The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  His bedclothes were wet with perspiration; his stomach churned. When McEvoy was gone he sprang out of bed to latch the door against further visitors, but immediately upon standing erect was overcome by nausea and had to run for the commode across the room. As soon as he was able he slipped into his nightshirt and called for Bertrand, who this time appeared almost at once, wigless and gowned. In one hand he held a bare wax candle, in the other its heavy pewter holder.

  “The fellow is gone,” Ebenezer said. “ ’Tis safe to show thyself.” Still weak in the knees, he sat at his writing-desk and held his head in his hands.

  “Lucky for him he held his temper!” Bertrand said grimly, brandishing his candleholder.

  Ebenezer smiled. “Was’t thy intent to rap on the wall for silence if he didn’t?”

  “On his arrogant pate, sir! I stood just without your door the entire while, for fear he’d leap you, and only jumped inside my room when he left, for fear he’d spy me.”

  “For fear in sooth! Did you not hear my call?”

  “I own I did not, sir, and beg your pardon for’t. Had he knocked below like any gentleman, he’d ne’er have got by me on that errand, I swear! ’Twas your voices waked me, and when I caught the drift of your talk I dared not intrude for fear of presuming, or leave for fear he’d assault you.”

  “Marry, Bertrand!” Ebenezer said. “Thou’rt the very model of a servant! You heard all, then?”

  “ ’Twas farthest from my mind to eavesdrop,” Bertrand protested, “but I could scarce avoid the substance of’t. What a cheat and blackguard the pimp is, to ask five guinea for a tart you spent not two hours with! For five guinea I could fill thy bed with trollops!”

  “Nay, ’tis no cheat; McEvoy is as honest a man as I. ’Twas a collision of principles, not a haggle over price.” He went to fetch a robe. “Will you make up the fire, Bertrand, and brew tea for both of us? I’ve small hope of sleep this night.”

  Bertrand lit the lamp from his candle, put fresh wood in the fireplace, and blew up the embers in the grate.

  “How can the wretch harm you?” he asked. “ ’Tis unlikely a pimp could press a law-suit!”

  “He hath no need of the courts. ’Tis but a matter of telling my father of the affair, and off I go to Maryland.”

  “For a simple business with a strumpet, sir? Marry, thou’rt not a child, nor Master Andrew any cleric! I beg your pardon for’t, sir, but your homeplace is no popish convent, if I may say so! There’s much goes on there that Miss Anna and yourself know naught of, nor old Twigg, either, for all her sniffs and snoops.”

  Ebenezer frowned. “How’s that? What in Heav’n do you mean, fellow?”

  “Nay, nay, spare your anger; marry, I yield to none in respect for your father, sir! I meant naught by’t at all, save that Master Andrew is a natural man, if you follow me, like thee and me; a lusty fellow despite his age, and—no disrespect intended—he’s long a widower. A servant sees things now and again, sir.”

  “A servant sees little and fancies much,” Ebenezer said sharply. “Is’t your suggestion my father’s a whoremonger?”

  “ ’Sblood, sir, nothing of the sort! He’s a great man and an honest, is Master Andrew, and I pride myself on having his confidence these many years. ’Tis no accident he chose me to come to London with you, sir: I’ve managed business of some consequence for him ere now that Mrs. Twigg for all her haughty airs knew naught of.”

  “See here, Bertrand,” Ebenezer demanded with interest, “are you saying you’ve been my father’s pimp?”

  “I’ll speak no more of’t, sir, an it please thee, for it seems thou’rt out of sorts and put an ill construction on my words. All I meant to say in the world was that were I in thy place I’d not pay a farthing for all the scoundrel’s letters to your father. The man who says he ne’er hath bought a swiving must needs be either fairy or castrate, if he be not a liar, and Master Andrew’s none o’ the three. Let the rascal say ’tis a vice with thee; I’ll swear on oath ’twas the first you’ve been a-whoring, to my knowledge. No disgrace in that.” He gave Ebenezer a cup of tea and stood by the fire to drink his own.

  “Perhaps not, even if ’twere true.”

  “I’m certain of’t,” Bertrand said, gaining confidence. “You had your tart as any man might, and there’s an end on’t. Her pimp asked more than her worth, and so you sent him packing. I’d advise thee to pay him not a farthing for all his trumpeting, and Master Andrew would agree with me.”

  “Belike you misheard me through the door, Bertrand,” Ebenezer said. “I did not swive the girl.”

  Bertrand smiled. “Ah, now, ’twas a clever enough stand to take with the pimp, considering he roused you up ere you’d time to think; but ’twill ne’er fool Master Andrew for a minute.”

