Sartor Resartus

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"If aught in the history of the world's blindness could surprise us, here
might we indeed pause and wonder. An idea has gone abroad, and fixed
itself down into a wide-spreading rooted error, that Tailors are a distinct
species in Physiology, not Men, but fractional Parts of a Man. Call any
one a _Schneider_ (Cutter, Tailor), is it not, in our dislocated,
hoodwinked, and indeed delirious condition of Society, equivalent to
defying his perpetual fellest enmity? The epithet _schneidermassig_
(tailor-like) betokens an otherwise unapproachable degree of pusillanimity;
we introduce a _Tailor's-Melancholy_, more opprobrious than any Leprosy,
into our Books of Medicine; and fable I know not what of his generating it
by living on Cabbage. Why should I speak of Hans Sachs (himself a
Shoemaker, or kind of Leather-Tailor), with his _Schneider mit dem Panier_?
Why of Shakspeare, in his _Taming of the Shrew_, and elsewhere? Does it
not stand on record that the English Queen Elizabeth, receiving a
deputation of Eighteen Tailors, addressed them with a 'Good morning,
gentlemen both!' Did not the same virago boast that she had a Cavalry
Regiment, whereof neither horse nor man could be injured; her Regiment,
namely, of Tailors on Mares? Thus everywhere is the falsehood taken for
granted, and acted on as an indisputable fact.

"Nevertheless, need I put the question to any Physiologist, whether it is
disputable or not? Seems it not at least presumable, that, under his
Clothes, the Tailor has bones and viscera, and other muscles than the
sartorius? Which function of manhood is the Tailor not conjectured to
perform? Can he not arrest for debt? Is he not in most countries a
taxpaying animal?

"To no reader of this Volume can it be doubtful which conviction is mine.
Nay if the fruit of these long vigils, and almost preternatural Inquiries,
is not to perish utterly, the world will have approximated towards a higher
Truth; and the doctrine, which Swift, with the keen forecast of genius,
dimly anticipated, will stand revealed in clear light: that the Tailor is
not only a Man, but something of a Creator or Divinity. Of Franklin it was
said, that 'he snatched the Thunder from Heaven and the Sceptre from
Kings:' but which is greater, I would ask, he that lends, or he that
snatches? For, looking away from individual cases, and how a Man is by the
Tailor new-created into a Nobleman, and clothed not only with Wool but with
Dignity and a Mystic Dominion,--is not the fair fabric of Society itself,
with all its royal mantles and pontifical stoles, whereby, from nakedness
and dismemberment, we are organized into Polities, into nations, and a
whole co-operating Mankind, the creation, as has here been often
irrefragably evinced, of the Tailor alone?--What too are all Poets and
moral Teachers, but a species of Metaphorical Tailors? Touching which high
Guild the greatest living Guild-brother has triumphantly asked us: 'Nay if
thou wilt have it, who but the Poet first made Gods for men; brought them
down to us; and raised us up to them?'

"And this is he, whom sitting downcast, on the hard basis of his Shopboard,
the world treats with contumely, as the ninth part of a man! Look up, thou
much-injured one, look up with the kindling eye of hope, and prophetic
bodings of a noble better time. Too long hast thou sat there, on crossed
legs, wearing thy ankle-joints to horn; like some sacred Anchorite, or
Catholic Fakir, doing penance, drawing down Heaven's richest blessings, for
a world that scoffed at thee. Be of hope! Already streaks of blue peer
through our clouds; the thick gloom of Ignorance is rolling asunder, and it
will be Day. Mankind will repay with interest their long-accumulated debt:
the Anchorite that was scoffed at will be worshipped; the Fraction will
become not an Integer only, but a Square and Cube. With astonishment the
world will recognize that the Tailor is its Hierophant and Hierarch, or
even its God.

"As I stood in the Mosque of St. Sophia, and looked upon these
Four-and-Twenty Tailors, sewing and embroidering that rich Cloth, which the
Sultan sends yearly for the Caaba of Mecca, I thought within myself: How
many other Unholies has your covering Art made holy, besides this Arabian
Whinstone!

"Still more touching was it when, turning the corner of a lane, in the
Scottish Town of Edinburgh, I came upon a Signpost, whereon stood written
that such and such a one was 'Breeches-Maker to his Majesty;' and stood
painted the Effigies of a Pair of Leather Breeches, and between the knees
these memorable words, SIC ITUR AD ASTRA. Was not this the martyr
prison-speech of a Tailor sighing indeed in bonds, yet sighing towards
deliverance, and prophetically appealing to a better day? A day of
justice, when the worth of Breeches would be revealed to man, and the
Scissors become forever venerable.

