Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (59 page)

It emerged that, elevated as these gentlemen were, they were the representatives of one still greater — the Duke of York — and they had come to speak to Mr Norrell about the madness of the King. The King's sons had recently paid a visit to their father and had been very shocked by his sad condition; and, though all of them were selfish and some of them were dissolute and none of them were much given to making sacrifices of any sort, they had all told each other how they would give any amount of money and cut off any number of limbs to make the King a little more comfortable.

But, just as the King's children quarrelled amongst themselves as to which doctor their father should have, so they now quarrelled as to whether or not a magician should attend the King. Chief in opposition to the idea was the Prince Regent. Many years before, during the life of the great Mr Pitt, the King had suffered a severe bout of madness and the Prince had ruled in his place, but then the King had recovered and the Prince had found his powers and privileges stripped away from him. Of all the tiresome situations in the world, thought the Prince Regent, the most tiresome was to rise from one's bed in a state of uncertainty as to whether or not one was the ruler of Great Britain. So perhaps the Prince might be forgiven for wishing that the King remain mad or, at least, only gain such relief as Death would supply.

Mr Norrell, who had no wish to offend the Prince Regent, declined to offer his assistance, adding that he doubted very much whether the King's illness were susceptible of treatment by magic. So the King's second son, the Duke of York, who was a military gentleman, asked the Duke of Wellington if he thought that Mr Strange might be persuaded to visit the King.

"Oh! I am certain of it!" replied the Duke of Wellington. "Mr Strange is always glad of an opportunity to do magic. Nothing pleases him more. The tasks I set him in Spain posed all sorts of difficulties and, though he made a great shew of complaining, the truth was he could not have been more delighted. I have a great opinion of Mr Strange's abilities. Spain is, as your Royal Highness knows, one of the most uncivilized places in the world, with scarcely any thoroughfare superior to a goat track from one end of the country to the other. But thanks to Mr Strange my men had good English roads to take them wherever they were needed and if there was a mountain or a forest or a city in our way, why! Mr Strange simply moved it somewhere else."

The Duke of York remarked that King Ferdinand of Spain had sent a letter to the Prince Regent complaining that many parts of his kingdom had been rendered entirely unrecognizable by the English magician and demanding that Mr Strange return and restore the country to its original form.

"Oh," said the Duke of Wellington, not much interested, "they are still complaining about that, are they?"

As a consequence of this conversation Arabella Strange came downstairs one Thursday morning to find her drawing-room full of the King's male offspring. There were five of them; their Royal Highnesses the Dukes of York, Clarence, Sussex, Kent and Cambridge. They were all between forty and fifty years of age. All had been handsome once, but all were rather fond of eating and drinking, and consequently all were growing rather stout.

Mr Strange was standing with his elbow on the mantelpiece, one of Mr Norrell's books in his hand and a polite look of interest upon his face, while their Royal Highnesses all talked at the same time and interrupted one another in their eagerness to describe the terrible pathos of the King's situation.

"Were you to see how His Majesty dribbles his bread and milk when he eats," said the Duke of Clarence to Arabella with tears in his eyes, "how full of imaginary fears he is and how he holds long conversations with Mr Pitt who has been dead this age . . . well, my dear, you could not help but be brought very low by the sight." The Duke took Arabella's hand and began to stroke it, apparently under the impression that she was the parlour-maid.

"All of His Majesty's subjects are very sorry that he is ill," said Arabella. "None of us can think of his suffering with indifference."

"Oh, my dear!" cried the Duke delighted, "How it touches my heart to hear you say so!" and he planted a large wet royal kiss upon her hand and looked at her very tenderly.

"If Mr Norrell does not consider it a subject capable of treatment by magic then frankly I do not think the chances are good," said Strange. "But I will gladly wait upon His Majesty."

"In that case," said the Duke of York, "there is only the problem of the Willises."

"The Willises?" said Strange.

"Oh, indeed!" cried the Duke of Cambridge. "The Willises are more impertinent than any one can imagine."

