The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  “Out on’t!” he cried, handing the finished draft to Ebenezer. “ ’Tis done, and I wish you fair passage.” Ebenezer read the commission, flung himself upon his knees before Lord Baltimore, and pressed that worthy’s coat hem to his lips in gratitude. Then, mumbling and stumbling, he pocketed the document, excused himself, and ran from the house into the bustling streets of London.

  11

  Ebenezer Returns to His Companions, Finds Them Fewer by One, Leaves Them Fewer by Another, and Reflects a Reflection

  “LOCKET’S!” CRIED EBENEZER to his cabman, and sprang into the hackney with a loose flail of limbs like a mismanaged marionette. With what a suddenness had he scaled the reaches of Parnassus, while his companions blundered in the foothills! Snatching out his commission, he read again the sweet word Laureat and the catalogue of Maryland’s excellencies.

  “Sweet land!” he exclaimed. “Pregnant with song! Thy deliverer approacheth!”

  There was a conceit worth saving, he reflected: the word deliverer, for instance, with its twin suggestions of midwife and savior… He lamented having no pen nor any paper other than Baltimore’s commission, which after kissing he tucked away in his coat.

  “I must purchase me a notebook,” he decided. “ ’Twere a pity such wildflowers should die unplucked. No more may I think merely of my own delight, for a laureate belongs to the world.”

  Soon the hackney cab reached Locket’s, and after rewarding the driver Ebenezer hurried to find his colleagues, whom he’d not seen since the night of the wager. Once inside, however, he assumed a slower, more dignified pace, in keeping with his position, and weaved through the crowded tables to where he spied his friends.

  Dick Merriweather noticed him first. “ ’Sblood!” he shouted. “Look ye yonder, what comes hither! Am I addled with the sack, or is’t Lazarus untombed?”

  “How now!” Tom Trent joined in. “Hath the spring wind thawed ye, boy? I feared me you was ossified for good and all.”

  “Thawed?” said Ben Oliver, and winked. “Nay, Tom, for how could such a lover e’er be chilled? ’Tis my guess he’s only now regained his strength from his mighty joust the night of our wager and is back to take all comers.”

  “Lightly, Ben,” reproved Tom Trent, and glanced at John McEvoy beside him, who, however, was entirely absorbed in regarding Ebenezer and seemed not to have heard the remark. “ ’Tis unbecoming a good fellow, to hold a grudge o’er such a trifle.”

  “Nay, nay,” Ben insisted. “What more pleasant or instructive, I ask you, than to hear of great deeds from the lips of their doers? Hither with thee, Ebenezer. Take a pot with us and tell us all plainly, as a man amongst men: What think you now of this Joan Toast that you did swive? How is she in the bed, I mean, and what fearsome bargain did you drive for your five guineas, that we’ve seen none of you this entire week, or her since? Marry, what a man!”

  “Curb your evil tongue,” Ebenezer said crisply, taking a seat. “You know the story as well as I.”

  “Hi!” cried Ben. “Such bravery! What, will you say naught by way of explanation or defense when a very trollop scorns you?”

  Ebenezer shrugged. “ ’Tis near as e’er she’ll come to greatness.”

  “Great Heav’n!” Tom Trent exclaimed. “Who is this stranger with the brave replies? I know the face and I know the voice, but b’m’faith, ’tis not the Eben Cooke of old!”

  “Nay,” agreed Dick Merriweather, “ ’tis some swaggering impostor. The Cooke I knew was e’er a shy fellow, something stiff in the joints, and no great hand at raillery. Know you aught of his whereabouts?” he asked Ebenezer.

  “Aye”—Ebenezer smiled—“I know him well, for ’twas I alone saw him die and wrote his elegy.”

  “And prithee, sir, what carried him off?” inquired Ben Oliver with as much of a sneer as could be salvaged from his late confounding. “Belike ’twas the pain of unrequited love?”

  “The truth of the matter is, sirs,” Ebenezer replied, “he perished in childbirth the night of the wager and never learned that what he’d been suffering was the pains of labor—the more intense, for that he’d carried the fetus since childhood and was brought to bed of’t uncommon late. Howbeit, ’twas the world’s good luck he had him an able midwife, who delivered full-grown the man you see before you.”

