Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (44 page)

A moment was enough to reassure him that he was not at Lost-hope. It was a quite commonplace sort of room — the sort of room, in fact, that one might find in any well-to-do house in London. It was, however, remarkably untidy. The inhabitants, who were presumably new to the house, appeared to be in the middle of unpacking. All the articles usually belonging to a sitting-room and study were present: card-tables, work-tables, reading-tables, fire-irons, chairs of varying degrees of comfortableness and usefulness, mirrors, tea-cups, sealing-wax, candle-sticks, pictures, books (a great number of these), sanders, ink-stands, pens, papers, clocks, balls of string, footstools, fire-screens and writing-desks. But they were all jumbled together and standing upon one another in new and surprizing combinations. Packing-cases and boxes and bundles were scattered about, some unpacked, some half-unpacked and some scarcely begun. The straw from the packing-cases had been pulled out and now lay scattered about the room and over the furniture, which had the effect of making everything dusty and causing Stephen to sneeze twice more. Some of the straw had even got into the fireplace so that there was a very real danger of the whole room going up in a conflagration at any moment.

The room contained two people: a man whom Stephen had never seen before and the gentleman with the thistle-down hair. The man he had never seen before was seated at a little table in front of the window. Presumably he ought to have been unpacking his things and setting his room in order, but he had abandoned this task and was presently engaged in reading a book. He broke off every now and then to look things up in two or three other volumes that lay on the table; to mutter excitedly to himself; and to dash down a note or two in an ink-splashed little book.

Meanwhile the gentleman with the thistle-down hair sat in an arm-chair on the opposite side of the fireplace, directing at the other man a look of such extreme malevolence and irritation as made Stephen fear for the man's life. Yet the moment the gentle- man with the thistle-down hair beheld Stephen, he became all delight, all affability. "Ah, there you are!" he cried. "How noble you look in your kingly accoutrements!"

There happened to be a large mirror standing opposite the door. For the first time Stephen saw himself with the crown, sceptre and orb. He looked every inch a king. He turned to look at the man at the table to discover how he bore with the sudden appearance of a black man in a crown.

"Oh! Do not concern yourself about
him
!" said the gentleman with the thistle-down hair. "He can neither see nor hear us. He has no more talent than the other one. Look!" He screwed up a piece of paper and threw it energetically at the man's head. The man did not flinch or look up or appear to know any thing about it.

"The other one, sir?" said Stephen. "What do you mean?"

"That is the younger magician. The one lately arrived in London."

"Is it indeed? I have heard of him, of course. Sir Walter thinks highly of him. But I confess I have forgotten his name."

"Oh! Who cares what his name is! What matters is that he is just as stupid as the other one and very near as ugly."

"What?" said the magician, suddenly. He turned away from his book and looked around the room with a slightly suspicious air. "Jeremy!" he called out very loudly.

A servant put his head around the door, but did not trouble himself so far as to come into the room. "Sir?" he said.

Stephen's eyes opened very wide at this lazy behaviour — it was a thing he would never have allowed in Harley-street. He made a point of staring very coldly at the man to shew him what he thought of him before he remembered that the man could not see him.

"These London houses are shockingly built," said the magician. "I can hear the people in the next house."

This was interesting enough to tempt the servant called Jeremy all the way into the room. He stood and listened.

"Are all the walls so thin?" continued the magician. "Do you suppose there can be something wrong with them?"

Jeremy knocked on the wall which divided the house from its neighbour. It responded with as dull and quiet a sound as any stout, well-built wall in the kingdom. Making nothing of this, he said, "I do not hear any thing, sir. What were they saying?"

"I believe I heard one of them call the other stupid and ugly."

"Are you sure, sir? It is two old ladies that live upon that side."

"Ha! That proves nothing. Age is no guarantee of any thing these days."

With this remark the magician appeared suddenly to grow tired of this conversation. He turned back to his book and started reading.

Jeremy waited a moment and then, since his master appeared to have forgotten all about him, he went away again.

