The Sot-Weed Factor (103 page)

Such accolades chagrined and wisened the poet, who accepted not a word of them. In 1711, when old Andrew died and Ebenezer was obliged to sail to London for the purpose of probating his father's will, he permitted himself to be wined and dined by Bragg and Ben Oliver, who had become his partner in the printing-house (Tom Trent, they informed him, had renounced poetry and the Established Church to become a Jesuit; Dick Merriweather, after wooing Death in a hundred unpublished odes and sonnets, had made such a conquest of that Dark Lady that at length, his horse rearing unexpectedly and throwing him to the cobbles, she had turned into an eternal embrace what he had meant as a mere flirtation), but to their entreaties for a sequel to the poem --
a Fur-and-Hide Factor
or
a Sot-Weed Factor's Revenge
-- he turned a deaf ear.

Truth to tell, he had little to say any more in verse. From time to time a couplet would occur to him as he worked about his estate, but the tumultuous days and tranquil years behind him had either blunted his poetic gift or sharpened his critical faculities:
The Sot-Weed Factor
itself he came to see as an artless work, full of clumsy spleen, obscure allusions, and ponderous or merely foppish levities; and none of his later conceptions struck him as worthy of the pen. In 1717, deciding that whatever obligation he owed to his father was amply satisfied, he sold his moiety of Cooke's Point to one Edward Cooke -- that same poor cuckold whose identity Ebenezer had once assumed to escape Captain Mitchell -- and Anna hers to Major Henry Trippe of the Dorset militia; though "their" son Andrew III was by this time a man of twenty-one and had already sustained whatever wounds the scandal of his birth was likely to inflict, they moved first to Kent and later to Prince George's County. For income, Ebenezer -- now in his early fifties -- performed various clerical odd-jobs as deputy to Henry and Bennett Lowe, Receivers General of the Province, with whom he became associated (the Author regrets to say) by reason of his conviction that their brother Nicholas was actually Henry Burlingame. Anna, be it said, did not permit herself to share this delusion, though she indulged it in her brother; but Ebenezer grew more fixed in it every day. If, indeed, it
was
a delusion: Nicholas Lowe did not in the least resemble Burlingame's past impersonation of him or any other of the former tutor's disguises, but he was of the proper age and height, possessed a curious wit and broad education, and even displayed what can only be called "cosmophilist" tendencies now and again. Furthermore, to all of Ebenezer's hints and veiled inquiries he replied with a mischievous smile or even a shrug. . . But no! Like Anna, we shall resist the temptation to
folie
à
deux
: age has made our hero fond, like many another, and there's an end on it!

Two things occurred in 1728 to conclude our history. Old Charles Calvert was then a baker's dozen years under the sod and thus unable to savor, as did our poet in his sixty-second year, this final irony concerning
The Sot-Weed Factor:
that its net effect was precisely what Baltimore had hoped to gain from a
Marylandiad,
and precisely the reverse of its author's intention. Maryland, in part because of the well-known poem, acquired in the early eighteenth century a reputation for graciousness and refinement comparable to Virginia's, and a number of excellent families were induced to settle there. In recognition of this fact, the fifth Lord Baltimore (that famous young rake and dilettante referred to earlier) was moved to write a letter to the aging poet, from which the following excerpt will suffice:

My Grandfather & namesake, for all his unquestiond Virtues, was no familiar of the Arts, and thwarted in his original purpose in calling you Laureat (w
^ch
be it said We are confident he did, notwithstanding his later denials thereof), he was unable to perceive the value of your gift to Maryland.
We do hence mark it fit, that now, when a generation hath attested the merits of your work, you s
^hd
accept in fact, albeit belatedly, that office & title the qualifications whereto you have so long since fulfill'd. Namely, Poet & Laureat of the Province of Maryland. . .

Ebenezer merely smiled at the invitation and shook his head at his sister's suggestion that he accept it.

"Nay, Anna, 'tis a poor climate for a poet, is Maryland's, nor is my talent hardy enough to live in't. Let Baltimore give his title to one whose pen deserves it; as for me, methinks I'll to the muse no more!"

But that same year saw the death of Nicholas Lowe, which so touched the poet (owing to his delusion) that he broke his vow and his long silence to publish, in the
Maryland Gazette,
an
Elegy on the Death of the Hon. Nicholas Lowe, Esq.,
containing sundry allusions to his ambivalent feelings towards that gentleman. Thereafter, either because he felt a ripening of his talents or merely because breaking one's vow, like losing one's innocence, is an irreparable affair which one had as well make the best of (the Reader will have to judge which), he was not sparing of his pen: in 1730 he brought out the long-awaited sequel,
Sot-Weed Redivivus,
or
The Planter's Looking-Glass,
which, alas, had not the success of its original; the following year he published another satirical narrative, this one dealing with Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia, and a revised (and emasculated) edition of
The Sot-Weed Factor.
In the spring of 1732, at the age of sixty-six, he succumbed to a sort of quinsy, and his beloved sister (who was to follow him not long after), in setting his affairs in order, discovered among his papers an epitaph, which, though undated, the Author presumes to be his final work, and appends for the benefit of interested scholars:

Here moulds a posing, foppish Actor,

Author of
THE SOT-WEED FACTOR,

Falsely prais'd. Take Heed, who sees this

Epitaph; look ye to
Jesus!

Labour not for Earthly Glory:

Fame's
a fickle Slut, and whory.

From thy
Fancy's
chast Couch drive her:

He's a Fool who'll strive to swive her!

Regrettably, his heirs saw fit not to immortalize their sire with this inscription, but instead had his headstone graved with the usual piffle. However, either his warning got about or else his complaint was accurate that Maryland's air -- in any case, Dorchester's -- ill supports the delicate muse, for to the best of the Author's knowledge her marshes have spawned no poet since Ebenezer Cooke, Gentleman, Laureate of the Province.

About the Author

John Barth,
born May 27, 1930, in Cambridge, Maryland, was only twenty-six when his first novel was published. Titled
The Floating Opera,
it was the runner-up for the 1956 National Book Award. Mr. Barth's other works include
The End of the Road, Lost in the Funhouse, Chimera, Giles Goat-Boy,
and
The Sot-Weed Factor.
In 1965, a poll of two hundred prominent authors, critics, and editors placed John Barth among the best American novelists to emerge in the past twenty years.

John Barth holds an A.B. and an M.A. degree from Johns Hopkins University. From 1953 to 1965 he taught English at Pennsylvania State University. He is currently professor of English at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is married and has three children.

Scan Notes, v3.0 (RTF only):
This was a tough proof because of the language used and the preponderance of apostrophes, but I spent many hours on't and 'tis about as close to perfect as one might expect in a file such as this one. One thing I did do is insert a space between all quotes and apostrophes. Though this may seem to be annoying at times, it looked much worse to let them run together. Italics and special characters are intact just as they were in the book. If you change the format of this file, be careful that you do not lose the formatting in the histories of the words that resemble such: "w
^ch"
, of which there is many.