Sartor Resartus (Oxford World's Classics) (39 page)

Here, however, can the present Editor, with an ambrosial joy as of over-weariness falling into sleep, lay down his pen. Well does he know, if human testimony be worth aught, that to innumerable British readers likewise, it
*
is a satisfying consummation; that innumerable British readers consider him, during these current months, but as an uneasy interruption to their ways of thought and digestion, not without a certain irritancy and even spoken invective. For which, as for other mercies, ought he not to thank the Upper Powers? To one and all of you, O irritated readers, he, with outstretched arms and open heart, will wave a kind farewell. Thou too, miraculous Entity, that namest thyself Y
ORKE
and O
LIVER
, and with thy vivacities and genialities, with thy all-too Irish mirth and madness, and odour of palled punch, makest such strange work, farewell; long as thou canst, fare-
well
! Have we not, in the course of eternity, travelled some months of our Life-journey in partial sight of one another; have we not lived
*
together, though in a state of quarrel!

F
RASER
, publisher of
Fraser’s Magazine
from its inception in February 1830 until his death in 1841, included a translation by Carlyle in its first number. Thereafter, Carlyle was a regular contributor. In November 1830 he began complex negotiations with Fraser over the serial publication of
Sartor Resartus
. For over a year these negotiations had been broken off. The letter to Fraser printed here, with the omission of opening and concluding paragraphs on other matters, reintroduces the possibility of serial publication, and contains Carlyle’s fullest account of the manuscript to date.

Most probably you recollect the Manuscript
Book
I had with me in London; and how during that Reform hurlyburly,
*
which unluckily still continues and is like to continue, I failed to make any bargain about it. The Manuscript still lies in my drawer; and now after long deliberation I have determined to slit it up into stripes, and send it forth in the Periodical way; for which in any case it was perhaps better adapted. The pains I took with the composition of it, truly, were greater than even I might have thought necessary, had this been foreseen: but what then? Care of that sort is never altogether thrown away; far better too much than too little. I reckon that it will be easy for the Magazine Printer to save me some thirty or forty complete Copies, as he prints it; these can then be bound up and distributed among my Friends likely to profit thereby; and in the end of all we can reprint it into a Book proper, if that seem good. Your Magazine is the first I think of for this object; and I must have got a distinct negative from you before I go any farther. Listen to me, then, and judge.

The Book is at present named “Thoughts on Clothes; or Life and Opinions of Herr D. Teufelsdröckh D.U.J.”; but perhaps we might see right to alter the title a little;
*
for the rest, some brief Introduction could fit it handsomely enough into its new destination: it is already divided into three “Books,” and farther into very short “Chapters,” capable in all ways of subdivision. Nay some tell me, what perhaps is true, that taking a few chapters at a time is really the profitablest way of reading it. There may be in all some Eight sheets of
Fraser
.
*
It is put together in the fashion of a Didactic Novel; but indeed properly
like
nothing yet extant. I used to characterize it briefly as a kind of “Satirical Extravaganza on Things in General”; it contains more of my
opinions on Art, Politics, Religion, Heaven Earth and Air, than all the things I have yet written. The Creed promulgated on all these things, as you may judge, is
mine
, and firmly
believed:
for the rest, the main Actor in the business (”Editor of these sheets” as he often calls himself) assumes a kind of Conservative (tho’ Antiquack) character; and would suit
Fraser
perhaps better than any other Magazine. The ultimate result, however, I need hardly premise, is a deep religious speculative-radicalism (so I call it for want of a better name), with which you are already well enough acquainted in me.

There are only five persons
*
that have yet read this Manuscript: of whom two have expressed themselves (I mean convinced me that they
are)
considerably interested and gratified; two quite
struck
, “overwhelmed with astonishment and new hope” (this is the result I aimed at for souls worthy of hope); and one in secret discontented and displeased. William Fraser is a sixth reader,* or rather half-reader; for I think he had only got half-way or so; and I never learned his opinion. With him, if you like, at this stage of the business you can consult freely about it. My own conjecture is that
Teufelsdröckh
, whenever published, will astonish most that read it, be wholly understood by very few; but to the astonishment of some will add touches of (almost the deepest) spiritual interest, with others quite the opposite feeling. I think I can practically prophecy that for some six or eight months (for it must be published without interruption), it would be apt at least to
keep the eyes
of the Public on you.

