At the time of the publication of this book the critics with astounding frankness admitted that, while this was a fine book, they had difficulty in deciphering what it meant. One, now a well-known Fleet Street editor, went farther, and said that possibly the author himself did not know what he meant—a situation in which quite a number of authors have found themselves, especially when they read the reviews of their books.
'The Napoleon of Notting Hill' is not an easy book to understand: it may be a satire, it may be a serious book, it may be a prophecy, it may be a joke, it may even be a novel! I think that it is a little bit of a joke, in a degree serious—something of a satire, possibly a prophecy.
The main thing about the book is that a king is so unwise as to make a joke, and an obscure poet is more unwise in taking this Royal joke seriously. Many who have laughed at monarchical wit have found that their heads had an alarming trick of falling on Tower Hill.
In 'The Napoleon of Notting Hill' we are living a hundred years on, and we are to believe that London hasn't much changed; a certain respectable gentleman has been made a king for no special reason—a very good way of having a versatile monarchy and a selection of kings.
Not far off in the kingdom of Notting Hill there resides a poet who has written poems that no one reads. He is a romantic youth, and loves Notting Hill with the love of a Roman for Rome or of a Jew for Whitechapel. The new king, by way of a joke, suggests that it would be quite a good idea to take the various parts of London and restore them to a mediæval dignity; thus 'Clapham should have a city guard, Wimbledon a city wall, Surbiton tolling a bell to raise its citizens.'
It so happens that the obscure poet, Adam Wayne, has always seen in Notting Hill a glory that her citizens cannot see; he determines to make the grocers and barbers of that neighbourhood realise their rich inheritance. The new king, for some reason, desires to possess Pump Street in Notting Hill, and this gives the poet's dream a chance to mature; and he gets together a huge army, with himself as Lord High Provost of Notting Hill. There are some frightful battles in the adjacent states of Kensington and Bayswater, and, after varying fortunes, the Notting Hill Army is defeated, the Napoleon becomes again the poet of Notting Hill, while his citizens have developed from grocers to romanticists, from barbers to fanatics.
That there might be in the future a Napoleon of Notting Hill is highly improbable, that London will ever return to the pomp and heraldry of the Middle Ages is not at all likely; but that in a hundred years Notting Hill will be different is quite possible. If it is not likely that there will be fights between Bayswater and Notting Hill, there may at least be battles in the air unthought of; it may well be that its citizens in times of peace will take a half-day trip, not to Kew Gardens or to Hampton Court, but to Bombay and Cape Town.
'MANALIVE'
One of the strangest complications that man has to face is the criminal mind. It is so complex that no society has ever understood it; very often it has not taken the trouble to try. No method of punishment has stamped out the criminal; no reformers, however ardent, have freed the world from those who live by violence, kill by violence, and are themselves killed by violence. If crime is a disease, then to treat criminals as wrongdoers is absurd. If every murderer is insane, then hanging is nonsense; if a murderer is sane, then sanity is capable of being more revolting than insanity.
'Manalive' may, perhaps, be called a philosophy of the motive for crime; it may be a pseudo philosophy—at least it is an entertaining one—which cannot be said about all serious attempts at moulding the universe into a tiresome system, that is uprooted generally by the next thinker. The book opens with a very strong gale that ends with the arrival at a boarding house of a man who can stand on his head and has the name of Innocent Smith. He is somewhat like the person in the 'Passing of the Third Floor Back,' in that he revolutionizes the household, who cannot determine whether he is a lunatic or not; anyhow, he falls in love with the girl of the house. Unfortunately, rumour—a nasty, ill-natured thing—has it that Smith is a criminal. Evidence is collected, and a Grand Jury inquire into the charges, which include Bigamy, Murder, Polygamy, Burglary. It looks as if Smith is in for a very uncomfortable time, and the wedding bells are a long way from ringing.