Sartor Resartus (Oxford World's Classics) (20 page)

“Such, since the most of us are too ophthalmic, would be the general fate; were it not that one thing saves us: our Hunger. For on this ground, as the prompt nature of Hunger is well known, must a prompt choice be made: hence have we, with
wise foresight, Indentures and Apprenticeships for our irrational young; whereby, in due season, the vague universality of a Man shall find himself ready-moulded into a specific Craftsman; and so thenceforth work, with much or with little waste of Capability, as it may be; yet not with the worst waste, that of time. Nay even in matters spiritual, since the spiritual artist too is born blind, and does not, like certain other creatures, receive sight in nine days, but far later, sometimes never,—is it not well that there should be what we call Professions, or Bread-studies (
Brod-zwecke)
, preappointed us? Here, circling like the gin-horse,
*
for whom partial or total blindness is no evil, the Bread-artist can travel contentedly round and round, still fancying that it is forward and forward, and realise much: for himself victual; for the world an additional horse’s power in the grand corn-mill or hemp-mill of Economic Society. For me too had such a leading-string been provided; only that it proved a neck-halter, and had nigh throttled me, till I broke it off. Then, in the words of Ancient Pistol,
*
did the World generally become mine oyster, which I, by strength or cunning, was to open, as I would and could. Almost had I deceased (
fast wär ich umgekommen)
, so obstinately did it continue shut.”

We see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit of much that was to befall our Autobiographer; the historical embodyment of which, as it painfully takes shape in his Life, lies scattered, in dim disastrous details, through this Bag
Pisces
, and those that follow. A young man of high talent, and high though still temper, like a young mettled colt, “breaks off his neck-halter,” and bounds forth, from his peculiar manger, into the wide world; which, alas, he finds all rigourously fenced in. Richest clover-fields tempt his eye; but to him they are forbidden pasture: either pining in progressive starvation, he must stand; or, in mad exasperation, must rush to and fro, leaping against sheer stone-walls, which he cannot leap over, which only lacerate and lame him; till at last, after thousand attempts and endurances, he, as if by miracle, clears his way; not indeed into luxuriant and luxurious clover, yet into a certain bosky wilderness where existence is still possible, and Freedom though waited on by Scarcity is not without sweetness.
In a word, Teufelsdröckh having thrown up his legal Profession, finds himself without landmark of outward guidance; whereby his previous want of decided Belief, or inward guidance, is frightfully aggravated. Necessity urges him on; Time will not stop, neither can he, a Son of Time; wild passions without solacement, wild faculties without employment, ever vex and agitate him. He too must enact that stern Monodrama,
No Object and no Rest
; must front its successive destinies, work through to its catastrophe, and deduce therefrom what moral he can.

Yet let us be just to him, let us admit that his “neck-halter” sat nowise easy on him; that he was in some degree forced to break it off. If we look at the young man’s civic position, in this Nameless Capital, as he emerges from its Nameless University, we can discern well that it was far from enviable. His first Law Examination he has come through triumphantly; and can even boast that the
Examen Rigorosum
need not have frightened him: but though he is hereby “an
Auscultator
*
of respectability,” what avails it? There is next to no employment to be had. Neither, for a youth without connexions is the process of Expectation very hopeful in itself; nor for one of his disposition much cheered from without. “My fellow Auscultators,” he says, “were Auscultators: they dressed, and digested, and talked articulate words; other vitality shewed they almost none. Small speculation in those eyes, that they did glare withal! Sense neither for the high nor for the deep, nor for aught human or divine, save only for the faintest scent of coming Preferment.” In which words, indicating a total estrangement on the part of Teufelsdröckh, may there not also lurk traces of a bitterness as from wounded vanity? Doubtless these prosaic Auscultators may have sniffed at him, with his strange ways; and tried to hate, and, what was much more impossible, to despise him. Friendly communion, in any case, there could not be: already has the young Teufelsdröckh left the other young geese; and swims apart, though as yet uncertain whether he himself is cygnet or gosling.

