Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

by Susanna Clarke

  Towards five o’clock they arrived at an inn in the village of S—near Gloucester. So little hope had Strange that his meeting with Miss Woodhope would be productive of any thing but misery to them both that he thought he would put it off until the following morning. He ordered a good dinner and went and sat down by the fire in a comfortable chair with a newspaper. But he soon discovered that comfort and tranquillity were poor substitutes for Miss Woodhope’s company and so he cancelled the dinner and went immediately to the house of Mr and Mrs Redmond in order to begin being unhappy as soon as possible. He found only the ladies at home, Mrs Redmond and Miss Woodhope.

  Lovers are rarely the most rational beings in creation and so it will come as no surprize to my readers to discover that Strange’s musings concerning Miss Woodhope had produced a most inexact portrait of her. Though his imaginary conversations might be said to describe her opinions, they were no guide at all to her disposition and manners. It was not her habit to harass recently bereaved persons with demands that they build schools and almshouses. Nor did she find fault with everything they said. She was not so unnatural.

  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 disagreeableness 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 de
al 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.”

  Volume II

  Jonathan Strange

  “Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord

  Wellington asked Strange. Strange frowned.

  He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose

  a magician might,” he admitted, “but a

  gentleman never could.”

  23

  The Shadow House

  July 1809

  On a summer’s day in 1809 two riders were travelling along a dusty country lane in Wiltshire. The sky was of a deep, brilliant blue, and beneath it England lay sketched in deep shadows and in hazy reflections of the sky’s fierce light. A great horse-chestnut leant over the road and made a pool of black shadow, and when the two riders reached the shadow it swallowed them up so that nothing remained of them except their voices.

  “… and how long will it be before you consider publication?” said one. “For you must, you know. I have been considering the matter and I believe it is the first duty of every modern magician to publish. I am surprized Norrell does not publish.”

  “I dare say he will in time,” said the other. “As to my publishing, who would wish to read what I have written? These days, when Norrell performs a new miracle every week, I cannot suppose that the work of a purely theoretical magician would be of much interest to any body.”

  “Oh! You are too modest,” said the first voice. “You must not leave every thing to Norrell. Norrell cannot do every thing.”

  “But he can. He does,” sighed the second voice.

  How pleasant to meet old friends! For it is Mr Honeyfoot and Mr Segundus. Yet why do we find them on horseback? – a kind of exercise which agrees with neither of them and which neither takes regularly, Mr Honeyfoot being too old and Mr Segundus too poor. And on such a day as this! So hot that it will make Mr Honeyfoot first sweat, and then itch, and then break out in red pimples; a day of such dazzling brightness that it is certain to bring on one of Mr Segundus’s headachs. And what are they doing in Wiltshire?

  It had so happened that, in the course of his labours on behalf of the little stone figure and the girl with the ivy-leaves in her hair, Mr Honeyfoot had discovered something. He believed that he had identified the murderer as an Avebury man. So he had come to Wiltshire to look at some old documents in Avebury parish church. “For,” as he had explained to Mr Segundus, “if I discover who he was, then perhaps it may lead me to discover who was the girl and what dark impulse drove him to destroy her.” Mr Segundus had gone with his friend and had looked at all the documents and helped him unpick the old Latin. But, though Mr Segundus loved old documents (no one loved them more) and though he put great faith in what they could achieve, he secretly doubted that seven Latin words five centuries old could explain a man’s life. But Mr Honeyfoot was all optimism. Then it occurred to Mr Segundus that, as they were already in Wiltshire, they should take the opportunity to visit the Shadow House which stood in that county and which neither of them had ever seen.

  Most of us remember hearing of the Shadow House in our schoolrooms. The name conjures up vague notions of magic and ruins yet few of us have any very clear recollection of why it is so important. The truth is that historians of magic still argue over its significance – and some will be quick to tell you that it is of no significance whatsoever. No great events in English magical history took place there; furthermore, of the two magicians who lived in the house, one was a charlatan and the other was a woman – neither attribute likely to recommend its possessor to the gentleman-magicians and gentleman-historians of recent years– and yet for two centuries the Shadow House has been known as one of the most magical places in England.

  It was built in the sixteenth century by Gregory Absalom, court magician to King Henry VIII and to Queens Mary and Elizabeth. If we measure a magician’s success by how much magic he does, then Absalom was no magician at all, for his spells hardly ever took effect. However, if instead we examine the amount of money a magician makes and allow that to be our yardstick, then Absalom was certainly one of the g
reatest English magicians who ever lived, for he was born in poverty and died a very rich man.

  One of his boldest achievements was to persuade the King of Denmark to pay a great handful of diamonds for a spell which, Absalom claimed, would turn the flesh of the King of Sweden into water. Naturally the spell did nothing of the sort, but with the money he got for half these jewels Absalom built the Shadow House. He furnished it with Turkey carpets and Venetian mirrors and glass and a hundred other beautiful things; and, when the house was completed, a curious thing happened – or may have happened – or did not happen at all. Some scholars believe – and others do not – that the magic which Absalom had pretended to do for his clients began to appear of its own accord in the house.

  On a moonlit night in 1610 two maids looked out of a window on an upper floor and saw twenty or thirty beautiful ladies and handsome gentlemen dancing in a circle on the lawn. In February 1666 Valentine Greatrakes, an Irishman, held a conversation in Hebrew with the prophets Moses and Aaron in a little passageway near the great linen press. In 1667 Mrs Penelope Chelmorton, a visitor to the house, looked in a mirror and saw a little girl of three or four years old looking out. As she watched, she saw the child grow up and grow older and she recognized herself. Mrs Chelmorton’s reflection continued to age until there was nought but a dry, dead corpse in the mirror. The reputation of the Shadow House is based upon these and a hundred other such tales.