All the young tarts.

There but for the Grace of God...

Jonnie Comet

17 July 2000

  So you’ve got yourself to middle school now, and you’re unlucky enough to go to a coeducational school, where the guys are.  And you’d hoped to find that they all really like you, because it’d make your life easier, since you’d love to know that at least one of them likes you in particular, because after all that’s what we’re all supposed to want, right?  But so far here’s how they’ve been treating you:

  Your shoe’s untied and you stop and bend over to tie it and some guys walk by and one of them says something about your tush or the angle you’re on or how the level of your head is ‘just right’.  Or you’re reaching up to shove the books into your locker and one of the guys says something about how high your top rides up or what size you must be now or what a ‘nice handful’ one or two things might make.  Or maybe you hit the jackpot and get an actual one-to-one with one of them, and after a few minor words he says something about ‘getting together’ and starts asking you about your dating experience, and what you’ve done and what you haven’t, and whether you’d try this or that if only you had the right guy– indicating himself of course– and you feel profoundly embarrassed because you haven’t the faintest clue about what he’s saying except that you know other people are talking about it too and, after all, you’re smart enough to figure it out, but you’re not sure you need to know about it like he’s suggesting you should, and you feel like an idiot until he really starts driving at you with the questions and you get the urge to just run away like a scared rabbit, punch him or at least hurl one good solid verbal insult back at him, and all those other guys too, something with a wonderfully nasty-looking wince on your face and one or two choice obscenities thrown in to let him know you don’t indulge in his kind of slime, the miserable scumball that he is, but you know that when you do he’ll just seem to like it more and keep at it and, worse, he’ll tell everyone else too, so you can get known like that.

  Have I got any of this right so far?

  This seems to happen all the time, with every guy that’s even remotely interesting.  And the only thing you can think by now is that you must really be a total tart.  You didn’t used to be; but everything about your life is totally different than it was three years ago.  Well, first, you’ve got a body now– you didn’t have that three years ago.  Everyone seems to be paying attention to you– men and women both.  You’ve got a shape other women love to hate you for, and you dress like you don’t care– or worse, like you do, and they hate you for it either way.  The men– well, you know what the men are thinking, and if you don’t you will in another year or so.  Every guy from 12 to 100 stares at you; and the awful part is, there’s a good-sized bit of you that actually likes it, and, even worse, there’s a little bit of you that actually wouldn’t mind doing whatever it is they’ve got in mind.  Oh, Lord! –what a tart you must be.
  Now the Darwinists will say that all of this is perfectly natural, that the strange attraction you feel towards that kind of scumball is normal and you ought to be brave enough, or intelligent enough, to just admit it and accept it.  But there’s a problem with believing this.  It suggests our basest feelings represent our true selves, that we are nothing higher than naked apes and it’s the way of all flesh.  That’s a pretty sad way to think.  If we were put on this earth with all the marvellous faculties and abilities we have for no other reason than to do as all other warm-blooded creatures do, then what’s the point of being here?  All our logic and faith tells us this can’t be the case.  Man, as an animal, is an admirable piece of work... ‘how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.’  It’s a crying shame to simply toss all that out and deny that we are ever called towards more than birth, sex, nursing a few infants, and death.
  But people who accept the Darwin argument are never going to be truly valuable in society– they only think they are because there’s so many of them; and the reason there are so many of them is because it’s an intellectually lazy way to think.  And men in particular are particularly lazy intellectually.  When a guy comes on to you with the attitude that ‘You’re a girl; I’m a guy– hey, let’s get together’, remind yourself that he probably follows an ideology suggesting he is directly descended from smelly apes who poop on each other, and the resemblance at the time ought to be crystal-clear to you.
  The truth is that there are only two things keeping you from being the tart you have been dreading you’ve already become.  The first is the love of God.  I’m not saying the will of God– no, not His will, powerful as that may be.  No, I mean the love of God– that true love, unconditional, unchanging, never-ending.  This is the love of a good father, who cares for you and teaches you and protects you from hazardous situations, and then takes you back in with open arms and repairs the damage when you’ve gone wrong anyway.  So you always have somewhere to turn whenever you are in doubt of what to do or how to act.  No child of God will ever be unwelcome in His house, because He chooses to love us all.  So you are never lost, bad as you think your situation might be.
  The other thing is your will.  God grant you a will like His own, so that you would have the ability to choose between His way and any other way.  Certainly God is not interested in seeing you become a tart.  But all His efforts at trying to prove to you that He exists and that you ought to follow Him will amount to nothing if you choose to turn your pretty head and ignore what He’s trying to say.  You have to remember that at any given time, you can say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.  You can decide what you will be– tart or virtuous woman, the choice is all yours and you can’t blame anyone but yourself.
  Only those who choose to believe in God and accept His love and His rules for good living ever realise this.  They are saved even before they have doubts, because they know there is always an alternative to sin, and that is to follow God, live under His roof, abide by His house rules, have His protection, receive His love.  God is your best friend and your most powerful ally.  He can bear any confidence and intercede in any problem you have.  –‘If God is with us, who can be against us?’
  Now the next time some guy makes a lewd comment, it would be unchristian to reduce yourself to his level and respond in kind.  Don’t play his game at all.  When he looks at you with sinful thoughts on his mind you play right into his hand by replying sinfully.  No; the correct thing to do is to smother him with virtue.  Act as though you don’t understand what he said– never mind that it makes you blush.  Say, ‘Pardon me?’  First of all, just saying that in a respectful tone will throw him off.  Guys don’t know how to deal with a young lady using real manners.  Oh; he’ll try again in some other way, if he’s really persistent.  But you’ll respond again like before. –‘I’m sorry; do I know you?’ –or, ‘I’m sorry; did you want to talk with me?’ –or something to indicate you were not aware you were supposed to value what he’s just said, as though you’re too nice to have got it at all.
  The main thing is to do it with absolutely the best manners and most ladylike– let’s even call it ‘prissy’ –tone that you can.  A scumball can’t handle that.  He’ll immediately brand you a prude and go off in search of someone who gives him less trouble; and what should you care if he calls you a prude? –for the opinion of a scumball isn’t worth anything and sooner or later everyone figures that out.
 You may wonder now why simply insulting him isn’t easier to be rid of him faster.  Well, you’re thinking; and at least you do want to be rid of him.  The reason insults won’t work is because deep down inside this kind of guy believes that he really is a scumball.  See; it’s the Darwin idea at work.  When you insult him, it meshes with that– he doesn’t even know it well enough to admit it, but you’ve just validated his deepest beliefs.  It’s easy for him then.  He doesn’t have to try to be anything more than a scumball, because the woman he’s attracted to already accepts him that way.  He’ll continue to insult and degrade you until he’s certain he’s brought you down to his level, where he feels most secure– where he is in charge, in his scumball world.  The single worst thing a woman can ever do is to allow a man to believe that being nothing more than a scumball is acceptable.

