Sartor Resartus


Book I

  Chap.                                                   
    I. Preliminary                                           
    Ii. Editorial Difficulties                               
   Iii. Reminiscences                                       
    Iv. Characteristics                                     
     V. The World In Clothes                                 
    Vi. Aprons                                               
   Vii. Miscellaneous-Historical                             
  Viii. The World Out Of Clothes                             
    Ix. Adamitism                                             
     X. Pure Reason                                           
    Xi. Prospective                                           

Book II

     I. Genesis                                               
    Ii. Idyllic                                               
   Iii. Pedagogy                                             
    Iv. Getting Under Way                                     
     V. Romance                                             
    Vi. Sorrows Of Teufelsdröckh                             
   Vii. The Everlasting No                                   
  Viii. Centre Of Indifference                               
    Ix. The Everlasting Yea                                 
     X. Pause                                               

Book III

     I. Incident In Modern History                           
    Ii. Church-Clothes                                       
   Iii. Symbols                                             
    Iv. Helotage                                             
     V. The Phoenix                                         
    Vi. Old Clothes                                         
   Vii. Organic Filaments                                   
  Viii. Natural Supernaturalism                             
    Ix. Circumspective                                     
     X. The Dandiacal Body                                   
    Xi. Tailors                                             
   Xii. Farewell

Book First




Chapter I

Preliminary


Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch
of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less
effect, for five-thousand years and upwards; how, in these times
especially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely
than ever, but innumerable Rush-lights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled
thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest
cranny or doghole in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated,--it might
strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or
nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philosophy
or History, has been written on the subject of Clothes.

Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as perfect: Lagrange, it is well
known, has proved that the Planetary System, on this scheme, will
endure forever; Laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it
could not have been made on any other scheme. Whereby, at least, our
nautical Logbooks can be better kept; and water-transport of all kinds
has grown more commodious. Of Geology and Geognosy we know enough:
what with the labours of our Werners and Huttons, what with the ardent
genius of their disciples, it has come about that now, to many a Royal
Society, the Creation of a World is little more mysterious than the
cooking of a dumpling; concerning which last, indeed, there have been
minds to whom the question, _How the apples were got in_, presented
difficulties. Why mention our disquisitions on the Social Contract, on
the Standard of Taste, on the Migrations of the Herring? Then, have we
not a Doctrine of Rent, a Theory of Value; Philosophies of Language,
of History, of Pottery, of Apparitions, of Intoxicating Liquors? Man's
whole life and environment have been laid open and elucidated;
scarcely a fragment or fibre of his Soul, Body, and Possessions, but
has been probed, dissected, distilled, desiccated, and scientifically
decomposed: our spiritual Faculties, of which it appears there are not
a few, have their Stewarts, Cousins, Royer Collards: every cellular,
vascular, muscular Tissue glories in its Lawrences, Majendies,
Bichâts.

How, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, that the grand
Tissue of all Tissues, the only real Tissue, should have been quite
overlooked by Science,--the vestural Tissue, namely, of woollen or
other cloth; which Man's Soul wears as its outmost wrappage and
overall; wherein his whole other Tissues are included and screened,
his whole Faculties work, his whole Self lives, moves, and has its
being? For if, now and then, some straggling, broken-winged thinker
has cast an owl's-glance into this obscure region, the most have
soared over it altogether heedless; regarding Clothes as a property,
not an accident, as quite natural and spontaneous, like the leaves of
trees, like the plumage of birds. In all speculations they have
tacitly figured man as a _Clothed Animal_; whereas he is by nature a
_Naked Animal_; and only in certain circumstances, by purpose and
device, masks himself in Clothes. Shakespeare says, we are creatures
that look before and after: the more surprising that we do not look
round a little, and see what is passing under our very eyes.

But here, as in so many other cases, Germany, learned, indefatigable,
deep-thinking Germany comes to our aid. It is, after all, a blessing
that, in these revolutionary times, there should be one country where
abstract Thought can still take shelter; that while the din and frenzy
of Catholic Emancipations, and Rotten Boroughs, and Revolts of Paris,
deafen every French and every English ear, the German can stand
peaceful on his scientific watch-tower; and, to the raging, struggling
multitude here and elsewhere, solemnly, from hour to hour, with
preparatory blast of cowhorn, emit his _Höret ihr Herren und lasset's
Euch sagen_; in other words, tell the Universe, which so often forgets
that fact, what o'clock it really is. Not unfrequently the Germans
have been blamed for an unprofitable diligence; as if they struck into
devious courses, where nothing was to be had but the toil of a rough
journey; as if, forsaking the gold-mines of finance and that political
slaughter of fat oxen whereby a man himself grows fat, they were apt
to run goose-hunting into regions of bilberries and crowberries, and
be swallowed up at last in remote peat-bogs. Of that unwise science,
which, as our Humorist expresses it,--

                'By geometric scale
  Doth take the size of pots of ale;'

still more, of that altogether misdirected industry, which is seen
vigorously thrashing mere straw, there can nothing defensive be said.
In so far as the Germans are chargeable with such, let them take the
consequence. Nevertheless, be it remarked, that even a Russian steppe
has tumuli and gold ornaments; also many a scene that looks desert and
rock-bound from the distance, will unfold itself, when visited, into
rare valleys. Nay, in any case, would Criticism erect not only
finger-posts and turnpikes, but spiked gates and impassable barriers,
for the mind of man? It is written, 'Many shall run to and fro, and
knowledge shall be increased.' Surely the plain rule is, Let each
considerate person have his way, and see what it will lead to. For not
this man and that man, but all men make up mankind, and their united
tasks the task of mankind. How often have we seen some such
adventurous, and perhaps much-censured wanderer light on some
out-lying, neglected, yet vitally-momentous province; the hidden
treasures of which he first discovered, and kept proclaiming till the
general eye and effort were directed thither, and the conquest was
completed;--thereby, in these his seemingly so aimless rambles,
planting new standards, founding new habitable colonies, in the
immeasurable circumambient realm of Nothingness and Night! Wise man
was he who counselled that Speculation should have free course, and
look fearlessly towards all the thirty-two points of the compass,
whithersoever and howsoever it listed.

Perhaps it is proof of the stunted condition in which pure Science,
especially pure moral Science, languishes among us English; and how
our mercantile greatness, and invaluable Constitution, impressing a
political or other immediately practical tendency on all English
culture and endeavour, cramps the free flight of Thought,--that this,
not Philosophy of Clothes, but recognition even that we have no such
Philosophy, stands here for the first time published in our language.
What English intellect could have chosen such a topic, or by chance
stumbled on it? But for that same unshackled, and even sequestered
condition of the German Learned, which permits and induces them to
fish in all manner of waters, with all manner of nets, it seems
probable enough, this abstruse Inquiry might, in spite of the results
it leads to, have continued dormant for indefinite periods. The Editor
of these sheets, though otherwise boasting himself a man of confirmed
speculative habits, and perhaps discursive enough, is free to confess,
that never, till these last months, did the above very plain
considerations, on our total want of a Philosophy of Clothes, occur to
him; and then, by quite foreign suggestion. By the arrival, namely, of
a new Book from Professor Teufelsdröckh of Weissnichtwo; treating
expressly of this subject, and in a style which, whether understood or
not, could not even by the blindest be overlooked. In the present
Editor's way of thought, this remarkable Treatise, with its Doctrines,
whether as judicially acceded to, or judicially denied, has not
remained without effect.

'_Die Kleider, ihr Werden und Wirken_ (Clothes, their Origin and
Influence): _von Diog. Teufelsdröckh, J.U.D. etc._ _Stillschweigen und
Co^{gnie}._ _Weissnichtwo_, 1831.

'Here,' says the _Weissnichtwo'sche Anzeiger_, 'comes a Volume of that
extensive, close-printed, close-meditated sort, which, be it spoken
with pride, is seen only in Germany, perhaps only in Weissnichtwo.
Issuing from the hitherto irreproachable Firm of Stillschweigen and
Company, with every external furtherance, it is of such internal
quality as to set Neglect at defiance.' * * * * 'A work,' concludes
the wellnigh enthusiastic Reviewer, 'interesting alike to the
antiquary, the historian, and the philosophic thinker; a masterpiece
of boldness, lynx-eyed acuteness, and rugged independent Germanism and
Philanthropy (_derber Kerndeutschheit und Menschenliebe_); which will
not, assuredly, pass current without opposition in high places; but
must and will exalt the almost new name of Teufelsdröckh to the first
ranks of Philosophy, in our German Temple of Honour.'

Mindful of old friendship, the distinguished Professor, in this the
first blaze of his fame, which however does not dazzle him, sends
hither a Presentation-copy of his Book; with compliments and encomiums
which modesty forbids the present Editor to rehearse; yet without
indicated wish or hope of any kind, except what may be implied in the
concluding phrase: _Möchte es_ (this remarkable Treatise) _auch im
Brittischen Boden gedeihen_!

Chapter II

Editorial Difficulties


If for a speculative man, 'whose seedfield,' in the sublime words of
the Poet, 'is Time,' no conquest is important but that of new ideas,
then might the arrival of Professor Teufelsdröckh's Book be marked
with chalk in the Editor's calendar. It is indeed an 'extensive
Volume,' of boundless, almost formless contents, a very Sea of
Thought; neither calm nor clear, if you will; yet wherein the toughest
pearl-diver may dive to his utmost depth, and return not only with
sea-wreck but with true orients.

Directly on the first perusal, almost on the first deliberate
inspection, it became apparent that here a quite new Branch of
Philosophy, leading to as yet undescried ulterior results, was
disclosed; farther, what seemed scarcely less interesting, a quite new
human Individuality, an almost unexampled personal character, that,
namely, of Professor Teufelsdröckh the Discloser. Of both which
novelties, as far as might be possible, we resolved to master the
significance. But as man is emphatically a proselytising creature, no
sooner was such mastery even fairly attempted, than the new question
arose: How might this acquired good be imparted to others, perhaps in
equal need thereof: how could the Philosophy of Clothes, and the
Author of such Philosophy, be brought home, in any measure, to the
business and bosoms of our own English Nation? For if new-got gold is
said to burn the pockets till it be cast forth into circulation, much
more may new truth.

