you go on, then?”

  Ebenezer considered for a moment and then agreed. “So be’t, but no more teasing. I shall administer to you the severest test of the rhymer’s art: the slipperiest crag on the rocky face of Parnassus!”

  “Administer at will,” said Burlingame; “if ’tis a point of rhyme I swear there’s none can best me, for I have learnt old Mother English to her very privates. But say, let’s make a sport of’t, would you mind? Else ’twere much the same to win or lose.”

  “I’ve naught to wager,” Ebenezer said, “nor should you wager if I had, for the word I mean to speak hath not its like.” Then he had a happier thought: “Stay, how far yet is that ferry you spoke of?”

  “Some five or six miles hence, I’d guess.”

  “Then let us wager the ride of our mounts, if you’ve a mind to. If you cannot rhyme the line I give you, you must walk from here to Cambridge ferry; if you can, ’tis I shall walk. Done?”

  “Well wagered,” Burlingame said merrily, “and I’ll add more: who loses must not merely walk, but walk behind the old Roan there, that ever gets the bumbreezes near midmorning. ’Twill add a spice to the winner’s victory!”

  “Done,” agreed the poet. “Let us on with the trial. I shall muse you a line, and you must rhyme it. Not a Hudibrastic, mind, but a perfect match.”

  “Is’t mosquito?” asked Burlingame. “I’ll say incognito.”

  “Nay,” the Laureate smiled, “nor is it literature.”

  “ ’Twould be bitter-that’s-sure,” his tutor laughed.

  “Nor misbehavior.”

  “Thank the Savior!”

  “Nor importunacy.”

  “That were lunacy!”

  “Nor tiddly-winks.”

  “ ’Twould gain thee little, methinks!”

  “Nor galligaskin.”

  “Was I askin’?”

  “Nor charlatan.”

  “Thin as tarlatan!”

  “Nor Saracen.”

  “ ’Twould be embarrassin’!”

  “Nor even autoschediastic.”

  “Then it ought to be fantastic!”

  “Nor catoptromancy.”

  “That’s not so fancy!”

  “Nor procrustean.”

  “I should bust thee one!”

  “Nor is it Piccadilly bombast.”

  “You’d be sick-o’-filly-bum-blast!”

  “Nor Grandma’s visit.”

  “Then, man, what is it?”

  “ ’Tis month,” Ebenezer said.

  “Month?” cried Burlingame.

  “Month,” the Laureate repeated. “Rhyme me a word with month. August is the Year’s eighth Month.”

  “Month!” Burlingame said again. “ ’Tis but a single syllable!”

  “Marry, then, ’twill be easy,” Ebenezer smiled. “August is the Year’s eighth Month.”

  “August is the Year’s eighth Month.” Burlingame began to show some alarm as he searched his store of language.

  “No lisping, now,” Ebenezer warned. “Don’t say Whoe’er denieth it ith a Dunth, or Athent thee not, then count it oneth. That will not do.”

  Burlingame sighed. “And no Hudibrastics, you say?”

  “Nay,” Ebenezer confirmed. “You mayn’t say August is the Year’s eighth Month, And not the tenth or milli-onth. Ben Oliver tried that once in Locket’s and was disqualified on the instant. I want a clear and natural rhyme.”

  “Is there aught in the language?” Burlingame cried.

  “Nay,” the poet declared, “as I warned you ere you took the wager.”

  Burlingame searched his memory so thoroughly that perspiration beaded his forehead
, but after twenty minutes he was obliged to yield.

  “I surrender, Eben; you have me pat.” Most reluctantly, under his protégé‘s triumphant smile, he dismounted, and taking his place behind the aged roan, prepared to meet the odious consequences of his gamble.

  “In future, Henry,” Ebenezer boldly advised, “do not engage with poets in their own preserve. If I may speak with candor, the gift of language is vouchsafed to but a few, and though ’tis no great shame not to have’t, ’twere folly to pretend to’t when you have it not.”

  And having delivered himself of this unusual rebuke, Ebenezer began to hum a tune for very satisfaction. At the first slight elevation in the terrain over which they traveled, the roan mare, already wearied, broke wind noisily from the effort of climbing. Burlingame growled a mighty oath and cried out in disgust, “What sort of poor vocabulary is’t, that possesses nary noun or verb to match the onth in August is the Year’s eighth Month?”

