Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (66 page)

Just then the door opened and an untidy-looking fellow in a leather apron entered the shop. He was somewhat discomfited to find the eyes of all the room upon him. He made a little bobbing bow, handed a piece of paper to Shackleton and quickly made his escape.

“What is it, Shackleton?” asked Mr Murray.

“A message from Thames-street. They have looked inside the books. They are all blank — not a word left upon any of the pages. I am sorry, Mr Murray, but
The History and Practice of English Magic
is gone.”

William Hadley-Bright stuck his hands in his pockets and gave a low whistle.

As the hours progressed it became clear that not a single copy of Strange’s book remained in circulation. William Hadley-Bright and Henry Purfois were all for calling Mr Norrell out, until it was represented to them that Mr Norrell was an elderly gentleman who rarely took exercise and had never been seen with a sword or a pistol in his hand. There were no circumstances under which it would be fair or honourable for two men in the prime of life (one of them a soldier) to challenge him to a duel. Hadley-Bright and Purfois accepted this with a good grace, but Purfois could not help looking hopefully about the room for a person of equal decrepitude to Mr Norrell. He gazed speculatively at Shackleton.

Other friends of Strange appeared to condole with Mr Murray and give vent to some of the fury they felt at what Mr Norrell had done. Lord Portishead arrived and gave an account of the letter he had sent to Mr Norrell breaking off their friendship and the letter he had sent to Lascelles resigning as editor of
The Friends of English Magic
and cancelling his subscription.

“Henceforth, gentlemen,” he told Strange’s pupils, “I consider myself as belonging solely to your party.”

Strange’s pupils assured his lordship he had done the right thing and would never regret it.

At seven o’clock Childermass arrived. He walked into the crowded room with as much composure as if he were walking into church. “Well, how much have you lost, Mr Murray?” he asked. He took out his memorandum book and picked up a quill from Mr Murray’s desk and dipped it in the ink.

“Put your book away again, Mr Childermass,” said Mr Murray. “I do not want your money.”

“Indeed? Be careful, sir, how you let these gentlemen influence you. Some of them are young and have no responsibilities …” Childermass gave a cool glance to Strange’s three pupils and to the several officers in uniform who stood about the room. “And others are rich and a hundred pounds more or less is nothing to them.” Childermass looked at Lord Portishead. “But you, Mr Murray, are a man of business and business ought to be your first consideration.”

“Ha!” Mr Murray crossed his arms and looked triumphantly at Childermass with his one good eye. “You think I am in desperate need of the money — but, you see, I am not. Offers of loans from Mr Strange’s friends have been arriving all evening. I believe I might set up a whole new business if I chose! But I desire you will take a message to Mr Norrell. It is this. He will pay in the end — but upon our terms, not his. We intend to make him pay for the new edition. He shall pay for the advertisements for his rival’s book. That will give him greater pain than any thing else could, I believe.”

“Oh, indeed! If it ever happens,” said Childermass, drily. He turned towards the door. Then he paused and, staring for a moment at the carpet, seemed to debate something within himself. “I will tell you this,” he said. “The book is not destroyed however it may seem at present. I have dealt my cards and asked them if there are any copies left. It seems that two remain. Strange has one and Norrell the other.”

* * *

For the next month London talked of little else but the astonishing thing that Mr Norrell had done, but as to whether it were the wickedness of Strange’s book or the spitefulness of Mr Norrell which was most to blame, London was divided. People who had bought copies were furious at the loss of their books and Mr Norrell did not help matters by sending his servants to their houses with a guinea (the cost of the book) and the letter in which he explained his reasons for making their books disappear. A great many people found themselves more insulted than ever and some of them immediately summoned their attorneys to begin proceedings against Mr Norrell.
⁵

In September the Ministers returned from the country to London and naturally Mr Norrell’s extraordinary actions formed one of the main topics of conversation at their first meeting.

“When we first employed Mr Norrell to do magic on our behalf,” said one, “we had no idea of permitting him to intrude his spells into people’s houses and alter their possessions. In some ways it is a pity that we do not have that magical court he is always proposing. What is it called?”

“The Cinque Dragownes,” said Sir Walter Pole.

“I presume he must be guilty of some magical crime or other?”

“Oh, certainly! But I have not the least idea what. John Childermass probably knows, but I very much doubt that he would tell us.”

“It does not matter. There are several suits against him in the common courts for theft.”