Here, however, difficulties occurred. The first thought naturally was
to publish Article after Article on this remarkable Volume, in such
widely-circulating Critical Journals as the Editor might stand
connected with, or by money or love procure access to. But, on the
other hand, was it not clear that such matter as must here be revealed,
and treated of, might endanger the circulation of any Journal extant?
If, indeed, all party-divisions in the State could have been abolished,
Whig, Tory, and Radical, embracing in discrepant union; and all the
Journals of the Nation could have been jumbled into one Journal, and
the Philosophy of Clothes poured forth in incessant torrents therefrom,
the attempt had seemed possible. But, alas, what vehicle of that sort
have we, except _Fraser's Magazine_? A vehicle all strewed
(figuratively speaking) with the maddest Waterloo-Crackers, exploding
distractively and destructively, wheresoever the mystified passenger
stands or sits; nay, in any case, understood to be, of late years, a
vehicle full to overflowing, and inexorably shut! Besides, to state the
Philosophy of Clothes without the Philosopher, the ideas of
Teufelsdröckh without something of his personality, was it not to
insure both of entire misapprehension? Now for Biography, had it been
otherwise admissible, there were no adequate documents, no hope of
obtaining such, but rather, owing to circumstances, a special despair.
Thus did the Editor see himself, for the while, shut out from all
public utterance of these extraordinary Doctrines, and constrained to
revolve them, not without disquietude, in the dark depths of his own
mind.

So had it lasted for some months; and now the Volume on Clothes, read
and again read, was in several points becoming lucid and lucent; the
personality of its Author more and more surprising, but, in spite of
all that memory and conjecture could do, more and more enigmatic;
whereby the old disquietude seemed fast settling into fixed
discontent,--when altogether unexpectedly arrives a Letter from Herr
Hofrath Heuschrecke, our Professor's chief friend and associate in
Weissnichtwo, with whom we had not previously corresponded. The
Hofrath, after much quite extraneous matter, began dilating largely on
the 'agitation and attention' which the Philosophy of Clothes was
exciting in its own German Republic of Letters; on the deep
significance and tendency of his Friend's Volume; and then, at length,
with great circumlocution, hinted at the practicability of conveying
'some knowledge of it, and of him, to England, and through England to
the distant West': a work on Professor Teufelsdröckh 'were undoubtedly
welcome to the _Family_, the _National_, or any other of those
patriotic _Libraries_, at present the glory of British Literature';
might work revolutions in Thought; and so forth;--in conclusion,
intimating not obscurely, that should the present Editor feel disposed
to undertake a Biography of Teufelsdröckh, he, Hofrath Heuschrecke,
had it in his power to furnish the requisite Documents.

As in some chemical mixture, that has stood long evaporating, but
would not crystallise, instantly when the wire or other fixed
substance is introduced, crystallisation commences, and rapidly
proceeds till the whole is finished, so was it with the Editor's mind
and this offer of Heuschrecke's. Form rose out of void solution and
discontinuity; like united itself with like in definite arrangement:
and soon either in actual vision and possession, or in fixed
reasonable hope, the image of the whole Enterprise had shaped itself,
so to speak, into a solid mass. Cautiously yet courageously, through
the twopenny post, application to the famed redoubtable OLIVER YORKE
was now made: an interview, interviews with that singular man have
taken place; with more of assurance on our side, with less of satire
(at least of open satire) on his, than we anticipated;--for the rest,
with such issue as is now visible. As to those same 'patriotic
_Libraries_,' the Hofrath's counsel could only be viewed with silent
amazement; but with his offer of Documents we joyfully and almost
instantaneously closed. Thus, too, in the sure expectation of these,
we already see our task begun; and this our _Sartor Resartus_, which
is properly a 'Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh,' hourly
advancing.

       *       *       *       *       *

Of our fitness for the Enterprise, to which we have such title and
vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting to say more. Let the British
reader study and enjoy, in simplicity of heart, what is here presented
him, and with whatever metaphysical acumen and talent for meditation
he is possessed of. Let him strive to keep a free, open sense; cleared
from the mists of prejudice, above all from the paralysis of cant; and
directed rather to the Book itself than to the Editor of the Book. Who
or what such Editor may be, must remain conjectural, and even
insignificant:[1] it is a voice publishing tidings of the Philosophy
of Clothes; undoubtedly a Spirit addressing Spirits: whoso hath ears,
let him hear.

    [1] With us even he still communicates in some sort of mask,
        or muffler: and, we have reason to think, under a feigned
        name!--O. Y.

On one other point the Editor thinks it needful to give warning:
namely, that he is animated with a true though perhaps a feeble
attachment to the Institutions of our Ancestors; and minded to defend
these, according to ability, at all hazards; nay, it was partly with a
view to such defence that he engaged in this undertaking. To stem, or
if that be impossible, profitably to divert the current of Innovation,
such a Volume as Teufelsdröckh's, if cunningly planted down, were no
despicable pile, or floodgate, in the logical wear.

For the rest, be it nowise apprehended, that any personal connexion of
ours with Teufelsdröckh, Heuschrecke, or this Philosophy of Clothes
can pervert our judgment, or sway us to extenuate or exaggerate.
Powerless, we venture to promise, are those private Compliments
themselves. Grateful they may well be; as generous illusions of
friendship; as fair mementos of bygone unions, of those nights and
suppers of the gods, when, lapped in the symphonies and harmonies of
Philosophic Eloquence, though with baser accompaniments, the present
Editor revelled in that feast of reason, never since vouchsafed him in
so full measure! But what then? _Amicus Plato, magis amica veritas_;
Teufelsdröckh is our friend, Truth is our divinity. In our historical
and critical capacity, we hope we are strangers to all the world; have
feud or favour with no one,--save indeed the Devil, with whom, as with
the Prince of Lies and Darkness, we do at all times wage internecine
war. This assurance, at an epoch when puffery and quackery have
reached a height unexampled in the annals of mankind, and even English
Editors, like Chinese Shopkeepers, must write on their door-lintels
_No cheating here_,--we thought it good to premise.

Chapter III

Reminiscences


To the Author's private circle the appearance of this singular Work on
Clothes must have occasioned little less surprise than it has to the
rest of the world. For ourselves, at least, few things have been more
unexpected. Professor Teufelsdröckh, at the period of our acquaintance
with him, seemed to lead a quite still and self-contained life: a man
devoted to the higher Philosophies, indeed; yet more likely, if he
published at all, to publish a refutation of Hegel and Bardili, both
of whom, strangely enough, he included under a common ban; than to
descend, as he has here done, into the angry noisy Forum, with an
Argument that cannot but exasperate and divide. Not, that we can
remember, the Philosophy of Clothes once touched upon between us. If
through the high, silent, meditative Transcendentalism of our Friend
we detected any practical tendency whatever, it was at most Political,
and towards a certain prospective, and for the present quite
speculative, Radicalism; as indeed some correspondence, on his part,
with Herr Oken of Jena was now and then suspected; though his special
contribution to the _Isis_ could never be more than surmised at. But,
at all events, nothing Moral, still less anything Didactico-Religious,
was looked for from him.

Well do we recollect the last words he spoke in our hearing; which
indeed, with the Night they were uttered in, are to be forever
remembered. Lifting his huge tumbler of _Gukguk_,[2] and for a moment
lowering his tobacco-pipe, he stood up in full Coffee-house (it was
_Zur Grünen Gans_, the largest in Weissnichtwo, where all the
Virtuosity, and nearly all the Intellect of the place assembled of an
evening); and there, with low, soul-stirring tone, and the look truly
of an angel, though whether of a white or of a black one might be
dubious, proposed this toast: _Die Sache der Armen in Gottes und
Teufels Namen_ (The Cause of the Poor, in Heaven's name and ----'s)!
One full shout, breaking the leaden silence; then a gurgle of
innumerable emptying bumpers, again followed by universal cheering,
returned him loud acclaim. It was the finale of the night: resuming
their pipes; in the highest enthusiasm, amid volumes of tobacco-smoke;
triumphant, cloud-capt without and within, the assembly broke up, each
to his thoughtful pillow. _Bleibt doch ein echter Spass- und
Galgen-vogel_, said several; meaning thereby that, one day, he would
probably be hanged for his democratic sentiments. _Wo steckt doch der
Schalk?_ added they, looking round: but Teufelsdröckh had retired by
private alleys, and the Compiler of these pages beheld him no more.

    [2] Gukguk is unhappily only an academical-beer.

In such scenes has it been our lot to live with this Philosopher, such
estimate to form of his purposes and powers. And yet, thou brave
Teufelsdröckh, who could tell what lurked in thee? Under those thick
locks of thine, so long and lank, overlapping roof-wise the gravest
face we ever in this world saw, there dwelt a most busy brain. In thy
eyes too, deep under their shaggy brows, and looking out so still and
dreamy, have we not noticed gleams of an ethereal or else a diabolic
fire, and half-fancied that their stillness was but the rest of
infinite motion, the _sleep_ of a spinning-top? Thy little figure,
there as, in loose, ill-brushed threadbare habiliments, thou sattest,
amid litter and lumber, whole days, to 'think and smoke tobacco,' held
in it a mighty heart. The secrets of man's Life were laid open to
thee; thou sawest into the mystery of the Universe, farther than
another; thou hadst _in petto_ thy remarkable Volume on Clothes. Nay,
was there not in that clear logically-founded Transcendentalism of
thine; still more, in thy meek, silent, deep-seated Sansculottism,
combined with a true princely Courtesy of inward nature, the visible
rudiments of such speculation? But great men are too often unknown, or
what is worse, misknown. Already, when we dreamed not of it, the warp
of thy remarkable Volume lay on the loom; and silently, mysterious
shuttles were putting in the woof!

       *       *       *       *       *

How the Hofrath Heuschrecke is to furnish biographical data, in this
case, may be a curious question; the answer of which, however, is
happily not our concern, but his. To us it appeared, after repeated
trial, that in Weissnichtwo, from the archives or memories of the
best-informed classes, no Biography of Teufelsdröckh was to be
gathered; not so much as a false one. He was a stranger there, wafted
thither by what is called the course of circumstances; concerning
whose parentage, birthplace, prospects, or pursuits, curiosity had
indeed made inquiries, but satisfied herself with the most indistinct
replies. For himself, he was a man so still and altogether
unparticipating, that to question him even afar off on such
particulars was a thing of more than usual delicacy: besides, in his
sly way, he had ever some quaint turn, not without its satirical edge,
wherewith to divert such intrusions, and deter you from the like. Wits
spoke of him secretly as if he were a kind of Melchizedek, without
father or mother of any kind; sometimes, with reference to his great
historic and statistic knowledge, and the vivid way he had of
expressing himself like an eye-witness of distant transactions and
scenes, they called him the _Ewige Jude_, Everlasting, or as we say,
Wandering Jew.