 Ultimately, countering with politeness will do exactly the opposite.  It doesn’t change the fact that the guy is interested in girls.  It won’t change the fact that he still may believe some of them are available tarts.  What’s different is how he will change after attempting to insult you.  You let him know that acting like a scumball is unacceptable, that if he wants your attention he’s going to have to earn it, and that he’ll have to try being more gentlemanly and polite to do it.

  Now there are two kinds of guys who’ll insult you and they’ll each handle this differently.  The true scumball doesn’t want to change from being a scumball; and, since you obviously want him to change, he’s not going to go there.  He’s lazy.  He’ll decide that you’re not worth his effort and just go after a real tart who doesn’t ask him to be anything but a scumball.  The sooner he realises this, the sooner he’ll give up on you.  You don’t need this guy anyway; so my advice is to be quick about it and spare both yourself and him a lot of aggravation.
  The other guy is the one who acts like a scumball because he thinks it’s expected of him because so many other guys seem to be scumballs; but he has a great potential for being a gentleman.  This guy will at least try to rise to the challenge you give him.  He’ll immediately apologise and possibly go away and approach you later with a better comment.  Be wary– but sound him and see how well he does.  It might be amusing.  It might even lead to something good.  After all, by trying to look like less of a scumball he’s making an effort to earn you.  But don’t let your guard down.  Don’t even meet him halfway.  Let him know in no uncertain terms that it’s going to take everything he’s got.  If he’s worth it, he’ll meet the challenge.  If he’s really just a scumball after all, he’ll give up and you won’t have lost anything anyway.
  Of course a guy who’s already a gentleman would not have made the lewd comment in the first place.  He’s probably been gazing at you from afar and, I assure you, though he is not stupid his thoughts are anything but lewd.  One day you will meet eyes with him, and he will say shyly, ‘Hi.’  It might take another few weeks for him to say more than that.  This is the way he sounds you out.  The best way to encourage him is by keeping your guard up and keeping your standards high, because that’s what’s attracting him to you.  Don’t worry about losing him– if he’s really good enough he’ll pass every test, and you won’t end up with a scumball.  This is how confident girls with less than goddess-like looks are able to get attention.  They attract it by sheer force of goodness.  Lesser people can’t handle that.  You see, it’s got nothing to do with your looks.  It’s got everything to do with your virtue.
 The deep-down secret which every guy will ultimately confess is that he just wants a nice, sweet, innocent, virtuous girl to fall head-over-heels in love with no-one but him.  Note, I said every guy.  Most of them know what’s required.  The best of them already try to do it.  The scumballs are just either stupid or lazy– probably both.  There’s simply no reason to accept a scumball; and you should never give up as so many modern women do and say, ‘All guys are scumballs’.  If that appears true it’s only because there are so many lazy or stupid women out there who accept them that way.  Most guys are essentially lazy– they won’t change if they don’t have to.  The best ones are hard workers and they’ll accept any challenge if the reward is appropriate.
  This is where you come in.  You see, you are the reward.  We all know you don’t get something for nothing– everything has its price.  And... ‘the price of a virtuous woman is far above rubies.’

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Last will.

From the Author, to his Children, should he go mad in Age.

Jonnie Comet


When I one day may cease to be my own,
But coming under some less thoughtful mind,
As Swift, once sad arrayed for friends to find
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying crone;
A Soul forgot, all Reason lost, or one
Scant Ghost of what he was, mem’ry resigned:
Regarding me but thus, Child, pray, be kind,
And my afflicted form discard alone.

For, whate’er my outward state, recall
That thy once minded father loved thee well,
Bear God no ill, for ‘tis but temp’ral hell:
Let not by eyes thy better heart enthrall.

  We are but dust: to dust let Bodies tend;
  And by thy Love thus skyward me commend.

- 4 April 2000

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l. 3 - Swift  - Swift went raving mad and was exhibited babbling in his chair by his servants –JC
l. 4 - An old... dying  -  paraphrased from Shelley, ‘England in1819’

An apology, for 'Virtue Reclaimed'.

The Pammy premise....

Jonnie Comet
23 June 1999

‘Merit should be chiefly placed

In Judgement, Knowledge, Wit, and Taste;

And these, she offer’d to dispute,

Alone distinguished Man from Brute.’    –Vanessa

  More boldly than is usual I have been initiating discussions of a new work in progress from my hand; a novel with the working title of Pamela; or: Virtue Reclaimed.  Deliberately to be like Richardson’s 1740 Pamela; or: Virtue Rewarded, probably my favourite book of all time, it is a fictional diary of a young lady ‘in service’. Mine is an updated version of the story, where instead of the cruel manipulating master whom she must forgive, my Pammy has a much more insidious problem within herself.  The story, then, shall deal with how she comes to face her own temptations and rise, like the Mr B of Richardson’s book, to a new level of propriety, respectability, and Godliness.  

  The heroine’s father abandoned the household when she was two and her deceptively celibate mother forced her own man-hating precepts upon her all her life.  The narration starts just as Pammy, an effervescent prodigy with 170+ IQ, and the sweet, good-natured Vicki, the youngest of a good Catholic family and Pammy’s childhood ‘blood-sister’ and soulmate, come to America from Australia as exchange students to the Cs in Delaware.  Inspired by the recent acquisition of a Macintosh computer, which seems to accompany her everywhere, Pammy has begun a very detailed, honest, and startlingly introspective journal which may apparently be her life’s one great opus. 
  

