The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  Here Burlingame lit another pipe, and sighed in remembrance.

  “I was, I believe, uncommonly well-read for a boy my age. In the two years with More I’d mastered Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, read all of Plato, Tully, Plotin, and divers other of the ancients, and at least perused most of the standard works of natural philosophy. My benefactor made no secret that he looked for me to become as notable a philosopher as Herbert of Cherbury, John Smith, or himself—and who knows but what I might have been, had things turned out happily? But alas, Eben, that same shamelessness by virtue of which I reached my goal proved my undoing. ’Twas quite poetic.”

  “What happened, pray?”

  “I was not strong in mathematics,” Burlingame said, “and for that reason I devoted much of my study to that subject, and spent as much time as I could with mathematicians—especially with the brilliant young man who but two years before, in 1669, had taken Barrow’s place as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, and holds the office yet…”

  “Newton!”

  “Aye, the wondrous Isaac! He was twenty-nine or thirty then, as I am now, with a face like a pure-bred stallion’s. He was thin and strong and marvelous energetic, much given to moods; he had the arrogance that of’t goes with great gifts, but was in other ways quite shy, and seldom overbearing. He could be merciless with others’ theories, yet was himself inordinately sensitive to criticism. He was so diffident about his talents ’twas with great reluctance he allowed aught of his discoveries to be printed; yet so vain, the slightest suggestion that someone had antedated him would drive him near mad with rage and jealousy. Impossible, splendid fellow!”

  “Marry, he frightens me!” Ebenezer said.

  “Now you must know that at that time More and Newton had no love whatever for each other, and the cause of their enmity was the French philosopher Renatus Descartes.”

  “Descartes? How can that be?”

  “I know not how well you’ve heeded your tutors,” Burlingame said; “you might know that all these Platonical gentlemen of Christ’s and Emmanuel Colleges are wont to sing the praises of Descartes, inasmuch as he makes a great show of pottering about in mathematics and the motions of heavenly bodies, like any Galileo, and yet unlike Tom Hobbes he affirms the real existence of God and the soul, which pleases them no end. The more for that the lot of ’em are Protestants: this much-vaunted rejection of the learning of his time, that Renatus brags of in his Discourse on Method: this searching of his innards for his axioms—is’t not the first principle of Protestantism? Thus it is that Descartes’ system is taught all over Cambridge, and More, like the rest, praised and swore by him as by a latter-day saint. Tell me, Eben: how is’t, d’you think, that the planets are moved in their courses?”

  “Why,” said Ebenezer, “ ’tis that the cosmos is filled with little particles moving in vortices, each of which centers on a star; and ’tis the subtle push and pull of these particles in our solar vortex that slides the planets along their orbs—is’t not?”

  “So saith Descartes,” Burlingame smiled. “And d’you haply recall what is the nature of light?”

  “If I have’t right,” replied Ebenezer, “ ’tis an aspect of the vortices—of the press of inward and outward forces in ’em. The celestial fire is sent through space from the vortices by this pressure, which imparts a transitional motion to little light globules—”

  “Which Renatus kindly hatched for that occasion,” Burlingame interrupted. “And what’s more he allows his globules both a rectilinear and a rotatory motion. If only the first occurs when the globules smite our retinae, we see white light; if both, we see color. And as if this were not magical enough—mirabile dictu!—when the rotatory motion surpasseth the rectilinear, we see blue; when the reverse, we see red; and when the twain are equal, we see yellow. What fantastical drivel!”

  “You mean ’tis not the truth? I must say, Henry, it sounds reasonable to me. In sooth, there is a seed of poetry in it; it hath an elegance.”

  “Aye, it hath every virtue and but one small defect, which is, that the universe doth not operate in that wise. Marry, ’tis no crime, methinks, to teach the man’s skeptical philosophy or his analytical geometry—both have much of merit in ’em. But his cosmology is purely fanciful, his optics right bizarre; and the first man to prove it is Isaac Newton.”

  “Hence their enmity?” asked Ebenezer.

