John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"Thus might others be instructed by my loss," he reflected grimly. "But stay — " He remembered the details of his abuse at the hands of the Poseidon's crew, the rape of the Cyprian, Burlingame's pig, and other indelicate features of his adventure. " 'Twill ne'er be printed."

For some moments he was bitterly discouraged, for this reflection implied a cruel paradox: the very wickedness of one's afflictions can prevent one's avenging them by public exposure. But he soon saw a means to circumvent that difficulty.

"I shall make the piece a fiction! I'll be a tradesman, say — nay, a factor that comes to Maryland on's business, with every good opinion of the country, and is swindled of his goods and property. All my trials I'll reconceive to suit the plot and alter just enough to pass the printer!"

The sequence instantly unfolded in his imagination, and he made a quick prose outline lest it slip away. He could do no more just then; exhausted by the effort, he slept for several hours dreamlessly. However, when he reawakened, the vision was still clear in his mind and what was more, the Hudibrastic couplets wherewith he meant to render it began springing readily to hand. He could scarcely wait to launch into composition: as soon as he was strong enough he left his bed, but only because the writing desk in his chamber was more comfortable to work at; there he spent day after day, and week after week, setting down his long poem. So jealous was he of his time that he rebuffed the curiosity and occasional solicitude of Smith, Sowter, and the kitchen-women; he demanded — and, somewhat to his surprise, received — his meals at his desk, and never left his room except to take health-walks in the late October and November sun. All thoughts of suicide departed from him for the time, as did, on the other hand, all thoughts of regaining his lost estate. He was not disturbed or even curious about the absence of any word from Henry Burlingame. When, a week or ten days after his awakening from coma, his legal wife Susan Warren reappeared at Malden, he thanked her brusquely for her aid in nursing him back to health, but although he understood from the kitchen-women that at Mitchell's and Smith's direction she had become a prostitute exclusively for the Indians, he neither protested her activities or her return to Mitchell on the one hand, nor sought annulment of his marriage on the other.

Malden itself was becoming every day more evidently a gambling house, tavern, brothel, and opium den: Susan brought the brown phials with her from Calvert County, and Mary Mungummory — who, the poet learned, had previously resisted Mitchell's efforts to draw her into his organization — moved in with her entire retinue of doxies and accepted the office of madame of the house. Every night the whole point bustled: planters came from all over Dorset by horse and wagon, and by boat from Talbot County as well, and the house rang with their debauchery. From the mid-county fresh marshes and even the salt marshes of the lower county, twenty and thirty miles to the southeast, Abaco, Wiwash, and Nanticoke Indians came to engage Susan and two of Mary Mungummory's least-favored employees in a tobacco-curing house set aside for the purpose. But Ebenezer walked obliviously past the gaming tables, through the rooms of intoxicated, narcotized, and lecherous Marylanders, and across the tobacco fields where knots of solemn Indians moved toward the curing-house. He soon became a figure of fun among the clients, but their jests met with the same indifference with which he rewarded Susan when, upon his entry into a room, she would follow him with troubled and inquiring eyes.

Throughout November he labored at the task of casting into rhyme the sorry episodes of his journey:

Freighted with Fools, from Plimouth Sound,

To MARYLAND our Ship was bound;

Where we arriv'd, in dreadful Pain,

Shock'd by the Terrors of the Main. .

He recalled his first encounter with the planters in St. Mary's County, whom he had mistaken for field hands —

. . a numerous Crew,

In Shirts and Drawers of Scotch -cloth blew,

With neither Stocking, Hat, nor Shoe. .

— and to their description appended the couplets written long before under different circumstances, painful now to remember:

Figures, so strange, no GOD design'd

To be a Part of Human-kind:

But Wanton Nature, void of Rest,

Moulded the brittle Clay in Jest . .

Shifting with masterly nonchalance from tetrametric to pentametric verses, he next proceeded to flay the inhabitants of his poetical bailiwick —

. . that Shore where no good Sense is Found,

But Conversation's lost, and Manners drown'd. .

— and thereafter to describe in turn, once more in four-footed lines, his trip across the Patuxent River in a canoe:

Cut from a Poplar tree, or Pine,

And fashion'd like a Trough for Swine. .

The encounter with Susan's herd of pigs:

This put me in a pannick Fright,

Lest I should be devour'd quite. .

His lawful wife the swine-maiden herself:

. . by her loose and sluttish Dress,

She rather seem'd a Bedlam-Bess. .

His fruitless vigil in the barnyard:

Where, riding on a Limb astride,

Night and the Branches did me hide,

And I the De'el and Snake defy'd. .

The spectacle of the open-air assizes:

. . the Crowds did there resort,

Which Justice made, and Law, their Sport,

In their Sagacious County Court. .

The trial:

The planting Rabble being met,

Their drunken Worships likewise sat,

Cryer proclaims the Noise shou'd cease,

And streight the Lawyers broke the Peace,

Wrangling for Plaintiff and Defendant,

I thought they ne'er wou'd make an End on't,

With Nonsense, Stuff, and false Quotations

With brazen Lies, and Allegations. .

Judge Hammaker himself:

. . who, to the Shame,

Of all the Bench, cou'd write his Name. .

His night in the corncrib:

I lay me down secur'd from Fray,

And soundly snor'd till break o' Day;

When waking fresh, I sat upright,

And found my Shoes were vanish'd quite,

Hat, Wig, and Stockings, all were fled,

From this extended Indian Bed. .

The kitchen-whores at Malden:

. .a jolly Female Crew,

Were deep engag'd at Lanterloo,

In Nightrails white, with dirty Mien,

Such Sights are scarce in England seen:

I thought them first some Witches, bent

On black Designs, in dire Convent;

. .who, with affected Air,

Had nicely learn'd to Curse and Swear. .

His illness:

A fiery Pulse beat in my Veins,

From cold I felt resembling Pains;

This cursed Seasoning I remember

Lasted. . till cold December;

Nor cou'd it then it's Quarter shift.

Until by Carduus turn'd adrift:

And had my doct'ress wanted Skill,

Or Kitch'n-Physick at her Will,

My Father's Son had lost his Lands. .

And his exploitation by the versatile Sowter:

. . and ambodexter Quack,

Who learnedly had got the Knack

Of giving Clysters, making Pills,

Of filing Bonds, and forging Wills . .

When at last he had recounted the sum of his misfortunes by means of the sot-weed-factor conceit, he imagined himself fleeing to an outbound ship, and so concluded ferociously: