Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh
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 untranslatable 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 Gesass_): 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
head-gear 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 (_Kragenmantel_).
"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 have humor 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, counted 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 gallooned, 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
galloons 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 Despreaux (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 Teufelsdrockh, 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 Colombian 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, Teufelsdrockh,
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: all 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! Teufelsdrockh undertakes no less than to
expound the moral, political, even religious Influences of Clothes; he
undertakes to make manifest, in its thousand-fold 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 limbos, 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 favor 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 Teufelsdrockh, "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 stonewalls, 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, visualized 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 colors 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-colored 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