Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (78 page)

Intrigued, Denby sought out the tribe of Half-Finished People. At first they seemed like any other tribe, but then Denby noticed that the older men had an oddly European look and some of them spoke English. Some of their customs were the same as the Lakota tribes' but others seemed to be founded upon European military practice. Their language was like Lakota but contained a great many English, Dutch and German words.

A man called Robert Heath (otherwise Little-man-talks-too-much) told Denby that they had all deserted from several different armies and regiments on the afternoon of 15th June 1815 because a great battle was going to be fought the next day and they had all had a strong presentiment that they would die if they remained. Did Denby know if the Duke of Wellington or Napoleon Buona-parte was now King of France? Denby could not say. “Well, sir," said Heath philosophically, “Whichever of 'em it is, I dare say life goes on just the same for the likes of you and me."

2 General Rebecq also made up a Dutch version of his jingle which was sung by his soldiers on the way to Quatre Bras. They taught it to their English comrades and it later became a child's skipping rhyme, both in England and the Netherlands.

3 Copenhagen, the Duke's famous chestnut horse, 1808-36.

4 In 1810 Messrs George and Jonathan Barratt, the proprietors of Vauxhall Gardens, had offered Strange and Norrell a vast sum of money to stage displays of magic every night in the gardens. The magic which the Barratts were proposing was of exactly this sort - illusions of magical creatures, famous persons from the Bible and history etc., etc. Naturally enough, Mr Norrell had refused.

5 The accepted magical technique for creating confusion within roads, landscapes, rooms and other physical spaces is to make a labyrinth within them. But Strange did not learn this magic until February 1817.

Nevertheless this was arguably the decisive action of the campaign. Unknown to Strange, the French general, D'Erlon, was trying to reach the battlefield with 20,000 men. Instead he spent those crucial hours marching through a landscape which changed inexplicably every few minutes. Had he and his men succeeded in reaching Quatre Bras it is probable the French would have won and Waterloo would never have happened. Strange was piqued by the Duke's abruptness earlier in the day and did not mention to any one what he had done. Later he told John Segundus and Thomas Levy. Consequently historians of Quatre Bras were perplexed to account for D'Erlon's failure until John Segundus's
The Life of Jonathan Strange
was published in 1820.

6 In actual fact Mr Pink was only one of the civilians whom the Duke pressed into service as unofficial
aides-de-camp
that day. Others included a young Swiss gentleman and another commercial traveller, this time from London.

41
Starecross

Late September-December 1815

F
ORTUNE, IT SEEMED, could not be persuaded to smile upon Mr Segundus. He had come to live in York with the aim of enjoying the society and conversation of the city's many magicians. But no sooner had he got there than all the other magicians were deprived of their profession by Mr Norrell, and he was left alone. His little stock of money had dwindled considerably and in the autumn of 1815 he was forced to seek employment.

“And it is not to be supposed," he remarked to Mr Honeyfoot with a sigh, “that I shall be able to earn very much. What am I qualified to do?"

Mr Honeyfoot could not allow this. “Write to Mr Strange!" he advised. “He may be in need of a secretary."

Nothing would have pleased Mr Segundus better than to work for Jonathan Strange, but his natural modesty would not allow him to propose it. It would be a shocking thing to put himself forward in such a way. Mr Strange might be embarrassed to know how to answer him. It might even look as if he, John Segundus, considered himself Mr Strange's equal!

Mr and Mrs Honeyfoot assured him that if Mr Strange did not like the idea he would very soon say so - and so there could be no possible harm in asking him. But upon this point Mr Segundus proved unpersuadable.

Their next proposal, however, pleased him better. “Why not see if there are any little boys in the town who wish to learn magic?" asked Mrs Honeyfoot. Her grandsons - stout little fellows of five and seven - were just now of an age to begin their education and so the subject rather occupied her mind.

