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

In pursuit of Palladio.

The philosophical foundation of a lifetime’s study in architectural design.

Jonnie Comet
1 January 1997


The great Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) is usually considered the father of what we now popularly call classical architecture. Through his study of ancient Roman models, he revived the symmetrical ideal and defined such classical architectural elements as the pedimented gable, the column, and the Venetian arch-top window that came to be known by his name.

Inigo Jones, Christopher Wren, John Vanbrugh and Colen Campbell, all major figures in Neoclassical architecture, were devoted scholars of the Palladian manner. During the early 1700s James Gibbs made several extended pilgrimages to Italy to study the work of Palladio and returned to London to explain, in writing and in plan, the ideals to which all architects and builders were to aspire. In his 1725 A Book of Architecture, he provides beautifully detailed descriptions and drawings of gates, fences, obelisks, columns, doors, windows, pediments, as well as dozens of plans for residences, churches, public halls, and their outbuildings. He presents himself in his foreword as a scholar, not a creator, and a public servant, not a self-concerned artist. The designs are offered as models which the thinking individual in the country who, having no benefit of local architectural counsel but desiring a proper edifice to confirm his station as a gentleman of quality, can consult for inspiration and direction.

To prescribe rules for art seems pompous, arrogant, and confining to modern Western thinking. In the late 20th century we have each grown accustomed to having our own way and letting the opinion of the public consensus be damned. In the 18th century, with its profound emphasis on propriety and posterity, such advice as Gibbs offered was welcomed with great enthusiasm. He became one of the most respected and beloved architects of all time, and A Book of Architecture was in every erudite Englishman’s library. It also sold well in the Americas, and while it seems none of his designs were ever substantially executed in the Colonies, the volume was an indispensable reference source for the designers and renovators of churches, residences, and public buildings– including Philadelphia’s Independence Hall.

The Palladian concept as touted by Gibbs requires several key design elements; to ignore or be ignorant of them is considered, to the classical sensibility, as a serious artistic and even societal faux pas. In his foreword Gibbs cautions that more than one builder who assumed his own personal expertise in design without benefit of serious study ended up with a structure so grotesque to the propriety-minded eye that the builder was shunned by quality society, causing him great expense both to his reputation and, through the resulting necessity of remedial renovations to the offending creation, his purse as well. Balance in style is, after all, simply both artistically and practically sensible.

To start, the true Palladian house must be symmetrical. Obvious imbalance always distracts and discomforts a beholder, even when he does not realise why. Proportions of windows, doors, pavilions, pediments, dependencies, columns, rooflines, arches, chimneys, interior panelling and finish, as well as the rooms themselves and the general layout of the building, are all governed by strict artistic maxims. The plans in Gibbs’ book are in fact so reliably symmetrical that he dimensions only one room in four, since those at the other corners may be assumed identical, or gives a depth only to one side of a corridor, for the corridor must certainly be on centre. Perfection in balance is maintained front-to-back, side-to-side, from room to room, and within each room. Blatantly disregarding this rule, your house should be considered at best a compromise, at worst, a failure.

Dependencies, if not perfectly symmetrical, must at least approach symmetry through equivalent balance; in pure theory, this rule extends to the gardens, walls, landscaping, and even the lay of the land where at all possible. The famous 18th-century groundsman Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown capitalised on the gentry’s craving for structure and symmetry, and was immortalised not only in the hundreds of his gardens which still survive in England, but by respectful mentions in the vaunted novels of propriety priestess Jane Austen (notably Mansfield Park. --JC).

A façade must have a clear central focus, defined by a principal door, and window above; therefore the true classical or Palladian house always has an odd number of bays, and a centre gable or pediment. Of course some very pretty houses have been constructed in violation of this rule, but even an unenlightened beholder will gravitate more to the example which obeys it over the one which scarcely attempts it.

This is James Gibbs' rendering of Houghton Hall, for PM Robert Walpole, 1728.

As built, the towers were altered.

Having been of an 18th-century mentality for all of my adult life, even before I fully grasped the philosophy, the ideals of Palladio and Gibbs always came naturally to me. As a designer I have always pursued balance and symmetry. This is not to say I have never drawn an asymmetrical house; but no-one can argue that even an asymmetrical layout can be extremely fetching when correctly balanced. It takes very little effort to arrange windows and doors on the outside and archways and hallways on the inside with some sense of organisational balance, yet I cringe to the very point of nausea to see so many basic rules of art rashly and rudely violated by modern residential designers.

I once believed that with the advent of computer-aided design had come a generation of keyboard-poking simpletons who had never even touched carpentry tools and concocted houses with no regard to ease of construction or æsthetics. It seemed to me that the computer must have made it very easy to draw shapes and spaces which were in no thematic relation to each other, but merely jumbled together in some kind of floor plan and decorated on the outside with whatever windows from whose manufacturers the scofflaw received the most free cocktails. The carpenters would swear and scratch heads and sling hammers about in disbelief and frustration till they would arrive at some framing shortcut by which they could actually execute such an implausible design, and then, the last vestiges of their true joinery skills rapidly eroding, merely slap up whatever gaudy trim they could over the sheetrock and cover all the seams in the waferboard sheathing with vinyl siding, ever prudent enough to add the hassle factor into the builder’s fee.

