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Letters by John Barth Page A

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yet into rest; indeed we can scarcely hold pen to paper for drowsiness; must count on another to post this ultimatum. But justice now is hatched and stirring: when you next hear from us (a month hence, if you have not by then made the reparations our attorney will demand) we shall be fully awake and at work on our grand project. Do not imagine that because your thefts are of gn_t-like inconsequence by comparison with our Revolutionary NOVEL, they will go unpunished. For as our noble forebear, while conquering Europe and administering the Empire, could attend with equal firmness to such details as correcting our namesake’s American marriage, so we, while supervising the Novel Revolution, will not fail to attend also to your exposure and ruin.
    B.
    cc. T. Andrews
2 encl.
    (ENCL. 2)
    Enclosure #1
    On board the Gadf_y III, Lake Chautauqua, New York, 14 July 1966
To His Majesty George III of England
Tidewater Farms, Redmans Neck, Maryland 21612
    Your Royal Highness,
    On 22 June 1815, in order to establish a new and sounder base of empire, we abdicated the throne of France and withdrew to the port of Rochefort, where 2 of our frigates—new, fast, well-manned and -gunned—lay ready to run Your Majesty’s blockade of the harbor and carry us to America. Captain Ponée of the Méduse planned to engage on the night of 10 July the principal English vessel, H.M.S. Bellerophon, a 74-gunner but old and slow, against which he estimated the Méduse could hold out for 2 hours while her sister ship, with our party aboard, outran the lesser blockading craft. The plan was audacious but certain of success. Reluctant, however, to sacrifice the Méduse, we resolved instead like a cunning wrestler to turn our adversary’s strength to our advantage: to reach our goal by means of, rather than despite, Your Majesty’s navy; and so we addressed to your son the Prince Regent the following:
    Isle of Aix, 12 July 1815
    In view of the factions that divide my country and of the enmity of the greatest powers in Europe I have brought my political career to a close and am going like Themistocles to seat myself on the hearthstone of the British people. I put myself under the protection of English Law and request that protection of Your Royal Highness, as the most powerful, the most trustworthy, and the most generous of my enemies.
    Having sent our aide-de-camp before us with this message and instructions to request from the Prince Regent passports to America, on Bastille Day we put ourself and our entourage in the hands of Commander Maitland aboard Bellerophon and left France. Alas, Your Majesty’s own betrayal and confinement on the mischievous charge of insanity should have taught us that our confidence in your son and his ministers was ill placed, more especially as it is with the Muse of the Past that we have ever gone to school for present direction. When therefore we learned from Admiral Sir George Cockburn that our destination was to be, not London and Baltimore, but St. Helena, like a derelict student we applied in vain to our old schoolmistress for vindication:
    On board Bellerophon, at sea
    …I appeal to History. History will say that an enemy who waged war for 20 years against the English people came of his own free will, in his misfortune, to seek asylum under her laws. What more striking proof could he give of his esteem and his trust? But what reply was made in England to such magnanimity’? There was a pretense of extending a hospitable hand to that enemy, and when he had yielded himself up in good faith, he was sacrificed.
    Our maroonment on that desolated rock, under the boorish Cockburn and his more boorish successors, we need not describe to 1 so long and even more ignobly gaoled. We, at least, had the consolation that our exile was both temporary and as it were voluntary: we needed no Perseus to save us; we could have escaped at any time, and waited 7 years only because that period was needed for us to exploit to best advantage our

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