"We must be careful not to vex the Willises too much," warned the Duke of Clarence, "or they are sure to revenge themselves upon His Majesty."

"The Willises will have a great many objections to Mr Strange visiting the King," sighed the Duke of Kent.

The Willises were two brothers who owned a madhouse in Lincolnshire. For many years now they had attended the King whenever His Majesty had happened to become mad. And whenever he had happened to be in his right mind the King had repeatedly told everyone how much he hated the Willises and how deeply he resented their cruel treatment of him. He had extracted promises from the Queen and the Dukes and the Princesses that, should he ever become mad again, they would not surrender him to the Willises. But it had done no good. At the first sign of delirium the Willises had been sent for, and they had come immediately and locked the King in a room and clapped him in a strait waistcoat and given him strong, purging medicines.

I believe it will puzzle my readers (for it puzzled everyone else) that a king should be so little able to command his own fate. But consider with what alarm the rumour of madness is greeted in private families. Consider then how much greater the alarm when the sufferer is the King of Great Britain! If you or I go mad, it is a misfortune for ourselves, our friends and family. When a king goes mad, it is a disaster for the whole Nation. Frequently in the past King George's illness had left it entirely uncertain who should govern the country. There were no precedents. No one had known what to do. It was not that the Willises were liked or respected — they were not. It was not that their treatments granted the King any relief from his torments — they did not. The secret of the Willises' success was that they were cool when everyone else was in a panic. They embraced a responsibility which everyone else was most anxious to avoid. In return they demanded absolute control of the King's person. No one was permitted to speak to the King without a Will is being present. Not the Queen, not the Prime Minister. Not even the King's thirteen sons and daughters.

"Well, said Strange when all this had been explained to him, "I admit that I would much rather speak to His Majesty without the encumbrance of other people — particularly people unfavourable to my purpose. However, I have upon occasion baffled the entire French Army. I dare say I can manage two doctors. Leave the Willises to me."

Strange refused to discuss the matter of a fee until he had seen the King. He would make no charge for visiting His Majesty, which the Dukes — who all had gambling debts to pay and houses full of illegitimate children to feed and educate — thought very handsome of him.

Early the next day Strange rode out to Windsor Castle to see the King. It was a sharp, cold morning and a thick, white mist lay everywhere. On the way he cast three small spells. The first ensured that the Willises would sleep long past their customary hour; the second spell caused the wives and servants of the Willises to forget to wake them; and the third made sure that when the Willises finally woke, none of their clothes or boots would be in the places where they had left them. Two years earlier Strange would have scrupled to play even so slight a trick as this upon two strangers, but now he did not give it a second thought. Like many other gentlemen who had been in Spain with the Duke of Well-ington, he had begun unconsciously to imitate his Grace, part of whose character it was always to act in the most direct way possible.
¹

Towards ten o'clock he crossed the River Thames by the little wooden bridge at the village of Datchet. He passed along the lane between the river and the Castle wall and entered the town of Windsor. At the Castle-gate he told the sentry who he was and his business with the King. A servant in a blue uniform appeared to escort him to the King's apartments. The servant was a civil, intelligent sort of man and, as often happens with servants in grand places, he was excessively proud of the Castle and every thing to do with it. His chief pleasure in life laying in shewing people around the Castle and in fancying them astonished, awed and amazed. "Surely this cannot be your first visit to the Castle, sir?" was his first question to Strange.

"Upon the contrary. I was never here in my life."

The man looked shocked. "Then, sir, you have missed one of the noblest sights that England has to offer!"

"Indeed? Well, I am here now."

"But you are here on business, sir," answered the servant in a reproving tone, "and will not, I dare say, have leisure to examine everything properly. You must come again, sir. In summer. And in case you should be a married gentleman, I take the liberty of observing that ladies are always particularly delighted with the Castle."

