The Napoleon of Notting Hill
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Gilbert K. Chesterton >> The Napoleon of Notting Hill
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Lambert suddenly faced round and struck his stick into the ground in a
defiant attitude.
"Auberon," he said, "chuck it. I won't stand it. It's all bosh."
Both men stared at him, for there was something very explosive about
the words, as if they had been corked up painfully for a long time.
"You have," began Quin, "no--"
"I don't care a curse," said Lambert, violently, "whether I have 'a
delicate sense of humour' or not. I won't stand it. It's all a
confounded fraud. There's no joke in those infernal tales at all. You
know there isn't as well as I do."
"Well," replied Quin, slowly, "it is true that I, with my rather
gradual mental processes, did not see any joke in them. But the finer
sense of Barker perceived it."
Barker turned a fierce red, but continued to stare at the horizon.
"You ass," said Lambert; "why can't you be like other people? Why
can't you say something really funny, or hold your tongue? The man who
sits on his hat in a pantomime is a long sight funnier than you are."
Quin regarded him steadily. They had reached the top of the ridge and
the wind struck their faces.
"Lambert," said Auberon, "you are a great and good man, though I'm
hanged if you look it. You are more. You are a great revolutionist or
deliverer of the world, and I look forward to seeing you carved in
marble between Luther and Danton, if possible in your present
attitude, the hat slightly on one side. I said as I came up the hill
that the new humour was the last of the religions. You have made it
the last of the superstitions. But let me give you a very serious
warning. Be careful how you ask me to do anything _outre_, to imitate
the man in the pantomime, and to sit on my hat. Because I am a man
whose soul has been emptied of all pleasures but folly. And for
twopence I'd do it."
"Do it, then," said Lambert, swinging his stick impatiently. "It would
be funnier than the bosh you and Barker talk."
Quin, standing on the top of the hill, stretched his hand out towards
the main avenue of Kensington Gardens.
"Two hundred yards away," he said, "are all your fashionable
acquaintances with nothing on earth to do but to stare at each other
and at us. We are standing upon an elevation under the open sky, a
peak as it were of fantasy, a Sinai of humour. We are in a great
pulpit or platform, lit up with sunlight, and half London can see us.
Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness
which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man."
"I don't know what you are talking about," said Lambert,
contemptuously. "I only know I'd rather you stood on your silly head,
than talked so much."
"Auberon! for goodness' sake ..." cried Barker, springing forward; but
he was too late. Faces from all the benches and avenues were turned in
their direction. Groups stopped and small crowds collected; and the
sharp sunlight picked out the whole scene in blue, green and black,
like a picture in a child's toy-book. And on the top of the small
hill Mr. Auberon Quin stood with considerable athletic neatness upon
his head, and waved his patent-leather boots in the air.
"For God's sake, Quin, get up, and don't be an idiot," cried Barker,
wringing his hands; "we shall have the whole town here."
"Yes, get up, get up, man," said Lambert, amused and annoyed. "I was
only fooling; get up."
Auberon did so with a bound, and flinging his hat higher than the
trees, proceeded to hop about on one leg with a serious expression.
Barker stamped wildly.
"Oh, let's get home, Barker, and leave him," said Lambert; "some of
your proper and correct police will look after him. Here they come!"
Two grave-looking men in quiet uniforms came up the hill towards them.
One held a paper in his hand.
"There he is, officer," said Lambert, cheerfully; "we ain't
responsible for him."
The officer looked at the capering Mr. Quin with a quiet eye.
"We have not come, gentlemen," he said, "about what I think you are
alluding to. We have come from head-quarters to announce the
selection of His Majesty the King. It is the rule, inherited from the
old _regime_, that the news should be brought to the new Sovereign
immediately, wherever he is; so we have followed you across Kensington
Gardens."
Barker's eyes were blazing in his pale face. He was consumed with
ambition throughout his life. With a certain dull magnanimity of the
intellect he had really believed in the chance method of selecting
despots. But this sudden suggestion, that the selection might have
fallen upon him, unnerved him with pleasure.
"Which of us," he began, and the respectful official interrupted him.
"Not you, sir, I am sorry to say. If I may be permitted to say so, we
know your services to the Government, and should be very thankful if
it were. The choice has fallen...."
"God bless my soul!" said Lambert, jumping back two paces. "Not me.