  “Do not rail against the language,” Ebenezer began, “ ’tis really a most admirable tongue…”

  He halted, as did Buriingame and the roan. The two men regarded each other warily.

  “No matter,” Ebenezer ventured. “The trial was done.”

  “Ah nay, Sir Laureate!” Burlingame laughed. “Mine is done, but thine is but begun! Down with you, now!”

  “But onth,” Ebenezer protested—nevertheless dismounting. “ ’Tis not an English word, is’t? What doth it signify?”

  “Tut,” said Burlingame, remounting his young gelding, “we set no such criterion as significance, that I recall. ‘To match the onth…’ is what I said: onth is the object of match; objects of verbs are substantives; substantives are words. Get thee behind yon roan!”

  Ebenezer sighed, Burlingame laughed aloud, the roan mare once again broke wind, and on went the travelers toward Cambridge, Burlingame singing lustily:

  “How wondrous a Vocabulary Is’t,

  that possesseth nary

  Noun nor Verb the Rhyme for which’ll

  Stump the son of Captain Mitchell!”

  27

  The Laureate Asserts That Justice Is Blind, and Armed With This Principle, Settles a Litigation

  UPON THEIR ARRIVAL at the Choptank River ferry, Burlingame declared Ebenezer’s sentence served; he paid out a shilling apiece for their fares and another shilling for the two horses’, and the travelers took their places in the sailing scow for the two-mile run to Cambridge.

  Burlingame pointed across the channel to a few scattered buildings, scarcely visible on the farther shore. “Yonder stands the seat of Dorset County. When last your father saw it, ’twas but a planter’s landing.”

  Weary from his ordeal, Ebenezer made no effort to conceal his disappointment. “I knew ’twould be no English Cambridge, but I’ll own I had not thought ’twas rude as that. What is there in’t to sing in epical verse?”

  “Who knows what manner of sloven huts the real Troy was composed of, or cares to know?” his friend replied. “ ’Tis the genius of the poet to transcend his material; and it wants small eloquence to argue that the meaner the subject, the greater must be the transcension.”

  To this the Laureate clucked his tongue and said, “Methinks the Jesuit hath the better of you, after all: you made a prisoner of his body, and he a convert of your Reason.”

  Burlingame bristled at the jibe, for it was not the first Ebenezer had directed at him that day. “It ill becomes you to defend the priest,” he scolded in a low voice, so that the ferryman could not hear. “ ’Tis not the Pope’s cause we serve, but Baltimore’s: the cause of Justice.”

  “True enough,” the poet agreed. “Yet who’s to say which cause is Justice’s? Justice is blind.”

  “But men are not; and as for Justice, her blindness is the blindness of disinterest, not of innocence.”

  “That I deny,” Ebenezer said blithely.

  “Thou’rt grown entirely captious!”

  “You are near forty, and I but twenty-eight,” the Laureate declared, “and in experience thou’rt at least three times my age; but despite my innocence—nay, just because of’t—I deem myself no less an authority than you on matters of Justice, Truth, and Beauty.”

  “Outrageous!” cried his friend. “Why is’t men pick the oldest and most knowledgeable of their number to judge them, if not that worldliness is the first ingredient of Justice?”

  But Ebenezer stuck to his guns. “ ’Tis but a vulgar error, like many another.”

  Burlingame showed more irritation by the minute. “What is the difference ’twixt innocence and ignorance, pray, save that the one is Latin and the other Greek? In substance they are the same: innocence is ignorance.”

  “By which you mean,” Ebenezer retorted at once, “that innocence of the world is ignorance of’t: no man can quarrel with that. Yet the surest thing about Justice, Truth, and Beauty is that they live not in the world, but as transcendent entities, noumenal and pure. ’Tis everywhere remarked how children of’t perceive the truth at once, where their elders have been led astray by sophistication. What doth this evidence, if not that innocence hath eyes to see what experience cannot?”

  “Fogh!” scoffed Burlingame. “That is mere Cambridge claptrap, such as dear old Henry More did e’er espouse. Thank Heav’n such babes are helpless in society—think how ’twould be to have one for your judge!”

  “Haply Justice would live up to her motto for the first time ever,” Ebenezer said.

  “That she would!” Henry laughed. “She could be pictured holding dice in lieu of scales, for where blind Innocence is judge, the jury is blind Chance! I cannot decide,” he added, “whether you maintain your innocence because you hold such notions as this, or hold the notions to justify your innocence.”