  “Nay, ’tis the simple truth! And e’en had I done so I would not pay him a ha’penny for’t. I love the girl and shan’t buy her for a harlot.”

  “Now, that one hath the touch of greatness in it,” Bertrand declared. “ ’Tis worthy of the cleverest blade in London! But speaking as your adviser—”

  “My adviser! Thou’rt my adviser?”

  Bertrand shifted uneasily. “Aye, sir, in a manner of speaking, you understand. As I said before, I pride myself that your father trusts me—”

  “Did Father send you to me as a governess? Do you report my doings to him?”

  “Nay, nay!” Bertrand said soothingly. “I only meant, as I said before, ’tis clearly no accident he named me and no other to attend ye, sir. I pride myself ’tis a sign of his faith in my judgment. I merely meant ’twas clever to tell the pimp thou’re in love with his tart and shan’t cheapen her; but if ye repeat the tale to Master Andrew ’twere wise to make clear ’twas but a gambit, so as not to alarm him.”

  “You don’t believe it? Nor that I am a virgin?”

  “Thou’rt a great tease, sir! I only question whether thy father would understand raillery.”

  “I see thou’rt not to be convinced,” Ebenezer said, shaking his head. “No matter, I suppose. ’Tis not the business of five guineas will undo me anyhow, but the other.”

  “Another? Marry, what a rascal!”

  “Nay, not another wench; another business. Haply ’twill interest you, as my adviser: McEvoy’s tattling letter describes my place at Peter Paggen’s, that hath not improved these five years.”

  Bertrand set down his cup. “My dear sir, pay him his rascally guineas.”

  Ebenezer smiled. “What? Permit the wretch to overcharge me?”

  “I’ve two guinea laid by, sir, in a button box in my chest. ’Tis thine toward the debt. Only let me run to pay him, ere he posts his foul letter.”

  “Thy charity gladdens me, Bertrand, and thy concern, but the principle is the same. I shan’t pay it.”

  “Marry, sir, then I must off to a Jew for the other three and pay it myself, though he hold liver and lights for collateral. Master Andrew will have my head!”

  “ ’Twill avail thee naught. ’Tis not five guineas McEvoy wants, but five guineas from my hand as whore-money.”

  “I’faith, then I’m lost!”

  “How so?’

  “When Master Andrew learns how ill ye’ve minded his direction he’ll sack me for certain, to punish ye. What comfort hath the adviser? If things go well ’tis the student gets the praise; if ill, ’tis the adviser gets the blame.”

  “ ’Tis in sooth a thankless office,” Ebenezer said sympathetically. He yawned and stretched. “Let us sleep out the balance of the night, now. Thy conversation is a marvelous soporific.”

  Bertrand showed no sign of understanding the remark, but he rose to leave.

  “You’ll see me sacked, then, ere you pay the debt?”

  “I doubt me such a priceless adviser will be sacked,” Ebenezer replied. “Belike he’ll send thee off with me to Maryland, to advise me.”

  “Gramercy, sir! Thou’rt jesting!”

  “Not at all.”

  “ ’Sheart! To perish at the
hands of salvages!”

  “Ah, as for that, two of us can fight ’em better than one. Good night, now.” So saying, he sent Bertrand terrified to his room and attempted to lull himself to sleep. But his fancy was too much occupied with versions of the imminent confrontation of his father and himself—versions the details of which he altered and perfected with an artist’s dispassionate care—to allow him more than a restless somnolence.

  As it turned out, there was no confrontation at all, though St. Giles was but an easy carriage ride from where he lived. On the evening of the second day after McEvoy’s threat, a messenger came to Ebenezer’s room (from which, having abandoned Peter Paggen entirely, he had scarcely ventured in two days) with twelve pounds in cash and a brief letter from Andrew:

  My Son: It is truly said, that Children are a certain Care, and but an uncertain Comfort. Suffice it to say, I have learned of your vicious Condition; I shall not sully myself by witnessing it firsthand. You shall on Pain of total and entire Disinheritance and Disownment take Ship for Maryland on the Bark Poseidon, sailing from Plimouth for Piscataway on April 1, there to proceed straightway to Cookes poynt and assume Managership of Malden. It is my intention to make a final Sojourn in the Plantations perhaps a Year hence, and I pray that at that Time I shall find a prosperous Malden and a regenerate Son: an Estate worth bequeathing and an Heir worth the Bequest. It is your final Chance.

  Your Father

  Ebenezer was more numbed than stunned by the letter, for he’d anticipated some such ultimatum.