Don't say I'm autocrat of all the Russias."
"No, sir," said the officer, with a slight cough and a glance towards
Auberon, who was at that moment putting his head between his legs and
making a noise like a cow; "the gentleman whom we have to congratulate
seems at the moment--er--er--occupied."
"Not Quin!" shrieked Barker, rushing up to him; "it can't be. Auberon,
for God's sake pull yourself together. You've been made King!"
With his head still upside down between his legs, Mr. Quin answered
modestly--
"I am not worthy. I cannot reasonably claim to equal the great men who
have previously swayed the sceptre of Britain. Perhaps the only
peculiarity that I can claim is that I am probably the first monarch
that ever spoke out his soul to the people of England with his head
and body in this position. This may in some sense give me, to quote a
poem that I wrote in my youth--
A nobler office on the earth
Than valour, power of brain, or birth
Could give the warrior kings of old.
The intellect clarified by this posture--"
Lambert and Barker made a kind of rush at him.
"Don't you understand?" cried Lambert. "It's not a joke. They've
really made you King. By gosh! they must have rum taste."
"The great Bishops of the Middle Ages," said Quin, kicking his legs in
the air, as he was dragged up more or less upside down, "were in the
habit of refusing the honour of election three times and then
accepting it. A mere matter of detail separates me from those great
men. I will accept the post three times and refuse it afterwards. Oh!
I will toil for you, my faithful people! You shall have a banquet of
humour."
By this time he had been landed the right way up, and the two men were
still trying in vain to impress him with the gravity of the situation.
"Did you not tell me, Wilfrid Lambert," he said, "that I should be of
more public value if I adopted a more popular form of humour? And when
should a popular form of humour be more firmly riveted upon me than
now, when I have become the darling of a whole people? Officer," he
continued, addressing the startled messenger, "are there no ceremonies
to celebrate my entry into the city?"
"Ceremonies," began the official, with embarrassment, "have been more
or less neglected for some little time, and--"
Auberon Quin began gradually to take off his coat.
"All ceremony," he said, "consists in the reversal of the obvious.
Thus men, when they wish to be priests or judges, dress up like women.
Kindly help me on with this coat." And he held it out.
"But, your Majesty," said the officer, after a moment's bewilderment
and manipulation, "you're putting it on with the tails in front."
"The reversal of the obvious," said the King, calmly, "is as near as
we can come to ritual with our imperfect apparatus. Lead on."
The rest of that afternoon and evening was to Barker and Lambert a
nightmare, which they could not properly realise or recall. The King,
with his coat on the wrong way, went towards the streets that were
awaiting him, and the old Kensington Palace which was the Royal
residence. As he passed small groups of men, the groups turned into
crowds, and gave forth sounds which seemed strange in welcoming an
autocrat. Barker walked behind, his brain reeling, and, as the crowds
grew thicker and thicker, the sounds became more and more unusual. And
when he had reached the great market-place opposite the church,
Barker knew that he had reached it, though he was roods behind,
because a cry went up such as had never before greeted any of the
kings of the earth.
BOOK II
CHAPTER I--_The Charter of the Cities_
Lambert was standing bewildered outside the door of the King's
apartments amid the scurry of astonishment and ridicule. He was just
passing out into the street, in a dazed manner, when James Barker
dashed by him.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"To stop all this foolery, of course," replied Barker; and he
disappeared into the room.
He entered it headlong, slamming the door, and slapping his
incomparable silk hat on the table. His mouth opened, but before he
could speak, the King said--
"Your hat, if you please."
Fidgetting with his fingers, and scarcely knowing what he was doing,
the young politician held it out.
The King placed it on his own chair, and sat on it.
"A quaint old custom," he explained, smiling above the ruins. "When
the King receives the representatives of the House of Barker, the hat
of the latter is immediately destroyed in this manner. It represents
the absolute finality of the act of homage expressed in the removal
of it. It declares that never until that hat shall once more appear
upon your head (a contingency which I firmly believe to be remote)
shall the House of Barker rebel against the Crown of England."
Barker stood with clenched fist, and shaking lip.
"Your jokes," he began, "and my property--" and then exploded with an
oath, and stopped again.
"Continue, continue," said the King, waving his hands.
"What does it all mean?" cried the other, with a gesture of passionate
rationality. "Are you mad?"
