Establishment

Establishment (pronounced ih-stab-lish-muhnt)

(1) The act or an instance of establishing.

(2) The state or fact of being established.

(3) Something established; a constituted order or system.

(4) The existing power structure in society; the dominant groups in society and their customs or institutions; institutional authority (ie “the Establishment” in the popular imagination which in this context should be used with an initial capital).  “The Establishment” is a nuanced synecdoche for “ruling class” with the emphasis on a dedication to the preservation of the status quo.

(5) As a modifier, belonging to or characteristic of “the Establishment” (the dominant or hegemonic “power elite” in a field of endeavor, organization etc (“the political establishment”, “the literary establishment” etc) or their “world view” (the “establishment interpretation of history”).

(6) A household; place of residence including its furnishings, grounds etc; a body of employees or servants

(7) A place of business together with its employees, merchandise, plant, equipment etc.

(8) A permanent civil, military, or other force or organization (often used to describe the defined number of personnel, in aggregate or sectionally, the “establishment” being the approved size, composition, and equipment of a unit.  In the military, the word is often modified (peacetime-establisnment, war-establishment, overseas-establishment etc).

(9) Any institution (university, hospital, library etc).

(10) The recognition by a state of a church as the state church.  In Christianity, the church so recognized, the term most associated with the Church of England (and historically the Church of Wales and Church of Ireland).

(11) A fixed or settled income (archaic).

1475–1485: A compound word, the construct being establish + -ment, from the Middle English establishment, stablishment & stablisshement, from the Old French establissement (which endures in Modern French as établissement), from the verb establir.  The noun establishment was from the late fourteenth century verb establish, from the Old French establiss-, the present participle stem of the twelfth century establir (cause to stand still, establish, stipulate, set up, erect, build), (which endures in Modern French as établir), from the Latin stabilire (make stable), from stabilis (stable).  The -ment suffix was from the Middle English -ment, from the Late Latin -amentum, from -mentum which came via Old French -ment.  It was used to form nouns from verbs, the nouns having the sense of "the action or result of what is denoted by the verb".  The suffix is most often attached to the stem without change, except when the stem ends in -dge, where the -e is sometimes dropped (abridgment, acknowledgment, judgment, lodgment et al), with the forms without -e preferred in American English.  The most widely known example of the spelling variation is probably judgment vs judgement.  In modern use, judgement is said to be a "free variation" word where either spelling is considered acceptable as long as use is consistent.  Like enquiry vs inquiry, this can be a handy where a convention of use can be structured to impart great clarity: judgment used when referring to judicial rulings and judgement for all other purposes although the approach is not without disadvantage given one might write of the judgement a judge exercised before delivering their judgment.  To those not aware of the convention, it could look just like a typo.  Establishment is a noun; the noun plural is establishments.

The noun establishmentarian describes “an adherent of the principle of an established church” dates from 1839 which of course begat the noun establishmentarianism (the doctrine of the establishmentarians).  What came first however was antidisestablishmentarianism, every schoolboy’s favorite long word although in scientific English there are constructions longer still and even the most alphabetically prolifically forms in English are short compared to those in languages such as Welsh, German and Maori.  It’s not clear who coined antidisestablishmentarianism but William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898; prime-minister 1868–1874, 1880–1885, Feb-July 1886 & 1892–1894) used the word in his two volume work The state in its relations with the church (1841), a critique of “the ecclesiastical system established by law” and specifically the status of Church of England; it was a discussion of the implications of disestablishment (the act of withdrawing the church from its privileged relation to the state).  As words, neither establishmentarianism nor antidisestablishmentarianism now much disturb the thoughts of many in England and the only role for the latter has long been as a entry in the internet’s many lists of long, obscure or weird words.  In the narrow technical sense, the curious beast that is the Church of England became “an established church” only after the Act of Settlement (1701) and the subsequent Acts of Union (1707) which formalized the status of the institution, first in England and later Great Britain.  Functionally however, the English church can be considered “established” since the Act of Supremacy (1534) which abolished papal authority in England and declared Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England (and Ireland after 1541) 1509-1547) Supreme Head of the Church of England, the culmination of a process the king had triggered in 1527 when Clement VII (1478–1534; pope 1523-1534) proved tiresome in the matter of divorce law.  Although other sixteenth century statutes (notably the Act of Supremacy (1558) & Act of Uniformity (1558) which usually are referred to collectively as the “Elizabethan Religious Settlement”) added to the framework, the changes were mechanistic and procedural rather than substantive and simply built upon what had since 1534 been the established “state church” while the eighteenth century acts were essentially codifications which formalized the position in constitutional law.  Legally, little since has changed and 26 Church of England bishops (all appointed by the prime-minister (on the recommendation of the Archbishop of Canterbury)) continue (as the “Lords Spiritual”, their lay colleagues being the “Lords Temporal”) to sit in the House of Lords.

In English, establishment's original fifteenth century meaning was “a finalized and settled arrangement” (ie of income or property) while the sense of “the established church” entered the language in 1731, reflecting what had been the legal position since 1534.  The sense of “a place of business” emerged in the early 1830s while the idea of “a social matrix of ruling people and institutions” was in use as early as the mid 1920s although the phrase “the Establishment” (in the socio-political sense) didn’t enter popular use until the late 1950s, influenced by the publication in 1956 of The Power Elite by US sociologist Charles Wright Mills (1916–1962 and usually styled C Wright Mills).  Mills took a structuralist approach and explored the clusters of elites and how their relationships and interactions work to enable them to exert (whether overtly or organically) an essentially dictatorial control over US society and its economy.  Mills, while acknowledging some overlap between the groups, identified six clusters of elites: (1) those who ran the large corporations, (2) those who owned the corporations, (3) popular culture celebrities including the news media, (4) the upper-strata of wealth-owning families, (5) the military establishment (centred on the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff) and (6), the upper echelons of government (the executives, the legislatures the judges, the senior bureaucracy and the duopoly of the two established political parties.  The overlaps he noted did not in any way diminish the value of his description, instead illustrating its operation.

