The Napoleon of Notting Hill Read online

  CHAPTER I--_The Mental Condition of Adam Wayne_

  A little while after the King's accession a small book of poemsappeared, called "Hymns on the Hill." They were not good poems, norwas the book successful, but it attracted a certain amount ofattention from one particular school of critics. The King himself, whowas a member of the school, reviewed it in his capacity of literarycritic to "Straight from the Stables," a sporting journal. They wereknown as the Hammock School, because it had been calculatedmalignantly by an enemy that no less than thirteen of their delicatecriticisms had begun with the words, "I read this book in a hammock:half asleep in the sleepy sunlight, I ..."; after that there wereimportant differences. Under these conditions they liked everything,but especially everything silly. "Next to authentic goodness in abook," they said--"next to authentic goodness in a book (and that,alas! we never find) we desire a rich badness." Thus it happened thattheir praise (as indicating the presence of a rich badness) was notuniversally sought after, and authors became a little disquieted whenthey found the eye of the Hammock School fixed upon them with peculiarfavour.

  The peculiarity of "Hymns on the Hill" was the celebration of thepoetry of London as distinct from the poetry of the country. Thissentiment or affectation was, of course, not uncommon in the twentiethcentury, nor was it, although sometimes exaggerated, and sometimesartificial, by any means without a great truth at its root, for thereis one respect in which a town must be more poetical than the country,since it is closer to the spirit of man; for London, if it be not oneof the masterpieces of man, is at least one of his sins. A street isreally more poetical than a meadow, because a street has a secret. Astreet is going somewhere, and a meadow nowhere. But, in the case ofthe book called "Hymns on the Hill," there was another peculiarity,which the King pointed out with great acumen in his review. He wasnaturally interested in the matter, for he had himself published avolume of lyrics about London under his pseudonym of "Daisy Daydream."

  This difference, as the King pointed out, consisted in the fact that,while mere artificers like "Daisy Daydream" (on whose elaborate stylethe King, over his signature of "Thunderbolt," was perhaps somewhattoo severe) thought to praise London by comparing it to thecountry--using nature, that is, as a background from which allpoetical images had to be drawn--the more robust author of "Hymns onthe Hill" praised the country, or nature, by comparing it to the town,and used the town itself as a background. "Take," said the critic,"the typically feminine lines, 'To the Inventor of The Hansom Cab'--

  'Poet, whose cunning carved this amorous shell, Where twain may dwell.'"

  "Surely," wrote the King, "no one but a woman could have written thoselines. A woman has always a weakness for nature; with her art is onlybeautiful as an echo or shadow of it. She is praising the hansom cabby theme and theory, but her soul is still a child by the sea, pickingup shells. She can never be utterly of the town, as a man can; indeed,do we not speak (with sacred propriety) of 'a man about town'? Whoever spoke of a woman about town? However much, physically, 'abouttown' a woman may be, she still models herself on nature; she tries tocarry nature with her; she bids grasses to grow on her head, and furrybeasts to bite her about the throat. In the heart of a dim city, shemodels her hat on a flaring cottage garden of flowers. We, with ournobler civic sentiment, model ours on a chimney pot; the ensign ofcivilisation. And rather than be without birds, she will commitmassacre, that she may turn her head into a tree, with dead birds tosing on it."

  This kind of thing went on for several pages, and then the criticremembered his subject, and returned to it.

  "Poet, whose cunning carved this amorous shell, Where twain may dwell."

  "The peculiarity of these fine though feminine lines," continued"Thunderbolt," "is, as we have said, that they praise the hansom cabby comparing it to the shell, to a natural thing. Now, hear the authorof 'Hymns on the Hill,' and how he deals with the same subject. In hisfine nocturne, entitled 'The Last Omnibus' he relieves the rich andpoignant melancholy of the theme by a sudden sense of rushing at theend--

  'The wind round the old street cornerSwung sudden and quick as a cab.'

