The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton
"In the twentieth century you could not see the ground for clever men....And all these clever men were at work giving accounts of what would happen in the next age." The discussion of prophetic literature with which Chesterton begins The Napoleon of Notting Hill is itself an accurate piece of prophecy.
As Chesterton points out, most of the books devoted to the ever-receding horizon of the future are really descriptions of the present carried one step further: "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 ... called, 'Why should Salt suffer?'"
In their extrapolated predictions, such would-be prophets as H.G. Wells and George Orwell were both myopic enough to have hailed from Oregon. World wars have turned out to be too costly to sustain; continental federations too unwieldy to keep together. Successful empires require subtler, less dramatic methods than Wells or Orwell, Hitler or Stalin could project from their experience of WWI and its aftershocks. Aldous Huxley came far closer to reality with his fantasy of a world subdued not by jackbooted armies but by sexual freedom, mood-elevating drugs, and the soft propaganda of films, pop songs, and fact-free education. Chesterton, who like Huxley was more a poet than a journalist, envisioned an absolute despotism run by colorless bureaucrats who would eliminate all the little ethnic and regional differences, all the eccentricities of class and profession that had made European civilization the gorgeous mosaic that it was.
In Chesterton's future, England is ruled by a bureaucratic machine in which the king is chosen by lot. When the lot falls on a practical joker named Auberon Quinn (a dead ringer for Max Beerbohm), the new king decides, as a prank, to recreate the old London boroughs and invest them with a medieval pageantry of his own invention. No one takes Quinn's posturing seriously, except the 19 year old Provost of Notting Hill, Adam Wayne, who is fired with enthusiasm for the drab and familiar streets of his own neighborhood. In the interests of progress and their own personal gain, the leaders of the other boroughs decide to run a thoroughfare through Notting Hill's Pump Street, and Wayne rallies the inhabitants to resist. When the politicians seeking to buy him off deprecate the size of Pump Street, Wayne fires back: "That which is large enough for the rich to covet...is large enough for the poor to defend," and when King Auberon tries to make him see the ludicrous side of Notting Hill patriotism, he explains that "Notting Hill...is a rise or high ground of the common earth, on which men have built houses to live, in which they are born, fall in love, pray, marry, and die. Why should I think it absurd?"
Not content with defending his borough from aggression, Wayne appeals to the professional imaginations of the shopkeepers. "I can imagine," he tells the Pump Street grocer, "what it must be to sit all day as you do surrounded with wares from all the ends of the earth, from strange seas that we have never sailed and strange forests that we could not even picture." At first his only convert is a toy merchant fond of war games, and together they plan the revolt of Notting Hill. Their very success, however, is almost their undoing, as the businessmen and bureaucrats succumb to blood-lust and patriotism. In the final struggle, a working-man tired of hearing "Notting Hill!" cried in his face, exclaims, "Well, what about Bayswater?....Bayswater forever," to which the mad Provost responds, "We have won....We have taught our enemies patriotism."
The victory of Notting Hill is at first a liberation of all London; eventually, however, the borough becomes arrogant and inspires the other neighborhoods to revolt against her empire. But in his defeat Wayne achieves his greatest triumph, in teaching his enemies patriotism.
Chesterton's fable delighted its first readers, but his prophetic insight has taken longer to be recognized. It is partly the playful spirit of the book that prevents us from taking him seriously, but an even greater obstacle is our own stupid conviction that history moves in a straight line. If, we say, the tendency since the Renaissance has been the agglomeration of little powers into great powers--of Florence into the Duchy of Tuscany into the Kingdom of Italy into the European Union--then it does little good to speak wistfully of the days when an independent Florence was at war with Siena and Arezzo, and the very neighborhoods of Florence had their own names, their own flags, their own costumes, and--above all--their own honor for which the inhabitants contended in street fights. Even the United States, when they were a republic, more resembled medieval Siena or Adam Wayne's London than they do the mass-produced population that is sent to fight under the flag of the United Nations. But that, as we say, is history.
