John Hicklin - "The Ladies of Llangollen"

A. A. Milne - "First Plays"

Anonymous - "The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II"

Herbert Baird Stimpson - "The Tory Maid"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

G >> Gilbert K. Chesterton >> The Napoleon of Notting Hill




"I don't," said Mr. Turnbull, of the toy-shop, shortly, but with great
emphasis.

"I am glad to hear it," replied Wayne. "I confess that I feared for my
military schemes the awful innocence of your profession. How, I
thought to myself, will this man, used only to the wooden swords that
give pleasure, think of the steel swords that give pain? But I am at
least partly reassured. Your tone suggests to me that I have at least
the entry of a gate of your fairyland--the gate through which the
soldiers enter, for it cannot be denied--I ought, sir, no longer to
deny, that it is of soldiers that I come to speak. Let your gentle
employment make you merciful towards the troubles of the world. Let
your own silvery experience tone down our sanguine sorrows. For there
is war in Notting Hill."

The little toy-shop keeper sprang up suddenly, slapping his fat hands
like two fans on the counter.

"War?" he cried. "Not really, sir? Is it true? Oh, what a joke! Oh,
what a sight for sore eyes!"

Wayne was almost taken aback by this outburst.

"I am delighted," he stammered. "I had no notion--"

He sprang out of the way just in time to avoid Mr. Turnbull, who took
a flying leap over the counter and dashed to the front of the shop.

"You look here, sir," he said; "you just look here."

He came back with two of the torn posters in his hand which were
flapping outside his shop.

"Look at those, sir," he said, and flung them down on the counter.

Wayne bent over them, and read on one--

"LAST FIGHTING.
REDUCTION OF THE CENTRAL DERVISH CITY.
REMARKABLE, ETC."

On the other he read--

"LAST SMALL REPUBLIC ANNEXED.
NICARAGUAN CAPITAL SURRENDERS AFTER A
MONTH'S FIGHTING.
GREAT SLAUGHTER."

Wayne bent over them again, evidently puzzled; then he looked at the
dates. They were both dated in August fifteen years before.

"Why do you keep these old things?" he said, startled entirely out of
his absurd tact of mysticism. "Why do you hang them outside your
shop?"

"Because," said the other, simply, "they are the records of the last
war. You mentioned war just now. It happens to be my hobby."

Wayne lifted his large blue eyes with an infantile wonder.

"Come with me," said Turnbull, shortly, and led him into a parlour at
the back of the shop.

In the centre of the parlour stood a large deal table. On it were set
rows and rows of the tin and lead soldiers which were part of the
shopkeeper's stock. The visitor would have thought nothing of it if it
had not been for a certain odd grouping of them, which did not seem
either entirely commercial or entirely haphazard.

"You are acquainted, no doubt," said Turnbull, turning his big eyes
upon Wayne--"you are acquainted, no doubt, with the arrangement of the
American and Nicaraguan troops in the last battle;" and he waved his
hand towards the table.

"I am afraid not," said Wayne. "I--"

"Ah! you were at that time occupied too much, perhaps, with the
Dervish affair. You will find it in this corner." And he pointed to a
part of the floor where there was another arrangement of children's
soldiers grouped here and there.

"You seem," said Wayne, "to be interested in military matters."

"I am interested in nothing else," answered the toy-shop keeper,
simply.

Wayne appeared convulsed with a singular, suppressed excitement.

"In that case," he said, "I may approach you with an unusual degree
of confidence. Touching the matter of the defence of Notting Hill,
I--"

"Defence of Notting Hill? Yes, sir. This way, sir," said Turnbull,
with great perturbation. "Just step into this side room;" and he led
Wayne into another apartment, in which the table was entirely covered
with an arrangement of children's bricks. A second glance at it told
Wayne that the bricks were arranged in the form of a precise and
perfect plan of Notting Hill. "Sir," said Turnbull, impressively, "you
have, by a kind of accident, hit upon the whole secret of my life. As
a boy, I grew up among the last wars of the world, when Nicaragua was
taken and the dervishes wiped out. And I adopted it as a hobby, sir,
as you might adopt astronomy or bird-stuffing. I had no ill-will to
any one, but I was interested in war as a science, as a game. And
suddenly I was bowled out. The big Powers of the world, having
swallowed up all the small ones, came to that confounded agreement,
and there was no more war. There was nothing more for me to do but to
do what I do now--to read the old campaigns in dirty old newspapers,
and to work them out with tin soldiers. One other thing had occurred
to me. I thought it an amusing fancy to make a plan of how this
district or ours ought to be defended if it were ever attacked. It
seems to interest you too."

