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."