  The Cs (you never hear their last name, as in Richardson’s book, in which the diarist endeavours to keep ‘Mr B’ anonymous– as if she could) are the most enigmatic part of the story– a very contradiction in terms. The father, not known as John Paul Caprici, is an old character of mine of whom I wrote in the 1980s and then gave over but have since resurrected as an adult.  Born on a Wednesday, he is ‘full of woe’– Pammy will call him ‘the man of sorrows’.  He was a member of a rock band on Long Beach Island in the late 1970s but lost a beloved fiancee in a tragic plane crash in 1980 and, distraught, sold off the beachfront property intended for their honeymoon cottage, broke up the band, made a few enemies in the process, and fled to London to immerse himself in music-production work and a rakish lifestyle.  Following the death of his father he met Lisa in New Jersey, who is an angel.  Eager to leave his spate of recklessness behind, he retires to a gentleman’s country life at a very nice authentic Colonial-style spread on the bay beach at Lewes.  
  

  Lisa embodies everything good and Christian about women, and as the mother of the two little girls whom Pammy and Vicki are to mind as live-in exchange students, becomes a very good influence on the heretofore ill-guided Pammy. Vicki feels homesick and departs one December leaving Pammy alone, who chooses to not return to her mother but to attend high school and then UD in Delaware.  Her mother, acknowledging Pammy’s reasons, recognises that her daughter’s academic prowess and literary demeanour would be better served here than at UQ, where at home ‘everyone’ goes (Queensland has a mundane English literature programme), and signs her over as ward to the Cs.  Gradually the humble, dutiful, scholarly Pammy achieves a somewhat ambiguous relationship in the household, something akin to a younger sister to Mrs C, an older one to the girls, and a niece or almost daughter to Mr C; she admits often that she feels like she’s living with her ‘faery godparents’.  

  The conflict Pammy faces is over her own sexuality.  Seduced by a deceitful female school-friend at age 14 she has never been fully confident since.  She readily recognises that having been intimate with the Catholic Vicki, who was too remorseful with guilt to allow it to continue, was morally wrong, but it is like an addiction that she cannot help and it undermines her self-worth.  Over the second third of the story she develops an abject fear of being ‘found out’ and losing the respect the Cs have for her, and the trust they have in her with their two little girls. In at least one way however she is far stronger than she believes.  She embodies my own view that most of what liberals call ‘sexual preference’ is just that– a matter of choice rather than a natural (as in genetic) determination.  Whether the inclination is adopted freely or under subtle, chronic conditioning, as on an immature intellect, is not the issue. Pammy insists that if properly motivated, she can leave behind her corrupt ways and ‘go straight’.  Therefore she repels all ‘politically-correct’ labels for herself, even when reflecting her innermost thoughts in the privacy of her own diary.  Whether this is out of philosophical nobility or denial she cannot say, but despite her profound haughtiness in writing the reader will surmise Pammy is deluding herself.  

  Lisa contracts some unnamed blood disorder in the summer of 1998 and dies unexpectedly in October.  Upon her deathbed she tells the weeping Pammy, ‘I have always believed you were capable of much more than you have done.’  As she labours on in mourning Pammy slowly realises she had never really deceived Mrs C, who probably always suspected her inclination and yet as a true Christian chose to love her anyway, in ways Pammy’s own mother never could have.  Inspired by the faith of a friend she had long underestimated, she must rise out of the moral mire of her sinful existence and endeavour to deserve her keep, both by the decimated C family and by the Shepherd of us all.  

  Therefore the real core of the story is the tedious household arrangement during Mr C’s widowhood, when Pammy, set up with her own apartment in Newark, attends UD with 15-18 credits per term, carries a GPA over 3.7, drives the 75-mile distance between Lewes and Newark every Wednesday afternoon to make dinner and help the little girls with homework, and then returns each weekend to do washing and other chores.  Mr C takes up quarters in the attic to be away from his wife’s room which is kept intact until he must enlist Pammy to clear out her wardrobe.  Under the weight of what’s been lost, Pammy reports, ‘I would rather have spent the same two hours in a nuclear reactor.’ The departed Lisa has now become a saint to her, and though she dares not say so directly, she wishes to emulate her as a Christian and woman in general. The fact is that she does, much more than she realises.  

  The most obvious and yet troubling criticism of the premise of this love story is the hasty assumption of many that no ‘normal’ man could endure in a household with a ‘nubile’ young woman for long after his wife’s death without ‘hitting on her’.  In fact this is exactly what Pammy’s mother cautions her about, prompting Pammy to promise to the heartbroken Mr C– precisely as Jane Eyre promised Rochester– ‘I would stay with any friend.  I will stay with you.’  But I submit that the belief in an inevitable, irresistible consummation of two people thrown together in adversity is too low a view of human potential.  The great problem with modern society is that sexuality has come to the fore and is generally claimed to be the most important influence on our lives.  This belief is Romantic– the idea that one’s own personal perceptions and sensory satisfaction can be more important than absolute truth or absolute good.  But I am no Romantic.  I am only concerned that so many seem to be.  

  My criticism of the world today is that people have grown too trusting of what we see and feel round about us, which is anti-intellectual and subjects the God-given power of Reason beneath the perceptions of inherently flawed physical feelings and senses.  Modern people are no longer interested in the ‘irrelevant’ thought processes of the past, if they are even aware of them.  As a scholar of literature from before the Romantic period I can attest that, whilst in 1999 it may be implausible to expect that a young single woman and an unattached, lonely man can coexist in a household, observing all prior rules of propriety, without their quickly developing a sexual or at least overtly passionate premarital relationship, before 1799 the story I am writing would not only have been perfectly plausible, but the public would have demanded it develop precisely as I do develop it.  

  It is logically and morally dangerous to claim that the capacities of human nature have changed so much since ‘then’, that we know so much more about mankind now, that we were naïve and clueless ‘then’ but are not now.  St Paul says we see in a mirror dimly– meaning all of us, in every time of life, in every time of man.  Not one of us has any better clue about the true capacity of human nature than another.  This is where so many go wrong– they claim, for example, that the Bible reflects a way of thinking then, but is irrelevant now.  That claim is Romantic– it assumes that what is right for one man or one age may not be right for another, totally disregarding the possibility of an absolute truth.  What God has deigned is universal– it cannot change.  What must change is the way mortal and mutable Christians view it, so that we can be more in line with how God would have us think. In this way pure Romanticism is anathema to true Christianity.  
 