  “I’faith!” declared Dick Merriweather. “I have fair lost sight o’ you in this Hampton Court Hedge of a conceit! Speak literally, an’t please you, if only for a sentence, and lay open plainly what is signified by all this talk of death and midwives and the rest of the allegory.”

  “I shall,” smiled Ebenezer, “but I would Joan Toast were present to hear’t, inasmuch as ’twas she who played all innocently the midwife’s part. Do fetch her, McEvoy, that all the world may know I bear no ill will towards either of you. Albeit you acted from malice, yet, as the proverb hath it, Many a thing groweth in the garden, that was not planted there; or even A man’s fortune may be made by his enviers. Certain it is, your mischief bore fruit beyond my grandest dreams! You said of me once that I comprehend naught of life, and perchance ’tis true; but you must allow farther that Fools rush in where wise men fear to tread, and that A castle may be taken by storm, that ne’er would fall to siege. The fact is, I’ve wondrous news to tell. Will you summon her?”

  Ever since Ebenezer’s appearance in the winehouse McEvoy had sat quietly, even sullen. Now he got up from his place, growled “Summon her yourself, damn ye!” and left the tavern in a great sulk.

  “What ails him?” asked Ebenezer. “The man meant me an injury—doth it chagrin him that it misfired into fortune? ’Twas a civil request; did I know Joan’s whereabouts I’d fetch her myself.”

  “So I doubt not would he,” Ben Oliver said.

  “What is’t you say?”

  “Did you not hear it said before,” asked Tom Trent, “that nor hide nor hair of your Joan have we seen these three days past?”

  “I took it for a twit,” said Ebenezer. “She’s gone in sooth?”

  “Aye,” affirmed Dick, “the tart is vanished from sight, and not McEvoy nor any soul else knows aught of’t. The last anyone saw of her was the day after the wager. She was in a fearful fret—”

  “I’faith,” put in Ben, “there was no speaking to the woman!”

  “We took it for a pout,” Dick went on, “forasmuch as you’d — That is to say—”

  “She’d scorned four guineas from a good man,” Ben declared in a last effort at contempt, “and got in exchange a penceless preachment from—”

  “From Ebenezer Cooke, my friends,” Ebenezer finished, unable to hold back the news any longer, “who this very day hath been named by Lord Baltimore to be Poet and Laureate of the entire Province of Maryland! And you’ve not seen the wench since, you say?”

  But none heard the question: they looked at each other and at Ebenezer.

  “Egad!”

  “ ’Sblood!”

  “Is’t true? Thou’rt Laureate of Maryland?”

  “Aye,” said Ebenezer, who actually had said only that he’d been named Laureate, but deemed it too late, among other things, to clarify the misunderstanding. “I sail a few days hence for America, to manage the estate where I was born, and by command of Lord Baltimore to do the office of Laureate for the colony.”

  “Have you commission and all?” Tom Trent marveled.

  Ebenezer did not hesitate. “The Laureate’s commission is in the writing,” he explained, “but already I’m commissioned to turn him a poem.” He pretended to search his pockets and came up with the document in his coat, which he passed around the table to great effect.

  “By Heav’n ’tis true!” Tom said reverently. “Laureate of Maryland! It staggers me!” said Dick. “I will confess,” said Ben, “I’d ne’er have guessed it possible. But out on’t! Here’s a pot to you, Master Laureate! Hi there, barman, a pint all around! Come, Tom! Ho, Dick! Let’s have a health, now! I hope I may call it,” he went on, putting his arm about Ebenezer’s sho
ulders, “for ’tis many a night Eben’s taken my twitting in good grace, that would have rankled a meaner spirit. ’Twould be as fair an honor to propose this health t’you, friend, as ’twill be for me to pay for’t. Prithee grant me that, and ’twere proof of a grace commensurate to thy talent.”

  “Your praise flatters me the more,” Ebenezer said, “for that I know you—how well!—to be no flatterer. Toast away, and a long life to you!”

  The waiter had by this time brought the pints, and the four men raised their glasses.

  “Hi there, sots and poetasters!” Ben shouted to the house at large, springing up on the table. “Put by your gossip and drink as worthy a health as e’er was drunk under these rafters!”

