Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (62 page)

On a particularly gloomy day when a cold, grey rain fell in the dirty streets and pooled in the mud, a carriage came down Elder-street in Spitalfields and stopped at a tall, thin house. The coachman and footman belonging to this carriage wore deep mourning. The footman jumped down from the box, put up a black umbrella and held it up as he opened the door for Jonathan Strange to get out.

Strange paused a moment on the pavement to adjust his black gloves and to cast his glance up and down Elder-street. Apart from two mongrel dogs industriously excavating a heap of refuse, the street was deserted. Yet he continued to look about him until his eye was caught by a doorway on the opposite side of the street.

It was the most unremarkable of doorways — the entrance to a merchant’s warehouse or some such. Three worn stone steps led up to a massive black door of venerable construction, surmounted by a great jutting pediment. The door was much papered over with tattered playbills and notices informing the reader that upon such-and-such a day at such-and-such a tavern all the property of Mr So-and-so Esq. (Bankrupt) would be put up for sale.

“George,” said Strange to the footman who held the umbrella, “do you draw?”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Were you ever taught drawing? Do you understand its principles? Fore-grounds, side-screens, perspective, that sort of thing?”

“Me, sir? No, sir.”

“A pity. It was part of my education. I could draw you a landscape or portrait perfectly proficient and perfectly uninteresting. Exactly like the productions of any other well-educated
amateur
. Your late mistress had none of the advantages of expensive drawing-masters that I had, yet I believe she had more talent. Her watercolours of people and children would horrify a fashionable drawing-master. He would find the figures too stiff and the colours too bright. But Mrs Strange had a genius for capturing expressions both of face and figure, for finding charm and wit in the most commonplace situations. There is something in her pictures, altogether lively and pretty which …” Strange broke off and was silent a moment. “What was I saying? Oh, yes. Drawing teaches habits of close observation that will always be useful. Take that doorway for instance …”

The footman looked at the doorway.

“… Today is cold, dark, rainy. There is very little light and therefore no shadows. One would expect the interior of that doorway to be gloomy and dim; one would not expect that shadow to be there — I mean the strong shadow going from left to right, keeping the left-hand of the doorway in utter blackness. And I believe I am right in saying that even if today were sunny and bright, a shadow would fall in the opposite direction. No, that shadow is altogether an oddity. It is not a thing that appears in Nature.”

The footman looked at the coachman for some assistance, but the coachman was determined not to be drawn in and stared off into the distance. “I see, sir,” said the footman.

Strange continued to regard the doorway with the same expression of thoughtful interest. Then he called out, “Childermass! Is that you?”

For a moment nothing happened and then the dark shadow which Strange objected to so strongly moved. It came away from the doorway like a wet sheet being peeled from a bed and as it did so, it changed and shrank and altered and became a man: John Childermass.

Childermass smiled his wry smile. “Well, sir, I could not expect to stay hidden from you for long.”

Strange sniffed. “I have been expecting you this past week or more. Where have you been?”

“My master did not send me until yesterday.”

“And how is your master?”

“Oh, poorly, sir, very poorly. He is beset with colds and headachs and tremblings in his limbs. All his usual symptoms when someone has vexed him. And no one vexes him as you do.”

“I am pleased to hear it.”

“By the by, sir, I have been meaning to tell you. I have some money at Hanover-square for you. Your fees from the Treasury and the Admiralty for the last quarter of 1814.”

Strange opened his eyes in surprize. “And does Norrell really intend to let me have my share? I had supposed that money was gone for good.”

Childermass smiled. “Mr Norrell knows nothing about it. Shall I bring the money tonight?”

“Certainly. I shall not be at home, but give it to Jeremy. Tell me, Childermass, I am curious. Does Norrell know that you go about making yourself invisible and turning yourself into shadows?”

“Oh, I have picked up a little skill here and there. I have been twenty-six years in Mr Norrell’s service. I would have to be a very dull fellow to have learnt nothing at all.”

“Yes, of course. But that was not what I asked. Does Norrell
know
?”

“No, sir. He suspects, but he chuses not to
know
. A magician who passes his life in a room full of books must have someone to go about the world for him. There are limits to what you can find out in a silver dish of water. You know that.”

“Hmm. Well, come on, man! See what you were sent to see!” The house had a much neglected, almost deserted air. Its windows and paint were very dirty and the shutters were all put up. Strange and Childermass waited upon the pavement while the footman knocked at the door. Strange had his umbrella and Childermass was entirely indifferent to the rain falling upon him.

Nothing happened for some time and then something made the footman look down into the area and he began a conversation with someone no one else could see. Whoever this person was, Strange’s footman did not think much of them; his frown, his way of standing with both hands on his hips, the manner in which he admonished them, all betrayed the severest impatience.

After a while the door was opened by a very small, very dirty, very frightened servant-girl. Jonathan Strange, Childermass and the footman entered and, as they did so, each glanced down at her and she, poor thing, was frightened out of her wits to be looked at by so many tall, important-looking people.

Strange did not trouble to send up his name — it seemed so unlikely that they could have persuaded the little servant-girl to do it. Instead, instructing Childermass to follow him, Strange ran up the stairs and passed directly into one of the rooms. There in an obscure light made by many candles burning in a sort of fog — for the house seemed to produce its own weather — they found the engraver, M’sieur Minervois, and his assistant, M’sieur Forcalquier.