  Emerson would justify Pammy’s transgressions in saying that so long as she felt personally satisfied by it there could be no judgement of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in being intimately involved with her childhood friend.  Fortunately I have read enough chivalric and moralist literature to have something to base my arguments on. After Richardson’s 1740 masterpiece in which Pamela reforms her rakish master and marries him respectably, the public raved over it and demanded a sequel just to have more of it. Preachers praised it as the epitome of Christianity put to good earthly use.  The Catholic poet Alexander Pope boldly stated that priests could do far worse than to base sermons on the openly Protestant Pamela– and many took the advice.  Ben Franklin published it in 1744 as the first novel printed in America. Austen, Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, and even Hardy were profoundly influenced by it; but by the time Romanticism had done its full damage at the close of the 19th century only the most moralistic literati cared a whit for it.  
 

  What I am attempting is to take a major problem of our time– the inane argument over whether any alternate mode of sexuality or morality can be personally prescribed and justified– and put it into a context which leaves little room for doubt.  Pammy has always been a good little girl and has always gone to church and with the Cs, at least at first, she merely follows what she’s been taught.  Like many mainstream Anglicans (a minority in Catholic Queensland) she takes it all for granted. But following Mrs Cs death and searching for some clue about what to do, she discovers the Bible again.  Passages like ‘You are the light of the world’ and ‘Whosoever will not take up his cross and follow me, cannot be my disciple’ haunt her– she knows there is guidance in there somewhere.  So she explains to Dani, her eager young ‘protegee’ (as it were) in Delaware, that she will end their intimacy cold-turkey– and does.  With the understanding Dani’s blessing she begins a single-minded crusade to do nothing for herself and to be the best nanny she can be under the circumstances, caring for the two little lambs who have lost their mother, taking every example of their mother she can.  She denies herself in order to serve others.  She loses half her friends who don’t get it– but recalls Helen’s words to a sceptical young Jane Eyre: ‘If all the world hated you, you would not be without friends.’  

  Deliberately, the very ironic part is that Lisa is 33 when she dies– the perfect angel, the one without blemish, the one whom everyone should look to as a paragon of virtue, who essentially says to Pammy on her deathbed, ‘Love one another, as I have loved you’.  Despite all her book-learning, Pammy will only accept the full gravity of the symbolism when a full year afterwards, at nearly 20, she accepts Mr C’s serious, sober proposal of marriage, which he actually suggests as an expedient way to keep her in the family (and country) after she has become to him the best teammate and the most loyal of friends.  But they both know better.  They are of the same mind on so many things– but are also, after all, flesh and blood too.  It is only that there are procedures to follow for propriety’s sake.  In church that Sunday, as they anticipate speaking to the priest about it, there is a baptism service and the whole concept of rebirth and being ‘sealed as Christ’s own forever’ comes back to Pammy like a boomerang from the Outback.  In a sudden revelation she gets it, and there is a very moving moment when she begs the priest for a penance– having learnt too much from going to Vicki’s church, no doubt– and his only response is to read to her about Jesus at the charcoal fire from Acts and then say that her penance is to ‘feed the lambs’. Pammy knows who the lambs are.  She has been serving them all along.  

  I put everything I know into this story. It is part Jane Eyre, part The Sound of Music, part Emma, and partly Swift’s Cadenus and Vanessa.  It has begun to appear to me more eminently publishable than anything else I’ve written, if only for the incredible breadth of its market (I should love to publish it in installments in some mass-market periodical) and so I am not really working on anything else at the moment.  It is a modern Christian fairy tale, in which the good people are obvious and no-one’s flaws are so awful that they cannot be corrected and forgiven.  Pammy ends up marrying the only one suited for her in every way, a gallant and respectable gentleman of means, the only male role model she has ever known, and her very best friend, in a largely intellectual union of two kindred souls separated by 23 years, but the admiration and affection between them is sincere and there is no doubt they will be well matched till at last one of the loves of Mr C’s life will outlive him.  

  The character of Pammy is a deliberate paradox.  Truly beautiful, she gets called ‘Barbie’ because she looks like a bimbo, but her beauty is juxtaposed with a formidable intellect– as with Vanessa in Swift’s comic epic mentioned earlier (which Pammy quotes from in fact). Young men hate her– they cannot get past her looks to care about what she thinks and so misjudge her.  When they discover how brilliant she really is they can’t reconcile such stirring beauty with such daunting brain power and so are at a loss as to how to deserve her.  She goes through high school and college in the US like Frankenstein’s poor monster, out of place, out of time, an 18th-C Absolutist in a 20th-C Romantic world.  People ask me why I made her so physically striking– it’s simple when you think on it.  In the modern sensory world, for a woman to be both intelligent and beautiful is a liability, even a curse.  Either attribute alone would be easier to take. But as Pammy writes in a sophomore sociology thesis, men are primarily visually stimulated and judge women first on their appearance.  As a man myself I have studied this at great length and have come to be able to put mere looks aside– honest.  It is true that many women are pleasant to look at, but I don’t care.  A beautiful-looking woman is like a work of art– you can take it home and admire how it looks, but you can’t have a satisfying conversation with it. And good conversation ability can last a lot longer than than good looks.  

  Therefore Pammy is fodder for the modern Romantic male-centred misconception that worth is equal to looks– that is, appeal to the senses rather than to the intellect is most valuable.  Pammy appeals both ways and is actually the very best ‘catch’ a rational man could wish for.  The sad thing is, there are precious few rational young men. Thus she represents another of my long-standing beliefs that the dumbest thing a modern girl can do is marry an immature idiot her own age with an earring in his nose. The only truly sensible choice of husbands for an intelligent young woman is an adult who is already established in his station in life and comfortable with being himself.  This is only what everyone believed up till that damnable book Wuthering Heights and the whole Romantic movement in fiction, when emotion took over logic throughout society.  I lament that, for its negative aspects are still with us and show no signs of abating.  This is why I study the 18th century, because it was the middle period in which the good aspects of Passion and the good sides of Reason were melded successfully.  Such a perfect blend is not likely to ever happen again– more to pity.  