To the most, indeed, he had become not so much a Man as a Thing; which
Thing doubtless they were accustomed to see, and with satisfaction;
but no more thought of accounting for than for the fabrication of
their daily _Allgemeine Zeitung_, or the domestic habits of the Sun.
Both were there and welcome; the world enjoyed what good was in them,
and thought no more of the matter. The man Teufelsdröckh passed and
repassed, in his little circle, as one of those originals and
nondescripts, more frequent in German Universities than elsewhere; of
whom, though you see them alive, and feel certain enough that they
must have a History, no History seems to be discoverable; or only such
as men give of mountain rocks and antediluvian ruins: That they may
have been created by unknown agencies, are in a state of gradual
decay, and for the present reflect light and resist pressure; that is,
are visible and tangible objects in this phantasm world, where so much
other mystery is.

It was to be remarked that though, by title and diploma, _Professor
der Allerley-Wissenschaft_, or as we should say in English, 'Professor
of Things in General,' he had never delivered any Course; perhaps
never been incited thereto by any public furtherance or requisition.
To all appearance, the enlightened Government of Weissnichtwo, in
founding their New University, imagined they had done enough, if 'in
times like ours,' as the half-official Program expressed it, 'when all
things are, rapidly or slowly, resolving themselves into Chaos, a
Professorship of this kind had been established; whereby, as occasion
called, the task of bodying somewhat forth again from such Chaos might
be, even slightly, facilitated.' That actual Lectures should be held,
and Public Classes for the 'Science of Things in General,' they
doubtless considered premature; on which ground too they had only
established the Professorship, nowise endowed it; so that
Teufelsdröckh, 'recommended by the highest Names,' had been promoted
thereby to a Name merely.

Great, among the more enlightened classes, was the admiration of this
new Professorship: how an enlightened Government had seen into the
Want of the Age (_Zeitbedürfniss_); how at length, instead of Denial
and Destruction, we were to have a science of Affirmation and
Reconstruction; and Germany and Weissnichtwo were where they should
be, in the vanguard of the world. Considerable also was the wonder at
the new Professor, dropt opportunely enough into the nascent
University; so able to lecture, should occasion call; so ready to hold
his peace for indefinite periods, should an enlightened Government
consider that occasion did not call. But such admiration and such
wonder, being followed by no act to keep them living, could last only
nine days; and, long before our visit to that scene, had quite died
away. The more cunning heads thought it was all an expiring clutch at
popularity, on the part of a Minister, whom domestic embarrassments,
court intrigues, old age, and dropsy soon afterwards finally drove
from the helm.

As for Teufelsdröckh, except by his nightly appearances at the _Grüne
Gans_, Weissnichtwo saw little of him, felt little of him. Here, over
his tumbler of Gukguk, he sat reading Journals; sometimes
contemplatively looking into the clouds of his tobacco-pipe, without
other visible employment: always, from his mild ways, an agreeable
phenomenon there; more especially when he opened his lips for speech;
on which occasions the whole Coffee-house would hush itself into
silence, as if sure to hear something noteworthy. Nay, perhaps to hear
a whole series and river of the most memorable utterances; such as,
when once thawed, he would for hours indulge in, with fit audience:
and the more memorable, as issuing from a head apparently not more
interested in them, not more conscious of them, than is the sculptured
stone head of some public fountain, which through its brass mouth-tube
emits water to the worthy and the unworthy; careless whether it be for
cooking victuals or quenching conflagrations; indeed, maintains the
same earnest assiduous look, whether any water be flowing or not.

To the Editor of these sheets, as to a young enthusiastic Englishman,
however unworthy, Teufelsdröckh opened himself perhaps more than to
the most. Pity only that we could not then half guess his importance,
and scrutinise him with due power of vision! We enjoyed, what not
three men in Weissnichtwo could boast of, a certain degree of access
to the Professor's private domicile. It was the attic floor of the
highest house in the Wahngasse; and might truly be called the pinnacle
of Weissnichtwo, for it rose sheer up above the contiguous roofs,
themselves rising from elevated ground. Moreover, with its windows it
looked towards all the four _Orte_, or as the Scotch say, and we ought
to say, _Airts_: the sitting-room itself commanded three; another came
to view in the _Schlafgemach_ (bedroom) at the opposite end; to say
nothing of the kitchen, which offered two, as it were, _duplicates_,
and showing nothing new. So that it was in fact the speculum or
watch-tower of Teufelsdröckh; wherefrom, sitting at ease, he might see
the whole life-circulation of that considerable City; the streets and
lanes of which, with all their doing and driving (_Thun und Treiben_),
were for the most part visible there.

"I look down into all that wasp-nest or bee-hive," have we heard him
say, "and witness their wax-laying and honey-making, and
poison-brewing, and choking by sulphur. From the Palace esplanade,
where music plays while Serene Highness is pleased to eat his
victuals, down to the low lane, where in her door-sill the aged widow,
knitting for a thin livelihood, sits to feel the afternoon sun, I see
it all; for, except the Schlosskirche weathercock, no biped stands so
high. Couriers arrive bestrapped and bebooted, bearing Joy and Sorrow
bagged-up in pouches of leather: there, top-laden, and with four swift
horses, rolls-in the country Baron and his household; here, on
timber-leg, the lamed Soldier hops painfully along, begging alms: a
thousand carriages, and wains, and cars, come tumbling-in with Food,
with young Rusticity, and other Raw Produce, inanimate or animate, and
go tumbling out again with Produce manufactured. That living flood,
pouring through these streets, of all qualities and ages, knowest thou
whence it is coming, whither it is going? _Aus der Ewigkeit, zu der
Ewigkeit hin_: From Eternity, onwards to Eternity! These are
Apparitions: what else? Are they not Souls rendered visible: in
Bodies, that took shape and will lose it, melting into air? Their
solid Pavement is a picture of the Sense; they walk on the bosom of
Nothing, blank Time is behind them and before them. Or fanciest thou,
the red and yellow Clothes-screen yonder, with spurs on its heels and
feather in its crown, is but of Today, without a Yesterday or a
Tomorrow; and had not rather its Ancestor alive when Hengst and Horsa
overran thy Island? Friend, thou seest here a living link in that
Tissue of History, which inweaves all Being: watch well, or it will be
past thee, and seen no more."

"_Ach, mein Lieber!_" said he once, at midnight, when we had returned
from the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk, "it is a true sublimity
to dwell here. These fringes of lamplight, struggling up through smoke
and thousandfold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of
Night, what thinks Boötes of them, as he leads his Hunting-Dogs over
the Zenith in their leash of sidereal fire? That stifled hum of
Midnight, when Traffic has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels
of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are
bearing her to Halls roofed-in, and lighted to the due pitch for her;
and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like nightbirds, are
abroad: that hum, I say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber of sick
Life, is heard in Heaven! Oh, under that hideous covelet of vapours,
and putrefactions, and unimaginable gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies
simmering and hid! The joyful and the sorrowful are there; men are
dying there, men are being born; men are praying,--on the other side
of a brick partition, men are cursing; and around them all is the
vast, void Night. The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed
saloons, or reposes within damask curtains; Wretchedness cowers into
truckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken into its lair of straw: in
obscure cellars, _Rouge-et-Noir_ languidly emits its voice-of-destiny
to haggard hungry Villains; while Councillors of State sit plotting,
and playing their high chess-game, whereof the pawns are Men. The
Lover whispers his mistress that the coach is ready; and she, full of
hope and fear, glides down, to fly with him over the borders: the
Thief, still more silently, sets-to his picklocks and crowbars, or
lurks in wait till the watchmen first snore in their boxes. Gay
mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing-rooms, are full of light and
music and high-swelling hearts; but, in the Condemned Cells, the pulse
of life beats tremulous and faint, and bloodshot eyes look-out through
the darkness, which is around and within, for the light of a stern
last morning. Six men are to be hanged on the morrow: comes no
hammering from the _Rabenstein_?--their gallows must even now be o'
building. Upwards of five-hundred-thousand two-legged animals without
feathers lie round us, in horizontal positions; their heads all in
nightcaps, and full of the foolishest dreams. Riot cries aloud, and
staggers and swaggers in his rank dens of shame; and the Mother, with
streaming hair, kneels over her pallid dying infant, whose cracked
lips only her tears now moisten.--All these heaped and huddled
together, with nothing but a little carpentry and masonry between
them;--crammed in, like salted fish in their barrel;--or weltering,
shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers, each struggling
to get its _head above_ the others: _such_ work goes on under that
smoke-counterpane!--But I, _mein Werther_, sit above it all; I am
alone with the Stars."

We looked in his face to see whether, in the utterance of such
extraordinary Night-thoughts, no feeling might be traced there; but
with the light we had, which indeed was only a single tallow-light,
and far enough from the window, nothing save that old calmness and
fixedness was visible.

These were the Professor's talking seasons: most commonly he spoke in
mere monosyllables, or sat altogether silent, and smoked; while the
visitor had liberty either to say what he listed, receiving for answer
an occasional grunt; or to look round for a space, and then take
himself away. It was a strange apartment; full of books and tattered
papers, and miscellaneous shreds of all conceivable substances,
'united in a common element of dust.' Books lay on tables, and below
tables; here fluttered a sheet of manuscript, there a torn
handkerchief, or nightcap hastily thrown aside; ink-bottles alternated
with bread-crusts, coffee-pots, tobacco-boxes, Periodical Literature,
and Blücher Boots. Old Lieschen (Lisekin, 'Liza), who was his
bed-maker and stove-lighter, his washer and wringer, cook,
errand-maid, and general lion's-provider, and for the rest a very
orderly creature, had no sovereign authority in this last citadel of
Teufelsdröckh; only some once in the month she half-forcibly made her
may thither, with broom and duster, and (Teufelsdröckh hastily saving
his manuscripts) effected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery of such
lumber as was not literary. These were her _Erdbeben_ (earthquakes),
which Teufelsdröckh dreaded worse than the pestilence; nevertheless,
to such length he had been forced to comply. Glad would he have been
to sit here philosophising forever, or till the litter, by
accumulation, drove him out of doors: but Lieschen was his right-arm,
and spoon, and necessary of life, and would not be flatly gainsayed.
We can still remember the ancient woman; so silent that some thought
her dumb; deaf also you would often have supposed her; for
Teufelsdröckh, and Teufelsdröckh only, would she serve or give heed
to; and with him she seemed to communicate chiefly by signs; if it
were not rather by some secret divination that she guessed all his
wants, and supplied them. Assiduous old dame! she scoured, and sorted,
and swept, in her kitchen, with the least possible violence to the
ear; yet all was tight and right there: hot and black came the coffee
ever at the due moment; and the speechless Lieschen herself looked out
on you, from under her clean white coif with its lappets, through her
clean withered face and wrinkles, with a look of helpful intelligence,
almost of benevolence.