When the establishment fractured: Republican (for Goldwater, left) & Democratic (against Goldwater, right), 1964 presidential campaign buttons, 1964.  This was before the color coding (Republican red, Democratic blue) was standardized in 2000 by the arbitrary choice of the TV networks.

The term “Establishment Republican” (a “moderate” or “liberal” member of the US Republican Party (as opposed to the right-wing fanatics who staged a hostile take-over) emerged in the 1980s to replace “Rockefeller Republican”.  Nelson Rockefeller (1908–1979; US vice president 1974-1977) was the archetype of the “liberal republican” in the decade between crazy old Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) losing the 1964 presidential election and crooked old Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) in 1974 resigning from office in the wake of the Watergate scandal.  It was in those years the right-wing began their “march through the party establishment”, a process accelerated during the Reagan (Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) years and the moderates came to prefer the term “Establishment Republican” because Rockefeller was tainted by his association with the north-east, something with less appeal as the party’s centre of gravity shifted to the Mid-West and south of the Mason-Dixon Line.  The few surviving Establishment Republicans are now derided by the right wing fanatics as RINOs (Republicans in name only) and in 2024 the more useful descriptors are probably “pre-Trump Republican” & “post-Trump Republican”.  That linguistic moment may pass but the party at this time shows little inclination of seeking to find the centre ground, a wisdom advocated even by Richard Nixon.  In the pre-Thatcher (Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013; UK prime-minister 1979-1990)) UK, where the existence of “the Establishment” was quite obvious, it was the journalist Henry Fairlie (1924-1990) who popularized the term, explaining the concept as a kind of individual & institutional symbiosis by which “the right chaps” came to control the country’s “levers of power, influence and social authority”, exercised through social connections established between families or at the elite schools such men attended: “By the 'Establishment' I do not mean only the centers of official power—though they are certainly part of it—but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised. The exercise of power in Britain (more specifically, in England) cannot be understood unless it is recognised that it is exercised socially.”

The Rover P5B, the car of the Establishment

In the UK, the Establishment had survived two world wars, the Great Depression, an abdication and even a couple of Labour governments but, by the 1960s, the acceptance of its once effortless hegemony was being challenged, not because people were becoming convinced by the writings of political theorists but as a consequence of the antics of those from the very heart of the Establishment (the Profumo scandal, the “Cambridge Five” spies et al).  In retrospect, it was the ten-odd years prior to 1973 that were the last halcyon days of the “old Establishment” for after that the UK’s anyway troubled “old” economy stagnated, triggering a series of events, notably the assault on the system from within by the improbable anti-Establishment figure of Margaret Thatcher.  The changes wrought in the last five decades shouldn’t be overstated because what happened was one Establishment was replaced by another and there was a substantial overlap in institutional and individual membership but it’s a very different apparatus from that of the 1960s.

Rover 3.5 Coupé.  Establishment figures preferred the saloon, the (four door) coupé more what used to be called a “co-respondent's” car (ie the sort of rakish design which would appeal to the sort of chap who slept with other men’s wives, later to be named as “co-respondent” in divorce proceedings).

One charming Establishment symbol from those years which are for most not in living memory was the ultimate “Establishment car”, one which while not the biggest, fastest, or most expensive available, possessed the qualities to appeal to the “right chaps”.  The Rover P5 was in production between 1958-1973, running from around the time that old patrician Harold Macmillan (1894–1986; UK prime-minister 1957-1963) told the working class “…most of you have never had it so good” to the last days before the first oil shock ended the West’s long, post-war economic prosperity (although the British experience of that was patchy).  The P5’s presence throughout was somehow reassuring because from its debut it embodied the virtues for which Rovers had during the 1950s come to be valued: solidity, quality, comfort and an indifference to fashions and fads.  The P5 was a presence also in parts of the old British Empire and it enjoyed a following in both Australia & New Zealand, valued because it had an “Establishment air” yet was not flashy like a Pontiac or Jaguar (the mostly badge-engineered Daimlers a remarkably effective piece of product differentiation) or a statement of wealth like a Mercedes-Benz would by the mid-1960s become.

Rover 3 Litre engine schematic.

The P5 was sold originally as the 3 Litre in three releases (Mark 1, 1958-1962; Mark II, 1962-1965 & Mark III 1965-1967), using a 3.0 litre (183 cubic inch) straight-six with an implementation of the “F-head” design in which the inlet valve sat at the top of the combustion chamber with a side-mounted exhaust valve, an arrangement which offered some advantages when designing combustion chambers suited to the lower octane fuel then used in many markets and allowed the use of larger valves than would have been possible with a conventional OHV (overhead valve) arrangement).  The latter was a matter of some significance because the Rover six came from a time when the taxation regime was based on bore diameter, something which resulted in generations of British small bore, long-stroke engines and the 3 litre six was a famously smooth device, the advertising sometimes showing a circular coin sitting (on its edge) on the air-cleaner with the engine running, the coin not even vibrating.  Technologically though, for passenger vehicles, it was a cul-de-sac and more modern power-plants from the US, Europe (and even the UK) were out-performing the old F-Head.

