The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  “In a manner, I suppose,” Ebenezer smiled. “And yet the man I most respect hath got on without it, hath he not?”

  Burlingame laughed. “My dear fellow, I see ’tis time I told you many things. Will it comfort you to learn that I, too, suffer from your disease, and have since childhood?”

  “Nay, that cannot be,” Ebenezer said. “Ne’er have I seen thee falter, Henry: thou’rt the very antithesis of indecision! ’Tis to you I look in envy, and despair of e’er attaining such assurance.”

  “Let me be your hope, not your despair, for just as a mild siege of smallpox, though it scar a man’s face, leaves him safe forever from dying of that ailment, so inconstancy, fickleness, a periodic shifting of enthusiasms, though a vice, may preserve a man from crippling indecision.”

  “Fickleness, Henry?” Ebenezer asked in wonderment. “Is’t fickleness explains your leaving us?”

  “Not in the sense you take it,” Burlingame said. He fetched out a shilling and called for two more tankards of beer. “I say, did you know I was an orphan child?”

  “Why, yes,” Ebenezer said, surprised. “Now you mention it, I believe I did, though I can’t recall your ever telling us. Haply we just assumed it. I’faith, Henry, all the years we’ve known you, and yet in sooth we know naught of you, do we? I’ve no idea when you were born, or where reared, or by whom.”

  “Or why I left you so discourteously, or how I learned of your failure, or why I fled the great Mister Newton,” Burlingame added. “Very well then, take a draught with me, and I shall uncloak the mystery. There’s a good fellow!”

  They drank deeply, and Burlingame began his story.

  “I’ve not the faintest notion where I was born, or even when—though it must have been about 1654. Much less do I know what woman bore me, or what man got me on her. I was raised by a Bristol sea-captain and his wife, who were childless, and ’tis my suspicion I was born in either America or the West Indies, for my earliest memories are of an ocean passage when I was no more than three years old. Their name was Salmon—Avery and Melissa Salmon.”

  “I am astonished!” Ebenezer declared. “I ne’er dreamed aught so extraordinary of your beginnings! How came you to be called Burlingame, then?”

  Burlingame sighed. “Ah, Eben, just as till now you’ve been incurious about my origin, so till too late was I. Burlingame I’ve been since earliest memory, and, as is the way of children, it ne’er occurred to me to wonder at it, albeit to this day I’ve met no other of that surname.”

  “It must be that whomever Captain Salmon received you from was your parent!” Ebenezer said. “Or haply ’twas some kin of yours, that knew your name.”

  “Dear Eben, think you I’ve not racked myself upon that chance? Think you I’d not forfeit a hand for five minutes’ converse with my poor Captain, or gentle Melissa? But I must put by my curiosity till Judgment Day, for they both are in their graves.”

  “Unlucky fellow!”

  “All through my childhood,” Burlingame went on, “ ’twas my single aim to go to sea, like Captain Salmon. Boats were my only toys; sailors my only playmates. On my thirteenth birthday I shipped as messboy on the Captain’s vessel, a West Indiaman, and so taken was I by the mariner’s life that I threw my heart and soul into my apprenticeship. Ere we raised Barbados I was scrambling aloft with the best of ’em, to take in a stuns’l or tar the standing rigging, and was as handy with a fid as any Jack aboard. Eben, Eben, what a life for a lad—e’en now it shivers me to think on’t! Brown as a coffeebean I was, and agile as a monkey, and ere my voice had left off changing, ere my parts were fully haired—at an age when most boys have still the smell of the womb on ’em, and dream of traveling to the neighboring shire—I had dived for sheepswool sponges on the Great Bahaman Banks and fought with pirates in the Gulf of Paria. What’s more, after guarding my innocence in the fo’c’sle with a fishknife from a lecherous old Manxman who’d offered two pounds for’t, I swam a mile through shark-water from our mooring off Curasao to squander it one August night with a mulatto girl upon the beach. She was scarce thirteen, Eben—half Dutch, half Indian, lissome and trembly as an eight-month colt—but on receipt of a little brass spyglass of mine, which she’d taken a great fancy to in the village that morning, she fetched up her skirts with a laugh, and I deflowered her under the sour-orange trees. I was not yet fifteen.”

