The Napoleon of Notting Hill · Book II · Chapter 2 1 (1/2)

I

The Charter of the Cities

Lambert was standing bewildered outside the door of the King’s apartments amid the scurry of astonishment and ridicule. He was just passing out into the street, in a dazed manner, when James Barker dashed by him.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“To stop all this foolery, of course,” replied Barker; and he disappeared into the room.

He entered it headlong, slamming the door, and slapping his incomparable silk hat on the table. His mouth opened, but before he could speak, the King said⁠—

“Your hat, if you please.”

Fidgetting with his fingers, and scarcely knowing what he was doing, the young politician held it out.

The King placed it on his own chair, and sat on it.

“A quaint old custom,” he explained, smiling above the ruins. “When the King receives the representatives of the House of Barker, the hat of the latter is immediately destroyed in this manner. It represents the absolute finality of the act of homage expressed in the removal of it. It declares that never until that hat shall once more appear upon your head (a contingency which I firmly believe to be remote) shall the House of Barker rebel against the Crown of England.”

Barker stood with clenched fist, and shaking lip.

“Your jokes,” he began, “and my property⁠—” and then exploded with an oath, and stopped again.

“Continue, continue,” said the King, waving his hands.

“What does it all mean?” cried the other, with a gesture of passionate rationality. “Are you mad?”

“Not in the least,” replied the King, pleasantly. “Madmen are always serious; they go mad from lack of humour. You are looking serious yourself, James.”

“Why can’t you keep it to your own private life?” expostulated the other. “You’ve got plenty of money, and plenty of houses now to play the fool in, but in the interests of the public⁠—”

“Epigrammatic,” said the King, shaking his finger sadly at him. “None of your daring scintillations here. As to why I don’t do it in private, I rather fail to understand your question. The answer is of comparative limpidity. I don’t do it in private, because it is funnier to do it in public. You appear to think that it would be amusing to be dignified in the banquet hall and in the street, and at my own fireside (I could procure a fireside) to keep the company in a roar. But that is what everyone does. Everyone is grave in public, and funny in private. My sense of humour suggests the reversal of this; it suggests that one should be funny in public, and solemn in private. I desire to make the State functions, parliaments, coronations, and so on, one roaring old-fashioned pantomime. But, on the other hand, I shut myself up alone in a small storeroom for two hours a day, where I am so dignified that I come out quite ill.”

By this time Barker was walking up and down the room, his frock coat flapping like the black wings of a bird.

“Well, you will ruin the country, that’s all,” he said shortly.

“It seems to me,” said Auberon, “that the tradition of ten centuries is being broken, and the House of Barker is rebelling against the Crown of England. It would be with regret (for I admire your appearance) that I should be obliged forcibly to decorate your head with the remains of this hat, but⁠—”

“What I can’t understand,” said Barker flinging up his fingers with a feverish American movement, “is why you don’t care about anything else but your games.”

The King stopped sharply in the act of lifting the silken remnants, dropped them, and walked up to Barker, looking at him steadily.

“I made a kind of vow,” he said, “that I would not talk seriously, which always means answering silly questions. But the strong man will always be gentle with politicians.

‘The shape my scornful looks deride

Required a God to form;’

if I may so theologically express myself. And for some reason I cannot in the least understand, I feel impelled to answer that question of yours, and to answer it as if there were really such a thing in the world as a serious subject. You ask me why I don’t care for anything else. Can you tell me, in the name of all the gods you don’t believe in, why I should care for anything else?”

“Don’t you realise common public necessities?” cried Barker. “Is it possible that a man of your intelligence does not know that it is everyone’s interest⁠—”

“Don’t you believe in Zoroaster? Is it possible that you neglect Mumbo-Jumbo?” returned the King, with startling animation. “Does a man of your intelligence come to me with these damned early Victorian ethics? If, on studying my features and manner, you detect any particular resemblance to the Prince Consort, I assure you you are mistaken. Did Herbert Spencer ever convince you⁠—did he ever convince anybody⁠—did he ever for one mad moment convince himself⁠—that it must be to the interest of the individual to feel a public spirit? Do you believe that, if you rule your department badly, you stand any more chance, or one half of the chance, of being guillotined, that an angler stands of being pulled into the river by a strong pike? Herbert Spencer refrained from theft for the same reason that he refrained from wearing feathers in his hair, because he was an English gentleman with different tastes. I am an English gentleman with different tastes. He liked philosophy. I like art. He liked writing ten books on the nature of human society. I like to see the Lord Chamberlain walking in front of me with a piece of paper pinned to his coattails. It is my humour. 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 round the room with a preoccupied expression.

Barker ran round the room after him, bombarding him with demands and entreaties. But he received no response except in the new language. He came out banging the door again, and sick like a man coming on shore. As he strode along the streets he found himself suddenly opposite Cicconani’s restaurant, and for some reason there rose up before him the green fantastic figure of the Spanish General, standing, as he had seen him last, at the door, with the words on his lips, “You cannot argue with the choice of the soul.”

The King came out from his dancing with the air of a man of business legitimately tired. He put on an overcoat, lit a cigar, and went out into the purple night.

“I will go,” he said, “and mingle with the people.”