  Burlingame nodded. “By the time Newton became Lucasian Professor he had already spoilt Cartesian optics with his prism experiments—and well do I recall them from his lectures!—and he was refuting the theory of vortices by mathematics, though he hadn’t as yet published his own cosmical hypotheses. But his loathing for Descartes goes deeper yet: it hath its origin in a difference betwixt their temperaments. Descartes, you know, is a clever writer, and hath a sort of genius for illustration that lends force to the wildest hypotheses. He is a great hand for twisting the cosmos to fit his theory. Newton, on the other hand, is a patient and brilliant experimenter, with a sacred regard for the facts of nature. Then again, since the lectures De Motu Corporum and his papers on the nature of light have been available, the man always held up to him by his critics is Descartes.

  “So, then, no love was lost ’twixt Newton and More; they had in fact been quietly hostile for some years. And when I became the focus of’t, their antagonism boiled over.”

  “You? But you were a simple student, were you not? Surely two such giants ne’er would stoop to fight their battles with their students.”

  “Must I draw a picture, Eben?” Burlingame said. “I was out to learn the nature of the universe from Newton, but knowing I was More’s protégé, he was cold and incommunicative with me. I employed every strategy I knew to remove this barrier, and, alas, won more than I’d fought for—in plain English, Eben, Newton grew as enamored of me as had More, with this difference only, that there was naught Platonical in his passion.”

  “I know not what to think!” cried Ebenezer.

  “Nor did I,” said Burlingame, “albeit one thing I knew well, which was that save for the impersonal respect I bare the twain of ’em, I cared not a fart for either. ’Tis a wise thing, Eben, not to confuse one affection with another. Well, sir, as the months passed, each of my swains came to realize the passions of the other, and both grew as jealous as Cervantes’ Celoso Extremeño. They carried on shamefully, and each threatened my ruination in the University should I not give o’er the other. As for me, I paid no more heed than necessary to either, but wallowed in the libraries of the colleges like a dolphin in the surf. ’Twas job enough for me to remember to eat and sleep, much less fulfill the million little obligations they thought I owed ’em. I’faith, a handsome pair!”

  “Prithee, what was the end of it?”

  Burlingame sighed. “I played the one against the other for above two years, till at last Newton could endure it no longer. The Royal Society had by this time published his experiments with prisms and reflecting telescopes, and he was under fire from Robert Hooke, who had light theories of his own; from the Dutchman Christian Huygens, who was committed to the lens telescope; from the French monk Pardies; and from the Belgian Linus. So disturbed was he by the conjunction of this criticism and his jealousy, that in one and the same day he swore ne’er to publish another of his discoveries, and confronted More in the latter’s chambers with the intent of challenging him to settle their rivalry for good and all by means of a duel to the death!”

  “Ah, what a loss to the world, whate’er the issue of’t,” observed Ebenezer.

  “As’t happened, no blood was let,” Burlingame said: “the tale ends happily for them both, if not for the teller. After much discourse Newton discovered that his rival’s position was uncertain as his own, and that I seemed equally indifferent to both—which conclusion, insofar as’t touches the particular matters they had in mind, is as sound as any in the Principia. In addition More showed to Newton his Enchiridion Metaphysicum, wherein he plainly expressed a growing disaffection for Descarte
s; and Newton assured More that albeit ’twas universal gravitation, and not angels or vortices, that steered the planets in their orbits, there yet remained employment enough for the Deity as a first cause to set the cosmic wheels a-spin, e’en as old Renatus had declared. In fine, so far from dueling to the death, they so convinced each other that at the end of some hours of colloquy—all which I missed, being then engrossed in the library—they fell to tearful embraces, and decided to cut me off without a penny, arrange my dismissal from the College, and move into the same lodgings, where, so they declared, they would couple the splendors of the physical world to the glories of the ideal, and listen ravished to the music of the spheres! This last they never did in fact, but their connection endures to this day, and from all I hear, More hath washed his hands entirely of old Descartes, while Newton hath caught a foolish infatuation with theology, and seeks to explain the Apocalypse by application of his laws of series and fluxions. As for the first two of their resolves, they fulfilled ’em to the letter—turned me out to starve, and so influenced all and sundry against me that not a shilling could I beg, nor eat one meal on credit. ’Twas off to London I went, with not a year ’twixt me and the baccalaureate. Thus was it, in 1676, your father found me; and playing fickle to the scholar’s muse, I turned to you and your dear sister all the zeal I’d erst reserved for my researches. Your instruction became my First Good, my Primary Cause, which lent all else its form and order. And my fickleness is thorough and entire: not for an instant have I regretted the way of my life, or thought wistfully of Cambridge.”