It is only at the end of the twentieth century that one can fully appreciate Chesterton's prophecy, because not only are the nations of the world tending more and more every day toward the lifeless bureaucracies that he predicted, but also because we are beginning to see the first flickers of resistance. In America the western states are passing 10th Amendment resolutions; in Italy the Northern League (whatever its political future) has been successful in recreating a Lombard identity; and in Eastern Europe the old nationalities are lifting their heads up out of the rubble of empire, singing their old songs, reopening the ancient wounds whose very throbbing shows they are still alive.
One of Chesterton's hunches was that a New World Order would not tolerate particularity, and at the beginning of his novel, Quinn meets the President of Nicaragua. When told that Nicaragua is no longer a country, the old man declares, "Nicaragua has been conquered like Athens. Nicaragua has been annexed like Jerusalem....The Yankee and the German and the brute powers of modernity have trampled it with the hoofs of oxen." One of Quinn's civil servant friends explains that Nicaragua was a stumbling block to civilization: "We moderns believe in a great cosmopolitan civilization, one which shall include all the talents of all the absorbed peoples." To understand Chesterton one must have some sympathy for the unabsorbed peoples, even when, as in the case of Nicaragua and Iraq, they were ruled by a brutal dictator, and for the poor Serbs of Bosnia and Kosovo, even though our whole great cosmopolitan civilization is against them.
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"fact-free education" Wonderful and telling phrase, Dr. Fleming
You two gentlemen, Drs. Fleming and Wilson, have some touch of this Notting Hill Napoleonism in you. In disparaging the Midwest, you have led me to love it more after the order of Bayswater. Michigan forever!
I love the Midwest, too, especially my little Duchy of Southern Indiana (from which I remain sadly exiled in Ohio). I have thought for some time SI should be its own state at least, perhaps its own country. Chesterton understood even back then so much more than the "best and the brightest" of today will ever know in ten lifetimes. Our current thinkers (tee hee, hard to get that out without laughing) all start from the wrong place, go the wrong direction and arrive at the wrong destination, all the while sure they have it figured out. If they were GPS's they would all be recalled.
"Why should Salt suffer?"
My brother recommended this book to me after I left active duty the first time, and I still remember the snort of surprised laughter provoked by that line, as well as by many others in this fine piece of work.
It's been years since I read it. As I recall there's a point where a sort of peculiar dialectic occurs between Quinn & Wayne -- man's sense of the comic & absurd v. his sense of dignity & piety, or something like that.
Chesterton's narrative affirms both these complementary sides of man: Only taken together do Quinn and Wayne upset the hegemony of the bureaucrats.
Michigan forever, indeed!
The whole of southern Indiana is too big for me. Even Dubois County is too large. I prefer the Republic of Ferdinand, which is somewhat ironic given it was named after an Austrian emperor.
I love Midwestern patriotism, particularly if it will keep them from fleeing to the South. So, Michigan forever, boys.
Schooling today: fact-free, lies-full.
I somehow missed this work over the years (I‘ve added it to my basket at Amazon). I am well acquainted with Huxley’s Brave New World, however. That work deeply impressed me and forever changed the way I view the world. The central issue here is the creation of the Leviathan that controls everything, and the self-elected gods that view everything human as plastic and malleable. As Edmund Burke observed, cultures develop over many centuries and through processes not at all understood. My own sentiment is that the modern cultural architects know how to tear down, but not how to build up. As a result we live in an age of destruction. The consequence of this is, of course, of historic proportions. I have done some dabbling at trying to uncover the historic roots of this, though not always with success. I, for one, would be very interested in further essays on this subject.