M’sieur Minervois was not a tall man; he was slight of figure. He had long hair, as fine, dark, shining and soft as a skein of brown silk. It brushed his shoulders and fell into his face whenever he stooped over his work — which was almost all the time. His eyes too were remarkable — large, soft and brown, suggesting his southern origins. M’sieur Forcalquier’s looks formed a striking contrast to the extreme handsomeness of his master. He had a bony face with deep sunken eyes, a shaven head covered in pale bristles. But for all his cadaverous, almost skeletal, aspect he was of a most courteous disposition.

They were refugees from France, but the distinction between a refugee and an enemy was altogether too fine a one for the people of Spitalfields. M’sieur Minervois and M’sieur Forcalquier were known everywhere as French spies. They endured much on account of this unjust reputation: gangs of Spitalfields boys and girls thought it the best part of any holiday to lie in wait for the two Frenchmen and beat them and roll them in the dirt — an article in which Spitalfields was peculiarly rich. On other days the Frenchmen’s neighbours relieved their feelings by surliness and catcalls and refusing to sell them any thing they might want or need. Strange had been of some assistance in mediating between M’sieur Minervois and his landlord and in arguing this latter gentleman into a more just understanding of M’sieur Minervois’s character and situation — and by sending Jeremy Johns into all the taverns in the vicinity to drink gin and get into conversations with the natives of the place and to make it generally known that the two French-men were the protégés of one of England’s two magicians — “and,” said Strange, raising a finger to Jeremy in instruction, “if they reply that Norrell is the greater of the two, you may let it pass — but say to them that I have a shorter temper and am altogether more sensitive to slights to my friends.” M’sieur Minervois and M’sieur Forcalquier were grateful to Strange for his efforts, but, under such dismal circumstances, they had found that their best friend was brandy, taken with a strict regularity throughout the day.

They stayed shut up inside the house in Elder-street. The shutters were closed day and night against the inhospitableness of Spitalfields. They lived and worked by candlelight and had long since broken off all relations with clocks. They were rather amazed to see Strange and Childermass, being under the impression that it was the middle of the night. They had one servant — the tiny, wide-eyed orphan girl — who could not understand them and who was very much afraid of them and whose name they did not know. But in a careless, lofty way, the two men were kind to her and had given her a little room of her own with a feather-bed in it and linen sheets — so that she thought the gloomy house a very paradise. Her chief duties were to go and fetch them food and brandy and opium — which they then divided with her, keeping the brandy and opium for themselves, but giving her most of the food. She also fetched and heated water for their baths and their shaving — for both were rather vain. But they were entirely indifferent to dirt or disorder in the house, which was just as well for the little orphan knew as much of housekeeping as she did of Ancient Hebrew.

There were sheets of thick paper on every surface and inky rags. There were pewter dishes containing ancient cheese rinds and pots containing pens and pieces of charcoal. There was an elderly bunch of celery that had lived too long and too promiscuously in close companionship with the charcoal for its own good. There were engravings and drawings pinned directly on to every part of the panelling and the dark, dirty wallpaper — there was one of Strange that was particularly good.

At the back of the house in a smutty little yard there was an apple tree which had once been a country tree — until grey London had come and eaten up all its pleasant green neighbours. Once in a fit of industriousness some unknown person in the house had picked all the apples off the tree and placed them on all of the windowsills, where they had lain for several years now — becoming first old apples, then swollen corpses of apples and finally mere ghosts of apples. There was a very decided smell about the place — a compound of ink, paper, seacoals, brandy, opium, rotting apples, candles, coffee — all mingled with the unique perfume exuded by two men who work day and night in a rather confined space and who never under any circumstances can be induced to open a window.

The truth was that Minervois and Forcalquier often forgot that there were such places as Spitalfields or France upon the face of the earth. They lived for days at a time in the little universe of the engravings for Strange’s book — and these were very odd things indeed.

They shewed great corridors built more of shadows than any thing else. Dark openings in the walls suggested other corridors so that the engravings appeared to be of the inside of a labyrinth or something of that sort. Some shewed broad steps leading down to dark underground canals. There were drawings of a vast dark moor, across which wound a forlorn road. The spectator appeared to be looking down on this scene from a great height. Far, far ahead on that road there was a shadow — no more than a scratch upon the road’s pale surface — it was too far off to say if it were man or woman or child, or even a human person, but somehow its appearance in all that unpeopled space was most disquieting.

One picture showed the likeness of a lonely bridge that spanned some immense and misty void — perhaps the sky itself — and, though the bridge was constructed of the same massive masonry as the corridors and the canals, upon either side tiny staircases wound down, clinging to the great supports of the bridge. These staircases were frail-looking things, built with far less skill than the bridge, but there were many of them winding down through the clouds to God-knew-where.

Strange bent over these things, with a concentration to rival Minervois’s own, questioning, criticizing and proposing. Strange and the two engravers spoke French to each other. To Strange’s surprize Childermass understood perfectly and even addressed one or two questions to Minervois in his own language. Unfortunately, Childermass’s French was so strongly accented by his native Yorkshire that Minervois did not understand and asked Strange if Childermass was Dutch.

“Of course,” remarked Strange to Childermass, “they make these scenes altogether too Roman — too like the works of Palladio and Piranesi, but they cannot help that — it is their training. One can never help one’s training, you know. As a magician I shall never quite be Strange — or, at least, not Strange alone — there is too much of Norrell in me.”

“So this is what you saw upon the King’s Roads?” said Childermass.

“Yes.”

“And what is the country that the bridge crosses?”