“Theft!” said another Minister in surprize. “I find it very shocking that a man who has done the country such service should be prosecuted for such a low crime!”

“Why?” asked the first. “He has brought it upon himself.”

“The problem is,” said Sir Walter, “that the moment he is asked to defend himself he will respond by saying something about the nature of English magic. And no one is competent to argue that subject except Strange. I think we must be patient. I think we must wait until Strange comes back.”

“Which raises another question,” said another Minister. “There are only two magicians in England. How can we decide between them? Who can say which of them is right and which is wrong?”

The Ministers looked at each other in perplexity.

Only Lord Liverpool, the Prime Minister, was unperturbed. “We will know them as we know other men,” he declared, “by the fruits that they bear.”
⁶

There was a pause for the Ministers to reflect that the fruits Mr Norrell was currently bearing were not very promising: arrogance, theft and malice.

It was agreed that the Home Secretary should speak to Mr Lascelles privately and ask that he would convey to Mr Norrell the extreme displeasure of the Prime Minister and all the Ministers at what Mr Norrell had done.

There seemed no more to be said, but the Ministers were unable to leave the subject without indulging in a little gossip. They had all heard how Lord Portishead had severed himself from Mr Norrell. But Sir Walter was able to tell them how Childermass — who up to this moment had seemed like his master’s shadow — had distanced himself from Mr Norrell’s interests and spoken to Strange’s assembled friends as an independent person, assuring them that the book was not destroyed. Sir Walter sighed deeply. “I cannot help thinking that in many ways this is a worse sign than all the rest. Norrell never was a good judge of men, and now the best of his friends are deserting him — Strange is gone, John Murray and now Portishead. If Childermass and Norrell quarrel there will only be Henry Lascelles left.”

Strange’s friends all sat down that evening and wrote him letters full of indignation. The letters would take two weeks to reach Italy, but Strange moved about so much that it might be another two weeks before they found him. At first Strange’s friends felt confident that the instant he read them he would immediately set out for England in a blaze of anger, ready to contend with Norrell in the courts and the newspapers. But in September they received news which made them think that perhaps they would have to wait a while after all.

As long as Strange had been travelling towards Italy he had seemed generally to be in good spirits. His letters had been full of cheerful nonsense. But as soon as he arrived there his mood changed. For the first time since Arabella’s death he had no work to do and nothing to distract him from his widowed state. Nothing he saw pleased him and for some weeks it seemed that he could only find any relief for his misery in continual change of scene.
⁷
In early September he reached Genoa. Liking this place a little better than other Italian towns he had seen, he stayed almost a week. During this time an English family arrived at the hotel where he was staying. Though he had previously declared to Sir Walter his intention of avoiding the society of Englishmen while he was abroad, Strange struck up an acquaintance with this family. In no time at all he was writing letters back to England full of praise for the manners, cleverness and kindness of the Greysteels. At the end of the week he travelled to Bologna, but finding no pleasure there he very soon returned to Genoa to remain with the Greysteels until the end of the month when they all planned to travel together to Venice.

Naturally, Strange’s friends were very glad that he had found some agreeable company, but what intrigued them most were several references in Strange’s letters to the daughter of the family, who was young and unmarried and in whose society Strange seemed to take a particular pleasure. The same interesting idea occurred to several of his friends at once: what if he were to marry again? A pretty young wife would cure his gloomy spirits better than any thing else could, and best of all she would distract him from that dark, unsettling magic he seemed so set upon.

There were more thorns in Mr Norrell’s side than Strange. A gentleman called Knight had begun a school for magicians in Henrietta-street in Covent-garden. Mr Knight was not a practical magician, nor did he pretend to be. His advertisement offered young gentlemen: “a thorough Education in Theoretical Magic and English Magical History upon the same principles which guided our Foremost Magician, Mr Norrell, in teaching his Illustrious Pupil, Jonathan Strange.” Mr Lascelles had written Mr Knight an angry letter in which he declared that Mr Knight’s school could not possibly be based upon the principles mentioned since these were known only to Mr Norrell and Mr Strange. Lascelles threatened Mr Knight with exposure as a fraud if he did not immediately dismantle his school.

