Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (111 page)

Henry Woodhope might perhaps be excused for looking a little puzzled at this since he had not the least idea what Lascelles was talking about, but all he said was, "Thank you for your advice, Mr Norrell. I will certainly do as you suggest and now, I wonder if I might take back my letters?"

"Ah! Well, as to that," said Lascelles, "Mr Norrell wonders if he might borrow them for a time? He believes there is still much to learn from them." Henry Woodhope looked as if he was about to protest, so Lascelles added in a somewhat reproachful tone, "He is only thinking of Mr Strange! It is all for the good of Mr Strange."

So Henry Woodhope left the letters in the possession of Mr Norrell and Lascelles.

When he was gone Lascelles said, "Our next step must be to send someone to Venice."

"Yes, indeed!" agreed Mr Norrell. "I should dearly love to know the truth of the matter."

"Ah, yes, well." Lascelles gave a short, contemptuous laugh. "
Truth
. . ."

Mr Norrell blinked his little eyes rapidly at Lascelles, but Lascelles did not explain what he meant. "I do not know who we can send," continued Mr Norrell. "Italy is a very great distance. The journey takes almost two weeks, I understand. I could not spare Childermass for half so long."

"Hmm," said Lascelles, "I was not necessarily thinking of Childermass. Indeed there are several arguments against sending Childermass. You yourself have often suspected him of Strangite sympathies. It appears to me highly undesirable that the two of them should be alone together in a foreign country where they can plot against us. No, I know whom we can send."

The next day Lascelles's servants went out into various parts of London. Some of the places they visited were highly disreputable like the slums and rookeries of St Giles, Seven Dials and Saffron- hill; others were grand and patrician like Golden-square, St James's and Mayfair. They gathered up a strange miscellany of persons: tailors, glove-makers, hat-makers, cobblers, money-len- ders (a great many of these), bailiffs and sponging-house-keepers; and they brought them all back to Lascelles's house in Bruton- street. When they were assembled in the kitchen (the master of the house having no intention of receiving such people in the drawing- room) Lascelles came down and paid each of them a sum of money on behalf of someone else. It was, he told them with a cold smile, an act of charity. After all if a man cannot be charitable at Christmas, when can he be?

Three days later, on St Stephen's Day, the Duke of Wellington appeared suddenly in London. For the past year or so his Grace had been living in Paris, where he was in charge of the Allied Army of Occupation. Indeed it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that at present the Duke of Wellington ruled France. Now the question had arisen whether the AlliedArmyought to remain in France or go to its various homes (which was what the French wanted). All that day the Duke was closeted with the Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh, to discuss this important matter and in the evening he dined with the Ministers at a house in Grosvenor-square.

They had scarcely begun to eat when the conversation lapsed (a rare thing among so many politicians). The Ministers seemed to be waiting for someone to say something. The Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, cleared his throat a little nervously and said, "We do not think you will have heard, but it is reported from Italy that Strange has gone mad."

The Duke paused for a moment with his spoon halfway to his mouth. He glanced round at them all and then continued eating his soup.

"You do not appear very much disturbed at the news," said Lord Liverpool.

His Grace dabbed at his lips with his napkin. "No," he said. "I am not."

"Will you give us your reasons?" asked Sir Walter Pole.

"Mr Strange is eccentric," said the Duke. "He might seem mad to the people around him. I dare say they are not used to magicians."

The Ministers did not appear to find this quite as convincing an argument as Wellington intended they should. They offered him examples of Strange's madness: his insistence that his wife was not dead, his curious belief that people had candles in their heads and the even odder circumstance that it was no longer possible to transport pineapples into Venice.

"The watermen who carry fruit from the mainland to the city say that the pineapples fly out of their boats as if they had been fired out of a cannon," said Lord Sidmouth, a small, dried-up- looking person. "Of course they carry other sorts of fruit as well - apples and pears and so on. None of these occasion the least disturbance, but several people have been injured by the flying pineapples. Why the magician should have taken such a dislike to this particular fruit, no one knows."

The Duke was not impressed. "None of this proves any thing. I assure you, he did much more eccentric things in the Peninsula. But if he is indeed mad, then he has some reason for being so. If you will take my advice, gentlemen, you will not worry about it."

