Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (97 page)

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 establish- ments 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.

1 This was not in the least true. It had been the Duke of Wellington's bitterest complaint during the Peninsular War that the Government interfered con- stantly.

2 Lord Byron left England in April 1816 in the face of mounting debts, accusations of cruelty to his wife and rumours that he had seduced his sister.

3 Despite the seeming lack of sympathy between the two men, something about Strange must have impressed Byron. His next poem,
Manfred
, begun in September or October of the same year, was about a magician. Certainly Manfred does not greatly resemble Jonathan Strange (or at least not the respectable Strange whom Byron so disliked). He much more resembles Byron with his self-obsession, his self-loathing, his lofty disdain for his fellow men, his hints of impossible tragedies and his mysterious longings. Never- theless Manfred is a magician who passes his time in summoning up spirits of the air, earth, water and fire to talk to him. It was as if Byron, having met a magician who disappointed him, created one more to his liking.

4 Walter De Chepe was an early thirteenth-century London magician. His procedure, Prophylaxis, protects a person, city or object from magic spells. Supposedly it closely follows a piece of fairy magic. It is reputed to be very strong. Indeed the only problem with this spell is its remarkable efficacy. Sometimes objects become impervious to human or fairy agency of any sort whether magical or not. Thus if Strange's students had succeeded in casting the spell over one of Strange's books, it is quite possible that no one would have been able to pick up the book or turn its pages.

In 1280 the citizens of Bristol ordered the town's magicians to cast de Chepe's Prophylaxis over the whole town to protect it from the magic spells of its enemies. Unfortunately so successful was the magic that everyone in the town, all the animals and all the ships in the harbour became living statues. No one could move; water stopped flowing within the boundaries; even the flames in the hearth were frozen. Bristol remained like this for a whole month until John Uskglass came from his house in Newcastle to put matters right.

5 The letter contained two implications which were considered particularly offensive: first, that the purchasers were not clever enough to understand Strange's book; and second, that they did not possess the moral judgement to decide for themselves if the magic Strange was describing was good or wicked.

The Norrellites had fully expected that the destruction of Strange's book would be controversial and they were prepared to receive a great deal of criticism, however the harm done to their own cause by the letter was entirely unintentional. Mr Norrell had been supposed to shew the letter to Mr Lascelles before it was sent out. If Lascelles had seen it, then the language and expressions would have undergone considerable modification and pre- sumably have been less offensive to the recipients.

Unfortunately, there was a misunderstanding. Mr Norrell asked Child- ermass if Lascelles had made his amendments. Childermass thought they were speaking of an article for
The Friends of English Magic
and said that he had. And so the letter went out uncorrected. Lascelles was furious and accused Childermass of having purposely encouraged Mr Norrell to damage his own cause. Childermass vehemently denied doing any such thing.

From this time on relations between Lascelles and Childermass (never good) worsened rapidly and soon Lascelles was hinting to Mr Norrell that Childermass had Strangite sympathies and was secretly working to betray his master.

6 "Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them." St Matthew, 7,16.

7 ". . . I cannot tell you any thing of Piacenza," Strange wrote to Henry Woodhope, "as I did not stay long enough to see it. I arrived in the evening. After dinner I thought I would walk about for a half hour, but on entering the main piazza, I was immediately struck by a tall urn standing upon a pedestal with its long, black shadow trailing upon the stones. Two or three strands of ivy or some other creeping plant emerged from the neck of the urn but they were quite dead. I cannot say why, but this seemed to me so deeply melancholy that I could not bear it. It was like an allegory of loss, death and misery. I returned to the inn, went immediately to bed and in the morning left for Turin."

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 an- other 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 immeasur- able 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
nd 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
huse
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 con- stantly 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 . . .