  “Gramercy!”

  “No man e’er loved his trade more than I,” Burlingame continued, “nor slaved at it more diligently; I was the apple of the Captain’s eye, and would, I think, have risen fast through the ranks.”

  “Then out on’t, Henry, how is’t you claim my failing? For I see naught in thy tale here but a staggering industry and singlemindedness, the half of which I’d lose an ear to equal.”

  Burlingame smiled and drank off the last of his beer. “Inconstancy, dear fellow, inconstancy. That same singlemindedness that raised me o’er the other lads on the ship was the ruin of my nautical career.”

  “How can that be?”

  “I made five voyages in all,” Burlingame said. “On the fifth—the same voyage on which I lost my virginity—we lay becalmed one day in the horse latitudes off the Canary Islands, and quite by chance, looking about for something wherewith to occupy myself, I happened on a copy of Motteux’s Don Quixote among a shipmate’s effects: I spent the remainder of the day with it, for though Mother Salmon had taught me to read and write, ’twas the first real storybook I’d read. I grew so entranced by the great Manchegan and his faithful squire as to lose all track of time and was rebuked by Captain Salmon for reporting late to the cook.

  “From that day on I was no longer a seaman, but a student. I read every book I could find aboard ship and in port—bartered my clothes, mortgaged my pay for books, on any subject whatever, and reread them over and over when no new ones could be found. All else went by the board; what work I could be made to do I did distractedly, and in careless haste. I took to hiding, in the rope-locker or the lazarette, where I could read for an hour undisturbed ere I was found. Finally Captain Salmon could tolerate it no more: he ordered the mate to confiscate every volume aboard, save only the charts, the ship’s log, and the navigational tables, and pitched ’em to the sharks off Port-au-Prince; then he gave me such a hiding for my sins that my poor bum tingled a fortnight after, and forbade me e’er to read a printed page aboard his vessel. This so thwarted and aggrieved me, that at the next port (which happened to be Liverpool) I jumped ship and left career and benefactor forever, with not a thank-ye nor a fare-thee-well for the people who’d fed and clothed me since babyhood.

  “I had no money at all, and for food only a great piece of hard cheese I’d stolen from the ship’s cook: therefore I very soon commenced to starve. I took to standing on street-corners and singing for my supper: I was a pretty lad and knew many a song, and when I would sing What Thing Is Love? to the ladies, or A Pretty Duck There Was to the gentlemen, ’twas not often they’d pass me by without a smile and tuppence. At length a band of wandering gypsies, traveling down from Scotland to London, heard me sing and invited me to join them, and so for the next year I worked and lived with those curious people. They were tinkers, horse-traders, fortune-tellers, basket-makers, dancers, troubadours, and thieves. I dressed in their fashion, ate, drank, and slept with them, and they taught me all their songs and tricks. Dear Eben! Had you seen me then, you’d ne’er have doubted for an instant I was one of them!”

  “I am speechless,” Ebenezer declared. “ ’Tis the grandest adventure I have heard!”

  “We worked our way slowly, with many digressions, from Liverpool through Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester, and Bedford, sleeping in the wagons when it rained or out under the stars on fine nights. In the troupe of thirty souls I was the only one who read and wrote, and so was of great assistance to them in many ways. Once to their great delight I read them tales out of Boccaccio—they all love to tell and hear stories—and they were so surprised to learn that books contain such m
arvelous pleasantries, a thing which erst they’d not suspected, that they began to steal every book they could find for me: I seldom lacked reading that year! It happened one day they turned up a primer, and I taught the lot of ’em their letters, for which services they were unimaginably grateful. Despite my being a ‘gorgio’ (by which name they call non-gypsies) they initiated me into their most privy matters and expressed the greatest desire for me to marry into their group and travel with them forever.

  “But late in 1670 we arrived here in Cambridge, having wandered down from Bedford. The students and several of the dons took a great fancy to us, and though they made too free with sundry of our women, they treated us most cordially, even bringing us to their rooms to sing and play for them. Thus were my eyes first opened to the world of learning and scholarship, and I knew on the instant that my interlude with the gypsies was done. I resolved to go no farther: I bid adieu to my companions and remained in Cambridge, determined to starve upon the street-corners rather than leave this magnificent place.”

