The Sot-Weed Factor Read online

  All of the characters in this book are fictitious,

  and any resemblance to actual persons, living

  or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This low-priced Bantam Book

  has been completely reset in a type face

  designed for easy reading, and was printed

  from new plates. It contains the complete

  text of the original hard-cover edition.

  NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

  THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

  A Bantam Book/published by arrangement with

  Doubleday & Company, Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Doubleday edition published 1960

  Doubleday revised edition published 1967

  Bantam edition / May 1969

  2nd printing …… April 1970 5th printing ……. July 1973

  3rd printing …… April 1971 6th printing ….. August 1974

  4th printing …… April 1972 7th printing …… June 1975

  8th printing

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1960, 1967 by John Barth.

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by

  mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

  For information address: Doubleday & Company, Inc.,

  243 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017.

  ISBN 0-553-10471-3

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc., a National General company. Its trade-mark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a bantam, is registered in the United States Patent Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10019.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  Foreword to the Second Edition

  I‘VE TAKEN THE OPPORTUNITY to reread The Sot-Weed Factor with an eye to emending and revising the text of the original edition before its reissue, quite as Ebenezer Cooke himself did in 1731 with the poem from which this novel takes its title. The cases differ in that Cooke’s objective was to blunt the barbs of his original satire, he having dwelt by then many years among its targets, but mine is merely, where possible, to make this long narrative a quantum swifter and more graceful.

  Buffalo, New York 1966

  John Barth

  Contents

  Foreword to the Second Edition

  PART I: THE MOMENTOUS WAGER

  1: The Poet Is Introduced, and Differentiated from His Fellows

  2: The Remarkable Manner in Which Ebenezer Was Educated, and the No Less Remarkable Results of That Education

  3: Ebenezer Is Rescued, and Hears a Diverting Tale Involving Isaac Newton and Other Notables

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

  5: Ebenezer Commences His Second Sojourn in London, and Fares Unspectacularly

  6: The Momentous Wager Between Ebenezer and Ben Oliver, and Its Uncommon Result

  7: The Conversation Between Ebenezer and the Whore Joan Toast, Including the Tale of the Great Tom Leech

  8: A Colloquy Between Men of Principle, and What Came of It

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

  10: A Brief Relation of the Maryland Palatinate, Its Origins and Struggles for Survival, as Told to Ebenezer by His Host

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

  PART II: GOING TO MALDEN

  1: The Laureate Acquires a Notebook

  2: The Laureate Departs from London

  3: The Laureate Learns the True Identity of Colonel Peter Sayer

  4: The Laureate Hears the Tale of Burlingame’s Late Adventures

  5: Burlingame’s Tale Continued, Till Its Teller Falls Asleep

  6: Burlingame’s Tale Carried Yet Farther; the Laureate Reads from The Privie Journall of Sir Henry Burlingame and Discourses on the Nature of Innocence

  7: Burlingame’s Tale Concluded; the Travelers Arrive at Plymouth

  8: The Laureate Indites a Quatrain and Fouls His Breeches

  9: Further Sea-Poetry, Composed in the Stables of the King o’ the Seas

  10: The Laureate Suffers Literary Criticism and Boards the Poseidon

  11: Departure from Albion: the Laureate at Sea

  12: The Laureate Discourses on Games of Chance and Debates the Relative Gentility of Valets and Poets Laureate. Bertrand Sets Forth the Anatomy of Sophistication and Demonstrates His Thesis

  13: The Laureate, Awash in a Sea of Difficulties, Resolves to Be Laureate, Not Before Inditing Final Sea-Couplets

  14: The Laureate Is Exposed to Two Assassinations of Character, a Piracy, a Near-Deflowering, a Near-Mutiny, a Murder, and an Appalling Colloquy Between Captains of the Sea, All Within the Space of a Few Pages

  15: The Rape of the Cyprian; Also, the Tale of Hicktopeake, King of Accomack, and the Greatest Peril the Laureate Has Fallen Into Thus Far