I would point out to our Midwestern friends that I have probably spent more years in this region than some of them have. The trouble with the Midwest is that it no longer exists outside of fiction. The old Midwest--a meeting place of Southerners and Yankees--was a somewhat dull but charming place, where Penrod put tar in the Methodist preacher's hat or the Hoosier Schoolmaster had to put up with rowdy boys. That world was destroyed by immigration. Douglas County, WI, where I spent 13 years of life, was predominantly made up of Swedes, Norwegians, and Finns who made ethnic jokes about each other. I love the place in many ways, but it is not the old midwest. Tarkington's great trilogy and Glenway Westcott's Goodbye Wisconsin tell the story better than I can, and I recommend both to everyone, not just Midwesterners. We did a Summer School on the Midwest, perhaps the most interesting one we have ever done. Hardly anyone came, though we were able to visit the homes of Sterling North and Lorine Nydecker and do an architectural walking tour. Even Midwesterners are bored by the Midwest, and that is the real pity. There are pockets, though, in places like Wisconsin and Indiana, where people are proud of their home town. If everyone took to heart Chesterton's fantasy, they might take the first steps in their own home towns instead of running off to futile political meetings. Anyone for tea?
#9. Unfortunately, I would have to agree with you, Dr. Fleming, that a great deal of what was good in the Midwest has been destroyed. Of course, that is the case throughout the country's regions. If enough people had been more willing to fight for local and regional traditions instead of wishing to be "progressive" and adopt every idiocy that came down the pike much more good would have remained. Two illustrations of the decline: My wife works for an educational publisher (that's what they call themselves, so I will go with that for convenience). A couple of weeks ago while in Indianapolis she tried to find a book of James Whitcomb Riley poems to give to a customer. She called a local bookstore and asked the young female clerk if they had any. "Who?" was the response. Who? This is James Whitcomb Riley for goodness sake. School children used to get days off from school on "Riley Day." Another illustration: In the 1970's the school superintendant of the Bedford (Lawrence county seat) schools led a fight to merge all the high schools in the area. He was successful and now there is the mega school Bedford-North Lawrence. All the small schools disappeared and with them all the colorful athletic names like Shawswick Farmers, Needmore Hilltoppers (of course Needmore was on a hilltop), Bedford Stonecutters (Limestone capital of the world) etc. Now we are blessed with the Bedford North Lawrence "Stars." How imaginative. As you point out, however, there are pockets of hope if we can just nurture and grow them. At the Mitchell Persimmon Festival I am pleased to say that all the persimmons are locally procured and the persimmon pudding contest consists of all-local family recipes. There is a fierce competition to be the winning pudding and great pride in achieving first place. When I become dictator I will require all students to study, in addition to the classics, local and regional writers, artists, traditions, etc. Tarkington, Nicholson and Riley will rise again! As to tea, I am not much for it. However, I would be happy to sit down with a bottle of bourbon and some good cigars.
I agree that one of the worst thing to hit Indiana was the school consolidation movement of the postwar period. We used to have a number of hometown high schools in the county, but they were all rolled up into four consolidated districts. As for Riley, it's shameful that someone up in Indy wouldn't know who he was, especially since there's a children's hospital named after him up there, which I used to go to when I was a child. There was a fine portrait of Riley in the lobby.
Well, why leave out the poor Serbs of Serbia?!
This piece was written perhaps 15 years ago. I don't recall exactly but before the bombing of Belgrade.
Speaking of Indiana, you may all remember the film Hoosiers. At the beginning, a student is reading his little paper on progress, which includes rural electrification and school consolidation. The school that is featured in the movie, naturally, fell victim to consolidation.
Another effect of consolidation: I can remember awhile back school children used to have different days off from kids in other states due to local holidays. What happened to these? Consolidation with the federal beast and its hatred of localism.
Dr. Fleming and Mr. Flin give an accurate, though somewhat depressing portrayal of the Midwest that I know. I grew up in James Whitcomb Riley's hometown of Greenfield, IN and did not study a single poem of his in all my years of school there. The town still holds the Riley Days Festival, but the festival is really just about eating vendor food. Mr. Flinn is also correct that there is a tendency to try to adopt progressive attitudes. It seems that some people around Indianapolis, especially the more affluent, would like to escape Indiana's agricultural tradition. Of course, it's not hard to do since nearly all the farmland near the city has been plowed over and replaced with the sprawl of cookie cutter houses, making the entire region a cultural wasteland. It is true that the southern half of the state retains a bit more of its regional charms.