What transformed the P5 was the adoption of the 3.5 litre (215 cid) V8 which Rover had purchased from General Motors (GM) which, in versions made by Buick, Oldsmobile & Pontiac (BOP), had been used for the new compact lines between 1961-1963.  The UK’s industry made many mistakes in the post-war years but what became the Rover V8 was an inspired purchase, remaining in production in displacements between 3.5 litres (215 cubic inch) and 5.0 (305) from 1967 until 2006, powering everything from the original Range Rovers to executive sedans and sports cars  It was related also to the Oldsmobile version (Rover used Buick’s variant) on which Repco in Australia based the 3.0 litre (193 cubic inch) SOHC (single overhead camshaft) V8 the Brabham team would use to secure the Formula One drivers & constructors championships in 1966 & 1967.

Look of the past; glimpse of the future: 1967 Rover 3.5 Saloon (left) and 1967 NSU Ro80 (right).

It was in late 1967 the Rover 3.5 was released and the press reception was generally favourable, the improvements in performance and fuel consumption (not something often achieved when adding cylinders and displacement) attributed to a combination of greater mechanical efficiency and reduced weight, the all-aluminum V8 some 200 lb (90 kg) lighter than the hefty old six although some did note the new engine couldn’t quite match the smoothness of the old.  By 1967 however the testers seemed to be aware that whatever its charms, it was a design from the mid-1950s and the world had moved on although to be fair Rover had too, it’s P6 (2000), released in 1963 was very much a modernist take (and one which would in 1968 also be transformed by the V8, becoming the 3500 (1968-1976)).  Between 1967 and the end of production in 1967, the flavor of the press commentary about the 3.5 was very much: “outmoded but satisfying”.

Released in September 1967: Rover 3.5 saloon (left) and NSU Ro80 (right), partially exposed at the Earls Court Motor Show in October.

Like the 3.5, the NSU Ro80 had been released in September that year and the contrast was obviously between the past and the future, the German car influencing design for more than a generation (with the obvious exception of the ill-fated Wankel engine) while what the Rover represented was already almost extinct, few of the others in its market segment (the Vanden Plas Farinas, the Humber Super Snipe, the Vauxhall Viscount, the Daimler Majestic Major and the Austin 3 Litre) to see the 1970s.  Nor did other manufacturers make much effort to compete for buyers who clearly wanted something lighter and more modern although, after taking over Rootes Group, to replace the defunct Super Snipe and Imperial, Chrysler did embark on a quixotic venture to prove demand still existed by taking advantage of the old Commonwealth tariff preference scheme by importing the Australian-built Valiant (built on the US A-Body) in both straight-six & V8 form.  It registered barely a blip on the sales charts although, remarkably, both remained available until 1976 by which time the writing was on the wall for Chrysler’s entire European operation.

A UK government 3.5 waiting outside No 10 Downing Street (left) and Harold Wilson about to enter his (right).

For many however, the Rover’s reassuring presence was more appealing than modernity (although the rakish Rostyle wheels may have been a shock for some).  It certainly appealed to those at the heart of the establishment and the first prime minister to have been driven in one was the pipe-smoking Harold Wilson (1916–1995; UK prime minister 1964-1970 & 1974-1976) who, although he’d once promised to revitalize the economy with the “white heat of technological change”, was a cautious and conservative character; the car suited him and he appreciated the custom-built ashtray which held his pipe.  Edward "Ted" Heath (1916-2005; UK prime-minister 1970-1974), James "Jim" Callaghan (1912–2005; prime minister of the UK 1979-1979) and Mrs Thatcher followed him into the backseat, something made possible because the Ministry of Supply (advised production was ending in 1973), purchased a batch from the final run, stockpiling them for future VIP use, the same tactic some police forces would later adopt to secure warehouses full of Rover SD1s (another recipient of the ex-Buick V8), the front wheel drive (FWD) replacements they knew were in the pipeline not a compelling choice for the highway patrol.  Not until 1981 was Mrs Thatcher's Rover retired and replaced with a Daimler.

A tale of two rooflines: the “Establishment” 3.5 Saloon (left) and the rakish 3.5 Coupé (right).

In automobiles, by the 1960s, the English-speaking world had (more or less) agreed a coupé was a two door car with a fixed roof and (if based on a sedan), often a shorter wheelbase, designed put a premium on style over utility.  There were hold-outs among a few UK manufacturers who insisted there were fixed head coupés (FHC) and drop head coupés (DHC), the latter described by most others as convertibles or cabriolets but mostly the term had come to be well-understood.  It was thus a surprise when Rover in 1962 displayed a “four-door coupé”, essentially their 3 Litre sedan with a lower roof-line and a few “sporty” touches such as a tachometer and a full set of gauges.  One intriguing part of the tale was why, defying the conventions of the time, the low-roof variation of the four-door was called a coupé (and Rover did use the l'accent aigu (the acute accent: “é”) to ensure the “traditional pronunciation” was imposed although the Americans and others sensibly abandoned the practice).  The rakish lines, including more steeply sloped front and rear glass were much admired although the original vision had been more ambitious still, the intention being a four-door hardtop with no central pillar.  Strangely, although the Americans and Germans had managed this satisfactorily, a solution eluded Rover which had to be content with a more slender B-pillar.