Few strangers, as above hinted, had admittance hither: the only one we
ever saw there, ourselves excepted, was the Hofrath Heuschrecke,
already known, by name and expectation, to the readers of these pages.
To us, at that period, Herr Heuschrecke seemed one of those
purse-mouthed, crane-necked, clean-brushed, pacific individuals,
perhaps sufficiently distinguished in society by this fact, that, in
dry weather or in wet, 'they never appear without their umbrella.' Had
we not known with what 'little wisdom' the world is governed; and how,
in Germany as elsewhere, the ninety-and-nine Public Men can for most
part be but mute train-bearers to the hundredth, perhaps but
stalking-horses and willing or unwilling dupes,--it might have seemed
wonderful how Herr Heuschrecke should be named a Rath, or Councillor,
and Counsellor, even in Weissnichtwo. What counsel to any man, or to
any woman, could this particular Hofrath give; in whose loose, zigzag
figure; in whose thin visage, as it went jerking to and fro, in minute
incessant fluctuation,--you traced rather confusion worse confounded;
at most, Timidity and physical Cold? Some indeed said withal, he was
'the very Spirit of Love embodied': blue earnest eyes, full of sadness
and kindness; purse ever open, and so forth; the whole of which, we
shall now hope, for many reasons, was not quite groundless.
Nevertheless friend Teufelsdröckh's outline, who indeed handled the
burin like few in these cases, was probably the best: _Er hat Gemüth
und Geist, hat wenigstens gehabt, doch ohne Organ, ohne
Schicksals-Gunst; ist gegenwärtig aber halb-zerrüttet, halb-erstarrt_,
"He has heart and talent, at least has had such, yet without fit mode
of utterance, or favour of Fortune; and so is now half-cracked,
half-congealed."--What the Hofrath shall think of this when he sees
it, readers may wonder: we, safe in the stronghold of Historical
Fidelity, are careless.

The main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love of Teufelsdröckh,
which indeed was also by far the most decisive feature of Heuschrecke
himself. We are enabled to assert that he hung on the Professor with
the fondness of a Boswell for his Johnson. And perhaps with the like
return; for Teufelsdröckh treated his gaunt admirer with little
outward regard, as some half-rational or altogether irrational friend,
and at best loved him out of gratitude and by habit. On the other
hand, it was curious to observe with what reverent kindness, and a
sort of fatherly protection, our Hofrath, being the elder, richer, and
as he fondly imagined far more practically influential of the two,
looked and tended on his little Sage, whom he seemed to consider as a
living oracle. Let but Teufelsdröckh open his mouth, Heuschrecke's
also unpuckered itself into a free doorway, besides his being all eye
and all ear, so that nothing might be lost: and then, at every pause
in the harangue, he gurgled-out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh
(for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion, and
seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, _Bravo! Das
glaub' ich_; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. In short,
if Teufelsdröckh was Dalai-Lama, of which, except perhaps in his
self-seclusion, and god-like indifference, there was no symptom, then
might Heuschrecke pass for his chief Talapoin, to whom no dough-pill
he could knead and publish was other than medicinal and sacred.

In such environment, social, domestic, physical, did Teufelsdröckh, at
the time of our acquaintance, and most likely does he still, live and
meditate. Here, perched-up in his high Wahngasse watch-tower, and
often, in solitude, outwatching the Bear, it was that the indomitable
Inquirer fought all his battles with Dulness and Darkness; here, in
all probability, that he wrote this surprising Volume on _Clothes_.
Additional particulars: of his age, which was of that standing middle
sort you could only guess at; of his wide surtout; the colour of his
trousers, fashion of his broad-brimmed steeple-hat, and so forth, we
might report, but do not. The Wisest truly is, in these times, the
Greatest; so that an enlightened curiosity, leaving Kings and suchlike
to rest very much on their own basis, turns more and more to the
Philosophic Class: nevertheless, what reader expects that, with all
our writing and reporting, Teufelsdröckh could be brought home to him,
till once the Documents arrive? His Life, Fortunes, and Bodily
Presence, are as yet hidden from us, or matter only of faint
conjecture. But, on the other hand, does not his Soul lie enclosed in
this remarkable Volume, much more truly than Pedro Garcia's did in the
buried Bag of Doubloons? To the soul of Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, to his
opinions, namely, on the 'Origin and Influence of Clothes,' we for the
present gladly return.

Chapter IV

Characteristics


It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this Work on Clothes
entirely contents us; that it is not, like all works of genius, like
the very Sun, which, though the highest published creation, or work of
genius, has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid
its effulgence,--a mixture of insight, inspiration, with dulness,
double-vision, and even utter blindness.

Without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic praises and
prophesyings of the _Weissnichtwo'sche Anzeiger_, we admitted that the
Book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the
best effect of any book; that it had even operated changes in our way
of thought; nay, that it promised to prove, as it were, the opening of
a new mine-shaft, wherein the whole world of Speculation might
henceforth dig to unknown depths. More especially it may now be
declared that Professor Teufelsdröckh's acquirements, patience of
research, philosophic and even poetic vigour, are here made
indisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity and
tortuosity and manifold ineptitude; that, on the whole, as in opening
new mine-shafts is not unreasonable, there is much rubbish in his
Book, though likewise specimens of almost invaluable ore. A paramount
popularity in England we cannot promise him. Apart from the choice of
such a topic as Clothes, too often the manner of treating it betokens
in the Author a rusticity and academic seclusion, unblamable, indeed
inevitable in a German, but fatal to his success with our public.

Of good society Teufelsdröckh appears to have seen little, or has
mostly forgotten what he saw. He speaks-out with a strange plainness;
calls many things by their mere dictionary names. To him the
Upholsterer is no Pontiff, neither is any Drawing-room a Temple, were
it never so begilt and overhung: 'a whole immensity of Brussels
carpets, and pier-glasses, and or-molu,' as he himself expresses it,
'cannot hide from me that such Drawing-room is simply a section of
Infinite Space, where so many God-created Souls do for the time meet
together.' To Teufelsdröckh the highest Duchess is respectable, is
venerable; but nowise for her pearl bracelets and Malines laces: in
his eyes, the star of a Lord is little less and little more than the
broad button of Birmingham spelter in a Clown's smock; 'each is an
implement,' he says, 'in its kind; a tag for _hooking-together_; and,
for the rest, was dug from the earth, and hammered on a smithy before
smith's fingers.' Thus does the Professor look in men's faces with a
strange impartiality, a strange scientific freedom; like a man
unversed in the higher circles, like a man dropped thither from the
Moon. Rightly considered, it is in this peculiarity, running through
his whole system of thought, that all these short-comings,
over-shootings, and multiform perversities, take rise: if indeed they
have not a second source, also natural enough, in his Transcendental
Philosophies, and humour of looking at all Matter and Material things
as Spirit; whereby truly his case were but the more hopeless, the more
lamentable.

To the Thinkers of this nation, however, of which class it is firmly
believed there are individuals yet extant, we can safely recommend the
Work: nay, who knows but among the fashionable ranks too, if it be
true, as Teufelsdröckh maintains, that 'within the most starched
cravat there passes a windpipe and weasand, and under the thickliest
embroidered waistcoat beats a heart,'--the force of that rapt
earnestness may be felt, and here and there an arrow of the soul
pierce through? In our wild Seer, shaggy, unkempt, like a Baptist
living on locusts and wild honey, there is an untutored energy, a
silent, as it were unconscious, strength, which, except in the higher
walks of Literature, must be rare. Many a deep glance, and often with
unspeakable precision, has he cast into mysterious Nature, and the
still more mysterious Life of Man. Wonderful it is with what cutting
words, now and then, he severs asunder the confusion; shears down,
were it furlongs deep, into the true centre of the matter; and there
not only hits the nail on the head, but with crushing force smites it
home, and buries it.--On the other hand, let us be free to admit, he
is the most unequal writer breathing. Often after some such feat, he
will play truant for long pages, and go dawdling and dreaming, and
mumbling and maundering the merest commonplaces, as if he were asleep
with eyes open, which indeed he is.

Of his boundless Learning, and how all reading and literature in most
known tongues, from _Sanchoniathon_ to _Dr Lingard_, from your
Oriental _Shasters_, and _Talmuds_, and _Korans_, with Cassini's
_Siamese Tables_, and Laplace's _Mécanique Céleste_, down to _Robinson
Crusoe_ and the _Belfast Town and Country Almanack_, are familiar to
him,--we shall say nothing: for unexampled as it is with us, to the
Germans such universality of study passes without wonder, as a thing
commendable, indeed, but natural, indispensable, and there of course.
A man that devotes his life to learning, shall he not be learned?

In respect of style our Author manifests the same genial capability,
marred too often by the same rudeness, inequality, and apparent want
of intercourse with the higher classes. Occasionally, as above hinted,
we find consummate vigour, a true inspiration; his burning thoughts
step forth in fit burning words, like so many full-formed Minervas,
issuing amid flame and splendour from Jove's head; a rich, idiomatic
diction, picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint
tricksy turns; all the graces and terrors of a wild Imagination,
wedded to the clearest Intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude.
Were it not that sheer sleeping and soporific passages;
circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure doting jargon, so
often intervene! On the whole, Professor Teufelsdröckh is not a
cultivated writer. Of his sentences perhaps not more than nine-tenths
stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular
attitudes, buttressed-up by props (of parentheses and dashes), and
ever with this or the other tagrag hanging from them; a few even
sprawl-out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and
dismembered. Nevertheless, in almost his very worst moods, there lies
in him a singular attraction. A wild tone pervades the whole utterance
of the man, like its keynote and regulator; now screwing itself aloft
as into the Song of Spirits, or else the shrill mockery of Fiends; now
sinking in cadences, not without melodious heartiness, though
sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch, when we hear it only
as a monotonous hum; of which hum the true character is extremely
difficult to fix. Up to this hour we have never fully satisfied
ourselves whether it is a tone and hum of real Humour, which we reckon
among the very highest qualities of genius, or some echo of mere
Insanity and Inanity, which doubtless ranks below the very lowest.

Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal intercourse, do
we still lie with regard to the Professor's moral feeling. Gleams of
an ethereal Love burst forth from him, soft wailings of infinite pity;
he could clasp the whole Universe into his bosom, and keep it warm; it
seems as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a very seraph. Then
again he is so sly and still, so imperturbably saturnine; shows such
indifference, malign coolness towards all that men strive after; and
ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humour, if
indeed it be not mere stolid callousness,--that you look on him almost
with a shudder, as on some incarnate Mephistopheles, to whom this
great terrestrial and celestial Round, after all, were but some huge
foolish Whirligig, where kings and beggars, and angels and demons, and
stars and street-sweepings, were chaotically whirled, in which only
children could take interest. His look, as we mentioned, is probably
the gravest ever seen: yet it is not of that cast-iron gravity
frequent enough among our own Chancery suitors; but rather the gravity
as of some silent, high-encircled mountain-pool, perhaps the crater of
an extinct volcano; into whose black deeps you fear to gaze: those
eyes, those lights that sparkle in it, may indeed be reflexes of the
heavenly Stars, but perhaps also glances from the region of Nether
Fire!

