 This is a LibraVox recording. All LibraVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton Dedication to Hillair Belock For every tiny town or place, God made the stars especially. Babies look up with owlish face and see them tangled in a tree. You saw a moon from Sussex Downs, a Sussex moon untraveled still. I saw a moon that was the towns, the largest lamp on Campton Hill. A heaven is everywhere at home, the big blue cap that always fits. And so it is, be calm they come, to goal at last my wandering wits. So is it with the heroic thing. This shall not end for the world's end. And though the sullen engines swing, be you not much afraid, my friend. This did not end by Nelson's urn where an immortal England sits, nor where your tall young men in turn drank deathlike wine at Austerlitz. And when the pendants bet us mark what cold mechanic happenings must come our souls, said in the dark. Be like, but there are likelier things. Likelier across these flats afar, these sulky levels smooth and free, the drum shall crash a wall of war, and death shall dance with liberty. Likelier the barricade shall blare, slaughter below and smoke above, and death and hate and hell declare, that men have found a thing to love. Far from your sunny upland set I saw the dream the streets I trod, the lit starlit streets shot out and met, the starry streets that point to God, this legend of an epic hour, a child I dreamed, and dreameth still, under the great gray water tower that strikes the stars on Campden Hill. GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON CHAPTER I Introductory remarks on the art of prophecy. The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do so till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called Keep Tomorrow Dark, and which is also named by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt. Cheat the Prophet. The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. Then they go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun. For human beings, being children, have the childish wilfulness and childish secrecy, and they never have from the beginning of the world done what the wise men have seen to be inevitable. They stoned the false prophets, it is said, but they could have stoned true prophets with a greater and juster enjoyment. Individually men may present a more or less rational appearance, eating, sleeping, and scheming, but humanity as a whole is changeful, mystical, fickle, delightful. Men are men, but man is a woman. But in the beginning of the twentieth century, the game of cheat the Prophet was made far more difficult than it ever had been before. The reason was that there were so many prophets, and so many prophecies, that it was difficult to elude all their ingenuities. When a man did something free and frantic and entirely his own, a horrible thought struck him afterwards. It might have been predicted. Whenever a duke climbed a lamppost, when a dean got drunk, he could not be really happy. He could not be certain that he was not fulfilling some prophecy. In the beginning of the twentieth century, you could not see the ground for clever men. They were so common that a stupid man was quite exceptional, and when they found him they followed him in crowds down the street and treasured him up and gave him some high post in the state. And all these clever men were at work giving accounts of what would happen in the next age, all quite clear, all quite keen-sighted and ruthless, and all quite different. And it seemed that the good old game of hoodwinking your ancestors could not really be managed this time, because the ancestors neglected meat and sleep and practical politics so that they might meditate day and night on what their descendants would be likely to do. But the way the prophets of the twentieth century went to work was this. They took something or another that was certainly going on in their time and then said that it would go on more and more until something extraordinary happened. And very often they added that in some odd place that extraordinary thing had happened and that it showed the signs of the times. Thus for instance there were Mr. H. G. Wells and others who thought that science would take charge of the future and just as the motor car was quicker than the coach so some lovely thing would be quicker than the motor car and so on forever. And there arose from their ashes Dr. Quillp who said that a man could be sent on his machine so fast round the world that he could keep up a long chatty conversation in some old world village by saying a word of a sentence each time he came round. And it was said that the experiment had been tried on an apopleptic old major that was sent round the world so fast that there seemed to be to the inhabitants of some other star a continuous band round the earth of white whiskers red complexion and tweeds a thing like the Ring of Saturn. And then there was the opposite school. There was Mr. Edward Carpenter who thought that we should in a very short time return to nature and live simply and slowly as the animals do. And Edward Carpenter was followed by James Pickie D.D. for Pocahontas College who said that men were immensely improved by grazing or taking their food slowly and continuously after the manner of cows. And he said that he had, with the most encouraging results, turned city men out on all fours in a field covered with veal cutlets. Then Tolstoy and the Humanitarian said that the world is growing more merciful and therefore no one would ever desire to kill. And Mr. Mick not only became a vegetarian but at length declared vegetarianism doomed shedding, as he called it finally, the green blood of the silent animals and predicted that men in a better age would live on nothing but salt. And then came the pamphlet from Oregon where the thing was tried the pamphlet called Why Should Salt Suffer? And there was more trouble. And on the other hand some people were predicting the lines of kinship would become narrower and sterner. There was Mr. Cecil Rhodes who thought that the one thing of the future was the British Empire and that there would be a gulf between those who were of the empire and those who were not between the Chinaman in Hong Kong and the Chinaman outside between the Spaniard on the Rock of Gibraltar and the Spaniard Offit similar to the gulf between man and the lower animals. And in the same way his impetuous friend Dr. Zappi, the Paul of Anglo-Saxonism carried it a bit further and as a result of this view cannibalism should be held to mean eating a member of the empire not eating one of the subject peoples who should, he said, be killed without needless pain. His horror at the idea of eating a man in British Guiana showed how they misunderstood his stoicism who thought him devoid of feeling. He was, however, in a hard position as it was said that he had attempted the experiment and, living in London, had to subsist entirely on Italian organ grinders. And his end was terrible. For just when he had begun Sir Paul Swiller read his great paper at the Royal Society proving that the savages were not only quite right in eating their enemies but right on moral and hygienic grounds since it was true that the qualities of the enemy when eaten passed into the eater. The notion that the nature of an Italian organ man was irrevocably growing and burgeoning inside him was almost more than the kindly old professor could bear. There was Mr. Benjamin Kidd who said that the growing note of our race would be the care for and knowledge of the future. His idea was developed more powerfully by William Borker, who wrote that passage which every schoolboy knows by heart about men in future ages weeping by the graze of their descendants and tourists being shown over the scene of the historic battle which was to take place some centuries afterwards. And Mr. Stead, too, was prominent who thought that England would, in the 20th century, be united to America and his young lieutenant, Graham Podge, who included the states of France, Germany, and Russia in the American Union, the state of Russia being abbreviated to RA. There was Mr. Sidney Webb, also, who said that the future would see a continuously increasing order and neatness in the life of the people and his poor friend Phipps, who went mad and ran about the country with an axe hacking branches off the trees whenever they were not the same number on both sides. All these clever men were prophesying with every variety of ingenuity what would happen soon, and they all did it in the same way by taking something they saw going strong as the saying is and carrying it as far as ever their imaginations could stretch. This, they said, was the true and simple way of anticipating the future. Just as, said Dr. Pilkins, in a fine passage, just as when we see a pig in a litter larger than the other pigs, we know that by an unalterable law of the inscrutable it will someday be larger than an elephant. Just as we know when we see weeds and dandelions growing more and more thickly in a garden that they must, in spite of all our efforts, grow taller than the chimney-pots and swallow the house from sight. So we know and reverently acknowledge that when any power in human politics has shown for any period of time any considerable activity it will go on until it reaches to the sky. And it did certainly appear that the prophets had put the people engaged in the old game of cheat the prophet in a quite unprecedented difficulty. It seemed really hard to do anything without fulfilling some of their prophecies. But there was nevertheless in the eyes of laborers in the streets of peasants in the fields, of sailors and children, and especially women, a strange look that kept the wise men in a perfect fever of doubt. They could not fathom the motionless mirth in their eyes. They still had something up their sleeve. They were still playing the game of cheat the prophet. Then the wise men grew, like wild things, and swayed hither and thither, crying, What can it be? What can it be? What will London be like in a century hence? Is there anything we have not thought of? Houses upside down, more hygienic perhaps? Men