Mr Knight had written a polite letter back in which he begged to differ. He said that, upon the contrary, Mr Norrell’s system of education was well known. He directed Mr Lascelles’s attention to page 47 of
The Friends of English Magic
from the Autumn of 1810 in which Lord Portishead had declared that the only basis for training up more magicians approved by Mr Norrell was that devised by Francis Sutton-Grove. Mr Knight (who declared himself a sincere admirer of Mr Norrell’s) had bought a copy of Sutton-Grove’s
De Generibus Artium Magicarum Anglorum
and studied it. He took the opportunity to wonder whether Mr Norrell would do him the honour of becoming the school’s Visiting Tutor and giving lectures and so forth. He had intended to tutor four young men, but he had been so overpowered by applications that he had been obliged to rent another house to accommodate them and hire more teachers to teach them. Other schools were being proposed in Bath, Chester and Newcastle.

Almost worse than the schools were the shops. Several establishments in London had begun to sell magical philtres, magic mirrors and silver basins which, the manufacturers claimed, had been specially constructed for seeing visions in. Mr Norrell had done what he could to halt the trade, with diatribes against them in
The Friends of English Magic
. He had persuaded the editors of all the other magical publications over which he had any influence to publish articles explaining that there never ever had been any such thing as magical mirrors, and that the magic performed by magicians using mirrors (which were in any case only a few sorts and hardly any that Mr Norrell approved) were performed using ordinary mirrors. Nevertheless the magical articles continued to sell out as fast as the shopkeepers could put them on the shelves and some shopkeepers were considering whether they ought not to give up their other business and devote their whole shop to magical accoutrements.

51
A family by the name of Greysteel

October to November 1816

Campo Santa Maria Zobenigo, Venice

Jonathan Strange to Sir Walter Pole
     Oct. 16th, 1816.

We left
terra firma
at Mestre. There were two gondolas. Miss Greysteel and her aunt were to go in one, and the doctor and I were to go in the other. But whether there was some obscurity in my Italian when I explained it to the
gondolieri
or whether the distribution of Miss Greysteel’s boxes and trunks dictated another arrangement I do not know, but matters did not fall out as we had planned. The first gondola glided out across the lagoon with all the Greysteels inside it, while I still stood upon the shore. Dr Greysteel stuck his head out and roared his apologies, like the good fellow that he is, before his sister — who I think is a little nervous of the water — pulled him back in again. It was the most trivial incident yet somehow it unnerved me and for some moments afterwards I was prey to the most morbid fears and imaginings. I looked at my gondola. Much has been said, I know, about the funereal appearance of these contraptions — which are something between a coffin and a boat. But I was struck by quite another idea. I thought how much they resembled the black-painted, black-curtained conjuring boxes of my childhood — the sort of boxes into which quack-sorcerers would put country people’s handkerchiefs and coins and lockets. Sometimes these articles could never be got back — for which the sorcerer was always very sorry — “but fairy-spirits, Sir, is very giddy, wexatious creatures.” And all the nursemaids and kitchenmaids I ever knew when I was a child, always had an aunt, who knew a woman, whose first cousin’s boy had been put into just such a box, and had never been seen again. Standing on the quayside at Mestre I had a horrible notion that when the Greysteels got to Venice they would open up the gondola that should have conveyed me there and find nothing inside. This idea took hold of me so strongly that for some minutes I forgot to think of any thing else and there were actual tears standing in my eyes — which I think may serve to shew how nervous I have become. It is quite ridiculous for a man to begin to be afraid that he is about to disappear. It was towards evening and our two gondolas were as black as night and quite as melancholy. Yet the sky was the coldest, palest blue imaginable. There was no wind or hardly any, and the sea was nothing but the sky’s mirror. There were immeasurable spaces of still cold light above us and immeasurable spaces of still cold light beneath. But the city ahead of us received no illumination either from sky or lagoon, and appeared like a vast collection of shadow-towers and shadow-pinnacles, all pierced with tiny lights and set upon the shining water. As we entered Venice the water became crowded with scraps and rubbish — splinters of wood and hay, orange peels and cabbage stalks. I looked down and saw a ghostly hand for a moment — it was only a moment — but I quite believed that there was a woman beneath the dirty water, trying to find her way back to the light. Of course it was only a white glove, but the fright, while it lasted, was very great. But you are not to worry about me. I am very well occupied, working on the second volume of
The History and Practice
and when I am not working I am generally with the Greysteels, who are just such a set of people as you yourself would like — cheerful, independent, and well-informed. I confess to being a little fretful that I have heard nothing as yet of how the first volume was received. I am tolerably certain of its being a great triumph — I
know
that when he read it, N. fell down on the floor in a jealous fit and foamed at the mouth — but I cannot help wishing that someone would write and tell me so.