  “Marry, ’tis but a week hence!” he reflected with alarm. The notion of leaving his companions just when, having determined his essence, he felt prepared to begin enjoying them, distressed him quite; whatever fugitive attraction the colonies had held for him fled before the prospect of actually going there.

  He showed the letter to Bertrand.

  “Ah, ’tis as I thought: thy principles have undone me. I see no summons here to my old post in St. Giles.”

  “Haply ’twill come yet, Bertrand, by another messenger.”

  But the servant appeared unconsoled. “I’faith! Back to old Twigg! I had almost rather brave the salvage Indians.”

  “I would not see thee suffer on my account,” Ebenezer declared. “I shall pay your April’s wages, and you may start today to seek another post.”

  The valet seemed scarcely able to believe such generosity. “Bless ye, sir! Thou’rt every inch a gentleman!”

  Ebenezer dismissed him and returned to his own problem. What was he to do? During most of that day he anxiously examined various faces of himself in his looking glass; during most of the next he composed stanzas to Gloom and Melancholy, after the manner of Il Penseroso (though briefer and, he decided, of a different order of impact); the third he spent abed, getting up only to feed and relieve himself. He refused Bertrand’s occasional proffered services. A change came over him: his beard went unshaved, his drawers unchanged, his feet unwashed. How take ship for the wild untutored colonies, now he knew himself a poet and was ready to fire London with his art? And yet how make shift unaided in London, penniless, in defiance of his father and at the expense of his inheritance?

  “What am I to do?” he asked himself, lying unkempt in his bed on the fourth day. It was a misty March morning, though a warm and sunny one, and the glaring haze from outside caused his head to ache. The bedclothes were no longer clean, nor was his nightshirt. His late fire was ashed and cold. Eight o’clock passed, and nine, but he could not resolve to get up. Once only, as a mere experiment, he held his breath in order to try whether he could make himself die, for he saw no alternative; but after a half minute he drew air frantically and did not try again. His stomach rumbled, and his sphincters signaled their discomfort. He could think of no reason for rising from the bed, nor any for remaining there. Ten o’clock came and went.

  Near noon, running his eyes about the room for the hundredth time that morning, he caught sight of something that had previously escaped him: a scrap of paper on the floor beside his writing-desk. Recognizing it, he climbed out of bed without thinking, fetched it up, and squinted at it in the glare.

  Ebenezer Cooke, Gent., Poet & Laureate…

  The rest of the epithet was torn off, but despite its loss, or perhaps because of it, Ebenezer was suddenly inspired with such a pleasant resolve that his spirits rose on the instant, driving three days’ gloom before them as a March breeze drives away squalls. His spine thrilled; his face flushed. Lighting on a piece of letter paper, he addressed a salutation directly to Charles Calvert, Third Lord Baltimore and Second Lord Proprietary of the Province of Maryland. Your Excellency, he wrote, with the same sure hand of some nights before:

  It is my Intention to take Ship for Maryland upon the Bark Poseidon a few Days hence, for the Purpose of managing my Father’s Property, called Cooke’s Point, in Dorchester. YrLdshp will do me a great Honour, and Himself no ill Turn it may be, by granting me an Audience before I embark, in order that I might discuss certain Plans of mine, such that I venture will not altogether displease YrLdshp, and in order farther that I might learn, from Him most qualified to say, where in the Province to seek the congenial Company of Men of Breeding and Refinement, with whom to share my leisure Hours in those most civiliz’d Pursuits of Poetry, Music and Conversation, without which Life were a Salvag’ry, and scarce endurable. Respectfully therefore awaiting YrLdshps Reply, I am,

  Yr Most Hmble & Obt Svt

  Ebenezer Cooke

  And after but a moment’s deliberation he appended boldly to his name the single word Poet, deeming it a pointless modesty to deny or conceal his very essence.

  “By Heav’n!” he exclaimed to himself, looking back on his recent doldrums. “I had near slipped once again into the Abyss! Methinks ’tis a peril I am prone to: ’tis my Nemesis, and marks me off from other men as did the Furies poor Orestes! So be’t: at least I know my dread Erinyes for what they are and will henceforth mark their approach betimes. What is more—thank Joan Toast! I now know how to shield myself from their assault.” He consulted his mirror and after some false starts, reflected this reflection: “Life! I must fling myself into Life, escape to’t, as Orestes to the temple of Apollo. Action be my sanctuary; Initiative my shield! I shall smite ere I am smitten; clutch Life by his horns! Patron of poets, thy temple be the Entire Great Real World, whereto I run with arms a-stretch: may’t guard me from the Pit, and may my Erinyes sink ’neath the vertigo I flee to be transformed to mild Eumenides!”