Such is all the description I can give you, in these limits: now what say you to it? Let me hear as soon as you can; for the time seems come to set these little bits of Doctrine forth; and, as I said, till your
finale
arrive, I can do nothing. Would you like to see the
Ms
. yourself? It can come, and return, by Coach for a few shillings, if you think of that: it will of course want the Introduction, and various other “O. Y.’s”
*
that will perhaps be useful. I need not remind you that about shewing it to any third party (as I have learned by experience) there is a certain delicacy to be observed: I shall like to hear from you first. Write to me, therefore, with the same openness as I have done to you; we shall then soon see how it lies between us.

T
HE
description of Carlyle printed here, written in ‘imitative Carlylese’, is by William Maginn (1793—1842), editor of
Fraser’s Magazine
from 1830 to 1836. Printed in the June 1833 issue, five months before the first instalment of
Sartor Resartus
, it was number 37 of Maginn’s ‘Gallery of Literary Characters’; other subjects included Coleridge, Hazlitt, Scott, and Disraeli.

Maginn’s portraits were accompanied by pen-and-ink sketches by the Irish painter Daniel Maclise (
c
. 1806–70), using the pseudonym Alfred Croquis. Carlyle termed his sketch ‘a very considerable likeness. Done from life in Fraser’s back-parlour in about twenty minutes’ (
Collected Letters
, vi. 125 n. 16.). He was less enthusiastic about the piece by Maginn, ‘a mad rattling Irishman’, which he found ‘hardly intelligible … but complimentary enough’ (ibid, vi. 406).

Here hast thou, O Reader! the-from stone-printed effigies of Thomas Carlyle, the thunderwordoversetter of Herr Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. These fingers, now in listless occupation supporting his head, or clutching that outward integument which with the head holds so singular a relation, that those who philosophically examine, and with a fire-glance penetrate into the contents of the great majority of the orbshaped knobs which form the upper extremity of man, know not with assured critic-craft to decide whether the hat was made to cover the head, or the head erected as a peg to hang the hat upon;—yea, these fingers have transferred some of the most harmonious and mystic passages,—to the initiated, mild-shining, inaudible-light instinct—and to the uninitiated, dark and untransparent as the shadows of Eleusis—of those forty volumes of musical wisdom which are commonly known by the title of
Goethe’s Werke
, from the Fatherlandish dialect of High-Dutch to the Allgemeine-Mid-Lothianish of Auld Reekie. Over-set Goethe hath Carlyle, not in the ordinary manner of languageturners, who content themselves with giving, according to the capacity of knowingness or honesty within them, the meaning or the idea (if any there be) of the original book-fashioner, on whom their secondhand-penmongery is employed; but with reverential thought, word-worshipping even the articulable clothing wherein the clear and ethereal harmony of Goethe is invested, Carlyle hath bestowed upon us the
Wilhelm Meister
, and other works, so Teutonical in raiment, in
the structure of sentence, the modulation of phrase, and the roundabout, hubble-bubble, rumfustianish (
hübble-bübblen, rümfüstianischen)
, roly-poly growlery of style, so Germanically set forth, that it is with difficulty we can recognise them to be translations at all.

Come, come, some reader will impatiently exclaim,—quite enough of this! A whole page of imitative Carlylese would be as bad as the influenza. In human English, then, Thomas Carlyle,—like Dionysius, of Syracuse, among the ancients, and Milton and Johnson among the moderns,—formerly instilled the prima stamina of knowledge into the minds of ingenuous youth; but for some years past has retired from what Oppian calls, or is supposed to call (see Bayle
in voce
)
*
feeding the sheep of the muses, to the rural occupations of a Dumfriesshire laird, in a place rejoicing in the melodious title of Craigenputtock, an appellation which must have delighted his ear, from its similarity in harmonious sound to the poetical effusions of the bards he loves. Here he occupies his leisure hours in translating Goethe, or in corresponding with the
Edinburgh Review
, or
Fraser’s Magazine
, the
Morning Post
, or the
Examiner
,—in all, donner-und-blitzenizing
*
it like a north-wester. To his credit be it spoken, he gave a Christian and an honourable tone to the articles of the
Edinburgh;
but he came too late. The concern was worn out and gone, and not even Carlyle could keep it from destruction, particularly when he was associated with Thomas Babbletongue Macaulay, whose articles would swamp a seventy-four.
*
He has a more congenial soil in
Regina
*
where he expounds, in the most approved fashion of the Cimbri and the Teutones, his opinions on men and things, greatly to the edification of our readers. Of his contributions to the forty-eight feet of diurnal or septimanal literature which are set before the industrious eyes of the readers of newspapers, we know nothing.