  16: The Laureate and Bertrand, Left to Drown, Assume Their Niches in the Heavenly Pantheon

  17: The Laureate Meets the Anacostin King and Learns the True Name of His Ocean Isle

  18: The Laureate Pays His Fare to Cross a River

  19: The Laureate Attends a Swine-Malden’s Tale

  20: The Laureate Attends the Swine-Malden Herself

  21: The Laureate Yet Further Attends the Swine-Malden

  22: No Ground Is Gained Towards the Laureate’s Ultimate Objective, but Neither Is Any Lost

  23: In His Efforts to Get to the Bottom of Things the Laureate Comes Within Sight of Malden, but So Far from Arriving There, Nearly Falls Into the Stars

  24: The Travelers Hear About the Singular Martyrdom of Father Joseph FitzMaurice, S.J.: a Tale Less Relevant in Appearance Than It Will Prove in Fact

  25: Further Passages from Captain John Smith’s Secret Historic of the Voiage Up the Bay of Chesapeake: Dorchester Discovered, and How the Captain First Set Foot Upon It

  26: The Journey to Cambridge, and the Laureate’s Conversation by the Way

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

  28: If the Laureate Is Adam, Then Burlingame Is the Serpent

  29: The Unhappy End of Mynheer Wilhelm Tick, As Related to the Laureate by Mary Mungummory, the Traveling Whore o’ Dorset

  30: Having Agreed That Naught Is in Men Save Perfidy, Though Not Necessarily That Jus est id quod aliens fecit, the Laureate at Last Lays Eyes on His Estate

  31: The Laureate Attains Husbandhood at No Expense Whatever of His Innocence

  32: A Marylandiad Is Brought to Birth, but Its Deliverer Fares as Badly as in Any Other Chapter

  33: The Laureate Departs from His Estate

  PART III: MALDEN EARNED

  1: The Poet Encounters a Man With Naught to Lose, and Requires Rescuing

  2: A Layman’s Pandect of Geminology Compended by Henry Burlingame, Cosmophilist

  3: A Colloquy Between Ex-Laureates of Maryland, Relating Duly the Trials of Miss Lucy Robotham and Concluding With an Assertion Not Lightly Matched for Its Implausibility

  4: The Poet Crosses Chesapeake Bay, but Not to His Intended Port of Call

  5: Confrontations and Absolutions in Limbo

  6: His Future at Stake, the Poet Reflects on a Brace of Secular Mysteries

  7: How the Ahatchwhoops Doe Choose a King Over Them

  8: The Fate of Father Joseph FitzMaurice, S.J., Is Further Illuminated, and Itself Illumines Mysteries More Tenebrous and Pregnant

  9: At Least One of the Pregnant Mysteries Is Brought to Bed, With Full Measure of Travail, but Not as Yet Delivered
to the Light

  10: The Englishing of Billy Rumbly Is Related, Purely from Hearsay, by the Traveling Whore o’ Dorset

  11: The Tale of Billy Rumbly Is Concluded by an Eye-Witness to His Englishing. Mary Mungummory Poses the Question, Does Essential Savagery Lurk Beneath the Skin of Civilization, or Does Essential Civilization Lurk Beneath the Skin of Savagery?—but Does Not Answer It

  12: The Travelers Having Proceeded Northward to Church Creek, McEvoy Out-Nobles a Nobleman, and the Poet Finds Himself Knighted Willy-Nilly

  13: His Majesty’s Provincial Wind- and Water-Mill Commissioners, With Separate Ends in View, Have Recourse on Separate Occasions to Allegory

  14: Oblivion Is Attained Twice by the Miller’s Wife, Once by the Miller Himself, and Not All by the Poet, Who Likens Life to a Shameless Playwright

  15: In Pursuit of His Manifold Objectives the Poet Meets an Unsavaged Savage Husband and an Un-englished English Wife

