In contrast to these "found" grotesques that Carlyle and other sages produce by interpreting contemporary phenomena, the "invented" kind take the form of extended analogies, metaphors, and parables they create out of whole cloth. At their simplest, these invented symbolical grotesques appear as witty, often raucous analogies, such as Chartism's description of the impoverished Irishman as a "Sanspotatoe" (29.136).
Past and Present opens with a more extended version of the invented symbolical grotesque. Immediately after announcing the paradox of an England "full of wealth ... dying of inanition," Carlyle describes the condition of England and its workers in terms of baleful enchantment. The work English laborers "have done," says Carlyle, the fruit they have realised is here, abundant, exuberant on every hand of us: and behold, some baleful fiat as of Enchantment has gone forth, saying, 'Touch it not, ye workers, ye master-workers, ye master-idlers ...; this is enchanted fruit!"' (10.1). Two million workers find themselves in "Workhouses, Poor-law Prisons; or have 'out-door relief' flung over the wall to them, — the workhouse Bastille being filled to bursting" (10.1-2) . These workers, some of the finest in the world, sit there imprisoned "as in a kind of horrid enchantment; glad to be imprisoned and enchanted, that they may not perish starved." Citing the words of a picturesque tourist of his own imagining, Carlyle describes the interior of such a workhouse Bastille and the silent despair of its inhabitants, which he interprets: "An Earth all lying round, crying, Come and till me, come and reap me; — yet we here sit enchanted!" (10.2).
At the heart of this Carlylean grotesque emblem of the condition of England resides a simple conceit, heavy with implicit satire, which we can state in the following terms: British workers, the best in the world, find themselves helpless and unable to work when so much work is to be done; surely only evil magic, only enchantment, only a curse could have produced such an absurd, inefficient, essentially unjust state of affairs. Only something like "Enchantment" could explain what has gone wrong. Only enchantment could explain why "we have more riches than any Nation ever had before; we have less good of them than any Nation ever had before," and worse, worse indeed: "In the midst of plethoric plenty, the people perish; with gold walls, and full barns, no man feels himself safe or satisfied. Workers, Master Workers, Unworkers, all men, come to a pause; stand fixed, and cannot farther. Fatal paralysis spreading inwards, from the extremities, in St. Ives workhouses, in Stockport cellars, through all limbs, as if towards the heart itself." Is this no mere analogy, no mere fable, then? "Have we," asks Carlyle, "actually got enchanted, then; accursed by some god? — " whereupon he closes this first chapter of Past and Present, which he has called "Midas," with a symbolical grotesque in the form of the old Greek fable of the greedy king that answers his question and thereby explains precisely what kind of enchantment Britain has brought upon itself: "Midas longed for gold, and insulted the Olympians. He got gold, so that whatsoever he touched became gold, — and he, with his long ears, was little the better for it.... What a truth in these old Fables!" (10.6). Britain, as the rest of Past and Present demonstrates, has given itself up to the pursuit of material wealth and thus managed to destroy all capacity to enjoy it.
Interpretation, diagnosis, and warning all appear in this Carlylean progression of symbolical grotesques. Having thus introduced the conceits of enchantment, Midas, and workhouse Bastille, Carlyle repeatedly employs them as mock-explanatory devices throughout the volume, and he also connects them to his found grotesques, such as that created by the Stockport child murders, the presentation of which immediately follows that of baleful Enchantment.
Given Carlyle's major emphasis upon fact, most of his symbolical grotesques, such as the amphibious pope and "that great Hat seven-foot high, which now perambulates London streets," in Past and Present, obviously derive from contemporary phenomena, but he occasionally employs the invented form of the symbolical grotesque with particular brilliance as well.
Last modified 19 March 2008