Certainly a most involved, self-secluded, altogether enigmatic nature,
this of Teufelsdröckh! Here, however, we gladly recall to mind that
once we saw him _laugh_; once only, perhaps it was the first and last
time in his life; but then such a peal of laughter, enough to have
awakened the Seven Sleepers! It was of Jean Paul's doing: some single
billow in that vast World-Mahlstrom of Humour, with its heaven-kissing
coruscations, which is now, alas, all congealed in the frost of death!
The large-bodied Poet and the small, both large enough in soul, sat
talking miscellaneously together, the present Editor being privileged
to listen; and now Paul, in his serious way, was giving one of those
inimitable 'Extra-harangues'; and, as it chanced, On the Proposal for
a _Cast-metal King_: gradually a light kindled in our Professor's eyes
and face, a beaming, mantling, loveliest light; through those murky
features, a radiant, ever-young Apollo looked; and he burst forth like
the neighing of all Tattersall's,--tears streaming down his cheeks,
pipe held aloft, foot clutched into the air,--loud, long-continuing,
uncontrollable; a laugh not of the face and diaphragm only, but of the
whole man from head to heel. The present Editor, who laughed indeed,
yet with measure, began to fear all was not right: however,
Teufelsdröckh composed himself, and sank into his old stillness; on
his inscrutable countenance there was, if anything, a slight look of
shame; and Richter himself could not rouse him again. Readers who have
any tincture of Psychology know how much is to be inferred from this;
and that no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be
altogether irreclaimably bad. How much lies in Laughter: the
cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an
everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter
as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called laughing,
but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat outwards; or at
best, produce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they were
laughing through wool: of none such comes good. The man who cannot
laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; but his
whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.

Considered as an Author, Herr Teufelsdröckh has one scarcely
pardonable fault, doubtless his worst: an almost total want of
arrangement. In this remarkable Volume, it is true, his adherence to
the mere course of Time produces, through the Narrative portions, a
certain show of outward method; but of true logical method and
sequence there is too little. Apart from its multifarious sections and
subdivisions, the Work naturally falls into two Parts; a
Historical-Descriptive, and a Philosophical-Speculative: but falls,
unhappily, by no firm line of demarcation; in that labyrinthic
combination, each Part overlaps, and indents, and indeed runs quite
through the other. Many sections are of a debatable rubric or even
quite nondescript and unnameable; whereby the Book not only loses in
accessibility, but too often distresses us like some mad banquet,
wherein all courses had been confounded, and fish and flesh, soup and
solid, oyster-sauce, lettuces, Rhine-wine and French mustard, were
hurled into one huge tureen or trough, and the hungry Public invited
to help itself. To bring what order we can out of this Chaos shall be
part of our endeavour.

Chapter V

The World in Clothes


'As Montesquieu wrote a _Spirit of Laws_,' observes our Professor, 'so
could I write a _Spirit of Clothes_; thus, with an _Esprit des Lois_,
properly an _Esprit de Coutumes_, we should have an _Esprit de
Costumes_. For neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man
proceed by mere Accident, but the hand is ever guided on by mysterious
operations of the mind. In all his Modes, and habilatory endeavours,
an Architectural Idea will be found lurking; his Body and the Cloth
are the site and materials whereon and whereby his beautified edifice,
of a Person, is to be built. Whether he flow gracefully out in folded
mantles, based on light sandals; tower-up in high headgear, from amid
peaks, spangles and bell-girdles; swell-out in starched ruffs, buckram
stuffings, and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself into separate
sections, and front the world an Agglomeration of four limbs,--will
depend on the nature of such Architectural Idea: whether Grecian,
Gothic, Later-Gothic, or altogether Modern, and Parisian or
Anglo-Dandiacal. Again, what meaning lies in Colour! From the soberest
drab to the high-flaming scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold
themselves in choice of Colour: if the Cut betoken Intellect and
Talent, so does the Colour betoken Temper and Heart. In all which,
among nations as among individuals, there is an incessant,
indubitable, though infinitely complex working of Cause and Effect:
every snip of the Scissors has been regulated and prescribed by
ever-active Influences, which doubtless to Intelligences of a superior
order are neither invisible nor illegible.

'For such superior Intelligences a Cause-and-Effect Philosophy of
Clothes, as of Laws, were probably a comfortable winter-evening
entertainment: nevertheless, for inferior Intelligences, like men,
such Philosophies have always seemed to me uninstructive enough. Nay,
what is your Montesquieu himself but a clever infant spelling Letters
from a hieroglyphical prophetic Book, the lexicon of which lies in
Eternity, in Heaven?--Let any Cause-and-Effect Philosopher explain,
not why I wear such and such a Garment, obey such and such a Law; but
even why _I_ am _here_, to wear and obey anything!--Much, therefore,
if not the whole, of that same _Spirit of Clothes_ I shall suppress,
as hypothetical, ineffectual, and even impertinent: naked Facts, and
Deductions drawn therefrom in quite another than that omniscient
style, are my humbler and proper province.'

Acting on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdröckh has nevertheless
contrived to take-in a well-nigh boundless extent of field; at least,
the boundaries too often lie quite beyond our horizon. Selection being
indispensable, we shall here glance-over his First Part only in the
most cursory manner. This First Part is, no doubt, distinguished by
omnivorous learning, and utmost patience and fairness: at the same
time, in its results and delineations, it is much more likely to
interest the Compilers of some _Library_ of General, Entertaining,
Useful, or even Useless Knowledge than the miscellaneous readers of
these pages. Was it this Part of the Book which Heuschrecke had in
view, when he recommended us to that joint-stock vehicle of
publication, 'at present the glory of British Literature'? If so, the
Library Editors are welcome to dig in it for their own behoof.

To the First Chapter, which turns on Paradise and Fig-leaves, and
leads us into interminable disquisitions of a mythological,
metaphorical, cabalistico-sartorial and quite antediluvian cast, we
shall content ourselves with giving an unconcerned approval. Still
less have we to do with 'Lilis, Adam's first wife, whom, according to
the Talmudists, he had before Eve, and who bore him, in that wedlock,
the whole progeny of aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial Devils,'--very
needlessly, we think. On this portion of the Work, with its profound
glances into the _Adam-Kadmon_, or Primeval Element, here strangely
brought into relation with the _Nifl_ and _Muspel_ (Darkness and
Light) of the antique North, it may be enough to say, that its
correctness of deduction, and depth of Talmudic and Rabbinical lore
have filled perhaps not the worst Hebraist in Britain with something
like astonishment.

But, quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdröckh hastens from the
Tower of Babel, to follow the dispersion of Mankind over the whole
habitable and habilable globe. Walking by the light of Oriental,
Pelasgic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, Otaheitean, Ancient and Modern
researches of every conceivable kind, he strives to give us in
compressed shape (as the Nürnbergers give an _Orbis Pictus_) an _Orbis
Vestitus_; or view of the costumes of all mankind, in all countries,
in all times. It is here that to the Antiquarian, to the Historian, we
can triumphantly say: Fall to! Here is learning: an irregular
Treasury, if you will; but inexhaustible as the Hoard of King
Nibelung, which twelve wagons in twelve days, at the rate of three
journeys a day, could not carry off. Sheepskin cloaks and wampum
belts; phylacteries, stoles, albs; chlamydes, togas, Chinese silks,
Afghaun shawls, trunk-hose, leather breeches, Celtic philibegs (though
breeches, as the name _Gallia Braccata_ indicates, are the more
ancient), Hussar cloaks, Vandyke tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are
brought vividly before us,--even the Kilmarnock nightcap is not
forgotten. For most part, too, we must admit that the Learning,
heterogeneous as it is, and tumbled-down quite pell-mell, is true
concentrated and purified Learning, the drossy parts smelted out and
thrown aside.

Philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes touching pictures
of human life. Of this sort the following has surprised us. The first
purpose of Clothes, as our Professor imagines, was not warmth or
decency, but ornament. 'Miserable indeed,' says he, 'was the condition
of the Aboriginal Savage, glaring fiercely from under his fleece of
hair, which with the beard reached down to his loins, and hung round
him like a matted cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick
natural fell. He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, living on
wild-fruits; or, as the ancient Caledonian, squatted himself in
morasses, lurking for his bestial or human prey; without implements,
without arms, save the ball of heavy Flint, to which, that his sole
possession and defence might not be lost, he had attached a long cord
of plaited thongs; thereby recovering as well as hurling it with
deadly unerring skill. Nevertheless, the pains of Hunger and Revenge
once satisfied, his next care was not Comfort but Decoration (_Putz_).
Warmth he found in the toils of the chase; or amid dried leaves, in
his hollow tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto: but for
Decoration he must have Clothes. Nay, among wild people we find
tattooing and painting even prior to Clothes. The first spiritual want
of a barbarous man is Decoration, as indeed we still see among the
barbarous classes in civilised countries.

'Reader, the heaven-inspired melodious Singer; loftiest Serene
Highness; nay thy own amber-locked, snow-and-rose-bloom Maiden, worthy
to glide sylphlike almost on air, whom thou lovest, worshippest as a
divine Presence, which, indeed, symbolically taken, she is,--has
descended, like thyself, from that same hair-mantled, flint-hurling
Aboriginal Anthropophagus! Out of the eater cometh forth meat; out of
the strong cometh forth sweetness. What changes are wrought, not by
time, yet in Time! For not Mankind only, but all that Mankind does or
beholds, is in continual growth, regenesis and self-perfecting
vitality. Cast forth thy Act, thy Word, into the ever-living,
ever-working Universe: it is a seed-grain that cannot die; unnoticed
to-day (says one), it will be found flourishing as a Banyan-grove
(perhaps, alas, as a Hemlock-forest!) after a thousand years.