Inexcusably hideous. Even the least bit of effort by the designer would have improved it.

Common sense. Tell me this wouldn't be the most tasteful house on your block
- and inexpensive and roomy as well.
This is the authentic 1930s recreation of William Penn's Pennsbury Manor, 1682.

Then I began designing on the computer myself. And I discovered that not only was it easy to draw straightforward plans that would be simple to build and pleasing to the eye, but that it was downright difficult not to. In fact any idiot, with no faculties other than the ability to manipulate keyboard and mouse and the knowledge of proper architectural conventions, can design a beautiful dwelling in just a few evenings. With my own experience as draughtsman in naval architecture and 25 years of study in residential design, I had only to get comfortable with the idiosyncrasies of the design programme itself, and go to work. In theory, and often in actual practice, I need only to draw the basic structural partitions of half the house, and simply copy-and-paste the half to the other side and reverse it left-to-right. The duplication inherent in a classically symmetrical plan actually pays its dues to the architect, and thence, to the surveyor, the carpenter, the builder, the bank, and the admiring neighbourhood.

Even on asymmetrical designs I begin by fixing X and Y datum lines, which are nearly always the centreline of the crosswise ridgepole and the centre of the principal doorway. These two elements are so fundamental that their location and relation to each other govern everything else to be drawn. I seriously and sadly doubt that most fools responsible for modern residences could even conceive of such a concept, let alone strike such lines by eye on one of their finished houses– more for which we should pity the carpenters.

This is too much the norm in the northeastern US--
a fool's attempt at imposing a self-determined 'style'.

All of this has lead me to only one possible conclusion: that the perpetrators of these obnoxious late-1900s monstrosities are consciously, deliberately drawing them to be what they appear to us from the kerb. But to what purpose? Given the choice of a lovely symmetrical Palladian manor, can any man worth his salt truly prefer such an incomprehensible amogon?

I used to drive to work past a housing tract, dreading the ride every day because of the extreme ugliness of the erections under construction, till one day I said aloud in the car, ‘If the kid who designed these things were my draughtsmanship student, and submitted one of these for a project, I’d fail him for the course on the spot!’ That served to put it better in perspective for me, and I resolved to write as much as I could on the subject for the rest of my life if need be.

The Prince of Wales, a great advocate of propriety in architecture, lamented in his 1985 A Vision of Britain that there are no degree programmes in the Realm today which provide architecture students with formal training in the classics. I found this incredible, and deplorable. We in this age have become so protective and even venerating of individual right to expression, no matter how inappropriate or offensive, that we have completely lost sight of the greater callings in society. The Augustan sensibility views architecture as a public profession, whose methods and fruits are exhibited to the whole world. A new structure must clearly perform some philosophical function for society. It must satisfy the wealthy and powerful that its beauty is appropriate for its overall purpose and the money invested in it. It must also impress the poor and helpless with a sense of awe at its majesty, no less than would a member of royalty in their midst, and also give them comfort, that their social betters are in possession of faculties befitting their station. All art is, after all, fundamentally intellectual, and no poor serf ever wants to think his overseers are intellectual idiots.

In America, unfortunately, intellectual idiocy is almost a required condition for membership. It seems that the richer one is, the more outlandish and obnoxious his taste, especially in the bigger things of his life, such as his houses. A poor man’s plain frame farm cottage is infinitely more elegant and appealing in its simplicity than the ostentatious palace of the most precipitously upwardly-mobile investment broker. When I wince, with agitated innards, at the garish treatment of windows and doors and cornices and gables on some of these typically American temples of impropriety, I often wish I could knock up one of the self-important owners and ask, ‘Why have you put on your modern stucco house vinyl louvred shutter appliques beside a wide window they could not possibly cover?’ To which he would undoubtedly answer, ‘Well, for looks, of course.’ –which would thus show him to be in deliberate violation of the prime maxim of design, as so succinctly put by the immortal yacht designer L Francis Herreschoff:

‘That which is put on merely for style has no style.’

Classic American style: Semple House, Williamsburg, c.1770.
Attributed to Thomas Jefferson, gentleman architect.
(Obviously a debt to Palladio.)

No style at all. (What are the shutters on it for, again?)

Ostentation which serves no valid artistic purpose is always needless and usually even destructive to the whole. Perhaps in the obvious parallels to late-20th-century narcotics use we might begin to decipher why it is so prevalent in spite of itself.

Always the unanswered question to me is, ‘So who are these idiots really fooling?’ Then the immediately succeeding wonder is, ‘And how can I, who am of no moment, know these things, when educated men with degrees and formal credentials in design and construction and marketing and municipal zoning so obviously do not?’ As one of no great means it always gives me great trepidation to contemplate these mighty things, and I know I end up sounding self-pitying and antisocial when I proclaim to the so-called Powers That Be what seem like irrelevant working-class sympathies.


