The Napoleon of Notting Hill

G. K. Chesterton's The Napoleon of Notting Hill is a satirical fantasy set in a future London of roughly 1984. The novel opens by arguing that humanity always defeats its prophets by doing the unexpected. Various prophets are mocked for assuming that existing trends, from scientific progress to imperial expansion, will simply continue indefinitely. The narrator announces that, contrary to all prophecy, London has barely changed. The people have accepted a quiet, passionless despotism in which democracy has died and the King of England is chosen by alphabetical rotation, serving as a mere figurehead.

In this grey, mechanized world, three government clerks walk together each morning. Auberon Quin, a small, round-headed man who resembles a cross between a baby and an owl, is joined by James Barker, a lean and ambitious official, and Wilfrid Lambert, a good-natured but intellectually limited young man. On the street they encounter Juan del Fuego, the exiled President of Nicaragua, wearing a brilliant green military uniform. Del Fuego tears a strip of yellow paper from a mustard poster and stabs his own palm, pinning both the yellow paper and his own blood to his breast as makeshift representations of his conquered nation's colors. Over lunch, del Fuego argues that cosmopolitan civilization destroys unique local cultures and warns that Quin, who cares for nothing but jokes, is a dangerous man. Three days later, del Fuego dies quietly in Soho.

Shortly afterward, Quin is performing acrobatics atop a hill in Kensington Gardens when officials arrive to announce that the rotational selection for King has fallen on him. Barker, who secretly craved the position, is stunned. Quin accepts the kingship while still upside down and processes toward Kensington Palace to an unprecedented roar of laughter.

As King, Quin devotes himself to an elaborate joke. After encountering a small boy playing soldier in Notting Hill, he conceives his grandest scheme: a revival of medieval civic pageantry for London's suburbs. He designs heraldic uniforms, invents fictional heroic histories for each borough, and issues the Charter of the Cities, requiring every borough to maintain city walls, gates, armed guards, banners, and coats-of-arms. Most Londoners treat the Charter as a joke until they realize the King intends it enforced. Among the audience at Quin's lecture, a tradition records a pale face with burning blue eyes that watched with absolute attention, after which a red-haired boy ran from the room.

Ten years pass. Mr. Buck, the Provost of North Kensington and a blunt, powerful draper, has organized a major road project through several boroughs, including Notting Hill. The old Provost cooperated, but he has died, and the lot has fallen on a young man named Adam Wayne. Wayne refuses to allow the road through Pump Street, a small lane containing only a pub and a penny toy-shop. Buck, Wilson (the Provost of Bayswater), and Barker (now Provost of South Kensington) gather before the King to demand action.

When Wayne arrives, the other Provosts expect another complaint. Instead, he kneels and flings his sword at the King's feet, declaring himself the heir of the Charter and swearing to defend Notting Hill. The King believes he has found a fellow performer of ironic comedy, but Wayne's face goes white and tears shine on it. He is completely sincere. As a boy, Wayne struck the King with a toy sword on Pump Street, and the King's casual, mocking words about defending the borough became Wayne's sacred prophecy. Born and raised entirely within Notting Hill, Wayne perceives London's gas-lamps and iron railings with the same reverence others feel for mountains and stars. He argues that Notting Hill, where people are born, fall in love, and die, is no more absurd than any other place worth fighting for. The touch of real combat and sacrifice, he insists, can transform commonplace things into objects of reverence.

Wayne recruits the shopkeepers of Pump Street with mixed results. The grocer, Mr. Mead, is baffled but agreeable. The chemist, Mr. Bowles, cheerfully agrees. The curiosity-shop keeper is reluctantly persuaded. The barber throws Wayne out. Wayne's true discovery is Mr. Turnbull, the toy-shop keeper, a lifelong amateur military strategist who has spent years planning Notting Hill's defense with a brick model purely as an intellectual exercise. The two sit together over Turnbull's model through the night and establish headquarters by dawn.

At a formal conference, Buck offers Wayne 1,500 pounds for his Pump Street properties. Wayne refuses at any price. The Provosts resolve to send 800 halberdiers (soldiers armed with long-handled axes) to demolish Pump Street by force. The King gives reluctant consent after the Provosts threaten revolution. Barker leads the combined force into Notting Hill, but Wayne's men ambush the column at Portobello Road, cutting it in half. The King watches as soldiers crash through a garden fence in panicked retreat. Wayne appears framed in a gateway, sword raised, red robes streaming. The King experiences a shattering inversion: The masquerade he created as mockery now looks like the truly natural thing.

Buck regroups. He identifies nine approaches to Pump Street and stations 200 men at each, relying on gas street lamps to guide the advance. Wayne's men shut off the gas at the works. In total blackness, the allies lose orientation and spend the night attacking each other. By dawn, Wayne is barricaded again behind massive fortifications. A proper siege begins, with each soldier now carrying a lantern. Wayne's cavalry, mounted on horses Turnbull commandeered at the war's start, bursts out in a daring sortie. The fighting pushes toward the Waterworks Tower on Campden Hill, where Lambert intercepts Wayne's men. Wayne kills Lambert and rallies his forces atop the wall.

While everyone fights around the Tower, Buck raises an army of nearly 4,000 men from the southern boroughs. A herald from Notting Hill arrives, but instead of offering surrender, he delivers Wayne's demand that the great army lay down its arms. The herald announces that Wayne has captured the Waterworks Tower and will open the reservoir, flooding the valley with 30 feet of water. Buck recognizes the threat is real and surrenders. The Empire of Notting Hill begins. Wayne has the Tower plated with gold as a monument to Lambert.

Twenty years later, all of London has adopted Wayne's vision of local pride, but Notting Hill has become an imperial bully, meddling in other boroughs' affairs. Wayne pleads with his people not to let nationalism degenerate into imperialism. The crowd ignores him and roars for war. Wayne tells Turnbull, his old commander, that they will be defeated because they deserve to be. The King seizes a halberd and enlists in Wayne's army.

Wayne leads his forces into Kensington Gardens against 100 allied cities. Wilson storms through Wayne's left flank and kills Bowles. Turnbull drives back Barker on the right but, seeing the end, charges to his death. Every soldier of Notting Hill is slain. Wayne fights alone by an oak tree. He cuts down Wilson with his great sword, but Wilson, in dying, snaps the blade. Buck closes in with a dagger, and Wayne tears a branch from the tree and kills Buck with it. Surrounded, Wayne tears a shred of the enemy's yellow banner and points to his own blood, recreating the red and yellow of Nicaragua, the colors del Fuego assembled at the novel's beginning. The King, struck by a halberd, loses consciousness with this image in his fading vision. Wayne clings to the oak until the tree uproots and falls, crushing everyone beneath it.

In total darkness, two voices speak. One, revealed as Quin's, confesses that the entire enterprise was a practical joke lasting 20 years. Wayne asks if there was ever any sincerity in it. Quin says there was none. Wayne thanks him and declares that they are two halves of one being: Quin the humorist stripped of gravity, Wayne the fanatic groping without humor. Together they are the father and mother of the Charter of the Cities. In healthy people, laughter and love coexist without conflict; Quin and Wayne are the two extremes that become necessary only in dark times. In the white light of dawn, Quin salutes with his halberd, and the two walk away together into the unknown world.