Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsThe Daily Mail, September 2, 1929
TO the student of history, as he turns the pages of musty chronicles, there is always something very sad and poignant, not to say stark, in the thought that ideas worth millions have so often come to men at a time when the world was not ripe for them, thus preventing them from cashing in and cleaning up on a big scale. One pities these pioneers who with just a spot of luck might so easily have clicked.
In the days of the Spanish Inquisition, for instance, Torquemada, strolling through the dungeons during a matinée performance, came upon one of the humbler members of the executive staff sitting hunched up in a corner. It was plain to him that the fellow was not his usual sunny self and, being a kindly soul who liked to have smiling faces about him, he inquired the reason.
“You look pretty mouldy, Sebastian,” said Torquemada. “Why the grouch?”
“It’s the business.”
“What’s wrong with the business?”
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong with the business,” replied the other, as he listlessly heated his pincers at a near-by brazier. “It’s going to pot. I’m not kept busy at all nowadays—not what I call busy.”
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Torquemada said something about the competition of talking films.
“It isn’t that,” sighed the honest fellow.
“Perhaps the supply of heretics is giving out.”
“It isn’t that either. The trouble is that our methods are all wrong. What happens, for instance, if we want to put a fellow on the rack? Why, we go out and chase him and arrest him and try him and send him to prison and all that, which all means swelling the overhead, whereas what we ought to do is change the name of the rack to Stretching the Stretch or something snappy like that with a sales-appeal in it and charge a small admission fee, and before you knew where you were we should be turning them away in hundreds. They’d stand in queues and fight to come in.”
Well, you know what Torquemada was like. Cautious. Ultra-conservative. What was good enough for his grandfather, he used to say, was good enough for him. He laughed at the suggestion, and look at the result. Who ever hears of the Spanish Inquisition nowadays? What dividends does it pay? It has failed, ruining the shareholders, simply because it was run without any understanding of the first principles of human nature.
And, centuries later, along come Blackpool and Margate and Douglas, Isle of Man, with their Amusement Parks, and do better business every year.
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The men who run these places are students of humanity. They know—what Torquemada’s boy friend knew—that what, if administered gratis, would be a brutal assault becomes, when you have to pay for it, a source of rollicking enjoyment.
Suppose somebody laid hands on you and put you in a large round tub. Suppose he then proceeded to send the tub spinning down an incline so arranged that at intervals of a few feet it spun round and bumped violently into something, causing your heart to get all scrambled up with your uvula and your brain-cells to come unstuck.
What would happen? Next day he would hear from your solicitor. But at Blackpool you simply love it. Released from the tub, you run round to the starting-place and jump into another. And why? Because it costs sixpence a go.
It makes one think when one reads that Blackpool and its sister resorts expect to be fuller than ever this year, and that the proprietors of the Amusement Parks are looking forward to doing record business.
One realises how sound the heart of the nation must be and how little it will affect this country’s potentiality for combat if disarmament schemes reduce the numbers of the regular army. It was Shakespeare’s opinion that England would never lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, and if he were alive to-day and spent Bank Holiday at Blackpool he would say the same again. It would be a rash Power that would dare set foot on the soil of a country whose inhabitants can consume hot sausages and iced lemonade, follow them with a few whelks and a jellied eel or two, and then go off and submit smilingly to the Aerial Slide and the Barrel of Bonhomie.
Apart from the sausages, the whelks and the jellied eels, such men have the right stuff in them.
To one who, like myself, has never invented anything, unless you count using a brass paper-fastener to take the place of a missing collar-stud, the most amazing thing about these Amusement Parks is the unfailing way in which those in charge think up new attractions every year.
I picture them as grim, melancholy men with very large heads that stick out at the back. In early life they have had some great disappointment or sorrow, and this has soured them. They hate their fellow-men, and as the law prevents them revenging themselves on mankind in any other way they have to invent attractions. When they devise something that looks as if it were bound to turn the customers into nervous wrecks, they smile twisted smiles and for a moment are happy.
“The trustees got away with all my money during my minority,” says one, “but I have invented an attraction which jerks you up and sideways at the same time and squirts water in your face.”
“My wife eloped with the chauffeur in the summer of ’24,” says another, “but look at the one I’ve just thought out. You pay sixpence and drop through a trap-door on to a lot of spikes.”
“Hot spikes?”
The second speaker is impressed. He realises now why his companion is known at the club as Big-Brained Benjamin.
“That’s an idea. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Listen,” says the first speaker, his eyes gleaming with a strange, soft light. “Let’s amalgamate. Let’s jerk them up and sideways and squirt water in their faces, and then drop ’em through a trap-door on to red-hot spikes. Then we’ll be able to charge a shilling.”
And they go off arm-in-arm and wet the bargain with a vitriol and seltzer.
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Before I forget, it seems that the explosion from the neighbourhood of the kitchen which I heard as I was writing my last paragraph was caused by the cook having trouble with the oven.
Apparently the thing exploded, setting her dress on fire, shooting her to the ceiling, and sending her into hysterics.
I cannot conclude this article on a pleasanter note than by offering this idea to the promoters. I look forward to seeing, on my next visit to Blackpool, the great new attraction, The Oven of Joy. It contains all the elements of a genuine Amusement Park success. It makes a lot of noise, it hurls you in the air, and it nearly kills you. I shall be satisfied with a small royalty.