  "Here the distinction is obvious. 'Daisy Daydream' thinks it a greatcompliment to a hansom cab to be compared to one of the spiralchambers of the sea. And the author of 'Hymns on the Hill' thinks it agreat compliment to the immortal whirlwind to be compared to a hackneycoach. He surely is the real admirer of London. We have no space tospeak of all his perfect applications of the idea; of the poem inwhich, for instance, a lady's eyes are compared, not to stars, but totwo perfect street-lamps guiding the wanderer. We have no space tospeak of the fine lyric, recalling the Elizabethan spirit, in whichthe poet, instead of saying that the rose and the lily contend in hercomplexion, says, with a purer modernism, that the red omnibus ofHammersmith and the white omnibus of Fulham fight there for themastery. How perfect the image of two contending omnibuses!"

  Here, somewhat abruptly, the review concluded, probably because theKing had to send off his copy at that moment, as he was in some wantof money. But the King was a very good critic, whatever he may havebeen as King, and he had, to a considerable extent, hit the right nailon the head. "Hymns on the Hill" was not at all like the poemsoriginally published in praise of the poetry of London. And thereason was that it was really written by a man who had seen nothingelse but London, and who regarded it, therefore, as the universe. Itwas written by a raw, red-headed lad of seventeen, named Adam Wayne,who had been born in Notting Hill. An accident in his seventh yearprevented his being taken away to the seaside, and thus his whole lifehad been passed in his own Pump Street, and in its neighbourhood. Andthe consequence was, that he saw the street-lamps as things quite aseternal as the stars; the two fires were mingled. He saw the houses asthings enduring, like the mountains, and so he wrote about them as onewould write about mountains. Nature puts on a disguise when she speaksto every man; to this man she put on the disguise of Notting Hill.Nature would mean to a poet born in the Cumberland hills, a stormysky-line and sudden rocks. Nature would mean to a poet born in theEssex flats, a waste of splendid waters and splendid sunsets. Sonature meant to this man Wayne a line of violet roofs and lemon lamps,the chiaroscuro of the town. He did not think it clever or funny topraise the shadows and colours of the town; he had seen no othershadows or colours, and so he praised them--because they were shadowsand colours. He saw all this because he was a poet, though in practicea bad poet. It is too often forgotten that just as a bad man isnevertheless a man, so a bad poet is nevertheless a poet.

  Mr. Wayne's little volume of verse was a complete failure; and hesubmitted to the decision of fate with a quite rational humility, wentback to his work, which was that of a draper's assistant, and wrote nomore. He still retained his feeling about the town of Notting Hill,because he could not possibly have any other feeling, because it wasthe back and base of his brain. But he does not seem to have made anyparticular attempt to express it or insist upon it.

  He was a genuine natural mystic, one of those who live on the borderof fairyland. But he was perhaps the first to realise how often theboundary of fairyland runs through a crowded city. Twenty feet fromhim (for he was very short-sighted) the red and white and yellow sunsof the gas-lights thronged and melted into each other like an orchardof fiery trees, the beginning of the woods of elf-land.

  But, oddly enough, it was because he was a small poet that he came tohis strange and isolated triumph. It was because he was a failure inliterature that he became a portent in English history. He was one ofthose to whom nature has given the desire without the power ofartistic expression. He had been a dumb poet from his cradle. He mighthave been so to his grave, and carried unuttered into the darkness atreasure of new and sensational song. But he was born under the luckystar of a single coincidence. He happened to be at the head of hisdingy municipality at the time of the King's jest, at the time whenall municipalities were suddenly commanded to break out into bannersand flowers. Out of the long procession of the silent poets
, who havebeen passing since the beginning of the world, this one man foundhimself in the midst of an heraldic vision, in which he could act andspeak and live lyrically. While the author and the victims aliketreated the whole matter as a silly public charade, this one man, bytaking it seriously, sprang suddenly into a throne of artisticomnipotence. Armour, music, standards, watch-fires, the noise ofdrums, all the theatrical properties were thrown before him. This onepoor rhymster, having burnt his own rhymes, began to live that life ofopen air and acted poetry of which all the poets of the earth havedreamed in vain; the life for which the Iliad is only a cheapsubstitute.

