Sartor Resartus (Oxford World's Classics) (18 page)

Over his Gymnasic and Academic years the Professor by no means lingers so lyrical and joyful as over his childhood. Green sunny tracts there are still; but intersected by bitter rivulets of tears, here and there stagnating into sour marshes of discontent. “With my first view of the Hinterschlag
*
Gymnasium,” writes he, “my evil days began. Well do I still remember the red sunny Whitsuntide morning, when trotting full of hope, by the side of Father Andreas, I entered the main street of the place, and saw its steeple-clock (then striking Eight), and
Schuldthurm
(Jail), and the aproned or disaproned Burghers moving in to breakfast: a little dog, in mad terror, was rushing past; for some human imps had tied a tin kettle to its tail; thus did the agonised creature loud-jingling career through the whole length of the Borough, and become notable enough. Fit emblem of many a Conquering Hero, to whom Fate (wedding Fantasy to Sense, as it often elsewhere does) has malignantly appended a tin kettle of Ambition, to chase him on; which, the faster he runs, urges him the faster, the more loudly and more foolishly! Fit emblem also of much that awaited myself, in that mischievous Den; as in the World, whereof it was a portion and epitome!

“Alas, the kind beech-rows of Entepfuhl were hidden in the distance: I was among strangers, harshly, at best indifferently, disposed towards me; the young heart felt, for the first time, quite orphaned and alone.” His schoolfellows, as is usual, persecuted him: “They were Boys,” he says, “mostly rude Boys, and obeyed the impulse of rude Nature, which bids the deerherd fall upon any stricken hart, the duck-flock put to death any broken-winged brother or sister, and on all hands the strong tyrannise over the weak.” He admits that though
“perhaps in an unusual degree morally courageous,” he succeeded ill in battle, and would fain have avoided it; a result, as would appear, owing less to his small personal stature (for, in passionate seasons, he was “incredibly nimble”), than to his “virtuous principles:” “if it was disgraceful to be beaten,” says he, “it was only a shade less disgraceful to have so much as fought; thus was I drawn two ways at once, and in this important element of school history, the war-element, had little but sorrow.” On the whole, that same excellent “Passivity,” so notable in Teufelsdröckh’s childhood, is here visibly enough again getting nourishment. “He wept often; indeed to such a degree, that he was nicknamed
Der Weinende
(the Tearful), which epithet, till towards his thirteenth year, was indeed not quite unmerited. Only at rare intervals did the young soul burst forth into fire-eyed rage, and, with a Stormfulness (
Ungestüm)
under which the boldest quailed, assert that he too had Rights of Man, or at least of Mankin.” In all which, who does not discern a fine flower-tree and cinnamon-tree (of genius) nigh choked among pumpkins, reedgrass, and ignoble shrubs; and forced, if it would live, to struggle upwards only, and not outwards; into a
height
quite sickly and disproportioned to its
breadth?

We find, moreover, that his Greek and Latin were “mechanically” taught; Hebrew scarce even mechanically; much else which they called History, Cosmography, Philosophy, and so forth, no better than not at all. So that, except inasmuch as Nature was still busy; and he himself “went about, as was of old his wont, among the Craftsmen’s workshops, there learning many things;” and farther lighted on some small store of curious reading, in Hans Wachtel the Cooper’s house, where he lodged,—his time, it would appear, was utterly wasted. Which facts the Professor has not yet learned to look upon with any contentment. Indeed, throughout the whole of this Bag
Scorpio
, where we now are, and often in the following Bag, he shews himself unusually animated on the matter of Education, and not without some touch of what we might presume to be anger.

“My Teachers,” says he, “were hide-bound Pedants, without knowledge of man’s nature or of boy’s; or of aught save
their lexicons and quarterly account-books. Innumerable dead Vocables (no dead Language, for they themselves knew no Language) they crammed into us, and called it fostering the growth of mind. How can an inanimate, mechanical Gerund-grinder, the like of whom will, in a subsequent century, be manufactured, at Nürnberg, out of wood and leather, foster the growth of any thing; much more of Mind, which grows, not like a vegetable (by having its roots littered with etymological compost), but like a Spirit, by mysterious contact of Spirit; Thought kindling itself at the fire of living Thought? How shall
he
give kindling, in whose own inward man there is no live coal, but all is burnt out to a dead grammatical cinder? The Hinterschlag Professors knew Syntax enough; and of the human soul thus much: that it had a faculty called Memory, and could be acted on through the muscular integument by appliance of birch rods.

