OLD CLOTHES
As mentioned above, Teufelsdröckh, though a sansculottist, is in
practice probably the politest man extant: his whole heart and life
are penetrated and informed with the spirit of politeness; a noble
natural Courtesy shines through him, beautifying his vagaries; like
sunlight, making a rosy-fingered, rainbow-dyed Aurora out of mere
aqueous clouds; nay brightening London-smoke itself into gold vapour,
as from the crucible of an alchemist. Hear in what earnest though
fantastic wise he expresses himself on this head:
'Shall Courtesy be done only to the rich, and only by the rich? In
Good-breeding, which differs, if at all, from High-breeding, only as
it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully
insists on its own rights, I discern no special connexion with wealth
or birth: but rather that it lies in human nature itself, and is due
from all men towards all men. Of a truth, were your Schoolmaster at
his post, and worth anything when there, this, with so much else,
would be reformed. Nay, each man were then also his neighbour's
schoolmaster; till at length a rude-visaged, unmannered Peasant could
no more be met with, than a Peasant unacquainted with botanical
Physiology, or who felt not that the clod he broke was created in
Heaven.
'For whether thou bear a sceptre or a sledgehammer, art thou not
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
holier than this high Form. Bending before men is a reverence done to
this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our hands
on a human Body."
'On which ground, I would fain carry it farther than most do; and
whereas the English Johnson only bowed to every Clergyman, or man with
a shovel-hat, I would bow to every Man with any sort of hat, or with
no hat whatever. Is not he a Temple, then; the visible Manifestation
and Impersonation of the Divinity? And yet, alas, such indiscriminate
bowing serves 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 to the pocket of Vanity (which is your clearest phasis of the
Devil, in these times); therefore must we withhold it.
'The gladder am I, on the other hand, to do reverence to those Shells
and outer Husks of the Body, wherein no devilish passion any longer
lodges, 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 do reverence: to the fine frogged broadcloth, nowise to the
"straddling animal with bandy legs" which it holds, and makes a
Dignitary of? Who ever saw any Lord my-lorded in tattered blanket
fastened with wooden skewer? Nevertheless, I say, there is in such
worship a shade of hypocrisy, a practical deception: for how often
does the Body appropriate what was meant for the Cloth only! Whoso
would avoid falsehood, which is the essence of all Sin, will perhaps
see good to take a different course. That reverence which cannot act
without obstruction and perversion when the Clothes are full, may have
free course when they are empty. Even as, for Hindoo Worshippers, the
Pagoda is not less sacred than the God; so do I too worship the hollow
cloth Garment with equal fervour, 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
long over Scotland; the man John Baliol being quite gone, and only the
"Toom Tabard" (Empty Gown) remaining? What still dignity dwells in a
suit of Cast Clothes! How meekly it bears its honours! No haughty
looks, no scornful gesture: silent and serene, it fronts the world;
neither demanding worship, nor afraid to miss it. The Hat still
carries the physiognomy of its Head: but the vanity and the stupidity,
and goose-speech which was the sign of these two, are gone. The
Coat-arm is stretched out, but not to strike; the Breeches, in modest
simplicity, depend at ease, and now at last have a graceful flow; the
Waistcoat hides no evil passion, no riotous desire; hunger or thirst
now dwells not in it. Thus all is purged from the grossness of sense,
from the carking cares and foul vices of the World; and rides there,
on its Clothes-horse; as, on a Pegasus, might some skyey Messenger, or
purified Apparition, visiting our low Earth.
'Often, while I sojourned in that monstrous tuberosity of Civilised
Life, the Capital of England; and meditated, and questioned Destiny,
under that ink-sea of vapour, black, thick, and multifarious as
Spartan broth; and was one lone soul amid those grinding
millions;--often have I turned into their Old-Clothes Market to
worship. With awe-struck heart I walk through that Monmouth Street,
with its empty Suits, as through a Sanhedrim of stainless Ghosts.
Silent are they, but expressive in their silence: the past witnesses
and instruments of Woe and Joy, of Passions, Virtues, Crimes, and all
the fathomless tumult of Good and Evil in "the Prison men call Life."
Friends! trust not the heart of that man for whom Old Clothes are not
venerable. Watch, too, with reverence, that bearded Jewish
High-priest, who with hoarse voice, like some Angel of Doom, summons
them from the four winds! On his head, like the Pope, he has three
Hats,--a real triple tiara; on either hand are the similitude of
wings, whereon the summoned Garments come to alight; and ever, as he
slowly cleaves the air, sounds forth his deep fateful note, as if
through a trumpet he were proclaiming: "Ghosts of Life, come to
Judgment!" Reck not, ye fluttering Ghosts: he will purify you in his
Purgatory, with fire and with water; and, one day, new-created ye
shall reappear. O, let him in whom the flame of Devotion is ready to
go out, who has never worshipped, and knows not what to worship, pace
and repace, with austerest thought, the pavement of Monmouth Street,
and say whether his heart and his eyes still continue dry. If Field
Lane, with its long fluttering rows of yellow handkerchiefs, be a
Dionysius' Ear, where, in stifled jarring hubbub, we hear the
Indictment which Poverty and Vice bring against lazy Wealth, that it
has left them there cast-out and trodden under foot of Want, Darkness
and the Devil,--then is Monmouth Street a Mirza's Hill, where, in
motley vision, the whole Pageant of Existence passes awfully before
us; with its wail and jubilee, 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 so
fatally broken in upon by the brood of money-changers who nestle in that
Church, and importune the worshipper with merely secular proposals.
Whereas Teufelsdröckh might be in that happy middle state, which
leaves to the Clothes-broker no hope either of sale or of purchase,
and so be allowed to linger there without molestation.--Something we
would have given to see the little philosophical figure, with its
steeple-hat and loose flowing skirts, and eyes in a fine frenzy,
'pacing and repacing in austerest thought' that foolish Street; which
to him was a true Delphic avenue, and supernatural Whispering-gallery,
where the 'Ghosts of Life' rounded strange secrets in his ear. O thou
philosophic Teufelsdröckh, that listenest while others only gabble,
and with thy quick tympanum hearest the grass grow!
At the same time, is it not strange that, in Paper-bag Documents
destined for an English work, there exists nothing like an authentic
diary of this his sojourn in London; and of his Meditations among the
Clothes-shops only the obscurest emblematic shadows? Neither, in
conversation (for, indeed, he was not a man to pester you with his
Travels), have we heard him more than allude to the subject.
For the rest, however, it cannot be uninteresting that we here find
how early the significance of Clothes had dawned on the now so
distinguished Clothes-Professor. Might we but fancy it to have been
even in Monmouth Street, at the bottom of our own English 'ink-sea,'
that this remarkable Volume first took being, and shot forth its
salient point in his soul,--as in Chaos did the Egg of Eros, one day
to be hatched into a Universe!