  Upwards from his abstracted childhood, Adam Wayne had grown stronglyand silently in a certain quality or capacity which is in moderncities almost entirely artificial, but which can be natural, and wasprimarily almost brutally natural in him, the quality or capacity ofpatriotism. It exists, like other virtues and vices, in a certainundiluted reality. It is not confused with all kinds of other things.A child speaking of his country or his village may make every mistakein Mandeville or tell every lie in Munchausen, but in his statementthere will be no psychological lies any more than there can be in agood song. Adam Wayne, as a boy, had for his dull streets in NottingHill the ultimate and ancient sentiment that went out to Athens orJerusalem. He knew the secret of the passion, those secrets which makereal old national songs sound so strange to our civilisation. He knewthat real patriotism tends to sing about sorrows and forlorn hopesmuch more than about victory. He knew that in proper names themselvesis half the poetry of all national poems. Above all, he knew thesupreme psychological fact about patriotism, as certain in connectionwith it as that a fine shame comes to all lovers, the fact that thepatriot never under any circumstances boasts of the largeness of hiscountry, but always, and of necessity, boasts of the smallness of it.

  All this he knew, not because he was a philosopher or a genius, butbecause he was a child. Any one who cares to walk up a side slum likePump Street, can see a little Adam claiming to be king of apaving-stone. And he will always be proudest if the stone is almosttoo narrow for him to keep his feet inside it.

  It was while he was in such a dream of defensive battle, marking outsome strip of street or fortress of steps as the limit of his haughtyclaim, that the King had met him, and, with a few words flung inmockery, ratified for ever the strange boundaries of his soul.Thenceforward the fanciful idea of the defence of Notting Hill in warbecame to him a thing as solid as eating or drinking or lighting apipe. He disposed his meals for it, altered his plans for it, layawake in the night and went over it again. Two or three shops were tohim an arsenal; an area was to him a moat; corners of balconies andturns of stone steps were points for the location of a culverin or anarcher. It is almost impossible to convey to any ordinary imaginationthe degree to which he had transmitted the leaden London landscape toa romantic gold. The process began almost in babyhood, and becamehabitual like a literal madness. It was felt most keenly at night,when London is really herself, when her lights shine in the dark likethe eyes of innumerable cats, and the outline of the dark houses hasthe bold simplicity of blue hills. But for him the night revealedinstead of concealing, and he read all the blank hours of morning andafternoon, by a contradictory phrase, in the light of that darkness.To this man, at any rate, the inconceivable had happened. Theartificial city had become to him nature, and he felt the curbstonesand gas-lamps as things as ancient as the sky.

  One instance may suffice. Walking along Pump Street with a friend, hesaid, as he gazed dreamily at the iron fence of a little front garden,"How those railings stir one's blood!"

  His friend, who was also a great intellectual admirer, looked at thempainfully, but without any particular emotion. He was so troubledabout it that he went back quite a large number of times on quietevenings and stared at the railings, waiting for something to happento his blood, but without success. At last he took refuge in askingWayne himself. He discovered that the ecstacy lay in the one point hehad never noticed about the railings even after his six visits--thefact that they were, like the great majority of others--in London,shaped at the top after the manner of a spear. As a child, Wayne hadhalf unconsciously compared them with the spears in pictures ofLancelot and St. George, and had grown up under the shadow of thegraphic association. Now, whenever he looked at them, they were simplythe serried weapons that made a hedge of steel round the sacred homesof Notting Hill. He could not have cleansed his mind of that meaningeven if he tried. It was not a fanciful comparison, or anything likeit. It would not have been true to say that the familiar railingsreminded him of spears; it would have been far truer to say that thefamiliar spears occasionally reminded him of railings.

  A couple of days after his interview with the King, Adam Wayne waspacing like a caged lion in front of five shops that occupied theupper end of the disputed street. They were a grocer's, a chemist's, abarber's, an old curiosity shop and a toy-shop that sold alsonewspapers. It was these five shops which his childish fastidiousnesshad first selected as the essentials of the Notting Hill campaign, thecitadel of the city. If Notting Hill was the heart of the universe,and Pump Street was the heart of Notting Hill, this was the heart ofPump Street. The fact that they were all small and side by siderealised that feeling for a formidable comfort and compactness which,as we have said, was the heart of his patriotism, and of allpatriotism. The grocer (who had a wine and spirit licence) wasincluded because he could provision the garrison; the old curiosityshop because it contained enough swords, pistols, partisans,cross-bows, and blunderbusses to arm a whole irregular regiment; thetoy and paper shop because Wayne thought a free press an essentialcentre for the soul of Pump Street; the chemist's to cope withoutbreaks of disease among the besieged; and the barber's because itwas in the middle of all the rest, and the barber's son was anintimate friend and spiritual affinity.