So Mr Segundus became a tutor in magic. As well as little boys, he also discovered some young ladies whose studies would have more usually been confined to French, German and music, but who were now anxious to be instructed in theoretical magic. Soon he was asked to give lessons to the young ladies' older brothers, many of whom began to picture themselves as magicians. To young men of a studious turn of mind, who did not desire to go into the Church or the Law, magic was very appealing, particularly since Strange had triumphed on the battlefields of Europe. It is, after all, many centuries since clergymen distinguished themselves on the field of war, and lawyers never have.

In the early autumn of 1815 Mr Segundus was engaged by the father of one of his pupils upon an errand. This gentleman, whose name was Palmer, had heard of a house in the north of the county that was being sold. Mr Palmer did not wish to buy the house, but a friend had told him that there was a library there worth examining. Mr Palmer was not at leisure just then to go and see for himself. Though he trusted his servants in many other matters, their talents did not quite run to scholarship, so he asked Mr Segundus to go in his place, to find out how many books there were and what their condition might be and whether they were worth purchasing.

Starecross Hall was the principal building in a village which otherwise comprised a handful of stone cottages and farmhouses. Starecross itself stood in a most isolated spot, surrounded on all sides by brown, empty moors. Tall trees sheltered it from storms and winds - yet at the same time they made it dark and solemn. The village was amply provided with tumbledown stone walls and tumbledown stone barns. It was very quiet; it felt like the end of the world.

There was a very ancient and worn-looking packhorse bridge that crossed a deep beck of fast-running water. Bright yellow leaves flowed swiftly upon the dark, almost-black water, making patterns as they went. To Mr Segundus the patterns looked a little like magical writing. “But then," he thought, “so many things do."

The house itself was a long, low, rambling building, constructed of the same dark stone as the rest of the village. Its neglected gardens, garths and courts were filled with deep drifts of autumn leaves. It was hard to know who would wish to buy such a house. It was much too large for a farmhouse, yet altogether too gloomy and remote for a gentleman's residence. It might have done for a parsonage except that there was no church. It might have done for an inn, except that the old pack-road that had once passed through the village had fallen into disuse and the bridge was all that remained of it.

No one came in answer to Mr Segundus's knock. He observed that the front door was ajar. It seemed rather impertinent simply to go inside, but after four or five minutes of fruitless knocking he did so.

Houses, like people, are apt to become rather eccentric if left too much on their own; this house was the architectural equivalent of an old gentleman in a worn dressing-gown and torn slippers, who got up and went to bed at odd times of day, and who kept up a continual conversation with friends no one else could see. As Mr Segundus wandered about in search of whoever was in charge, he found a room which contained nothing but china cheese-moulds, all stacked one upon another. Another room had heaps of queer red clothes, the like of which he had never seen before - something between labourers' smocks and clergymen's robes. The kitchen had very few of those articles that usually belong to kitchens, but it did have the skull of an alligator in a glass case; the skull had a great grin and seemed very pleased with itself, though Mr Se- gundus did not know why it should be. There was one room that could only be reached by a queer arrangement of steps and staircases, where the pictures all seemed to have been chosen by someone with an inordinate love of fighting; there were pictures of men fighting, boys fighting, cocks fighting, bulls fighting, dogs fighting, centaurs fighting and even a startling depiction of two beetles locked in combat. Another room was almost empty except for a doll's house standing on a table in the middle of the floor; the doll's house was an exact copy of the real house - except that inside the doll's house a number of smartly dressed dolls were enjoying a peaceful and rational existence together: making doll-sized cakes and loaves of bread, entertaining their friends with a diminutive harpsichord, playing casino with tiny cards, educating miniature children, and dining upon roast turkeys the size of Mr Segundus's thumbnail. It formed a strange contrast with the bleak, echoing reality.

He seemed to have looked in every room, but he still had not found the library and he still had not found any people. He came to a small door half-hidden by a staircase. Behind it was a tiny room - scarcely more than a closet. A man in a dirty white coat with his boots propped up on the table was drinking brandy and staring at the ceiling. After a little persuasion this person agreed to shew him where the library was.