walking on hands make feet flexible, don't you know? Moon, motor-cars, no heads. And so they swayed and wondered till they died. And were buried nicely. Then the people went and did what they liked. Let me no longer conceal the painful truth. The people had cheated the prophets of the twentieth century. When the curtain goes up on this story, eighty years after the present date, London is almost exactly like what it is now. The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton Book 1 Chapter 2 The Man in Green Very few words are needed to explain why London, a hundred years hence, will be very like it is now, or rather, since I must slip into a prophetic past, why London, when my story opens, was very like it was in those enviable days, when I was still alive. The reason can be stated in one sentence. The people had absolutely lost faith in revolutions. All revolutions are doctrinal, such as the French one, or the one that introduced Christianity. For it stands to common sense that you cannot upset all existing things, customs, and compromises, unless you believe in something outside them, something positive and divine. Now England, during this century, lost all belief in this. It believed in a thing called evolution, and it said, all theoretic changes have ended in blood and N. U. I. If we change, we must change slowly and safely, as the animals do. Nature's revolutions are the only successful ones that has been no conservative reaction in favour of tales. And some things did change, things that were not much thought of, dropped out of sight, things that had not often happened, did not happen at all. Thus, for instance, the actual physical force ruling the country. The soldiers and police grew smaller and smaller, and at last vanished, almost to a point. The people combined could have swept the few policemen away in ten minutes. They did not, because they did not believe it would do them the least good. They had lost faith in revolutions. Democracy was dead, for no one minded the governing class governing. England was now practically a despotism, but not an hereditary one. Someone in the official class was made king. No one cared how, no one cared who. He was merely a universal secretary. In this manner it happened that everything in London was very quiet, that vague and somewhat depressed reliance upon things happening as they have always happened, which is with all Londoners a mood, had become an assumed condition. There was really no reason for any man doing anything but the thing he had done the day before. There was therefore no reason whatever why the three young men who had always walked up to their government office together should not walk up to it together on this particular wintery and cloudy morning. Everything in that age had become mechanical, and government clerks especially. All those clerks assembled regularly at their posts. Three of those clerks always walked into town together. All the neighborhood knew them. Two of them were tall and one short, and on this particular morning the short clerk was only a few seconds late to join the other two as they passed his gate. He could have overtaken them in three strides. He could have called after them easily, but he did not. For some reason that will never be understood until all souls are judged if they are ever judged. The idea was at this time classed with fetish worship. He did not join his two companions, but walked steadily behind them. The day was dull, their dress was dull, everything was dull, but in some odd impulse he walked through street after street, through district after district, looking at the backs of the two men who would have swung round at the sound of his voice. Now there is a law written in the darkest of the books of life, and it is this. If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times you are perfectly safe. If you look at it the thousandth time you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time. So the short government official looked at the coattails of the tall government officials, and through street after street and round corner after corner saw only coattails, coattails, and again coattails. When he did not in the least know why something happened to his eyes. Two black dragons were walking backwards in front of him. Two black dragons were looking at him with evil eyes. The dragons were walking backwards it was true, but they kept their eyes fixed on him nonetheless. The eyes which he saw were in truth, only the two buttons at the back of a frock coat. Perhaps some traditional memory of their meaningless character gave this half-witted prominence to their gaze. The slit between the tails was the nose line of the monster. Whenever the tails flapped in the wintry wind the dragons licked their lips. It was only a momentary fancy, but the small clerk found it embedded in his soul ever afterwards. He never could again think of men in frock coats except as dragons walking backwards. He explained afterwards quite tactfully and nicely to his two official friends that while feeling an inexpressible regard for each of them he could not seriously regard the face of either of them as anything but a kind of tail. It was he admitted a handsome tail, a tail elevated in the air, but if he said any true friend of theirs wished to see their faces to look into the eyes of their soul that friend must be allowed to walk reverently round behind them so as to see them from the rear. There he would see the two black dragons with blind eyes. But when first the two black dragons sprang out of the fog upon the small clerk they had merely the effect of all miracles. They changed the universe. He discovered the fact that all romantics know that adventures happen on dull days and not on sunny ones. When the cord of monotony is stretched most tight then it breaks with a sound-like song. He had scarcely noticed the weather before but with the four dead eyes glaring at him he looked round and realized the strange dead day. The morning was wintry and dim, not misty, but darkened with that shadow of cloud or snow which steeps everything in a green or copper twilight. The light there is on such a day seems not so much to come from the clear heavens but to be a phosphorescence clinging to the shapes themselves. The load of heaven and the clouds is like the load of waters and the men move like fishes feeling that they are on the floor of a sea. Everything in a London street completes the fantasy. The carriages and cabs themselves resemble deep sea creatures with eyes of flame. He had been startled at first to meet two dragons now. He found he was among deep sea dragons possessing the deep sea. The two young men in front were like the small young man himself, well-dressed. The lines of their frock coats and silk hats had that luxuriant severity which marks the modern fob, hideous as he is, a favorite exercise of the modern drutzman. That element which Mr. Max Beerbaum has admirably expressed in speaking of certain congruities of dark cloth and the rigid perfection of linen. They walked with the gait of an affected snail and they spoke at the longest intervals, dropping a sentence at about every sixth lamppost. They crawled on past the lampposts. Their mean was so immovable that a fanciful description might almost say that the lamppost crawled past the man as in a dream. Then the small man suddenly ran after them and said, I want to get my hair cut. I say, do you know a little shop anywhere where they cut your hair properly? I keep on having my hair cut, but it keeps growing again. One of the tall men looked at him with the air of a pained naturalist. Why, here is a little place, cried the small man with a sort of imbecile cheerfulness as the bright bulging window of a fashionable toilet saloon growed abruptly out of the foggy twilight. Do you know, I often find hairdressers when I walk about London. I'll lunch with you, it's Chinese, you know. I'm awfully fond of hairdresser shops. They're miles better than those nasty butchers. And he disappeared into the doorway. The man called James continued to gaze after him. A monocle screwed into his eye. What the devil do you make of that fellow? He asked his companion, a pale young man with a high nose. The pale young man reflected conscientiously for some minutes and then said, had a knock on his head when he was a kid, I should think. No, I don't think it's that, replied the Honorable James Barker. I have sometimes fancied he was a sort of artist, Lambert. Bosh, cried Mr. Lambert briefly. I admit I can't make him out, resumed Barker abstractedly. He never opens his mouth without saying something so indescribably half-witted that to call him a fool seems the very feeblest attempt at characterization. But there's another thing about him that's rather funny. Do you know that he has the one collection of Japanese lacquer in Europe? Have you ever seen his books? All Greek poets and medieval French and that sort of thing? Have you ever been in his rooms? It's like being inside an anthist. And he moves about and all that and talks like a turnip. Well, damn all books. Your blue books as well, said the ingenuous Mr. Lambert with a friendly simplicity. I don't understand such things. What do you make of him? He's beyond me, returned Barker. But if you ask me for my opinion, I should say he was a man with a taste for nonsense, as they call it, artistic fooling. And all that kind of thing. And I seriously believe that he has talked nonsense so much that he has half bewildered his own mind and doesn't know the difference between sanity and insanity. He has gone round the metal world, so to speak, and found the place where the East and the West are one, and extreme idiocy is as good as sense. But I can't explain these psychological games. You can't explain them to me, replied Mr. Wilford Lambert with candor. As they passed up the long streets toward their restaurant, the copper twilight cleared slowly to a pale yellow, and by the time they reached it, they stood discernible in a tolerable winter daylight. The Honourable James Barker, one of the most powerful officials in the English government, by this time a