"Neither, perhaps, may I now say, has his appeal been altogether in vain.
It was in this high moment, when the soul, rent, as it were, and shed
asunder, is open to inspiring influence, that I first conceived this Work
on Clothes: the greatest I can ever hope to do; which has already, after
long retardations, occupied, and will yet occupy, so large a section of my
Life; and of which the Primary and simpler Portion may here find its
conclusion."

CHAPTER XII.
FAREWELL.

So have we endeavored, from the enormous, amorphous Plum-pudding, more like
a Scottish Haggis, which Herr Teufelsdrockh had kneaded for his
fellow-mortals, to pick out the choicest Plums, and present them separately
on a cover of our own. A laborious, perhaps a thankless enterprise; in
which, however, something of hope has occasionally cheered us, and of which
we can now wash our hands not altogether without satisfaction. If hereby,
though in barbaric wise, some morsel of spiritual nourishment have been
added to the scanty ration of our beloved British world, what nobler
recompense could the Editor desire? If it prove otherwise, why should he
murmur? Was not this a Task which Destiny, in any case, had appointed him;
which having now done with, he sees his general Day's-work so much the
lighter, so much the shorter?

Of Professor Teufelsdrockh, it seems impossible to take leave without a
mingled feeling of astonishment, gratitude, and disapproval. Who will not
regret that talents, which might have profited in the higher walks of
Philosophy, or in Art itself, have been so much devoted to a rummaging
among lumber-rooms; nay too often to a scraping in kennels, where lost
rings and diamond-necklaces are nowise the sole conquests? Regret is
unavoidable; yet censure were loss of time. To cure him of his mad humors
British Criticism would essay in vain: enough for her if she can, by
vigilance, prevent the spreading of such among ourselves. What a result,
should this piebald, entangled, hyper-metaphorical style of writing, not to
say of thinking, become general among our Literary men! As it might so
easily do. Thus has not the Editor himself, working over Teufelsdrockh's
German, lost much of his own English purity? Even as the smaller whirlpool
is sucked into the larger, and made to whirl along with it, so has the
lesser mind, in this instance, been forced to become portion of the
greater, and, like it, see all things figuratively: which habit time and
assiduous effort will be needed to eradicate.

Nevertheless, wayward as our Professor shows himself, is there any reader
that can part with him in declared enmity? Let us confess, there is that
in the wild, much-suffering, much-inflicting man, which almost attaches us.
His attitude, we will hope and believe, is that of a man who had said to
Cant, Begone; and to Dilettantism, Here thou canst not be; and to Truth, Be
thou in place of all to me: a man who had manfully defied the
"Time-Prince," or Devil, to his face; nay perhaps, Hannibal-like, was
mysteriously consecrated from birth to that warfare, and now stood minded
to wage the same, by all weapons, in all places, at all times. In such a
cause, any soldier, were he but a Polack Scythe-man, shall be welcome.

Still the question returns on us: How could a man occasionally of keen
insight, not without keen sense of propriety, who had real Thoughts to
communicate, resolve to emit them in a shape bordering so closely on the
absurd? Which question he were wiser than the present Editor who should
satisfactorily answer. Our conjecture has sometimes been, that perhaps
Necessity as well as Choice was concerned in it. Seems it not conceivable
that, in a Life like our Professor's, where so much bountifully given by
Nature had in Practice failed and misgone, Literature also would never
rightly prosper: that striving with his characteristic vehemence to paint
this and the other Picture, and ever without success, he at last
desperately dashes his sponge, full of all colors, against the canvas, to
try whether it will paint Foam? With all his stillness, there were perhaps
in Teufelsdrockh desperation enough for this.

A second conjecture we hazard with even less warranty. It is, that
Teufelsdrockh, is not without some touch of the universal feeling, a wish
to proselytize. How often already have we paused, uncertain whether the
basis of this so enigmatic nature were really Stoicism and Despair, or Love
and Hope only seared into the figure of these! Remarkable, moreover, is
this saying of his: "How were Friendship possible? In mutual devotedness
to the Good and True: otherwise impossible; except as Armed Neutrality, or
hollow Commercial League. A man, be the Heavens ever praised, is
sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in Love, capable of being
and of doing what ten thousand singly would fail in. Infinite is the help
man can yield to man." And now in conjunction therewith consider this
other: "It is the Night of the World, and still long till it be Day: we
wander amid the glimmer of smoking ruins, and the Sun and the Stars of
Heaven are as if blotted out for a season; and two immeasurable Phantoms,
HYPOCRISY and ATHEISM, with the Ghoul, SENSUALITY, stalk abroad over the
Earth, and call it theirs: well at ease are the Sleepers for whom
Existence is a shallow Dream."

But what of the awe-struck Wakeful who find it a Reality? Should not these
unite; since even an authentic Spectre is not visible to Two?--In which
case were this Enormous Clothes-Volume properly an enormous Pitch-pan,
which our Teufelsdrockh in his lone watch-tower had kindled, that it might
flame far and wide through the Night, and many a disconsolately wandering
spirit be guided thither to a Brother's bosom!--We say as before, with all
his malign Indifference, who knows what mad Hopes this man may harbor?

