Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (35 page)

She greeted him in a very different manner from the cross, scolding young lady of his imaginings. Far from demanding that he immediately undo every wrong his father had ever done, she behaved with particular kindness towards him and seemed altogether delighted to see him.

She was about twenty-two years of age. In repose her looks were only moderately pretty. There was very little about her face and figure that was in any way remarkable, but it was the sort of face which, when animated by conversation or laughter, is completely transformed. She had a lively disposition, a quick mind and a fondness for the comical. She was always very ready to smile and, since a smile is the most becoming ornament that any lady can wear, she had been known upon occasion to outshine women who were acknowledged beauties in three counties.

Her friend, Mrs Redmond, was a kindly, placid creature of forty-five. She was not rich, widely travelled or particularly clever. Under other circumstances she would have been puzzled to know what to say to a man of the world like Jonathan Strange, but happily his father had just died and that provided a subject.

"I dare say you are a great deal occupied just now,Mr Strange," she said. "I remember when my own father died, there was a world of things to do. He left so many bequests. There were some china jugs that used to stand upon the kitchen mantelpiece at home. My father wished a jug to be given to each of our old servants. But the descriptions of the jugs in his will were most confusing and no one could tell which jug was meant for which person. And then the servants quarrelled and they all desired to be given the yellow jug with pink roses. Oh! I thought I would never be done with those bequests. Did your father leave many bequests, Mr Strange?"

"No, madam. None. He hated everybody."

"Ah! That is fortunate, is it not? And what shall you do now?"

"Do?" echoed Strange.

"Miss Woodhope says your poor, dear father bought and sold things. Shall you do the same?"

"No, madam. If I have my way - and I believe I shall - my father's business will all be wound up as soon as possible."

"Oh! But then I dare say you will be a good deal taken up with farming? Miss Woodhope says your estate is a large one."

"It is, madam. But I have tried farming and I find it does not suit me."

"Ah!" said Mrs Redmond, wisely.

There was a silence. Mrs Redmond's clock ticked and the coals shifted in the grate. Mrs Redmond began to pull about some embroidery silks that lay in her lap and had got into a fearful knot. Then her black cat mistook this activity for a game and stalked along the sopha and tried to catch at the silks. Arabella laughed and caught up the cat and started to play with it. This was exactly the sort of tranquil domestic scene that Strange had set his heart upon (though he did not want Mrs Redmond and was undecided about the cat) and it was all the more desirable in his eyes since he had never met with anything other than coldness and disagree- ableness in his childhood home. The question was: how to persuade Arabella that it was what she wanted too? A sort of inspiration came over him and he suddenly addressed Mrs Redmond again. "In short, madam, I do not think that I shall have the time. I am going to study magic."

"Magic!" exclaimed Arabella, looking at him in surprize.

She seemed about to question him further, but at this highly interesting moment Mr Redmond was heard in the hall. He was accompanied by his curate, Henry Woodhope - the same Henry Woodhope who was both brother to Arabella and childhood friend to Jonathan Strange. Naturally there were introductions and explanations to get through (Henry Woodhope had not known Strange was coming) and for the moment Strange's unexpected announcement was forgotten.

The gentlemen were just come from a parish meeting and as soon as everyone was seated again in the drawing-room, Mr Redmond and Henry imparted various items of parish news to Mrs Redmond and Arabella. Then they inquired about Strange's journey, the state of the roads and how the farmers got on in Shropshire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire (these being the counties Strange had travelled through). At seven o'clock the tea things were brought in. In the silence that followed, while they were all eating and drinking, Mrs Redmond remarked to her husband, "Mr Strange is going to be a magician, my love." She spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world, because to her it was.

"A magician?" said Henry, quite astonished. "Why should you want to do that?"

Strange paused. He did not wish to tell his real reason - which was to impress Arabella with his determination to do something sober and scholarly - and so he fell back upon the only other explanation he could think of. "I met a man under a hedge at Monk Gretton who told me that I was a magician."

Mr Redmond laughed, approving the joke. "Excellent!" he said.

"Did you, indeed?" said Mrs Redmond.

"I do not understand," said Henry Woodhope.

"You do not believe me, I suppose?" said Strange to Arabella.

"Oh, on the contrary, Mr Strange!" said Arabella with an amused smile. "It is all of a piece with your usual way of doing things. It is quite as strong a foundation for a career as I should expect from you."

Henry said, "But if you are going to take up a profession - and I cannot see why you should want one at all, now that you have come into your property - surely you can chuse something better than magic! It has no practical application."

"Oh, but I think you are wrong!" said Mr Redmond. "There is that gentleman in London who confounds the French by sending them illusions! I forget his name. What is it that he calls his theory? Modern magic?"

"But how is that different from the old-fashioned sort?" wondered Mrs Redmond. "And which will you do, Mr Strange?"

"Yes, do tell us, Mr Strange," said Arabella, with an arch look. "Which will you do?"

"A little of both, Miss Woodhope. A little of both!" Turning to Mrs Redmond, he said, "I purchased three spells from the man under the hedge. Should you like to see one, madam?"

"Oh, yes, indeed!"

"Miss Woodhope?" asked Strange.

"What are they for?"

