Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (4 page)

“Well,” said Mr Segundus, a little puzzled, “there are all sorts of things. What did you wish to know? There are accounts of the actions of His Majesty’s Navy against the French; speeches of the Government; reports of scandals and divorces. Is this what you meant?”

“Oh yes!” said Childermass. “You explain it very well, sir. I wonder,” he continued, growing thoughtful, “whether provincial news is ever reported in the London papers? — whether (for example) today’s remarkable occurrences might merit a paragraph?”

“I do not know,” said Mr Segundus. “It seems to me quite possible but then, you know, Yorkshire is so far from London — perhaps the London editors will never get to hear of what has happened.”

“Ah,” said Mr Childermass; and then was silent.

Snow began to fall; a few flakes at first — then rather more than a few; until a million little flakes were drifting down from a soft, heavy greenish-grey sky. All the buildings of York became a little fainter, a little greyer in the snow; the people all seemed a little smaller; the cries and shouts, the footsteps and hoofsteps, the creaks of carriages and the slammings of doors were all a little more distant. And all these things became somehow less important until all the world contained was the falling snow, the sea-green sky, the dim, grey ghost of York Cathedral — and Childermass.

And all this time Childermass said nothing. Mr Segundus wondered what more he required — all his questions had been answered. But Childermass waited and watched Mr Segundus with his queer black eyes, as if he were waiting for Mr Segundus to say one thing more — as if he fully expected that Mr Segundus would say it — indeed as if nothing in the world were more certain.

“If you wish,” said Mr Segundus, shaking the snow from his cape, “I can remove all the uncertainty from the business. I can write a letter to the editor of
The Times
informing him of Mr Norrell’s extraordinary feats.”

“Ah! That is generous indeed!” said Childermass. “Believe me, sir, I know very well that not every gentleman would be so magnanimous in defeat. But it is no more than I expected. For I told Mr Norrell that I did not think there could be a more obliging gentleman than Mr Segundus.”

“Not at all,” said Mr Segundus, “it is nothing.”

The Learned Society of York Magicians was disbanded and its members were obliged to give up magic (all except Mr Segundus) — and, though some of them were foolish and not all of them were entirely amiable, I do not think that they deserved such a fate. For what is a magician to do who, in accordance with a pernicious agreement, is not allowed to study magic? He idles about his house day after day, disturbs his niece (or wife, or daughter) at her needlework and pesters the servants with questions about matters in which he never took an interest before — all for the sake of having someone to talk to, until the servants complain of him to their mistress. He picks up a book and begins to read, but he is not attending to what he reads and he has got to page 22 before he discovers it is a
novel
— the sort of work which above all others he most despises — and he puts it down in disgust. He asks his niece (or wife, or daughter) ten times a day what o’clock it is, for he cannot believe that time can go so slowly — and he falls out with his pocket watch for the same reason.

Mr Honeyfoot, I am glad to say, fared a little better than the others. He, kind-hearted soul, had been very much affected by the story that the little stone figure high up in the dimness had related. It had carried the knowledge of the horrid murder in its small stone heart for centuries, it remembered the dead girl with the ivy leaves in her hair when no one else did, and Mr Honeyfoot thought that its faithfulness ought to be rewarded. So he wrote to the Dean and to the Canons and to the Archbishop, and he made himself very troublesome until these important personages agreed to allow Mr Honeyfoot to dig up the paving stones of the south transept. And when this was done Mr Honeyfoot and the men he had employed uncovered some bones in a leaden coffin, just as the little stone figure had said they would. But then the Dean said that he could not authorize the removal of the bones from the Cathedral (which was what Mr Honeyfoot wanted) on the evidence of the little stone figure; there was no precedent for such a thing. Ah! said Mr Honeyfoot but there was, you know; and the argument raged for a number of years and, as a consequence, Mr Honeyfoot really had no leisure to repent signing Mr Norrell’s document.
²

The library of the Learned Society of York Magicians was sold to Mr Thoroughgood of Coffee-yard. But somehow no one thought to mention this to Mr Segundus and he only learnt about it in a round-about fashion when Mr Thoroughgood’s shop boy told a friend (that was a clerk in Priestley’s linen-drapers) and the friend chanced to mention it to Mrs Cockcroft of the George Inn and she told Mrs Pleasance who was Mr Segundus’s landlady. As soon as Mr Segundus heard of it he ran down through the snowy streets to Mr Thoroughgood’s shop without troubling to put on his hat or his coat or his boots. But the books were already gone. He inquired of Mr Thoroughgood who had bought them. Mr Thoroughgood begged Mr Segundus’s pardon but he feared he could not divulge the name of the gentleman; he did not think the gentleman wished his name to be generally known. Mr Segundus, hatless and coatless and breathless, with water-logged shoes and mud-splashes on his stockings and the eyes of everybody in the shop upon him, had some satisfaction in telling Mr Thoroughgood that it did not signify whether Mr Thoroughgood told him or not, for he believed he knew the gentleman anyway.

