The Napoleon of Notting Hill
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Gilbert K. Chesterton >> The Napoleon of Notting Hill
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Barker's sword was broken, but he was laying about him with his
dagger. Just as Buck ran up, a man of Notting Hill struck Barker down,
but Buck struck the man down on top of him, and Barker sprang up
again, the blood running down his face.
Suddenly all these cries were cloven by a great voice, that seemed to
fall out of heaven. It was terrible to Buck and Barker and the King,
from its seeming to come out the empty skies; but it was more terrible
because it was a familiar voice, and one which at the same time they
had not heard for so long.
"Turn up the lights," said the voice from above them, and for a moment
there was no reply, but only a tumult.
"In the name of Notting Hill and of the great Council of the City,
turn up the lights."
There was again a tumult and a vagueness for a moment, then the whole
street and every object in it sprang suddenly out of the darkness, as
every lamp sprang into life. And looking up they saw, standing upon a
balcony near the roof of one of the highest houses, the figure and the
face of Adam Wayne, his red hair blowing behind him, a little streaked
with grey.
"What is this, my people?" he said. "Is it altogether impossible to
make a thing good without it immediately insisting on being wicked?
The glory of Notting Hill in having achieved its independence, has
been enough for me to dream of for many years, as I sat beside the
fire. Is it really not enough for you, who have had so many other
affairs to excite and distract you? Notting Hill is a nation. Why
should it condescend to be a mere Empire? You wish to pull down the
statue of General Wilson, which the men of Bayswater have so rightly
erected in Westbourne Grove. Fools! Who erected that statue? Did
Bayswater erect it? No. Notting Hill erected it. Do you not see that
it is the glory of our achievement that we have infected the other
cities with the idealism of Notting Hill? It is we who have created
not only our own side, but both sides of this controversy. O too
humble fools, why should you wish to destroy your enemies? You have
done something more to them. You have created your enemies. You wish
to pull down that gigantic silver hammer, which stands, like an
obelisk, in the centre of the Broadway of Hammersmith. Fools! Before
Notting Hill arose, did any person passing through Hammersmith
Broadway expect to see there a gigantic silver hammer? You wish to
abolish the great bronze figure of a knight standing upon the
artificial bridge at Knightsbridge. Fools! Who would have thought of
it before Notting Hill arose? I have even heard, and with deep pain I
have heard it, that the evil eye of our imperial envy has been cast
towards the remote horizon of the west, and that we have objected to
the great black monument of a crowned raven, which commemorates the
skirmish of Ravenscourt Park. Who created all these things? Were they
there before we came? Cannot you be content with that destiny which
was enough for Athens, which was enough for Nazareth? the destiny, the
humble purpose, of creating a new world. Is Athens angry because
Romans and Florentines have adopted her phraseology for expressing
their own patriotism? Is Nazareth angry because as a little village it
has become the type of all little villages out of which, as the Snobs
say, no good can come? Has Athens asked every one to wear the chlamys?
Are all followers of the Nazarene compelled to wear turbans. No! but
the soul of Athens went forth and made men drink hemlock, and the soul
of Nazareth went forth and made men consent to be crucified. So has
the soul of Notting Hill gone forth and made men realise what it is to
live in a city. Just as we inaugurated our symbols and ceremonies, so
they have inaugurated theirs; and are you so mad as to contend against
them? Notting Hill is right; it has always been right. It has moulded
itself on its own necessities, its own _sine qua non_; it has accepted
its own ultimatum. Because it is a nation it has created itself; and
because it is a nation it can destroy itself. Notting Hill shall
always be the judge. If it is your will because of this matter of
General Wilson's statue to make war upon Bayswater--"
A roar of cheers broke in upon his words, and further speech was
impossible. Pale to the lips, the great patriot tried again and again
to speak; but even his authority could not keep down the dark and
roaring masses in the street below him. He said something further, but
it was not audible. He descended at last sadly from the garret in
which he lived, and mingled with the crowd at the foot of the houses.
Finding General Turnbull, he put his hand on his shoulder with a queer
affection and gravity, and said--
"To-morrow, old man, we shall have a new experience, as fresh as the
flowers of spring. We shall be defeated. You and I have been through
three battles together, and have somehow or other missed this peculiar
delight. It is unfortunate that we shall not probably be able to
exchange our experiences, because, as it most annoyingly happens, we
shall probably both be dead."
Turnbull looked dimly surprised.