"I do not know. I have not read them yet." Jonathan Strange took the three spells Vinculus had given him out of his breast pocket and gave them to her to look at.

"They are very dirty," said Arabella.

"Oh! We magicians do not regard a little dirt. Besides I dare say they are very old. Ancient, mysterious spells such as these are often . . ."

"The date is written at the top of them. 2nd February 1808. That is two weeks ago."

"Indeed? I had not observed."

"
Two Spells to Make an Obstinate Man leave London
," read Arabella. "I wonder why the magician would want to make people leave London?"

"I do not know. There are certainly too many people in London, but it seems a great deal of work to make them leave one at a time."

"But these are horrible! Full of ghosts and horrors! Making them think that they are about to meet their one true love, when in truth the spell does nothing of the sort!"

"Let me see!" Strange snatched back the offending spells. He examined them rapidly and said, "I promise you I knew nothing of their content when I purchased them - nothing whatsoever. The truth is that the man I bought them from was a vagabond and quite destitute. With the money I gave him he was able to escape the workhouse."

"Well, I am glad of that. But his spells are still horrible and I hope you will not use them."

"But what of the last spell?
One Spell to Discover what My Enemy is doing Presently
. I think you can have no objection to that? Let me do the last spell."

"But will it work? You do not have any enemies, do you?"

"None that I know of. And so there can be no harm in attempting it, can there?"

The instructions called for a mirror and some dead flowers,
³
so Strange and Henry lifted a mirror off the wall and laid it upon the table. The flowers were more difficult; it was February and the only flowers Mrs Redmond possessed were some dried lavender, roses and thyme.

"Will these do?" she asked Strange.

He shrugged. "Who knows? Now . . ." He studied the instructions again. "The flowers must be placed around, like so. And then I draw a circle upon the mirror with my finger like this. And quarter the circle. Strike the mirror thrice and say these words . . ."

"Strange," said Henry Woodhope, "where did you get this nonsense?"

"From the man under the hedge. Henry, you do not listen."

"And he seemed honest, did he?"

"Honest? No, not particularly. He seemed, I would say, cold. Yes, `cold' is a good word to describe him and `hungry' another."

"And how much did you pay for these spells?"

"Henry!" said his sister. "Did you not just hear Mr Strange say that he bought them as an act of charity?"

Strange was absent-mindedly drawing circles upon the surface of the mirror and quartering them. Arabella, who was sitting next to him, gave a sudden start of surprize. Strange looked down.

"Good God!" he cried.

In the mirror was the image of a room, but it was not Mrs Redmond's drawing-room. It was a small room, furnished not extravagantly but very well. The ceiling - which was high - gave the idea of its being a small apartment within a large and perhaps rather grand house. There were bookcases full of books and other books lay about on tables. There was a good fire in the fireplace and candles on the desk. A man worked at a desk. He was perhaps fifty and was dressed very plainly in a grey coat. He was a quiet, unremarkable sort of man in an old-fashioned wig. Several books lay open on his desk and he read a little in some and wrote a little in others.

"Mrs Redmond! Henry!" cried Arabella. "Come quickly! See what Mr Strange has done!"

"But who in the world is he?" asked Strange, mystified. He lifted the mirror and looked under it, apparently with the idea that he might discover there a tiny gentleman in a grey coat, ready to be questioned. When the mirror was replaced upon the table the vision of the other room and the other man was still there. They could hear no sounds from the other room but the flames of the fire danced in the grate and the man, with his glinting spectacles on his nose, turned his head from one book to another.

"Why is he your enemy?" asked Arabella.

"I have not the least idea."

"Do you owe him money, perhaps?" asked Mr Redmond.

"I do not
think
so."

"He could be a banker. It looks a little like a counting house," suggested Arabella.

Strange began to laugh. "Well, Henry, you can cease frowning at me. If I am a magician, I am a very indifferent one. Other adepts summon up fairy-spirits and long-dead kings. I appear to have conjured the spirit of a banker."

1 It appears that Strange did not abandon the notion of a poetical career easily. In
The Life of Jonathan Strange
, pub. John Murray, London, 1820, John Segundus describes how, having been disappointed in his search for a poet, Strange decided to write the poems himself. "Things went very well upon the first day; from breakfast to dinner he sat in his dressing gown at the little writing table in his dressing room and scribbled very fast upon several dozen sheets of quarto. He was very delighted with everything he wrote and so was his valet, who was a literary man himself and who gave advice upon the knotty questions of metaphor and rhetoric, and who ran about gathering up the papers as they flew about the room and putting them in order and then running downstairs to read the most exhilarating parts to his friend, the under-gardener. It really was astonishing how quickly Strange wrote; indeed the valet declared that when he put his hand close to Strange's head he could feel a heat coming off it because of the immense creative energies within. On the second day Strange sat down to write another fifty or so pages and immediately got into difficulties because he could not think of a rhyme for " `let love suffice'. `Sunk in vice' was not promising; `a pair of mice' was nonsense, and `what's the price?' merely vulgar. He struggled for an hour, could think of nothing, went for a ride to loosen his brains and never looked at his poem again."

2 A village five or six miles from Strange's home.

3 Mr Norrell appears to have adapted it from a description of a Lancashire spell in Peter Watershippe's
Death's Library
(1448).

Volume II

JONATHAN STRANGE