/
20058.txt
6847 lines (5431 loc) · 330 KB
/
20058.txt
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723
724
725
726
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754
755
756
757
758
759
760
761
762
763
764
765
766
767
768
769
770
771
772
773
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782
783
784
785
786
787
788
789
790
791
792
793
794
795
796
797
798
799
800
801
802
803
804
805
806
807
808
809
810
811
812
813
814
815
816
817
818
819
820
821
822
823
824
825
826
827
828
829
830
831
832
833
834
835
836
837
838
839
840
841
842
843
844
845
846
847
848
849
850
851
852
853
854
855
856
857
858
859
860
861
862
863
864
865
866
867
868
869
870
871
872
873
874
875
876
877
878
879
880
881
882
883
884
885
886
887
888
889
890
891
892
893
894
895
896
897
898
899
900
901
902
903
904
905
906
907
908
909
910
911
912
913
914
915
916
917
918
919
920
921
922
923
924
925
926
927
928
929
930
931
932
933
934
935
936
937
938
939
940
941
942
943
944
945
946
947
948
949
950
951
952
953
954
955
956
957
958
959
960
961
962
963
964
965
966
967
968
969
970
971
972
973
974
975
976
977
978
979
980
981
982
983
984
985
986
987
988
989
990
991
992
993
994
995
996
997
998
999
1000
Project Gutenberg's The Napoleon of Notting Hill, by Gilbert K. Chesterton
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Napoleon of Notting Hill
Author: Gilbert K. Chesterton
Illustrator: W. Graham Robertson
Release Date: December 8, 2006 [EBook #20058]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL ***
Produced by Jason Isbell, Diane Monico, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: IN THE DARK ENTRANCE THERE APPEARED A FLAMING
FIGURE.]
The Napoleon of
Notting Hill
THE NAPOLEON
_of_
NOTTING HILL
_By_
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON
_With Seven Full-Page Illustrations by
W. GRAHAM ROBERTSON
and a Map of the Seat of War_
REV. WILLIAM J. GORMLEY, C. M.
JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD
LONDON & NEW YORK. MDCCCCIV
_Copyright in
U.S.A., 1904_
William Clowes & Sons, Limited, London and Beccles.
_TO HILAIRE BELLOC_
_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, untravelled still,
I saw a moon that was the town's,
The largest lamp on Campden Hill._
_Yea; 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 death like wine at Austerlitz.
And when the pedants bade us mark
What cold mechanic happenings
Must come; our souls said in the dark,
"Belike; but there are likelier things."_
_Likelier across these flats afar
These sulky levels smooth and free
The drums shall crash a waltz of war
And Death shall dance with Liberty;
Likelier the barricades 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 uplands set
I saw the dream; the streets I trod
The lit straight streets shot out and met
The starry streets that point to God.
This legend of an epic hour
A child I dreamed, and dream it still,
Under the great grey water-tower
That strikes the stars on Campden Hill._
G. K. C.
_CONTENTS_
BOOK I
_Chapter_ _Page_
I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON THE ART OF PROPHECY 13
II. THE MAN IN GREEN 21
III. THE HILL OF HUMOUR 49
BOOK II
I. THE CHARTER OF THE CITIES 65
II. THE COUNCIL OF THE PROVOSTS 82
III. ENTER A LUNATIC 102
BOOK III
I. THE MENTAL CONDITION OF ADAM WAYNE 125
II. THE REMARKABLE MR. TURNBULL 147
III. THE EXPERIMENT OF MR. BUCK 163
BOOK IV
I. THE BATTLE OF THE LAMPS 189
II. THE CORRESPONDENT OF THE "COURT JOURNAL" 208
III. THE GREAT ARMY OF SOUTH KENSINGTON 224
BOOK V
I. THE EMPIRE OF NOTTING HILL 259
II. THE LAST BATTLE 279
III. TWO VOICES 291
_ILLUSTRATIONS_
IN THE DARK ENTRANCE THERE APPEARED A FLAMING FIGURE _Frontispiece_
_To face page_
CITY MEN OUT ON ALL FOURS IN A FIELD COVERED WITH
VEAL CUTLETS 16
"I'M THE KING OF THE CASTLE" 70
"I BRING HOMAGE TO MY KING" 104
MAP OF THE SEAT OF WAR 190
KING AUBERON DESCENDED FROM THE OMNIBUS WITH DIGNITY 220
"A FINE EVENING, SIR," SAID THE CHEMIST 264
"WAYNE, IT WAS ALL A JOKE!" 296
BOOK I
_THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL_
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
it 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
to-morrow 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. They then 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 the
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 had ever 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 lamp-post, 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 other 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 for ever. And there arose from
their ashes Dr. Quilp, 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 apoplectic old major, who 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.
