Sartor Resartus

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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 he found in the toils of the chase; or amid dried leaves,
in his hollow tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto: but for
Decoration he must have Clothes. Nay, among wild people, we find tattooing
and painting even prior to Clothes. The first spiritual want of a
barbarous man is Decoration, as indeed we still see among the barbarous
classes in civilized countries.

"Reader, the heaven-inspired melodious Singer; loftiest Serene Highness;
nay thy own amber-locked, snow-and-rosebloom Maiden, worthy to glide
sylph-like almost on air, whom thou lovest, worshippest as a divine
Presence, which, indeed, symbolically taken, she is,--has descended, like
thyself, from that same hair-mantled, flint-hurling Aboriginal
Anthropophagus! Out of the eater cometh forth meat; out of the strong
cometh forth sweetness. What changes are wrought, not by Time, yet in
Time! For not Mankind only, but all that Mankind does or beholds, is in
continual growth, re-genesis and self-perfecting vitality. Cast forth thy
Act, thy Word, into the ever-living, ever-working Universe: it is a
seed-grain that cannot die; unnoticed to-day (says one), it will be found
flourishing as a Banyan-grove (perhaps, alas, as a Hemlock-forest!) after a
thousand years.

"He who first shortened the labor of Copyists by device of _Movable Types_
was disbanding hired Armies, and cashiering most Kings and Senates, and
creating a whole new Democratic world: he had invented the Art of
Printing. The first ground handful of Nitre, Sulphur, and Charcoal drove
Monk Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling: what will the last do?
Achieve the final undisputed prostration of Force under Thought, of Animal
courage under Spiritual. A simple invention it was in the old-world
Grazier,--sick of lugging his slow Ox about the country till he got it
bartered for corn or oil,--to take a piece of Leather, and thereon scratch
or stamp the mere Figure of an Ox (or _Pecus_); put it in his pocket, and
call it _Pecunia_, Money. Yet hereby did Barter grow Sale, the Leather
Money is now Golden and Paper, and all miracles have been out-miracled:
for there are Rothschilds and English National Debts; and whoso has
sixpence is sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over all men; commands
cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over
him,--to the length of sixpence.--Clothes too, which began in foolishest
love of Ornament, what have they not become! Increased Security and
pleasurable Heat soon followed: but what of these? Shame, divine Shame
(_Schaam_, Modesty), as yet a stranger to the Anthropophagous bosom, arose
there mysteriously under Clothes; a mystic grove-encircled shrine for the
Holy in man. Clothes gave us individuality, distinctions, social polity;
Clothes have made Men of us; they are threatening to make Clothes-screens
of us.

"But, on the whole," continues our eloquent Professor, "Man is a Tool-using
Animal (_Handthierendes Thier_). Weak in himself, and of small stature, he
stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half-square
foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs, lest the very wind
supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for
him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag.
Nevertheless he can use Tools; can devise Tools: with these the granite
mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing iron, as if it
were soft paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying
steeds. Nowhere do you find him without Tools; without Tools he is
nothing, with Tools he is all."

Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream of Oratory with a
remark, that this Definition of the Tool-using Animal appears to us, of all
that Animal-sort, considerably the precisest and best? Man is called a
Laughing Animal: but do not the apes also laugh, or attempt to do it; and
is the manliest man the greatest and oftenest laugher? Teufelsdrockh
himself, as we said, laughed only once. Still less do we make of that
other French Definition of the Cooking Animal; which, indeed, for rigorous
scientific purposes, is as good as useless. Can a Tartar be said to cook,
when he only readies his steak by riding on it? Again, what Cookery does
the Greenlander use, beyond stowing up his whale-blubber, as a marmot, in
the like case, might do? Or how would Monsieur Ude prosper among those
Orinoco Indians who, according to Humboldt, lodge in crow-nests, on the
branches of trees; and, for half the year, have no victuals but pipe-clay,
the whole country being under water? But, on the other hand, show us the
human being, of any period or climate, without his Tools: those very
Caledonians, as we saw, had their Flint-ball, and Thong to it, such as no
brute has or can have.

"Man is a Tool-using Animal," concludes Teufelsdrockh, in his abrupt way;
"of which truth Clothes are but one example: and surely if we consider the
interval between the first wooden Dibble fashioned by man, and those
Liverpool Steam-carriages, or the British House of Commons, we shall note
what progress he has made. He digs up certain black stones from the bosom
of the earth, and says to them, _Transport me and this luggage at the rate
of file-and-thirty miles an hour_; and they do it: he collects, apparently
by lot, six hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous individuals, and says to
them, _Make this nation toil for us, bleed for us, hunger and, sorrow and
sin for us_; and they do it."

CHAPTER VI.
APRONS.

One of the most unsatisfactory Sections in the whole Volume is that on
_Aprons_. What though stout old Gao, the Persian Blacksmith, "whose Apron,
now indeed hidden under jewels, because raised in revolt which proved
successful, is still the royal standard of that country;" what though John
Knox's Daughter, "who threatened Sovereign Majesty that she would catch her
husband's head in her Apron, rather than he should lie and be a bishop;"
what though the Landgravine Elizabeth, with many other Apron
worthies,--figure here? An idle wire-drawing spirit, sometimes even a tone
of levity, approaching to conventional satire, is too clearly discernible.
What, for example, are we to make of such sentences as the following?