"Not in the least," replied the King, pleasantly. "Madmen are always
serious; they go mad from lack of humour. You are looking serious
yourself, James."
"Why can't you keep it to your own private life?" expostulated the
other. "You've got plenty of money, and plenty of houses now to play
the fool in, but in the interests of the public--"
"Epigrammatic," said the King, shaking his finger sadly at him. "None
of your daring scintillations here. As to why I don't do it in
private, I rather fail to understand your question. The answer is of
comparative limpidity. I don't do it in private, because it is funnier
to do it in public. You appear to think that it would be amusing to be
dignified in the banquet hall and in the street, and at my own
fireside (I could procure a fireside) to keep the company in a roar.
But that is what every one does. Every one is grave in public, and
funny in private. My sense of humour suggests the reversal of this; it
suggests that one should be funny in public, and solemn in private. I
desire to make the State functions, parliaments, coronations, and so
on, one roaring old-fashioned pantomime. But, on the other hand, I
shut myself up alone in a small store-room for two hours a day, where
I am so dignified that I come out quite ill."
By this time Barker was walking up and down the room, his frock coat
flapping like the black wings of a bird.
"Well, you will ruin the country, that's all," he said shortly.
"It seems to me," said Auberon, "that the tradition of ten centuries
is being broken, and the House of Barker is rebelling against the
Crown of England. It would be with regret (for I admire your
appearance) that I should be obliged forcibly to decorate your head
with the remains of this hat, but--"
"What I can't understand," said Barker flinging up his fingers with a
feverish American movement, "is why you don't care about anything else
but your games."
The King stopped sharply in the act of lifting the silken remnants,
dropped them, and walked up to Barker, looking at him steadily.
"I made a kind of vow," he said, "that I would not talk seriously,
which always means answering silly questions. But the strong man will
always be gentle with politicians.
'The shape my scornful looks deride
Required a God to form;'
if I may so theologically express myself. And for some reason I cannot
in the least understand, I feel impelled to answer that question of
yours, and to answer it as if there were really such a thing in the
world as a serious subject. You ask me why I don't care for anything
else. Can you tell me, in the name of all the gods you don't believe
in, why I should care for anything else?"
"Don't you realise common public necessities?" cried Barker. "Is it
possible that a man of your intelligence does not know that it is
every one's interest--"
"Don't you believe in Zoroaster? Is it possible that you neglect
Mumbo-Jumbo?" returned the King, with startling animation. "Does a man
of your intelligence come to me with these damned early Victorian
ethics? If, on studying my features and manner, you detect any
particular resemblance to the Prince Consort, I assure you you are
mistaken. Did Herbert Spencer ever convince you--did he ever convince
anybody--did he ever for one mad moment convince himself--that it must
be to the interest of the individual to feel a public spirit? Do you
believe that, if you rule your department badly, you stand any more
chance, or one half of the chance, of being guillotined, that an
angler stands of being pulled into the river by a strong pike? Herbert
Spencer refrained from theft for the same reason that he refrained
from wearing feathers in his hair, because he was an English gentleman
with different tastes. I am an English gentleman with different
tastes. He liked philosophy. I like art. He liked writing ten books on
the nature of human society. I like to see the Lord Chamberlain
walking in front of me with a piece of paper pinned to his coat-tails.
It is my humour. Are you answered? At any rate, I have said my last
serious word to-day, and my last serious word I trust for the
remainder of my life in this Paradise of Fools. The remainder of my
conversation with you to-day, which I trust will be long and
stimulating, I propose to conduct in a new language of my own by means
of rapid and symbolic movements of the left leg." And he began to
pirouette slowly round the room with a preoccupied expression.
Barker ran round the room after him, bombarding him with demands and
entreaties. But he received no response except in the new language. He
came out banging the door again, and sick like a man coming on shore.
As he strode along the streets he found himself suddenly opposite
Cicconani's restaurant, and for some reason there rose up before him
the green fantastic figure of the Spanish General, standing, as he had
seen him last, at the door, with the words on his lips, "You cannot
argue with the choice of the soul."
The King came out from his dancing with the air of a man of business
legitimately tired. He put on an overcoat, lit a cigar, and went out
into the purple night.
[Illustration: "I'M KING OF THE CASTLE."]
"I will go," he said, "and mingle with the people."
