The Napoleon of Notting Hill

by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

  BOOK V

  CHAPTER I

  THE EMPIRE OF NOTTING HILL

  ON the evening of the third of October, twenty years after the great victory of Notting Hill, which gave it the dominion of London, King Auberon, came, as of old, out of Kensington Place.

  He had changed little, save for a streak or two of grey in his hair, for his face had always been old, and his step slow, and, as it were, decrepit.

  If he looked old, it was not because of anything physical or mental. It was because he still wore, with a quaint conservatism, the frock-coat and high hat of the days before the great war. “I have survived the Deluge,” he said. “I am a pyramid, and must behave as such.”

  As he passed up the street the Kensingtonians in their picturesque blue smocks, saluted him as a King, and then looked after him as a curiosity. It seemed odd to them that men had once worn so elvish an attire.

  The King, cultivating the walk attributed to the oldest inhabitant (“Gaffer Auberon” his friends were now confidentially desired to call him), went toddling northward. He paused, with reminiscence in his eye, at the Southern Gate of Notting Hill, one of those nine great gates of bronze and steel, wrought with reliefs of the old battles, by the hand of Chiffy himself.

  “Ah!” he said, shaking his head and assuming an unnecessary air of age, and a provincialism of accent, “Ah! I mind when there warn’t none of this here.”

  He passed through the Ossington Gate, surmounted by a great lion, wrought in red copper on yellow brass, with the motto, “Nothing Ill.” The guard in red and gold saluted him with his halberd.

  It was about sunset, and the lamps were being lit. Auberon paused to look at them, for they were Chiffy’s finest work, and his artistic eye never failed to feast on them. In memory of the Great Battle of the Lamps, each great iron lamp was surmounted by a veiled figure, sword in hand, holding over the flame an iron hood or extinguisher, as if ready to let it fall if the armies of the South and West should again show their flags in the city. Thus no child in Notting Hill could play about the streets without the very lamp-posts reminding him of the salvation of his country in the dreadful year.

  “Old Wayne was right in a way,” commented the King. “The sword does make things beautiful. It has made the whole world romantic by now. And to think people once thought me a buffoon for suggesting a romantic Notting Hill. Deary me, deary me (I think that is the expression). It seems like a previous existence.”

  Turning a corner he found himself in Pump Street, opposite the four shops which Adam Wayne had studied twenty years before. He entered idly the shop of Mr. Mead, the grocer. Mr. Mead was somewhat older, like the rest of the world, and his red beard, which he now wore with a moustache, and long and full, was partly blanched and discoloured. He was dressed in a long and richly embroidered robe of blue, brown, and crimson, interwoven with an Eastern complexity of pattern, and covered with obscure symbols and pictures, representing his wares passing from hand to hand and from nation to nation. Round his neck was the chain with the Blue Argosy cut in turquoise, which he wore as Grand Master of the Grocers. The whole shop had the sombre and sumptuous look of its owner. The wares were displayed as prominently as in the old days, but they were now blended and arranged with a sense of tint and grouping, too often neglected by the dim grocers of those forgotten days. The wares were shown plainly, but shown not so much as an old grocer would have shown his stock, but rather as an educated virtuoso would have shown his treasures. The tea was stored in great blue and green vases, inscribed with the nine indispensable sayings of the wise men of China. Other vases of a confused orange and purple, less rigid and dominant, more humble and dreamy, stored symbolically the tea of India. A row of caskets of a simple silvery metal contained tinned meats. Each was wrought with some rude but rhythmic form, as a shell, a horn, a fish, or an apple, to indicate what material had been canned in it. “Your Majesty,” said Mr. Mead, sweeping an Oriental reverence. “This is an honour to me, but yet more an honour to the city.”

  Auberon took off his hat.

  “Mr. Mead,” he said, “Notting Hill, whether in giving or taking, can deal in nothing but honour. Do you happen to sell liquorice?”

  “Liquorice, sire,” said Mr. Mead, “is not the least important of our benefits out of the dark heart of Arabia.”

  And going reverently towards a green and silver canister, made in the form of an Arabian mosque, he proceeded to serve his customer.

  “I was just thinking, Mr. Mead,” said the King reflectively, “I don’t know why I should think about it just now, but I was just thinking of twenty years ago. Do you remember the times before the war?”

  The grocer, having wrapped up the liquorice sticks in a piece of paper (inscribed with some appropriate sentiment), lifted his large grey eyes dreamily, and looked at the darkening sky outside.

  “Oh yes, your Majesty,” he said. “I remember these streets before the Lord Provost began to rule us. I can’t remember how we felt very well. All the great songs and the fighting change one so; and I don’t think we can really estimate all we owe to the Provost; but I can remember his coming into this very shop twenty-two years ago, and I remember the things he said. The singular thing is that as far as I remember I thought the things he said odd at that time. Now it’s the things that I said, as far as I can recall them, that seem to me odd...as odd as a madman’s antics.”

