George Marchmont

Under-Secretary of Civic Works, the Westminster name muttered whenever London’s bridges, quays, lamps and drainage become matters of metropolitan seriousness rather than local complaint.

George Marchmont serves as Under-Secretary of Civic Works under Sir Matthew Wetherall, Minister of Works and Communications. The minister answers for the Crown side of great roads, bridges, public works and guarded masts; Marchmont is one of the men beneath him through whom that responsibility becomes budgets, appropriations and site visits. Ordinary Londoners meet his name more often than the minister’s own, which is characteristic of the present state: great offices are public, but government is usually met one rung lower.

His name is attached to bridges, quay improvements, lamp budgets and drainage appropriations whenever Westminster chooses to notice the lower city, and quieter clerks mutter it whenever such things cease to be local complaint and become politically noticeable. Newcomers to the capital learn it early, among the public intermediaries worth knowing.

Young for the post, he has an engineer’s eye under an administrator’s coat, and his memoranda set out his creed without ornament. Crown order in a capital, he writes, is not the splendour of any one great house; it is a great many small and dull services working together, and working before anybody has had occasion to watch them fail. It is said he would rather walk a site than read of it.

Companies meet his office when a works site needs guarding, surveying or clearing, when a project stalls on something no survey anticipated, or when a quarrel between ward and Crown over a bridge or a drain needs somebody to find out what actually happened.

In person

Marchmont is a lean man in his early thirties, fair-haired and clean-shaven, with a long, refined face and light eyes that lend him a youthful seriousness. He dresses in a dark, practical professional suit and waistcoat — the clothes of an engineer who has become an administrator without quite ceasing to be an engineer. He is most often seen over unrolled bridge plans and works drawings, or looking along the line of a viaduct as if checking it.