  “Marry, Henry!” Ebenezer said. “Thy courage brings me nigh to weeping! What did you then?”

  “Why, so soon as my belly commenced to rumble I stopped short where I was (which happened to be over by Christ’s College) and broke into Flow My Tears, it being of all the songs I knew the most plaintive. And when I had done with the last verse of it—

  Hark! yon Shadows that in Darkness dwell,

  Learn to contemn Light.

  Happy, happy they that in Hell

  Feel not the World’s Despite.

  —when I had done, I say, there appeared at a nearby window a lean frowning don, who enquired of me, What manner of Cainite was I, that I counted them happy who must fry forever in the fires of Hell? And another, who came to the window beside him, a fat wight, asked me. Did I not know where I was? To which I answered, ‘I know no more, good masters, than that I am in Cambridge Town and like to perish of my belly!’ Then the first don, who all unbeknownst to me was having a merry time at my expense, told me I was in Christ’s College, and that he and all his fellows were powerful divines, and that for lesser blasphemies than mine they had caused men to be broke upon the wheel. I was a mere sixteen then, and not a little alarmed, for though I’d read enough scarce to credit their story, yet I knew not but what they could work me some injury or other, e’en were’t something short of the wheel. Therefore I humbly craved their pardon, and pled ’twas but an idle song, the words of which I scarce attended; so that were there aught of blasphemy in’t, ’twas not the singer should be racked for’t but the author Dowland, who being long since dead, must needs already have had the sin rendered out of him in Satan’s try-works, and there’s an end on’t! At this methinks the merry dons had like to laugh aloud, but they put on sterner faces yet and ordered me into their chamber. There they farther chastised me, maintaining that while my first offense had been grievous enough, in its diminution of the torments of Hell, this last remark of mine had on’t the very smell of the stake. ‘How is that?’ I asked them. ‘Why,’ the lean one cried, ‘to hold as you do that they who perpetuate another’s sin, albeit witlessly, are themselves blameless, is to deny the doctrine of Original Sin itself, for who are Eve and Adam but the John Dowlands of us all, whose sinful song all humankind must sing willy-nilly and die for’t?’ ‘What is more,’ the fat don declared, ‘in denying the mystery of Original Sin you scorn as well the mystery of Vicarious Atonement—for where’s the sense of Salvation for them that are not lost?’

  “ ‘Nay, nay!’ said I, and commenced to sniffling. ‘Marry, masters, ’twas but an idle observation! Prithee take no notice of’t!’

  “ ‘An idle observation!’ the first replied, and laid hold of my arms. ‘ ’Swounds, boy! You scoff at the two cardinal mysteries of the Church, which like twin pillars bear the entire edifice of Christendom; you as much as call the Crucifixion a vulgar Mayfair show; and to top all you regard such unspeakable blasphemies as idle observations! ’Tis a more horrendous sin yet! Whence came thee here, anyhow?’

  “ ‘From Bedford,’ I replied, frightened near out of my wits, ‘with a band of gypsies.’ On hearing this the dons feigned consternation, and declared that every year at this time the gypsies passed through Cambridge for the sole purpose, since they are heathen to a man, of working some hurt on the divines. Only the year before, they said, one of my cohorts had sneaked privily into the Trinity brew-house and poisoned a vat of beer, with the result that three Senior Fellows, four Scholars, and a brace of idle Sizars were done to death ere sundown. Then they asked me, What was my design? And when I told them I had hoped to attach myself to one of their number as a serving-boy, the better to improve my mind, they made out I was come to poison the lot of ’em. So saying, they stripped me naked on the spot, despite my protestations of innocence, and on pretext of seeking hidden phials of vitriol they poked and probed every inch of my person, and pinched and tweaked me in alarming places. Nay, I must own they laid lecherous hands upon me, and had soon done me a violence but that their sport was interrupted by another don—an aging, saintlike gentleman, clearly their superior—who bade them stand off and rebuked them for molesting me. I flung myself at his feet, and, raising me up and looking at me from top to toe, he enquired, What was the occasion of my being disrobed? I replied, I had but sung a song to please these gentlemen, the which they had called a blasphemy, and had then so diligently searched me for phials of vitriol, that I looked to be costive the week through.