I have noticed that an increasing number of microbreweries have been popping up over the Midwest. Maybe if each town had its own beer it would stir up some local pride.
It seems to me that any political unit that is too big to easily permit a common citizen to personally approach a local political leader and express his displeasure by punching said leader in the mouth is likely to be too big.
"likely to be just plain too big", that is. Apologies for the mistake.
Mr. Flinn,
This is all part of the strip malling, mega-churching, super-schooling, big-governing and dumbing-down of America. All the easier if we are to be docile little consumers who get worked up over professional sports and indiscernable differences of party politics and nothing actually meaningful or real, that is, local.
Dr. Fleming,
How do we think about urban ethnics of the Midwest? Immigrants or one generation in, but seemingly not the same as all immigration that we speak of today.
It seems that the ethnic, particularly Catholic, urban neighborhoods of the Midwest were a real place and community at one time. I recall the remnants of one in west Detroit (Warrendale, for my fellow Michigander/Detroiters reading here) where my grandparents had a home. Poles, Ukranians, and Slovaks with the neighborhood Catholic parishes and parochial schools (with the nuns running them that Mr. Piatak has written about), and a sprinkling of Orthodox eastern European Slavs and Romanians.
I recall scenes of my great-grandmother and other women whose heads were covered in scarves talking three different languages yet somehow still communicating. It was a slice of European-America. Largely gone now due to a different immigration, well, also migration. Part of government engineering that some suspect was designed deliberately to dismantle these communities and scatter them into the suburbia not unlike the place that Mr. Flinn described.
Beautiful, Dr. Fleming, beautiful. I echo your sentiment for local autonomy. As you know, we of the Texan breed have more than a spark of local pride, and one that a century and a half of American statehood has failed to quench. Who knows if someday it might blaze again?
I thrill every time I hear someone speak with pride of "my state", or "my town", or even "my old high school". In our disconnected world of egalitarian anomie, such sentimental attachments to the streets of one's old neighborhood or the old school tie are like a whiff of incense through a church door on a winter day.
I've enjoyed reading your _Traveler's History of the Roman Empire_, and I look forward to hearing you speak in person soon here in good old Fort Worth, Texas.
Part of the problem is that, for a people who incessantly boast of their open-mindedness to all things, Americans are remarkably unimaginative when it comes to political organization. Perhaps this is because human beings are inherently conservative in the sense of being instinctively suspicious of change, but it really does not take much political dissent to be deemed too radical for mainstream political discourse. A man wouldn't be taken seriously if he wondered out loud whether 600 congressmen can actually represent 300 million people, yet, at least to me, the question seems eminently sensible.
... population that is sent to fight under the flag of the United Nations.
Indeed, but a young soldier called Michael McKnew refused to obey illegal orders and chose to defend the USA as his Soldiers' Oath stated. I reckon he was not army materiel.
Tom, Just a superb piece. And that Summer School on the Midwest was, I agree, one of the best. I still listen to your excellent opening lecture and have shared it with a number of friends.
12. Comment by Steve: One of the first rest stops on the Indiana Tollway some fifty years ago was named "James Whitcombe Riley." Not sure this was sufficient honor, but the names of these stops on the road called attention to such fine "local color" (V.L. Parrington's phrase, I think) writers as Tarkington, et. al.
16. Comment by Justin. Ferdinand used to have its own brewery ages and ages ago. I wish someone would bring it back.
It appears there are a few fellow Hoosiers here-Wonderful! I agree for the most part with Dr. Fleming's and Steve's observations about the lack of a distinct culture in parts of the state. However it is my observation that the farther you go south- the less loss of traditions there seems to be- especially in SE Ind- strong German Catholic communities that still have some "culture". And as indicated South Central Indiana has some local variations- again German Catholic- But it is also being homogenized- progress you know. T.V. killed any local culture.