'He who first shortened the labour of Copyists by device of _Movable
Types_ was disbanding hired Armies, and cashiering most Kings and
Senates, and creating a whole new Democratic world: he had invented
the Art of Printing. The first ground handful of Nitre, Sulphur, and
Charcoal drove Monk Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling: what will
the last do? Achieve the final undisputed prostration of Force under
Thought, of Animal courage under Spiritual. A simple invention it was
in the old-world Grazier,--sick of lugging his slow Ox about the
country till he got it bartered for corn or oil,--to take a piece of
Leather, and thereon scratch or stamp the mere Figure of an Ox (or
_Pecus_); put it in his pocket, and call it _Pecunia_, Money. Yet
hereby did Barter grow Sale, the Leather Money is now Golden and
Paper, and all miracles have been out-miracled: for there are
Rothschilds and English National Debts; and whoso has sixpence is
sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over all men; commands cooks to
feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over
him,--to the length of sixpence.--Clothes too, which began in
foolishest love of Ornament, what have they not become! Increased
Security and pleasurable Heat soon followed: but what of these? Shame,
divine Shame (_Schaam_, Modesty), as yet a stranger to the
Anthropophagous bosom, arose there mysteriously under Clothes; a
mystic grove-encircled shrine for the Holy in man. Clothes gave us
individuality, distinctions, social polity; Clothes have made Men of
us; they are threatening to make Clothes-screens of us.

'But, on the whole,' continues our eloquent Professor, 'Man is a
Tool-using Animal (_Handthierendes Thier_). Weak in himself, and of
small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled,
of some half-square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his
legs, lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three
quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses
him aloft, like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use Tools, can devise
Tools: with these the granite mountain melts into light dust before
him; he kneads glowing iron, as if it were soft paste; seas are his
smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you
find him without Tools; without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is
all.'

Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream of Oratory with a
remark, that this Definition of the Tool-using Animal, appears to us,
of all that Animal-sort, considerably the precisest and best? Man is
called a Laughing Animal: but do not the apes also laugh, or attempt
to do it; and is the manliest man the greatest and oftenest laugher?
Teufelsdröckh himself, as we said, laughed only once. Still less do we
make of that other French Definition of the Cooking Animal; which,
indeed, for rigorous scientific purposes, is as good as useless. Can a
Tartar be said to cook, when he only readies his steak by riding on
it? Again, what Cookery does the Greenlander use, beyond stowing-up
his whale-blubber, as a marmot, in the like case, might do? Or how
would Monsieur Ude prosper among those Orinocco Indians, who,
according to Humboldt, lodge in crow-nests, on the branches of trees;
and, for half the year, have no victuals but pipe-clay, the whole
country being under water? But, on the other hand, show us the human
being, of any period or climate, without his Tools: those very
Caledonians, as we saw, had their Flint-ball, and Thong to it, such as
no brute has or can have.

'Man is a Tool-using Animal,' concludes Teufelsdröckh in his abrupt
way; 'of which truth Clothes are but one example: and surely if we
consider the interval between the first wooden Dibble fashioned by
man, and those Liverpool Steam-carriages, or the British House of
Commons, we shall note what progress he has made. He digs up certain
black stones from the bosom of the earth, and says to them, _Transport
me and this luggage at the rate of five-and-thirty miles an hour_; and
they do it: he collects, apparently by lot, six-hundred and
fifty-eight miscellaneous individuals, and says to them, _Make this
nation toil for us, bleed for us, hunger and sorrow and sin for us_;
and they do it.'

Chapter VI

Aprons


One of the most unsatisfactory Sections in the whole Volume is that on
_Aprons_. What though stout old Gao, the Persian Blacksmith, 'whose
Apron, now indeed hidden under jewels, because raised in revolt which
proved successful, is still the royal standard of that country'; what
though John Knox's Daughter, 'who threatened Sovereign Majesty that
she would catch her husband's head in her Apron, rather than he should
lie and be a bishop'; what though the Landgravine Elizabeth, with many
other Apron worthies,--figure here? An idle wire-drawing spirit,
sometimes even a tone of levity, approaching to conventional satire,
is too clearly discernible. What, for example, are we to make of such
sentences as the following?

'Aprons are Defences; against injury to cleanliness, to safety, to
modesty, sometimes to roguery. From the thin slip of notched silk (as
it were, the Emblem and beatified Ghost of an Apron), which some
highest-bred housewife, sitting at Nürnberg Workboxes and Toyboxes,
has gracefully fastened on; to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him
with thongs, wherein the Builder builds, and at evening sticks his
trowel; or to those jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your otherwise
half-naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their smelt-furnace,--is there
not range enough in the fashion and uses of this Vestment? How much
has been concealed, how much has been defended in Aprons! Nay, rightly
considered, what is your whole Military and Police Establishment,
charged at uncalculated millions, but a huge scarlet-coloured,
iron-fastened Apron, wherein Society works (uneasily enough); guarding
itself from some soil and stithy-sparks, in this Devil's-smithy
(_Teufelsschmiede_) of a world? But of all Aprons the most puzzling to
me hitherto has been the Episcopal or Cassock. Wherein consists the
usefulness of this Apron? The Overseer (_Episcopus_) of Souls, I
notice, has tucked-in the corner of it, as if his day's work were
done: what does he shadow forth thereby?' &c. &c.

Or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to read such stuff
as we shall now quote?

'I consider those printed Paper Aprons, worn by the Parisian Cooks, as
a new vent, though a slight one, for Typography; therefore as an
encouragement to modern Literature, and deserving of approval: nor is
it without satisfaction that I hear of a celebrated London Firm having
in view to introduce the same fashion, with important extensions, in
England.'--We who are on the spot hear of no such thing; and indeed
have reason to be thankful that hitherto there are other vents for our
Literature, exuberant as it is.--Teufelsdröckh continues: 'If such
supply of printed Paper should rise so far as to choke-up the highways
and public thoroughfares, new means must of necessity be had recourse
to. In a world existing by Industry, we grudge to employ fire as a
destroying element, and not as a creating one. However, Heaven is
omnipotent, and will find us an outlet. In the mean while, is it not
beautiful to see five-million quintals of Rags picked annually from
the Laystall; and annually, after being macerated, hot-pressed,
printed-on, and sold,--returned thither; filling so many hungry mouths
by the way? Thus is the Laystall, especially with its Rags or
Clothes-rubbish, the grand Electric Battery, and Fountain-of-motion,
from which and to which the Social Activities (like vitreous and
resinous Electricities) circulate, in larger or smaller circles,
through the mighty, billowy, storm-tost Chaos of Life, which they keep
alive!'--Such passages fill us, who love the man, and partly esteem
him, with a very mixed feeling.

Farther down we meet with this: 'The Journalists are now the true
Kings and Clergy: henceforth Historians, unless they are fools, must
write not of Bourbon Dynasties, and Tudors and Hapsburgs; but of
Stamped Broad-sheet Dynasties, and quite new successive Names,
according as this or the other Able Editor, or Combination of Able
Editors, gains the world's ear. Of the British Newspaper Press,
perhaps the most important of all, and wonderful enough in its secret
constitution and procedure, a valuable descriptive History already
exists, in that language, under the title of _Satan's Invisible World
Displayed_; which, however, by search in all the Weissnichtwo
Libraries, I have not yet succeeded in procuring (_vermöchte nicht
aufzutreiben_).'

Thus does the good Homer not only nod, but snore. Thus does
Teufelsdröckh, wandering in regions where he had little business,
confound the old authentic Presbyterian Witchfinder with a new,
spurious, imaginary Historian of the _Brittische Journalistik_; and so
stumble on perhaps the most egregious blunder in Modern Literature!

Chapter VII

Miscellaneous-Historical


Happier is our Professor, and more purely scientific and historic,
when he reaches the Middle Ages in Europe, and down to the end of the
Seventeenth Century; the true era of extravagance in Costume. It is
here that the Antiquary and Student of Modes comes upon his richest
harvest. Fantastic garbs, beggaring all fancy of a Teniers or a
Callot, succeed each other, like monster devouring monster in a Dream.
The whole too in brief authentic strokes, and touched not seldom with
that breath of genius which makes even old raiment live. Indeed, so
learned, precise, graphical, and everyway interesting have we found
these Chapters, that it may be thrown-out as a pertinent question for
parties concerned, Whether or not a good English Translation thereof
might henceforth be profitably incorporated with Mr. Merrick's
valuable Work _On Ancient Armour_? Take, by way of example, the
following sketch; as authority for which Paulinus's _Zeitkürzende
Lust_ (ii. 678) is, with seeming confidence, referred to:

'Did we behold the German fashionable dress of the Fifteenth Century,
we might smile; as perhaps those bygone Germans, were they to rise
again, and see our haberdashery, would cross themselves, and invoke
the Virgin. But happily no bygone German, or man, rises again; thus
the Present is not needlessly trammelled with the Past; and only grows
out of it, like a Tree, whose roots are not intertangled with its
branches, but lie peaceably underground. Nay it is very mournful, yet
not useless, to see and know, how the Greatest and Dearest, in a short
while, would find his place quite filled-up here, and no room for him;
the very Napoleon, the very Byron, in some seven years, has become
obsolete, and were now a foreigner to his Europe. Thus is the Law of
Progress secured; and in Clothes, as in all other external things
whatsoever, no fashion will continue.

'Of the military classes in those old times, whose buff-belts,
complicated chains and gorgets, huge churn-boots, and other riding and
fighting gear have been bepainted in modern Romance, till the whole
has acquired somewhat of a sign-post character,--I shall here say
nothing: the civil and pacific classes, less touched upon, are
wonderful enough for us.

'Rich men, I find, have _Teusinke_' (a perhaps untranslateable
article); 'also a silver girdle, whereat hang little bells; so that
when a man walks, it is with continual jingling. Some few, of musical
turn, have a whole chime of bells (_Glockenspiel_) fastened there;
which, especially in sudden whirls, and the other accidents of
walking, has a grateful effect. Observe too how fond they are of
peaks, and Gothic-arch intersections. The male world wears peaked
caps, an ell long, which hang bobbing over the side (_schief_): their
shoes are peaked in front, also to the length of an ell, and laced on
the side with tags; even the wooden shoes have their ell-long noses:
some also clap bells on the peak. Further, according to my authority,
the men have breeches without seat (_ohne Gesäss_): these they fasten
peakwise to their shirts; and the long round doublet must overlap
them.

'Rich maidens, again, flit abroad in gowns scolloped out behind and
before, so that back and breast are almost bare. Wives of quality, on
the other hand, have train-gowns four or five ells in length; which
trains there are boys to carry. Brave Cleopatras, sailing in their
silk-cloth Galley, with a Cupid for steersman! Consider their welts, a
handbreadth thick, which waver round them by way of hem; the long
flood of silver buttons, or rather silver shells, from throat to shoe,
wherewith these same welt-gowns are buttoned. The maidens have bound
silver snoods about their hair, with gold spangles, and pendent flames
(_Flammen_), that is, sparkling hair-drops: but of their mother's
headgear who shall speak? Neither in love of grace is comfort
forgotten. In winter weather you behold the whole fair creation (that
can afford it) in long mantles, with skirts wide below, and, for hem,
not one but two sufficient hand-broad welts; all ending atop in a
thick well-starched Ruff, some twenty inches broad: these are their
Ruff-mantles (_Kragenmäntel_).

