Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh Read online

  CHAPTER VII. MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL.

  Happier is our Professor, and more purely scientific and historic,when he reaches the Middle Ages in Europe, and down to the end of theSeventeenth Century; the true era of extravagance in Costume. It is herethat the Antiquary and Student of Modes comes upon his richest harvest.Fantastic garbs, beggaring all fancy of a Teniers or a Callot, succeedeach other, like monster devouring monster in a Dream. The whole tooin brief authentic strokes, and touched not seldom with that breath ofgenius which makes even old raiment live. Indeed, so learned, precise,graphical, and every way interesting have we found these Chapters, thatit may be thrown out as a pertinent question for parties concerned,Whether or not a good English Translation thereof might henceforth beprofitably incorporated with Mr. Merrick's valuable Work _On AncientArmor_? Take, by way of example, the following sketch; as authorityfor which Paulinus's _Zeitkurzende Lust_ (ii. 678) is, with seemingconfidence, referred to:

  "Did we behold the German fashionable dress of the Fifteenth Century, wemight smile; as perhaps those bygone Germans, were they to rise again,and see our haberdashery, would cross themselves, and invoke the Virgin.But happily no bygone German, or man, rises again; thus the Present isnot needlessly trammelled with the Past; and only grows out of it, likea Tree, whose roots are not intertangled with its branches, but liepeaceably underground. Nay it is very mournful, yet not useless, to seeand know, how the Greatest and Dearest, in a short while, would find hisplace quite filled up here, and no room for him; the very Napoleon, thevery Byron, in some seven years, has become obsolete, and were now aforeigner to his Europe. Thus is the Law of Progress secured; and inClothes, as in all other external things whatsoever, no fashion willcontinue.

  "Of the military classes in those old times, whose buff-belts,complicated chains and gorgets, huge churn-boots, and other riding andfighting gear have been bepainted in modern Romance, till the whole hasacquired somewhat of a sign-post character,--I shall here say nothing:the civil and pacific classes, less touched upon, are wonderful enoughfor us.

  "Rich men, I find, have _Teusinke_ [a perhaps untranslatable article];also a silver girdle, whereat hang little bells; so that when a manwalks, it is with continual jingling. Some few, of musical turn, have awhole chime of bells (_Glockenspiel_) fastened there; which, especiallyin sudden whirls, and the other accidents of walking, has a gratefuleffect. Observe too how fond they are of peaks, and Gothic-archintersections. The male world wears peaked caps, an ell long, which hangbobbing over the side (_schief_): their shoes are peaked in front,also to the length of an ell, and laced on the side with tags; eventhe wooden shoes have their ell-long noses: some also clap bells on thepeak. Further, according to my authority, the men have breeches withoutseat (_ohne Gesass_): these they fasten peakwise to their shirts; andthe long round doublet must overlap them.

  "Rich maidens, again, flit abroad in gowns scolloped out behind andbefore, so that back and breast are almost bare. Wives of quality, onthe other hand, have train-gowns four or five ells in length; whichtrains there are boys to carry. Brave Cleopatras, sailing in theirsilk-cloth Galley, with a Cupid for steersman! Consider their welts, ahandbreadth thick, which waver round them by way of hem; the longflood of silver buttons, or rather silver shells, from throat to shoe,wherewith these same welt-gowns are buttoned. The maidens have boundsilver snoods about their hair, with gold spangles, and pendent flames(_Flammen_), that is, sparkling hair-drops: but of their mother'shead-gear who shall speak? Neither in love of grace is comfortforgotten. In winter weather you behold the whole fair creation (thatcan afford it) in long mantles, with skirts wide below, and, for hem,not one but two sufficient hand-broad welts; all ending atop in athick well-starched Ruff, some twenty inches broad: these are theirRuff-mantles (_Kragenmantel_).

  "As yet among the womankind hoop-petticoats are not; but the men havedoublets of fustian, under which lie multiple ruffs of cloth, pastedtogether with batter (_mit Teig zusammengekleistert_), which createprotuberance enough. Thus do the two sexes vie with each other in theart of Decoration; and as usual the stronger carries it."

  Our Professor, whether he have humor himself or not, manifests a certainfeeling of the Ludicrous, a sly observance of it which, could emotionof any kind be confidently predicated of so still a man, we might calla real love. None of those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches, counted shoes,or other the like phenomena, of which the History of Dress offersso many, escape him: more especially the mischances, or strikingadventures, incident to the wearers of such, are noticed with duefidelity. Sir Walter Raleigh's fine mantle, which he spread in the mudunder Queen Elizabeth's feet, appears to provoke little enthusiasmin him; he merely asks, Whether at that period the Maiden Queen "wasred-painted on the nose, and white-painted on the cheeks, as hertire-women, when from spleen and wrinkles she would no longer look inany glass, were wont to serve her"? We can answer that Sir Walter knewwell what he was doing, and had the Maiden Queen been stuffed parchmentdyed in verdigris, would have done the same.

  Thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, that were not onlyslashed and gallooned, but artificially swollen out on the broaderparts of the body, by introduction of Bran,--our Professor fails not tocomment on that luckless Courtier, who having seated himself on achair with some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay his_devoir_ on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously emitted severalpecks of dry wheat-dust: and stood there diminished to a spindle, hisgalloons and slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby round him. Whereuponthe Professor publishes this reflection:--

  "By what strange chances do we live in History? Erostratus by a torch;Milo by a bullock; Henry Darnley, an unfledged booby and bustard, byhis limbs; most Kings and Queens by being born under such and such abed-tester; Boileau Despreaux (according to Helvetius) by the peck of aturkey; and this ill-starred individual by a rent in his breeches,--forno Memoirist of Kaiser Otto's Court omits him. Vain was the prayer ofThemistocles for a talent of Forgetting: my Friends, yield cheerfully toDestiny, and read since it is written."--Has Teufelsdrockh, to be put inmind that, nearly related to the impossible talent of Forgetting, standsthat talent of Silence, which even travelling Englishmen manifest?

  "The simplest costume," observes our Professor, "which I anywhere findalluded to in History, is that used as regimental, by Bolivar's Cavalry,in the late Colombian wars. A square Blanket, twelve feet in diagonal,is provided (some were wont to cut off the corners, and make itcircular): in the centre a slit is effected eighteen inches long;through this the mother-naked Trooper introduces his head and neck; andso rides shielded from all weather, and in battle from many strokes (forhe rolls it about his left arm); and not only dressed, but harnessed anddraperied."

  With which picture of a State of Nature, affecting by its singularity,and Old-Roman contempt of the superfluous, we shall quit this part ofour subject.