rigidly official one, was a lean and elegant young man with a blank, handsome face and bleak blue eyes. He had a great amount of intellectual capacity of that peculiar kind which raises a man from throne to throne and lets him die loaded with honors without having either amused or enlightened the mind of a single man. Wilford Lambert, the youth with the nose which appeared to impoverish the rest of his face, had also contributed little to the enlargement of the human spirit. But he had the honourable excuse of being a fool. Lambert would have been called a silly man. Barker, with all his cleverness, might have been called a stupid man, but mere silliness and stupidity sank into insignificance in the presence of the awful and mysterious treasures of foolishness, apparently stored up in the small figure that stood waiting for them outside Chikinani's. The little man, whose name was Auberon Quinn, had an appearance compounded of a baby and an owl. His round head, round eyes, seemed to have been designed by nature playfully with a pair of compasses. His flat dark hair and preposterously long frock coat gave him something of the look of a child's Noah. When he entered a room of strangers they mistook him for a small boy and wanted to take him on their knees until he spoke, when they perceived that a boy would have been more intelligent. I have been waiting quite a long time, said Quinn mildly. It's awfully funny I should see you coming up the street at last. Why, asked Lambert, staring, you told us to come here yourself. My mother used to tell people to come places, said the sage. They were about to turn into the restaurant with the resigned air when their eyes were caught by something in the street. The weather, though cold and blank, was now quite clear and across the dull brown of the wood pavement and between the dull gray terraces was moving, something not to be seen for miles around, not to be seen perhaps at that time in England. A man dressed in bright colors, a small crowd hung on the man's heels. He was a tall, stately man, clad in a military uniform of brilliant green, splashed with great silver facings. From the shoulders hung a short green furrowed cloak, somewhat like that of a hussar, the lining of which gleamed every now and then with a kind of tawny crimson. His breast glittered with metals round his neck was the red ribbon and star of some foreign order, and a long straight sword with a blazing hilt trailed and clattered along the pavement. At this time the Pacific and utilitarian development of Europe had relegated all such customs to the museums. The only remaining force, the small but well-organized police, were attired in a somber and hygienic manner. But even those who remembered the last lifeguards and Lancers who disappeared in 1912 must have known at a glance that this was not and never had been an English uniform, and this conviction would have been heightened by the yellow aquiline face, like Dante, carved in bronze, which rose crowned with white hair out of the green military collar, a keen and distinguished but not an English face. The magnificence with which the green-clad gentlemen walked down the center of the road would be something difficult to express in human language, but it was an ingrained simplicity and an arrogance, something in the mere carriage of the head and body which made ordinary moderns in the street stare after him. But it had comparatively little to do with actual conscious gestures or expression. In the manner of these merely temporary movements the man appeared to be rather worried and inquisitive, but he was inquisitive with the inquisitiveness of a despot and worried as with the responsibilities of a God. The men who lounged and wandered behind him followed partly with an astonishment at his brilliant uniform, that is to say partly because of that instinct which makes us all follow one who looks like a madman, but far more because of that instinct which makes all men follow and worship anyone who chooses to behave like a king. He had so sublime an extent that great quality of royalty and almost imbecilic unconsciousness of everybody that people went after him as they do after kings to see what would be the first thing or person he would take notice of. And all the time, as we have said, in spite of his quiet splendor there was an air about him as if he were looking for somebody, an expression of inquiry. Suddenly that expression of inquiry vanished. None could tell why, and was replaced by an expression of contentment. Amid the rapt attention of the mob of idlers the magnificent green gentleman deflected himself from his direct course down the center of the road and walked to one side of it. He came to a halt opposite to a large poster of Coleman's mustard erected on a wooden boarding. His spectators almost held their breath. He took from a small pocket in his uniform a little penknife. With this he made a slash at the stretched paper. Completing the rest of the operation with his fingers he tore off a strip or rag of paper, yellow in color, and wholly irregular in outline. Then for the first time the great being addressed his adoring onlookers. Can anyone, he said, with a pleasing foreign accent, lend me a pin? Mr. Lambert, who happened to be nearest and who carried innumerable pins for the purpose of attaching innumerable buttonholes lent him one, which was received with extravagant but dignified bows and hyperbolees of thanks. The gentleman in green then with every appearance of being gratified and even puffed up pinned the piece of yellow paper to the green silk and silver lace adornments of his breast. Then he turned his eyes round again unsatisfied. Anything else I can do, sir? asked Lambert, with the absurd politeness of the English, when once embarrassed. Red, said the stranger vaguely. Red. I beg your pardon. I beg yours also, senior, said the stranger bowing. I was wondering whether any of you had any red about you. Any red about us? Well, really no. I don't think I have. I used to carry a red bandana once, but... Barker asked Auburn Quinn suddenly, where's your red cockatoo? Where is your red cockatoo? What do you mean, asked Barker desperately, what cockatoo? You've never seen me with any cockatoo? I know, said Auburn, vaguely mollified. Where's it been all the time? Barker swung round, not without resentment. I am sorry, sir, he said, but shortly with civility none of us seemed to have anything red to lend you. But why, if one may ask? I thank you, senior, it is nothing. I can, since there is nothing else, fulfill my own requirements. And standing for a second of thought, with a pen knife in his hand, he stabbed his left palm. The blood fell with so full a stream that it struck the stones without dripping. The foreigner pulled out his handkerchief and tore a piece from it with his teeth. The rag was immediately soaked in scarlet. Since you are so generous, senior, he said, another pen, perhaps? Lambert held one out with eyes protruding like a frog's. The red linen was pinned beside the yellow paper, and the foreigner took off his hand. I have to thank you all, gentlemen, he said, and wrapping the remainder of the handkerchief round his bleeding hand, he resumed his walk with an overwhelming statelyness. I have to thank you all, gentlemen, with an overwhelming statelyness. While all the rest paused in some disorder, little Mr. Aberon Quinn ran after the stranger and stopped him with hat in hand. Considerably to everybody's astonishment, he addressed him in purest Spanish. Senior, he said in that language, pardon a hospitality, perhaps indiscreet, towards one who appears to be a distinguished but solitary guest in London. Will you do me and my friends with whom you have held some conversation, the honour of lunching with us at the adjoining restaurant? The man in the green uniform had turned a fiery colour of pleasure at the mere sound of his own language, and he accepted the invitation with that profusion of bows which so often shows, in the case of the Southern races, the falsehood of the notion that ceremony has nothing to do with feeling. Senior, he said, your language is my own, but all my love for my people shall not lead me to deny to yours the possession of so chivalrous an entertainer. Let me say that the tongue is Spanish, but the heart is English. And he passed with the rest and did chicanonies. Now perhaps said Barker over the fish and cherry, intensely polite, but burning with curiosity, perhaps it would be rude of me to ask why you did that? Senior asked the guest who spoke English quite well, though in a manner indefinably American. Well said the Englishman in some confusion. I mean, tore a strip off the hoarding and cut yourself. To tell you that, senior, answered the other, with a certain sad pride, involves merely telling you who I am. I am Juan Del Fuego, president of Nicaragua. The manner with which the president of Nicaragua went back and drank his sherry showed that to him this explanation covered all the facts observed and a great deal more. Barker's brow, however, was still a little clouded. The yellow paper he began with anxious friendliness and the red rag. The yellow paper and the red rag said to you, with indescribable grandeur are the colors of Nicaragua. But Nicaragua began Barker with great hesitation. Nicaragua is no longer a Nicaragua has been conquered like Athens. Nicaragua has been annexed like Jerusalem, cried the old man with amazing fire. The Yankee and the German and the brute powers of modernity have trampled it with the hooves of oxen, but Nicaragua is not dead. Nicaragua is an idea. Oberon Quinn suggested timidly. A brilliant idea. Yes, said the foreigners snatching at the word. You are right, generous Englishman. An idea brilliant. A burning thought. Signorio asked me why. In my desire to see the colors of my country I snatched it paper and blood. Can you not understand the ancient sanctity of colors? The church has her symbolic colors. And think of what colors mean to us. Think of the position of one like myself who can see nothing but those two colors. Nothing but the red and the yellow. To me all shapes are equal. All