  It was a cloudless October evening settling down through purple intopure silver around the roofs and chimneys of the steep little street,which looked black and sharp and dramatic. In the deep shadows thegas-lit shop fronts gleamed like five fires in a row, and before them,darkly outlined like a ghost against some purgatorial furnaces, passedto and fro the tall bird-like figure and eagle nose of Adam Wayne.

  He swung his stick restlessly, and seemed fitfully talking to himself.

  "There are, after all, enigmas," he said "even to the man who hasfaith. There are doubts that remain even after the true philosophy iscompleted in every rung and rivet. And here is one of them. Is thenormal human need, the normal human condition, higher or lower thanthose special states of the soul which call out a doubtful anddangerous glory? those special powers of knowledge or sacrifice whichare made possible only by the existence of evil? Which should comefirst to our affections, the enduring sanities of peace or thehalf-maniacal virtues of battle? Which should come first, the mangreat in the daily round or the man great in emergency? Which shouldcome first, to return to the enigma before me, the grocer or thechemist? Which is more certainly the stay of the city, the swiftchivalrous chemist or the benignant all-providing grocer? In suchultimate spiritual doubts it is only possible to choose a side by thehigher instincts, and to abide the issue. In any case, I have made mychoice. May I be pardoned if I choose wrongly, but I choose thegrocer."

  "Good morning, sir," said the grocer, who was a middle-aged man,partially bald, with harsh red whiskers and beard, and forehead linedwith all the cares of the small tradesman. "What can I do for you,sir?"

  Wayne removed his hat on entering the shop, with a ceremoniousgesture, which, slight as it was, made the tradesman eye him with thebeginnings of wonder.

  "I come, sir," he said soberly, "to appeal to your patriotism."

  "Why, sir," said the grocer, "that sounds like the times when I was aboy and we used to have elections."

  "You will have them again," said Wayne, firmly, "and far greaterthings. Listen, Mr. Mead. I know the temptations which a grocer has toa too cosmopolitan philosophy. I can imagine what it must be to sitall day as you
do surrounded with wares from all the ends of theearth, from strange seas that we have never sailed and strange foreststhat we could not even picture. No Eastern king ever had suchargosies or such cargoes coming from the sunrise and the sunset, andSolomon in all his glory was not enriched like one of you. India is atyour elbow," he cried, lifting his voice and pointing his stick at adrawer of rice, the grocer making a movement of some alarm, "China isbefore you, Demerara is behind you, America is above your head, and atthis very moment, like some old Spanish admiral, you hold Tunis inyour hands."

  Mr. Mead dropped the box of dates which he was just lifting, and thenpicked it up again vaguely.

  Wayne went on with a heightened colour, but a lowered voice,

  "I know, I say, the temptations of so international, so universal avision of wealth. I know that it must be your danger not to fall likemany tradesmen into too dusty and mechanical a narrowness, but ratherto be too broad, to be too general, too liberal. If a narrownationalism be the danger of the pastry-cook, who makes his own waresunder his own heavens, no less is cosmopolitanism the danger of thegrocer. But I come to you in the name of that patriotism which nowanderings or enlightenments should ever wholly extinguish, and I askyou to remember Notting Hill. For, after all, in this cosmopolitanmagnificence, she has played no small part. Your dates may come fromthe tall palms of Barbary, your sugar from the strange islands of thetropics, your tea from the secret villages of the Empire of theDragon. That this room might be furnished, forests may have beenspoiled under the Southern Cross, and leviathans speared under thePolar Star. But you yourself--surely no inconsiderable treasure--youyourself, the brain that wields these vast interests--you yourself, atleast, have grown to strength and wisdom between these grey houses andunder this rainy sky. This city which made you, and thus made yourfortunes, is threatened with war. Come forth and tell to the ends ofthe earth this lesson. Oil is from the North and fruits from theSouth; rices are from India and spices from Ceylon; sheep are from NewZealand and men from Notting Hill."

  The grocer sat for some little while, with dim eyes and his mouthopen, looking rather like a fish. Then he scratched the back of hishead, and said nothing. Then he said--

  "Anything out of the shop, sir?"

