About a week ago, when they took Titterby away to the large red-brick
establishment which he now adorns, certain papers which were left lying
in his study passed into my hands, for I was almost his only friend. It
had long been Titterby's belief that a great future lay before the
librettist who should produce topical light operas on the GILBERT and
SULLIVAN model, dealing with our present-day economic crises. The thing
became an _idée fixe_, as the French say, or, as we lamely put it in
English, a fixed idea. There can be no doubt that he was engaged in the
terrible task of fitting the current coal dispute to fantastic verse
when a brain-cell unhappily buckled, and he was found destroying the
works of his grand piano with a coal-scoop.
Most of the MS. in my possession is blurred and undecipherable, full of
erasures, random stage-directions and marginal notes, amongst which
occasional passages such as the following "emerge" (as Mr. SMILLIE would
say):--
"_Secretary._ The fellow is standing his ground,
He's as stubborn and stiff as a war-mule.
_Minister._ A
Means will be found
If we look all around
To arrive at a suitable formula.
_Chorus._ Yes, you've got to arrive at a formula."
Difficult though my task may be I feel it the duty of friendship to
attempt to give the public some faint outline of this fascinating and
curious work. Scenarios, _dramatis personæ_ and choruses had evidently
caused the author inordinate trouble, for at the top of one sheet I
find:--
"ACT I.
_Interior of a coal-mine. Groups of colliers with lanterns and picks (?
tongs). Enter Chorus of female consumers._"