He is an honourable and worthy man, and talks the most unquestionable High Fifeshire. Of our German scholars, he is clearly the first; and it is generally suspected that he has an idea that he understands the meaning of the books which he is continually reading, which really is a merit of no small magnitude, particularly when we consider that nobody ever thinks of publishing a translation from the German without prefixing thereto a preface, proving in general in the most satisfactory manner that his predecessors in the work of translation made as many blunders as there were lines in the book, and that of the spirit of the original they were perfectly ignorant. Even-handed justice is sure to bring back the chalice to his own lips, and he receives the same compliment from his successor.

E
MERSON
(1803–82) first wrote to Carlyle in May 1834, having read the first four instalments of
Sartor Resartus
in
Fraser’s Magazine
. Carlyle’s reply, of which a long paragraph on
Sartor Resartus
is printed here, begins his side of a correspondence that lasted for almost forty years. Because of Emerson’s advocacy,
Sartor Resartus
was published in book form first in America and subsequently in England; his preface to the first American edition concludes the ‘Testimonies of Authors’ in Appendix V below. With his letter, Carlyle sent Emerson four copies of the privately issued volume of
Sartor Resartus
(1834); see Note on the Text, above.

You thank me for
Teufelsdröckh:
how much more ought I to thank you for your hearty, genuine tho’ extravagant acknowledgement of it! Blessed is the voice that amid dispiritment stupidity and contradiction proclaims to us:
Euge
[well done]! Nothing ever was more ungenial than the soil that poor Teufelsdröckhish seedcorn has been thrown on here; none cries, Good speed to it; the sorriest nettle or hemlock seed, one would think, had been more welcome. For indeed our British periodical critics, and especially the public of Fraser’s Magazine (which I believe I have now done with) exceed all speech; require not even contempt, only oblivion. Poor Teufelsdröckh! Creature of mischance, miscalculation, and thousandfold obstruction! Here nevertheless he is, as you see; has struggled across the Stygian marshes, and now, as a stitched Pamphlet “for Friends,” cannot be
burnt
, or lost—before his time. I send you one copy for your own behoof; three others you yourself can perhaps find fit readers for: as you spoke in the plural number, I thought there might be three; more would rather surprise me. From the British side of the water, I have met simply
one
intelligent response; clear, true, tho’ almost enthusiastic as your own: my British Friend too is utterly a stranger, whose very name I know not, who did not print, but only write and to an
unknown
third party.
*
Shall I say then: “In the mouth of
two
witnesses”? In any case, God be thanked, I am done with it; can wash my hands of it, and send it forth; sure that the Devil will get his full share of it, and not a whit
more
, clutch as he may. But as for you, my Transoceanic Brothers, read this earnestly, for it
was
earnestly meant and written, and contains no
voluntary
falsehood of mine. For the rest if you dislike it, say that I
wrote it four years ago, and could not now so write it, and on the whole (as Fritz the Only
*
said) “will do better another time.”—With regard to style and so forth, what you call your “saucy” objections are not only most intelligible to me, but welcome and instructive. You say well that I take up that attitude because I have no known public, am
alone
under the Heavens, speaking into friendly or unfriendly Space; add only that I will not defend such attitude, that I call it questionable, tentative, and only the best that I in these mad times could conveniently hit upon. For you are to know, my view is that now at last we have lived to see all manner of Poetics and Rhetorics and Sermonics, and one may say generally all manner of
Pulpits
for addressing mankind from, as good as broken and abolished: alas, yes; if you have any earnest meaning, which demands to be not only listened to, but
believed
and
done
, you cannot (at least I cannot) utter it
there
, but the sound sticks in my throat, as when a Solemnity were
felt
to have become a Mummery; and so one leaves the pasteboard coulisses, and three Unities, and Blair[’]s Lectures,
*
quite behind; and feels only that there is
nothing sacred
, then, but the
Speech of Man
to believing Men!
This
, come what will, was, is and forever must be
sacred:
and will one day doubtless anew environ itself with fit Modes, with Solemnities that are
not
Mummeries. Meanwhile, however, is it not pitiable? For tho’ Teufelsdröckh exclaims: “Pulpit! Canst thou not
make
a pulpit, by simply
inverting the nearest tub”;
yet alas he does not sufficiently reflect that it is still only a
tub
, that the most inspired utterance will come from
it
, inconceivable, misconceivable to the million; questionable (not of
ascertained
significance) even to the few. Pity us therefore; and with your just shake of the head join a sympathetic even a hopeful smile. Since I saw you, I have been trying, am still trying, other methods, and shall surely get nearer the truth, as I honestly strive for it. Meanwhile I know no method of much consequence, except that of
believing
, of being
sincere:
from
Homer
and the
Bible
down to the poorest Burns’s
Song
I find no other
Art
that promises to be perennial.