Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (38 page)

Whereupon Mr Strange told them how, to his certain knowledge, there had been four copies of
The Language of Birds
in England not more than five years ago: one in a Gloucester bookseller's; one in the private library of a gentleman-magician in Kendal; one the property of a blacksmith near Penzance who had taken it in part payment for mending an iron-gate; and one stopping a gap in a window of the boys' school in the close of Durham Cathedral.

"But where are they now?" cried Mr Honeyfoot. "Why did you not purchase a copy?"

"By the time that I came to each place Norrell had got there before me and bought them all," said Mr Strange. "I never laid eyes upon the man, and yet he thwarts me at every turn. That is why I hit upon this plan of summoning up some dead magician and asking him - or her - questions. I fancied a
lady
might be more sympathetic to my plight, and so I chose Miss Absalom."
⁵

Mr Segundus shook his head. "As a means of getting knowledge, it strikes me as more dramatic than convenient. Can you not think of an easier way? After all, in the Golden Age of English magic, books were much rarer than they are now, yet men still became magicians."

"I have studied histories and biographies of the
Aureates
to discover how they began," said Strange, "but it seems that in those days, as soon as any one found out he had some aptitude for magic, he immediately set off for the house of some other, older, more experienced magician and offered himself as a pupil."
⁶

"Then you should apply to Mr Norrell for assistance!" cried Mr Honeyfoot, "Indeed you should. Oh! yes, I know," seeing that Mr Segundus was about to make some objection, "Norrell is a little reserved, but what is that? Mr Strange will know how to overcome his timidity I am sure. For all his faults of temper, Norrell is no fool and must see the very great advantages of having such an assistant!"

Mr Segundus had many objections to this scheme, in particular Mr Norrell's great aversion to other magicians; but Mr Honeyfoot, with all the enthusiasm of his eager disposition, had no sooner conceived the idea than it became a favourite wish and he could not suppose there would be any drawbacks. "Oh! I agree," he said, "that Norrell has never looked very favourably upon us
theoretical
magicians. But I dare say he will behave quite differently towards an
equal
."

Strange himself did not seem at all averse to the idea; he had a natural curiosity to see Mr Norrell. Indeed Mr Segundus could not help suspecting that he had already made up his mind upon the point and so Mr Segundus gradually allowed his doubts and objections to be argued down.

"This is a great day for Great Britain, sir!" cried Mr Honeyfoot. "Look at all that one magician has been able to accomplish! Only consider what two might do! Strange and Norrell! Oh, it sounds very well!" Then Mr Honeyfoot repeated "Strange and Norrell" several times over, in a highly delighted manner that made Strange laugh very much.

But like many gentle characters, Mr Segundus was much given to changes of mind. As long as Mr Strange stood before him, tall, smiling and assured, Mr Segundus had every confidence that Strange's genius must receive the recognition it deserved - whether it be with Mr Norrell's help, or in spite of Mr Norrell's hindrance; but the next morning, after Strange and Henry Woodhope had ridden off, his thoughts returned to all the magicians whom Mr Norrell had laboured to destroy, and he began to wonder if Mr Honeyfoot and he might not have misled Strange.

"I cannot help thinking," he said, "that we should have done a great deal better to warn Mr Strange to avoid Mr Norrell. Rather than encouraging him to seek out Norrell we should have advised him to hide himself!"

But Mr Honeyfoot did not understand this at all. "No gentleman likes to be told to hide," he said, "and if Mr Norrell should mean any harm to Mr Strange - which I am very far from allowing to be the case - then I am sure that Mr Strange will be the first to find it out."

1 Some scholars (Jonathan Strange among them) have argued that Maria Absalom knew exactly what she was about when she permitted her house to go to rack and ruin. It is their contention that Miss Absalom did what she did in accordance with the commonly-held belief that all ruined buildings belong to the Raven King. This presumably would account for the fact that the magic at the Shadow House appeared to grow stronger
fter
the house fell into ruin.