common and noble things are in a democracy of combination. Wherever there is a field of marigolds and the red cloak of an old woman there is Nicaragua. Wherever there is a field of poppies and a yellow patch of sand there is Nicaragua. Wherever there is a lemon and the red sunset there is my country. Wherever I see a red pillar box and a yellow sunset there my heart beats. Blood and a splash of mustard can be my heraldry. If there be yellow mud and red mud in the same ditch it is better to me than white stars. And if, said Quinn, with equal enthusiasm, there should happen to be yellow wine that could not confine yourself to Sherry. Let me order some burgundy and complete as it were a sort of Nicaraguan heraldry in your inside. Barker was fiddling with his knife and was evidently making up his mind to say something with the intense nervousness of the amiable Englishman. I am to understand then he said it last with a cough. Did you and were the president of Nicaragua when it made its or one must of course agree with quite heroic resistance to the ex-president of Nicaragua waved his hand. You need not hesitate in speaking to me, he said. I am quite fully aware that the whole tendency of the world of today is against Nicaragua and against me. I shall not consider it any diminution of your evident courtesy if you say what you think of the misfortunes that have laid my republican ruins. Barker looked immeasurably relieved and gratified. You are most generous president, he said with some hesitation over the title and I will take advantage of your generosity. To express the doubts which I must confess we moderns have about such things as the Nicaraguan independence. So your sympathies are said Del Foucault quite calmly with the big nation which pardon me pardon me president said Barker warmly. My sympathies are with no nation. You misunderstand I think the modern intellect. We do not disapprove of the fire and extravagance of such common wealth as yours only to become more extravagant on a larger scale. We do not condemn Nicaragua because we think Britain ought to be more Nicaraguan. We do not discourage small nationalities because we wish larger nationalities to have all their smallness all their uniformity of outlook all their exaggeration of spirit. If I differ with the greatest respect from your Nicaraguan enthusiasm it is not because a nation or ten nations were against you it is because civilization was against you. We moderns believe in a great cosmopolitan civilization one which shall include all the talents of all the absorbed peoples. The senior will forgive me said the president. May I ask the senior how under ordinary circumstances he catches a wild horse. May I never catch a wild horse replied Barker with dignity. Precisely said the other and there ends your absorption of the talents. That is what I complain of your cosmopolitanism. When you say you want all the peoples to unite you really mean that you want all the peoples to unite to learn the tricks of your people. If the Bedouin Arab does not know how to read some English missionary or schoolmaster must be sent to teach him how to read. But no one ever says this schoolmaster does not know how to ride on a camel. Let us pay a Bedouin to teach him. You say your civilization will include all talents. Will it? Do you really mean to say that at the moment when the Esquimo has learned to vote for a county council you will have learned to spear a walrus? I recur to the example I gave in Nicaragua we had a way of catching wild horses by lassoing the four feet which was supposed to be the best in South America. If you are going to include all the talents go and do it. If not permit me to say what I have always said that something went out from the world when Nicaragua was civilized. Something perhaps replied Barker but that is something very in dexterity. I do not know that I could chip flints as well as a primeval man but I know that civilization can make these knives which are better and I trust to civilization. You have good authority answered the Nicaraguan. Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians many clever Egyptians many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me in a world that is flagrant failures of civilization what there is particularly immortal about yours? I think you do not quite understand president what ours is answered Barker. You judge it rather as if England was still a poor and pugnacious island. You have been long out of Europe. Many things have happened. And what as the other would you call the summary of those things? The summary of those things answered Barker with great animation is that we are rid of the superstitions and in becoming so we have not merely become rid of the superstitions which have been most frequently and most enthusiastically so described. The superstition of big nationalities is bad but the superstition of small nationalities is worse. The superstition of reverencing our own country is bad but the superstition of reverencing other people's countries is worse. We are so everywhere and in a hundred ways the superstition of monarchy is bad and the superstition of aristocracy is bad but the superstition of democracy is the worst of all. The old gentleman opened his eyes with some surprise. Are you then he said no longer a democracy in England? Barker laughed. The situation invites paradox he said we are in a sense the purest democracy we have become a despotism. Have you not noticed how continually in history democracy becomes despotism? People call it the decay of democracy. It is simply its fulfillment. Why take the trouble to number and register and enfranchise all the innumerable John Robinson's when you can take one John Robinson with the same intellect or lack of intellect as all the rest and have done with it? The old idealistic Republicans used to found democracy on the idea that all men were equally intelligent. Believe me the sane and enduring democracy is founded on the fact that all men are equally idiotic. Why should we not choose out of them one as much as another? All that we want for government is a man not criminal and insane who can rapidly look over some petitions and sign some proclamations. To think what time was wasted in arguing about the House of Lords Tory saying it ought to be preserved because it was clever and radical and saying it ought to be destroyed because it was stupid. And all the time no one saw that it was right because it was stupid because that chants mob of ordinary men thrown there by accident of blood were a great democratic protest against the lower House against the eternal insolence of the aristocracy of talents. We have established now in England the thing towards which all systems have dimly groped the dull popular despotism without illusions. We want one man at the head of our state not because he is brilliant or virtuous, but because he is one man and not a chattering crowd. To avoid the possible chance of hereditary diseases or such things we have abandoned hereditary monarchy. The King of England is chosen like a juryman upon an official rotation list. Beyond that the whole system is quietly despotic and we have not found it raised a murmur. Do you really mean as the President incredulously that you choose any ordinary man that comes to hand and make him despot that you trust to the chance of some alphabetical list? And why not, cried Barker? Did not half the historical nations trust to the chance of the eldest sons of eldest sons and did not half of them get on tolerably well? To have a perfect system is impossible. To have a system is indispensable. All hereditary monarchies were a matter of luck. So are alphabetical monarchies. Can you find a deep philosophical meaning in the difference between the stewards and the Hanoverians? Believe me, I will undertake to find a deep philosophical meaning in the contrast between the dark tragedy of the A's and the solid success of the B's. And you risk it, asked the other, though the man may be a tyrant or a cynic or a criminal. We risk it, answered the Barker, with a perfect placidity. Suppose he is a tyrant. He is still a check on a hundred other tyrants. Suppose he is a cynic. It is to his interest to govern well. Suppose he is a criminal. By removing poverty and substituting power we put a check on his criminality. In short, by substituting despotism we have put a total check on one criminal and a partial check on all the rest. The Nicaraguan old gentleman leaned over with a queer expression in his eyes. My church, sir, he said, has taught me to respect faith. I do not wish to speak with any disrespect of yours, however fantastic. But do you really mean that you will trust to the ordinary man, the man who happened to come next as a good despot? I do, said Barker simply. He may not be a good man, but he will be a good despot. For when he comes to mere business routine of governing he will endeavor to do ordinary justice. Do we not assume the same thing in a jury? The old president smiled. I don't know, he said, that I have any particular objection in detail to your excellent scheme of government. My only objection is a quite personal one. It is that if I were asked whether I would belong to it I should ask, first of all, if I was not permitted as an alternative to be a toad in a ditch. That is all. You cannot argue with the choice of the soul. Of the soul, said Barker, knitting his brows. I cannot pretend to say anything, but speaking in the interest of the public, Mr. Auburn Quinn rose suddenly to his feet. If you'll excuse me, gentlemen, he said I will step out for a moment I am so sorry, Auburn, said Lambert, good-naturedly. Do you feel bad? Not bad exactly, said Auburn, with self-restraint. Rather good, if anything, strangely and richly good. The fact is, I want to reflect a little on those beautiful words that have just been uttered. Speaking, yes, that was the phrase, speaking in the interest of the public, one cannot get the honey from such things without being alone for a little. Was he really off his chump, do you think, asked Lambert? The old president looked after him with clearly vigilant eyes. He is