  16: A Sweeping Generalization Is Proposed Regarding the Conservation of Cultural Energy, and Demonstrated With the Aid of Rhetoric and Inadvertence

  17: Having Discovered One Unexpected Relative Already, the Poet Hears the Tale of the Invulnerable Castle and Acquires Another

  18: The Poet Wonders Whether the Course of Human History Is a Progress, a Drama, a Retrogression, a Cycle, an Undulation, a Vortex, a Right- or Left-Handed Spiral, a Mere Continuum, or What Have You. Certain Evidence Is Brought Forward, but of an Ambiguous and Inconclusive Nature

  19: The Poet Awakens from His Dream of Hell to Be Judged in Life by Rhadamanthus

  20: The Poet Commences His Day in Court

  21: The Poet Earns His Estate

  PART IV: THE AUTHOR APOLOGIZES TO HIS READERS; THE LAUREATE COMPOSES HIS EPITAPH

  About the Author

  PART I: THE MOMENTOUS WAGER

  1

  The Poet Is Introduced, and Differentiated from His Fellows

  IN THE LAST YEARS of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffeehouses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point.

  As poet, this Ebenezer was not better nor worse than his fellows, none of whom left behind him anything nobler than his own posterity; but four things marked him off from them. The first was his appearance: pale-haired and pale-eyed, raw-boned and gaunt-cheeked, he stood—nay, angled—nineteen hands high. His clothes were good stuff well tailored, but they hung on his frame like luffed sails on long spars. Heron of a man, lean-limbed and long-billed, he walked and sat with loose-jointed poise; his every stance was angular surprise, his each gesture half flail. Moreover there was a discomposure about his face, as though his features got on ill together: heron’s beak, wolf-hound’s forehead, pointed chin, lantern jaw, wash-blue eyes, and bony blond brows had minds of their own, went their own ways, and took up odd postures, which often as not had no relation to what one took as his mood of the moment. And these configurations were short-lived, for like restless mallards the features of his face no sooner were settled than ha! they’d be flushed, and hi! how they’d flutter, and no man could say what lay behind them.

  The second was his age: whereas most of his accomplices were scarce turned twenty, Ebenezer at the time of this chapter was more nearly thirty, yet not a whit more wise than they, and with six or seven years’ less excuse.

  The third was his origin: Ebenezer was born American, though he’d not seen his birthplace since earliest childhood. His father, Andrew Cooke 2nd, of the Parish of St. Giles in the Fields, County of Middlesex—a red-faced, white-chopped, stout-winded old lecher with flinty eye and withered arm—had spent his youth in Maryland as agent for an English manufacturer, as had his father before him, and having a sharp eye for goods and a sharper for men, had added to the Cooke estate by the time he was thirty some one thousand acres of good wood and arable land on the Choptank River. The point on which this land lay he called Cooke’s Point, and the small manor-house he built there, Malden. He married late in life and conceived twin children, Ebenezer and his sister Anna, whose mother (as if such an inordinate casting had cracked the mold) died bearing them. When the twins were but four Andrew returned to England, leaving Malden in the hands of an overseer, and thenceforth employed himself as a merchant, sending his own factors to the plantations. His affairs prospered, and the children were well provided for.

  The fourth thing that distinguished Ebenezer from his coffee-house associates was his manner: though not one of them was blessed with more talent than he needed, all of Ebenezer’s friends put on great airs when together, declaiming their verses, denigrating all the well-known poets of their time (and any members of their own circle who happened to be not on hand), boasting of their amorous conquests and their prospects for imminent success, and otherwise behaving in a manner such that, had not every other table in the coffee-house sported a like ring of coxcombs, they’d have made great nuisances of themselves. But Ebenezer himself, though his appearance rendered inconspicuousness out of the question, was bent to taciturnity. He was even chilly. Except for infrequent bursts of garrulity he rarely joined in the talk, but seemed content for the most part simply to watch the other birds preen their feathers. Some took this withdrawal as a sign of his contempt, and so were either intimidated or angered by it, according to the degree of their own self-confidence. Others took it for modesty; others for shyness; others for artistic or philosophical detachment. Had it been in fact symptom of any one of these, there would be no tale to tell; in truth, however, this manner of our poet’s grew out of something much more complicated, which warrants recounting his childhood, his adventures, and his ultimate demise.