Lindsay Lohan with Porsche Panamera 4S four-door coupe (the factory doesn't use the designation but most others seem to), Los Angeles, 2012.

The etymology of coupé is that it’s from couper (to cut off) but the original use in the context of horse-drawn coaches referred to the platform being shortened, not lowered.  Others too have been inventive, Cadillac for decades offering the Coupe De Ville (they used also Coupe DeVille) and usually it was built to exactly the same dimensions as the Sedan De Ville, differing on in the door count.  So Rover probably felt entitled to cut where they preferred; in their case it was the roof and in the early twentieth century, the four-door coupe became a thing, the debut in 2004 of the Mercedes-Benz CLS influencing other including BMW, Porsche, Volkswagen and Audi.  The moment for the style clearly hasn’t passed because when CLS production ended in August 2023, the lines were carried over to the new E-Class (W214, 2023-) but there are no longer references to a “four-door coupé”.

One of Elizabeth II’s P5B Saloons outside the gates of Windsor castle (left) and Her Majesty at the wheel (right), leaving the castle, reputedly on the way to church so while one of her 3.5s won’t quite be “only driven to church on Sunday by little old lady”, being in the Royal mews, it would have been well-maintained.

Although for almost 20 years a fixture outside No 10 Downing Street, the most famous P5B owner was Elizabeth II (1926-2022; Queen of the UK and other places, 1952-2022) who upgraded from a 3 Litre in 1968 and, although not noted for being sentimental about machinery, until 1987 ran one of the several maintained in the Royal Mews during her reign.

Rover P5B headrests (left & right) and the mounting assembly for the reading lamps in the front units (centre).

Most of the focus on the Rover 3.5 has always been about the engine and the illustrious passengers but one detail of note is the bulk of the headrests, optional fittings in most markets.  Quite why they were so big isn’t clear although the shape of the rear units presumably made for an easier mounting on the parcel shelf, meaning the seat's frames & covers needed no modification, but it’s apparently not an urban myth some used by the British government had a bullet-proof panel inserted; there was certainly the space to accommodate even a thick metal plate.  The front headrests were used also to house the optional reading lamps, the wiring harness well concealed within.

Halcyon

Halcyon (pronounced hal-see-uhn)

(1) Calm; peaceful; tranquil.

(2) Rich; wealthy; prosperous.

(3) Happy; joyful; carefree, the best of times.

(4) A mythical bird, usually identified with the kingfisher, said to breed about the time of the winter solstice in a nest floating on the sea, and to have the power of charming winds and waves into calmness.

(5) Any of various kingfishers, especially of the genus Halcyon.

(6) In Classical mythology, Alcyone.

1350-1400: From the Middle English Alceoun, from the Latin halcyōn & alcyōn (kingfisher), from the Ancient Greek halkyṓn, a pseudo-etymological variant of ἀλκυών (alkuṓn). (kingfisher) of unknown origin.  It replaced the Middle English alceon (or alicion), from the Classical Latin alcyōn, from the same Greek root.  By the 1540s it had in English assumed the sense of "calm, quiet, peaceful" in the phrase "halcyon dayes", a translation of the Latin alcyonei dies, from the Greek alkyonides hemerai, the fourteen days of calm weather at the winter solstice, when a mythical bird (identified with the kingfisher) was said to breed in a nest floating on calm seas.  In late fourteenth century Middle English, the fabled bird was known as the alcioun.  The word intrigued etymologists and the orthodox explanation is the construct hals (sea; salt) + kyon (conceiving), the present participle of kyein (to conceive (literally "to swell")) was an ancient folk-etymology to explain a loan-word from a non-Indo-European language.  The proper noun Halcyonidae describes the taxonomic family within the order Coraciiformes (tree kingfishers), sometimes considered a subfamily, as Halcyoninae.  Halcyon is a noun & adjective, halcyonid is a noun and halcyonian is an adjective; the noun plural is halcyons.

The Legend of Halcyone

Halcyone (1915) by Herbert James Draper (circa 1863-1920).

In Greek mythology, Alcyone was the daughter of Aeolus and she married Ceyx, son of Eosphorus (the Morning Star).  Alcyone and Ceyx were very happy together in Trachis and according to Pseudo-Apollodorus's account, playfully they would often call each other Zeus and Hera.  That was sacrilegious and so did it anger Zeus that one day when his mood was especially bad, seeing Ceyx at sea, the god cast a thunderbolt at his boat, sinking the fragile vessel and drowning Ceyx.  That evening, Morpheus, the god of dreams, disguised himself as Ceyx and appeared to Alcyone as an apparition, telling her of her lover's fate, at which in her grief, determined to join Ceyx, she cast herself into the sea and died.  In compassion, the gods changed them both into halcyon birds, named after her and by some accounts the kingfisher-like birds were granted the power to calm stormy, troubled seas and breed in nests floating on calm waters.  Like much mythology from Antiquity, there are variations of the story.  The Roman writers Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso; 43 BC–17 AD) & Hyginus (Gaius Julius Hyginus (circa 64 BC–17 AD) both recount the metamorphosis of the pair after Ceyx's loss in a terrible storm, though neither make mention of the wrath of Zeus, blaming the tragedy on the stormy seas.  Ovid also claims she threw herself into the ocean upon seeing his body washed ashore and Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro (70–19 BC)) makes a brief mention of the affair, again without blaming Zeus.

Halcyon days: The Mean Girls (2004) cast at the 2005 MTV Movie Awards ceremony.