  “Nay, Ben!” Ebenezer protested, tugging Ben’s coat.

  “Hear!” cried several patrons, for Ben was a favorite among them.

  “Drag off yon skinny fop and raise your glasses!” someone cried.

  “Scramble up here,” Ben ordered, and Ebenezer was lifted willy-nilly to the table top.

  “To the long life, good health, and unfailing talent of Ebenezer Cooke,” Ben proposed, and everyone in the room raised his glass, “who while we lesser fry spent our energies braying and strutting, sat aloof and husbanded his own, and crowed him not a crow nor, knowing himself an eagle, cared a bean what barnyard fowl thought of him; and who, therefore, while the rest of us cocks must scratch our dunghills in feeble envy, hath spread his wings and taken flight, for who can tell what eyrie! I give thee Ebenezer Cooke, lads, twitted and teased by all—none more than myself—who this day was made Poet and Laureate of the Province of Maryland!”

  A general murmur went round the room, followed by a clamor of polite congratulation that went like wine to Ebenezer’s head, for it was the first such experience in his life.

  “I thank you,” he said thickly to the room. “I can say no more!”

  “Hear! Hear!”

  “A poem, sir!” someone called.

  “Aye, a poem!”

  Ebenezer got hold of himself and stayed the clamor with a gesture. “Nay,” he said, “the muse is no minstrel, that sings for a pot in the taverns; besides, I’ve not a line upon me. This is the place for a toast, not for poetry, and ’twill greatly please me do you join my toast to my magnanimous patron Baltimore—”

  A few glasses went up, but not many, for anti-Papist feeling was running high in London.

  “To the Maryland Muse—” Ebenezer added, perceiving the small response, and got a few more hands for his trouble.

  “To Poetry, fairest of the arts”—many additional glasses were raised—“and to every poet and good-fellow in this tavern, which for gay and gifted patrons hath not its like in the hemisphere!”

  “Hear!” the crowd saluted, and downed the toast to a man.

  It was near midnight when Ebenezer returned at last to his rooms. He called in vain for Bertrand and tipsily commenced undressing, still very full of his success. But whether because of the silence of his room after Locket’s, or the unhappy sight of his bed lying still unmade as he’d left it in the morning, the linens all rumpled and soiled from his four days’ despair, or some more subtle agency, his gaiety seemed to leave him with his clothes; when at length he had stripped himself of shoes, drawers, shirt, and periwig, and stood shaved, shorn, and mother-naked in the center of his room, his mind was dull, his eyes listless, his stance uncertain. The great success of his first plunge still thrilled him to contemplate, but no longer was it entirely a pleasurable excitement. His stomach felt weak. All that Charles had told him of the history of Maryland came like a bad dream to his memory, and turning out the lamp he hurried to the window for fresh air.

  Despite the hour, London bristled in the darkness beneath and all around him, from which came at intervals here a drunkard’s shout, there a cabman’s curse, the laughter of a streetwalker, the whinny of a horse. A damp spring breeze moved off the Thames and breathed on him: out there on the river, anchors were being weighed and catted, sails unfurled from yards and sheeted home, bearings taken, soundings called, and dark ships run down the tide, out the black Channel, and thence to the boundless ocean, cresting and tossing under the moon. Great restless creatures stirred and glided in the depths; pale gray sea birds wheeled and shrieked down the night wind, or wildly planed against the scud. Could one suppose that somewhere far out under the stars there really lay a Maryland, against whose long sand coasts the black sea foamed? That at that very instant, peradventure, some naked Indian prowled the reedy dunes or stalked his quarry down whispering aisles of the forest?

  Ebenezer shuddered, turned from the window, and drew the curtains fast. His stomach was extremely uneasy. He lay down on the bed and tried to sleep, but with no success: the daring of his interview with Charles Calvert, and all that followed on it, kept him tossing and turning long after his muscles had begun to ache and his eyes to burn for sleep. The specters of William Claiborne, Richard Ingle, William Penn, Josias Fendall, and John Coode—their strange and terrible energy, their intrigues and insurrections—chilled and sickened him but refused to be driven from his awareness; and he could not give over remembering and pronouncing his title even after repetition had taken pleasure and sense from the epithet and left it a nightmare string of sounds. His saliva ran freely; he was going to be ill. Poet and Laureate of the Province of Maryland! There was no turning back. Out under the night, Maryland and his single mortal destiny awaited him.

