The last time I saw him he called on me to unfold a new scheme of much greater importance, as he declared, than his trucks. He was very interesting on that occasion. He began by giving me a vivid account of the pirates who used to infest the Thames below London Bridge before the docks were built. He described how the docks had come into existence not as wharves for loading and unloading but as strongholds in which ships and their cargoes could be secure from piracy. They are now, he declared, a waste of fabulously valuable ground; and their work should be done in quite another way. He then produced plans of a pier to be built in the middle of the river, communicating directly by rail and road with the shore and the great main lines. The ships would come alongside the pier; and by a simple system of hoists the contents of their holds would be lifted out and transferred (like myself in the armchair) to railway trucks or motor lorries without being touched by a human hand and therefore without risk of breakage. It was all so masterly, so simple in its complexity, so convincing as to its practicability, and so prodigiously valuable socially, that I, taking it very seriously, proceeded to discuss what could be done to interest the proper people in it.
To my amazement Gattie began to show unmistakeable signs of disappointment and indignation. “You do not seem to understand me,” he said. “I have shown you all this mechanical stuff merely by way of illustration. What I have come to consult you about is a great melodrama I am going to write, the scene of which will be the Pool of London in the seventeenth century among the pirates!”
What could I or anyone do with a man like that? He was naively surprised when I laughed; and he went away only half persuaded that his scheme for turning the docks into building land; expediting the Thames traffic; saving much dangerous and demoralizingly casual labor; and transfiguring the underpaid stevedore into a fullfed electrician, was stupendously more important than any ridiculous melodrama. He admitted that there was of course all that in it; but I could see that his heart was in the melodrama.
As it was evident that officialdom, writhing under his insults and shocked by his utter lack of veneration for bigwigs, besides being hampered as all our Government departments are by the vested interests of Breakages, Limited, would do nothing for him, I induced some less embarrassed public persons to take a ride in the trucks and be convinced that they really existed and worked. But here again the parallel between Gattie and his fellow amateur Sir Christopher Wren came in. Wren was not content to redesign and rebuild St. Paul’s: he wanted to redesign London as well. He was quite right: what we have lost by not letting him do it is incalculable. Similarly, Gattie was not content to improve the luggage arrangements of our railways: he would not listen to you if your mind was not large enough to grasp the immediate necessity for a new central clearing house in Farringdon Market, connected with the existing railways by a system of new tubes. He was of course right; and we have already lost by sticking to our old ways more than the gigantic sum his scheme would have cost. But neither the money nor the enterprise was available just then, with the war on our hands. The Clearing House, like the Thames pier, remains on paper; and Gattie is in his grave. But I still hold that there must have been something great in a man who, having not only imagined them but invented their machinery, could, far from being crushed by their rejection, exclaim “Perish all my mechanical trash if only it provides material for one bad play!”
This little history will explain how it actually did provide material for Breakages, Limited, and for the bitter cry of the Powermistress General. Not until Breakages is itself broken will it cease to have a message for us.
Dramatis Personae
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Pamphilius, the King’s Private Secretary
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Sempronius, the King’s Private Secretary
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Bill Boanerges, President of the Board of Trade
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King Magnus
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Alice, the Princess Royal
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Joe Proteus, the Prime Minister
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Nicobar, the Foreign Secretary
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Crassus, the Colonial Secretary
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Pliny, the Chancellor of the Exchequer
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Balbus, the Home Secretary
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Amanda Postlethwaite, the Postmistress General
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Lysistrata, the Powermistress General
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Orinthia, the King’s mistress
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Queen Jemima
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Vanhattan, the American ambassador
The Apple Cart
A Political Extravaganza
Act I
An office in the royal palace. Two writing-tables face each other from opposite sides of the room, leaving plenty of room between them. Each table has a chair by it for visitors. The door is in the middle of the farthest wall. The clock shows that it is a little past 11; and the light is that of a fine summer morning.
Sempronius, smart and still presentably young, shows his right profile as he sits at one of the tables opening the King’s letters.
Pamphilius, middle aged, shows his left as he leans back in his chair at the other table with a pile of the morning papers at his elbow, reading one of them. This goes on silently for some time. Then Pamphilius, putting down his paper, looks at Sempronius for a moment before speaking.
| Pamphilius | What was your father? |
| Sempronius | Startled. Eh? |
| Pamphilius | What was your father? |
| Sempronius | My father? |
| Pamphilius | Yes. What was he? |
| Sempronius | A Ritualist. |
| Pamphilius | I don’t mean his religion. I mean his profession. And his politics. |
| Sempronius | He was a Ritualist by profession, a Ritualist in politics, a Ritualist in religion: a raging emotional Die Hard Ritualist right down to his boots. |
| Pamphilius | Do you mean that he was a parson? |
| Sempronius | Not at all. He was a sort of spectacular artist. He got up pageants and Lord Mayors’ Shows and military tattoos and big public ceremonies and things |
