Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh
genialities, with thy all too Irish mirth and madness, and odor of
palled punch, makest such strange work, farewell; long as thou canst,
_fare-well_! Have we not, in the course of Eternity, travelled some
months of our Life-journey in partial sight of one another; have we not
existed together, though in a state of quarrel?
APPENDIX.
This questionable little Book was undoubtedly written among the mountain
solitudes, in 1831; but, owing to impediments natural and accidental,
could not, for seven years more, appear as a Volume in England;--and had
at last to clip itself in pieces, and be content to struggle out, bit by
bit, in some courageous _Magazine_ that offered. Whereby now, to
certain idly curious readers, and even to myself till I make study, the
insignificant but at last irritating question, What its real history and
chronology are, is, if not insoluble, considerably involved in haze.
To the first English Edition, 1838, which an American, or two American
had now opened the way for, there was slightingly prefixed, under the
title, "_Testimonies of Authors_," some straggle of real documents,
which, now that I find it again, sets the matter into clear light and
sequence:--and shall here, for removal of idle stumbling-blocks and
nugatory guessings from the path of every reader, be reprinted as it
stood. (_Author's Note, of_ 1868.)
TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS.
I. HIGHEST CLASS, BOOKSELLER'S TASTER.
_Taster to Bookseller_.--"The Author of _Teufelsdrockh_ is a person of
talent; his work displays here and there some felicity of thought and
expression, considerable fancy and knowledge: but whether or not it
would take with the public seems doubtful. For a _jeu d'esprit_ of that
kind it is too long; it would have suited better as an essay or article
than as a volume. The Author has no great tact; his wit is frequently
heavy; and reminds one of the German Baron who took to leaping on
tables and answered that he was learning to be lively. _Is_ the work a
translation?"
_Bookseller to Editor_.--"Allow me to say that such a writer requires
only a little more tact to produce a popular as well as an able work.
Directly on receiving your permission, I sent your MS. to a gentleman in
the highest class of men of letters, and an accomplished German scholar:
I now enclose you his opinion, which, you may rely upon it, is a just
one; and I have too high an opinion of your good sense to" &c. &c.--_Ms.
(penes nos), London, 17th September_, 1831.
II. CRITIC OF THE SUN.
"_Fraser's Magazine_ exhibits the usual brilliancy, and also the" &c.
"_Sartor Resartus_ is what old Dennis used to call 'a heap of clotted
nonsense,' mixed however, here and there, with passages marked by
thought and striking poetic vigor. But what does the writer mean by
'Baphometic fire-baptism'? Why cannot he lay aside his pedantry, and
write so as to make himself generally intelligible? We quote by way
of curiosity a sentence from the _Sartor Resartus_; which may be read
either backwards or forwards, for it is equally intelligible either
way: indeed, by beginning at the tail, and so working up to the head,
we think the reader will stand the fairest chance of getting at its
meaning: 'The fire-baptized soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven,
here feels its own freedom; which feeling is its Baphometic baptism:
the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, and
will keep inexpugnable; outwards from which the remaining dominions, not
indeed without hard battering, will doubtless by degrees be conquered
and pacificated.' Here is a"...--_Sun Newspaper, 1st April_, 1834.
III. NORTH--AMERICAN REVIEWER.
... "After a careful survey of the whole ground, our belief is that no
such persons as Professors Teufelsdrockh or Counsellor Heuschrecke ever
existed; that the six Paper-bags, with their China-ink inscriptions
and multifarious contents, are a mere figment of the brain; that the
'present Editor' is the only person who has ever written upon the
Philosophy of Clothes; and that the _Sartor Resartus_ is the only
treatise that has yet appeared upon that subject;--in short, that the
whole account of the origin of the work before us, which the supposed
Editor relates with so much gravity, and of which we have given a brief
abstract, is, in plain English, a _hum_.
"Without troubling our readers at any great length with our reasons for
entertaining these suspicions, we may remark, that the absence of all
other information on the subject, except what is contained in the work,
is itself a fact of a most significant character. The whole German
press, as well as the particular one where the work purports to have
been printed, seems to be under the control of _Stillschweigen and Co.
_--Silence and Company. If the Clothes-Philosophy and its author are
making so great a sensation throughout Germany as is pretended, how
happens it that the only notice we have of the fact is contained in a
few numbers of a monthly Magazine published at London! How happens it
that no intelligence about the matter has come out directly to this
country? We pique ourselves here in New England upon knowing at least
as much of what is going on in the literary way in the old Dutch
Mother-land as our brethren of the fast-anchored Isle; but thus far
we have no tidings whatever of the 'extensive close-printed,
close-meditated volume,' which forms the subject of this pretended
commentary. Again, we would respectfully inquire of the 'present Editor'
upon what part of the map of Germany we are to look for the city of
_Weissnichtwo_--'Know-not-where'--at which place the work is supposed
to have been printed, and the Author to have resided. It has been
our fortune to visit several portions of the German territory, and to
examine pretty carefully, at different times and for various purposes,
maps of the whole; but we have no recollection of any such place. We
suspect that the city of _Know-not-where_ might be called, with at
least as much propriety, _Nobody-knows-where_, and is to be
found in the kingdom of _Nowhere_. Again, the village of
_Entepfuhl_--'Duck-pond'--where the supposed Author of the work is said
to have passed his youth, and that of _Hinterschlag_, where he had his
education, are equally foreign to our geography. Duck-ponds enough there
undoubtedly are in almost every village in Germany, as the traveller
in that country knows too well to his cost, but any particular village
denominated Duck-pond is to us altogether _terra incognita_. The names
of the personages are not less singular than those of the places.
