Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh

by Thomas Carlyle

  CHAPTER VI. OLD CLOTHES.

  As mentioned above, Teufelsdrockh, though a Sansculottist, is inpractice probably the politest man extant: his whole heart and life arepenetrated and informed with the spirit of politeness; a noble naturalCourtesy shines through him, beautifying his vagaries; like sunlight,making a rosyfingered, rainbow-dyed Aurora out of mere aqueous clouds;nay brightening London-smoke itself into gold vapor, as from thecrucible of an alchemist. Hear in what earnest though fantastic wise heexpresses himself on this head:--

  "Shall Courtesy be done only to the rich, and only by the rich? InGood-breeding, which differs, if at all, from High-breeding, only asit gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefullyinsists on its own rights, I discern no special connection with wealthor birth: but rather that it lies in human nature itself, and is duefrom all men towards all men. Of a truth, were your Schoolmaster at hispost, and worth anything when there, this, with so much else, would bereformed. Nay, each man were then also his neighbor's schoolmaster; tillat length a rude-visaged, unmannered Peasant could no more be met with,than a Peasant unacquainted with botanical Physiology, or who felt notthat the clod he broke was created in Heaven.

  "For whether thou bear a sceptre or a sledge-hammer, art not thou ALIVE;is not this thy brother ALIVE? 'There is but one temple in the world,'says Novalis, 'and that temple is the Body of Man. Nothing is holierthan this high Form. Bending before men is a reverence done to thisRevelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our hands on ahuman Body.'

  "On which ground, I would fain carry it farther than most do; andwhereas the English Johnson only bowed to every Clergyman, or man witha shovel-hat, I would bow to every Man with any sort of hat, or with nohat whatever. Is not he a Temple, then; the visible Manifestation andImpersonation of the Divinity? And yet, alas, such indiscriminate bowingserves not. For there is a Devil dwells in man, as well as a Divinity;and too often the bow is but pocketed by the _former_. It would go tothe pocket of Vanity (which is your clearest phasis of the Devil, inthese times); therefore must we withhold it.

  "The gladder am I, on the other hand, to do reverence to those Shellsand outer Husks of the Body, wherein no devilish passion any longerlodges, but only the pure emblem and effigies of Man: I mean, to Empty,or even to Cast Clothes. Nay, is it not to Clothes that most men doreverence: to the fine frogged broadcloth, nowise to the 'straddlinganimal with bandy legs' which it holds, and makes a Dignitary of? Whoever saw any Lord my-lorded in tattered blanket fastened with woodenskewer? Nevertheless, I say, there is in such worship a shadeof hypocrisy, a practical deception: for how often does the Bodyappropriate what was meant for the Cloth only! Whoso would avoidfalsehood, which is the essence of all Sin, will perhaps see goodto take a different course. That reverence which cannot act withoutobstruction and perversion when the Clothes are full, may have freecourse when they are empty. Even as, for Hindoo Worshippers, the Pagodais not less sacred than the God; so do I too worship the hollow clothGarment with equal fervor, as when it contained the Man: nay, with more,for I now fear no deception, of myself or of others.

  "Did not King _Toomtabard_, or, in other words, John Baliol, reign longover Scotland; the man John Baliol being quite gone, and only the 'ToomTabard' (Empty Gown) remaining? What still dignity dwells in a suitof Cast Clothes! How meekly it bears its honors! No haughty looks,no scornful gesture: silent and serene, it fronts the world; neitherdemanding worship, nor afraid to miss it. The Hat still carriesthe physiognomy of its Head: but the vanity and the stupidity, andgoose-speech which was the sign of these two, are gone. The Coat-arm isstretched out, but not to strike; the Breeches, in modest simplicity,depend at ease, and now at last have a graceful flow; the Waistcoathides no evil passion, no riotous desire; hunger or thirst now dwellsnot in it. Thus all is purged from the grossness of sense, from thecarking cares and foul vices of the World; and rides there, on itsClothes-horse; as, on a Pegasus, might some skyey Messenger, or purifiedApparition, visiting our low Earth.

  "Often, while I sojourned in that monstrous tuberosity of CivilizedLife, the Capital of England; and meditated, and questioned Destiny,under that ink-sea of vapor, black, thick, and multifarious as Spartanbroth; and was one lone soul amid those grinding millions;--often have Iturned into their Old-Clothes Market to worship. With awe-struck heartI walk through that Monmouth Street, with its empty Suits, as through aSanhedrim of stainless Ghosts. Silent are they, but expressive in theirsilence: the past witnesses and instruments of Woe and Joy, of Passions,Virtues, Crimes, and all the fathomless tumult of Good and Evil in 'thePrison men call Life.' Friends! trust not the heart of that man for whomOld Clothes are not venerable. Watch, too, with reverence, that beardedJewish High-priest, who with hoarse voice, like some Angel of Doom,summons them from the four winds! On his head, like the Pope, he hasthree Hats,--a real triple tiara; on either hand are the similitude ofwings, whereon the summoned Garments come to alight; and ever, ashe slowly cleaves the air, sounds forth his deep fateful note, asif through a trumpet he were proclaiming: 'Ghosts of Life, come toJudgment!' Reck not, ye fluttering Ghosts: he will purify you in hisPurgatory, with fire and with water; and, one day, new-created ye shallreappear. Oh, let him in whom the flame of Devotion is ready to goout, who has never worshipped, and knows not what to worship, pace andrepace, with austerest thought, the pavement of Monmouth Street, and saywhether his heart and his eyes still continue dry. If Field Lane, withits long fluttering rows of yellow handkerchiefs, be a Dionysius' Ear,where, in stifled jarring hubbub, we hear the Indictment which Povertyand Vice bring against lazy Wealth, that it has left them there castout and trodden under foot of Want, Darkness and the Devil,--then isMonmouth Street a Mirza's Hill, where, in motley vision, the wholePageant of Existence passes awfully before us; with its wail andjubilee, mad loves and mad hatreds, church-bells and gallows-ropes,farce-tragedy, beast-godhood,--the Bedlam of Creation!"

  To most men, as it does to ourselves, all this will seem overcharged.We too have walked through Monmouth Street; but with little feeling of"Devotion:" probably in part because the contemplative process is sofatally broken in upon by the brood of money-changers who nestle inthat Church, and importune the worshipper with merely secular proposals.Whereas Teufelsdrockh, might be in that happy middle state, which leavesto the Clothes-broker no hope either of sale or of purchase, and so beallowed to linger there without molestation.--Something we would havegiven to see the little philosophical figure, with its steeple-hat andloose flowing skirts, and eyes in a fine frenzy, "pacing and repacing inausterest thought" that foolish Street; which to him was a true Delphicavenue, and supernatural Whispering-gallery, where the "Ghosts of Life"rounded strange secrets in his ear. O thou philosophic Teufelsdrockh,that listenest while others only gabble, and with thy quick tympanumhearest the grass grow!

  At the same time, is it not strange that, in Paper-bag Documentsdestined for an English work, there exists nothing like an authenticdiary of this his sojourn in London; and of his Meditations amongthe Clothes-shops only the obscurest emblematic shadows? Neither, inconversation (for, indeed, he was not a man to pester you with hisTravels), have we heard him more than allude to the subject.

  For the rest, however, it cannot be uninteresting that we here find howearly the significance of Clothes had dawned on the now so distinguishedClothes-Professor. Might we but fancy it to have been even in MonmouthStreet, at the bottom of our own English "ink-sea," that this remarkableVolume first took being, and shot forth its salient point in hissoul,--as in Chaos did the Egg of Eros, one day to be hatched into aUniverse!