He led Strange through a courtyard of impressive size. Long ago, in times of war it must have provided a refuge for a large number of people and their livestock and there were still a few ancient buildings in a very simple style that bore witness to the military character which the Castle had originally possessed. But as time had gone on the desire for kingly pomp and splendour had begun to outweigh more utilitarian considerations and a magnificent church had been built which filled up most of the space. This church (called the Chapel, but in truth more like a Cathedral) displayed all the complexity and elaborateness of which the Gothic style is capable. It was hedged about with prickly stone buttresses, crowned with stone pinnacles and it bulged with chapels, oratories and vestries.

The servant took Strange past a steep mound with smooth sides, surmounted by the round tower which is the most easily recognizable part of the Castle when viewed from a distance. Passing through a mediaeval gateway, they entered another courtyard. This was almost as magnificently proportioned as the first courtyard, but whereas the other had been peopled with servants, soldiers and household officials, this was silent and empty.

"It is a great pity that you did not come here a few years ago, sir," said the servant. "At that time it was possible to visit the King and Queen's Apartments upon application to the housekeeper, but His Majesty's illness has made that impossible."

He led Strange to an imposing Gothic entrance in the middle of a long range of stone buildings. As they mounted a flight of stone stairs he continued to bemoan the many obstacles which stood in the way of Strange's seeing the Castle. He could not help but suppose Strange's disappointment to be very great. "I have it!" he declared suddenly. "I will shew you St George's Hall! Oh, it is not a hundredth part of what you ought to see, sir, but still it will give you a notion of the sublimity of which Windsor Castle is capable!"

At the top of the stairs he turned to the right and went swiftly through a hall with arrangements of swords and pistols upon the walls. Strange followed. They entered a long and lofty hall, some two or three hundred feet long.

"There!" said the servant with as much satisfaction as if he had built and decorated it himself.

Tall, arched windows along the south wall let in the cold, misty light. The lower part of the walls was panelled with pearwood and the panels all had carved and gilded borders. The upper part of the walls and the ceiling were covered with paintings of gods and goddesses, kings and queens. The ceiling shewed Charles II in the process of being carried up to eternal glory upon a white and blue cloud, surrounded by fat, pink cherubs. Generals and diplomats laid trophies at his feet, while Julius Caesar, Mars, Hercules and various important personages stood about in some embarrassment, having been suddenly struck with a mortifying consciousness of their inferiority to the British King.

All of this was most magnificent, but the painting which caught Strange's eye was a huge mural that stretched the entire length of the north wall. In the middle were two kings seated upon two thrones. On each side stood or knelt knights, ladies, courtiers, pages, gods and goddesses. The left-hand part of the painting was steeped in sunlight. The king upon this side was a strong, hand-some man who displayed all the vigour of youth. He was dressed in a pale robe and his hair was golden and curling. There was a laurel wreath upon his brow and a sceptre in his hand. The people and gods who attended him were all equipped with helmets, breast-plates, spears and swords, as if the artist wished to suggest that this king only attracted the most warlike of men and gods to be his friends. In the right-hand part of the painting the light grew dim and dusky, as if the artist meant to depict a summer's twilight. Stars shone above and around the figures. The king on this side was pale-skinned and dark-haired. He wore a black robe and his expression was unfathomable. He had a crown of dark ivy leaves and in his left hand he held a slim ivory wand. His entourage was composed largely of magical creatures: a phoenix, a unicorn, a manticore, fauns and satyrs. But there were also some mysterious persons: a male figure in a monklike robe with his hood pulled down over his face, a female figure in a dark, starry mantle with her arm thrown over her eyes. Between the two thrones stood a young woman in a loose white robe with a golden helmet upon her head. The warlike king had placed his left hand protectively upon her shoulder; the dark king held out his right hand towards her and she had extended her hand to his so that their fingertips lightly touched.

"The work of Antonio Verrio, an Italian gentleman," said the servant. He pointed to the king upon the left. "That is Edward the Third of Southern England." He pointed to the king upon the right, "And that is the Magician-King of Northern England, John Uskglass."