He passed swiftly up a street in the neighbourhood of Notting Hill,
when suddenly he felt a hard object driven into his waistcoat. He
paused, put up his single eye-glass, and beheld a boy with a wooden
sword and a paper cocked hat, wearing that expression of awed
satisfaction with which a child contemplates his work when he has hit
some one very hard. The King gazed thoughtfully for some time at his
assailant, and slowly took a note-book from his breast-pocket.
"I have a few notes," he said, "for my dying speech;" and he turned
over the leaves. "Dying speech for political assassination; ditto, if
by former friend--h'm, h'm. Dying speech for death at hands of injured
husband (repentant). Dying speech for same (cynical). I am not quite
sure which meets the present...."
"I'm the King of the Castle," said the boy, truculently, and very
pleased with nothing in particular.
The King was a kind-hearted man, and very fond of children, like all
people who are fond of the ridiculous.
"Infant," he said, "I'm glad you are so stalwart a defender of your
old inviolate Notting Hill. Look up nightly to that peak, my child,
where it lifts itself among the stars so ancient, so lonely, so
unutterably Notting. So long as you are ready to die for the sacred
mountain, even if it were ringed with all the armies of Bayswater--"
The King stopped suddenly, and his eyes shone.
"Perhaps," he said, "perhaps the noblest of all my conceptions. A
revival of the arrogance of the old mediaeval cities applied to our
glorious suburbs. Clapham with a city guard. Wimbledon with a city
wall. Surbiton tolling a bell to raise its citizens. West Hampstead
going into battle with its own banner. It shall be done. I, the King,
have said it." And, hastily presenting the boy with half a crown,
remarking, "For the war-chest of Notting Hill," he ran violently home
at such a rate of speed that crowds followed him for miles. On
reaching his study, he ordered a cup of coffee, and plunged into
profound meditation upon the project. At length he called his
favourite Equerry, Captain Bowler, for whom he had a deep affection,
founded principally upon the shape of his whiskers.
"Bowler," he said, "isn't there some society of historical research,
or something of which I am an honorary member?"
"Yes, sir," said Captain Bowler, rubbing his nose, "you are a member
of 'The Encouragers of Egyptian Renaissance,' and 'The Teutonic Tombs
Club,' and 'The Society for the Recovery of London Antiquities,'
and--"
"That is admirable," said the King. "The London Antiquities does my
trick. Go to the Society for the Recovery of London Antiquities and
speak to their secretary, and their sub-secretary, and their
president, and their vice-president, saying, 'The King of England is
proud, but the honorary member of the Society for the Recovery of
London Antiquities is prouder than kings. I should like to tell you of
certain discoveries I have made touching the neglected traditions of
the London boroughs. The revelations may cause some excitement,
stirring burning memories and touching old wounds in Shepherd's Bush
and Bayswater, in Pimlico and South Kensington. The King hesitates,
but the honorary member is firm. I approach you invoking the vows of
my initiation, the Sacred Seven Cats, the Poker of Perfection, and the
Ordeal of the Indescribable Instant (forgive me if I mix you up with
the Clan-na-Gael or some other club I belong to), and ask you to
permit me to read a paper at your next meeting on the "Wars of the
London Boroughs."' Say all this to the Society, Bowler. Remember it
very carefully, for it is most important, and I have forgotten it
altogether, and send me another cup of coffee and some of the cigars
that we keep for vulgar and successful people. I am going to write my
paper."
The Society for the Recovery of London Antiquities met a month after
in a corrugated iron hall on the outskirts of one of the southern
suburbs of London. A large number of people had collected there under
the coarse and flaring gas-jets when the King arrived, perspiring and
genial. On taking off his great-coat, he was perceived to be in
evening dress, wearing the Garter. His appearance at the small table,
adorned only with a glass of water, was received with respectful
cheering.
The chairman (Mr. Huggins) said that he was sure that they had all
been pleased to listen to such distinguished lecturers as they had
heard for some time past (hear, hear). Mr. Burton (hear, hear), Mr.
Cambridge, Professor King (loud and continued cheers), our old friend
Peter Jessop, Sir William White (loud laughter), and other eminent
men, had done honour to their little venture (cheers). But there were
other circumstances which lent a certain unique quality to the present
occasion (hear, hear). So far as his recollection went, and in
connection with the Society for the Recovery of London Antiquities it
went very far (loud cheers), he did not remember that any of their
lecturers had borne the title of King. He would therefore call upon
King Auberon briefly to address the meeting.