Then there was the opposite school. There was Mr. Edward Carpenter,
who thought 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. (of Pocohontas 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 Humanitarians
said that the world was 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 finely, "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.
[Illustration: CITY MEN OUT ON ALL FOURS IN A FIELD COVERED WITH VEAL
CUTLETS.]
And on the other hand, some people were predicting that 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 off it, similar to the gulf between man and the lower
animals. And in the same way his impetuous friend, Dr. Zoppi ("the
Paul of Anglo-Saxonism"), carried it yet further, and held that, 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 graves 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 twentieth 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 Fipps, who went mad and ran about the country with
an axe, hacking branches off the trees whenever there 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 imagination could stretch. This, they said, was
the true and simple way of anticipating the future. "Just as," said
Dr. Pellkins, 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 some day 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 labourers 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 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 until 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.
CHAPTER II--_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 ennui. If we change, we
must change slowly and safely, as the animals do. Nature's revolutions
are the only successful ones. There has been no conservative reaction
in favour of tails."
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.
Some one in the official class was made King. No one cared how: no one
cared who. He was merely an 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 wintry 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
neighbourhood 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 coat-tails of the tall
Government officials, and through street after street, and round
corner after corner, saw only coat-tails, coat-tails, and again
coat-tails--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 none the
less. 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 winter wind the dragons licked their lips. It
was only a momentary fancy, but the small clerk found it imbedded 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 the 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 chord
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 realised 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 as to be a phosphorescence clinging to the
shapes themselves. The load of heaven and the clouds is like a 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 makes the modern fop, hideous as he is, a
favourite exercise of the modern draughtsman; that element which Mr.
Max Beerbohm 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 lamp-post.
They crawled on past the lamp-posts; their mien was so immovable that
a fanciful description might almost say, that the lamp-posts crawled
past the men, 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 on 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 glowed abruptly out of the foggy twilight. "Do you know,
I often find hair-dressers when I walk about London. I'll lunch with
you at Cicconani's. You know, I'm awfully fond of hair-dressers'
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 Honourable James Barker.
"I've 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
characterisation. 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 mediaeval
French and that sort of thing. Have you ever been in his rooms? It's
like being inside an amethyst. And he moves about in all that and
talks like--like a turnip."
"Well, damn all books. Your blue books as well," said the ingenuous
Mr. Lambert, with a friendly simplicity. "You ought to understand such
things. What do you make of him?"
"He's beyond me," returned Barker. "But if you asked 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 mental 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. Wilfrid Lambert, with
candour.
As they passed up the long streets towards 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
honours without having either amused or enlightened the mind of a
single man. Wilfrid 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 Cicconani's. The
little man, whose name was Auberon Quin, 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 Quin, 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 to places," said the sage.
They were about to turn into the restaurant with a 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 grey terraces was moving something
not to be seen for miles round--not to be seen perhaps at that time in
England--a man dressed in bright colours. 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 shoulder swung a
short green furred 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 medals; 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-organised police, were attired in a sombre and hygienic manner.
But even those who remembered the last Life Guards 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 gentleman walked down the
centre of the road would be something difficult to express in human
language. For it was an ingrained simplicity and 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 matter 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 wondered 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) any one who chooses to behave like a king. He had to so
sublime an extent that great quality of royalty--an almost imbecile
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 splendour, 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 centre of the road and walked
to one side of it. He came to a halt opposite to a large poster of
Colman's Mustard erected on a wooden hoarding. 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 colour and wholly irregular in outline. Then for the first
time the great being addressed his adoring onlookers--
"Can any one," 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
hyperboles 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, searching and unsatisfied.
"Anything else I can do, sir?" asked Lambert, with the absurd
politeness of the Englishman when once embarrassed.
"Red," said the stranger, vaguely, "red."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I beg yours also, Senor," 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 bandanna once, but--"
"Barker," asked Auberon Quin, suddenly, "where's your red cockatoo?
Where's your red cockatoo?"
"What do you mean?" asked Barker, desperately. "What cockatoo? You've
never seen me with any cockatoo!"
