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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

A Fantasy of the Future

G. K. Chesterton

Illustrations by W. Graham Robertson

IN THE DARK ENTRANCE THERE APPEARED A FLAMING FIGURE.

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.

Book I

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. ...