Campo Santa Maria Zobenigo, Venice

Jonathan Strange to John Murray
     Oct. 27th, 1816.

… from eight separate persons of what Norrell has done. Oh, I
could
be angry. I
could
, I dare say, wear out both my pen and myself in a long tirade — but to what end? I do not
chuse
to be governed any longer by this impudent little man. I shall return to London in the early spring, as I planned, and we shall have a new edition. We shall have lawyers. I have my friends, just as he has his. Let him say in court (if he dares) why he thinks that Englishmen have become children and may not know the things that their forefathers knew. And if he dares to use magic against me again, then we shall have some counter-magic and then we shall finally see who is the Greatest Magician of the Age. And I think, Mr Murray, that you will be best advised to print a great many more copies than before — this has been one of Norrell’s most notorious acts of magic and I am sure that people will like to see the book that forced him to it. By the by when you print the new edition we shall have corrections — there are some horrible blunders. Chapters six and forty-two are particularly bad …

Harley-street, London

Sir Walter Pole to Jonathan Strange
      Oct. 1st, 1816.

… a bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard, Titus Watkins, has printed up a very nonsensical book and is selling it as Strange’s lost
History and Practice of English Magic
. Lord Portishead says some of it is copied out of Absalom
¹
and some of it is nonsense. Portishead wonders which you will find the most insulting — the Absalom part or the nonsense. Like a good fellow, Portishead contradicts this imposition wherever he goes, but a great many people have already been taken in and Watkins has certainly made money. I am glad you like Miss Greysteel so much …

Campo Santa Maria Zobenigo, Venice

Jonathan Strange to John Murray
      Nov. 16th., 1816.

My dear Murray,
You will be pleased, I think, to hear that some good at least has come from the destruction of
The History and Practice of English Magic
— I have made up my quarrel with Lord Byron. His lordship knows nothing of the great controversies which are rending English magic in two and frankly cares less. But he has the greatest respect for books. He informs me that he is constantly on guard lest your over-cautious pen, Mr Murray, should alter some of his own poems and render some of the more
surprizing
words a little more respectable. When he heard that a whole book had been magicked out of existence by the author’s enemy, his indignation was scarcely to be described. He sent me a long letter, vilifying Norrell in the liveliest terms. Of all the letters I received upon that sad occasion, this is my favourite. No Englishman alive can equal his lordship for an insult. He arrived in Venice about a week ago and we met at Florian’s.
²
I confess to being a little anxious lest he should bring that insolent young person, Mrs Clairmont, but happily she was nowhere to beseen. Apparently he dismissed her some time ago. Our new friendly relations have been sealed by the discovery that we share a fondness for billiards; I play when I am thinking about magic and he plays when he is hatching his poems …

The sunlight was as cold and clear as the note struck by a knife on a fine wine-glass. In such a light the walls of the Church of Santa Maria Formosa were as white as shells or bones — and the shadows on the paving stones were as blue as the sea.

The door to the church opened and a little party came out into the campo. These ladies and gentlemen were visitors to the city of Venice who had been looking at the interior of the church, its altars and objects of interest, and now that they had got out of it, they were inclined to be talkative and filled up the water-lapped silence of the place with loud, cheerful conversation. They were excessively pleased with the Campo Santa Maria Formosa. They thought the façades of the houses very magnificent — they could not praise them highly enough. But the sad decay, which buildings, bridges and church all displayed, seemed to charm them even more. They were Englishmen and, to them, the decline of other nations was the most natural thing in the world. They belonged to a race blessed with so sensitive an appreciation of its own talents (and so doubtful an opinion of any body else’s) that they would not have been at all surprized to learn that the Venetians themselves had been entirely ignorant of the merits of their own city — until Englishmen had come to tell them it was delightful.

One lady, having got to the end of her raptures, began to speak of the weather to the other lady.

“You know, it is a very odd thing, my dear, but when we were in the church, while you and Mr Strange were looking at the pictures, I just popped my head out of the door and I thought then that it was raining and I was very much afraid that you would get wet.”

“No, aunt. See, the stones are perfectly dry. There is not a spot of rain upon them.”

“Well then, my dear, I hope that you are not inconvenienced by this wind. It is a little sharp about the ears. We can always ask Mr Strange and papa to walk a little faster if you do not like it.”

“Thank you, aunt, but I am perfectly comfortable. I like this breeze — I like the smell of the sea — it clears the brain, the senses — every thing. But perhaps, aunt,
you
do not like it.”