The most common use of halcyon now is "halcyon days" meaning “the best of times”.  Ovid and Hyginus both make Alcyone’s metamorphosis the origin of the etymology for halcyon days although for them it was something literally meteorological: the seven winter days when storms never gather.  These were the fourteen days each year (seven days either side of the shortest day) during which Alcyone (as a kingfisher) laid her eggs and made her nest on the beach and during which her father Aeolus, god of the winds, restrained the winds and calmed the waves so she could do so in safety. The phrase has since come to refer to any peaceful time and this has supplanted the older meaning; that of a lucky break, or a bright interval set in the midst of adversity.

Vanity

Vanity (pronounced van-i-tee)

(1) An excessive pride in one's appearance, qualities, abilities, achievements, etc; character or quality of being vain; conceit.

(2) An instance or display of this quality or feeling.

(3) Something about which one is vain or excessively proud.

(4) Lack of real value; hollowness; worthlessness.

(5) Something worthless, trivial, or pointless.

(6) A small case, usually used for make-up items.

(7) A usually small dressing table used to apply makeup, preen, and coif hair. Normally quite low and similar to a desk, with drawers and one or more mirrors on top.  Often paired with a bench or stool to sit upon.

(8) A type of bathroom fitting, usually a permanently-fixed storage unit including one or more washbasins.

(9) An alternative name for a portfolio maintained as a showcase for one's own talents, especially as a writer, actor, singer, composer or model.

(10) Any idea, theory or statement entirely without foundation (UK only, now obsolete).

1200-1250: From Middle English vanite, borrowed from Old French vanité (self-conceit; futility; lack of resolve) derived from the Classical Latin vānitās (emptiness, aimlessness; falsity (and when used figuratively "vainglory, foolish pride”), root of which was vānus (empty, void (and when used figuratively "idle, fruitless”).  A more precise equivalent in Latin was probably vanitatem (emptiness, foolish pride).  Root was the primitive Indo-European wano-, the suffixed form of the root eue- (to leave, abandon, give out).  English also absorbed many synonyms and related words: egotism, complacency, vainglory, ostentation, pride, emptiness, sham, unreality, folly, triviality, futility.  Except in religious texts, the old meaning (that which is vain, futile, or worthless) faded from general use, the modern meaning (self-conceited), which endures to this day, is attested from the mid-fourteenth century.  The first reference to furniture was the vanity table, dating from 1936, a use adopted by manufacturers of bathroom fittings in the later post-war period.  The first vanity table seem to have been advertised in 1936.

The Old Testament

Vanity of vanities, said the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 1:2)

The word translated as vanity appears 37 times in Ecclesiastes, more than in the entirety of the rest of the Old Testament so is clearly a theme of the text.  The meaning of vanity is used here in its original form of something that is transitory and quickly passes away.  In that it’s a literal translation of the Hebrew hebel, best understood in this context as meaning breath of wind, something which, whatever its immediate effects, is soon gone.  Unfortunately for nihilists, emos and other depressives trawling texts for anything confirming the pointlessness of life, biblical scholars agree the phrase is not an assertion that life is meaningless or that our labors in this fallen world are ultimately useless.  Instead, it’s a saying to help people put their lives in the proper perspective.  Ecclesiastes is not saying all our efforts are worthless, just observing that all we do in our three score and ten years upon this earth is but a brief prelude to our eternal existence and much of life escapes our understanding, for we cannot comprehend how everything fits into the grand story of creation.

All very poetic but, perhaps sadly, improbable.  It’s more likely the universe is a violent, doomed, swirl of matter and energy, life is pointless, right or wrong are just variable constructs, everything is meaningless and all any can hope for is a fleetingly brief false consciousness which might make us feel happy.

Vanity Fair

Published in 1678, John Bunyan’s (1628–1688) The Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory of the Christian’s spiritual journey through the sins and temptations of earthly existence to the salvation of the Kingdom of Heaven; a symbolic vision of an English worthy’s pilgrimage through life.  In the village of Vanity is a perpetual fair, selling all things to satisfy all desires and Vanity Fair represents the sin of man’s attachment to and lust for transient worldly goods, a critique echoed later in secular criticisms of materialism.

Novelist William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863), although making no mention of Bunyan or his work when he published Vanity Fair in 1848, could rely on his readers being well acquainted with the symbolism of the earlier allegory.  By the mid-nineteenth century when Thackeray’s portrait of British society was published, the term had become laden too with secular and class-conscious meanings, suggesting the imagery both of self-indulgent playground and the sense of that stratum of society where the only habitué are the idle and undeserving rich.  Thackeray explored both.

Lindsay Lohan. Vanity Fair Italia, August 2011

Over the years, on both sides of the Atlantic, a number of periodicals have used the masthead Vanity Fair.  The current one has its roots in Condé Nast’s purchase in 1913 of a men's fashion journal called Dress, and Vanity Fair, a magazine devoted to performing arts with an emphasis on theatre.  After a brief, unsatisfactory foray as the combined title Dress and Vanity Fair, in 1914 he re-launched as Vanity Fair and success was immediate, continuing even until well into the depression years of the 1930s.  Curiously different to the vicissitudes of the digital age, although revenue from advertising had collapsed, by the time Condé Nast in 1936 folded Vanity Fair into his companion title Vogue, circulation had reached an all-time high.  The problem was the cover price of an issue wasn’t sufficient profitably to cover production and distribution costs; advertising was essential.  In a situation familiar to newspaper publishers in their halcyon days, it wasn’t advantageous to achieve higher sales.

