The Napoleon of Notting Hill
because a cry went up such as had never before greeted any of the
kings of the earth.
BOOK II
CHAPTER 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 every one does. Every one 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 store-room 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
every one'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 coat-tails.
It is my humour. Are you answered? At any rate, I have said my last
serious word to-day, 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 to-day, 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 eye-glass, 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
some one very hard. The King gazed thoughtfully for some time at his
assailant, and slowly took a note-book 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 kind-hearted 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 mediaeval 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 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 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