One correction Dr. Fleming- the H.S. Depicted in "Hoosiers" is still very much in existence- Milan HS is just down the road. It has survived the consolidation mania that swept Indiana. Now the old gym they shot the film in- that is actually in the west central area of the state- and that did not survive the consolidation mania.
I do remember that scene in Hoosiers (one of my favorite films) where the student is listing all the things that comprise "progress," which included school consolidation. I found it sad that so many bought into the whole scheme. Of course, it was for the well being of the children to get rid of all those small schools and there is no foolishness that can not be sold if it is marketed as being "for the children." The school superintendent who sold the bill of goods to the folks in north Lawrence county managed to get the old high school (now a jr high)named after him. I suspect egos of people like him had more to do with the whole affair than any alleged educational improvements. My father used to call this man "the old goat" and referred to him as an "educated idiot." Time has proven my father right in that. By the way Justin, I love your idea of small communities setting up microbreweries. Perhaps my home town could specialize in persimmon beer. That might be an interesting brand.
Bruce Lewis @20
For Mr. Lewis, and anyone who enjoys hearing "someone speak with pride of “my state”, or “my town”, or even “my old high school”, may I suggest the site dedicated to the victims and survivors of Chicago's 1958 Our Lady Of The Angels school fire http://www.olafire.com/.
The tale of the fire itself, in which 92 children and three nuns died, and which left an indelible mark on my neighborhood and the city, and caused changes in building codes around the world, is of course bottomlessly sad, and is covered in meticulous detail. But there are numerous posts from former parishioners and other old-time Chicagoans about the way things were before the fire, with much colorful detail on how the old inner city ethnic neighborhoods worked.
This is off topic, except in that it deals with things literary, but it's interesting for anyone who likes Faulkner and hasn't heard: the University of Virginia has now posted online audio recordings of lectures and discussions that Faulkner gave while resident there during the late 50's.
you can go to:
http://faulkner.lib.virginia.edu/
but for me, the audio works better on this mirror site:
http://faulkner.scholarslab.org/
Here in Wisconsin there are quite a few little murmurs of love of the local. (Enough murmurs to stir at least a bit of hope.) Microbreweries, artisan cheese houses and farmers’ markets are on the rise. People here resent California touting its dairy output. We buy Wisconsin cranberries rather than those imported from New England. We still visit local apple orchards and pumpkin patches in the fall. Most Wisconsinites are proud of our great north woods and lovely driftless area (SW Wisconsin). Hunting and fishing locally are still very popular.
However, many do not have any pride of place that is really close to home: Southeasterners are more likely to romanticize about the St. Croix region in the Northwest than the beautiful kettle-moraine area in which they live.
And while Wisconsinites usually know a few of the big names (e.g. Frank Lloyd Wright) in their history, they can't tell you the name of a single noteworthy author.
Also, most people here do not want to be thought of as local yokels, so they must at least appear to have a significant degree of “global” savvy; which, of course is, demonstrated by being interested in national (and international) politics, celebrities and the usual stuff that is supposed to show that one is sophisticated.
Mr. Wihowski @28,
Can you explain what "driftless" means? I know SW Wisconsin primarily as great cycling terrain, especially in the vicinity of Verona, but am intrigued by this term.
@29: Driftless = unglaciated. The NW corner of Illinois and small parts of Iowa and Minnesota are also driftless. Very beautiful terrain: nice valleys and ridges, caves, rock formations, etc. Some geologists are very fond of that part of the state.
Reading everyone's depressing comments about the Midwest reminded me of last Saturday's Nebraska/Mizzou game. The camera kept going to Bo Belini, the Cornhusker's head coach, and I kept thinking there was something very un-cornhuskerish about him. His jaw didn't seem square enough nor was his hair blond. Aren't all Nebraskans Germans? Well sure enough he is from Ohio. The rootless, mercenary spirit of American sports, particularly professional sports, is clearly a by-product of whatever it is that has made the Midwest so blah and now threatens to make my beloved South equally blah.