Mr Segundus did not lack curiosity about Mr Norrell. He thought about him a great deal and often talked of him with Mr Honeyfoot.
³
Mr Honeyfoot was certain that everything that had happened could be explained by an earnest wish on Mr Norrell’s part to bring back magic to England. Mr Segundus was more doubtful and began to look about him to try if he could discover any acquaintance of Norrell’s that might be able to tell him something more.

A gentleman in Mr Norrell’s position with a fine house and a large estate will always be of interest to his neighbours and, unless those neighbours are very stupid, they will always contrive to know a little of what he does. Mr Segundus discovered a family in Stonegate who were cousins to some people that had a farm five miles from Hurtfew Abbey — and he befriended the Stonegate-family and persuaded them to hold a dinner-party and to invite their cousins to come to it. (Mr Segundus grew quite shocked at his own skill in thinking up these little stratagems.) The cousins duly arrived and were all most ready to talk about their rich and peculiar neighbour who had bewitched York Cathedral, but the beginning and the end of their information was that Mr Norrell was about to leave Yorkshire and go to London.

Mr Segundus was surprized to hear this, but more than that he was surprized at the effect this news had upon his own spirits. He felt oddly discomfited by it — which was very ridiculous, he told himself; Norrell had never shewn any interest in him or done him the least kindness. Yet Norrell was Mr Segundus’s only colleague now. When he was gone Mr Segundus would be the only magician, the last magician in Yorkshire.

4
The Friends of English Magic

Early spring 1807

Consider, if you will, a man who sits in his library day after day; a small man of no particular personal attractions. His book is on the table before him. A fresh supply of pens, a knife to cut new nibs, ink, paper, notebooks — all is conveniently to hand. There is always a fire in the room — he cannot do without a fire, he feels the cold. The room changes with the season: he does not. Three tall windows open on a view of English countryside which is tranquil in spring, cheerful in summer, melancholy in autumn and gloomy in winter — just as English landscape should be. But the changing seasons excite no interest in him — he scarcely raises his eyes from the pages of his book. He takes his exercise as all gentlemen do; in dry weather his long walk crosses the park and skirts a little wood; in wet weather there is his short walk in the shrubbery. But he knows very little of shrubbery or park or wood. There is a book waiting for him upon the library table; his eyes fancy they still follow its lines of type, his head still runs upon its argument, his fingers itch to take it up again. He meets his neighbours twice or thrice a quarter — for this is England where a man’s neighbours will never suffer him to live entirely bereft of society, let him be as dry and sour-faced as he may. They pay him visits, leave their cards with his servants, invite him to dine or to dance at assembly-balls. Their intentions are largely charitable — they have a notion that it is bad for a man to be always alone — but they also have some curiosity to discover whether he has changed at all since they last saw him. He has not. He has nothing to say to them and is considered the dullest man in Yorkshire.

Yet within Mr Norrell’s dry little heart there was as lively an ambition to bring back magic to England as would have satisfied even Mr Honeyfoot, and it was with the intention of bringing that ambition to a long-postponed fulfillment that Mr Norrell now proposed to go to London.

Childermass assured him that the time was propitious and Childermass knew the world. Childermass knew what games the children on street-corners are playing — games that all other grown-ups have long since forgotten. Childermass knew what old people by firesides are thinking of, though no one has asked them in years. Childermass knew what young men hear in the rattling of the drums and the tooting of the pipes that makes them leave their homes and go to be soldiers — and he knew the half-eggcupful of glory and the barrelful of misery that await them. Childermass could look at a smart attorney in the street and tell you what he had in his coat-tail pockets. And all that Childermass knew made him smile; and some of what he knew made him laugh out loud; and none of what he knew wrung from him so much as ha’pennyworth of pity.

So when Childermass told his master, “Go to London. Go now,” Mr Norrell believed him.

“The only thing I do not quite like,” said Mr Norrell, “is your plan to have Segundus write to one of the London newspapers upon our behalf. He is certain to make errors in what he writes — have you thought of that? I dare say he will try his hand at interpretation. These third-rate scholars can never resist putting in something of themselves. He will make guesses — wrong guesses — at the sorts of magic I employed at York. Surely there is enough confusion surrounding magic without our adding to it. Must we make use of Segundus?”

Childermass bent his dark gaze upon his master and his even darker smile, and replied that he believed they must. “I wonder, sir,” he said, “if you have lately heard of a naval gentleman of the name of Baines?”

“I believe I know the man you mean,” said Mr Norrell.

“Ah!” said Childermass. “And how did you come to hear of him?”

A short silence.

“Well then,” said Mr Norrell reluctantly, “I suppose that I have seen Captain Baines’s name in one of the newspapers.”