He passed swiftly up a street in the neighbourhood of Notting Hill, when suddenly he felt a hard object driven into his waistcoat. He paused, put up his single eyeglass, and beheld a boy with a wooden sword and a paper cocked hat, wearing that expression of awed satisfaction with which a child contemplates his work when he has hit 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 speech for political assassination; ditto, if by former friend⁠—h’m, h’m. Dying speech for death at hands of injured husband (repentant). Dying speech for same (cynical). I am not quite sure which meets the present.⁠ ⁠…”

“I’m the King of the Castle,” said the boy, truculently, and very pleased with nothing in particular.

The King was a kindhearted man, and very fond of children, like all people who are fond of the ridiculous.

“Infant,” he said, “I’m glad you are so stalwart a defender of your old inviolate Notting Hill. Look up nightly to that peak, my child, where it lifts itself among the stars so ancient, so lonely, so unutterably Notting. So long as you are ready to die for the sacred mountain, even if it were ringed with all the armies of Bayswater⁠—”

The King stopped suddenly, and his eyes shone.

“Perhaps,” he said, “perhaps the noblest of all my conceptions. A revival of the arrogance of the old medieval cities applied to our glorious suburbs. Clapham with a city guard. Wimbledon with a city wall. Surbiton tolling a bell to raise its citizens. West Hampstead going into battle with its own banner. It shall be done. I, the King, have said it.” And, hastily presenting the boy with half a crown, remarking, “For the war-chest of Notting Hill,” he ran violently home at such a rate of speed that crowds followed him for miles. On reaching his study, he ordered a cup of coffee, and plunged into profound meditation upon the project. At length he called his favourite equerry, Captain Bowler, for whom he had a deep affection, founded principally upon the shape of his whiskers.

“Bowler,” he said, “isn’t there some society of historical research, or something of which I am an honorary member?”

“Yes, sir,” said Captain Bowler, rubbing his nose, “you are a member of the Encouragers of Egyptian Renaissance, and the Teutonic Tombs Club, and the Society for the Recovery of London Antiquities, and⁠—”

“That is admirable,” said the King. “The London Antiquities does my trick. Go to the Society for the Recovery of London Antiquities and speak to their secretary, and their sub-secretary, and their president, and their vice-president, saying, ‘The King of England is proud, but the honorary member of the Society for the Recovery of London Antiquities is prouder than kings. I should like to tell you of certain discoveries I have made touching the neglected traditions of the London boroughs. The revelations may cause some excitement, stirring burning memories and touching old wounds in Shepherd’s Bush and Bayswater, in Pimlico and South Kensington. The King hesitates, but the honorary member is firm. I approach you invoking the vows of my initiation, the Sacred Seven Cats, the Poker of Perfection, and the Ordeal of the Indescribable Instant (forgive me if I mix you up with the Clan-na-Gael or some other club I belong to), and ask you to permit me to read a paper at your next meeting on the “Wars of the London Boroughs.” ’ Say all this to the Society, Bowler. Remember it very carefully, for it is most important, and I have forgotten it altogether, and send me another cup of coffee and some of the cigars that we keep for vulgar and successful people. I am going to write my paper.”

The Society for the Recovery of London Antiquities met a month after in a corrugated iron hall on the outskirts of one of the southern suburbs of London. A large number of people had collected there under the coarse and flaring gas-jets when the King arrived, perspiring and genial. On taking off his greatcoat, he was perceived to be in evening dress, wearing the Garter. His appearance at the small table, adorned only with a glass of water, was received with respectful cheering.

The chairman (Mr. Huggins) said that he was sure that they had all been pleased to listen to such distinguished lecturers as they had heard for some time past (hear, hear). Mr. Burton (hear, hear), Mr. Cambridge, Professor King (loud and continued cheers), our old friend Peter Jessop, Sir William White (loud laughter), and other eminent men, had done honour to their little venture (cheers). But there were other circumstances which lent a certain unique quality to the present occasion (hear, hear). So far as his recollection went, and in connection with the Society for the Recovery of London Antiquities it went very far (loud cheers), he did not remember that any of their lecturers had borne the title of King. He would therefore call upon King Auberon briefly to address the meeting.

The King began by saying that this speech might be regarded as the first declaration of his new policy for the nation. “At this supreme hour of my life I feel that to no one but the members of the Society for the Recovery of London Antiquities can I open my heart (cheers). If the world turns upon my policy, and the storms of popular hostility begin to rise (no, no), I feel that it is here, with my brave Recoverers around me, that I can best meet them, sword in hand” (loud cheers).

His Majesty then went on to explain that, now old age was creeping upon him, he proposed to devote his remaining strength to bringing about a keener sense of local patriotism in the various municipalities of London. How few of them knew the legends of their own boroughs! How many there were who had never heard of the true origin of the Wink of Wandsworth! What a large proportion of the younger generation in Chelsea neglected to perform the old Chelsea Chuff! Pimlico no longer pumped the Pimlies. Battersea had forgotten the name of Blick.

There was a short silence, and then a voice said “Shame!”

The King continued: “Being called, however unworthily, to this high estate, I have resolved that, so far as possible, this neglect shall cease. I desire no military glory. I lay claim to no constitutional equality with Justinian or Alfred. If I can go down to history as the man who saved from extinction a few old English customs, if our descendants can say it was through this man, humble as he was, that the Ten Turnips are still eaten in Fulham, and the Putney parish councillor still shaves one half of his head, I shall look my great fathers reverently but not fearfully in the face when I go down to the last house of Kings.”

The King paused, visibly affected, but collecting himself, resumed once more.