a man, I think, he said, who cares for nothing but a joke. He is a dangerous man. Lambert laughed in the act of lifting some macaroni to his mouth. Dangerous, he said. You don't know little Quinn, sir. Every man is dangerous, said the old man without moving, who cares only for one thing. I was once dangerous myself. And with a pleasant smile he finished his coffee and rose, bowing profoundly, passed out into the fog which had again grown dense and somber. Three days afterwards they heard that he had died quietly in lodgings in Soho. Drowned somewhere else in the dark sea of fog was a little figure, shaking and quaking, with what might at first sight argue, but which was really that strange malady, a lonely laughter. He was repeating over and over to himself with a rich accent. But speaking in the interest of the public End of Chapter 2 Book 1 This is a LibraVox recording. All LibraVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibraVox.org The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton Book 1 Chapter 3 The Hill of Humour In a little square garden of yellow roses beside the sea said Auburn Quinn, there was a nonconformist minister who had never been to Wimbledon. His family did not understand his sorrow or the strange look in his eyes, but one day they repented their neglect for they heard that a body had been found on the shore, battered, but wearing patent leather boots. As it happened it turned out not to be the minister at all, but in the dead man's pocket there was a return ticket to Maidston. There was a short pause as Quinn and his friends Barker and Lambert went swinging on through the slushy grass of Kensington Gardens. That story, he said reverently, is the test of humor. They walked on further and faster, wading through higher grass as they began to climb a slope. I perceived, continued Auburn, that you have passed the test and consider the anecdote excruciatingly funny since you say nothing. Only coarse humor is received with pothouse applause. The great anecdote is received in silence like a benediction. You felt pretty benedicted, didn't you, Barker? I saw the point, said Barker somewhat loftily. Do you know, said Quinn, with the sort of idiocatiy, I have lots of stories as good as that. Listen to this one. And he slightly cleared his throat. Dr. Polycarp was, as you all know, an unusually sallow bimetalist. There, people of wide experience would say, there goes the sallowest bimetalist in Cheshire. Once this was said so that he overheard it, it was said by an actuary tinder in a sunset of mauve and gray. Polycarp turned upon him. Sallow, he cried fiercely. Sallow! Queas Tularot Grascio's De Sedinchoni Quarentis. It was said that no actuary ever made game of Dr. Polycarp again. Barker nodded with a simple sagacity. Lambert only grunted. Here is another continued the insatiable Quinn. In a hollow of the gray green hills of rainy Ireland lived an old, old woman whose uncle was always Cambridge at the boat race. But in her gray-green hollows she knew nothing of this. She didn't know that there was a boat race. Also, she did not know that she had an uncle. She had heard of nobody at all except of George I, of whom she had heard, I know not why, and in whose historical memory she put her simple trust. And by and by in God's good time it was discovered that this uncle of hers was not really her uncle. And they came and told her so. She smiled through her tears and said only, Virtue is its own reward. Again there was a silence Lambert said, It seems a bit mysterious. Mysterious cried the other. The true humor is mysterious. Do you not realize the chief incident of the 19th and 20th centuries? And what is that? asked Lambert shortly. It is very simple, replied the other. Hitherto it was the ruin of a joke that people did not see it. Now it is the sublime victory of a joke that people do not see it. Friends is the one sanctity remaining to mankind. It is the one thing you are thoroughly afraid of. Look at that tree. His interlocutors looked vaguely toward a beach that leaned out toward them from the ridge of the hill. If said Mr. Quinn, I were to say that you did not see the great truths of science exhibited by that tree, though they stared any man of intellect in the face. What would you think or say? He would merely regard me as a pedant with some unimportant theory about vegetable cells. If I were to say that you did not see in that tree the vile mismanagement of local politics you would dismiss me as a socialist crank with some particular fad about public parks. If I were to say that you were guilty of the supreme blasphemy of looking at that tree and not seeing in it a new religion, a special revelation of God, you would simply say I was a mystic and think no more about me. But if, and he lifted a pontifical hand, if I say that you cannot see the humor of that tree and that I see the humor of it, my God, you will roll about at my feet. He paused a moment and then resumed. Yes, a sense of humor, a weird and delicate sense of humor is the new religion of mankind. It is towards that men will strain themselves on the asceticism of saints. Exercises, spiritual exercises will be set in it. It will be asked, can you see the humor of this iron railing or can you see the humor of this field of corn? Can you see the humor of the stars? Can you see the humor of the sunsets? How often I have laughed myself to sleep over a violet sunset. Quite so, said Mr. Barker with an intelligent embarrassment. Let me tell you another story. How often it happens that the MPs for Essex are less punctual than one would suppose. The least punctual Essex MP perhaps was James Wilson who said, in the very act of plucking a poppy, Lambert suddenly faced round and stuck his stick in the ground in a defiant attitude. Auberon, he said, chuck it. I won't stand it, it's all Bosch. 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 begun, Quinn, no? I don't care a curse, said Lambert violently, whether I have a delicate sense of humor or not. I won't stand it. It's all a confounded fraud. There is no joke in those infernal tales at all. You know there isn't, as well as I do. Well, replied Quinn slowly, it is true that I, with my rather gradual mental process, 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 nearer than you are. Quinn regarded him steadily. They had reached the top of the ridge and the wind struck their faces. Lambert, said Auburn, you are a great and good man, though I am 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 humor 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, Autre, to imitate the man in the pantomime and to sit on my hat, because I am a man who's soul has been emptied of all pleasures but folly, and for two pents I'd do it. Do it, then said Lambert, swinging his stick impatiently. It'd be funnier than the Bosch, Ewan, Barker talk. Quinn, standing on the top of the hill, stretched his hand out toward the main avenue of Kensington Gardens. Two hundred yards away, he said, are all your fashionable acquaintances with nothing on earth to do but stare at each other and at us. We are standing upon an elevation under the open sky, a cyanide of humor. 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're talking about, said Lambert contemptuously. I only know I'd rather you stood on your silly head than talk so much. Auburn, 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 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. Auburn Quinn stood with considerable athletic neatness upon his head and waved his patent leather boots in the air. For God's sake, Quinn, get up and don't be an idiot, cried Barker, ringing his hands. We shall have the whole town here. Yes, get up, man, said Lambert amused and annoyed. I was only fooling, get up. Auburn did so with a bound and flinging his head higher than the trees proceeded to hop about on one leg with a serious expression. Barker stamped wildly. Oh, let's go 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 toward 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. Quinn with a quiet eye. We have not come, gentlemen, he said, about what I think you are alluding to. We have come from headquarters 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, but in 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 we should be very thankful if it were. The choice has fallen. God bless my soul, Sir Lambert, jumping back two paces. Not me. Don't say I am an autocrat of all the rushes. No, sir, said the officer, with a slight cough and a glance toward Auburn, 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 are occupied. Not Quinn! Shriek Barker rushing up to him. It can't be! Auburn, for God's sake, pull yourself together. You've been made king. With his head still upside down between his legs, Mr. Quinn answered modestly, I am not worthy. I cannot reasonably claim to equal the great men who have previously swayed the scepter of Britain. Perhaps the only peculiarity that I can claim is that I am probably the first monarch of all 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 Valor, 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. He made you king. By gosh they must have rum taste. The great bishops of the Middle Ages said Quinn, kicking his legs in the air as he was dragged up more or less upside down, were in the habit of refusing the honor of election three times and then accepting it. A mere manner 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 humor. 