"If it were ever attacked," repeated Wayne, awed into an almost
mechanical enunciation. "Mr. Turnbull, it is attacked. Thank Heaven, I
am bringing to at least one human being the news that is at bottom the
only good news to any son of Adam. Your life has not been useless.
Your work has not been play. Now, when the hair is already grey on
your head, Turnbull, you shall have your youth. God has not destroyed,
He has only deferred it. Let us sit down here, and you shall explain
to me this military map of Notting Hill. For you and I have to defend
Notting Hill together."

Mr. Turnbull looked at the other for a moment, then hesitated, and
then sat down beside the bricks and the stranger. He did not rise
again for seven hours, when the dawn broke.

* * * * *

The headquarters of Provost Adam Wayne and his Commander-in-Chief
consisted of a small and somewhat unsuccessful milk-shop at the corner
of Pump Street. The blank white morning had only just begun to break
over the blank London buildings when Wayne and Turnbull were to be
found seated in the cheerless and unswept shop. Wayne had something
feminine in his character; he belonged to that class of persons who
forget their meals when anything interesting is in hand. He had had
nothing for sixteen hours but hurried glasses of milk, and, with a
glass standing empty beside him, he was writing and sketching and
dotting and crossing out with inconceivable rapidity with a pencil and
a piece of paper. Turnbull was of that more masculine type in which a
sense of responsibility increases the appetite, and with his
sketch-map beside him he was dealing strenuously with a pile of
sandwiches in a paper packet, and a tankard of ale from the tavern
opposite, whose shutters had just been taken down. Neither of them
spoke, and there was no sound in the living stillness except the
scratching of Wayne's pencil and the squealing of an aimless-looking
cat. At length Wayne broke the silence by saying--

"Seventeen pounds eight shillings and ninepence."

Turnbull nodded and put his head in the tankard.

"That," said Wayne, "is not counting the five pounds you took
yesterday. What did you do with it?"

"Ah, that is rather interesting!" replied Turnbull, with his mouth
full. "I used that five pounds in a kindly and philanthropic act."

Wayne was gazing with mystification in his queer and innocent eyes.

"I used that five pounds," continued the other, "in giving no less
than forty little London boys rides in hansom cabs."

"Are you insane?" asked the Provost.

"It is only my light touch," returned Turnbull. "These hansom-cab
rides will raise the tone--raise the tone, my dear fellow--of our
London youths, widen their horizon, brace their nervous system, make
them acquainted with the various public monuments of our great city.
Education, Wayne, education. How many excellent thinkers have pointed
out that political reform is useless until we produce a cultured
populace. So that twenty years hence, when these boys are grown up--"

"Mad!" said Wayne, laying down his pencil; "and five pounds gone!"

"You are in error," explained Turnbull. "You grave creatures can never
be brought to understand how much quicker work really goes with the
assistance of nonsense and good meals. Stripped of its decorative
beauties, my statement was strictly accurate. Last night I gave forty
half-crowns to forty little boys, and sent them all over London to
take hansom cabs. I told them in every case to tell the cabman to
bring them to this spot. In half an hour from now the declaration of
war will be posted up. At the same time the cabs will have begun to
come in, you will have ordered out the guard, the little boys will
drive up in state, we shall commandeer the horses for cavalry, use the
cabs for barricade, and give the men the choice between serving in our
ranks and detention in our basements and cellars. The little boys we
can use as scouts. The main thing is that we start the war with an
advantage unknown in all the other armies--horses. And now," he said,
finishing his beer, "I will go and drill the troops."

And he walked out of the milk-shop, leaving the Provost staring.

A minute or two afterwards, the Provost laughed. He only laughed once
or twice in his life, and then he did it in a queer way as if it were
an art he had not mastered. Even he saw something funny in the
preposterous coup of the half-crowns and the little boys. He did not
see the monstrous absurdity of the whole policy and the whole war. He
enjoyed it seriously as a crusade, that is, he enjoyed it far more
than any joke can be enjoyed. Turnbull enjoyed it partly as a joke,
even more perhaps as a reversion from the things he hated--modernity
and monotony and civilisation. To break up the vast machinery of
modern life and use the fragments as engines of war, to make the
barricade of omnibuses and points of vantage of chimney-pots, was to
him a game worth infinite risk and trouble. He had that rational and
deliberate preference which will always to the end trouble the peace
of the world, the rational and deliberate preference for a short life
and a merry one.