  All I am trying to say is that I haven’t made anything up here that’s implausible.  This book is founded on all the precepts I have learnt in school, studied on my own, and lived myself, for all the years I’ve been thinking.  It is not intended to be scholarly, but realistic– the character at times nearly bores the reader with what appear to be trivial details (a trick I got from Dickens, Austen, and even Billy Joel).  What she does not say is as important as what she does.  She is struggling and occasionally admits it, but what she is struggling about does not occur to her till nearly the very end.  She is human and fallible and knows it, and her failings are as authentic as her strengths.  Above all she realises the power of free will, which she must accept and harness in order to follow the will of God.  She does not know the eventual outcome and eventually stops asking God to tell her, leaving it all to Him and reconciling herself to whatever fate He determines for her.  When at last she can do this completely, she will have earned the best reward imaginable.  

  I’m sorry if this is trite and boring; but I can’t abide the ‘film noir’ genre of literature.  Hemingway does not impress me with his tragically hopeless, permanently scarred anti-heroes.  I think the entire premise of that Naturalist, amoral outlook is dangerous to impressionable minds, especially today. It must be remembered that all literature by definition has a teaching component, whether admitted or not by the writer, because the net effect of all reading is that the reader comes away changed in some way from having read it– the same as the definition of education.  My primary concern is how that reader changes.  A good story is not the goal– that is Romantic, to please through perception.  The good story is the means to the end, which is an important lesson.  Failure to accept this on the part of the writer has led to exactly what we have now– an entire culture built on gratifying false ‘needs’ as perceived by flawed people and forgetting more profound issues of life. Any book which seeks to gratify the reader in the ‘here and now’ at the expense of a valuable lesson for posterity abandons the morality of mankind for a quick quid for the writer, which is, of course, socially irresponsible. Any writer that does so is therefore part of the problem, no matter  how materially wealthy he becomes.  

  This is the belief of mine I have long wished others to understand, though often I worry that no-one ever will.  Yes, write– never fail to write– but always place yourself beyond the work, not only into the chair of the reader, but into that of the critic in posterity.  What has your book taught?  What effect does it have beyond the first few readers who say they like it?  Why is it worthy of being remembered after you cease to collect royalties on it?  What will a professor say about it in 200 years?  For as sure as you and I are sitting here the printed word will endure and come back one day to affect someone in a very different time than ours. Literature by its whole definition is not intended to be transitory or ‘for the moment’.  If all you mean to do is please an audience at a sitting and make 6.95 into the bargain each time, you had better hold a lecture up at Loveladies, tell your story, and forbid notes, rather than to ever take out a pen or switch on your computer.  The whole premise of writing it down and publishing it is to make an impact on posterity.  Otherwise, why bother?

  
* * *

epigram  - Merit should be... Vanessa  - J Swift, Cadenus and Vanessa; 1713

The vilest deceit.

Jonnie Comet

17 March 1999


  In an ethical sense the vilest form of deceit is that of marital infidelity, for there can be no moral defence for it. One has only to count the cost in terms of the number of its victims hurt by the deceit to begin to see the point.  First in a case of marital infidelity, the spouse is hurt, naturally.  Then the children are, if there are any.  Then come the family of the spouse, and quite often the family of the deceiver as well– actually everyone who was present at the wedding will feel painfully let down.  Then there are all the people on the third party’s side as well.  Then of course there is God, to whom all promises were made in the first place.  I don’t know about everyone; but I was taught that wilfully breaking a promise to God is not good grounds for a ticket to Heaven.

  What other deceit can compare to this?  Perhaps even high treason is not as ethically unjustifiable.  I acknowledge that in some cases one man’s treason could lead to full-scale war; but at a certain point you’ve got to recognise that, seen in an ethical light, the motives for the deceit necessary for treason might be much more reasonable than they seem in name alone.  I mean, it is possible that treason against the current ideology of one’s own country could be said to be patriotic.  Under certain circumstances it could even be exquisitely noble.

  The IRA may serve as a prime example.  One argument can be that these people have betrayed the very ideals of their own belief system– ideally, who may kill in the name of ideological liberty? –let alone Christian unity?  The IRA have committed countless crimes– and sins– for their cause.  Yet as much as it pains me to admit anything virtuous about the IRA, I have to acknowledge that these people sincerely believe they are trying to achieve a noble end.  They have rationalised that their ends are more important than what they must do to achieve them.  And therefore the pain and suffering they cause must be viewed as unfortunate but temporary, because what they are trying to vindicate is a society; and to them that is far more valuable as a benefit than the loss of numerable human lives are as a cost.

  In that light then, what is the end of an adulterous affair, and how can it be ethically or ideologically justified?  My position is simply that it cannot be.  It is nothing but cowardly to sneak round behind a spouse’s back in the name of sexual fulfillment or emotional freedom or psychological therapy or some other feebly self-centred excuse, all the while endeavouring to convince yourself you are doing the right thing for yourself at last.  Any attempted defence of that is fraught with ethical hypocrisy.  No one person’s individual concept of temporal happiness can ever be considered such a priceless ideal that it should entail the breach of a trust given in front of God and so many witnesses, whilst incurring catastrophic pain and anxiety for so many other individuals, about whose feelings the person was supposed to care deeply, by the deceit.

  I will not now delve into the many reasons why an individual might think himself in a bad marriage, or how such an individual might seek remedies to the root problems of such a marriage short of absolving the entire union.  The individual who regards his own vows and beliefs as fundamental and priceless will keep them upon penalty of death; but this is a rare breed in such in today’s commercial, disposable society.  It must be accepted therefore that to the vast majority of modern people, marriages, and the feelings of the individuals concerned, are seen as cheap and replaceable so long as they can be readily got rid of, and hopefully for some material and personal gain into the bargain.

  Yet no matter how bad a marriage seems, there has always been a legitimate option to staying faithful to one, especially in these post-Vatican II times.  The first excuse proffered might be that a cruel, controlling, vindictive spouse may not be willing to ‘grant’ a divorce.  But that is bollocks.  If such were true then your whole legal insistence on divorce would only benefit from your adherence to a strong ethical stance which makes your adversary look worse.  The spouse may go out and get a good lawyer and intimidate you with the thought that the case will go in favour of the more expensive counsel.  I say, go out and get a better lawyer.  All it takes is money.  In the end the monetary cost is immaterial– it will reap dividends in the trust you earn whilst you are seen to be doing the morally right thing.