Perhaps too what little employment he had was performed ill, at best unpleasantly. “Great practical method and expertness” he may brag of; but is there not also great practical pride,
though deep-hidden, only the deeper-seated? So shy a man can never have been popular. We figure to ourselves, how in those days he may have played strange freaks with his Independence, and so forth: do not his own words betoken as much? “Like a very young person, I imagined it was with Work alone, and not also with Folly and Sin, in myself and others, that I had been appointed to struggle.” Be this as it may, his progress from the passive Auscultatorship, towards any active Assessorship, is evidently of the slowest. By degrees, those same established men, once partially inclined to patronise him, seem to withdraw their countenance, and give him up as “a man of genius;” against which procedure he, in these Papers loudly protests. “As if,” says he, “the higher did not presuppose the lower; as if he who can fly into heaven, could not also walk post if he resolved on it! But the world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin; whereby being often cheated she will thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper.”

How our winged sky-messenger, unaccepted as a terrestrial runner, contrived, in the meanwhile, to keep himself from flying skyward without return, is not too clear from these Documents. Good old Gretchen seems to have vanished from the scene, perhaps from the Earth; other Horn of Plenty, or even of Parsimony, no where flows for him; so that “the prompt nature of Hunger being well known,” we are not without our anxiety. From private Tuition, in never so many languages and sciences, the aid derivable is small; neither, to use his own words, “does the young Adventurer hitherto suspect in himself any literary gift; but at best earns bread-and-water wages, by his wide faculty of Translation. Nevertheless,” continues he, “that I subsisted is clear, for you find me even now alive.” Which fact, however, except upon the principle of our true-hearted, kind old Proverb, that “there is ever Life for the Living,”
*
we must profess ourselves unable to explain.

Certain Landlords’ Bills, and other economic Documents, bearing the mark of Settlement, indicate that he was not without money; but, like an independent Hearth-holder, if not House-holder, paid his way. Here also occur, among many others, two little mutilated Notes, which perhaps throw light
on his condition. The first has now no date, or writer’s name, but a huge Blot; and runs to this effect: “The (
Inkblot
), tied down by previous promise, cannot, except by best wishes, forward the Herr Teufelsdröckh’s views on the Assessorship in question; and sees himself under the cruel necessity of forbearing for the present, what were otherwise his duty and joy, to assist in opening the career for a man of genius, on whom far higher triumphs are yet waiting.” The other is on gilt paper; and interests us like a sort of epistolary mummy now dead, yet which once lived and beneficently worked. We give it in the original:
“Herr Teufelsdröckh wird von der Frau Gräfinn, auf Donnerstag, zum
Æ
STHETISCHEN
T
HEE
,
schönstens eingeladen.”
*

Thus, in answer to a cry for solid pudding, whereof there is the most urgent need, comes, epigrammatically enough, the invitation to a wash of quite fluid
Æsthetic Tea!
How Teufelsdröckh, now at actual handgrips with Destiny herself, may have comported himself among these Musical and Literary Dilettanti of both sexes, like a hungry lion invited to a feast of chickenweed, we can only conjecture. Perhaps in expressive silence, and abstinence: otherwise if the lion, in such case, is to feast at all, it cannot be on the chickenweed, but only on the chickens. For the rest, as this Frau Gráfinn dates from the
Zähdarm House
, she can be no other than the Countess and mistress of the same; whose intellectual tendencies, and good will to Teufelsdröckh, whether on the footing of Herr Towgood, or on his own footing, are hereby manifest. That some sort of relation, indeed, continued, for a time, to connect our Autobiographer, though perhaps feebly enough, with this noble House, we have elsewhere express evidence. Doubtless, if he expected patronage, it was in vain; enough for him if he here obtained occasional glimpses of the great world, from which we at one time fancied him to have been always excluded. “The Zähdarms,” says he, “lived in the soft, sumptuous garniture of Aristocracy; whereto Literature and Art, attracted and attached from without, must serve as the handsomest fringing. It was to the
Gnädigen Frau
(her Ladyship) that this latter improvement was due: assiduously she gathered, dexterously she fitted on, what fringing was to be had; lace or
cobweb, as the place yielded.” Was Teufelsdröckh also a fringe, of lace or cobweb; or promising to be such? “With His
Excellenz
(the Count),” continues he, “I have more than once had the honour to converse; chiefly on general affairs, and the aspect of the world, which he, though now past middle life, viewed in no unfavourable light; finding indeed, except the Outrooting of Journalism (
die auszurottende Journalistik)
, little to desiderate therein. On some points, as his
Excellenz
was not uncholeric, I found it more pleasant to keep silence. Besides, his occupation being that of Owning Land, there might be faculties enough, which, as superfluous for such use, were little developed in him.”