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, Wilford Lambert, he said, that I should be of more public value if I adopted a more popular form of humor. And when should a popular form of humor be more firmly riveted upon me than now, when I had 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 Auburn Quinn 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 realize or recall. The King, with his coat on the wrong way, went toward 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, as the crowds grew thicker and thicker, the sounds became more and more unusual, and when he had reached the great marketplace opposite the church, Barker knew that he had reached it, though he was rude behind, because a cry went up such as had never before greeted any of the kings of the earth. The end of Chapter 3 End of Book 1 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton Section 4 Book 2, Chapter 1 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 tomfoolery, of course, replied Barker, and he disappeared into the room. He entered it along, slamming the door and slapping his incomparable silk hat on the table. His mouth opened, but before he could speak the king said, What hat have you, please? Fidgeting 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 quite old custom he explained, smiling above the ruins, when the king received 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 fists and shaking lip. Your jokes he began and my property and then exploded with an oath and stopped again. Continue, continue, said the king, 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. Mad men are always serious. They go mad from lack of humor. You're looking serious yourself, James. Why can't you keep it to your own private life? You've got plenty of money and plenty of houses now to play in the fooling, but the interests of the public. The monarch, said the king, shaking his fingers 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 everyone does. Everyone is grave in public and funny in private. My sense of humor 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 storeroom for two hours where I am so dignified that I come out quite ill. By this time Barker was walking up and down the room, his frockcoat flabbing like the black wings of a bird. Well, you will ruin the country, that's all he said shortly. It seems to me, said Oberon, 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 Gods, you don't believe in? Why I should care for anything else. Don't you realize common public necessities cried Barker? Is it possible that a man of your intelligence does not know that it is in everyone's interest? Don't you believe in Zoroaster? Is it possible that you neglect Mumbo-Jumbo, return the king with startling animation? Does a man of your intelligence come to me with these damned early Victorian ethics? When 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 the chance of being guillotined and 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 my nails. It is my humor. Are you answered? At any rate, I have said my last serious word today, 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 today, 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 around 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, chicken on his 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 to the purple night. I will go, he said, and mingle with the people. He passed swiftly up a street in the neighborhood of Notting Hill when suddenly he felt a hard object driven into his waistcoat. He paused, put up his single eyeglasses, and beheld a boy with a wooden sword and a paper cocked hat, wearing that expression of odd satisfaction which a child contemplates his work when he has hit someone very hard. The king gazed thoughtfully for some time at his assailant and slowly took a notebook from his breast pocket. I have a few notes, he said, for my dying speech. And he turned over the leaves. Dying speeches for a political assassination ditto. Dying speech for a former friend. Dying speech for death at hands of injured husband. Dying speech for same cynical. I'm not quite sure which meets the present. I am 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 am glad you are so a defender of your old and violent nutting hill. Look up nightly to that peak, my child, where it lifts itself among the stars so ancient, so lonely, so unutterably nutting, so long as you are ready to die for the sacred mountain, even if it were ringed with all the armies of base water. The king stopped suddenly and his eyes shone. Perhaps, he said, perhaps the noblest of all my conceptions, a revival of the old medieval cities, applied to our glorious suburbs. Clap him with the city guard. Wimbledon with the city wall. Serviton tolling a bell to raise its citizens. West Hamston going into battle with its own banner. It shall be done. I, the king, have said it. And hastily presenting the boy with half-crown remarking for the war chest of nutting hill, he ran violently home at such a rate of speed that crowds followed 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 favorite equity, 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 Bowling, rubbing 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 the secretaries 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 king's. I should like to tell you of certain discoveries I have made touching the neglected traditions of the London Burroughs. The revelations may cause some excitement stirring burning memories and touching old wounds in Shepherd's Bush and base water 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 of Gale 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 Burroughs. Say all this to the Society, Boller. Remember it very carefully, for it is most important. And I have forgotten it all together. And send me another cup of coffee and some of the cigars that we keep for 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 course and glaring 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 they had all been pleased to listen to such distinguished lectures as they had heard for some time past. Here, here! Mr. Burton, here, here! Mr. Cambridge, Professor King, loud and continued cheers. Our old friend Peter Jessup, Sir William White, loud laughter, and other imminent men had to honor to their little venture cheers. But there were other circumstances which lent a certain unique quality to the present occasion. Here, here! 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 Aberon 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 word turns upon my policy and the storms of popular hostility begin to rise, no, no. I feel that it is here that 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 of the legends of their own burrows. 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 pimleys, 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 know constitutional equality with Justinian or Alfred. If I can go down to history as the man who say from extinction a few old English customs. If our descendants can say that it was through this man, humble as he was that the ten turnips are still eaten at Fulham, and the Putney Parish consular still shaves one half of his head. I shall look my great fathers reverently, but not fearfully in place, when I go down to the last house of Kings. The King paused, visibly affected by collecting himself, resumed once more. I trust that to very few of you at least I need to 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 broad way into battle till he drove the chivalry of Kensington before him, and overthrew them at that place which in honor of the best blood of the defeated aristocracy is still called Kensington Gore. Man 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 humor 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 Kensings or Kensings ever afterwards. But you also have great memories of Man of Kensington, you show 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 Knight's Bridge is named, nor will it forget the day of your re-emergence purged in the fire of calamity, cleansed of your oligarchy 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 Ravens Court. 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 from personal association. I am myself descended from one of the three heroes of Knight's Bridge 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 questions between two such men as Professor Hugg and Sir William Whiskey as to whether knotting 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 Jossi 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 we face today. Is this ancient spirit of the London townships to die out? Our omnibus conductors and policemen to lose altogether that light which we see so often in their eyes the dreamy light of old unhappy far-off things and battles long ago to quote the words of a little-known poet who was a friend of my youth I have resolved, as I have said so far as possible, to preserve policemen and omnibus conductors in their present dreamy state or what is a state without dreams and the remedy I propose is as follows Tomorrow morning at twenty-five minutes past ten the heavens bears my life I propose to issue a proclamation it has been the work of my life and is about half finished with the assistance of a whiskey soda I shall conclude the other half tonight and my people will receive it tomorrow all these burrows where you were born and hoped to lay your bones shall be reinstated in their ancient magnificence Hammersmith, Kensington Bayswater, Chelsea Battersea, Clapham, Ballum and a hundred others each shall immediately build a city wall with gates to be closed at sunset each shall have a city guard armed to the teeth each shall have a banner, a coat of arms and, if convenient, a gathering cry I will not enter into the details now my heart is too full they will be found in the proclamation itself you will all, however be subject to enrollment in the local city guards to be summoned together by a thing called the toxin the meaning of which I am studying and my researches into history personally I believe a toxin to be some kind of highly paid official if therefore any of you happen to have such a thing as a Hulbert in the house I should advise you to practice with it in the garden here the king buried his face in his handkerchief and hurriedly left the platform overcome by emotions the members of the society for the recovery of London antiquities rose in an indescribable state of vagueness some were purple with indignation an intellectual few were purple with laughter the great majority found their minds a blank there remains a tradition that one pale face with burning blue eyes remained fixed upon the lecturer and after the lecture a red-haired boy ran out of the room end of chapter one book two this is a