Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh

by Thomas Carlyle

  BOOK III.

  CHAPTER I. INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY.

  As a wonder-loving and wonder-seeking man, Teufelsdrockh, from anearly part of this Clothes-Volume, has more and more exhibited himself.Striking it was, amid all his perverse cloudiness, with what forceof vision and of heart he pierced into the mystery of the World;recognizing in the highest sensible phenomena, so far as Sense went,only fresh or faded Raiment; yet ever, under this, a celestial Essencethereby rendered visible: and while, on the one hand, he trod the oldrags of Matter, with their tinsels, into the mire, he on the othereverywhere exalted Spirit above all earthly principalities and powers,and worshipped it, though under the meanest shapes, with a truePlatonic mysticism. What the man ultimately purposed by thus casting hisGreek-fire into the general Wardrobe of the Universe; what such, moreor less complete, rending and burning of Garments throughout the wholecompass of Civilized Life and Speculation, should lead to; the rather ashe was no Adamite, in any sense, and could not, like Rousseau, recommendeither bodily or intellectual Nudity, and a return to the savagestate: all this our readers are now bent to discover; this is, in fact,properly the gist and purport of Professor Teufelsdrockh's Philosophy ofClothes.

  Be it remembered, however, that such purport is here not so muchevolved, as detected to lie ready for evolving. We are to guide ourBritish Friends into the new Gold-country, and show them the mines;nowise to dig out and exhaust its wealth, which indeed remains for alltime inexhaustible. Once there, let each dig for his own behoof, andenrich himself.

  Neither, in so capricious inexpressible a Work as this of theProfessor's, can our course now more than formerly be straightforward,step by step, but at best leap by leap. Significant Indications standout here and there; which for the critical eye, that looks both widelyand narrowly, shape themselves into some ground-scheme of a Whole: toselect these with judgment, so that a leap from one to the other bepossible, and (in our old figure) by chaining them together, a passableBridge be effected: this, as heretofore, continues our only method.Among such light-spots, the following, floating in much wild matterabout _Perfectibility_, has seemed worth clutching at:--

  "Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modern History," saysTeufelsdrockh, "is not the Diet of Worms, still less the Battle ofAusterlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other Battle; but an incidentpassed carelessly over by most Historians, and treated with some degreeof ridicule by others: namely, George Fox's making to himself a suit ofLeather. This man, the first of the Quakers, and by trade a Shoemaker,was one of those, to whom, under ruder or purer form, the Divine Idea ofthe Universe is pleased to manifest itself; and, across all the hullsof Ignorance and earthly Degradation, shine through, in unspeakableAwfulness, unspeakable Beauty, on their souls: who therefore are rightlyaccounted Prophets, God-possessed; or even Gods, as in some periodsit has chanced. Sitting in his stall; working on tanned hides, amidpincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles, and a nameless flood ofrubbish, this youth had, nevertheless, a Living Spirit belonging to him;also an antique Inspired Volume, through which, as through a window, itcould look upwards, and discern its celestial Home. The task of a dailypair of shoes, coupled even with some prospect of victuals, andan honorable Mastership in Cordwainery, and perhaps the post ofThirdborough in his hundred, as the crown of long faithful sewing,--wasnowise satisfaction enough to such a mind: but ever amid the boring andhammering came tones from that far country, came Splendors and Terrors;for this poor Cordwainer, as we said, was a Man; and the Temple ofImmensity, wherein as Man he had been sent to minister, was full of holymystery to him.

  "The Clergy of the neighborhood, the ordained Watchers and Interpretersof that same holy mystery, listened with un-affected tedium to hisconsultations, and advised him, as the solution of such doubts, to'drink beer, and dance with the girls.' Blind leaders of the blind!For what end were their tithes levied and eaten; for what were theirshovel-hats scooped out, and their surplices and cassock-aprons girton; and such a church-repairing, and chaffering, and organing, and otherracketing, held over that spot of God's Earth,--if Man were but a PatentDigester, and the Belly with its adjuncts the grand Reality? Fox turnedfrom them, with tears and a sacred scorn, back to his Leather-paringsand his Bible. Mountains of encumbrance, higher than AEtna, had beenheaped over that Spirit: but it was a Spirit, and would not lie buriedthere. Through long days and nights of silent agony, it struggled andwrestled, with a man's force, to be free: how its prison-mountainsheaved and swayed tumultuously, as the giant spirit shook them to thishand and that, and emerged into the light of Heaven! That Leicestershoe-shop, had men known it, was a holier place than any Vatican orLoretto-shrine.--'So bandaged, and hampered, and hemmed in,' groaned he,'with thousand requisitions, obligations, straps, tatters, and tagrags,I can neither see nor move: not my own am I, but the World's; and Timeflies fast, and Heaven is high, and Hell is deep: Man! bethink thee,if thou hast power of Thought! Why not; what binds me here? Want,want!--Ha, of what? Will all the shoe-wages under the Moon ferry meacross into that far Land of Light? Only Meditation can, and devoutPrayer to God. I will to the woods: the hollow of a tree will lodgeme, wild berries feed me; and for Clothes, cannot I stitch myself oneperennial suit of Leather!'

