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

  CHAPTER IX. ADAMITISM.

  Let no courteous reader take offence at the opinions broached in theconclusion of the last Chapter. The Editor himself, on first glancingover that singular passage, was inclined to exclaim: What, have we gotnot only a Sansculottist, but an enemy to Clothes in the abstract? Anew Adamite, in this century, which flatters itself that it is theNineteenth, and destructive both to Superstition and Enthusiasm?

  Consider, thou foolish Teufelsdrockh, what benefits unspeakable all agesand sexes derive from Clothes. For example, when thou thyself, a watery,pulpy, slobbery freshman and new-comer in this Planet, sattest mulingand puking in thy nurse's arms; sucking thy coral, and looking forthinto the world in the blankest manner, what hadst thou been without thyblankets, and bibs, and other nameless hulls? A terror to thyself andmankind! Or hast thou forgotten the day when thou first receivedstbreeches, and thy long clothes became short? The village where thoulivedst was all apprised of the fact; and neighbor after neighbor kissedthy pudding-cheek, and gave thee, as handsel, silver or copper coins, onthat the first gala-day of thy existence. Again, wert not thou, at oneperiod of life, a Buck, or Blood, or Macaroni, or Incroyable, or Dandy,or by whatever name, according to year and place, such phenomenon isdistinguished? In that one word lie included mysterious volumes. Nay,now when the reign of folly is over, or altered, and thy clothes are notfor triumph but for defence, hast thou always worn them perforce, and asa consequence of Man's Fall; never rejoiced in them as in a warm movableHouse, a Body round thy Body, wherein that strange THEE of thine satsnug, defying all variations of Climate? Girt with thick double-milledkerseys; half buried under shawls and broadbrims, and overalls andmudboots, thy very fingers cased in doeskin and mittens, thou hastbestrode that "Horse I ride;" and, though it were in wild winter, dashedthrough the world, glorying in it as if thou wert its lord. In vain didthe sleet beat round thy temples; it lighted only on thy impenetrable,felted or woven, case of wool. In vain did the winds howl,--forestssounding and creaking, deep calling unto deep,--and the storms heapthemselves together into one huge Arctic whirlpool: thou flewest throughthe middle thereof, striking fire from the highway; wild music hummedin thy ears, thou too wert as a "sailor of the air;" the wreck of matterand the crash of worlds was thy element and propitiously wafting tide.Without Clothes, without bit or saddle, what hadst thou been; what hadthy fleet quadruped been?--Nature is good, but she is not the best: heretruly was the victory of Art over Nature. A thunderbolt indeed mighthave pierced thee; all short of this thou couldst defy.

  Or, cries the courteous reader, has your Teufelsdrockh forgotten what hesaid lately about "Aboriginal Savages," and their "condition miserableindeed"? Would he have all this unsaid; and us betake ourselves again tothe "matted cloak," and go sheeted in a "thick natural fell"?

  Nowise, courteous reader! The Professor knows full well what he issaying; and both thou and we, in our haste, do him wrong. If Clothes,in these times, "so tailorize and demoralize us," have they no redeemingvalue; can they not be altered to serve better; must they ofnecessity be thrown to the dogs? The truth is, Teufelsdrockh, though aSansculottist, is no Adamite; and much perhaps as he might wish to goforth before this degenerate age "as a Sign," would nowise wish to doit, as those old Adamites did, in a state of Nakedness. The utility ofClothes is altogether apparent to him: nay perhaps he has an insightinto their more recondite, and almost mystic qualities, what wemight call the omnipotent virtue of Clothes, such as was never beforevouchsafed to any man. For example:--

  "You see two individuals," he writes, "one dressed in fine Red, theother in coarse threadbare Blue: Red says to Blue, 'Be hanged andanatomized;' Blue hears with a shudder, and (O wonder of wonders!)marches sorrowfully to the gallows; is there noosed up, vibrates hishour, and the surgeons dissect him, and fit his bones into a skeletonfor medical purposes. How is this; or what make ye of your _Nothing canact but where it is_? Red has no physical hold of Blue, no _clutch_of him, is nowise in _contact_ with him: neither are those ministeringSheriffs and Lord-Lieutenants and Hangmen and Tipstaves so related tocommanding Red, that he can tug them hither and thither; but each standsdistinct within his own skin. Nevertheless, as it is spoken, so isit done: the articulated Word sets all hands in Action; and Rope andImproved-drop perform their work.

