The "tea-tray" in Parade's End

One certain literary source to which Madox is alluding with the multi-layered iterations of the Tea Tray image in Parade's End is this poem from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll:

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat,
How I wonder what you're at:
Up above the world you fly
Like a tea tray in the sky.