“Lieutenant Hector Baines served on
The King of the North
, a frigate,” said Childermass. “At twenty-one years of age he lost a leg and two or three fingers in an action in the West Indies. In the same battle the Captain of
The King of the North
and many of the seamen died. Reports that Lieutenant Baines continued to command the ship and issue orders to his crew while the ship’s doctor was actually sawing at his leg are, I dare say, a good deal exaggerated, but he certainly brought a fearfully damaged ship out of the Indies, attacked a Spanish ship full of bounty, gained a fortune and came home a hero. He jilted the young lady to whom he was engaged and married another. This, sir, is the Captain’s history as it appeared in
The Morning Post
. And now I shall tell you what followed. Baines is a northerner like you, sir, a man of obscure birth with no great friends to make life easy for him. Shortly after his marriage he and his bride went to London to stay at the house of some friends in Seacoal-lane, and while they were there they were visited by people of all ranks and stations. They ate their dinner at viscountesses’ tables, were toasted by Members of Parliament, and all that influence and patronage can do for Captain Baines was promised to him. This success, sir, I attribute to the general approbation and esteem which the report in the newspaper gained for him. But perhaps you have friends in London who will perform the same services for you without troubling the editors of the newspapers?”

“You know very well that I do not,” said Mr Norrell impatiently.

In the meantime, Mr Segundus laboured very long over his letter and it grieved him that he could not be more warm in his praise of Mr Norrell. It seemed to him that the readers of the London newspaper would expect him to say something of Mr Norrell’s personal virtues and would wonder why he did not.

In due course the letter appeared in
The Times
entitled: “EXTRAORDINARY OCCURRENCES IN YORK: AN APPEAL TO THE FRIENDS OF ENGLISH MAGIC.” Mr Segundus ended his description of the magic at York by saying that the Friends of English Magic must surely bless that love of extreme retirement which marked Mr Norrell’s character — for it had fostered his studies and had at last borne fruit in the shape of the wonderful magic at York Cathedral — but, said Mr Segundus, he appealed to the Friends of English Magic to join him in begging Mr Norrell not to return to a life of solitary study but to take his place upon the wider stage of the Nation’s affairs and so begin a new chapter in the History of English Magic.

AN APPEAL TO THE FRIENDS OF ENGLISH MAGIC had a most sensational effect, particularly in London. The readers of
The Times
were quite thunderstruck by Mr Norrell’s achievements. There was a general desire to see Mr Norrell; young ladies pitied the poor old gentlemen of York who had been so frightened by him, and wished very much to be as terrified themselves. Clearly such an opportunity as this was scarcely likely to come again; Mr Norrell determined to establish himself in London with all possible haste. “You must get me a house, Childermass,” he said. “Get me a house that says to those that visit it that magic is a respectable profession — no less than Law and a great deal more so than Medicine.”

Childermass inquired drily if Mr Norrell wished him to seek out architecture expressive of the proposition that magic was as respectable as the Church?

Mr Norrell (who knew there were such things as jokes in the world or people would not write about them in books, but who had never actually been introduced to a joke or shaken its hand) considered a while before replying at last that no, he did not think they could quite claim that.

So Childermass (perhaps thinking that nothing in the world is so respectable as money) directed his master to a house in Hanover-square among the abodes of the rich and prosperous. Now I do not know what may be your opinion yet to say the truth I do not much care for the south side of Hanover-square; the houses are so tall and thin — four storeys at least — and all the tall, gloomy windows are so regular, and every house so exactly resembles its neighbours that they have something of the appearance of a high wall blocking out the light. Be that as it may, Mr Norrell (a less fanciful person than I) was satisfied with his new house, or at least as satisfied as any gentleman could be who for more than thirty years has lived in a large country-house surrounded by a park of mature timber, which is in its turn surrounded by a good estate of farms and woods — a gentleman, in other words, whose eye has never been offended by the sight of any other man’s property whenever he looked out of the window.

“It is certainly a small house, Childermass,” he said, “but I do not complain. My own comfort, as you know, I do not regard.”

Childermass replied that the house was larger than most.

“Indeed?” said Mr Norrell, much surprized. Mr Norrell was particularly shocked by the smallness of the library, which could not be made to accommodate one third of the books he considered indispensable; he asked Childermass how people in London housed their books? Perhaps they did not read?

Mr Norrell had been in London not above three weeks when he received a letter from a Mrs Godesdone, a lady of whom he had never heard before.