  “Ah!” said the King; and looked at him with an unfathomable quietness.

  “I thought nothing of being a grocer then,” he said. “Isn’t that odd enough for anybody? I thought nothing of all the wonderful places that my goods came from, and wonderful ways that they are made. I did not know that I was for all practical purposes a king with slaves spearing fishes near the secret-pool, and gathering fruits in the islands under the world. My mind was a blank on the thing. I was as mad as a hatter.”

  The King turned also, and stared out into the dark, where the great lamps that commemorated the battle were already flaming.

  “And is this the end of poor old Wayne?” he said, half to himself. “To inflame every one so much that he is lost himself in the blaze; Is this his victory, that he, my incomparable Wayne, is now only one in a world of Waynes? Has he conquered and become by conquest commonplace? Must Mr. Mead, the grocer, talk as high as he? Lord! what a strange world in which a man cannot remain unique even by taking the trouble to go mad.”

  And he went dreamily out of the shop.

  He paused outside the next one almost precisely as the Provost had done two decades before.

  “How uncommonly creepy this shop looks,” he said. “But yet somehow encouragingly creepy, invitingly creepy. It looks like something in a jolly old nursery story in which you are frightened out of your skin, and yet know that things always end well. The way those low sharp gables are carved like great black bat’s wings folded down, and the way those queer-coloured bowls underneath are made to shine like giant’s eyeballs. It looks like a benevolent warlock’s hut. It is apparently a chemist’s.”

  Almost as he spoke, Mr. Bowles, the chemist, came to his shop door in a long black velvet gown and hood, monastic as it were, but yet with a touch of the diabolic. His hair was still quite black, and his face even paler than of old. The only spot of colour he carried was a red star cut in some precious stone of strong tint, hung on his breast. He belonged to the Society of the Red Star of Charity, founded on the lamps displayed by doctors and chemists.

  “A fine evening, sir,” said the chemist. “Why, I can scarcely be mistaken in supposing it to be your Majesty. Pray step inside and share a bottle of sal-volatile, or anything that my take your fancy. As it happens there is an old acquaintance of your Majesty’s in my shop carousing (if I may be permitted the term) upon that beverage at this moment.”

  The King entered the shop, which was an Aladdin’s garden of shades and hues, for as the chemist’s scheme of colour was more brilliant than the grocer’s scheme, so it was arranged with even more delicacy and fancy. Never
, if the phrase may be employed, had such a nosegay of medicines been presented to the artistic eye.

  But even the solemn rainbow of that evening interior was rivalled or even eclipsed by the figure standing in the centre of the shop. His form, which was a large and stately one, was clad in a brilliant blue velvet, cut in the richest Renaissance fashion, and slashed so as to show gleams and gaps of a wonderful lemon or pale yellow. He had several chains round his neck and his plumes, which were of several tints, of bronze and gold, hung down to the great gold hilt of his long sword. He was drinking a dose of sal-volatile, and admiring its opal tint. The King advanced with a slight mystification towards the tall figure, whose face was in shadow, then he said:

  “By the Great Lord of Luck, Barker!”

  The figure, removed his plumed cap, showing the same dark head and long, almost equine, face which the King had so often seen rising out of the high collar of Bond Street. Except for a grey patch on each temple, it was totally unchanged.

  “Your Majesty,” said Barker, “this is a meeting nobly retrospective, a meeting that has about it a certain October gold. I drink to old days;” and he finished his sal-volatile with simple feeling.

  “I am delighted to see you again, Barker,” said the King. “It is, indeed, long since we met. What with my travels in Asia Minor, and my book having to be written (you have read my ‘Life of Prince Albert for Children,’ of course), we have scarcely met twice since the Great War. That is twenty years ago.”

  “I wonder,” said Barker, thoughtfully, “if I might speak freely to your Majesty.”

  “Well,” said Auberon, “it’s rather late in the day to start speaking respectfully. Flap away, my bird of freedom.”

  “Well, your Majesty,” replied Barker, lowering his voice, “I don’t think it will be so long to the next war.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Auberon.

  “We will stand this insolence no longer,” burst out Barker, fiercely. “We are not slaves because Adam Wayne twenty years ago cheated us with a water-pipe. Notting Hill is Notting Hill; it is not the world. We in South Kensington, we also have memories...aye, and hopes. If they fought for these trumpery shops and a few lamp-posts, shall we not fight for the great High Street and the sacred Natural History Museum?”