There was a short silence while the Ministers puzzled this out.

"You mean to say he might have become mad
deliberately
?" said one in an incredulous tone.

"Nothing is more likely," said the Duke.

"But why?" asked another.

"I have not the least idea. In the Peninsula we learnt not to question him. Sooner or later it would become clear that all his incomprehensible and startling actions were part of his magic. Keep him to his task, but shew no surprize at any thing he does. That, my lords, is the way to manage a magician."

"Ah, but you have not heard all yet," said the First Lord of the Admiralty eagerly. "There is worse. It is reported that he is surrounded by Constant Darkness. The Natural Order of Things is overturned and a whole parish in the city of Venice has been plunged into Ceaseless Night!"

Lord Sidmouth declared, "Even you, your Grace, with all your partiality for this man must admit that a Shroud of Eternal Darkness does not bode well. Whatever the good this man has done for the country, we cannot pretend that a Shroud of Eternal Darkness bodes well."

Lord Liverpool sighed. "I am very sorry this has happened. One could always speak to Strange as if he were an ordinary person. I had hoped that he would interpret Norrell's actions for us. But now it seems we must first find someone to interpret Strange."

"We could ask Mr Norrell," suggested Lord Sidmouth.

"I do not think we can expect an impartial judgement from that quarter," said Sir Walter Pole.

"So what ought we to do?" asked the First Lord of the Admir- alty.

"We shall send a letter to the Austrians," said the Duke of Wellington with his customary decisiveness. "A letter reminding them of the warm interest that the Prince Regent and the British Government will always feel in Mr Strange's welfare; reminding them of the great debt owed by all Europe to Mr Strange's gallantry and magicianship during the late wars. Reminding them of our great displeasure were we to learn that any harm had come to him."

"Ah!" said Lord Liverpool. "But that is where you and I differ, your Grace. It seems to me that if harm does come to Strange, it will not come from the Austrians. It is far more likely to come from Strange himself."

In the middle of January a bookseller named Titus Watkins published a book called
The Black Letters
which purported to be letters from Strange to Henry Woodhope. It was rumoured that Mr Norrell had paid all the expences of the edition. Henry Woodhope swore that he had never given his permission for the letters to be published. He also said that some of them had been changed. References to Norrell's dealings with Lady Pole had been removed and other things had been put in, many of which seemed to suggest that Strange had murdered his wife by magic.

At about the same time one of Lord Byron's friends - a man called Scrope Davies - caused a sensation when he let it be known that he intended to prosecute Mr Norrell upon Lord Byron's account for attempting to acquire Lord Byron's private corre- spondence by means of magic. Scrope Davies went to a lawyer in Lincoln's Inn and swore an affidavit in which he stated the following. He had recently received several letters from Byron in which his lordship referred to the Pillar of Constant Darkness which covered the Parish of Mary Sobendigo [sic] in Venice, and to the madness of Jonathan Strange. Scrope Davies had placed the letters on his dressing-table in his rooms in Jermyn-street, St James's. One evening - he thought the 7th of January - he was dressing to go to his club. He had just picked up a hairbrush when he happened to notice that the letters were skipping about like dry leaves caught in a breeze. But there was no breeze to account for the movement and at first he was puzzled. He picked up the letters and saw that the handwriting on the pages was behaving strangely too. The pen-strokes were coming unhitched from their moorings and lashing about like clothes-lines in a high wind. It suddenly came to him that the letters must be under the influence of magic spells. He was a gambler by profession and, like all successful gamblers, he was quick-witted and cool-headed. He quickly placed the letters inside a Bible, in the pages of St Mark's Gospel. He told some friends afterwards that, though he was entirely ignorant of magical theory, it had seemed to him that nothing was so likely to foil an unfriendly spell as Holy Writ. He was right; the letters remained in his possession and unaltered. It was a favourite joke afterwards in all the gentlemen's clubs that the most extraordinary aspect of the whole business was not that Mr Norrell should have tried to acquire the letters, but that Scrope Davies - a notorious rake and drunk - should possess a
Bible
.