  Wayne looked round in a dazed way. Seeing a pile of tins of pine-applechunks, he waved his stick generally towards them.

  "Yes," he said; "I'll take those."

  "All those, sir?" said the grocer, with greatly increased interest.

  "Yes, yes; all those," replied Wayne, still a little bewildered, likea man splashed with cold water.

  "Very good, sir; thank you, sir," said the grocer with animation. "Youmay count upon my patriotism, sir."

  "I count upon it already," said Wayne, and passed out into thegathering night.

  The grocer put the box of dates back in its place.

  "What a nice fellow he is!" he said. "It's odd how often they arenice. Much nicer than those as are all right."

  Meanwhile Adam Wayne stood outside the glowing chemist's shop,unmistakably wavering.

  "What a weakness it is!" he muttered. "I have never got rid of it fromchildhood--the fear of this magic shop. The grocer is rich, he isromantic, he is poetical in the truest sense, but he is not--no, he isnot supernatural. But the chemist! All the other shops stand inNotting Hill, but this stands in Elf-land. Look at those great burningbowls of colour. It must be from them that God paints the sunsets. Itis superhuman, and the superhuman is all the more uncanny when it isbeneficent. That is the root of the fear of God. I am afraid. But Imust be a man and enter."

  He was a man, and entered. A short, dark young man was behind thecounter with spectacles, and greeted him with a bright but entirelybusiness-like smile.

  "A fine evening, sir," he said.

  "Fine indeed, strange Father," said Adam, stretching his handssomewhat forward. "It is on such clear and mellow nights that yourshop is most itself. Then they appear most perfect, those moons ofgreen and gold and crimson, which from afar oft guide the pilgrim ofpain and sickness to this house of merciful witchcraft."

  "Can I get you anything?" asked the chemist.

  "Let me see," said Wayne, in a friendly but vague manner. "Let me havesome sal volatile."

  "Eightpence, tenpence, or one and sixpence a bottle?" said the youngman, genially.

  "One and six--one and six," replied Wayne, with a wild submissiveness."I come to ask you, Mr. Bowles, a terrible question."

  He paused and collected himself.

  "It is necessary," he muttered--"it is necessary to be tactful, and tosuit the appeal to each profession in turn."

  "I come," he resumed aloud, "to ask you a question which goes to theroots of your miraculous toils. Mr. Bowles, shall all this witcherycease?" And he waved his stick around the shop.

  Meeting with no answer, he continued with animation--

  "In Notting Hill we have felt to its core the elfish mystery of yourprofession. And now Notting Hill itself is threatened."

  "Anything more, sir?" asked the chemist.

  "Oh," said Wayne, somewhat disturbed--"oh, what is it chemists sell?Quinine, I think. Thank you. Shall it be destroyed? I have met thesemen of Bayswater and North Kensington--Mr. Bowles, they arematerialists. They see no witchery in your work, even when it iswrought within their own borders. They think the chemist iscommonplace. They think him human."

  The chemist appeared to pause, only a moment, to take in the insult,and immediately said--

  "And the next article, please?"

  "Alum," said the Provost, wildly. "I resume. It is in this sacredtown alone that your priesthood is reverenced. Therefore, when youfight for us you fight not only for yourself, but for everything youtypify. You fight not only for Notting Hill, but for Fairyland, for assurely as Buck and Barker and such men hold sway, the sense ofFairyland in some strange manner diminishes."

  "Anything more, sir?" asked Mr. Bowles, with unbroken cheerfulness.

  "Oh yes, jujubes--Gregory powder--magnesia. The danger is imminent. Inall this matter I have felt that I fought not merely for my own city(though to that I owe all my blood), but for all places in which thesegreat ideas could prevail. I am fighting not merely for Notting Hill,but for Bayswater itself; for North Kensington itself. For if thegold-hunters prevail, these also will lose all their ancientsentiments and all the mystery of their national soul. I know I cancount upon you."

  "Oh yes, sir," said the chemist, with great animation; "we are alwaysglad to oblige a good customer."

  Adam Wayne went out of the shop with a deep sense of fulfilment ofsoul.

  "It is so fortunate," he said, "to have tact, to be able to play uponthe peculiar talents and specialities, the cosmopolitanism of thegrocer and the world-old necromancy of the chemist. Where should I bewithout tact?"