"I don't mind so much about being dead," he said, "but why should you
say that we shall be defeated?"
"The answer is very simple," replied Wayne, calmly. "It is because we
ought to be defeated. We have been in the most horrible holes before
now; but in all those I was perfectly certain that the stars were on
our side, and that we ought to get out. Now I know that we ought not
to get out; and that takes away from me everything with which I won."
As Wayne spoke he started a little, for both men became aware that a
third figure was listening to them--a small figure with wondering
eyes.
"Is it really true, my dear Wayne," said the King, interrupting, "that
you think you will be beaten to-morrow?"
"There can be no doubt about it whatever," replied Adam Wayne; "the
real reason is the one of which I have just spoken. But as a
concession to your materialism, I will add that they have an organised
army of a hundred allied cities against our one. That in itself,
however, would be unimportant."
Quin, with his round eyes, seemed strangely insistent.
"You are quite sure," he said, "that you must be beaten?"
"I am afraid," said Turnbull, gloomily, "that there can be no doubt
about it."
"Then," cried the King, flinging out his arms, "give me a halberd!
Give me a halberd, somebody! I desire all men to witness that I,
Auberon, King of England, do here and now abdicate, and implore the
Provost of Notting Hill to permit me to enlist in his army. Give me a
halberd!"
He seized one from some passing guard, and, shouldering it, stamped
solemnly after the shouting columns of halberdiers which were, by this
time, parading the streets. He had, however, nothing to do with the
wrecking of the statue of General Wilson, which took place before
morning.
CHAPTER II--_The Last Battle_
The day was cloudy when Wayne went down to die with all his army in
Kensington Gardens; it was cloudy again when that army had been
swallowed up by the vast armies of a new world. There had been an
almost uncanny interval of sunshine, in which the Provost of Notting
Hill, with all the placidity of an onlooker, had gazed across to the
hostile armies on the great spaces of verdure opposite; the long
strips of green and blue and gold lay across the park in squares and
oblongs like a proposition in Euclid wrought in a rich embroidery. But
the sunlight was a weak and, as it were, a wet sunlight, and was soon
swallowed up. Wayne spoke to the King, with a queer sort of coldness
and languor, as to the military operations. It was as he had said the
night before--that being deprived of his sense of an impracticable
rectitude, he was, in effect, being deprived of everything. He was out
of date, and at sea in a mere world of compromise and competition, of
Empire against Empire, of the tolerably right and the tolerably wrong.
When his eye fell on the King, however, who was marching very gravely
with a top hat and a halberd, it brightened slightly.
"Well, your Majesty," he said, "you at least ought to be proud to-day.
If your children are fighting each other, at least those who win are
your children. Other kings have distributed justice, you have
distributed life. Other kings have ruled a nation, you have created
nations. Others have made kingdoms, you have begotten them. Look at
your children, father!" and he stretched his hand out towards the
enemy.
Auberon did not raise his eyes.
"See how splendidly," cried Wayne, "the new cities come on--the new
cities from across the river. See where Battersea advances over
there--under the flag of the Lost Dog; and Putney--don't you see the
Man on the White Boar shining on their standard as the sun catches it?
It is the coming of a new age, your Majesty. Notting Hill is not a
common empire; it is a thing like Athens, the mother of a mode of
life, of a manner of living, which shall renew the youth of the
world--a thing like Nazareth. When I was young I remember, in the old
dreary days, wiseacres used to write books about how trains would get
faster, and all the world be one empire, and tram-cars go to the moon.
And even as a child I used to say to myself, 'Far more likely that we
shall go on the crusades again, or worship the gods of the city.' And
so it has been. And I am glad, though this is my last battle."
Even as he spoke there came a crash of steel from the left, and he
turned his head.
"Wilson!" he cried, with a kind of joy. "Red Wilson has charged our
left. No one can hold him in; he eats swords. He is as keen a soldier
as Turnbull, but less patient--less really great. Ha! and Barker is
moving. How Barker has improved; how handsome he looks! It is not all
having plumes; it is also having a soul in one's daily life. Ha!"
And another crash of steel on the right showed that Barker had closed
with Notting Hill on the other side.
"Turnbull is there!" cried Wayne. "See him hurl them back! Barker is
checked! Turnbull charges--wins! But our left is broken. Wilson has
smashed Bowles and Mead, and may turn our flank. Forward, the
Provost's Guard!"
And the whole centre moved forward, Wayne's face and hair and sword
flaming in the van.