  The single worst thing you can do when you perceive yourself in a bad marriage is to begin your ‘new life’ whilst remaining de facto married to another.  To do so is to forfeit all substance and appearance of virtue.  No observer of your extramarital affair can ever comfortably condone it or look upon what you call a ‘plight’ with true compassion.  There is something profoundly disturbing about beholding a deliberate deceit against another which you would never want to suffer yourself.  This is part of the great hypocrisy of infidelity– that to free yourself from your ‘bad’ marriage, you must do to your spouse what would certainly have made you call it a bad marriage if your spouse had done the same to you.  You must hurt someone else in order to save yourself from pain.

  No belief system which can attempt to defend this can ever be said to be a true ‘society’.  The ideal of individual freedom cannot be without limits; and those limits must be in the best interests of society as a whole.  It is incumbent upon the whole concept of a society that no one person may have any right to anything when to exercise that right infringes upon the equivalent rights of other members of the same society.

  To believe otherwise is to defend hypocrisy– which, logically, cannot be defended.  A society based upon the unlimited freedoms of the individual is no more than a society of one.  Any collection of such individuals can lead to a kind of ethical anarchy, a dog-eat-dog world in which no-one can ever be safe from the whims of others.  Despite many individuals’ claims otherwise, the concept of limited personal freedom is at the heart of the official tenets of every so-called ‘free society’ in the world– or, at least, the ones that truly survive as such.

  For one who would consider closing a bad marriage, the only correct thing when confronted with the opportunity for an affair is to appeal to the third party’s patience.  Say, ‘Hold that thought, whilst I extricate myself from Situation Number One.’  Don’t even talk about an affair– not even once, in a public place, over coffee.  To court even the idea of breaking the marriage vows is to have already done so.

  Now I know that inherent in this is a risk of going through all the trouble to extricate yourself from a bad match only to find, once free, that your intended paramour is no longer interested– in which case you will feel that you have lost twice.  But in this risk is the nobility of fidelity, if not to your undesirable marriage partner, at least then to a standard of morality.  Desperately trying to play two games at the same time for fear of losing at one before you have got the other assured is cowardly and immature– after all, most teenagers get it wrong too.

  It takes great courage to stand up and say, ‘I believe this is bad, therefore I shall make getting out of it my first priority– but I will not transgress morality to do it.’  In such one-on-one personal matters the ends cannot be made to justify the means, for, ethically speaking, the means themselves are the ends.  Your method of pursuing your own happiness will ultimately be your own happiness, and vice versa.  You may yet incur the sadness of others by seeking a divorce; but at least those left to suffer behind you will not have had the heartbreak of finding you a traitor to their trust as well.

  It is a truth universally accepted that there can be no promise of goodness without risk of suffering.  Anyone who tells you differently is selling something– and I submit that, in the long run, when viewed rationally, the cost you do not recognise now will prove morally too expensive before long; for, in the end, no-one trusts a traitor.

* * *

Old soldiers’ home.

Jonnie Comet

I wandered in one summer sweet,

Quite pleased to find the lawn so neat;

The place stone quiet, I alone

Sat down before my father’s feet.

I told him what was on my mind,

And he made answer, of a kind;

Our mutual sentiments thus known,

I left refreshed, and he, resigned.

And as I strolled out ‘neath the trees,

I heard the Flag snap in the breeze;

Some distant warbird’s noble drone

Gave anxious obligations ease.

For I know well these aged men

Who served in wars’ dark horror then,

Despite all threat to breath and bone;

Their valour e’er inspires my pen.

I owe them all a greater debt

Than humble beds can meet, and yet

Amid the grass, and trees, and stone,

Like Daddy, they abide, well-met.

 

- 8 March 1997

* * *

l. 11 - warbird - affectionate nickname for a retired military airplane –JC

Resurgam.

Jonnie Comet

 

By love subsists

All lasting grandeur, by pervading love;

That gone, we are as dust. –WW.

What make a Marriage?  True, a union blessed

By God, ‘fore friends, in Love, with vows addressed;

A vestal Beauty, ‘trothed in blushing bloom;

A golden Band; –oh yes, a nervous Groom;

A blissful joy in seeds of Future sowing;

Then challenges ‘mid hopes of offspring growing;

Then gentle ease at home when labours rest,

Both e’er abiding, one another’s Best.

Now you, regard not graves with sad Despair;

Nor rue a widowed life with greying hair:

‘Tis all but temp’ral.  Time cannot decay

Love joined by God and never led astray.

 

 For all that love, the best years doth begin

 As gates of Heav’n enclose their Souls within.

- 16 November 1996 

* * *

title - resurgam  - that which is resurrected (ref. Jane Eyre, Book One)

epigram  - By love... as dust  - Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book The Fourteenth, ll. 168-170

l. 13  - For all that love  - originally ‘Louise and Walt’s’, as the poem was published on the church bulletins on the occasion of the burial office for Louise Bailey Staton, the Author’s grandmother, widowed two years and ten months, who passed away 16 November 1996

Funeral for a friend.

Elegiac essay on the passing of Rachel’s goldfish, 20 May 1996.

Jonnie Comet

20 May 1996


(Note: this was written about Rachel's first goldfish; as of this reprinting the effervescent and multitalented Galileo, now over 8 months old, is alive and well --JC; October 2012)

  ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life,’saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though were dead, yet shall he live.

  With these words we Christians commend the souls of our beloved to their Maker.  In all change we understand there is loss, yet also hope. Sadly, the child who loses a cherished pet to the way of Nature is often only consoled by the rapid acquisition of a new one, and a profound opportunity for a lesson about the necessity of earthly death is forestalled, perhaps lost for good.

  No-one should ever give a pet to a young child without sober thought on the inevitable parting of the pet from this world while the child is still young enough to be catastrophically affected by it.  The love of a small child for a pet, for a friend, for a parent or sibling, is naturally complete and perfect.  Children know no bounds in expressing that love; it is a power within them stronger than they can understand or control.  Indeed it is the purest example of the love of God, the love that passes all understanding.

  The Church, as a man-made organisation, may have been dead wrong for many years in declaring that children were born in sin and needed sacraments administered by fellow human beings to come to know Jesus Christ. I submit that the reverse of what was thought for centuries is more likely true, that children are born perfect, and learn sin through interaction with people of weak or nonexistent faith.  Remember that Jesus did say, ‘Whosoever will not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, will surely not enter therein.’  The faith of a small child is perfect acceptance.  The small child takes for granted everything in evidence around him, because he has within him the most godly love of all, which comforts him that God is at work in the world and that he need not fear or question its nature.