"All of Man's works, all his cities, all his empires, all his monuments will one day crumble to dust. Even the houses of my own dear readers must - though it be for just one day, one hour - be ruined and become houses where the stones are mortared with moonlight, windowed with starlight and furnished with the dusty wind. It is said that in that day, in that hour, our houses become the possessions of the Raven King. Though we bewail the end of English magic and say it is long gone from us and inquire of each other how it was possible that we came to lose something so precious, let us not forget that it also waits for us at England's end and one day we will no more be able to escape the Raven King than, in this present Age, we can bring him back."
The History and Practice of English Magic
by Jonathan Strange, pub. John Murray, London, 1816.

2 When people talk of "the Other Lands", they generally have in mind Faerie, or some such other vague notion. For the purposes of general conversation such definitions do very well, but a magician must learn to be more precise. It is well known that the Raven King ruled three kingdoms: the first was the Kingdom of Northern England that encompassed Cumber-land, Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire and part of Nottinghamshire. The other two were called "the King's Other Lands". One was part of Faerie and the other was commonly supposed to be a country on the far side of Hell, sometimes called "the Bitter Lands". The King's enemies said that he leased it from Lucifer.

3 Paris Ormskirk (1496-1587), a schoolmaster from the village of Clerkenwell near London. He wrote several treatises on magic. Though no very original thinker, he was a diligent worker who set himself the task of assembling and sifting through all the spells of summoning he could find, to try to uncover one reliable version. This took him twelve years, during which time his little house on Clerkenwell-green filled up with thousands of small pieces of paper with spells written on them. Mrs Ormskirk was not best pleased, and she, poor woman, became the original of the magician's wife in stock comedies and second-rate novels - a strident, scolding, unhappy person.

The spell that Ormskirk eventually produced became very popular and was widely used in his own century and the two following ones; but, until Jonathan Strange made his own alterations to the spell and brought forth Maria Absalom into his own dream and Mr Segundus's, I never heard of any one who had the least success with it - perhaps for the reasons that Jonathan Strange gives.

4 Mr Segundus's good sense seems to have deserted him at this point. Charles Hether-Gray (1712-89) was another historio-magician who published a famous spell of summoning. His spell and Ormskirk's are equally bad; there is not a pin to chuse between them.

5 In mediaeval times conjuring the dead was a well-known sort of magic and there seems to have been a consensus that a dead magician was both the easiest spirit to raise and the most worth talking to.

6 There have been very few magicians who did not learn magic from another practitioner. The Raven King was not the first British magician. There had been others before him - notably the seventh-century half-man, half-demon, Merlin - but at the time the Raven King came into England there were none. Little enough is known about the Raven King's early years, but it is reasonable to suppose that he learnt both magic and kingship at the court of a King of Faerie. Early magicians in mediaeval England learnt their art at the court of the Raven King and these magicians trained others.

One exception may be the Nottinghamshire magician, Thomas Godbless (1105?-82). Most of his life is entirely obscure to us. He certainly spent some time with the Raven King, but this seems to have been late in his life when he had already been a magician for years. He is perhaps one example that a magician may be self-created - as of course were both Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange.

24
Another magician

September 1809

M
R DRAWLIGHT TURNED slightly in his chair, smiled, and said, "It seems, sir, that you have a rival."

Before Mr Norrell could think of a suitable reply, Lascelles asked what was the man's name.

"Strange," said Drawlight.

"I do not know him," said Lascelles.

"Oh!" cried Drawlight. "I think you must. Jonathan Strange of Shropshire. Two thousand pounds a year."

"I have not the least idea whom you mean. Oh, but wait! Is not this the man who, when an undergraduate at Cambridge, frightened a cat belonging to the Master of Corpus Christi?"

Drawlight agreed that this was the very man. Lascelles knew him instantly and they both laughed.