'As yet among the womankind hoop-petticoats are not; but the men have
doublets of fustian, under which lie multiple ruffs of cloth, pasted
together with batter (_mit Teig zusammengekleistert_), which create
protuberance enough. Thus do the two sexes vie with each other in the
art of Decoration; and as usual the stronger carries it.'

Our Professor, whether he hath humour himself or not, manifests a
certain feeling of the Ludicrous, a sly observance of it, which, could
emotion of any kind be confidently predicated of so still a man, we
might call a real love. None of those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches,
cornuted shoes, or other the like phenomena, of which the History of
Dress offers so many, escape him: more especially the mischances, or
striking adventures, incident to the wearers of such, are noticed with
due fidelity. Sir Walter Raleigh's fine mantle, which he spread in the
mud under Queen Elizabeth's feet, appears to provoke little enthusiasm
in him; he merely asks, Whether at that period the Maiden Queen 'was
red-painted on the nose, and white-painted on the cheeks, as her
tire-women, when from spleen and wrinkles she would no longer look in
any glass, were wont to serve her?' We can answer that Sir Walter knew
well what he was doing, and had the Maiden Queen been stuffed
parchment dyed in verdigris, would have done the same.

Thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, that were not only
slashed and galooned, but artificially swollen-out on the broader
parts of the body, by introduction of Bran,--our Professor fails not
to comment on that luckless Courtier, who having seated himself on a
chair with some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay
his _devoir_ on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously emitted
several pecks of dry wheat-dust: and stood there diminished to a
spindle, his galoons and slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby round
him. Whereupon the Professor publishes this reflection:

'By what strange chances do we live in History? Erostratus by a torch;
Milo by a bullock; Henry Darnley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by
his limbs; most Kings and Queens by being born under such and such a
bed-tester; Boileau Despréaux (according to Helvetius) by the peck of
a turkey; and this ill-starred individual by a rent in his
breeches,--for no Memoirist of Kaiser Otto's Court omits him. Vain was
the prayer of Themistocles for a talent of Forgetting: my Friends,
yield cheerfully to Destiny, and read since it is written.'--Has
Teufelsdröckh to be put in mind that, nearly related to the impossible
talent of Forgetting, stands that talent of Silence, which even
travelling Englishmen manifest?

'The simplest costume,' observes our Professor, 'which I anywhere find
alluded to in History, is that used as regimental, by Bolivar's
Cavalry, in the late Columbian wars. A square Blanket, twelve feet in
diagonal, is provided (some were wont to cut-off the corners, and make
it circular): in the centre a slit is effected eighteen inches long;
through this the mother-naked Trooper introduces his head and neck:
and so rides shielded from all weather, and in battle from many
strokes (for he rolls it about his left arm); and not only dressed,
but harnessed and draperied.'

With which picture of a State of Nature, affecting by its singularity,
and Old-Roman contempt of the superfluous, we shall quit this part of
our subject.

Chapter VIII

The World Out of Clothes


If in the Descriptive-Historical portion of this Volume,
Teufelsdröckh, discussing merely the _Werden_ (Origin and successive
Improvement) of Clothes, has astonished many a reader, much more will
he in the Speculative-Philosophical portion, which treats of their
_Wirken_, or Influences. It is here that the present Editor first
feels the pressure of his task; for here properly the higher and new
Philosophy of Clothes commences: an untried, almost inconceivable
region, or chaos; in venturing upon which, how difficult, yet how
unspeakably important is it to know what course, of survey and
conquest, is the true one; where the footing is firm substance and
will bear us, where it is hollow, or mere cloud, and may engulf us!
Teufelsdröckh undertakes no less than to expound the moral, political,
even religious Influences of Clothes; he undertakes to make manifest,
in its thousandfold bearings, this grand Proposition, that Man's
earthly interests 'are all hooked and buttoned together, and held up,
by Clothes.' He says in so many words, 'Society is founded upon
Cloth'; and again, 'Society sails through the Infinitude on Cloth, as
on a Faust's Mantle, or rather like the Sheet of clean and unclean
beasts in the Apostle's Dream; and without such Sheet or Mantle, would
sink to endless depths, or mount to inane limboes, and in either case
be no more.'

By what chains, or indeed infinitely complected tissues, of Meditation
this grand Theorem is here unfolded, and innumerable practical
Corollaries are drawn therefrom, it were perhaps a mad ambition to
attempt exhibiting. Our Professor's method is not, in any case, that
of common school Logic, where the truths all stand in a row, each
holding by the skirts of the other; but at best that of practical
Reason, proceeding by large Intuition over whole systematic groups and
kingdoms; whereby, we might say, a noble complexity, almost like that
of Nature, reigns in his Philosophy, or spiritual Picture of Nature: a
mighty maze, yet, as faith whispers, not without a plan. Nay we
complained above, that a certain ignoble complexity, what we must call
mere confusion, was also discernible. Often, also, we have to exclaim:
Would to Heaven those same Biographical Documents were come! For it
seems as if the demonstration lay much in the Author's individuality;
as if it were not Argument that had taught him, but Experience. At
present it is only in local glimpses, and by significant fragments,
picked often at wide-enough intervals from the original Volume, and
carefully collated, that we can hope to impart some outline or
foreshadow of this Doctrine. Readers of any intelligence are once more
invited to favour us with their most concentrated attention: let
these, after intense consideration, and not till then, pronounce,
Whether on the utmost verge of our actual horizon there is not a
looming as of Land; a promise of new Fortunate Islands, perhaps whole
undiscovered Americas, for such as have canvas to sail thither?--As
exordium to the whole, stand here the following long citation:

'With men of a speculative turn,' writes Teufelsdröckh, 'there come
seasons, meditative, sweet, yet awful hours, when in wonder and fear
you ask yourself that unanswerable question: Who am _I_; the thing
that can say "I" (_das Wesen das sich_ ICH _nennt_)? The world, with
its loud trafficking, retires into the distance; and, through the
paper-hangings, and stone-walls, and thick-plied tissues of Commerce
and Polity, and all the living and lifeless integuments (of Society
and a Body), wherewith your Existence sits surrounded,--the sight
reaches forth into the void Deep, and you are alone with the Universe,
and silently commune with it, as one mysterious Presence with another.

'Who am I; what is this ME? A Voice, a Motion, an Appearance;--some
embodied, visualised Idea in the Eternal Mind? _Cogito, ergo sum._
Alas, poor Cogitator, this takes us but a little way. Sure enough, I
am; and lately was not: but Whence? How? Whereto? The answer lies
around, written in all colours and motions, uttered in all tones of
jubilee and wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced, harmonious
Nature: but where is the cunning eye and ear to whom that God-written
Apocalypse will yield articulate meaning? We sit as in a boundless
Phantasmagoria and Dream-grotto; boundless, for the faintest star, the
remotest century, lies not even nearer the verge thereof: sounds and
many-coloured visions flit round our sense; but Him, the Unslumbering,
whose work both Dream and Dreamer are, we see not; except in rare
half-waking moments, suspect not. Creation, says one, lies before us,
like a glorious Rainbow; but the Sun that made it lies behind us,
hidden from us. Then, in that strange Dream, how we clutch at shadows
as if they were substances; and sleep deepest while fancying ourselves
most awake! Which of your Philosophical Systems is other than a
dream-theorem; a net quotient, confidently given out, where divisor
and dividend are both unknown? What are all your national Wars, with
their Moscow Retreats, and sanguinary hate-filled Revolutions, but the
Somnambulism of uneasy Sleepers? This Dreaming, this Somnambulism is
what we on Earth call Life; wherein the most indeed undoubtingly
wander, as if they knew right hand from left; yet they only are wise
who know that they know nothing.

'Pity that all Metaphysics had hitherto proved so inexpressibly
unproductive! The secret of Man's Being is still like the Sphinx's
secret: a riddle that he cannot rede; and for ignorance of which he
suffers death, the worst death, a spiritual. What are your Axioms, and
Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, words. High Air-castles
are cunningly built of Words, the Words well bedded also in good
Logic-mortar, wherein, however, no Knowledge will come to lodge. _The
whole is greater than the part_: how exceedingly true! _Nature abhors
a vacuum_: how exceedingly false and calumnious! Again, _Nothing can
act but where it is_: with all my heart; only, WHERE is it? Be not the
slave of Words: is not the Distant, the Dead, while I love it, and
long for it, and mourn for it, Here, in the genuine sense, as truly as
the floor I stand on? But that same WHERE, with its brother WHEN, are
from the first the master-colours of our Dream-grotto; say rather, the
Canvas (the warp and woof thereof) whereon all our Dreams and
Life-visions are painted! Nevertheless, has not a deeper meditation
taught certain of every climate and age, that the WHERE and WHEN, so
mysteriously inseparable from all our thoughts, are but superficial
terrestrial adhesions to thought; that the Seer may discern them where
they mount up out of the celestial EVERYWHERE and FOREVER: have not
all nations conceived their God as Omnipresent and Eternal; as
existing in a universal HERE, an everlasting NOW? Think well, thou too
wilt find that Space is but a mode of our human Sense, so likewise
Time; there _is_ no Space and no Time: WE are--we know not
what;--light-sparkles floating in the æther of Deity!

'So that this so solid-seeming World, after all, were but an
air-image, our ME the only reality: and Nature, with its thousandfold
production and destruction, but the reflex of our own inward Force,
the "phantasy of our Dream"; or what the Earth-Spirit in _Faust_ names
it, _the living visible Garment of God_:

  "In Being's floods, in Action's storm,
  I walk and work, above, beneath,
  Work and weave in endless motion!
        Birth and Death,
        An infinite ocean;
        A seizing and giving
        The fire of Living:
  'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply,
  And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by."

Of twenty millions that have read and spouted this thunder-speech of
the _Erdgeist_, are there yet twenty units of us that have learned the
meaning thereof?