Meanwhile there is one fact to be stated here, which harmonizes ill with
such conjecture; and, indeed, were Teufelsdrockh made like other men, might
as good as altogether subvert it. Namely, that while the Beacon-fire
blazed its brightest, the Watchman had quitted it; that no pilgrim could
now ask him: Watchman, what of the Night? Professor Teufelsdrockh, be it
known, is no longer visibly present at Weissnichtwo, but again to all
appearance lost in space! Some time ago, the Hofrath Heuschrecke was
pleased to favor us with another copious Epistle; wherein much is said
about the "Population-Institute;" much repeated in praise of the Paper-bag
Documents, the hieroglyphic nature of which our Hofrath still seems not to
have surmised; and, lastly, the strangest occurrence communicated, to us
for the first time, in the following paragraph:--

"_Ew. Wohlgeboren_ will have seen from the Public Prints, with what
affectionate and hitherto fruitless solicitude Weissnichtwo regards the
disappearance of her Sage. Might but the united voice of Germany prevail
on him to return; nay could we but so much as elucidate for ourselves by
what mystery he went away! But, alas, old Lieschen experiences or affects
the profoundest deafness, the profoundest ignorance: in the Wahngasse all
lies swept, silent, sealed up; the Privy Council itself can hitherto elicit
no answer.

"It had been remarked that while the agitating news of those Parisian Three
Days flew from mouth to month, and dinned every ear in Weissnichtwo, Herr
Teufelsdrockh was not known, at the _Gans_ or elsewhere, to have spoken,
for a whole week, any syllable except once these three: _Es geht an_ (It
is beginning). Shortly after, as _Ew. Wohlgeboren_ knows, was the public
tranquillity here, as in Berlin, threatened by a Sedition of the Tailors.
Nor did there want Evil-wishers, or perhaps mere desperate Alarmists, who
asserted that the closing Chapter of the Clothes-Volume was to blame. In
this appalling crisis, the serenity of our Philosopher was indescribable:
nay, perhaps through one humble individual, something thereof might pass
into the _Rath_ (Council) itself, and so contribute to the country's
deliverance. The Tailors are now entirely pacificated.--

"To neither of these two incidents can I attribute our loss: yet still
comes there the shadow of a suspicion out of Paris and its Politics. For
example, when the _Saint-Simonian Society_ transmitted its Propositions
hither, and the whole _Gans_ was one vast cackle of laughter, lamentation
and astonishment, our Sage sat mute; and at the end of the third evening
said merely: 'Here also are men who have discovered, not without
amazement, that Man is still Man; of which high, long-forgotten Truth you
already see them make a false application.' Since then, as has been
ascertained by examination of the Post-Director, there passed at least one
Letter with its Answer between the Messieurs Bazard-Enfantin and our
Professor himself; of what tenor can now only be conjectured. On the fifth
night following, he was seen for the last time!

"Has this invaluable man, so obnoxious to most of the hostile Sects that
convulse our Era, been spirited away by certain of their emissaries; or did
he go forth voluntarily to their head-quarters to confer with them, and
confront them? Reason we have, at least of a negative sort, to believe the
Lost still living; our widowed heart also whispers that ere long he will
himself give a sign. Otherwise, indeed, his archives must, one day, be
opened by Authority; where much, perhaps the _Palingenesie_ itself, is
thought to be reposited."

Thus far the Hofrath; who vanishes, as is his wont, too like an Ignis
Fatuus, leaving the dark still darker.

So that Teufelsdrockh's public History were not done, then, or reduced to
an even, unromantic tenor; nay, perhaps the better part thereof were only
beginning? We stand in a region of conjectures, where substance has melted
into shadow, and one cannot be distinguished from the other. May Time,
which solves or suppresses all problems, throw glad light on this also!
Our own private conjecture, now amounting almost to certainty, is that,
safe-moored in some stillest obscurity, not to lie always still,
Teufelsdrockh, is actually in London!

Here, however, can the present Editor, with an ambrosial joy as of
over-weariness falling into sleep, lay down his pen. Well does he know, if
human testimony be worth aught, that to innumerable British readers
likewise, this is a satisfying consummation; that innumerable British
readers consider him, during these current months, but as an uneasy
interruption to their ways of thought and digestion; and indicate so much,
not without a certain irritancy and even spoken invective. For which, as
for other mercies, ought not he to thank the Upper Powers? To one and all
of you, O irritated readers, he, with outstretched arms and open heart,
will wave a kind farewell. Thou too, miraculous Entity, who namest thyself
YORKE and OLIVER, and with thy vivacities and 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.

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