The King ran suddenly forward.
The next instant a great jar that went through it told that it had met
the enemy. And right over against them through the wood of their own
weapons Auberon saw the Purple Eagle of Buck of North Kensington.
On the left Red Wilson was storming the broken ranks, his little green
figure conspicuous even in the tangle of men and weapons, with the
flaming red moustaches and the crown of laurel. Bowles slashed at his
head and tore away some of the wreath, leaving the rest bloody, and,
with a roar like a bull's, Wilson sprang at him, and, after a rattle
of fencing, plunged his point into the chemist, who fell, crying,
"Notting Hill!" Then the Notting Hillers wavered, and Bayswater swept
them back in confusion. Wilson had carried everything before him.
On the right, however, Turnbull had carried the Red Lion banner with a
rush against Barker's men, and the banner of the Golden Birds bore up
with difficulty against it. Barker's men fell fast. In the centre
Wayne and Buck were engaged, stubborn and confused. So far as the
fighting went, it was precisely equal. But the fighting was a farce.
For behind the three small armies with which Wayne's small army was
engaged lay the great sea of the allied armies, which looked on as yet
as scornful spectators, but could have broken all four armies by
moving a finger.
Suddenly they did move. Some of the front contingents, the pastoral
chiefs from Shepherd's Bush, with their spears and fleeces, were seen
advancing, and the rude clans from Paddington Green. They were
advancing for a very good reason. Buck, of North Kensington, was
signalling wildly; he was surrounded, and totally cut off. His
regiments were a struggling mass of people, islanded in a red sea of
Notting Hill.
The allies had been too careless and confident. They had allowed
Barker's force to be broken to pieces by Turnbull, and the moment that
was done, the astute old leader of Notting Hill swung his men round
and attacked Buck behind and on both sides. At the same moment Wayne
cried, "Charge!" and struck him in front like a thunderbolt.
Two-thirds of Buck's men were cut to pieces before their allies could
reach them. Then the sea of cities came on with their banners like
breakers, and swallowed Notting Hill for ever. The battle was not
over, for not one of Wayne's men would surrender, and it lasted till
sundown, and long after. But it was decided; the story of Notting Hill
was ended.
When Turnbull saw it, he ceased a moment from fighting, and looked
round him. The evening sunlight struck his face; it looked like a
child's.
"I have had my youth," he said. Then, snatching an axe from a man, he
dashed into the thick of the spears of Shepherd's Bush, and died
somewhere far in the depths of their reeling ranks. Then the battle
roared on; every man of Notting Hill was slain before night.
Wayne was standing by a tree alone after the battle. Several men
approached him with axes. One struck at him. His foot seemed partly to
slip; but he flung his hand out, and steadied himself against the
tree.
Barker sprang after him, sword in hand, and shaking with excitement.
"How large now, my lord," he cried, "is the Empire of Notting Hill?"
Wayne smiled in the gathering dark.
"Always as large as this," he said, and swept his sword round in a
semicircle of silver.
Barker dropped, wounded in the neck; and Wilson sprang over his body
like a tiger-cat, rushing at Wayne. At the same moment there came
behind the Lord of the Red Lion a cry and a flare of yellow, and a
mass of the West Kensington halberdiers ploughed up the slope,
knee-deep in grass, bearing the yellow banner of the city before them,
and shouting aloud.
At the same second Wilson went down under Wayne's sword, seemingly
smashed like a fly. The great sword rose again like a bird, but Wilson
seemed to rise with it, and, his sword being broken, sprang at Wayne's
throat like a dog. The foremost of the yellow halberdiers had reached
the tree and swung his axe above the struggling Wayne. With a curse
the King whirled up his own halberd, and dashed the blade in the man's
face. He reeled and rolled down the slope, just as the furious Wilson
was flung on his back again. And again he was on his feet, and again
at Wayne's throat. Then he was flung again, but this time laughing
triumphantly. Grasped in his hand was the red and yellow favour that
Wayne wore as Provost of Notting Hill. He had torn it from the place
where it had been carried for twenty-five years.
With a shout the West Kensington men closed round Wayne, the great
yellow banner flapping over his head.
"Where is your favour now, Provost?" cried the West Kensington leader.
And a laugh went up.
Adam struck at the standard-bearer and brought him reeling forward. As
the banner stooped, he grasped the yellow folds and tore off a shred.
A halberdier struck him on the shoulder, wounding bloodily.