  “The old don then commanded me to sing the song at once, that he might judge of its blasphemy, and so I fetched up my guitar, which the gypsies had taught me the use of, and as best I could (for I was weeping and shivering with fright) I once again sang Flow My Tears. Throughout the piece my savior smiled on me sweetly as an angel, and when I was done he spoke not a word about blasphemy, but kissed me upon the forehead, bade me dress, and after reproving again my tormentors, who were mightily ashamed at being thus surprised in their evil prank, he commanded me to go with him to his quarters. What’s more, after interrogating me at length concerning my origin and my plight, and expressing surprise and pleasure at the extent of my reading, he then and there made me a member of his household staff, to serve him personally, and allowed me free use of his admirable library.”

  “I must know who this saintly fellow was,” Ebenezer interrupted. “My curiosity leaps its banks!”

  Burlingame smiled and raised a finger. “I shall tell thee, Eben; but not a word of’t must you repeat, for reasons you’ll see presently. Whate’er his failings, ’twas a noble turn he did me, and I’d not see his name besmirched by any man.”

  “Never fear,” Ebenezer assured him. “ ’Twill be like whispering it to thyself.”

  “Very well, then. I shall tell thee only that he was Platonist to the ears, and hated Tom Hobbes as he hated the Devil, and was withal so fixed on things of the spirit—on essential spissitude and indiscerptibility and metaphysical extension and the like, which were as real to him as rocks and cow-patties—that he scarce lived in this world at all. And should these be still not sufficient clues, know finally that he was at that time much engrossed in a grand treatise against the materialist philosophy, which treatise he printed the following year under the title Enchiridion Metaphysicum.”

  “ ’Sheart!” Ebenezer whispered. “My dear friend, was’t Henry More himself you sang for? I should think ’twould be thy boast, not an embarrassment!”

  “Stay, till I end my tale. Twas in sooth great More himself I lived with! None knows more than I his noble character, and none is more a debtor to his generosity. I was then per- ; haps seventeen: I tried in every way I knew to be a model of intelligence, good manners, and industry, and ere long the old fellow would allow no other servant near him. He took great ‘ pleasure in conversing with me, at first about my adventures at sea and with the gypsies, but later on matters of philosophy and theology, with which subjects I made special effort to acquaint myself. ’Twas plain he’d conceived a
great liking for me.”

  “Thou’rt a lucky wight, i’faith!” Ebenezer sighed.

  “Nay; only hear me out. As time went on he no longer addressed me as ‘Dear Henry,’ or ‘My boy,’ but rather ‘My son,’ and ‘My dear’; and after that ‘Dearest thing,’ and finally ‘Thingums,’ ‘Precious laddikins,’ and ‘Gypsy mine’ in turn. In short, as I soon guessed, his affection for me was Athenian as his philosophy—dare I tell you he more than once caressed I me, and called me his little Alcibiades?”

  “I am amazed!” said Ebenezer. “The scoundrel rescued you from the other blackguards, merely to have you for his own unnatural lusts!”

  “Oh la, ’twas not at all the same thing, Eben. The others were men in their thirties, full to bursting (as my master himself put it) with the filth and unclean tinctures of corporeity. More, on the other hand, was near sixty, the gentlest of souls, and scarce realized himself, I daresay, the character of his passion: I had no fear of him at all. And here I must confess, Eben, I did a shameful thing: so intent was I on entering the University, that instead of leaving More’s service as soon as tact would permit, I lost no opportunity to encourage his shameful doting. I would perch on the arm of his chair like an impudent lass and read over his shoulder, or cover his eyes for a tease, or spring about the room like a monkey, knowing he admired my energy and grace. Most of all I sang and played on my guitar for him: many’s the night—I blush to tell it!—when I would let him come upon me, as though by accident; I would laugh and blush, and then as if to make a lark of’t, take my guitar and sing Flow My Tears.

  “Need I say the poor philosopher was simply ravished? His passion so took governance o’er his other faculties, he grew so entirely enamored of me, that upon my granting him certain trifling favors, which I knew he’d long coveted but scarce hoped for, he spent nearly all his meager savings to outfit me like the son of an earl, and enrolled me in Trinity College.”