Condé Nast Publications revived the title, February 1983 the first issue.  Like most print publications, its advertising revenue has declined but, critically in this market, so have newsstand sales.  Its subscriber base is said to be stable but Condé Nast doesn’t release data indicating the breakdown mix and it’s thus unknown how much of this is made up from less lucrative bundled packages.  Newsstand sales of single-issue copies are a vital metric in this market, editors judged by monthly sales, a school of analysis now devoted to deconstructing the relationship between the photograph on an issue’s cover and copies sold; editorial content, while not ignored, seems less relevant.

The magazine’s future is thus uncertain as are the options were it not to continue as a distinct, stand-alone entity with a print version.  It’s a different environment from 1936 when it was absorbed into Vogue and different even to the turn of the century when Mirabella, a similar publication facing similar problems, closed.  The now well-practiced path of ceasing print production and going wholly digital may become attractive if circulation continues to suffer.  While it true Condé Nast already has digital titles which would seem to overlap with Vanity Fair, that’s less of a concern than cannibalization in print where the relationship of production and distribution costs to individual sales is different; both are marginal in gaining additional digital subscriptions.

Vanity Cases

The vanity case is an ancient accessory, one, three-thousand years old, made from inlaid cedar containing ointment, face-paint, perfume and a mirror of polished metal, was discovered during one of Howard Carter’s (1874–1939) archaeological digs.  Well known in something recognizably modern from the fourteenth century in France and Italy, they became fashionable in England only during the 1700s and then for men, as a small box called a “dressing case”, designed to fit into larger “dressing case”.

Enamel vanity case by Gérard Sandoz, Paris, circa 1927 (left) and cigarette case by Cartier, Paris, circa 1925 (right).  During the 1920s, the modern styles evolved.  Most exquisite were the art-deco creations designed as companion pieces to the cigarette cases newly fashionable with women as the social acceptability of young ladies smoking became prevalent.

Colonnade

Colonnade (pronounced kol-uh-neyd)

(1) In architecture, a series of regularly spaced columns supporting an entablature and often one side of a roof.

(2) In design (usually as "colonnaded"), any array of upright structures which emulate the style of architectural colonnades. 

(3) A series of trees planted in a long row, as on each side of a driveway or road.

(4) The descriptor for the body style used in the US on the General Motors (GM) “A-Body” platform 1973-1977.

1718: From the French colonnade, from the Italian colonnato, from colonna (column), from the Latin columna (pillar), a collateral form of columen (top, summit), from the primitive Indo-European root kel- (to be prominent; hill).  The related term is colonnette which in architecture is a small slender column, sometimes merely decorative but also structural, supporting a beam or lintel). In interior decorating and furniture design, colonettes are also used, featuring in objects as diverse as chairs, tables and mantle-clocks, the motif noted by archeologists in excavations from Antiquity.  The –ette suffix was from the Middle English -ette, a borrowing from the Old French -ette, from the Latin -itta, the feminine form of -ittus.  It was used to form nouns meaning a smaller form of something.  Colonnade is a noun and colonnaded is an adjective; the noun plural is colannades.

Colonnades at Piazza San Pietro, leading to St Peter's Basilica, Vatican City.

The noun peristyle described "a range or ranges of columns surrounding any part or place".  It dates from the 1610s and was from the mid sixteenth century French péristyle (row of columns surrounding a building), from the Classical Latin peristȳlum & peristȳlium, from the Ancient Greek περιστῡ́λιον (peristū́lion) & περίστυλον (perístulon), a noun use of the neuter form of περίστυλος (perístulos) (surrounded by columns), the construct being περί (perí) + στῦλος (stûlos) (pillar), from the primitive Indo-European root sta- (to stand, make or be firm).  In voodoo, it has the special meaning of “a sacred roofed courtyard with a central pillar (the potomitan), used to conduct ceremonies, either alone or as an adjunct to an enclosed temple or altar-room.

1974 Buick Century Luxus Colonnade Sedan

Under the traditional naming system used by General Motors (GM), the code "A-body" was use for the intermediate platform, a body-on-frame design in which the driveline and suspension were pre-assembled on a perimeter-frame chassis to which the body subsequently was attached.  The 1973-1977 GM A-Body cars were thus structurally similar to the highly regarded 1964-1972 models but the body style was radically different for a number of reasons, including some imposed by legislation.  One feature eliminated from the A-Body after 1973 was the hardtop, a body-style which used frameless side-windows and no central (B) pillar.  The much admired hardtop style had to be sacrificed (though the fameless-windows were carried-over) because the new federal legislation demanded improved roll-over protection, thus the need for B-pillars to form a kind of integral roll-cage.  This was the era when safety and anti-pollution regulation first became stringent and the 1973-1977 cars would be the first with the 5 mph (8 km/h) crash bumpers, most early versions of which looked something like battering rams.

1973 Oldsmobile Colonnade Cutlass.  In the 1970s, the Cutlass would become the best-selling car in the US but it's the previous generation A-Bodies (1964-1972) which are much sought.

General Motors dubbed the style “Colonnade”, an allusion to the array of three pillars where once there had been but two.  Built at the time in big numbers with production (spread between the Chevrolet, Buick, Oldsmobile & Pontiac divisions) exceeding seven million, the survival rate was low compared with their more illustrious (though sometimes lethally unsafe) predecessors and because few attained “collectable” status, no industry of replacement and re-production parts emerged to make restorations conveniently possible.  While the Colonnade cars don’t mark the dawn of the “malaise era” for which the Carter administration is remembered (although in the “Crisis of Confidence” speech which is taken as its marker, Jimmy Carter (b 1924, US president 1977-1981) never spoke the word “malaise”), the hints are certainly there that worse was to come.