  “Great Heavens!” said the astounded Auberon. “Will wonders never cease? Have the two greatest marvels been achieved? Have you turned altruistic, and has Wayne turned selfish? Are you the patriot, and he the tyrant?”

  “It is not from Wayne himself altogether that the evil comes,” answered Barker. “He, indeed, is now mostly wrapped in dreams, and sits with his old sword beside the fire. But Notting Hill is the tyrant, your Majesty. Its Council and its crowds have been so intoxicated by the spreading over the whole city of Wayne’s old ways and visions, that they try to meddle with every one, and rule every one, and civilize every one, and tell every one what is good for him. I do not deny the great impulse which his old war, wild as it seemed, gave to the civic life of our time. It came when I was still a young man, and I admit it enlarged my career. But we are not going to see our own cities flouted and thwarted from day to day because of something Wayne did for us all nearly a quarter of a century ago. I am just waiting here for news upon this very matter. It is rumoured that Notting Hill has vetoed the statue of General Wilson they are putting up opposite Chepstow Place. If that is so, it is a black and white shameless breach of the terms of which we surrendered to Turnbull after the battle of the Tower. We were to keep our own customs and self-government. If that is so...”

  “It is so,” said a deep voice; and both men turned round.

  A burly figure in purple robes, with a silver eagle hung round his neck and moustaches almost as florid as his plumes, stood in the doorway.

  “Yes,” he said, acknowledging the King’s start, “I am Provost Buck, and the news is true. These men of the Hill have forgotten that we fought round the Tower as well as they did, and that it is sometimes foolish, as well as base, to despise the conquered.”

  “Let us step outside,” said Barker, with a grim composure.

  Buck did so, and stood rolling his eyes up and down the lamp-lit street.

  “I would like to have a go at smashing all this,” he muttered, “though I am over sixty. I would like...”

  His voice ended in a cry, and he reeled back a step, with his hands to his eyes, as he had done in those streets twenty years before.

  “Darkness!” he cried “darkness again! What does it mean?”

  For in truth every lamp in the street had gone out, so that they could not see even each other’s outline, except faintly. The voice of the chemist came with startling cheerfulness out of the density.

  “Oh, don’t you know?” he said. “Did they never tell you this is the Feast of the Lamps, the anniversary of the great battle that almost lost and just saved Notting Hill? Don’t you know, your Majesty, that on this night twenty-one years ago we saw Wilson’s green uniforms charging down this street, and driving Wayne and Turnbull back upon the gas-works, fighting with their handful of men like fiends from hell? And that then, in that great hour, Wayne sprang through a window of the gas-works, with one blow of his hand brought darkness on the whole city, and then with a cry like a lion’s, that was heard through four streets, flew at Wilson’s men, sword in hand, and swept them, bewildered as they were, and ignorant of the map, clear out of the sacred street again? And don’t you know that upon that night every year all lights are turned out for half an hour while we sing the Notting Hill anthem in the darkness? Hark! there it begins.”

  Through the night came a crash of drums, and then a strong swell of human voices:

  “When the world was in the balance, there was night on Notting Hill,

  (There was night on Notting Hill): it was nobler than the day;

  On the cities where the lights are and the firesides glow,

  From the seas and from the deserts came the thing we did not know,

  Came the darkness, came the darkness, came the darkness on the foe,

  And the old guard of God turned to bay.

  For the old guard of God turns to bay, turns to bay,

  And the stars fall down before it ere its banners fall to-day.

  For when armies were around us as a howling and a horde,

  When falling was the citadel and broken was the sword,

  The darkness came upon them like the Dragon of the Lord,

  When the old guard of God turned to bay.”

  The voices were just uplifting themselves in a second verse, when they were stopped by a scurry and a yell. Barker had bounded into the street with a cry of “South Kensington!” and a drawn dagger. In less time than man could blink, the whole packed street was full of curses and struggling. Barker was flung back against the shop-front, but used the second only to draw his sword as well as his dagger, and calling out, “This is not the first time I’ve come through the thick of you,” flung himself again into the press. It was evident that he had drawn blood at last, for a more violent outcry arose, and many other knives and sworlds were discernible in the faint light. Barker, after having wounded more than one man, seemed on the point of being flung back again, when Buck suddenly stepped out into the street. He had no weapon, for he affected rather the peaceful magnificence of the great burgher, than the pugnacious dandyism which had replaced the old sombre dandyism in Barker. But with a blow of his clenched fist he broke the pane of the next shop, which was the old curiosity shop, and, plunging in his hand, snatched a kind of Japanese scimitar, and calling out, “Kensington! Kensington!” rushed to Barker’s assistance.

  Barker’s sword was broken, but he was laying about him with his dagger. Just as Buck ran up, a man of Hotting 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 fro
m 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 monuments 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 realize 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...”