  Ebenezer looked away and frowned as if at the approaching wharf, where considerable activity seemed to be in progress. “Methinks ’twere fitter to ask that of yourself, Henry: a man can cast away his innocence when he list, but not his knowledge.”

  On this ungenerous note the argument ended, for the ferry had reached its destination. The travelers, mutually disgruntled, stepped up to the wharf, which was built at the juncture of Choptank River and a large creek, and with some difficulty—for the tide was out—led their horses up a steep gangplank after them.

  Unprepossessing as it had been from afar, the town of Cambridge was even less impressive at close range. There was, in fact, no town at all: a small log structure visible farther inland Burlingame identified as the Dorchester County Courthouse, which had been built only seven years before. Nearer the river was a kind of inn or ordinary of even more recent construction, and at the foot of the wharf itself was what appeared to be a relatively large warehouse and general merchandise store combined—a building which outdated both town and county as such, and which doubtless had been known to Ebenezer’s father as early as 1665. Other than these no buildings could be seen, and there were, apparently, no private houses at all.

  Yet at least a score of people were strolling on the wharf and about the warehouse; the sounds of general carouse rang down the roadway from the tavern; and in addition to the numerous small craft moored here and there along the shore, two larger, ocean-going vessels—a bark and a full-rigged ship—lay out in the Choptank channel. The activity, so disproportionate to the size and aspect of the town, Ebenezer learned was owing generally to its role as seat of the county and the convenience of its wharf and warehouse to the surroundiing plantations, and specifically to the fall term of the court, currently in session, which provided a rare diversion for the populace.

  The roan mare and the gelding they tethered to a sapling near the creek, and after a light dinner at the ordinary the travelers parted company, rather to the Laureate’s relief. Burlingame remained at the inn with the object of hiring lodgings for the night, inquiring the whereabouts of William Smith, and refreshing his thirst; and Ebenezer, left to himself, strolled idly up the road toward the courthouse, preoccupied with his thoughts. Since the day
was warm, the courthouse small, and litigation such a popular entertainment among the colonials, the court was sitting out of doors, in a little valley just adjacent to the building. Ebenezer found nearly a hundred of the audience present already, though the court had not yet reconvened; they were engaged in eating, drinking heartily, calling and waving to one another across the natural amphitheater formed by the valley, wrestling playfully on the grass, singing rowdy songs, and otherwise amusing themselves in a manner which the poet deemed scarcely befitting the dignity of a courtroom. Notes for tobacco were everywhere being exchanged, and Ebenezer soon realized that virtually all the men were making wagers on the outcome of the trials. The fact astonished him and even stirred vague forebodings in his mind, but he took a seat along the top of the amphitheater nevertheless to witness the session: his interest was aroused by his recent debate with Burlingame, for one thing, and he hoped as well to spawn couplets on the majesty of Maryland’s law, as had been suggested by—

  “ ’Sdeath!” he thought, and winced and sighed: he could not manage to remember that it was Burlingame, not Charles Calvert, who had issued his commission—it was a thought too great and painful to hold fast in his awareness.

  After some minutes the crier appeared from the courthouse door and bawled “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!” but advanced no farther than the first hedgerow before a rain of cheerfully-flung twigs and pebbles drove him back. Then entered the judge, sans wig and robe of office, whom Ebenezer recognized only because, after pausing to chat with several of the audience and nod his head at their exchanges of tobacco-notes, he took his place upon the open-air bench. Next came the jury (Ebenezer approved, uncertainly, their apparent practice of wagering only among themselves) and finally the attorneys for prosecution and defense, sharing a simple tall flagon with the judge. The only principals not present were the plaintiff and the defendant, and as Ebenezer scanned the crowd, conjecturing as to their identities, his eye fell on Susan Warren herself, sitting near the front row with an elderly man whom the poet had never seen before! She had, it appeared, cleaned herself up to some extent, but where before her face had been dirty and her brown hair matted, now she was rouged and powdered to excess, and her hair was done up like a tart’s. She had exchanged her tattered Scotch cloth for sleazy satinesco, gaudily printed and open at the bosom, and her manner was in keeping with her dress: her laugh was loud and easily provoked: her eves roved appraisingly from one man to another the while she talked to her escort; and she emphasized her statements with a hand laid lightly now on her partner’s arm, now on his shoulder, now on his knee.