As mentioned above, Teufelsdrockh, 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 rosyfingered, rainbow-dyed Aurora out of mere aqueous clouds;
nay brightening London-smoke itself into gold vapor, 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 connection 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 neighbor'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 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 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 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 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 honors! 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 Civilized
Life, the Capital of England; and meditated, and questioned Destiny,
under that ink-sea of vapor, 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. Oh, 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 Teufelsdrockh, 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 Teufelsdrockh,
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!