“Oh no, my dear. I never mind any such thing. I am quite hardy. I only think of you.”

“I know you do, aunt,” said the young lady. The young lady was perhaps aware that the sunlight and breeze which shewed Venice to so much advantage, made its canals so blue and its marble so mystically bright, did as much — or almost as much — for her. Nothing could so well draw attention to the translucency of Miss Greysteel’s complexion, as the rapid progression across it of sunlight and shadow. Nothing could be so becoming to her white muslin gown as the breeze which blew it about.

“Ah,” said the aunt, “now papa is showing Mr Strange some new thing or other. Flora, my dear, would not you like to see?”

“I have seen enough. You go, aunt.”

So the aunt hurried away to the other end of the campo and Miss Greysteel walked slowly on to the little white bridge that stood just by the church, fretfully poking the point of her white parasol between the white paving stones and murmuring to herself, “I have seen enough. Oh, I have seen
quite
enough!” The repetition of this mysterious exclamation did not appear to afford her spirits much relief — indeed it only served to make her more melancholy, and to make her sigh more frequently.

“You are very quiet today,” said Strange suddenly. She was startled. She had not known he was so close by.

“Am I? I was not aware of it.” But she then gave her attention to the view and was silent for several moments. Strange leant back against the bridge, folded his arms and looked very intently at her.

“Quiet,” he repeated, “and a little sad, I think. And so, you know, I must talk to you.”

This made her smile in spite of herself. “Must you?” she said. But then the very act of smiling and of speaking to him seemed to give her pain and so she sighed and looked away again.

“Indeed. Because, whenever
I
am melancholy you talk to me of cheerful things and cure my low spirits and so I must now do the same for
you
. That is what friendship is.”

“Openness and honesty, Mr Strange. Those are the best foundations for friendship, I think.”

“Oh! You think me secretive. I see by your face that you do. You may be right, but I … That is … No, I dare say you are right. It is not, I suppose, a profession that encourages …”

Miss Greysteel interrupted him. “I did not mean a fling at your profession. Not at all. All professions have their different sorts of discretion.
That
, I think, is quite understood.”

“Then I do not understand you.”

“It is no matter. We should rejoin my aunt and papa.”

“No, wait, Miss Greysteel, it will not do. Who else will put me right, when I am going wrong, if not you? Tell me — whom do you think I deceive?”

Miss Greysteel was silent a moment and then, with some reluctance, said, “Your friend of last night, perhaps?”

“My friend of last night! What do you mean?”

Miss Greysteel looked very unhappy. “The young woman in the gondola who was so anxious to speak to you and so unwilling — for a full half hour — that any one else should.”

“Ah!” Strange smiled and shook his head. “No, you have run away with a wrong idea. She is not my friend. She is Lord Byron’s.”

“Oh! …” Miss Greysteel reddened a little. “She seemed rather an agitated young person.”

“She is not best pleased with his lordship’s behaviour.” Strange shrugged. “Who is? She wished to discover if I were able to influence his lordship and I was at some pains to persuade her that there is not now, nor ever was, I think, magic enough in England to do that.”

“You are offended.”

“Not in the least. Now I believe we are closer to that good understanding which you require for friendship. Will you shake hands with me?”

“With the greatest goodwill,” she said.

“Flora? Mr Strange?” cried Dr Greysteel, striding up to them. “What is this?”

Miss Greysteel was a little confused. It was of the greatest importance to her that her aunt and father should have a good opinion of Mr Strange. She did not want them to know that she herself had suspected him of wrongdoing. She feigned not to have heard her father’s question and began to speak energetically of some paintings in the Scuola di Giorgio degli Schiavoni that she had a great desire to see. “It is really no distance. We could go now. You will come with us, I hope?” she said to Strange.

Strange smiled ruefully at her. “I have work to do.”

“Your book?” asked Dr Greysteel.

“Not today. I am working to uncover the magic which will bring forth a fairy-spirit to be my assistant. I have lost count of how many times I have tried — and how many ways. And never, of course, with the least success. But such is the predicament of the modern magician! Spells which were once taken for granted by every minor sorcerer in England are now so elusive that we despair of ever getting them back. Martin Pale had twenty-eight fairy servants. I would count myself fortunate to have one.”

“Fairies!” exclaimed Aunt Greysteel. “But by all accounts they are very mischievous creatures! Are you quite certain, Mr Strange, that you really wish to burden yourself with such a troublesome companion?”