Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh
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 Humor, 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 humor, 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 Teufelsdrockh! 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 Humor, 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, Teufelsdrockh, 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 Teufelsdrockh 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 unnamable; 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 endeavor.
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 endeavors, 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 Color! From the soberest
drab to the high-flaming scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold
themselves in choice of Color: if the Cut betoken Intellect and Talent,
so does the Color 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, Teufelsdrockh, 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, Teufelsdrockh 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 Nurnbergers 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 hilibegs (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