59
Leucrocuta, the Wolf of the Evening

January 1817

O
N A MORNING in the middle of January Dr Greysteel stepped out of his street-door and stood a moment to straighten his gloves. Looking up, he happened to ob- serve a small man who was sheltering from the wind in the doorway opposite.

All doorways in Venice are picturesque - and sometimes the people who linger in them are too. This fellow was rather small and, despite his evident poverty, he seemed to possess a strong degree of foppishness. His clothes were exceedingly worn and shabby-looking, but he had tried to improve them by shining whatever could be shone and brushing what could not. He had whitened his old, yellowing gloves with so much chalk that he had left little chalky fingerprints upon the door beside him. At first glance he appeared to be wearing the proper equipment of a fop - namely a long watch-chain, a bunch of watch-seals and a lorgn- ette; but a moment's further observation shewed that he had no watch-chain, only a gaudy gold ribbon which he had carefully arranged to hang from a buttonhole. Likewise his watch seals proved to be nothing of the sort; they were a bunch of tin hearts, crosses and talismans of the Virgin - the sort that Italian pedlars sell for a frank or two. But it was his lorgnette which was best of all - all fops and dandies love lorgnettes. They employ them to stare quizzically at those less fashionable than themselves. Presumably this odd little man felt naked without one and so he had hung a large kitchen spoon in its place.

Dr Greysteel took careful note of these eccentricities so that he might amuse a friend with them. Then he remembered that his only friend in the city was Strange, and Strange no longer cared about such things.

Suddenly the little man left the doorway and came up to Dr Greysteel. He put his head on one side and said in English, "You are Dr Greyfield?"

Dr Greysteel was surprized to be addressed by him and did not immediately reply.

"You are Dr Greyfield? The friend of the magician?"

"Yes," said Dr Greysteel, in a wondering tone. "But my name is Greysteel, sir, not Greyfield."

"A thousand apologies, my dear Doctor! Some stupid person has misinformed me of your name! I amquite mortified. You are, I assure you, the last person in the world to whom I should wish to give offence! My respect for the medical profession is boundless! And now you stand there in all the dignity of poultices and pulse- taking and you say to yourself, `Who is this odd creature that dares to address me in the street, as if I were a common person?' Permit me to introduce myself! I come from London - from Mr Strange's friends who, when they heard how far his wits had become deranged, were thrown into such fits of anxiety that they took the liberty of dispatching me to come and find out how he is!"

"Hmm!" said Dr Greysteel. "Frankly I could have wished them more anxious. I first wrote to them at the beginning of December - six weeks ago, sir! Six weeks ago!"

"Oh, quite! Very shocking, is it not? They are the idlest creatures in the world! They think of nothing but their own convenience! While you remain here in Venice - the magician's one true friend!" He paused. "That is correct, is it not?" he asked in quite a different voice. "He has no friends but you?"

"Well, there is Lord Byron . . ." began Dr Greysteel.

"Byron!" exclaimed the little man. "Really? Dear me! Mad,
and
a friend of Lord Byron!" He sounded as if he did not know which was worse. "Oh! My dear Dr Greysteel. I have a thousand questions to ask you! Is there somewhere you and I can talk privately?"

Dr Greysteel's street-door was just behind them, but his distaste for the little man was growing every moment. Anxious as he was to help Strange and Strange's friends, he had no wish to invite the fellow into his house. So he muttered something about his servant being in town on an errand just now. There was a little coffee- house a few streets away; why did they not go there?

The little man was all smiling acquiescence.

They set off for the coffee-house. Their way lay by the side of a canal. The little man was upon Dr Greysteel's right hand, closest to the water. He was talking and Dr Greysteel was looking around. The doctor's eyes happened to be directed towards the canal and he saw how, without warning, a wave appeared - a single wave. This was odd enough in itself, but what followed was even more surprizing. The wave rushed towards them and slopped over the stone rim of the canal and, as it did so, it changed shape; watery fingers reached out towards the little man's foot as if they were trying to pull him in. The moment the water touched him, he leapt back with an oath, but he did not appear to notice that any thing unusual had occurred and Dr Greysteel said nothing of what he had seen.