John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"Then ye don't look kindly on't after all?"

"Stay, not so fast: one could as readily say the contrary — that your Hobbesian materialist should never be a gambler, for no man gambles that doth not believe in luck, and to believe in luck is to deny blind chance and cold determinism, as well as the materialist order of things. Who says Yea to Luck, in short, had as well say Yea to God, and conversely."

"In Heav'n's name, then!" Bertrand cried, rather less respectfully than at first. "What do ye think of gambling — yea or nay?"

But Ebenezer would not be pressed. " 'Tis one of those questions that have many sides," he said blithely, and turned his attention again to the gulls. Contrary to his expectations, his position aboard the Poseidon was turning out to be by no means altogether unpleasant. He had contrived to establish himself as being not another common servant but a kind of amanuensis to the Laureate, in which capacity, he was permitted access to the quarter-deck at Bertrand's side and limited converse with the gentlemen; there was no need to conceal his education, since positions of the sort he pretended to were frequently filled by destitute scholars, and by making Bertrand out to be the lofty, taciturn variety of genius, he hoped to be able to speak for him more often than not and thus protect their disguise. Moreover, he could devote as much time as he chose to his notebook and even borrow books from the gentlemen passengers without arousing suspicion; an amanuensis was expected to busy himself with ink, paper, and books, especially when his employer was a poet laureate. In short, it became ever more clear to him as the voyage progressed that his role offered most of the privileges of his true identity and none of the dangers, and he counted the disguise among his happiest inspirations. While the servants relieved their ennui with gambling and gossip about their masters and mistresses, and the ladies and gentlemen with gambling and gossip about one another, Ebenezer passed the hours agreeably in the company of his own work or that of celebrated authors of the past, with whom, since his commission, he felt a strong spiritual kinship.

Indeed, the only thing he really found objectionable, once his initial embarrassment was forgotten and he had grown accustomed to his position, was mealtimes. For one thing, the food was not what he had imagined: the last entry in his notebook, made just before he fell asleep in the stable of the King o' the Seas, had been:

Ye ask, What eat our merry Band

En Route to lovely MARYLAND?

I answer: Ne'er were such Delights

As met our Sea-sharp'd Appetites

E'er serv'd to Jove and Junos Breed

By Vulcan and by Ganymede.

To which, during his very first day as Bertrand's amanuensis, he had appended:

The Finest from two Hemispheres,

From roasted Beef to Quarter'd Deers;

The Best of new and antick Worlds,

Fine curry'd Lamb and basted Squirrels.

We wash'd all down with liquid cheer —

Barbados Rum and English Beer.

'Twere vain to seek a nobler Feast

In legend'd West or story'd East,

Than this our plenteous Shipboard Store

Provided by LORD BALTIMORE.

This even though he had in fact seen nothing at either breakfast or dinner more exotic than eggs, fresh veal, and a few indifferently prepared vegetables. But three days sufficed to exhaust the Poseidon's store of every perishable foodstuff; on the fourth appeared instead, to Ebenezer's unhappy surprise, the usual fare of sailors and sea-travelers: a weekly ration of seven pounds of bread or ship biscuit for master and man alike, with butter scarce enough to disguise its tastelessness; half a pound of salt pork and dried peas per man each mess for five days out of the week, and on the other two salt beef instead of pork — except when the weather was too foul for the cook to boil the kettle, in which case every soul aboard made do for the day with a pound of English cheese and dreams of home.

All this, however, was mere disillusionment, the fault not of Lord Baltimore, the captain of the Poseidon, or the social order, but merely of Ebenezer's own naïveté or, as he himself felt mildly, not troubling to put it into words, of the nature of Reality, which had failed to measure up to his expectations. In any case, though the food grew no more palatable, he soon became sufficiently inured to it not to feel disappointed between meals. A more considerable objection — which led him one afternoon to profess his discontent to Bertrand — was that he had to eat with the servants after the ladies and gentlemen were finished.

"Think not 'tis the mere ignominy of't," he assured his valet hastily, "though in truth they are an uncouth lot and are forever making sport of me. 'Tis you I fear for; that you'll be drawn into talk at the Captain's table and discover yourself for an ass. Thrice daily I wait for news of your disgrace, and despair of carrying the fraud to Maryland!"

"Ah, now, sir, have no fear." They were in the ship's waist, and Bertrand seemed less concerned with Ebenezer's complaint than with watching a young lady who stood with the Captain by the taffrail. "There's no great trick to this gentleman business, that I can see; any man could play the part that hath a ready wit and keeps his eyes and ears open."

"Indeed! I'd say so much for my disguise, perhaps; they are no fools you dine with, though, but men of means and breeding."

But so far from being chastened by this remark, the valet actually challenged it, still watching the maid more than his master while he talked.

"Marry, sir, none knows better than your servant the merits of wealth and birth," he declared benignly. "Yet, may I hang for't if any man was e'er more bright or virtuous for either." He went on to swear by all his experience with fine ladies and gentlemen, both as their servant and as their peer, that no poor scullery maid among Ebenezer's messmates was more a hussy than yonder maiden on the poop, for example, whom he identified as one Miss Lucy Robotham. "For all her fine clothes and fancy speech, sir, she blushed not a blush this noontime when the Captain pinched her 'neath the table, but smartly pinched him back! And not a half hour later, what time I took her hand to help her up the stairway, what did she do if not make a scratching in my palm? A whore's a whore whate'er her station," he concluded, "and a fool a fool whate'er his wealth."

Ebenezer did not question the verity of this democratic notion, but he denied its relevance to the problem. " 'Tis not character and mother wit that make your gentleman, Bertrand," he said, adding the name in order to draw his eyes from Miss Robotham. " 'Tis manners and education. By a thousand signs the gentleman knows his peer — a turn of phrase, a choice of wine, a flourish of the quill — and by as many spies the fraud or parvenu. Be you never so practiced at aping 'em, 'tis but a matter of time till they find you out. A slip of the tongue, a slip of the fork: any trifle might betray you."

"Aye," laughed the other, "but for what, prithee?"

"Why, for not a gentleman 'to the manner born,' as't were!" Ebenezer was disturbed by the increasing arrogance of his servant, who had not wanted presumption to begin with. "How shall you answer them book for book, that have no books to your credit? How shall you hold forth on the new plays in London or the state of things on the Continent, that have not been through a university? Your true authentic gentleman is gallant but not a fop, witty but no buffoon, grave but not an owl, informed but not a pedant — in sum, he hath of every quality neither excess nor defect, but the very Golden Mean."