CHAPTER III--_The Experiment of Mr. Buck_


An earnest and eloquent petition was sent up to the King signed with
the names of Wilson, Barker, Buck, Swindon, and others. It urged that
at the forthcoming conference to be held in his Majesty's presence
touching the final disposition of the property in Pump Street, it
might be held not inconsistent with political decorum and with the
unutterable respect they entertained for his Majesty if they appeared
in ordinary morning dress, without the costume decreed for them as
Provosts. So it happened that the company appeared at that council in
frock-coats and that the King himself limited his love of ceremony to
appearing (after his not unusual manner), in evening dress with one
order--in this case not the Garter, but the button of the Club of Old
Clipper's Best Pals, a decoration obtained (with difficulty) from a
halfpenny boy's paper. Thus also it happened that the only spot of
colour in the room was Adam Wayne, who entered in great dignity with
the great red robes and the great sword.

"We have met," said Auberon, "to decide the most arduous of modern
problems. May we be successful." And he sat down gravely.

Buck turned his chair a little, and flung one leg over the other.

"Your Majesty," he said, quite good-humouredly, "there is only one
thing I can't understand, and that is why this affair is not settled
in five minutes. Here's a small property which is worth a thousand to
us and is not worth a hundred to any one else. We offer the thousand.
It's not business-like, I know, for we ought to get it for less, and
it's not reasonable and it's not fair on us, but I'm damned if I can
see why it's difficult."

"The difficulty may be very simply stated," said Wayne. "You may offer
a million and it will be very difficult for you to get Pump Street."

"But look here, Mr. Wayne," cried Barker, striking in with a kind of
cold excitement. "Just look here. You've no right to take up a
position like that. You've a right to stand out for a bigger price,
but you aren't doing that. You're refusing what you and every sane man
knows to be a splendid offer simply from malice or spite--it must be
malice or spite. And that kind of thing is really criminal; it's
against the public good. The King's Government would be justified in
forcing you."

With his lean fingers spread on the table, he stared anxiously at
Wayne's face, which did not move.

"In forcing you ... it would," he repeated.

"It shall," said Buck, shortly, turning to the table with a jerk. "We
have done our best to be decent."

Wayne lifted his large eyes slowly.

"Was it my Lord Buck," he inquired, "who said that the King of England
'shall' do something?"

Buck flushed and said testily--

"I mean it must--it ought to. As I say, we've done our best to be
generous; I defy any one to deny it. As it is, Mr. Wayne, I don't want
to say a word that's uncivil. I hope it's not uncivil to say that you
can be, and ought to be, in gaol. It is criminal to stop public works
for a whim. A man might as well burn ten thousand onions in his front
garden or bring up his children to run naked in the street, as do what
you say you have a right to do. People have been compelled to sell
before now. The King could compel you, and I hope he will."

"Until he does," said Wayne, calmly, "the power and government of
this great nation is on my side and not yours, and I defy you to defy
it."

"In what sense," cried Barker, with his feverish eyes and hands, "is
the Government on your side?"

With one ringing movement Wayne unrolled a great parchment on the
table. It was decorated down the sides with wild water-colour sketches
of vestrymen in crowns and wreaths.

"The Charter of the Cities," he began.

Buck exploded in a brutal oath and laughed.

"That tomfool's joke. Haven't we had enough--"

"And there you sit," cried Wayne, springing erect and with a voice
like a trumpet, "with no argument but to insult the King before his
face."

Buck rose also with blazing eyes.

"I am hard to bully," he began--and the slow tones of the King struck
in with incomparable gravity--

"My Lord Buck, I must ask you to remember that your King is present.
It is not often that he needs to protect himself among his subjects."

Barker turned to him with frantic gestures.

"For God's sake don't back up the madman now," he implored. "Have
your joke another time. Oh, for Heaven's sake--"

"My Lord Provost of South Kensington," said King Auberon, steadily, "I
do not follow your remarks, which are uttered with a rapidity unusual
at Court. Nor do your well-meant efforts to convey the rest with your
fingers materially assist me. I say that my Lord Provost of North
Kensington, to whom I spoke, ought not in the presence of his
Sovereign to speak disrespectfully of his Sovereign's ordinances. Do
you disagree?"

Barker turned restlessly in his chair, and Buck cursed without
speaking. The King went on in a comfortable voice--

"My Lord Provost of Notting Hill, proceed."

Wayne turned his blue eyes on the King, and to every one's surprise
there was a look in them not of triumph, but of a certain childish
distress.