LibraVox recording all LibraVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibraVox.org The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton Section 5 Book 2 Chapter 2 The Council of Provost the king got up early next morning and came down three steps at a time like a schoolboy having eaten his breakfast hurriedly he summoned one of the highest officials of the palace and presented him with a shilling go and buy me, he said a shilling paint box which you will get unless the mists of time mislead me in a shop at the corner of the second and dirtier street that leads out of Rochester Row I have already requested the master of the Buckhounds to provide me with the cardboard it seems to me, I know not why that it fell within his department the king was happy all that morning with his cardboard and his paint box he was engaged in designing the uniforms and coats of arms for the various municipalities of London they gave him deep and no inconsiderable thought he felt the responsibility I cannot think he said why people should think the names of places in the country more poetical than those in London shallow romantists go away in trains and stop in places called bug me in the hole or bumps on the puddle and all the time they could if they liked go and live in a place with the dim divine name of St. John's Wood I have never been to St. John's Wood I dare not I should be afraid of the innumerable night of fir trees afraid to come upon a blood red cup and the beatings of the wings of the eagle but all these things can be imagined by remaining reverently in the harrow train and he thoughtfully retouched his design for the headdress of the Halberdier of St. John's Wood a design in black and red compounded of a pine tree and the plumage of an eagle then he turned to another card let us think of milder matters he said Lavender Hill could any of your glebes and combs and all the rest of it produce so fragrant an idea think of a mountain of lavender purple poignancy into the silver skies and filling men's nostrils with a new breath of life a purple hill of incense it is true that upon my few excursions of discovery on a half-penny tram I failed to hit the precise spot but it must be there some poet called it by its name there is at least warmth enough for the solemn purple plumes following the botanical formation of Lavender which I have required people to wear in the neighborhood of Clapham Junction it is so everywhere after all I have never been actually to south fields but I suppose the scheme of lemons and olives represent their austral instincts I have never visited Parsons Green or seen either the green or the parson but surely the pale green shovel hats I have designed must be more or less in the spirit I must work in the dark and let my instincts guide me the great love I bear to my people will certainly save me from distressing their noble spirit or violating their great traditions as he was reflecting in this vein the door was flung open and an official announced Mr. Barker and Mr. Lambert Mr. Barker and Mr. Lambert were not particularly surprised to find the king sitting on the floor amid a litter of watercolor sketches they were not particularly surprised because the last time they had called on him they had found him sitting on the floor surrounded by a litter of children's bricks and the time before surrounded by a litter of wholly unsuccessful attempts to make paper darts but the trend of the royal infant's remarks uttered from amid this infantile chaos was not quite the same affair for some time they let him babble on cautious that his remarks meant nothing and then a horrible thought began to steal over the mind of James Barker he began to think that the king's remarks did not mean nothing in God's name, Auburn he suddenly volleied out startling the quiet hall you don't mean that you're really going to have these city guards and city walls and things I am indeed said the infant in a quiet voice why shouldn't I have them I have modeled them precisely on your political principles do you know what I've done Barker I behaved like a true Barkerian I've but perhaps it won't interest you the account of my Barkerian conduct oh go on go on cried Barker the account of my Barkerian conduct said Auburn calmly seems not only to interest you but to alarm you yet it is very simple it merely consists in choosing all the provost under the new scheme by the same principle by which you have caused central despot to be appointed each provo of each city under my charter is to be appointed by rotation sleep therefore my Barker a rosy sleep Barker's wild eyes flare but in God's name don't you see Quinn that the thing is quite different in the center it doesn't matter so much just because the whole object of despotism is to get some sort of unity but if any damn parish can go to any damn demand I see your difficulty said King Auburn calmly you feel that your talents may be neglected listen and he rose with immense magnificence I solemnly give to my alleged subject James Barker my special and splendid favor the right to override the obvious text of the charter of the cities and to be in his own right Lord High Provo of South Kensington and now my dear James are you all right? good day but a big Aunt Barker the audience is that at end Provo said the King smiling how far his confidence was justified it would require a somewhat complicated description to explain the great proclamation of the charter of the free cities appeared in due course that morning and was posted by Bill stickers all over the front of the palace the King assisting them with animated directions and standing in the middle of the road with his head on one side contemplating the result it was also carried up and down the main thoroughfares by sandwich men and the King was with difficulty restrained from going out in that capacity himself being in fact found by the groom of the stole and Captain Bowler struggling between two boards his excitement had positively to be quieted like that of a child the reception which the charter of the cities met at the hands of the public may be mildly described as mixed in one sense it was popular enough and many happy homes that remarkable legal document was read aloud on winter evenings amid a glorious appreciation when everything had been learnt by heart from that quaint but immortal old classic Mr. W. W. Jacobs but when it was discovered that the King had every intention of seriously requiring the provisions to be carried out of insisting that the grotesque cities with their toxins and city guards should really come into existence things were thrown into a far angrier confusion Londoners had no particular objection to the King making a fool of himself but they became indignant when it became evident he wished to make fools of them and the guards began to come in the Lord High Provost of the good and valiant city of West Kensington wrote a respectful letter to the King explaining that upon state occasions it would of course be his duty to observe what formalities the King thought proper but that it was really awkward for the decent householder not to be allowed to go out and put a postcard in a pillar box without being escorted by five heralds who announced with formal eyes and blasts of a trumpet that the Lord High Provost desired to catch the post the Lord High Provost of North Kensington who was a prosperous draper wrote a curt business note like a man complaining of a railway company stating that a definite inconvenience had been caused to him by the presence of the Holberdeers whom he had to take with him everywhere when attempting to catch an omnibus to the city he had found that while room could have been found for himself the Holberdeers had difficulty in getting into the vehicle believe him theirs faithfully the Lord High Provost of the Shepherd's Bush said his wife did not like men hanging around the kitchen the King was always delighted to listen to these grievances delivering lenient and kingly answers but as he always insisted as the absolute sigh went on that verbal complaints should be presented to him with the fullest pomp of trumpets plumes and holbrids and a few resolute spirits were prepared to run the gauntlet of the little boys in the street among these however was prominent the abrupt and business-like gentlemen who ruled North Kensington as he had before long occasioned to interview the King about a matter wider and even more urgent than the problem of the Holberdeers and the omnibus this was the great question which then and for long afterwards brought a stir to the blood the cheek of all the speculative builders and house agents from Shepherd's Bush to the Marble Arch and from Westbourne Grove to High Street Kensington I refer to the great affair of the improvements in Notting Hill the scheme was conducted chiefly by Mr. Buck the abrupt North Kensington magnet and by Mr. Wilson the provo of base water a great thoroughfare was to be driven through three burrows Kensington, North Kensington and Notting Hill opening at one end into Hammersmith Broadway and the other into Westbourne Grove the negotiations buying, selling, bullying and bribing took ten years and by the end of it Buck who had conducted them almost single-handed had proved himself a man of the strongest type of material energy and material diplomacy and just as his splendid patients and more splendid impatience had finally brought him victory when workmen were already demolishing houses and walls along the great line from Hammersmith a sudden obstacle appeared that had neither been reckoned with nor dreamed of a small and strange obstacle which like a speck of grit in a great machine jarred the whole vast scheme and brought it to a standstill and Mr. Buck the Draper getting with great impatience into his robes of office and summoning with indescribable disgust to his Hulver deers hurried over to speak to the king ten years had not tired the king of his joke there were still new faces to be seen looking out from the symbolic headgears he had designed gazing at him from amid the pastoral ribbons of Shepherd's Bush or from under the somber hoods of the