The Edwardian decade is a ghost decade. That lost era between Victorianism and modernism. Between a kind of European peace and the wars that were latent. It’s also a curiously empty decade, from a literary perspective. The modernists had yet to get properly going, and the great Victorians were gone or going.
Chesterton’s comic novel might warrant a proper Barthesian exegesis. Here is a novel which doesn’t seem to want to make much of an effort to be a novel. There’s not a single female character in the book, so far as I could glean. There’s a refusal to take anything seriously. It’s a jaundiced critique of empire and nationalism, but one that sees it all as an absurd game, whilst the ramifications were soon to lead to global conflict and the rapacious aspects of Empire were just beginning to be confronted. Set in 1984, supposedly, a mad king awards London boroughs the status of medieval cantons, complete with heraldry and uniforms. When three of them gang up to attack Notting Hill, its leader, Adam Wayne, fights back. The war happens after decades of peace, and is almost viewed as an aesthetic gesture, in keeping with the heraldry and colours. The fact that a decade later, the citizens of Notting Hill, Hammersmith, etc, would find themselves caught up in a war that was, perhaps, equally senseless, is one of the disturbing aspects of Chesterton’s satire. The aestheticisation of war, the insistent irreverence and the name Adam Wayne feel like they could be something out of the Marvel universe. Both representative, perhaps, of societies unprepared for the shit that will soon be hitting the fan.
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