Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh
as was said, some zigzag series of rafts floating tumultuously thereon.
Alas, and the leaps from raft to raft were too often of a breakneck
character; the darkness, the nature of the element, all was against us!
Nevertheless, may not here and there one of a thousand, provided with a
discursiveness of intellect rare in our day, have cleared the passage,
in spite of all? Happy few! little band of Friends! be welcome, be of
courage. By degrees, the eye grows accustomed to its new Whereabout;
the hand can stretch itself forth to work there: it is in this grand and
indeed highest work of Palingenesia that ye shall labor, each according
to ability. New laborers will arrive; new Bridges will be built;
nay, may not our own poor rope-and-raft Bridge, in your passings and
repassings, be mended in many a point, till it grow quite firm, passable
even for the halt?
Meanwhile, of the innumerable multitude that started with us, joyous
and full of hope, where now is the innumerable remainder, whom we see no
longer by our side? The most have recoiled, and stand gazing afar
off, in unsympathetic astonishment, at our career: not a few, pressing
forward with more courage, have missed footing, or leaped short; and now
swim weltering in the Chaos-flood, some towards this shore, some towards
that. To these also a helping hand should be held out; at least some
word of encouragement be said.
Or, to speak without metaphor, with which mode of utterance
Teufelsdrockh unhappily has somewhat infected us,--can it be hidden from
the Editor that many a British Reader sits reading quite bewildered in
head, and afflicted rather than instructed by the present Work?
Yes, long ago has many a British Reader been, as now, demanding with
something like a snarl: Whereto does all this lead; or what use is in
it?
In the way of replenishing thy purse, or otherwise aiding thy digestive
faculty, O British Reader, it leads to nothing, and there is no use in
it; but rather the reverse, for it costs thee somewhat. Nevertheless,
if through this unpromising Horn-gate, Teufelsdrockh, and we by means
of him, have led thee into the true Land of Dreams; and through the
Clothes-Screen, as through a magical _Pierre-Pertuis_, thou lookest,
even for moments, into the region of the Wonderful, and seest and
feelest that thy daily life is girt with Wonder, and based on Wonder,
and thy very blankets and breeches are Miracles,--then art thou profited
beyond money's worth; and hast a thankfulness towards our Professor;
nay, perhaps in many a literary Tea-circle wilt open thy kind lips, and
audibly express that same.
Nay farther, art not thou too perhaps by this time made aware that all
Symbols are properly Clothes; that all Forms whereby Spirit manifests
itself to sense, whether outwardly or in the imagination, are Clothes;
and thus not only the parchment Magna Charta, which a Tailor was nigh
cutting into measures, but the Pomp and Authority of Law, the sacredness
of Majesty, and all inferior Worships (Worth-ships) are properly
a Vesture and Raiment; and the Thirty-nine Articles themselves are
articles of wearing-apparel (for the Religious Idea)? In which case,
must it not also be admitted that this Science of Clothes is a high one,
and may with infinitely deeper study on thy part yield richer fruit:
that it takes scientific rank beside Codification, and Political
Economy, and the Theory of the British Constitution; nay rather,
from its prophetic height looks down on all these, as on so many
weaving-shops and spinning-mills, where the Vestures which _it_ has
to fashion, and consecrate, and distribute, are, too often by haggard
hungry operatives who see no farther than their nose, mechanically woven
and spun?
But omitting all this, much more all that concerns Natural
Supernaturalism, and indeed whatever has reference to the Ulterior or
Transcendental portion of the Science, or bears never so remotely on
that promised Volume of the _Palingenesie der menschlichen Gesellschaft_
(Newbirth of Society),--we humbly suggest that no province of
Clothes-Philosophy, even the lowest, is without its direct value,
but that innumerable inferences of a practical nature may be drawn
therefrom. To say nothing of those pregnant considerations, ethical,
political, symbolical, which crowd on the Clothes-Philosopher from the
very threshold of his Science; nothing even of those "architectural
ideas," which, as we have seen, lurk at the bottom of all Modes,
and will one day, better unfolding themselves, lead to important
revolutions,--let us glance for a moment, and with the faintest light
of Clothes-Philosophy, on what may be called the Habilatory Class of our
fellow-men. Here too overlooking, where so much were to be looked on,
the million spinners, weavers, fullers, dyers, washers, and wringers,
that puddle and muddle in their dark recesses, to make us Clothes, and
die that we may live,--let us but turn the reader's attention upon
two small divisions of mankind, who, like moths, may be regarded as
Cloth-animals, creatures that live, move and have their being in Cloth:
we mean, Dandies and Tailors.
In regard to both which small divisions it may be asserted without
scruple, that the public feeling, unenlightened by Philosophy, is at
fault; and even that the dictates of humanity are violated. As will
perhaps abundantly appear to readers of the two following Chapters.
CHAPTER X. THE DANDIACAL BODY.
First, touching Dandies, let us consider, with some scientific
strictness, what a Dandy specially is. A Dandy is a Clothes-wearing
Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing
of Clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse and person is
heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of Clothes
wisely and well: so that as others dress to live, he lives to dress.