"Aprons are Defences; against injury to cleanliness, to safety, to modesty,
sometimes to roguery. From the thin slip of notched silk (as it were, the
emblem and beatified ghost of an Apron), which some highest-bred housewife,
sitting at Nurnberg Work-boxes and Toy-boxes, has gracefully fastened on;
to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein the Builder
builds, and at evening sticks his trowel; or to those jingling sheet-iron
Aprons, wherein your otherwise half-naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their
smelt-furnace,--is there not range enough in the fashion and uses of this
Vestment? How much has been concealed, how much has been defended in
Aprons! Nay, rightly considered, what is your whole Military and Police
Establishment, charged at uncalculated millions, but a huge
scarlet-colored, iron-fastened Apron, wherein Society works (uneasily
enough); guarding itself from some soil and stithy-sparks, in this
Devil's-smithy (_Teufels-schmiede_) of a world? But of all Aprons the most
puzzling to me hitherto has been the Episcopal or Cassock. Wherein
consists the usefulness of this Apron? The Overseer (_Episcopus_) of
Souls, I notice, has tucked in the corner of it, as if his day's work were
done: what does he shadow forth thereby?" &c. &c.

Or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to read such stuff as we
shall now quote?

"I consider those printed Paper Aprons, worn by the Parisian Cooks, as a
new vent, though a slight one, for Typography; therefore as an
encouragement to modern Literature, and deserving of approval: nor is it
without satisfaction that I hear of a celebrated London Firm having in view
to introduce the same fashion, with important extensions, in England."--We
who are on the spot hear of no such thing; and indeed have reason to be
thankful that hitherto there are other vents for our Literature, exuberant
as it is.--Teufelsdrockh continues: "If such supply of printed Paper
should rise so far as to choke up the highways and public thoroughfares,
new means must of necessity be had recourse to. In a world existing by
Industry, we grudge to employ fire as a destroying element, and not as a
creating one. However, Heaven is omnipotent, and will find us an outlet.
In the mean while, is it not beautiful to see five million quintals of Rags
picked annually from the Laystall; and annually, after being macerated,
hot-pressed, printed on, and sold,--returned thither; filling so many
hungry mouths by the way? Thus is the Laystall, especially with its Rags
or Clothes-rubbish, the grand Electric Battery, and Fountain-of-motion,
from which and to which the Social Activities (like vitreous and resinous
Electricities) circulate, in larger or smaller circles, through the mighty,
billowy, storm-tost chaos of Life, which they keep alive!"--Such passages
fill us, who love the man, and partly esteem him, with a very mixed
feeling.

Farther down we meet with this: "The Journalists are now the true Kings
and Clergy: henceforth Historians, unless they are fools, must write not
of Bourbon Dynasties, and Tudors and Hapsburgs; but of Stamped Broad-sheet
Dynasties, and quite new successive Names, according as this or the other
Able Editor, or Combination of Able Editors, gains the world's ear. Of the
British Newspaper Press, perhaps the most important of all, and wonderful
enough in its secret constitution and procedure, a valuable descriptive
History already exists, in that language, under the title of _Satan's
Invisible World Displayed_; which, however, by search in all the
Weissnichtwo Libraries, I have not yet succeeded in procuring (_vermochte
night aufzutreiben_)."

Thus does the good Homer not only nod, but snore. Thus does Teufelsdrockh,
wandering in regions where he had little business, confound the old
authentic Presbyterian Witchfinder with a new, spurious, imaginary
Historian of the _Brittische Journalistik_; and so stumble on perhaps the
most egregious blunder in Modern Literature!

CHAPTER VII.
MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL.

Happier is our Professor, and more purely scientific and historic, when he
reaches the Middle Ages in Europe, and down to the end of the Seventeenth
Century; the true era of extravagance in Costume. It is here that the
Antiquary and Student of Modes comes upon his richest harvest. Fantastic
garbs, beggaring all fancy of a Teniers or a Callot, succeed each other,
like monster devouring monster in a Dream. The whole too in brief
authentic strokes, and touched not seldom with that breath of genius which
makes even old raiment live. Indeed, so learned, precise, graphical, and
every way interesting have we found these Chapters, that it may be thrown
out as a pertinent question for parties concerned, Whether or not a good
English Translation thereof might henceforth be profitably incorporated
with Mr. Merrick's valuable Work _On Ancient Armor_? Take, by way of
example, the following sketch; as authority for which Paulinus's
_Zeitkurzende Lust_ (ii. 678) is, with seeming confidence, referred to:

"Did we behold the German fashionable dress of the Fifteenth Century, we
might smile; as perhaps those bygone Germans, were they to rise again, and
see our haberdashery, would cross themselves, and invoke the Virgin. But
happily no bygone German, or man, rises again; thus the Present is not
needlessly trammelled with the Past; and only grows out of it, like a Tree,
whose roots are not intertangled with its branches, but lie peaceably
underground. Nay it is very mournful, yet not useless, to see and know,
how the Greatest and Dearest, in a short while, would find his 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."

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