The first ten books Mr Segundus looked at were worthless - books of sermons and moralizing from the last century, or descriptions of persons whom no one living cared about. The next fifty were very much the same. He began to think his task would soon be done. But then he stumbled upon some very interesting and unusual works of geology, philosophy and medicine. He began to feel more sanguine.

He worked steadily for two or three hours. Once he thought he heard a carriage arrive at the house, but he paid it no attention. At the end of that time he was suddenly aware that he was extremely hungry. He had no idea whether any arrangements had been made for his dinner or not, and the house was a long way from the nearest inn. He went off in search of the negligent man in the tiny room to ask him what could be done. In the labyrinth of rooms and corridors he was lost immediately. He wandered about open- ing every door, feeling more and more hungry, and more and more out of temper with the negligent man.

He found himself in an old-fashioned parlour with dark oak panelling and a mantelpiece the size of a young triumphal arch. Directly before him a lovely young woman was sitting in a deep window-seat, gazing out at the trees and the high, bare hills beyond. He had just time enough to notice that her left hand lacked a little finger, when suddenly she was not there at all - or perhaps it was more accurate to say she changed. In her place was a much older, stouter woman, a woman about Mr Segundus's own age, dressed in a violet silk gown, with an Indian shawl about her shoulders and a little dog in her lap. This lady sat in exactly the same attitude as the other, gazing out of the window with the same wistful expression.

All these details took but a moment to apprehend, yet the impression made upon Mr Segundus by the two ladies was unusually vivid - almost supernaturally so - like images in a delirium. A queer shock thrilled through his whole being, his senses were overwhelmed and he fainted away.

When he came to himself he was lying on the floor and two ladies were leaning over him, with exclamations of dismay and concern. Despite his confusion he quickly comprehended that neither lady was the beautiful young woman with the missing finger whom he had seen first. One was the lady with the little dog whom he had seen
second
, and the other was a thin, fair-haired, equally mature lady of unremarkable face and figure. It appeared that she had been in the room all along, but she had been seated
behind
the door and so he had not observed her.

The two ladies would not permit him to stand up or attempt any movement of his limbs. They would scarcely allow him to speak; they warned him sternly it would bring on another fainting fit. They fetched cushions for his head, and blankets to keep him warm (he protested he was perfectly warm to begin with, but they would not listen to him). They dispensed lavender water and
sal volatile
. They stopt a draught they thought might be coming from under one of the doors. Mr Segundus began to suspect that they had had an uneventful morning, and that when a strange gentle- man had walked into the room and dropt down in a swoon, they were rather pleased than otherwise.

After quarter of an hour of this treatment he was permitted to sit in a chair and sip weak tea unaided.

“The fault is entirely mine," said the lady with the little dog. “Fellowes told me that the gentleman had come from York to see the books. I ought to have made myself known to you before. It was too great a shock coming upon us like that!"

The name of this lady was Mrs Lennox. The other was Mrs Blake, her companion. They generally resided in Bath and they had come to Starecross so that Mrs Lennox might see the house one more time before it was sold.

“Foolish, is it not?" said Mrs Lennox to Mr Segundus. “The house has stood vacant for years and years. I ought to have sold it long ago, but when I was a child I spent several summers here which were particularly happy."

“You are still very pale, sir," offered Mrs Blake. “Have you eaten any thing today?"

Mr Segundus confessed that he was very hungry.

“Did not Fellowes offer to fetch your dinner?" asked Mrs Lennox in surprize.

Fellowes was presumably the negligent servant in the tiny room. Mr Segundus did not like to say that he had barely been able to rouse Fellowes to speak to him.

Fortunately, Mrs Lennox and Mrs Blake had brought an ample dinner with them and Fellowes was, at that moment, preparing it. Half an hour later the two ladies and Mr Segundus sat down to dine in an oak-panelled room with a melancholy view of autumn trees. The only slight inconvenience was that the two ladies wished Mr Segundus, in his invalid character, to eat light, easily digestible foods, whereas in truth he was very hungry and wanted fried beefsteaks and hot pudding.