“Alas, so is it every where, so will it ever be; till the Hodman is discharged, or reduced to Hodbearing; and an Architect is hired, and on all hands fitly encouraged: till communities and individuals discover, not without surprise, that fashioning the souls of a generation by Knowledge can rank on a level with blowing their bodies to pieces by Gunpowder; that with Generals and Field-marshals for killing, there should be world-honoured Dignitaries, and were it possible, true God-ordained Priests, for teaching. But as yet, though the Soldier wears openly, and even parades, his butchering-tool, nowhere, far as I have travelled, did the Schoolmaster make show of his instructing-tool: nay, were he to walk abroad with birch girt on thigh, as if he therefrom expected honour, would not, among the idler class, a certain levity be excited?”

In the third year of this Gymnasic period, Father Andreas seems to have died: the young Scholar, otherwise so maltreated, saw himself for the first time clad outwardly in sables, and inwardly in quite inexpressible melancholy. “The dark boundless
*
Abyss, that lies under our feet, had yawned open; the pale kingdoms of Death, with all their innumerable silent nations and generations stood before him; the inexorable word, N
EVER
! now first showed its meaning. My mother wept, and her sorrow got vent; but in my heart there lay a whole lake of
tears, pent up in silent desolation. Nevertheless, the unworn Spirit is strong, Life is so healthful that it even finds nourishment in Death: these stern experiences, planted down by Memory in my Imagination, rose there to a whole cypress forest, sad but beautiful; waving, with not unmelodious sighs, in dark luxuriance, in the hottest sunshine, through long years of youth:—as in manhood also it does, and will do; for I have now pitched my tent under a Cypress tree; the Tomb is now my inexpugnable Fortress, ever close by the gate of which I look upon the hostile armaments, and pains and penalties, of tyrannous Life placidly enough, and listen to its loudest threatenings with a still smile. O ye loved ones, that already sleep in the noiseless Bed of Rest, whom in life I could only weep for and never help; and ye, who wide-scattered still toil lonely in the monster-bearing Desert, dyeing the flinty ground with your blood,—yet a little while, and we shall all meet T
HERE
, and our Mother’s bosom will screen us all; and Oppression’s harness, and Sorrow’s fire-whip, and all the Gehenna Bailiffs that patrol and inhabit ever-vexed Time, cannot thenceforth harm us any more!”

Close by which rather beautiful apostrophe, lies a laboured Character of the deceased Andreas Futteral; of his natural ability, his deserts in life (as Prussian Sergeant); with long historical inquiries into the genealogy of the Futteral family, here traced back as far as Henry the Fowler: the whole of which we pass over, not without astonishment. It only concerns us to add that now was the time when Mother Gretchen revealed to her foster-son that he was not at all of this kindred; or indeed of any kindred, having come into historical existence in the way already known to us. “Thus was I doubly orphaned,” says he; “bereft not only of Possession, but even of Remembrance. Sorrow and Wonder, here suddenly united, could not but produce abundant fruit. Such a disclosure, in such a season, struck its roots through my whole nature: ever till the years of mature manhood, it mingled with my whole thoughts, was as the stem whereon all my day-dreams and night-dreams grew. A certain poetic elevation, yet also a corresponding civic depression, it naturally imparted:
I was like no other;
in which fixed-idea, leading sometimes to highest, and oftener to fright-fullest
results, may there not lie the first spring of Tendencies, that in my Life have become remarkable enough? As in birth, so in action, speculation, and social position, my fellows are perhaps not numerous.”

In the Bag
Sagittarius
, as we at length discover, Teufelsdröckh has become a University man; though how, when, or of what quality, will nowhere disclose itself with the smallest certainty. Few things, in the way of confusion and capricious indistinctness, can now surprise our readers; not even the total want of dates, almost without parallel in a Biographical work. So enigmatic, so chaotic we have always found, and must always look to find, these scattered Leaves. In
Sagittarius
, however, Teufelsdröckh begins to shew himself even more than usually Sibylline: fragments of all sorts; scraps of regular Memoir, College Exercises, Programs, Professional Testimoniums, Milkscores, torn Billets, sometimes to appearance of an amatory cast; all blown together as if by merest chance, henceforth bewilder the sane Historian. To combine any picture of these University, and the subsequent, years; much more, to decipher therein any illustrative primordial elements of the Clothes-Philosophy, becomes such a problem as the reader may imagine.