Who can refrain from a smile at the yoking together of such a pair of
appellatives as Diogenes Teufelsdrockh? The supposed bearer of
this strange title is represented as admitting, in his pretended
autobiography, that 'he had searched to no purpose through all the
Heralds' books in and without the German empire, and through all manner
of Subscribers'-lists, Militia-rolls, and other Name-catalogues,'
but had nowhere been able to find 'the name Teufelsdrockh, except as
appended to his own person.' We can readily believe this, and we doubt
very much whether any Christian parent would think of condemning a
son to carry through life the burden of so unpleasant a title. That of
Counsellor Heuschrecke--'Grasshopper'--though not offensive, looks much
more like a piece of fancy-work than a 'fair business transaction.'
The same may be said of _Blumine_--'Flower-Goddess'--the heroine of the
fable; and so of the rest.
"In short, our private opinion is, as we have remarked, that the
whole story of a correspondence with Germany, a university of
Nobody-knows-where, a Professor of Things in General, a Counsellor
Grasshopper, a Flower-Goddess Blumine, and so forth, has about as
much foundation in truth as the late entertaining account of Sir John
Herschel's discoveries in the moon. Fictions of this kind are, however,
not uncommon, and ought not, perhaps, to be condemned with too much
severity; but we are not sure that we can exercise the same indulgence
in regard to the attempt, which seems to be made to mislead the public
as to the substance of the work before us, and its pretended German
original. Both purport, as we have seen, to be upon the subject of
Clothes, or dress. _Clothes, their Origin and Influence_, is the title
of the supposed German treatise of Professor Teufelsdrockh and the
rather odd name of _Sartor Resartus_--the Tailor Patched--which the
present Editor has affixed to his pretended commentary, seems to look
the same way. But though there is a good deal of remark throughout the
work in a half-serious, half-comic style upon dress, it seems to be in
reality a treatise upon the great science of Things in General, which
Teufelsdrockh, is supposed to have professed at the university of
Nobody-knows-where. Now, without intending to adopt a too rigid standard
of morals, we own that we doubt a little the propriety of offering to
the public a treatise on Things in General, under the name and in the
form of an Essay on Dress. For ourselves, advanced as we unfortunately
are in the journey of life, far beyond the period when dress is
practically a matter of interest, we have no hesitation in saying,
that the real subject of the work is to us more attractive than the
ostensible one. But this is probably not the case with the mass of
readers. To the younger portion of the community, which constitutes
everywhere the very great majority, the subject of dress is one of
intense and paramount importance. An author who treats it appeals, like
the poet, to the young men end maddens--_virginibus puerisque_--and
calls upon them, by all the motives which habitually operate most
strongly upon their feelings, to buy his book. When, after opening their
purses for this purpose, they have carried home the work in triumph,
expecting to find in it some particular instruction in regard to the
tying of their neckcloths, or the cut of their corsets, and meet with
nothing better than a dissertation on Things in General, they
will--to use the mildest term--not be in very good humor. If the last
improvements in legislation, which we have made in this country, should
have found their way to England, the author, we think, would stand
some chance of being _Lynched_. Whether his object in this piece
of _supercherie_ be merely pecuniary profit, or whether he takes a
malicious pleasure in quizzing the Dandies, we shall not undertake to
say. In the latter part of the work, he devotes a separate chapter to
this class of persons, from the tenor of which we should be disposed
to conclude, that he would consider any mode of divesting them of their
property very much in the nature of a spoiling of the Egyptians.
"The only thing about the work, tending to prove that it is what it
purports to be, a commentary on a real German treatise, is the style,
which is a sort of Babylonish dialect, not destitute, it is true, of
richness, vigor, and at times a sort of singular felicity of expression,
but very strongly tinged throughout with the peculiar idiom of the
German language. This quality in the style, however, may be a mere
result of a great familiarity with German literature; and we cannot,
therefore, look upon it as in itself decisive, still less as outweighing
so much evidence of an opposite character."--_North-American Review, No.
89, October_, 1835.
IV. NEW ENGLAND EDITORS.
"The Editors have been induced, by the expressed desire of many persons,
to collect the following sheets out of the ephemeral pamphlets [*] in
which they first appeared, under the conviction that they contain in
themselves the assurance of a longer date.
* _Fraser's_ (London) _Magazine_, 1833-34.
"The Editors have no expectation that this little Work will have a