Meanwhile Mr Norrell sat silent as a stone. Drawlight's opening remark had been a terrible blow. He felt as if Drawlight had turned and struck him - as if a figure in a painting, or a table or a chair had turned and struck him. The shock of it had almost taken his breath away; he was quite certain he would be ill. What Drawlight might say next Mr Norrell dared not think - something of greater powers, perhaps - of wonders performed beside which Mr Norrell's own would appear pitiful indeed. And he had taken such pains to ensure there could be no rivals! He felt like the man who goes about his house at night, locking doors and barring windows, only to hear the certain sounds of someone walking about in an upstairs room.

But as the conversation progressed these unpleasant sensations lessened and Mr Norrell began to feel more comfortable. As Drawlight and Lascelles talked of Mr Strange's Brighton pleasure-trips and visits to Bath and Mr Strange's estate in Shropshire, Mr Norrell thought he understood the sort of man this Strange must be: a fashionable, shallow sort of man, a man not unlike Lascelles himself. That being so (said Mr Norrell to himself) was it not more probable that "You have a rival," was addressed, not to himself, but to Lascelles? This Strange (thought Mr Norrell) must be Lascelles's rival in some love affair or other. Norrell looked down at his hands clasped in his lap and smiled at his own folly.

"And so," said Lascelles, "Strange is now a magician?"

"Oh!" said Drawlight, turning to Mr Norrell. "I am sure that not even his greatest friends would compare his talents to those of the estimable Mr Norrell. But I believe he is well enough thought of in Bristol and Bath. He is in London at present. His friends hope that you will be kind enough to grant him an interview - and may I express a wish to be present when two such practitioners of the art meet?"

Mr Norrell lifted his eyes very slowly. "I shall be happy to meet Mr Strange," he said.

Mr Drawlight was not made to wait long before he witnessed the momentous interview between the two magicians (which was just as well for Mr Drawlight hated to wait). An invitation was issued and both Lascelles and Drawlight made it their business to be present when Mr Strange waited upon Mr Norrell.

He proved neither as young nor as handsome as Mr Norrell had feared. He was nearer thirty than twenty and, as far as another gentleman may be permitted to judge these things, not handsome at all. But what was very unexpected was that he brought with him a pretty young woman: Mrs Strange.

Mr Norrell began by asking Strange if he had brought his writing? He would, he said, very much like to read what Mr Strange had written.

"My writing?" said Strange and paused a moment. "I am afraid, sir, that I am at a loss to know what you mean. I have written nothing."

"Oh!" said Mr Norrell. "Mr Drawlight told me that you had been asked to write something for
The Gentleman's Magazine
but perhaps . . ."

"Oh, that!" said Strange. "I have scarcely thought about it. Nichols assured me he did not need it until the Friday after next."

"A week on Friday and not yet begun!" said Mr Norrell, very much astonished.

"Oh!" said Strange. "I think that the quicker one gets these things out of one's brain and on to the paper and off to the printers, the better. I dare say, sir," and he smiled at Mr Norrell in a friendly manner, "that you find the same."

Mr Norrell, who had never yet got any thing successfully out of his brain and off to the printers, whose every attempt was still at some stage or other of revision, said nothing.

"As to what I shall write," continued Strange, "I do not quite know yet, but it will most likely be a refutation of Portishead's article in
The Modern Magician
.
¹
Did you see it, sir? It put me in a rage for a week. He sought to prove that modern magicians have no business dealing with fairies. It is one thing to admit that we have lost the power to raise such spirits - it is quite another to renounce all intention of ever employing them! I have no patience with any such squeamishness. But what is most extraordinary is that I have yet to see any criticism of Portishead's article anywhere. Now that we have something approaching a magical community I think we would be very wrong to let such thick- headed nonsense pass unreproved."

Strange, apparently thinking that he had talked enough, waited for one of the other gentlemen to reply.

After a moment or two of silence Mr Lascelles remarked that Lord Portishead had written the article at Mr Norrell's express wish and with Mr Norrell's aid and approval.

"Indeed?" Strange looked very much astonished.

There was a silence of some moments and then Lascelles languidly inquired how one learnt magic these days?