Gilbert Chesterton - The Napoleon of Notting Hill

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

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

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

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

“By the Great Lord of Luck, Barker!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What do you mean?” asked Auberon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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