And so I willingly, soberly, happily, take a narrow, judgemental, even arrogant stance on the subject of residential design, and declare the far-too-frequent aberration in waferboard and vinyl to be entirely, irrevocably, and unforgivably wrong, and propose from my own hand the very alternative, that is, eminently practical plans of my own devisement which, I hope the thinking public and posterity will agree, are now, always will be, and should always have been what any intelligent person considers proper, elegant, and universally amenable to the eye, the heart, and the purse. The contents of this collection are for those who will receive them in the spirit intended; that is, that they are not really of my doing, nor for my own glory, but, in aggregate, the statement of what has always been considered by the true classical sensibility as good and wholesome and right, and that, in the same way my noble predecessor James Gibbs offered the fruits of his studies, I offer mine to the thinking individual of this and any age who has either no trust in or no access to local architectural counsel, yet earnestly desires a residence of quality, of which all his family and neighbours, present and future, can always be proud. Friend, let me be your lampman. I am,

Your devoted servant,

J Comet, ESQ.

* * *

JC’s suggested reading list of important feminist literature.

For my friends in studies...

Jonnie Comet

Distributed to fellow undergraduate literature students; 9 May 1996

1. Richardson, Samuel; Pamela; or: Virtue Rewarded, 1740.

  Remarkable first-person epistolary novel intended to exemplify a young woman’s correct behaviour in the face of lewd harassment and attempted seduction.  Faith conquers all: Ben Franklin issued it as the first novel published in America for a reason.  Every Christian girl should read this book before age 16.

2. Fielding, Henry; Joseph Andrews, 1744.

  Comic mock-epic about a role-reversal of the Pamela situation, intended as a spoof on Pamela (actually depicts Richardson’s heroine herself, though sadly far out of character, towards the end).  Fielding’s tongue-in-cheek digressions on writing and morality guarantee belly-aching laughter, yet convey his points beautifully.

3. Wollstonecraft, Mary; A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; 1792.

  Important sociological treatise, a basis for modern feminism, influenced by the humanistic sensibility of the French Revolution prior to the sobering ‘Reign of Terror’ slaughters.  It will open your eyes about modern feminism.  Find it in the Brit.Lit. anthologies, read as much of it as is available– you owe this woman.

4. Austen, Jane; Pride and Prejudice, 1813.

  Intensely detailed, culturally authentic novel of two country sisters’ attempts to meet eligible husbands in spite of their family’s social faux pas.  This is Austen’s best, but by far not her only worthy effort.  The A&E video from Jan. 1996 is a scholar’s dream.

5. Shelley, Mary; Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, 1818.

  Typically gravely misunderstood; actually a cry-in-the-wilderness from the overeducated, underappreciated daughter of Wollstonecraft and radical social reformer William Godwin, stuck in a misogynist society.  Avoid Branagh’s film (and all the others), if you care.

6. Brontë, Charlotte, Jane Eyre, 1847.

  Magical, sentimental novel about every woman’s plain-Jane heroine using faith, common sense, and ‘slow and steady wins the race’ tactics to resist and reform a reprobate rogue, the embodiment of the Romantic anti-hero.  The BBC/CBS video with Dalton and Clarke is most faithful to the text.

7. Hardy, Thomas, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, 1891.

  Sensual, naturalistic novel about a young girl’s victimisation by selfish, manipulative, judgemental men; frighteningly godless (keep Rosary at hand!).  Polanski’s film Tess distorts the seduction scene (remember, it is Polanski!) but seems otherwise respectful.

8. Chopin, Kate, The Awakening, 1899.

  Moving existentialist novel about a married woman’s sensual and emotional awakening despite grave societal censure; though Chopin remained an earnest Catholic it was banned for years after its writing due to suggestively ‘immoral’ content.

9. Colette, Claudine at School, 1900

  Sweetly modest ‘coming-of-age’ tale of a French country schoolgirl, peppered with sexual innuendo, enormously funny, undeniably realistic– and mostly autobiographical.  Consider the Penguin edition which includes its three sequels, though the first is by far the most delectable.

10. Lawrence, David Herbert, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, 1928 (unexpurgated!).

  Lush, beautiful, naturalist novel about the inalienable relationship between sex and love.  No mere film has ever done it justice.  Be sure to read the attendant ‘Apropos’ essay, in which DHL explains why every teenager should read this book.

11. Duras, Marguerite, The North China Lover, 1984.

  Tender, mostly biographical reminiscence of a girl’s sexual and emotional coming-of-age in 1930s Indochina, ‘so exquisitely beautiful that you’d as soon weep at the ending as at the irretrievable loss of a Ming vase’ –JC.  The film The Lover with Jane March, while stunningly graphic, is an eminently commendable rendition.

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This was almost a joke.  Towards the end of the spring semester there was great discussion round the lunch tables and snack counters about what constituted ‘valuable’ literature.   I was the only one who actually contributed a list in hard copy (typically).  The fact that the majority of the students in these informal discussions were women only partially affected the selections –JC