"Here is one colour!" he cried, pushing the yellow into his belt; "and
here!" he cried, pointing to his own blood--"here is the other."
At the same instant the shock of a sudden and heavy halberd laid the
King stunned or dead. In the wild visions of vanishing consciousness,
he saw again something that belonged to an utterly forgotten time,
something that he had seen somewhere long ago in a restaurant. He saw,
with his swimming eyes, red and yellow, the colours of Nicaragua.
Quin did not see the end. Wilson, wild with joy, sprang again at Adam
Wayne, and the great sword of Notting Hill was whirled above once
more. Then men ducked instinctively at the rushing noise of the sword
coming down out of the sky, and Wilson of Bayswater was smashed and
wiped down upon the floor like a fly. Nothing was left of him but a
wreck; but the blade that had broken him was broken. In dying he had
snapped the great sword and the spell of it; the sword of Wayne was
broken at the hilt. One rush of the enemy carried Wayne by force
against the tree. They were too close to use halberd or even sword;
they were breast to breast, even nostrils to nostrils. But Buck got
his dagger free.
"Kill him!" he cried, in a strange stifled voice. "Kill him! Good or
bad, he is none of us! Do not be blinded by the face!... God! have we
not been blinded all along!" and he drew his arm back for a stab, and
seemed to close his eyes.
Wayne did not drop the hand that hung on to the tree-branch. But a
mighty heave went over his breast and his whole huge figure, like an
earthquake over great hills. And with that convulsion of effort he
rent the branch out of the tree, with tongues of torn wood; and,
swaying it once only, he let the splintered club fall on Buck,
breaking his neck. The planner of the Great Road fell face foremost
dead, with his dagger in a grip of steel.
"For you and me, and for all brave men, my brother," said Wayne, in
his strange chant, "there is good wine poured in the inn at the end of
the world."
The packed men made another lurch or heave towards him; it was almost
too dark to fight clearly. He caught hold of the oak again, this time
getting his hand into a wide crevice and grasping, as it were, the
bowels of the tree. The whole crowd, numbering some thirty men, made a
rush to tear him away from it; they hung on with all their weight and
numbers, and nothing stirred. A solitude could not have been stiller
than that group of straining men. Then there was a faint sound.
"His hand is slipping," cried two men in exultation.
"You don't know much of him," said another, grimly (a man of the old
war). "More likely his bone cracks."
"It is neither--by God, it is neither!" said one of the first two.
"What is it, then?" asked the second.
"The tree is falling," he replied.
"As the tree falleth, so shall it lie," said Wayne's voice out of the
darkness, and it had the same sweet and yet horrible air that it had
had throughout, of coming from a great distance, from before or after
the event. Even when he was struggling like an eel or battering like a
madman, he spoke like a spectator. "As the tree falleth, so shall it
lie," he said. "Men have called that a gloomy text. It is the essence
of all exultation. I am doing now what I have done all my life, what
is the only happiness, what is the only universality. I am clinging to
something. Let it fall, and there let it lie. Fools, you go about and
see the kingdoms of the earth, and are liberal and wise and
cosmopolitan, which is all that the devil can give you--all that he
could offer to Christ, only to be spurned away. I am doing what the
truly wise do. When a child goes out into the garden and takes hold of
a tree, saying, 'Let this tree be all I have,' that moment its roots
take hold on hell and its branches on the stars. The joy I have is
what the lover knows when a woman is everything. It is what a savage
knows when his idol is everything. It is what I know when Notting Hill
is everything. I have a city. Let it stand or fall."
As he spoke, the turf lifted itself like a living thing, and out of it
rose slowly, like crested serpents, the roots of the oak. Then the
great head of the tree, that seemed a green cloud among grey ones,
swept the sky suddenly like a broom, and the whole tree heeled over
like a ship, smashing every one in its fall.
CHAPTER III--_Two Voices_
In a place in which there was total darkness for hours, there was also
for hours total silence. Then a voice spoke out of the darkness, no
one could have told from where, and said aloud--
"So ends the Empire of Notting Hill. As it began in blood, so it ended
in blood, and all things are always the same."
And there was silence again, and then again there was a voice, but it
had not the same tone; it seemed that it was not the same voice.