So much we can see; darkly, as through the foliage of some wavering thicket: a youth of no common endowment, that has passed happily through Childhood, less happily yet still vigorously through Boyhood, now at length perfect in “dead vocables,” and set down, as he hopes, by the living Fountain, there to superadd Ideas and Capabilities. From such Fountain he draws, diligently, thirstily, yet nowise
*
with his whole heart, for the water nowise suits his palate; discouragements, entanglements, aberrations are discoverable or supposable. Nor perhaps are even pecuniary distresses wanting; for “the good Gretchen, who in spite of advices from not disinterested relatives has sent him hither, must after a time withdraw her willing but too feeble hand.” Nevertheless in an atmosphere of Poverty and manifold Chagrin, the Humour of that young Soul, what character is in him, first decisively reveals itself; and, like strong sunshine in weeping skies, gives out variety of colours, some of which are prismatic. Thus with the aid of
Time, and of what Time brings, has the stripling Diogenes Teufelsdróckh waxed into manly stature; and into so questionable an aspect, that we ask with new eagerness How he specially came by it, and regret anew that there is no more explicit answer. Certain of the intelligible and partially significant fragments, which are few in number, shall be extracted from that Limbo of a Paperbag, and presented with the usual preparation.

As if, in the Bag
Scorpio
, Teufelsdröckh had not already expectorated his antipedagogic spleen; as if, from the name
Sagittarius
, he had thought himself called upon to shoot arrows, we here again fall in with such matter as this: “The University where I was educated still stands vivid enough in my remembrance, and I know its name well; which name, however, I from tenderness to existing interests and persons, shall in no wise divulge. It is my painful duty to say that, out of England and Spain, ours was the worst of all hitherto discovered Universities. This is indeed a time when right Education is, as nearly as may be, impossible: however, in degrees of wrongness there is no limit; nay, I can conceive a worse system than that of the Nameless itself; as poisoned victual may be worse than absolute hunger.

“It is written, When the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch: wherefore, in such circumstances, may it not sometimes be safer, if both leader and led simply—sit still? Had you, any where in Crim Tartary, walled in a square enclosure; furnished it with a small, ill-chosen Library; and then turned loose into it eleven hundred Christian striplings, to tumble about as they listed, from three to seven years; certain persons, under the title of Professors, being stationed at the gates, to declare aloud that it was a University, and exact considerable admission-fees,—you had, not indeed in mechanical structure, yet in spirit and result, some imperfect resemblance of our High Seminary. I say, imperfect; for if our mechanical structure was quite other, so neither was our result altogether the same: unhappily, we were not in Crim Tartary, but in a corrupt European city, full of smoke and sin; moreover, in the middle of a Public, which, without far costlier apparatus, than that of the Square Enclosure, and Declaration aloud, you could not be sure of gulling.

“Gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all Publics are; and gulled, with the most surprising profit. Towards any thing like a
Statistics of Imposture
, indeed, little as yet has been done: with a strange indifference, our Economists, nigh buried under Tables for minor Branches of Industry, have altogether overlooked the grand all-overtopping Hypocrisy Branch; as if our whole arts of Puffery, of Quackery, Priestcraft, Kingcraft, and the innumerable other crafts and mysteries of that genus, had not ranked in Productive Industry at all! Can any one, for example, so much as say, What monies, in Literature and Shoeblacking, are realised by actual Instruction and actual jet Polish; what by fictitious-persuasive Proclamation of such; specifying, in distinct items, the distributions, circulations, disbursements, incomings of said monies, with the smallest approach to accuracy? But to ask, How far, in all the several infinitely complected departments of social business, in government, education, in manual, commercial, intellectual fabrication of every sort, man’s Want is supplied by true Ware; how far by the mere Appearance of true Ware:—in other words, To what extent, by what methods, with what effects, in various times and countries, Deception takes the place and wages of Performance: here truly is an Inquiry big with results for the future time, but to which hitherto only the vaguest answer can be given. If for the present, in our Europe, we estimate the ratio of Ware to Appearance of Ware so high even as at One to a Hundred (which, considering the Wages of a Pope, Russian Autocrat, or English Game-Preserver, is probably not far from the mark),—what almost prodigious saving may there not be anticipated, as the
Statistics of Imposture
advances, and so the manufacturing of Shams (that of Realities rising into clearer and clearer distinction therefrom) gradually declines, and at length becomes all but wholly unnecessary!