  “Ah, God!” he wept at last, and sprang from the bed in an icy sweat. Running to the chamber pot he flung off the lid and with a retch heaved into it the wine of his triumph. Once delivered of it, he felt somewhat calmer: he returned to the bed, clasped his knees against his chest to quiet the agitation of his stomach, and so contrived, after countless fretful sighs, a sort of sleep.

  PART II: GOING TO MALDEN

  1

  The Laureate Acquires a Notebook

  WHATEVER TREPIDATIONS OR dank night doubts had lately plagued the Laureate’s repose, when the sun rose next morning over London they were burned off with the mist of the Thames. He woke at nine refreshed in body and spirit, and, when he remembered the happenings of the day before and his new office, it was with delight.

  “Bertrand! You, Bertrand!” he called, springing from the bed. “Are you there, fellow?”

  His man appeared at once from the next room.

  “Did you sleep well, sir?”

  “Like a silly babe. What a morning! It ravishes me!”

  “Methought I heard ye taken with the heaves last night.”

  “ ’Sheart, a sour pint, belike, at Locket’s,” Ebenezer replied lightly, “or a stein of green ale. Fetch my shirt there, will you? There’s a good fellow. Egad, what smells as fresh as new-pressed linen or feels as clean?”

  “ ’Tis a marvel ye threw it off so. Such a groaning and a hollowing!”

  “Indeed?” Ebenezer laughed and began to dress with leisurely care. “Nay, not those; my knit cottons today. Hollowing, you say? Some passing nightmare, I doubt not; I’ve no memory of’t. Nothing to fetch surgeon or priest about.”

  “Priest, sir!” Bertrand exclaimed with a measure of alarm. “ ’Tis true, then, what they say?”

  “It may be, or it may not. Who are they, and what is their story?”

  “Some have it, sir,” Bertrand replied glibly, “thou’rt in Lord Baltimore’s employ, who all the world knows is a famous Papist, and that ’twas only on your conversion to Rome he gave ye your post.”

  “ ’Dslife!” Ebenezer turned to his man incredulously. “What scurrilous libel! How came you to hear it?”

  Bertrand blushed. “Begging your pardon, sir, ye may have marked ere now that albeit I am a bachelor, I am not without interest in the ladies, and that, to speak plainly, I and a certain young serving maid belowstairs have what ye might call—”

  “An understanding,” Ebenezer suggested impatiently. “Do I know it, you scoundrel? D’you think I’ve not heard the twain of you clipping and tu
mbling the nights away in your room, when you thought me asleep? I’faith, ’tis enough to wake the dead! If my poor puking cost you an hour’s sleep last night, ’tis not the hundredth part of what I owe you! Is’t she told you this tale of a cock and a bull?”

  “Aye,” admitted Bertrand, “but ’twas not of her making.”

  “Whence came it, then? Get to the point, man! ’Tis a sorry matter when a poet cannot accept an honor without suffering on the instant the slanders of the envious, or make a harmless trope without his man’s crying Popery!”

  “I crave your pardon, sir,” said Bertrand. “ ’Twas no accusation, only concern; I thought it my duty to tell ye what your enemies are saying. The fact is, sir, my Betsy, who is a hot-blooded, affectionate lass, hath the bad luck to be married, and that to a lackluster chilly fellow whose only passions are ambition and miserliness, and who, though he’d like a sturdy son to bring home extra wages, is as sparing with caresses as with coins. Such a money-grubber is he that, after a day’s work as a clerk’s apprentice in the Customs-House, he labors half the night as a fiddler in Locket’s to put by an extra crown, with the excuse ’tis a nest egg against the day she finds herself with child. But ’sblood, ’tis such a tax on his time that he scarce sees her from one day to the next and on his strength that he hath not the wherewithal to roger what time he’s with her! It seemed a sinful waste to me to see, on the one hand, poor Betsy alone and all a-fidget for want of husbanding, and on the other her husband Ralph a-hoarding money to no purpose, and so like a proper Samaritan I did what I could for the both of ’em: Ralph fiddled and I diddled.”