  “Dear, dear Henry!” Ebenezer cried. “How thy tale moves me, and shames me, that I let slip through idleness what you strove so hard in vain to reach! Would God I had another chance!”

  “Nay, Eben, thou’rt no scholar, I fear. You have perchance the schoolman’s love of lore, but not the patience, not the address, not I fear that certain nose for relevance, that grasp of the world, which sets apart the thinker from the crank. There is a thing in you, a set of the grain as ’twere, that would keep you ingenuous even if all the books in all the libraries of Europe were distilled in your brain. Nay, let the baccalaureate go; I came here not to exhort you to try again, or to chide you for failing, but to take you with me to London for a time, until you see your way clearly. ’Twas Anna’s idea, who loves you more than herself, and I think it wise.”

  “Precious Anna! How came she to know thy whereabouts?”

  “There, now,” laughed Burlingame, “that is another tale entirely, and ’twill do for another time. Come with me to London, and I’ll tell it thee in the carriage.”

  Ebenezer hesitated. “ ’Tis a great step.”

  “ ’Tis a great world,” replied Burlingame.

  “I fear me what Father would say, did he hear of’t.”

  “My dear fellow,” Burlingame said, “we sit here on a blind rock careening through space; we are all of us rushing headlong to the grave. Think you the worms will care, when anon they make a meal of you, whether you spent your moment sighing wigless in your chamber, or sacked the golden towns of Montezuma? Lookee, the day’s nigh spent; ’tis gone careering into time forever. Not a tale’s length past we lined our bowels with dinner, and already they growl for more. We are dying men, Ebenezer: i’faith, there’s time for naught but bold resolves!”

  “You lend me courage, Henry,” Ebenezer said, rising from the table. “Let us begone.”

  4

  Ebenezer’s First Sojourn in London, and the Issue of It

  BURLINGAME SLEPT THAT NIGHT in Ebenezer’s room, and the next day they left Cambridge for London by carriage.

  “I think you’ve not yet told me,” the young man said en route, “how it is you left St. Giles so suddenly, and how Anna came to know your whereabouts.”

  Burlingame sighed. “ ’Tis a simple mystery, if a sad one. The fact is, Eben, your father fancies I have designs upon your sister.”

  “Nay! Incredible!”

  “Ah, now, as for that, ’tis not so incredible; Anna is a sweet and clever girl, and uncommon lovely.”

  “Yet think of your ages!” Ebenezer said. “ ’Tis absurd of Father!”

  “Think you ’tis absurd?” Burlingame asked. “Thou’rt a candid fellow.”

  “Ah, forgive me,” Ebenezer laughed; “ ’twas a rude remark. Nay, ’tis not absurd at all: thou’rt but thirty-odd, and Anna twenty-one. I daresay ’tis that you were our teacher made me think of you as older.”

  “ ’Twere no absurd suspicion, methinks, that any man might look with love on Anna,” Burlingame declared, “and I did indeed love the both of you for years, and love you yet; nor did I ever try to hide the fact. ’Tis not that which distresses me; ’tis Andrew’s notion that I had vicious designs on the girl. ’Sheart, if anything be improbable, ’tis that so marvelous a creature as Anna could look with favor on a penniless pedagogue!”

  “Nay, Henry, I have oft heard her protest, that by comparison to you, none of her acquaintances was worth the labor of being civil to.”

  “Anna said that?”

  “Aye, in a letter not two months past.”

  “Ah well, whate’er the case, Andrew took my regard for her as lewd intent, and threatened me one afternoon that should I not begone ere morning he’d shoot me like a dog and horsewhip dear Anna into the bargain. I had no fear for myself, but not to risk bringing injury to her I left at once, albeit it tore my heart to go.”

  Ebenezer sat amazed at this revelation. “How she wept that morning! and yet neither she nor Father told me aught of’t!”