The all-importance of Clothes, which a German Professor, of unequalled
learning and acumen, writes his enormous Volume to demonstrate, has
sprung up in the intellect of the Dandy without effort, like an
instinct of genius; he is inspired with Cloth, a Poet of Cloth. What
Teufelsdrockh would call a "Divine Idea of Cloth" is born with him; and
this, like other such Ideas, will express itself outwardly, or wring his
heart asunder with unutterable throes.
But, like a generous, creative enthusiast, he fearlessly makes his Idea
an Action; shows himself in peculiar guise to mankind; walks forth, a
witness and living Martyr to the eternal worth of Clothes. We called him
a Poet: is not his body the (stuffed) parchment-skin whereon he writes,
with cunning Huddersfield dyes, a Sonnet to his mistress' eyebrow? Say,
rather, an Epos, and _Clotha Virumque cano_, to the whole world, in
Macaronic verses, which he that runs may read. Nay, if you grant, what
seems to be admissible, that the Dandy has a Thinking-principle in
him, and some notions of Time and Space, is there not in this
life-devotedness to Cloth, in this so willing sacrifice of the Immortal
to the Perishable, something (though in reverse order) of that blending
and identification of Eternity with Time, which, as we have seen,
constitutes the Prophetic character?
And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, and even Prophecy,
what is it that the Dandy asks in return? Solely, we may say, that you
would recognize his existence; would admit him to be a living object; or
even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays
of light. Your silver or your gold (beyond what the niggardly Law has
already secured him) he solicits not; simply the glance of your eyes.
Understand his mystic significance, or altogether miss and misinterpret
it; do but look at him, and he is contented. May we not well cry shame
on an ungrateful world, which refuses even this poor boon; which will
waste its optic faculty on dried Crocodiles, and Siamese Twins; and
over the domestic wonderful wonder of wonders, a live Dandy, glance with
hasty indifference, and a scarcely concealed contempt! Him no Zoologist
classes among the Mammalia, no Anatomist dissects with care: when did we
see any injected Preparation of the Dandy in our Museums; any specimen
of him preserved in spirits! Lord Herringbone may dress himself in a
snuff-brown suit, with snuff-brown shirt and shoes: it skills not; the
undiscerning public, occupied with grosser wants, passes by regardless
on the other side.
The age of Curiosity, like that of Chivalry, is indeed, properly
speaking, gone. Yet perhaps only gone to sleep: for here arises the
Clothes-Philosophy to resuscitate, strangely enough, both the one and
the other! Should sound views of this Science come to prevail, the
essential nature of the British Dandy, and the mystic significance that
lies in him, cannot always remain hidden under laughable and lamentable
hallucination. The following long Extract from Professor Teufelsdrockh
may set the matter, if not in its true light, yet in the way towards
such. It is to be regretted, however, that here, as so often elsewhere,
the Professor's keen philosophic perspicacity is somewhat marred by a
certain mixture of almost owlish purblindness, or else of some perverse,
ineffectual, ironic tendency; our readers shall judge which:--
"In these distracted times," writes he, "when the Religious Principle,
driven out of most Churches, either lies unseen in the hearts of good
men, looking and longing and silently working there towards some new
Revelation; or else wanders homeless over the world, like a disembodied
soul seeking its terrestrial organization,--into how many strange
shapes, of Superstition and Fanaticism, does it not tentatively and
errantly cast itself! The higher Enthusiasm of man's nature is for the
while without Exponent; yet does it continue indestructible, unweariedly
active, and work blindly in the great chaotic deep: thus Sect after
Sect, and Church after Church, bodies itself forth, and melts again into
new metamorphosis.
"Chiefly is this observable in England, which, as the wealthiest and
worst-instructed of European nations, offers precisely the elements
(of Heat, namely, and of Darkness), in which such moon-calves and
monstrosities are best generated. Among the newer Sects of that country,
one of the most notable, and closely connected with our present subject,
is that of the _Dandies_; concerning which, what little information I
have been able to procure may fitly stand here.
"It is true, certain of the English Journalists, men generally without
sense for the Religious Principle, or judgment for its manifestations,
speak, in their brief enigmatic notices, as if this were perhaps
rather a Secular Sect, and not a Religious one; nevertheless, to the
psychologic eye its devotional and even sacrificial character
plainly enough reveals itself. Whether it belongs to the class of
Fetish-worships, or of Hero-worships or Polytheisms, or to what other
class, may in the present state of our intelligence remain undecided
(_schweben_). A certain touch of Manicheism, not indeed in the Gnostic
shape, is discernible enough; also (for human Error walks in a cycle,
and reappears at intervals) a not-inconsiderable resemblance to that
Superstition of the Athos Monks, who by fasting from all nourishment,
and looking intensely for a length of time into their own navels, came
to discern therein the true Apocalypse of Nature, and Heaven Unveiled.
To my own surmise, it appears as if this Dandiacal Sect were but a new
modification, adapted to the new time, of that primeval Superstition,
_Self-worship_; which Zerdusht, Quangfoutchee, Mahomet, and others,
strove rather to subordinate and restrain than to eradicate; and which
only in the purer forms of Religion has been altogether rejected.
Wherefore, if any one chooses to name it revived Ahrimanism, or a new