The King began by saying that this speech might be regarded as the
first declaration of his new policy for the nation. "At this supreme
hour of my life I feel that to no one but the members of the Society
for the Recovery of London Antiquities can I open my heart (cheers).
If the world turns upon my policy, and the storms of popular hostility
begin to rise (no, no), I feel that it is here, with my brave
Recoverers around me, that I can best meet them, sword in hand" (loud
cheers).
His Majesty then went on to explain that, now old age was creeping
upon him, he proposed to devote his remaining strength to bringing
about a keener sense of local patriotism in the various municipalities
of London. How few of them knew the legends of their own boroughs!
How many there were who had never heard of the true origin of the Wink
of Wandsworth! What a large proportion of the younger generation in
Chelsea neglected to perform the old Chelsea Chuff! Pimlico no longer
pumped the Pimlies. Battersea had forgotten the name of Blick.
There was a short silence, and then a voice said "Shame!"
The King continued: "Being called, however unworthily, to this high
estate, I have resolved that, so far as possible, this neglect shall
cease. I desire no military glory. I lay claim to no constitutional
equality with Justinian or Alfred. If I can go down to history as the
man who saved from extinction a few old English customs, if our
descendants can say it was through this man, humble as he was, that
the Ten Turnips are still eaten in Fulham, and the Putney parish
councillor still shaves one half of his head, I shall look my great
fathers reverently but not fearfully in the face when I go down to the
last house of Kings."
The King paused, visibly affected, but collecting himself, resumed
once more.
"I trust that to very few of you, at least, I need dwell on the
sublime origins of these legends. The very names of your boroughs
bear witness to them. So long as Hammersmith is called Hammersmith,
its people will live in the shadow of that primal hero, the
Blacksmith, who led the democracy of the Broadway into battle till he
drove the chivalry of Kensington before him and overthrew them at that
place which in honour of the best blood of the defeated aristocracy is
still called Kensington Gore. Men of Hammersmith will not fail to
remember that the very name of Kensington originated from the lips of
their hero. For at the great banquet of reconciliation held after the
war, when the disdainful oligarchs declined to join in the songs of
the men of the Broadway (which are to this day of a rude and popular
character), the great Republican leader, with his rough humour, said
the words which are written in gold upon his monument, 'Little birds
that can sing and won't sing, must be made to sing.' So that the
Eastern Knights were called Cansings or Kensings ever afterwards. But
you also have great memories, O men of Kensington! You showed that you
could sing, and sing great war-songs. Even after the dark day of
Kensington Gore, history will not forget those three Knights who
guarded your disordered retreat from Hyde Park (so called from your
hiding there), those three Knights after whom Knightsbridge is named.
Nor will it forget the day of your re-emergence, purged in the fire of
calamity, cleansed of your oligarchic corruptions, when, sword in
hand, you drove the Empire of Hammersmith back mile by mile, swept it
past its own Broadway, and broke it at last in a battle so long and
bloody that the birds of prey have left their name upon it. Men have
called it, with austere irony, the Ravenscourt. I shall not, I trust,
wound the patriotism of Bayswater, or the lonelier pride of Brompton,
or that of any other historic township, by taking these two special
examples. I select them, not because they are more glorious than the
rest, but partly from personal association (I am myself descended from
one of the three heroes of Knightsbridge), and partly from the
consciousness that I am an amateur antiquarian, and cannot presume to
deal with times and places more remote and more mysterious. It is not
for me to settle the question between two such men as Professor Hugg
and Sir William Whisky as to whether Notting Hill means Nutting Hill
(in allusion to the rich woods which no longer cover it), or whether
it is a corruption of Nothing-ill, referring to its reputation among
the ancients as an Earthly Paradise. When a Podkins and a Jossy
confess themselves doubtful about the boundaries of West Kensington
(said to have been traced in the blood of Oxen), I need not be ashamed
to confess a similar doubt. I will ask you to excuse me from further
history, and to assist me with your encouragement in dealing with the
problem which faces us to-day. Is this ancient spirit of the London
townships to die out? Are our omnibus conductors and policemen to lose
altogether that light which we see so often in their eyes, the dreamy
light of
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