'It was in some such mood, when wearied and fordone with these high
speculations, that I first came upon the question of Clothes. Strange
enough, it strikes me, is this same fact of there being Tailors and
Tailored. The Horse I ride has his own whole fell: strip him of the
girths and flaps and extraneous tags I have fastened round him, and
the noble creature is his own sempster and weaver and spinner; nay his
own bootmaker, jeweller, and man-milliner; he bounds free through the
valleys, with a perennial rain-proof court-suit on his body; wherein
warmth and easiness of fit have reached perfection; nay, the graces
also have been considered, and frills and fringes, with gay variety of
colour, featly appended, and ever in the right place, are not wanting.
While I--good Heaven!--have thatched myself over with the dead fleeces
of sheep, the bark of vegetables, the entrails of worms, the hides of
oxen or seals, the felt of furred beasts; and walk abroad a moving
Rag-screen, overheaped with shreds and tatters raked from the
Charnel-house of Nature, where they would have rotted, to rot on me
more slowly! Day after day, I must thatch myself anew; day after day,
this despicable thatch must lose some film of its thickness; some film
of it, frayed away by tear and wear, must be brushed-off into the
Ashpit, into the Laystall; till by degrees the whole has been brushed
thither, and I, the dust-making, patent Rag-grinder, get new material
to grind down. O subter-brutish! vile! most vile! For have not I too a
compact all-enclosing Skin, whiter or dingier? Am I a botched mass of
tailors' and cobblers' shreds, then; or a tightly-articulated,
homogeneous little Figure, automatic, nay alive?

'Strange enough how creatures of the human-kind shut their eyes to
plainest facts; and by the mere inertia of Oblivion and Stupidity,
live at ease in the midst of Wonders and Terrors. But indeed man is,
and was always, a blockhead and dullard; much readier to feel and
digest, than to think and consider. Prejudice, which he pretends to
hate, is his absolute lawgiver; mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him
by the nose; thus let but a Rising of the Sun, let but a Creation of
the World happen _twice_, and it ceases to be marvellous, to be
noteworthy, or noticeable. Perhaps not once in a lifetime does it
occur to your ordinary biped, of any country or generation, be he
gold-mantled Prince or russet-jerkined Peasant, that his Vestments and
his Self are not one and indivisible; that _he_ is naked, without
vestments, till he buy or steal such, and by forethought sew and
button them.

'For my own part, these considerations, of our Clothes-thatch, and
how, reaching inwards even to our heart of hearts, it tailorises and
demoralises us, fill me with a certain horror at myself and mankind;
almost as one feels at those Dutch Cows, which, during the wet season,
you see grazing deliberately with jackets and petticoats (of striped
sacking), in the meadows of Gouda. Nevertheless there is something
great in the moment when a man first strips himself of adventitious
wrappages; and sees indeed that he is naked, and, as Swift has it, "a
forked straddling animal with bandy legs"; yet also a Spirit, and
unutterable Mystery of Mysteries.'

Chapter IX

Adamitism


Let no courteous reader take offence at the opinions broached in the
conclusion of the last Chapter. The Editor himself, on first glancing
over that singular passage, was inclined to exclaim: What, have we got
not only a Sansculottist, but an enemy to Clothes in the abstract? A
new Adamite, in this century, which flatters itself that it is the
Nineteenth, and destructive both to Superstition and Enthusiasm?

Consider, thou foolish Teufelsdröckh, what benefits unspeakable all
ages and sexes derive from Clothes. For example, when thou thyself, a
watery, pulpy, slobbery freshman and new-comer in this Planet, sattest
muling and puking in thy nurse's arms; sucking thy coral, and looking
forth into the world in the blankest manner, what hadst thou been
without thy blankets, and bibs, and other nameless hulls? A terror to
thyself and mankind! Or hast thou forgotten the day when thou first
receivedst breeches, and thy long clothes became short? The village
where thou livedst was all apprised of the fact; and neighbour after
neighbour kissed thy pudding-cheek, and gave thee, as handsel, silver
or copper coins, on that the first gala-day of thy existence. Again,
wert not thou, at one period of life, a Buck, or Blood, or Macaroni,
or Incroyable, or Dandy, or by whatever name, according to year and
place, such phenomenon is distinguished? In that one word lie included
mysterious volumes. Nay, now when the reign of folly is over, or
altered, and thy clothes are not for triumph but for defence, hast
thou always worn them perforce, and as a consequence of Man's Fall;
never rejoiced in them as in a warm movable House, a Body round thy
Body, wherein that strange THEE of thine sat snug, defying all
variations of Climate? Girt with thick double-milled kerseys;
half-buried under shawls and broad-brims, and overalls and mud-boots,
thy very fingers cased in doeskin and mittens, thou hast bestrode that
'Horse I ride'; and, though it were in wild winter, dashed through the
world, glorying in it as if thou wert its lord. In vain did the sleet
beat round thy temples; it lighted only on thy impenetrable, felted or
woven, case of wool. In vain did the winds howl,--forests sounding and
creaking, deep calling unto deep,--and the storms heap themselves
together into one huge Arctic whirlpool: thou flewest through the
middle thereof, striking fire from the highway; wild music hummed in
thy ears, thou too wert as a 'sailor of the air'; the wreck of matter
and the crash of worlds was thy element and propitiously wafting tide.
Without Clothes, without bit or saddle, what hadst thou been; what had
thy fleet quadruped been?--Nature is good, but she is not the best:
here truly was the victory of Art over Nature. A thunderbolt indeed
might have pierced thee; all short of this thou couldst defy.

Or, cries the courteous reader, has your Teufelsdröckh forgotten what
he said lately about 'Aboriginal Savages,' and their 'condition
miserable indeed'? Would he have all this unsaid; and us betake
ourselves again to the 'matted cloak,' and go sheeted in a 'thick
natural fell'?

Nowise, courteous reader! The Professor knows full well what he is
saying; and both thou and we, in our haste, do him wrong. If Clothes,
in these times, 'so tailorise and demoralise us,' have they no
redeeming value; can they not be altered to serve better; must they of
necessity be thrown to the dogs? The truth is, Teufelsdröckh, though a
Sansculottist, is no Adamite; and much perhaps as he might wish to go
forth before this degenerate age 'as a Sign,' would nowise wish to do
it, as those old Adamites did, in a state of Nakedness. The utility of
Clothes is altogether apparent to him: nay perhaps he has an insight
into their more recondite, and almost mystic qualities, what we might
call the omnipotent virtue of Clothes, such as was never before
vouchsafed to any man. For example:

'You see two individuals,' he writes, 'one dressed in fine Red, the
other in coarse threadbare Blue: Red says to Blue, "Be hanged and
anatomised"; Blue hears with a shudder, and (O wonder of wonders!)
marches sorrowfully to the gallows; is there noosed-up, vibrates his
hour, and the surgeons dissect him, and fit his bones into a skeleton
for medical purposes. How is this; or what make ye of your _Nothing
can act but where it is_? Red has no physical hold of Blue, no
_clutch_ of him, is nowise in _contact_ with him: neither are those
ministering Sheriffs and Lord-Lieutenants and Hangmen and Tipstaves so
related to commanding Red, that he can tug them hither and thither;
but each stands distinct within his own skin. Nevertheless, as it is
spoken, so is it done: the articulated Word sets all hands in Action;
and Rope and Improved-drop perform their work.

'Thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold: First, that _Man is
a Spirit_, and bound by invisible bonds to _All Men_; secondly, that
_he wears Clothes_, which are the visible emblems of that fact. Has
not your Red hanging-individual a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins, and a
plush-gown; whereby all mortals know that he is a JUDGE?--Society,
which the more I think of it astonishes me the more, is founded upon
Cloth.

'Often in my atrabiliar-moods, when I read of pompous ceremonials,
Frankfort Coronations, Royal Drawing-rooms, Levees, Couchees; and how
the ushers and macers and pursuivants are all in waiting; how Duke
this is presented by Archduke that, and Colonel A by General B, and
innumerable Bishops, Admirals, and miscellaneous Functionaries, are
advancing gallantly to the Anointed Presence; and I strive, in my
remote privacy, to form a clear picture of that solemnity,--on a
sudden, as by some enchanter's wand, the--shall I speak it?--the
Clothes fly-off the whole dramatic corps; and Dukes, Grandees,
Bishops, Generals, Anointed Presence itself, every mother's son of
them, stand straddling there, not a shirt on them; and I know not
whether to laugh or weep. This physical or psychical infirmity, in
which perhaps I am not singular, I have, after hesitation, thought
right to publish, for the solace of those afflicted with the like.'

Would to Heaven, say we, thou hadst thought right to keep it secret!
Who is there now that can read the five columns of Presentations in
his Morning Newspaper without a shudder? Hypochondriac men, and all
men are to a certain extent hypochondriac, should be more gently
treated. With what readiness our fancy, in this shattered state of the
nerves, follows out the consequences which Teufelsdröckh, with a
devilish coolness, goes on to draw:

'What would Majesty do, could such an accident befall in reality;
should the buttons all simultaneously start, and the solid wool
evaporate, in very Deed, as here in Dream? _Ach Gott!_ How each skulks
into the nearest hiding-place; their high State Tragedy (_Haupt- und
Staats-Action_) becomes a Pickleherring-Farce to weep at, which is the
worst kind of Farce; _the tables_ (according to Horace), and with
them, the whole fabric of Government, Legislation, Property, Police,
and Civilised Society, _are dissolved_, in wails and howls.'

Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Windlestraw addressing a
naked House of Lords? Imagination, choked as in mephitic air, recoils
on itself, and will not forward with the picture. The Woolsack, the
Ministerial, the Opposition Benches--_infandum! infandum!_ And yet why
is the thing impossible? Was not every soul, or rather every body, of
these Guardians of our Liberties, naked, or nearly so, last night; 'a
forked Radish with a head fantastically carved'? And why might he not,
did our stern fate so order it, walk out to St Stephen's, as well as
into bed, in that no-fashion; and there, with other similar Radishes,
hold a Bed of Justice? 'Solace of those afflicted with the like!'
Unhappy Teufelsdröckh, had man ever such a 'physical or psychical
infirmity' before? And now how many, perhaps, may thy unparalleled
confession (which we, even to the sounder British world, and goaded-on
by Critical and Biographical duty, grudge to re-impart) incurably
infect therewith! Art thou the malignest of Sansculottists, or only
the maddest?

'It will remain to be examined,' adds the inexorable Teufelsdröckh,
'in how far the SCARECROW, as a Clothed Person, is not also entitled
to benefit of clergy, and English trial by jury: nay perhaps,
considering his high function (for is not he too a Defender of
Property, and Sovereign armed with the _terrors_ of the Law?), to a
certain royal Immunity and Inviolability; which, however, misers and
the meaner class of persons are not always voluntarily disposed to
grant him.' * * *

* * * 'O my Friends, we are (in Yorick Sterne's words) but as "turkeys
driven with a stick and red clout, to the market": or if some drivers,
as they do in Norfolk, take a dried bladder and put peas in it, the
rattle thereof terrifies the boldest!'