That to Teufelsdröckh the aspect of the world was nowise so faultless, and many things, besides “the Outrooting of Journalism,” might have seemed improvements, we can readily conjecture. With nothing but a barren Auscultatorship from without, and so many mutinous thoughts and wishes from within, his position was no easy one. “The Universe,” he says, “was as a mighty Sphinx-riddle, which I knew so little of, yet must rede, or be devoured. In red streaks of unspeakable grandeur, yet also in the blackness of darkness, was Life, to my too-unfurnished Thought, unfolding itself. A strange contradiction lay in me; and I as yet knew not the solution of it; knew not that spiritual music can spring only from discords set in unison;
*
that but for Evil there were no Good, as Victory is only possible by Battle.”

“I have heard affirmed (surely in jest),” observes he elsewhere, “by not unphilanthropic persons, that it were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five. With which suggestion, at least as considered in the light of a practical scheme, I need scarcely say that I nowise coincide. Nevertheless it is plausibly urged that, as young ladies (
Mädchen)
are, to mankind, precisely the most delightful in those years; so young gentlemen (
Bübchen)
*
do then attain their maximum of detestability. Such gawks (
Gecken)
are they, and foolish peacocks, and yet with such a vulturous hunger for self-indulgence;
so obstinate, obstreperous, vainglorious; in all senses, so froward and so forward. No mortal’s endeavour or attainment will in the smallest content the as yet unendeavouring, unattaining young gentleman; but he could make it all infinitely better, were it worthy of him. Life every where is the most manageable matter, simple as a question in the Rule of Three: multiply your second and third term together, divide the product by the first, and your quotient will be the answer,—which you are but an ass if you cannot come at. The booby has not yet found out, by any trial, that, do what one will, there is ever a cursed fraction, oftenest a decimal repeater, and no net integer quotient so much as to be thought of.”

In which passage, does there not lie an implied confession that Teufelsdröckh himself, besides his outward obstructions, had an inward, still greater, to contend with; namely, a certain temporary, youthful, yet still afflictive derangement of head? Alas! on the former side alone, his case was hard enough. “It continues ever true,” says he, “that Saturn, or Chronos, or what we call T
IME
, devours all his Children: only by incessant Running, by incessant Working, may you (for some threescore and ten years) escape him; and you too he devours at last. Can any Sovereign, or Holy Alliance of Sovereigns,
*
bid Time stand still; even in thought, shake themselves free of Time? Our whole terrestrial being is based on Time, and built of Time; it is wholly a Movement, a Time-impulse; Time is the author of it, the material of it. Hence also our Whole Duty, which is to Move, to Work,—in the right direction. Are not our Bodies and our Souls in continual movement, whether we will or not; in a continual Waste, requiring a continual Repair? Utmost satisfaction of our whole outward and inward Wants were but satisfaction for a space of Time; thus whatso we have done, is done, and for us annihilated, and ever must we go and do anew. O Time-Spirit, how hast thou environed and imprisoned us, and sunk us so deep in thy troublous dim Time-Element; that, only in lucid moments, can so much as glimpses of our upper Azure Home be revealed to us! Me, however, as a Son of Time, unhappier than some others, was Time threatening to eat quite prematurely; for strive as I might, there was no good Running, so obstructed was the path, so gyved were the
feet.” That is to say, we presume, speaking in the dialect of this lower world, that Teufelsdröckh’s whole duty and necessity was, like other men’s, “to work,—in the right direction,” and that no work was to be had; whereby he became wretched enough. As was natural: with haggard Scarcity threatening him in the distance; and so vehement a soul languishing in restless inaction, and forced thereby, like Sir Hudibras’s sword by rust,