  "Historical Oil-painting," continues Teufelsdrockh, "is one of the ArtsI never practiced; therefore shall I not decide whether this subjectwere easy of execution on the canvas. Yet often has it seemed to me asif such first outflashing of man's Freewill, to lighten, more andmore into Day, the Chaotic Night that threatened to engulf him in itshindrances and its horrors, were properly the only grandeur there isin History. Let some living Angelo or Rosa, with seeing eye andunderstanding heart, picture George Fox on that morning, when he spreadsout his cutting-board for the last time, and cuts cowhides by unwontedpatterns, and stitches them together into one continuous all-includingCase, the farewell service of his awl! Stitch away, thou noble Fox:every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart ofSlavery, and World-worship, and the Mammon-god. Thy elbows jerk, asin strong swimmer-strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee across thePrison-ditch, within which Vanity holds her Workhouse and Ragfair, intolands of true Liberty; were the work done, there is in broad Europe oneFree Man, and thou art he!

  "Thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the loftiest height; andfor the Poor also a Gospel has been published. Surely if, as D'Alembertasserts, my illustrious namesake, Diogenes, was the greatest man ofAntiquity, only that he wanted Decency, then by stronger reason isGeorge Fox the greatest of the Moderns, and greater than Diogeneshimself: for he too stands on the adamantine basis of his Manhood,casting aside all props and shoars; yet not, in half-savage Pride,undervaluing the Earth; valuing it rather, as a place to yield himwarmth and food, he looks Heavenward from his Earth, and dwells in anelement of Mercy and Worship, with a still Strength, such as the Cynic'sTub did nowise witness. Great, truly, was that Tub; a temple from whichman's dignity and divinity was scornfully preached abroad: but greateris the Leather Hull, for the same sermon was preached there, and not inScorn but in Love."

  George Fox's "perennial suit," with all that it held, has been wornquite into ashes for nigh two centuries: why, in a discussion onthe _Perfectibility of Society_, reproduce it now? Not out of blindsectarian partisanship: Teufelsdrockh, himself is no Quaker; with allhis pacific tendencies, did not we see him, in that scene at the NorthCape, with the Archangel Smuggler, exhibit fire-arms?

  For us, aware of his deep Sansculottism, there is more meant in thispassage than meets the ear. At the same time, who can avoid smilingat the earnestness and Boeotian simplicity (if indeed there be not anunderhand satire in it), with which that "Incident" is here broughtforward; and, in the Professor's ambiguous way, as clearly perhaps ashe durst in Weissnichtwo, recommended to imitation! Does Teufelsdrockhanticipate that, in this age of refinement, any considerable classof the community, by way of testifying against the "Mammon-god," andescaping from what he calls "Vanity's Workhouse and Ragfair,"where doubtless some of them are toil
ed and whipped and hoodwinkedsufficiently,--will sheathe themselves in close-fitting cases ofLeather? The idea is ridiculous in the extreme. Will Majesty lay asideits robes of state, and Beauty its frills and train-gowns, for a secondskin of tanned hide? By which change Huddersfield and Manchester, andCoventry and Paisley, and the Fancy-Bazaar, were reduced to hungrysolitudes; and only Day and Martin could profit. For neither wouldTeufelsdrockh's mad daydream, here as we presume covertly intended, oflevelling Society (_levelling_ it indeed with a vengeance, into onehuge drowned marsh!), and so attaining the political effects of Nuditywithout its frigorific or other consequences,--be thereby realized.Would not the rich man purchase a waterproof suit of Russia Leather;and the high-born Belle step forth in red or azure morocco, lined withshamoy: the black cowhide being left to the Drudges and Gibeonites ofthe world; and so all the old Distinctions be re-established?

  Or has the Professor his own deeper intention; and laughs in his sleeveat our strictures and glosses, which indeed are but a part thereof?