1977 Pontiac Can Am advertising was apparently the only time Pontiac officially used the popular "GOAT" (greatest of all time) allusion to the GTO.

One (not especially bright) highlight of the Colonnade years came almost at the end when Pontiac released the Can Am.  By 1977, Pontiac was no longer making genuinely fast or exciting cars (and in fairness, nor were many others) but with machines like the Firebird Trans-Am, they were certainly making stuff which looked the part and it was this flair for keeping-up-appearances which inspired the Can Am.  One model which had disappointed the Pontiac hierarchy was the LeMans which, even by Colonnade standards was an unhappy looking thing, the sloping rear end and buff-front apparently the work of two different committees, both comprised of not especially gifted members.  Fundamentally, it couldn’t be fixed but the Detroit’s marketing people had worked before with unpromising material and knew all about “tarting-up”.

1977 Pontiac Can Am.

The first proposal added a ducktail spoiler to the rear which was quite effectivein disguising the drooping lines and revived the “Judge” name, a muscle-car moniker from Pontiac’s recent past, added stripes and finished the thing in a lurid red which was close to the Judge’s signature shade.  Officially, the Pontiac management were said to be “unenthusiastic” but apparently they were appalled and knew something so obviously fake would not be well-received.  There the project might have died but the marketing team had a second go, adding the Firebird Trans Am’s 400 cubic inch (6.6 litre) V8, keeping the spoiler and changing the color to stark white, complemented with red, yellow and orange stripes, the Swiss-Guardesque combination looking better than it sounds.  The interior gained additional appointments, borrowed from the Grand Prix, one Pontiac which was selling well and the name came from a famous racing series which in its halcyon years had been contested by the FIA’s Group 7, unlimited displacement sports cars.  The Pontiac was a long way removed from that but at the time, so was just about everything and the project was duly approved for a mid-season (early 1977) introduction.

The spoiler which broke the mold: The 1977 Pontiac Can Am’s rear styling reflected GM’s thoughts on styling at the time, the same motifs appearing on contemporary Holdens in Australia (the HJ-HX-HZ sedans (1974-1980) and the HJ-HX Monaro coupés (1974-1977).

Sales began in January and the critical response was polite, the performance noted as being about as good as could be expected at the time and the handling receiving the usual praise, one improvement of the Colonnade era which was real.  In a sign of the times, only an automatic transmission was offered and, in deference to California’s more exacting anti-pollution rules, Can Ams sold there were fitted with the less powerful Oldsmobile 403 cubic inch (6.6 litre) V8 also used in high-altitude regions.  Sales projections were initially a modest 2500 units but the public clearly liked the look, dealers reporting high demand so the production schedule was doubled and the first batch of just over a 1000 cars was shipped.  Unfortunately, it was at this point the hand-crafted mold used to form the ducktail spoiler broke and such had been the rush to market than there was no spare.  Had the distinctive molding not been such a prominent part of the Can Am’s marketing materials, perhaps it might have been possible to proceed spoiler-less but it was decided to cancel the programme.  Whether or not it’s an industry myth, the story has always been that because the Can Am depended on so many parts (especially the interior) from the parts bin of the fast-selling (and highly profitable) Grand Prix, Pontiac decided they’d rather have more of them.  Total Can Am production was apparently 1377 units and they’re now regarded with more fondness than much of the machinery from the malaise era, the rarity and flamboyance of the Colonnade lines gaining them a small but seemingly secure niche in the collector market.

Lindsay Lohan in Falling for Christmas (Netflix, 2022).  Any structure, small or large which adopts the architectural language of the colonnade (an array of vertical pillar-like structures) is said to be colonnaded.  These are doors with colonnaded windows.

Salad

Salad (pronounced sal-uhd)

(1) A usually cold (a few are “warm”) dish consisting of vegetables, as lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, covered with a dressing and sometimes containing fruit, seafood, meat eggs or other additions; any of various dishes consisting of foods, as meat, seafood, eggs, pasta, or fruit, prepared singly or combined, usually cut up, mixed with a dressing, and served cold (often with a modifier: Caesar salad, Niçoise salad, pasta salad, Greek salad, Thai salad, tossed salad, chicken salad, potato salad, fruit salad etc).

(2) Any herb or green vegetable, as lettuce, used for salads or eaten raw.

(3) Figuratively, a mixture or assortment of people or things, similar or disparate.

1350–1400: From the Middle English salade & salad (raw herbs cut up and variously dressed), from the Old & Middle French salade, from the Old Provençal salada, from salar (to season with salt), from the Northern Italian salada & salata, from the Vulgar Latin salāta (literally "salted" and short for herba salata), from salāre, the feminine past participle of salāre (to salt (in Antiquity, the Romans seasoned vegetables with brine or salty oil-and-vinegar dressings)), the construct being sal- (genitive salis; stem of sāl (salt)) + -āta- (added to nouns to form adjectives and akin to –ate).  The suffix -ate was a word-forming element used in forming nouns from Latin words ending in -ātus, -āta, & -ātum (such as estate, primate & senate).  Those that came to English via French often began with -at, but an -e was added in the fifteenth century or later to indicate the long vowel.  It can also mark adjectives formed from Latin perfect passive participle suffixes of first conjugation verbs -ātus, -āta, & -ātum (such as desolate, moderate & separate).  Again, often they were adopted in Middle English with an –at suffix, the -e appended after circa 1400; a doublet of –ee.  Salad’s alternative spelling between the sixteenth & nineteenth centuries was sallet.  Salad is a noun: the noun plural is salads.