Inspired by Adam Wayne and borrowing from the Scots I say if it aint Southern its crap, and I’ll call a friend the man who tells me I am full of it because clearly his place is best.
@31: Nebraska is predominantly German, but Irish, Swedes and Czecks are there too. My Swedish-German mother (and 2 previous generations)hails from Nebraska. My Bohunk (her epithet) aunt and her family have been in Nebraska for several generations. But since the Bohemians are "German" Czecks, they probably should count as Germans.
Nebraska (especially Western) used to have some local character. Now most of it is as generically Midwestern as Minnesota or Iowa. At a family reunion in far western Nebraska 12 years ago we were at a big campfire in a state park. They sang a bunch of old cowboy songs, which was great fun. Then they had to add "Kumbaya" and "This Land is You Land." Instantly all the fun we were having vanished when those PC warm fuzzies came out.
Il Miglior Tessitore
When Weaver visited Falls Village
(Krutch recounts the anectdote)
all that proud, expansive visage
closed into one brow of doubt,
as trees,grass,vine,herb,mildew,lichen
viruse,virulent and piti-
less to industry and icon,busied to destroy his City.
"All this," he said morosely waving
(glancing back to see the twin
converging lifleines of the saving
track)"this naturing will win.
Infections that the surgeons drain,
swaddling bands and winding sheet,
are smeared with life's pernicious stain
where microscopic gleaners eat.
O Artificial Paradise,
my dream-god's Kingdom of the False!
I hate this seething enterprise
this vile,insulting IS --it galls."
Old Buck was right about the fact-
his painful presage of the loss
of everything man can effect
whose art and loves are a'rebours.
"Look at how they crack the sidewalk
vicious yellow pistabeds!"
He kicked the dandelions,looked skyward,
"It's Him. He envies upturned heads,
us anthropoids, our lusts and jests
who make and die of making fever!"
And now perturbed Weaver rests,
a pattern of the better Weaver.
js
Since becoming a disciple of John Cage, I have realized that everything is pleasing, so long as I don't have the ideas of pleasing and displeasing in my mind! I no longer have to make any choices, as all choices are equally wonderful! (I had the most wonderful breakfast today--scrambled eggs in lukewarm water, with turmeric, sardines, persimmons and smoke flavoring!!)
John Cage was also an amateur mycologist. Although he endorsed purposelessness in his music and philosophy, he was an avid collector and categorizer of mushrooms. Nor did his artistic anarchy carry over to his mushrooms hunts, for he thought it a good idea to avoid the poisonous ones.
A couple days ago, I made an off-topic post here and included a couple links, so the post is under moderation. I should have known better than put those links there. The purpose of the post was (since this is a literary discussion) to let William Faulkner readers know (if they didn't already) that the University of Virginia recently put online an extensive collection of audio recordings of Faulkner which were made while he was resident there for two years in the late 50's. They include lectures, discussion, Q&A, etc., in which he discusses his works, literature in general, and other subjects.
Just do a search for 'Faulkner at Virginia' and you'll find them, but the audio works better at a mirror site hosted by the scholars lab.
One of my favourite books.
Chesterton is so witty and entertaining, you don't even realise you're holding a culture war WMD in your hands. It's like an Athenian anarchist hiding a nuke inside a cute puppy. That shouldn't come as a surprise to us though, seeing how America was leveled partly by pop culture.
Thanks, Mr. W.
Hmm, nuke inside a puppy... Not my best analogy.
I should have said Athenian "anarchist, or perhaps anti-anarchist" too - that'd have been excellent.
It's too easy to blog a half baked comment.
My favorite Chesterton novel is The Flying Inn. It reflects our time so well. It has been said that G.K. Chesterton is the only theologian who understood the Twentieth Century.