"I have not thanked you yet, sir," said Stephen to the gentleman, "for these wonderful gifts."

"Ah, Stephen! I am glad I have pleased you. The diadem, I confess, is your own hat transformed by magic. I would have greatly preferred to give you a real crown, but I was entirely unable to lay my hand upon one at such short notice. You are disappointed, I dare say. Although now I come to think of it, the King of England has several crowns, and rarely makes use of any of them."

He raised his hands in the air and pointed upwards with two immensely long white fingers.

"Oh!" cried Stephen, suddenly realizing what the gentleman was about. "If you think of casting spells to bring the King of England here with one of his crowns — which I imagine you do, since you are all kindness — then I beg that you will spare yourself the trouble! I have no need of one at the moment, as you know, and the King of England is such an old gentleman — would it not perhaps be kinder to let him stay at home?"

"Oh, very well!" said the gentleman, lowering his hands.

For lack of any other occupation, he reassumed his abuse of the new magician. Nothing about the man pleased him. He ridiculed the book he was reading, found fault with the make of his boots, and was entirely unable to approve of his height (despite the fact that he was exactly the same height as the gentleman with the thistle-down hair — as was proved when they both happened to stand up at the same time.)

Stephen was anxious to return to his duties in Harley-street, but he feared that if he left them alone together then the gentleman might start throwing something more substantial than paper at the magician. "Shall you and I walk to Harley-street together, sir?" he asked. "Then you may tell me how your noble actions have moulded London and made it glorious. That is always so very entertaining. I never grow tired of hearing about it."

"Gladly, Stephen! Gladly!"

"Is it far, sir?"

"Is what far, Stephen?"

"Harley-street, sir. I do not know where we are."

"We are in Soho-square and no, it is not far at all!"

When they reached the house in Harley-street the gentleman took a most affectionate farewell of Stephen, urging him not to feel sad at this parting and reminding him that they would meet again that very night at Lost-hope. ". . . when a most charming ceremony will be held in the belfry of the Easternmost Tower. It commemorates an occasion which happened — oh! five hundred years ago or so — when I cleverly contrived to capture the little children of my enemy and we pushed them out of the belfry to their deaths. Tonight we will re-enact this great triumph! We will dress straw dolls in the children's blood-stained clothes and fling them down on to the paving stones and then we will sing and dance and rejoice over their destruction!"

"And do you perform this ceremony every year, sir? I feel sure I would have remembered it if I had seen it before. It is so very . . . striking."

"I am glad you think so. I perform it whenever I think of it. Of course it was a great deal more striking when we used real children."

1 Stephen described how, not long after Julius Caesar had arrived upon these shores, he had left his army and wandered into a little green wood. He had not gone far when he came upon two young men, sighing deeply and striking the ground in their frustration. Both were remarkably handsome and both were dressed in the finest linens dyed with the rarest dyes. Julius Caesar was so struck with the noble appearance of these young men that he asked them all sorts of questions and they answered him candidly and without the least diffidence. They explained how they were both plaintiffs at a court nearby. The court was held every Quarter Day to settle arguments and punish wrongdoers among their people, but unfortunately the race to which they belonged was a peculiarly wicked and quarrelsome one, and just at present no suits could be heard because they could not find an impartial judge; every venerable person among them either stood accused of a crime, or else had been found to have some other close connexion with one of the suits. On hearing this Caesar was struck with pity for them and immediately offered to be their judge himself - to which they eagerly agreed.

They led him a short way through the wood to a grassy hollow between smooth green hills. Here he found a thousand or so of the handsomest men and women that he had ever seen. He sat down upon the hillside and heard all their complaints and accusations; and when he had heard them he gave judgements so wise that everyone was delighted and no one went away feeling himself ill-used.

So pleased were they with Julius Caesar's judgements that they offered him any thing he liked as payment. Julius Caesar thought for a moment and said that he would like to rule the world. This they promised him.