  Therefore, when given a pet, the young child will naturally accept it as a gift from God, even without realising it, and take it for granted as with every other gift from God.  And so he should.  What the child cannot foresee is that most pets will not outlive his childhood.  Even before grandparents and other elder relatives to whom the child may be specially attached, the pet passes on, and herein lies the important opportunity which should not be neglected.

  It may seem trivial to some, but to observe with some solemnity the passing of a pet is of great value to the Christian child. A funeral ceremony is not to reassure us of the beloved’s mortality, but to reassure us of our own immortality. God has already determined that the beloved, be they of whatever species, will rest with Him in their proper place.  The soul of the pet is immaterial: it does not matter; it is not matter.  The pet was brought into the world, and made a pet, that we should know God’s love for us through our relationship with the pet. (See John 1, 3-9.)  The pet was, as the child secretly suspects, a gift from God just for him.  The child learns that to the Creator from whom all things come, all things must one day return. Earthly corruption dies, and shall be committed to the garden of life.  Symbols such as flowers are sacrificed upon the bier to represent the transient beauty of all living things and to remind us of the promise of renewal.  A marker is placed as a visible memorial in the absence of the departed friend.  The child may commemorate the event by drawing pictures or writing notes or selecting favourite photographs, no differently than the ancients did in enclosing earthly necessities in the tombs of their deceased, and for precisely the same reasons.  The reminders are to comfort those who remain, not those who are departed.

  The child may weep; Jesus wept.  No display of grief is bad theology.  It is the outpouring of an irrepressible love which feels, for the moment, that it has no object.  The sense of loss may seem inconsolable.  What the child will soon learn, as will all who mourn, is that God provides in all our want.  The next object that the child will choose to love will benefit from a wiser, maturer love, as the child grows to accept all things, even those he thought were his own, as proprietary only to God.

  The child who is not encouraged to grasp this fully will lose the ability to love in that pure, perfect manner by the time earthly materials begin to become important, as they inevitably do for us all.  The wise child will be the one who sees all things as gifts from God, here only for His purposes and under His conditions.  God’s world is a safe, secure place, not dictated by some fierce dichotomy of loss and gain but by a gently flowing cycle of change and rebirth.  The pet, after all, is not gone; it lives in our hearts forever, as it should.  There is no gain, only the generosity of God; no loss, only movement towards God.  This is what God has ordained, and He has seen that it is good.  As it is written, ‘Whatever IS is right.’

  Amen.

* * * 

epigram  - I am the Resurrection... shall he live  --BCP, 1928; ‘The Burial of the Dead’
p. 3  - Whosoever will not...therein  - Mark 10.13 
p. 7  - Whatever IS is right  - Pope, Essay on Man; e. 1, l. 294

Richardson’s 'Pamela' as chivalric literature.

In defence of virtue....[i]

Jonnie Comet
27 April 1995

  Samuel Richardson’s Pamela may be a rollicking tale of class bigotry, gender warfare, and sexual intrigue, but it is also a sober look at how cooperation and a willingness to submit to a greater good than one’s self can achieve genuinely positive ends for all involved.  I like to view this quaint and much-maligned work as an example of chivalric literature, in which goodness triumphs over evil.  Pamela Andrews, then, can be seen as the traditional chivalric heroine, because she exemplifies the complete definition of virtue.

  I see chivalry as an ideal, a model, for male-female human relations.  Caxton’s handbook[ii] set down the basic creeds of the good knight, but Malory and others expounded on these and gave positive and negative examples of male and female behavior in society.  For purposes of this paper the definition shall be kept broad, but I feel that really any story which presents this value system can be considered chivalric literature; one of my own favourites has become Fielding’s Joseph Andrews.

  One key to the chivalric code is the concept of the separate spheres: the male realm and the female realm.  This can be supported by open-minded study of Aristotle, the Bible, or evolutionary theory, and certainly through a reading of Pamela.  The male and female each have certain attributes, strengths, and responsibilities, and in Pamela we see the consequences when one of the two parties fails even to recognise the ideal.  It is crucial to remember that the two realms do not stand in judgement of each other; if not of the same elements, they are certainly equivalent.  The female may not wield the same sort of power as does the male, but the character of Pamela illustrates just how, at least in the arena of love, her power may actually be superior to that of her man.

  The female’s role in chivalry is to inspire the male toward virtue.  Richardson created Pamela as the paragon and champion of virtue; in his preface, he explicitly states his intention ‘to give practical examples, worthy to be followed in the most critical and affecting cases, by the virgin, the bride, and the wife’. [iii]  His book will also teach the man of station– indeed, any man– how and how not to retain his dignity and good reputation in the face of temptation.  The secret to it all is to embrace virtue for its own sake, and for the sake of its benefits– for virtue is its own reward.

  Narrowly defined, ‘virtue’ may connote simply physiological virginity.  Pamela’s words seem to bear this out, in part.  For her, chastity represents the one gift which she can to give freely to her husband; as a girl without a dowry, it is all she has in body and soul.  However virtue has a higher meaning here.  I prefer to use the word ‘chastity’ rather than ‘virtue’ in twentieth-century vocabulary, when referring to virginity alone.  ‘Virtuous’ seems more to mean ‘laden with virtues’, of which, for unmarried people, virginity– call it chastity– is one of the principals.  It is a diffuse nobleness in all issues.  Mrs Jervis and Mr B will exchange opinion on this, [iv] Mrs Jervis taking my view here, and Mr B assuming, as the twentieth-century reader surely does, that it is merely a pleasant euphemism for virginity– which, he insists, is the one thing he has not yet offended.  In chivalric terms virtue can be said to be a deliberate tendency– that is, invoking one’s free will– toward goodness, as prescribed by God and fellow virtuous people.  Pamela sums this whole debate up quite nicely for the reader, in her ‘Verses Upon Going Away’: ‘For what indeed is happiness/ But conscious innocence and peace’. [v]

  Pamela embodies all that is good about Christianity: humility, piety, chastity, kindness, and especially forgiveness.  She lives by the ‘Golden Rule’, a sort of trite axiom for whole of Christianity which lies at the heart of chivalry.  Raised by a lay deacon, Pamela is a good Christian, and never compromises her beliefs.  More than once she appears even Christlike; most notably in wishing her jailer well, and in her frequent resolutions to trust her fate to Providence rather than pray for her own designs.  The Church is important to her, as the social manifestation of God’s word and law.  The maintenance of her physical purity is prescribed by God; but the condemnation of its loss outside of wedlock, is prescribed by human society.  Therefore, to represent virtue in all eyes, she must subscribe to both.