"I am sorry, your Majesty," he said; "I fear I was more than equally
to blame with the Lord Provost of North Kensington. We were debating
somewhat eagerly, and we both rose to our feet. I did so first, I am
ashamed to say. The Provost of North Kensington is, therefore,
comparatively innocent. I beseech your Majesty to address your rebuke
chiefly, at least, to me. Mr. Buck is not innocent, for he did no
doubt, in the heat of the moment, speak disrespectfully. But the rest
of the discussion he seems to me to have conducted with great good
temper."

Buck looked genuinely pleased, for business men are all simple-minded,
and have therefore that degree of communion with fanatics. The King,
for some reason, looked, for the first time in his life, ashamed.

"This very kind speech of the Provost of Notting Hill," began Buck,
pleasantly, "seems to me to show that we have at least got on to a
friendly footing. Now come, Mr. Wayne. Five hundred pounds have been
offered to you for a property you admit not to be worth a hundred.
Well, I am a rich man and I won't be outdone in generosity. Let us say
fifteen hundred pounds, and have done with it. And let us shake
hands;" and he rose, glowing and laughing.

"Fifteen hundred pounds," whispered Mr. Wilson of Bayswater; "can we
do fifteen hundred pounds?"

"I'll stand the racket," said Buck, heartily. "Mr. Wayne is a
gentleman and has spoken up for me. So I suppose the negotiations are
at an end."

Wayne bowed.

"They are indeed at an end. I am sorry I cannot sell you the
property."

"What?" cried Mr. Barker, starting to his feet.

"Mr. Buck has spoken correctly," said the King.

"I have, I have," cried Buck, springing up also; "I said--"

"Mr. Buck has spoken correctly," said the King; "the negotiations are
at an end."

All the men at the table rose to their feet; Wayne alone rose without
excitement.

"Have I, then," he said, "your Majesty's permission to depart? I have
given my last answer."

"You have it," said Auberon, smiling, but not lifting his eyes from
the table. And amid a dead silence the Provost of Notting Hill passed
out of the room.

"Well?" said Wilson, turning round to Barker--"well?"

Barker shook his head desperately.

"The man ought to be in an asylum," he said. "But one thing is
clear--we need not bother further about him. The man can be treated as
mad."

"Of course," said Buck, turning to him with sombre decisiveness.
"You're perfectly right, Barker. He is a good enough fellow, but he
can be treated as mad. Let's put it in simple form. Go and tell any
twelve men in any town, go and tell any doctor in any town, that there
is a man offered fifteen hundred pounds for a thing he could sell
commonly for four hundred, and that when asked for a reason for not
accepting it he pleads the inviolate sanctity of Notting Hill and
calls it the Holy Mountain. What would they say? What more can we have
on our side than the common sense of everybody? On what else do all
laws rest? I'll tell you, Barker, what's better than any further
discussion. Let's send in workmen on the spot to pull down Pump
Street. And if old Wayne says a word, arrest him as a lunatic. That's
all."

Barker's eyes kindled.

"I always regarded you, Buck, if you don't mind my saying so, as a
very strong man. I'll follow you."

"So, of course, will I," said Wilson.

Buck rose again impulsively.

"Your Majesty," he said, glowing with popularity, "I beseech your
Majesty to consider favourably the proposal to which we have committed
ourselves. Your Majesty's leniency, our own offers, have fallen in
vain on that extraordinary man. He may be right. He may be God. He
may be the devil. But we think it, for practical purposes, more
probable that he is off his head. Unless that assumption were acted
on, all human affairs would go to pieces. We act on it, and we propose
to start operations in Notting Hill at once."

The King leaned back in his chair.

"The Charter of the Cities ...," he said with a rich intonation.

But Buck, being finally serious, was also cautious, and did not again
make the mistake of disrespect.

"Your Majesty," he said, bowing, "I am not here to say a word against
anything your Majesty has said or done. You are a far better educated
man than I, and no doubt there were reasons, upon intellectual
grounds, for those proceedings. But may I ask you and appeal to your
common good-nature for a sincere answer? When you drew up the Charter
of the Cities, did you contemplate the rise of a man like Adam Wayne?
Did you expect that the Charter--whether it was an experiment, or a
scheme of decoration, or a joke--could ever really come to this--to
stopping a vast scheme of ordinary business, to shutting up a road,
to spoiling the chances of cabs, omnibuses, railway stations, to
disorganising half a city, to risking a kind of civil war? Whatever
were your objects, were they that?"

Barker and Wilson looked at him admiringly; the King more admiringly
still.