  “Nor must you speak of it to either,” Burlingame warned, “for ’twould but embarrass Anna, would it not? And anger Andrew afresh, for there’s no statute of limitations within a family. Think not you’ll reason him out of his notion: he is convinced of it.”

  “I suppose so,” Ebenezer said doubtfully. “Then Anna has been in correspondence with you since?”

  “Not so regularly as I could wish. Egad, how I’ve yearned for news of you! I took lodgings on Thames Street, between Billingsgate and the Customs-House—far cry from the summer-pavilion at St. Giles, you’ll see!—and hired myself as tutor whenever I could. For two years and more I was unable to communicate with Anna, for fear your father would hear of’t, but some months ago I chanced to be engaged as a tutor in French to a Miss Bromly from Plumtree Street, that remembered you and Anna as playmates ere you removed to St. Giles. Through her I was able to tell Anna where I live, and though I dare not write to her, she hath contrived on two or three occasions to send me letters. ’Twas thus I learned the state of your affairs, and I was but too pleased to act on her suggestion that I fetch you out of Cambridge. She is a dear girl, Eben!”

  “I long to see her again!” Ebenezer said.

  “And I,” said Burlingame, “for I esteem her as highly as thee, and ’tis three years since I’ve seen her.”

  “Think you she might visit us in London?”

  “Nay, I fear ’tis out of the question. Andrew would have none of it.”

  “Yet surely I cannot resign myself to never seeing her again! Can you, Henry?”

  “ ’Tis not my wont to look that far ahead,” Burlingame said. “Let us consider rather how you’ll occupy yourself in London. You must not sit idle, lest you slip again into languishment and stupor.”

  “Alas,” said Ebenezer, “I have no long-term goals toward which to labor.”

  “Then follow my example,” advised Burlingame, “and set as your long-term goal the successful completion of all your short-term goals.”

  “Yet neither have I any short-term goal.”

  “Ah, but you will ere long, when your belly growls for dinner and your money’s gone.”

  “Unhappy day!” laughed Ebenezer. “I’ve no skill in any craft or trade whatever. I cannot even play Flow My Tears on the guitar.”

  “Then ’tis plain you’ll be a teacher, like myself.”

  “ ’Sheart! ’Twould be the blind leading the blind!”

 
“Aye,” smiled Burlingame. “Who better grasps the trials of sightlessness than he whose eyes are gone?”

  “But what teach? I know something of many things, and enough of naught.”

  “I’faith, then the field is open, and you may graze where you list.”

  “Teach a thing I know naught of?” exclaimed Ebenezer.

  “And raise thy fee for’t,” replied Burlingame, “inasmuch as ’tis no chore to teach what you know, but to teach what you know naught of requires a certain application. Choose a thing you’d greatly like to learn, and straightway proclaim yourself professor of’t.”

  Ebenezer shook his head. “ ’Tis still impossible; I am curious about the world in general, and ne’er could choose.”

  “Very well, then: I dub thee Professor of the Nature of the World, and as such shall we advertise you. Whate’er your students wish to learn of’t, that will you teach them.”

  “Thou’rt jesting, Henry!”

  “If’t be a jest,” replied Burlingame, “ ’tis a happy one, I swear, for just so have I lined my belly these three years. B’m’faith, the things I’ve taught! The great thing is always to be teaching something to someone—a fig for what or to whom. ’Tis no trick at all.”

  No matter what Ebenezer thought of this proposal, he had not the wherewithal to reject it: immediately on arriving in London he moved into Burlingame’s chambers by the river and was established as a full partner. A few days after that, Burlingame brought him his first customer—a lout of a tailor from Crutched Friars who happily desired to be taught nothing more intricate than his A B Cs—and for the next few months Ebenezer earned his living as a pedagogue. He worked six or seven hours a day, both in his rooms and at the homes of his students, and spent most of his free time studying desperately for the following day’s lessons. What leisure he had he spent in the taverns and coffeehouses with a small circle of Burlingame’s acquaintances, mostly idle poets. Impressed by their apparent confidence in their talent, he too endeavored on several occasions to write poems, but abandoned the effort each time for want of anything to write about.