  He then reread his letter.

  “Aye,” he said, “read and rejoice, Baltimore! ’Tis not every day your province is blessed with a poet. But faith! ’Tis already the twenty-seventh of the month! I must deliver’t in person at once.”

  Thus resolved, Ebenezer called for Bertrand and, finding him not at home, doffed his malodorous nightshirt and proceeded to dress himself. Not bothering to trouble his skin with water, he slipped on his best linen drawers, short ones without stirrups, heavily perfumed, and a clean white day-shirt of good frieze holland, voluminous and soft, with a narrow neckband, full sleeves caught at the wrists with a black satin ribbon, and small, modestly frilled cuffs. Next he pulled on a pair of untrimmed black velvet knee breeches, close in the thighs and full in the seat, and then his knitted white silk hose, which, following the very latest fashion, he left rolled above the knee in order to display the black ribbon garters that held them up. On then with his shoes, a fortnight old, of softest black Spanish leather, square-toed, high-heeled, and buckled, their cupid-bow tongues turned down to flash a fetching red lining. Respectful of both the warmth and the fashion of the day, he left his waistcoat where it hung and donned next a coat of plum-colored serge lined with silver-gray prunella—the great cuffs turned back to show alternate stripes of plum and silver—collarless, tight-shouldered, and full-skirted, which he left unbuttoned from neck to hem to show off shirt and cravat. This latter was of white muslin, the long pendant ends finished in lace, and Ebenezer tied it loosely, twisted th
e pendants ropewise, and fetched up the ends to pass through the top left buttonhole of his open coat, Steinkirk fashion. Then came his short-sword in its beribboned scabbard, slung low on his left leg from a well-tooled belt, and after it his long, tight-curled white periwig, which he powdered generously and fitted with care on his pate, in its natural state hairless as an egg. Nothing now remained but to top the periwig with his round-crowned, broad-brimmed, feather-edged black beaver, draw on his gauntlet gloves of fawn leather stitched in gold and silver (the cuffs edged in white lace and lined with yellow silk), fetch up his long cane (looped with plum-and-white ribbons like those on his scabbard), and behold the finished product in his looking glass.

  “ ‘Sbodikins!” he cried for very joy. “What a rascal! En garde, London! Look lively, Life! Have at ye!”

  But there was little time to admire the spectacle: Ebenezer hurried out to the street, hired himself the services of barber and bootblack, ate a hearty meal, and took hack at once for the London house of Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore.

  9

  Ebenezer’s Audience With Lord Baltimore, and His Ingenious Proposal to That Gentleman

  TO HIS EXTREME DELIGHT and considerable surprise, in a matter of minutes after Ebenezer had presented himself at Lord Baltimore’s town house and had sent his message in by a house-servant, word was sent back to him that Charles would receive the visitor in his library, and Ebenezer was ushered not long afterwards into the great man’s presence.

  Lord Baltimore was seated in an enormous leather chair beside the hearth, and, though he did not rise to greet his visitor, he motioned cordially for Ebenezer to take the chair opposite him. He was an old man, rather small-framed and tight-skinned despite his age, with a prominent nose, a thin white mustache, and large, unusually bright brown eyes; he looked, it occurred to Ebenezer, like an aged and ennobled Henry Burlingame. He was dressed more formally and expensively than Ebenezer, but—as the latter observed at once—not so fashionably: in fact, some ten years behind the times. His wig was a campaigner, full but not extremely long, its tight curls terminating before either shoulder in pendulous corkscrewed dildos; his cravat was of loosely-tied, lace-edged linen; his coat was rose brocade lined with white alamode, looser in the waist and shorter in the skirt than was the current preference, and the unflapped pockets were cut horizontally rather than vertically and set low to the hem. The sleeves reached nearly to the wrists, returned a few inches to show their white linings stitched in silver, and opened at the back with rounded hound’s-ear corners. The side vents, cut hip high, were edged with silver buttons and sham buttonholes, and the right shoulder boasted a knot of looped silver ribbons. Beneath the coat were a waistcoat of indigo armozine, which he wore completely buttoned, and silk breeches to match: one saw no more of his shirt than the dainty cuffs of white cobweb lawn. What is more, his garters were hidden under the roll of his hose, and the tongues of his shoes were high and square. He held Ebenezer’s letter in his hand and squinted at it in the dim light from the heavily-curtained windows as though re-examining its contents.