"If all things are always the same, it is because they are always
heroic. If all things are always the same, it is because they are
always new. To each man one soul only is given; to each soul only is
given a little power--the power at some moments to outgrow and swallow
up the stars. If age after age that power comes upon men, whatever
gives it to them is great. Whatever makes men feel old is mean--an
empire or a skin-flint shop. Whatever makes men feel young is great--a
great war or a love-story. And in the darkest of the books of God
there is written a truth that is also a riddle. It is of the new
things that men tire--of fashions and proposals and improvements and
change. It is the old things that startle and intoxicate. It is the
old things that are young. There is no sceptic who does not feel that
many have doubted before. There is no rich and fickle man who does not
feel that all his novelties are ancient. There is no worshipper of
change who does not feel upon his neck the vast weight of the
weariness of the universe. But we who do the old things are fed by
nature with a perpetual infancy. No man who is in love thinks that any
one has been in love before. No woman who has a child thinks that
there have been such things as children. No people that fight for
their own city are haunted with the burden of the broken empires. Yes,
O dark voice, the world is always the same, for it is always
unexpected."
A little gust of wind blew through the night, and then the first voice
answered--
"But in this world there are some, be they wise or foolish, whom
nothing intoxicates. There are some who see all your disturbances like
a cloud of flies. They know that while men will laugh at your Notting
Hill, and will study and rehearse and sing of Athens and Jerusalem,
Athens and Jerusalem were silly suburbs like your Notting Hill. They
know that the earth itself is a suburb, and can feel only drearily
and respectably amused as they move upon it."
"They are philosophers or they are fools," said the other voice. "They
are not men. Men live, as I say, rejoicing from age to age in
something fresher than progress--in the fact that with every baby a
new sun and a new moon are made. If our ancient humanity were a single
man, it might perhaps be that he would break down under the memory of
so many loyalties, under the burden of so many diverse heroisms, under
the load and terror of all the goodness of men. But it has pleased God
so to isolate the individual soul that it can only learn of all other
souls by hearsay, and to each one goodness and happiness come with the
youth and violence of lightning, as momentary and as pure. And the
doom of failure that lies on all human systems does not in real fact
affect them any more than the worms of the inevitable grave affect a
children's game in a meadow. Notting Hill has fallen; Notting Hill has
died. But that is not the tremendous issue. Notting Hill has lived."
"But if," answered the other voice, "if what is achieved by all these
efforts be only the common contentment of humanity, why do men so
extravagantly toil and die in them? Has nothing been done by Notting
Hill than any chance clump of farmers or clan of savages would not
have done without it? What might have been done to Notting Hill if the
world had been different may be a deep question; but there is a
deeper. What could have happened to the world if Notting Hill had
never been?"
The other voice replied--
"The same that would have happened to the world and all the starry
systems if an apple-tree grew six apples instead of seven; something
would have been eternally lost. There has never been anything in the
world absolutely like Notting Hill. There will never be anything quite
like it to the crack of doom. I cannot believe anything but that God
loved it as He must surely love anything that is itself and
unreplaceable. But even for that I do not care. If God, with all His
thunders, hated it, I loved it."
And with the voice a tall, strange figure lifted itself out of the
_debris_ in the half-darkness.
The other voice came after a long pause, and as it were hoarsely.
"But suppose the whole matter were really a hocus-pocus. Suppose that
whatever meaning you may choose in your fancy to give to it, the real
meaning of the whole was mockery. Suppose it was all folly. Suppose--"
"I have been in it," answered the voice from the tall and strange
figure, "and I know it was not."
A smaller figure seemed half to rise in the dark.
"Suppose I am God," said the voice, "and suppose I made the world in
idleness. Suppose the stars, that you think eternal, are only the
idiot fireworks of an everlasting schoolboy. Suppose the sun and the
moon, to which you sing alternately, are only the two eyes of one vast
and sneering giant, opened alternately in a never-ending wink. Suppose
the trees, in my eyes, are as foolish as enormous toad-stools. Suppose
Socrates and Charlemagne are to me only beasts, made funnier by
walking on their hind legs. Suppose I am God, and having made things,
laugh at them."
"And suppose I am man," answered the other. "And suppose that I give
the answer that shatters even a laugh. Suppose I do not laugh back at
you, do not blaspheme you, do not curse you. But suppose, standing up
straight under the sky, with every power of my being, I thank you for
the fools' paradise you have made. Suppose I praise you, with a
literal pain of ecstasy, for the jest that has brought me so terrible
a joy. If we have taken the child's games, and given them the
seriousness of a Crusade, if we have drenched your grotesque Dutch
garden with the blood of martyrs, we have turned a nursery into a
temple. I ask you, in the name of Heaven, who wins?"
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