O far as I know, the true story of the Bugsley Vacuum Jacket has never yet been made public. Now the death of the distinguished officer, who was associated with the patentee in the production of what has virtually revolutionised modern warfare, has removed what polite embargo lay upon the tongues of the informed, and there can be no indiscretion or ill-taste in admitting the "general" to the humours of an anecdote, which the "particular" was wont often to relate in private, with a keen sense of the nature of the laugh which it raised against himself.
The circumstances which, many years ago, led to the resignation, by Major Cheverel Manton, of his official position in Pall Mall will be still within the recollection of many. The gallant officer had pledged himself and his credit to the impenetrability of a certain bullet-proof coat designed by a Mr. Bugsley, and his strength of faith in the invention had lacked only the force to convince the superior impenetrability of his department. His demand for a trial being persistently ignored, he took, finally, the extreme step of resigning his commission, as the most practical form of protest possible against, as he considered it, the ruinous supineness of the War Office. That the result came to justify this step served the enlightened public, of course, for a delirious scandal by and by; yet, no doubt, the War Office had had its excuse, and one even—as Major Manton himself was moved presently to admit—of a more than commonly reasonable complexion. For the fact had been that, while Mr. Bugsley was a notorious patenter of chimeras, his backer—always a "cranky," hot-tempered man—had only recently at the time recovered from a severe influenza, and was supposed still subject to hallucinations.
Whatever the official rendering of the case, however, the evolution of the famous service jacket, from its first practical test in the Borstall explorative expedition to its ultimate adoption by the Government authorities, is a certain matter of history; and assuredly the late Major Manton never had reason to regret his firm confidence in the virtues of an invention, which compensated him with a fortune for the position he sacrificed to uphold it.
The story, as related by the Major, ran as follows:
"I was one of the officials of the Ordnance. It was part of my duties to interview cranks. Do you realise what that means—the ineffable weariness of flesh and waste of time? I dare say you have no conception of the number of people in the world who are busily engaged in trying to extract sunbeams out of cucumbers. A single day spent at the War Office would enlighten you, perhaps. I suppose that, as human nature swings at the eternal balance between offence and defence, it is natural that a disproportion of inventive genius should flow Pall-Mallwards. There is no such fruitful inspiration, of the right sort, as that which points to the most economic method of destroying one's enemies. Of all creative cranks, the man who invented or adapted the guillotine stands, in my opinion, at the head of the poll. Bugsley, for all his versatility, couldn't touch him.
"That man had haunted me for years—a suave apparition. You never saw him? He couldn't survive his only success, and was found sitting at his desk dead and smiling over the post which had brought him Borstall's testimonial to the efficacy of the jacket.
"The first time I saw him was on an afternoon in the late nineties. I had been pestered out of reason that day, I remember, and was in a bad mood for considering any further Colney Hatch patents—sights that would enable a man to kill with his eyes shut, powders that would explode automatically on the least little international friction, plugs for compressed rations to be carried in a rifle-barrel, and buttons each a receptacle for a condensed meat lozenge. I had been harassed, I say, and my temper was no doubt a bit short when Bugsley was shown in to me. There was nothing repugnant about the man; but I developed an instinctive antagonism to him on the spot. He was very short and thick and ungainly, with an enormous smiling face and knock knees. As he stood rattling the pence in his trouser-pockets, with his feet finned out, his little fat thighs pressed together, and his great beaked nose tilted up at an angle, he reminded me of nothing so much as the aldermanic turtle. I saw a calm and unctuous assurance in his smile, and snapped out at him instanter:
"'State your business, if you please. I've no time to spare. A word will do.'
"He answered at once, looking sideways at the ceiling, 'I have a little fancy—Vacuums. There's a fortune in it.'