  2

  The Remarkable Manner in Which Ebenezer Was Educated, and the No Less Remarkable Results of That Education

  EBENEZER AND ANNA had been raised together. There happening to be no other children on the estate in St. Giles, they grew up with no playmates except each other, and hence became unusually close. They played the same games together and were educated in the same subjects, since Andrew was wealthy enough to provide them with a tutor, but not with separate tutoring. Until the age of ten they even shared the same bedroom—not that space was lacking either in Andrew’s London house, on Plumtree Street, or in the later establishment at St. Giles, but because Andrew’s old housekeeper, Mrs. Twigg, who was for some years their governess, had in the beginning been so taken with the fact of their twinship that she’d made a point of keeping them together, and then later, when their increased size and presumed awareness began to embarrass her, they had come so to enjoy each other’s company that she was for a time unable to resist their combined protests at any mention of separate chambers. When the separation was finally effected, at Andrew’s orders, it was merely to adjoining rooms, between which the door was normally left open to allow for conversation.

  In the light of all this it is not surprising that even after puberty there was little difference, aside from the physical manifestations of their sex, between the two children. Both were lively, intelligent, and well-behaved. Anna was the less timid of the two, and even when Ebenezer naturally grew to be the taller and physically stronger, Anna was still the quicker and better coordinated, and therefore usually the winner in the games they played: shuttlecock, fives, or paille maille; squalls, Meg Merrilies, jackstraws, or shove ha’penny. Both were great readers, and loved the same books: among the classics, the Odyssey and the Metamorphoses, the Book of Martyrs and the Lives of the Saints; the romances of Valentine and Orson, Bevis of Hampton, and Guy
of Warwick; the tales of Robin Good-Fellow, Patient Grisel, and the Foundlings in the Wood; and among the newer books, Janeway’s Token for Children, Batchiler’s Virgins Pattern, and Fisher’s Wise Virgin, as well as Cacoethes Leaden Legacy, The Young Mans Warning-Peece, The Booke of Mery Riddles, and, shortly after their publication, Pilgrim’s Progress and Keach’s War with the Devil. Perhaps had Andrew been less preoccupied with his merchant-trading, or Mrs. Twigg with her religion, her gout, and her authority over the other servants, Anna would have been kept to her dolls and embroidery-hoops, and Ebenezer set to mastering the arts of hunting and fencing. But they were seldom subjected to direction at all, and hence drew small distinction between activities proper for little girls and those proper for little boys.

  Their favorite recreation was play-acting. Indoors or out, hour after hour, they played at pirates, soldiers, clerics, Indians, royalty, giants, martyrs, lords and ladies, or any other creatures that took their fancy, inventing action and dialogue as they played. Sometimes they would maintain the same role for days, sometimes only for minutes. Ebenezer, especially, became ingenious at disguising his assumed identity in the presence of adults, while still revealing it clearly enough to Anna, to her great delight, by some apparently innocent gesture or remark. They might spend an autumn morning playing at Adam and Eve out in the orchard, for example, and when at dinner their father forbade them to return there, on account of the mud, Ebenezer would reply with a knowing nod, “Mud’s not the worst of’t: I saw a snake as well.” And little Anna, when she had got her breath back, would declare, “It didn’t frighten me, but Eben’s forehead hath been sweating ever since,” and pass her brother the bread. At night, both before and after their separation into two rooms, they would either continue to make-believe (necessarily confining themselves to dialogue, which they found it easy to carry on in the dark) or else play word-games; of these they had a great variety, ranging from the simple “How many words do you know beginning with S?” or “How many words rhyme with faster?” to the elaborate codes, reverse pronunciations, and homemade languages of their later childhood.