In Europe, the Dutch salade, the German Salat, the Swedish salat and the Russian salat are from Romanic languages.  The early use was exclusively of herbs and vegetables but came later to be extended to dishes including meat chopped and mixed with uncooked herbs and variously seasoned, the point being that the meat was an addition to a concoction predominately of vegetables.  As a reference to the raw herbs and vegetables themselves, in the US by the early nineteenth century most had limited the application of “salad” to lettuce while all else were “greens” although, except in the South, “salad” has in recent years crept back.  Salad oil "olive oil used for dressing salads" was known by the 1550s and the salad fork was listed for sale as early as 1808.  The salad bar was an invention of US English, attested by 1940.

The idiomatic salad days is a rarely used phrase that survives because William Shakespeare (1654-1616) used it once in all that he wrote and it’s used exclusively in the plural; nobody has ever had a “salad day”.  It’s presumed usually to convey a sense of youthful innocence enthusiasm and idealism associated with inexperience and is sometimes confused with “halcyon days” which actually summons the idea of a time of calm, a nostalgic idealizing of a past.  Not all however thought something worth repeating just because it came from the bard's quill.  The unforgiving Henry Fowler (1858-1933) thought salad days just a cliché and even doubted the accepted meaning.  In Modern English Usage (1926) he though youth, like salad might variously be thought (1) green & raw, (2) prone to a preference for highly flavored tastes or (3) innocent as a herb unlike corrupted meat.  Even for the old curmudgeon that seems a stretch but his point was that few who used the phase properly understood its meaning and it was thus “fitter for parrots than for human speech”.

Salad days was spoken by Cleopatra in Act 1, Scene 5 of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (circa 1607).

CHARMIAN The valiant Caesar!

CLEOPATRA By Isis, I will give thee bloody teeth

If thou with Caesar paragon again

My man of men.

CHARMIAN By your most gracious pardon,

I sing but after you.

CLEOPATRA My salad days,

When I was green in judgment, cold in blood,

To say as I said then. But come, away,

Get me ink and paper.

He shall have every day a several greeting,

Or I’ll unpeople Egypt.

Having spoken longingly of Antony. Cleopatra doesn’t like it mentioned that once she spoke of her lover Caesar with the same ecstasy and when reminded they were her own words, Cleopatra concedes the point but puts it down to the rash impetuosity of youth, salad days when she was “green in judgment, cold in blood”.  The convention explanation of salad days as Shakespeare’s device is that the Cleopatra used the image of the salad (green and cold) as something served before the richer, more substantial, hot main course, making the point it was youthful inexperience which made her idealize her affair with Caesar.  It was the passionate Antony who made her blood boil.  Shakespeare never returned to the phrase but had earlier used “green” in the same sense.  In Hamlet (circa 1601), when Ophelia is speaking to her father Polonius, about her troubled relationship with Hamlet, he says “You speak like a green girl; Unsifted in such perilous circumstances.”

Others liked it though.  Although Bonjour Tristesse (Hello Sadness (1954)) tended to overshadow the later work of French novelist Francoise Sagan (1935-2004), her Salad Days (1980) is especially admired in English translation and one of the century’s better evocations of the well-worn tale of star-cross’d lovers.  Quite how many cook books, entertaining guides and such have been titled “Salad Days” (there have also been not a few “Salad Daze”) is not known but it’s many.  When Elizabeth II (1926-2022; Queen of England and other places variously 1952-2022) delivered a Silver Jubilee Royal Address (1977), she reiterated the vow to God and her people she gave in her twenty-first birthday broadcast (1947), adding: “Although that vow was made in my salad days, when I was green in judgment”, it still held.  Her conclusion was different from Shakespeare’s Cleopatra whose feelings had changed since those salad days.  Elizabeth II never wavered.

In the aftermath of her death, the words she spoke in those salad days were widely and admiringly quoted: 

"I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong."

There were however historians who, in their capacity as public psychologists, noted that few thought to trouble the people of 2022 with her concluding remarks:

"But I shall not have strength to carry out this resolution alone unless you join in it with me, as I now invite you to do: I know that your support will be unfailingly given. God help me to make good my vow, and God bless all of you who are willing to share in it."

Egg & Potato Salad

Ingredients

6 large Dutch cream(or Desiree) potatoes, cut into 50 mm (2 inch) cubes

6 eggs, at room temperature

250 grams crème fraîche

200 grams mayonnaise

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

70 grams salted baby capers, rinsed and drained

100 grams cornichons, thinly sliced

2 golden shallots, thinly sliced

To garnish: some flat-leaf parsley, torn

Instructions

(1) Cook potatoes in boiling salted water until tender (10-15 minutes), then drain and set aside to steam dry.

(2) While the potatoes are cooking, place eggs in a saucepan of salted boiling water and cook for 8 minutes (for medium-cooked yolks), then drain and transfer to iced water to stop cooking. Peel, quarter and set aside.

(3) Combine remaining ingredients in a bowl and season to taste. Add potato and gently mix to coat well, then transfer to a platter, top with eggs, scatter with parsley, season with black pepper and serve.