  The moral touchstone for the entire book is her realization that ‘Virtue is the only nobility’. [vi]  Pamela values the gentry by their actions, not their station.  She does not consider virtue as a province solely of the rich.  She laments that people too often regard themselves and each other for the good of their ancestors and not on their own actions.  Principles, morality, and ethics are valuable to her, not outward appearance (which is part of the male domain).  Her intentions and actions define her character, since ostensively she has no other value, and she naïvely thinks others should be valued likewise.  Through everything she remains certain that her piety, not her birthrights, shall earn her a place in Heaven.

  Inviting such an influence, Mr B cannot stay outside the realm of virtue forever.  Though he never quite admits it explicitly, he placed Pamela upon the proverbial pedestal long ago, and his only confusion or anger has been with himself for misreading and mistreating her.  In submitting to her influence, he realises that she has elevated him to a new station: that of a truly noble, respectable gentleman, blessed with the company of a woman who is his equal in all the ways she should be.  He is humble enough to admit it to her: ‘I might have addressed a hundred fine ladies; but never could have reason to admire one as I do you’. [vii]  It is a lovely sentiment, and the reader agrees that Pamela’s true assets are too worthy of admiration to be merely coveted.

  Richardson’s point is that neither sex has a monopoly on virtue in the chivalric ideal.  Pamela is the chaste female who favourably influences the male toward goodness, and readily welcomes him when he at last embraces it.  Mr B is touched when she, goodness incarnate, honors him by calling him ‘good’, and so he willingly returns to what Lady Davers praises him for, his ‘usual generosity of spirit’.[viii]  In the argument with his sister he defends his marriage, in terms to illustrate his full understanding of what good has been done him: ‘A man ennobles the woman he takes, be she who she will’. [ix]  For him, Pamela deserves no less than the very best he can give her: his love, his respect, and his family name.

  Richardson does not end the novel with the marriage and a promise of ‘happily ever after’.  Pamela’s virtue carries on, to idealise the genteel, modest female in a variety of social situations.  She endures, capable, intelligent, responsible, self-effacing, never haughty.  The new Mrs B assumes her role as gentleman’s wife with reserve and grace, almost out of character for a modestly cultivated servile-class teenager.  True to the chivalric code, she acknowledges her responsibility to continue as his lantern of virtue: ‘To be sure, a woman cannot be too good’. [x]   

  Yet she will expect the same standard of behaviour from him– in fact, from all men.  She favorably impresses her sister-in-law and all the ladies of Mr B’s society, who find new inspiration in witnessing Pamela’s humility and graciousness; they marvel as she gives silver to the poor squarely in front of them all.  Pamela acknowledges her responsibility: ‘God raised me to a condition to be useful to better persons than myself’. [xi]  All along she has been an instrument of God– which, after all, is the only truly noble calling.

  I believe this is a book for idealists.  It must be monotonous to read such a high ideal so relentlessly idealised if one is not in total agreement with the principle.  But ideals, and idealists, have their place.  It is the purpose of an ideal to be universal, to transcend race, ethnicity, natural law, God’s law, and socioeconomic station.  Richardson very plainly intends ‘to instruct and improve the minds of the youth of both sexes’, [xii] and touts this as a realistic ideal, one which should be presented to youth on down through the ages.  He was very mindful of the new order he was proposing: ‘The ideal in human relations… is direct emotional contact with another person’. [xiii]

  After all, why must virtue ever be out of date?  In my view Pamela still stands as a model for female behaviour, and the early Mr B, of course, as the precise opposite of desired male behaviour.  Pamela’s responses to his 48 rules for married bliss indicate that here is a woman two hundred-odd years ahead of her time, a champion of equal treatment in gender discourse.  In a period when wives were considered chattel, she proposes that women exert some degree of free will over their husbands– but always in their best interests.  She embraces what the Soviet jazz musicians of the Cold War era knew, when faced with a potentially oppressive environment, that there is liberty in ‘improvising within the system’.

  As a novel Pamela succeeds gloriously in the two most basic purposes of all literature: to delight and to instruct.  In its day it was popular for being fanciful and devotional at once.  I feel it ranks with any piece of chivalric literature, as an example of how noble ideals are to applied to situations in which anyone’s word may be suspect, duplicity is a practised art, and no-one is quite what they seem.  Dickens’ John Jarndyce advises in Bleak House that the prudent approach is to trust only in God’s hand and in one’s own efforts.  All else may be forfeit– but if so, one’s goodness survives until it may be of the most use for others who need it.

  Fifty years hence, Mary Wollstonecraft would propose a standard of conduct for both genders in society, based on merit and not appearance, insisting, ‘Elegance is inferior to virtue’. [xiv]

  No doubt Pamela would agree.

* * *

---

[i]  As an uncanny coincidence, the word count on the original of this paper is 1741– the same figure as the year Richardson declared his edition of Pamela completed –JC

[ii] Caxton’s handbook  - In about 1485 William Caxton, an English historian and contemporary of Malory, set down in A Book of Chivalrie what he perceived to be the rules of chivalric code, which became widely read and emulated throughout Europe –JC

[iii]     to give... the wife  - Richardson; Pamela, p. 31

[iv]    exchange opinion on this  - Ibid, pp. 59-60

[v]  For what...  peace  - Ibid, p. 122

[vi]    Virtue is the only nobility  - Ibid, p. 83.  There is some debate about the origin of this statement; its gist appears in Juvenal's Satires and elsewhere since.

[vii]   I might... you  - Ibid, p. 309

[viii]   usual generosity of spirit  - Ibid, p. 294

[ix]    A man... she will  - Ibid, p. 441

[x]  To be sure, a woman cannot be too good  - Ibid, p. 470; on his Rule 47

[xi]    God raised me... myself  - Ibid, p. 515

[xii]   to instruct... both sexes  - Ibid, p. 31

[xiii]  The ideal... another person  - Golden, p. 128

[xiv]  Elegance is inferior to virtue  - Wollstonecraft; A Vindication on The Rights of Woman; 1793