plumber-body

Updated: May 1, 2025

I walk about our house and gardens, I take one of the carriages or one of the automobiles and go to some large pointless gathering of hundreds and thousands and thousands of pounds, and we walk about and say empty little things, and the servants don't laugh at us, the butlers don't laugh at us, the people in the street tolerate us.... It has an effect of collective insanity.... You know the story of one of those dear Barons of the Cinque Ports a decent plumber-body from Rye or Winchelsea one of the six or eight who claimed the privilege of carrying the canopy over the King" she is speaking of King Edward's coronation of course "how that he was discovered suddenly to be speaking quite audibly to the sacred presence so near to him: 'It is very remarkable we should be here, your majesty very remarkable. And then he subsided happily unheard into hopeless embarrassment.

H. G. (Herbert George) Wells - The Passionate Friends