  "Thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold: First, that _Man is aSpirit_, and bound by invisible bonds to _All Men_; secondly, that _hewears Clothes_, which are the visible emblems of that fact. Has notyour Red hanging-individual a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins, and aplush-gown; whereby all mortals know that he is a JUDGE?--Society, whichthe more I think of it astonishes me the more, is founded upon Cloth.

  "Often in my atrabiliar moods, when I read of pompous ceremonials,Frankfort Coronations, Royal Drawing-rooms, Levees, Couchees; and howthe ushers and macers and pursuivants are all in waiting; how Dukethis is presented by Archduke that, and Colonel A by General B, andinnumerable Bishops, Admirals, and miscellaneous Functionaries, areadvancing gallantly to the Anointed Presence; and I strive, in my remoteprivacy, to form a clear picture of that solemnity,--on a sudden, as bysome enchanter's wand, the--shall I speak it?--the Clothes fly off thewhole dramatic corps; and Dukes, Grandees, Bishops, Generals, AnointedPresence itself, every mother's son of them, stand straddling there, nota shirt on them; and I know not whether to laugh or weep. This physicalor psychical infirmity, in which perhaps I am not singular, I have,after hesitation, thought right to publish, for the solace of thoseafflicted with the like."

  Would to Heaven, say we, thou hadst thought right to keep it secret!Who is there now that can read the five columns of Presentations in hisMorning Newspaper without a shudder? Hypochondriac men, and all men areto a certain extent hypochondriac, should be more gently treated. Withwhat readiness our fancy, in this shattered state of the nerves, followsout the consequences which Teufelsdrockh, with a devilish coolness, goeson to draw:--

  "What would Majesty do, could such an accident befall in reality; shouldthe buttons all simultaneously start, and the solid wool evaporate,in very Deed, as here in Dream? _Ach Gott_! How each skulks intothe nearest hiding-place; their high State Tragedy (_Haupt- undStaats-Action_) becomes a Pickleherring-Farce to weep at, which is theworst kind of Farce; _the tables_ (according to Horace), and with them,the whole fabric of Government, Legislation, Property, Police, andCivilized Society, _are dissolved_, in wails and howls."

  Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Windlestraw addressing anaked House of Lords? Imagination, choked as in mephitic air, recoilson itself, and will not forward with the picture. The Woolsack, theMinisterial, the Opposition Benches--_infandum! infandum_! And yet whyis the thing impossible? Was not every soul, or rather every body, ofthese Guardians of our Liberties, naked, or nearly so, last night; "aforked Radish with a head fantastically carved"? And why might he not,did our stern fate so order it, walk out to St. Stephen's, as well asinto bed, in that no-fashion; and there, with other similar Radishes,hold a Bed of Justice? "Solace of those afflicted with the like!"Unhappy Teufelsdrockh, had man ever such a "physical or psychicalinfirmity" before? And now how many, perhaps, may thy unparalleledconfession (which we, even to the sounder British world, and goaded onby Critical and Biographical duty, grudge to reimpart) incurablyinfect therewith! Art thou the malignest of Sansculottists, or only themaddest?

  "It will remain to be examined," adds the inexorable Teufelsdrockh,"in how far the SCARECROW, as a Clothed Person, is not also entitled tobenefit of clergy, and English trial by jury: nay perhaps, consideringhis high function (for is not he too a Defender of Property, andSovereign armed with the _terrors_ of the Law?), to a certain royalImmunity and Inviolability; which, however, misers and the meaner classof persons are not always voluntarily disposed to grant him."

  "O my Friends, we are [in Yorick Sterne's words] but as 'turkeys driven,with a stick and red clout, to the market:' or if some drivers, asthey do in Norfolk, take a dried bladder and put peas in it, the rattlethereof terrifies the boldest!"
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