27
The magician's wife

December 1809—January 1810

T
HERE WERE NOW two magicians in London to be ad-mired and made much of and I doubt if it will come as much surprize to any one to learn that, of the two, London preferred Mr Strange. Strange was everyone's idea of what a magician ought to be. He was tall; he was charming; he had a most ironical smile; and, unlike Mr Norrell, he talked a great deal about magic and had no objection to answering any body's questions on the subject. Mr and Mrs Strange attended a great many evening-and dinner-parties, and at some point in the proceedings Strange would generally oblige the company with a shew of one of the minor sorts of magic. The most popular magic e did was to cause visions to appear upon the surface of water.
¹
Unlike Norrell, he did not use a silver basin which was the traditional vessel for seeing visions in. Strange said that really one could see so little in a basin that it was scarcely worth the trouble of casting the spells. He preferred instead to wait until the servants had cleared the dishes off the table and removed the cloth, then he would tip a glass of water or wine over the table and conjure visions into the pool. Fortunately his hosts were generally so delighted with the magic that they hardly ever complained of their stained, spoilt tables and carpets.

For their part Mr and Mrs Strange were settled in London much to their satisfaction. They had taken a house in Soho-square and Arabella was deep in all the pleasant cares connected with a new home: commissioning elegant new furniture from the cabinet-makers, entreating her friends to help her to some steady servants and going every day to the shops.

One morning in mid-December she received a message from one of the shopmen at Haig and Chippendale's Upholstery (a most attentive person) to say that a bronze silk with alternate satin and watered stripes had just arrived in the shop and he believed it might be the very thing for Mrs Strange's drawing-room curtains. This necessitated a little re-organization of Arabella's day.

"It appears from Mr Sumner's description to be very elegant," she told Strange at breakfast, "and I expect to like it very much. But if I chuse bronze-coloured silk for the curtains, then I believe I must give up any notion of having a wine-coloured velvet for the chaise-longue. I do not think bronze-colour and wine-colour will look well together. So I shall to go to Flint and Clark's to look at the wine-coloured velvet again, and see if I can bear to give it up. Then I will go to Haig and Chippendale's. But that means I will have no time to visit your aunt — which I really ought to do as she is leaving for Edinburgh this morning. I want to thank her for finding Mary for us."

"Mmm?" said Strange, who was eating hot rolls and preserves, and reading
Curiose Observations upon the Anatomie of Faeries
by Holgarth and Pickle.
²

"Mary. The new maid. You saw her last night."

"Ah," said Strange, turning a page.

"She seems a nice, pleasant girl with quiet ways. I am sure we will be very happy with her. So, as I was saying, I would be very grateful, Jonathan, if you would call upon your aunt this morning. You can walk down to Henrietta-street after breakfast and thank her for Mary. Then you can come to Haig and Chippendale's and wait for me there. Oh! And could you look in at Wedgwood and Byerley's and ask the people when the new dinner-service will be ready? It will be scarcely any trouble. It is very nearly on your way." She looked at him doubtfully. "Jonathan, are you listening to me?"

"Mmm?" said Strange, looking up. "Oh, entirely!"

So Arabella, attended by one of the footmen, walked to Wig-more-street where Flint and Clark had their establishment. But on this second viewing of the wine-coloured velvet she concluded that, though very handsome, it was altogether too sombre. So then she walked on, all anticipation, to St Martin's-lane to behold the bronze-coloured silk. When she arrived at Haig and Chippen- dale's she found the shopman waiting for her, but not her husband. The shopman was most apologetic but Mr Strange had not been there all morning.

She went out into the street again.

"George, do you see your master anywhere?" she asked the footman.

"No, madam."

A grey rain was beginning to fall. A sort of premonition inspired her to look in at the window of a bookseller's. There she discovered Strange, talking energetically to Sir Walter Pole. So she went into the shop, bid Sir Walter good morning and sweetly inquired of her husband if he had visited his aunt or looked in at Wedgwood and Byerley's.