"I know," said Auberon, vaguely mollified. "Where's it been all the
time?"
Barker swung round, not without resentment.
"I am sorry, sir," he said, shortly but civilly, "none of us seem to
have anything red to lend you. But why, if one may ask--"
"I thank you, Senor, it is nothing. I can, since there is nothing
else, fulfil my own requirements."
And standing for a second of thought with the penknife 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, Senor," he said, "another pin, 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 hat.
"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 stateliness.
While all the rest paused, in some disorder, little Mr. Auberon Quin
ran after the stranger and stopped him, with hat in hand. Considerably
to everybody's astonishment, he addressed him in the purest Spanish--
"Senor," he said in that language, "pardon a hospitality, perhaps
indiscreet, towards one who appears to be a distinguished, but a
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.
"Senor," 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 English." And he passed with the rest into Cicconani's.
"Now, perhaps," said Barker, over the fish and sherry, intensely
polite, but burning with curiosity, "perhaps it would be rude of me to
ask why you did that?"
"Did what, Senor?" 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 a hoarding and ... er ... cut yourself ... and...."
"To tell you that, Senor," 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 leant 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.
"And the yellow paper," he began, with anxious friendliness, "and the
red rag...."
"The yellow paper and the red rag," said Fuego, with indescribable
grandeur, "are the colours 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
hoofs of oxen. But Nicaragua is not dead. Nicaragua is an idea."
Auberon Quin suggested timidly, "A brilliant idea."
"Yes," said the foreigner, snatching at the word. "You are right,
generous Englishman. An idea _brillant_, a burning thought. Senor,
you asked me why, in my desire to see the colours of my country, I
snatched at paper and blood. Can you not understand the ancient
sanctity of colours? The Church has her symbolic colours. And think of
what colours mean to us--think of the position of one like myself, who
can see nothing but those two colours, 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 a 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 Quin, with equal enthusiasm, "there should happen to be
yellow wine and red wine at the same lunch, you 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 at last, with a cough, "that you,
ahem, were the President of Nicaragua when it made its--er--one must,
of course, agree--its quite heroic resistance to--er--"
The ex-President of Nicaragua waved his hand.
"You need not hesitate in speaking to me," he said. "I'm quite fully
aware that the whole tendency of the world of to-day 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 republic in 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--er--the Nicaraguan independence."
"So your sympathies are," said Del Fuego, 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
commonwealths 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 large 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
civilisation was against you. We moderns believe in a great
cosmopolitan civilisation, one which shall include all the talents of
all the absorbed peoples--"
"The Senor will forgive me," said the President. "May I ask the Senor
how, under ordinary circumstances, he catches a wild horse?"
"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 peoples to unite, you really mean that you want all
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 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 civilisation will include all
talents. Will it? Do you really mean to say that at the moment when
the Esquimaux has learnt to vote for a County Council, you will have
learnt to spear a walrus? I recur to the example I gave. In Nicaragua
we had a way of catching wild horses--by lassooing the fore
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 from the world when
Nicaragua was civilised."
"Something, perhaps," replied Barker, "but that something a mere
barbarian dexterity. I do not know that I could chip flints as well as
a primeval man, but I know that civilisation can make these knives
which are better, and I trust to civilisation."
"You have good authority," answered the Nicaraguan. "Many clever men
like you have trusted to civilisation. Many clever Babylonians, many
clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me,
in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, 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," asked 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. It
is 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 fulfilment. Why take the trouble
to number and register and enfranchise all the innumerable John
Robinsons, 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, Tories saying it
ought to be preserved because it was clever, and Radicals 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 chance 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 raise a murmur."
"Do you really mean," asked 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
Stuarts 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 Barker, with a perfect placidity. "Suppose he
is a tyrant--he is still a check on a hundred 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
may happen 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 a mere business routine of
government he will endeavour 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 interests of the public--"
Mr. Auberon Quin rose suddenly to his feet.
"If you'll excuse me, gentlemen," he said, "I will step out for a
moment into the air."
"I'm so sorry, Auberon," said Lambert, good-naturedly; "do you feel
bad?"
"Not bad exactly," said Auberon, 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 interests of
the public.' One cannot get the honey from such things without being
alone for a little."
"Is he really off his chump, do you think?" asked Lambert.
The old President looked after him with queerly 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 maccaroni to his mouth.