"Provost Buck," said Auberon, "you speak in public uncommonly well. I
give you your point with the magnanimity of an artist. My scheme did
not include the appearance of Mr. Wayne. Alas! would that my poetic
power had been great enough."

"I thank your Majesty," said Buck, courteously, but quickly. "Your
Majesty's statements are always clear and studied; therefore I may
draw a deduction. As the scheme, whatever it was, on which you set
your heart did not include the appearance of Mr. Wayne, it will
survive his removal. Why not let us clear away this particular Pump
Street, which does interfere with our plans, and which does not, by
your Majesty's own statement, interfere with yours."

"Caught out!" said the King, enthusiastically and quite impersonally,
as if he were watching a cricket match.

"This man Wayne," continued Buck, "would be shut up by any doctors in
England. But we only ask to have it put before them. Meanwhile no
one's interests, not even in all probability his own, can be really
damaged by going on with the improvements in Notting Hill. Not our
interests, of course, for it has been the hard and quiet work of ten
years. Not the interests of Notting Hill, for nearly all its educated
inhabitants desire the change. Not the interests of your Majesty, for
you say, with characteristic sense, that you never contemplated the
rise of the lunatic at all. Not, as I say, his own interests, for the
man has a kind heart and many talents, and a couple of good doctors
would probably put him righter than all the free cities and sacred
mountains in creation. I therefore assume, if I may use so bold a
word, that your Majesty will not offer any obstacle to our proceeding
with the improvements."

And Mr. Buck sat down amid subdued but excited applause among the
allies.

"Mr. Buck," said the King, "I beg your pardon, for a number of
beautiful and sacred thoughts, in which you were generally classified
as a fool. But there is another thing to be considered. Suppose you
send in your workmen, and Mr. Wayne does a thing regrettable indeed,
but of which, I am sorry to say, I think him quite capable--knocks
their teeth out?"

"I have thought of that, your Majesty," said Mr. Buck, easily, "and I
think it can simply be guarded against. Let us send in a strong guard
of, say, a hundred men--a hundred of the North Kensington Halberdiers"
(he smiled grimly), "of whom your Majesty is so fond. Or say a hundred
and fifty. The whole population of Pump Street, I fancy, is only about
a hundred."

"Still they might stand together and lick you," said the King,
dubiously.

"Then say two hundred," said Buck, gaily.

"It might happen," said the King, restlessly, "that one Notting Hiller
fought better than two North Kensingtons."

"It might," said Buck, coolly; "then say two hundred and fifty."

The King bit his lip.

"And if they are beaten too?" he said viciously.

"Your Majesty," said Buck, and leaned back easily in his chair,
"suppose they are. If anything be clear, it is clear that all fighting
matters are mere matters of arithmetic. Here we have a hundred and
fifty, say, of Notting Hill soldiers. Or say two hundred. If one of
them can fight two of us--we can send in, not four hundred, but six
hundred, and smash him. That is all. It is out of all immediate
probability that one of them could fight four of us. So what I say is
this. Run no risks. Finish it at once. Send in eight hundred men and
smash him--smash him almost without seeing him. And go on with the
improvements."

And Mr. Buck pulled out a bandanna and blew his nose.

"Do you know, Mr. Buck," said the King, staring gloomily at the table,
"the admirable clearness of your reason produces in my mind a
sentiment which I trust I shall not offend you by describing as an
aspiration to punch your head. You irritate me sublimely. What can it
be in me? Is it the relic of a moral sense?"

"But your Majesty," said Barker, eagerly and suavely, "does not refuse
our proposals?"

"My dear Barker, your proposals are as damnable as your manners. I
want to have nothing to do with them. Suppose I stopped them
altogether. What would happen?"

Barker answered in a very low voice--

"Revolution."

The King glanced quickly at the men round the table. They were all
looking down silently: their brows were red.

He rose with a startling suddenness, and an unusual pallor.

"Gentlemen," he said, "you have overruled me. Therefore I can speak
plainly. I think Adam Wayne, who is as mad as a hatter, worth more
than a million of you. But you have the force, and, I admit, the
common sense, and he is lost. Take your eight hundred halberdiers and
smash him. It would be more sportsmanlike to take two hundred."

"More sportsmanlike," said Buck, grimly, "but a great deal less
humane. We are not artists, and streets purple with gore do not catch
our eye in the right way."

"It is pitiful," said Auberon. "With five or six times their number,
there will be no fight at all."

"I hope not," said Buck, rising and adjusting his gloves. "We desire
no fight, your Majesty. We are peaceable business men."

"Well," said the King, wearily, "the conference is at an end at last."

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