“… I know it is very
shoking
that I should write to you upon no acquaintance whatsoever & no doubt you say to yourself who is this impertinent creachure? I did not now there was such a person in existence! and consider me shokingly bold etc. etc. but Drawlight is a dear freind of mine and assures me that you are the sweetest-natured creachure in the world and will not mind it. I am most impatient for the pleasure of your acquaintance and would consider it the greatest honour in the world if you would consent to give us the pleasure of your company at an evening-party on Thursday se’night. Do not let the apprehension of meeting with a croud prevent you from coming — I detest a croud of all things and only my most intimate freinds will be invited to meet you …”

It was not the sort of letter to make any very favourable impression upon Mr Norrell. He read it through very rapidly, put it aside with an exclamation of disgust and took up his book again. A short while later Childermass arrived to attend to the morning’s business. He read Mrs Godesdone’s letter and inquired what answer Mr Norrell intended to return to it?

“A refusal,” said Mr Norrell.

“Indeed? And shall I say that you have a prior engagement?” asked Childermass.

“Certainly, if you wish,” said Mr Norrell.

“And
do
you have a prior engagement?” asked Childermass.

“No,” said Mr Norrell.

“Ah!” said Childermass. “Then perhaps it is the overabundance of your engagements on other days that makes you refuse this one? You fear to be too tired?”

“I have no engagements. You know very well that I do not.” Mr Norrell read for another minute or two before remarking (apparently to his book), “You are still here.”

“I am,” said Childermass.

“Well then,” said Mr Norrell, “what is it? What is the matter?”

“I had thought you were come to London to shew people what a modern magician looked like. It will be a slow business if you are to stay at home all the time.”

Mr Norrell said nothing. He picked up the letter and looked at it. “Drawlight,” he said at last. “What does she mean by that? I know no one of that name.”

“I do not know what she means,” said Childermass, “but I do know this: at present it will not do to be too nice.”

At eight o’clock on the evening of Mrs Godesdone’s party Mr Norrell in his best grey coat was seated in his carriage, wondering about Mrs Godesdone’s dear friend, Drawlight, when he was roused to a realization that the carriage was no longer moving. Looking out of the window he saw a great lamp-lit chaos of people, carriages and horses. Thinking that everyone else must find the London streets as confusing as he did, he naturally fell into the supposition that his coachman and footman had lost their way and, banging on the roof of the carriage with his stick, he cried, “Davey! Lucas! Did not you hear me say Manchester-street? Why did you not make sure of the way before we set off?”

Lucas, on the box-seat, called down that they were already in Manchester-street, but must wait their turn — there was a long line of carriages that were to stop at the house before them.

“Which house?” cried Mr Norrell.

The house they were going to, said Lucas.

“No, no! You are mistaken,” said Mr Norrell. “It is to be a small gathering.”

But on his arrival at Mrs Godesdone’s house Mr Norrell found himself instantly plunged into the midst of a hundred or so of Mrs Godesdone’s most intimate friends. The hall and reception rooms were crowded with people and more were arriving at every moment. Mr Norrell was very much astonished, yet what in the world was there to be surprized at? It was a fashionable London party, no different from any other that might be held at any of half a dozen houses across Town every day of the week.

And how to describe a London party? Candles in lustres of cut-glass are placed everywhere about the house in dazzling profusion; elegant mirrors triple and quadruple the light until night outshines day; many-coloured hot-house fruits are piled up in stately pyramids upon white-clothed tables; divine creatures, resplendent with jewels, go about the room in pairs, arm in arm, admired by all who see them. Yet the heat is over-powering, the pressure and noise almost as bad; there is nowhere to sit and scarce anywhere to stand. You may see your dearest friend in another part of the room; you may have a world of things to tell him — but how in the world will you ever reach him? If you are fortunate then perhaps you will discover him later in the crush and shake his hand as you are both hurried past each other. Surrounded by cross, hot strangers, your chance of rational conversation is equal to what it would be in an African desert. Your only wish is to preserve your favourite gown from the worst ravages of the crowd. Every body complains of the heat and the suffocation. Every body declares it to be entirely insufferable. But if it is all misery for the guests, then what of the wretchedness of those who have not been invited? Our sufferings are nothing to theirs! And we may tell each other tomorrow that it was a delightful party.

It so happened that Mr Norrell arrived at the same moment as a very old lady. Though small and disagreeable-looking she was clearly someone of importance (she was all over diamonds). The servants clustered round her and Mr Norrell proceeded into the house, unobserved by any of them. He entered a room full of people where he discovered a cup of punch upon a little table. While he was drinking the punch it occurred to him that he had told no one his name and consequently no one knew he was here. He found himself in some perplexity as to how to proceed. His fellow-guests were occupied in greeting their friends, and as for approaching one of the servants and announcing himself, Mr Norrell felt quite unequal to the task; their proud faces and air of indescribable superiority unnerved him. It was a great pity that one or two of the late members of the Society of York Magicians were not there to see him looking so all forlorn and ill at ease; it might have cheered them up immeasurably. But it is the same with all of us. In familiar surroundings our manners are cheerful and easy, but only transport us to places where we know no one and no one knows us, and Lord! how uncomfortable we become!