Black Friars Road and the interview which was promised him with a provo of North Kensington anticipated with a particular pleasure for he never really enjoyed he said the full richness of the medieval garments unless the people compelled to wear them were very angry and business-like Mr. Buck was both at the king's command the door of the audience chamber was thrown open and a herald appeared in the purple colors of Mr. Buck's Commonwealth emblazoned with a great eagle which the king had attributed to North Kensington in vague reminiscence of Russia for he always insisted on regarding North Kensington as some kind of semi-artic neighborhood the herald announced that the provo of that city desired audience of the king from North Kensington said the king rising graciously what news does he bring from that land of high hills and fair women he is welcome the herald advanced into the room and was immediately followed by twelve guards clad in purple who were followed by an attendant bearing the banner of the eagle who was followed by another attendant bearing the keys of the city upon his cushion who was followed by Mr. Buck in a great hurry when the king saw his strong animal face since steady eyes he knew that he was in the presence of a great man of business and consciously braced himself well, well, he said cheerily coming down two or three steps from a Diaz and striking his hands lightly together I am glad to see you nevermind, nevermind, ceremony is not everything I don't understand your majesty said the provost solidly nevermind, nevermind, said the king gaily a knowledge of courts is by no means an unmixed merit you will do it next time no doubt the man of business looked at him sulkily from under his black brows and said again without show of civility I don't follow you well, well replied the king goodnaturely if you ask me I don't mind telling you not because I myself attach any importance to these forms in comparison with the honest heart but it is usual it is usual that is all for a man when entering the presence of royalty to lie down on his back on the floor and elevating his feet towards heaven as the source of royal power to say three times monarchial institutions improve the manners but there there such pomp is far less and truly dignified than your simple kindness the provost's face was red with anger and he maintained silence and now said the king gaily and with the exasperating air of a man softening a snub what delightful weather we are having you must find your official robes warm my lord I designed them for your own snowbound land they are as hot as hell said buck briefly I came here on business right said the king nodding a great number of times with quite unmeaning solemnity right, right, right business as the sad glad old Persian said is business be punctual, rise early point the pen to the shoulder point the pen to the shoulder for you know not whence you come nor why point the pen to the shoulder for you know not where you go nor where savagely flap them open your majesty may have heard he began sarcastically of hammer smith than a thing called a road we have been at work ten years buying property and getting compulsory powers and fixing compensation and squaring vested interests and now at the very end the thing is stopped by a fool old Prout who was provo of knotting hill was a businessman and we dealt with him quite satisfactorily but he's dead and the cursed lot has fallen on a young man named Wayne who's up to some game that's perfectly incomprehensible to me we offer him a better price than anyone ever dreamt of but he won't let the road go through and his counsel seems to be backing him up it's mid-summer madness the king who was rather inattentively engaged in drawing the provo's nose with his finger on the windowpane heard the last two words what a perfect phrase that is he said mid-summer madness the chief point is continued buck doggedly that the only part that is really in question is one dirty little street pump street a street with nothing in it but a public house and a penny toy shop and that sort of thing all the respectable people of knotting hill have accepted our compensation but the ineffable Wayne sticks out over pump street in knotting hill he's only provo of pump street a good thought, replied Auburn I like the idea of a provo of pump street why not let him alone and dropped the whole scheme right out buck with a burst of brutal spirit I'll be damned if we do nope, I am for sending in workmen to pull down without more ado strike for the purple eagle cried the king, hot with historical associations I'll tell you what it is said buck, losing his temper all together if your majesty would spend less time in insulting respectable people with your silly coats of arms and more time over the business of the nation the king's brow wrinkled thoughtfully the situation is not bad he said the haughty burger defined the king in his own palace the burger's head should be thrown back on the right arm extended the left arm may be lifted toward heavens but that I leave to your private religious sentiment I have sunk back in this chair stricken with baffled fury now again please buck smiled open like a dog but before he could speak another herald appeared at the door the lord high provo of bayswater he said desires an audience admit him, said alberon this is a jolly day the hallbred ears of bayswater or a prevailing uniform of green and the banner which was born after them was emblazoned with a green bay wreath on a silver ground which the king in the course of his research into a bottle of champagne had discovered it to be the quaint old punning cognizance of the city of bayswater it is a fifth symbol, said the king near immortal bay wreath fulham may seek for wealth and Kensington for art but when did the man of bayswater care for anything but glory immediately behind the banner and almost completely hidden by it he came to the city clad in splendid robes of green and silver with white fur and crowned with bay he was an anxious little man with red whiskers originally the owner of a small sweet stuff shop our cousin of bayswater said the king with delight what can we get for you the king was heard also distinctly to mutter cold beef, cold damn, cold chicken his voice dying into silence i came to see your majesty said the provo of bayswater whose name was wilson about that pump street affair i have just been explaining the situation to his majesty said buck curtly but recovering his civility i am not sure however whether his majesty knows how much the matter affects you also it affects both of us to see your majesty as this scheme has started for the benefit of the old neighborhood he heads together the king clasped his hands perfect he cried in ecstasy your heads together i can see it can't you do it now oh do it now a smothered sound of amusement appeared to come from the hallbredeers but mr wilson looked merely bewildered and mr buck merely diabolical i suppose he began bitterly but the king stopped him with a gesture of listening hush he said there was no one else coming i seemed to hear another herald the herald whose boots creak and as he spoke another voice cried from the doorway the lord high provo of south kensington desires an audience the lord high provo of south kensington cried the king why that is my old friend james barker what does he want i wonder if the tender memories of friendship have not grown misty i fancy he wants something for himself how are you james mr james barker whose guard was attired in splendid blue and whose blue banner bore three gold bird singing rushed in his blue and gold robes into the room despite the absurdity of all the dresses it was worth noticing that he carried his better than the rest though he loved it as much as any of them he was a gentleman and a very handsome man and could not help unconsciously wearing even his preposterous robe as it should be worn he spoke quickly but with the slight initial hesitation he always showed in addressing the king due to suppressing an impulse to address his old acquaintance in the old way your majesty pray forgive my intrusion it is about this man in pump street i see you have buck here so you have probably heard that it is necessary i the king swept his eyes anxiously on the room which now blazed with the trappings of three cities there is one thing necessary he said yes your majesty said mr wilson obeys water a little eager what does your majesty think necessary a little yellow said the king firmly send for the provo of west Kensington amid some materialistic protest he was sent for and arrived with his yellow halberd ears in his saffron robes stripping his forehead with a handkerchief after all placed as he was he had a good deal to say on the matter welcome west Kensington said the king i have long wish to see you touching that matter of the hammer smith slain to the south of the rotten house will you hold it futely from the provo of hammer smith you have only to do him homage by putting his left arm in his overcoat and then marching home in state no no your majesty the other not said the provo of west Kensington who was a pale young man with a fair mustache and whiskers who kept the successful dairy the king struck him hardly on the shoulder ha the fierce old west Kensington bloody said they are not wise who ask it to do homage then he glanced again round the room it was full of a roaring sunset of color and he enjoyed the sight possible to so few artists the sight of his own dreams rising before him in the foreground of the yellow west Kensington livery outlined itself against the dark blue draperies of the south Kensington the crests of these again bright and suddenly into green as the almost woodland colors of base water rose behind them and over and behind all the great purple plumes of north Kensington showed almost unarial and black there is something lacking said the king something lacking what can there it is there it is and the doorway had appeared a new figure a herald in flaming red he cried in a loud but unemotional voice the lord high provo of Notting Hill desires an audience end of chapter 2 book 2