Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

by Susanna Clarke

  Absalom had one child, a daughter named Maria. She was born in the Shadow House and lived there all her life, scarcely ever leaving it for more than a day or two. In her youth the house was visited by kings and ambassadors, by scholars, soldiers and poets. Even after the death of her father, people came to look upon the end of English magic, its last strange flowering on the eve of its long winter. Then, as the visitors became fewer, the house weakened and began to decay and the garden went to the wild. But Maria Absalom refused to repair her father’s house. Even dishes that broke were left in cracked pieces on the floor.1

  In her fiftieth year the ivy was grown so vigorous and had so far extended itself that it grew inside all the closets and made much of the floor slippery and unsafe to walk upon. Birds sang as much within the house as without. In her hundredth year the house and woman were ruinous together – though neither was at all extinguished. She continued another forty-nine years, before dying one summer morning in her bed with the leaf shadows of a great ash-tree and the broken sunlight falling all around her.

  As Mr Honeyfoot and Mr Segundus hurried towards the Shadow House on this hot afternoon, they were a little nervous in case Mr Norrell should get to hear of their going (for, what with admirals and Ministers sending him respectful letters and paying him visits, Mr Norrell was growing greater by the hour). They feared lest he should consider that Mr Honeyfoot had broken the terms of his contract. So, in order that as few people as possible should know what they were about, they had told no one where they were going and had set off very early in the morning and had walked to a farm where they could hire horses and had come to the Shadow House by a very roundabout way.

  At the end of the dusty, white lane they came to a pair of high gates. Mr Segundus got down from his horse to open them. The gates had been made of fine Castillian wrought iron, but were now rusted to a dark, vivid red and their original form was very much decayed and shrivelled. Mr Segundus’s hand came away with dusty traces upon it as if a million dried and powdered roses had been compacted and formed into the dreamlike semblance of a gate. The curling iron had been further ornamented with little bas-reliefs of wicked, laughing faces, now ember-red and disintegrating, as if the part of Hell where these heathens were now resident was in the charge of an inattentive demon who had allowed his furnace to get too hot.

  Beyond the gate were a thousand pale pink roses and high, nodding cliffs of sunlit elm and ash and chestnut and the blue, blue sky. There were four tall gables and a multitude of high grey chimneys and stone-latticed windows. But the Shadow House had been a ruined house for well over a century and was built as much of elder-trees and dog roses as of silvery limestone and had in its composition as much of summer-scented breezes as of iron and timber.

  “It is like the Other Lands,” said Mr Segundus, pressing his face into the gate in his enthusiasm, and receiving from it an impression of its shape apparently in powdered roses.2 He pulled open the gate and led in his horse. Mr Honeyfoot followed. They tied up their horses by a stone basin and began to explore the gardens.

  The grounds of the Shadow House did not perhaps deserve the name, “gardens”. No one had tended them for over a hundred years. But nor were they a wood. Or a wilderness. There is no word in the English language for a magician’s garden two hundred years after the magician is dead. It was richer and more disordered than any garden Mr Segundus and Mr Honeyfoot had ever seen before.

  Mr Honeyfoot was highly delighted with everything he saw. He exclaimed over a great avenue of elms where the trees stood almost to their waists, as it were, in a sea of vivid pink foxgloves. He wondered aloud over a carving of a fox which carried a baby in its mouth. He spoke cheerfully of the remarkable magical atmosphere of the place, and declared that even Mr Norrell might learn something by coming here.

  But Mr Honeyfoot was not really very susceptible to atmospheres; Mr Segundus, on the other hand, began to feel uneasy. It seemed to him that Absalom’s garden was exerting a strange kind of influence on him. Several times, as Mr Honeyfoot and he walked about, he found himself on the point of speaking to someone he thought he knew. Or of recognizing a place he had known before. But each time, just as he was about to remember what he wanted to say, he realized that what he had taken for a friend was in fact only a shadow on the surface of a rose bush. The man’s head was only a spray of pale roses and his hand another. The place that Mr Segundus thought he knew as well as the common scenes of childhood was only a chance conjunction of a yellow bush, some swaying elder branches and the sharp, sunlit corner of the house. Besides he could not think who was the friend or what was the place. This began to disturb him so much that, after half an hour, he proposed to Mr Honeyfoot that they sit for a while.

  “My dear friend!” said Mr Honeyfoot, “What is the matter? Are you ill? You are very pale – your hand is trembling. Why did you not speak sooner?”

  Mr Segundus passed his hand across his head and said somewhat indistinctly that he believed that some magic was about to take place. He had a most definite impression that that was the case.

  “Magic?” exclaimed Mr Honeyfoot. “But what magic could there be?” He looked about him nervously in case Mr Norrell should appear suddenly from behind a tree. “I dare say it is nothing more than the heat of the day which afflicts you. I myself am very hot. But we are blockheads to remain in this condition. For here is comfort! Here is refreshment! To sit in the shade of tall trees – such as these – by a sweet, chattering brook – such as this – is generally allowed to be the best restorative in the world. Come, Mr Segundus, let us sit down!”

  They sat down upon the grassy bank of a brown stream. The warm, soft air and the scent of roses calmed and soothed Mr Segundus. His eyes closed once. Opened. Closed again. Opened slowly and heavily …

  He began to dream almost immediately.

  He saw a tall doorway in a dark place. It was carved from a silver-grey stone that shone a little, as if there was moonlight. The doorposts were made in the likeness of two men (or it might only be one man, for both were the same). The man seemed to stride out of the wall and John Segundus knew him at once for a magician. The face could not clearly be seen, only enough to know that it would be a young face and a handsome one. Upon his head he wore a cap with a sharp peak and raven wings upon each side.

  John Segundus passed through the door and for a moment saw only the black sky and the stars and the wind. But then he saw that there was indeed a room, but that it was ruinous. Yet despite this, such walls as there were, were furnished with pictures, tapestries and mirrors. But the figures in the tapestries moved about and spoke to each other, and not all the mirrors gave faithful reproductions of the room; some seemed to reflect other places entirely.

  At the far end of the room in an uncertain compound of moonlight and candlelight someone was sitting at a table. She wore a gown of a very ancient style and of a greater quantity of material than John Segundus could have supposed necessary, or even possible, in one garment. It was of a strange, old, rich blue; and about the gown, like other stars, the last of the King of Denmark’s diamonds were shining still. She looked up at him as he approached – two curiously slanting eyes set farther apart than is generally considered correct for beauty and a long mouth curved into a smile, the meaning of which he could not guess at. Flickers of candlelight suggested hair as red as her dress was blue.

  Suddenly another person arrived in John Segundus’s dream – a gentleman, dressed in modern clothes. This gentleman did not appear at all surprized at the finely dressed (but somewhat outmoded) lady, but he did appear very astonished to find John Segundus there and he reached out his hand and took John Segundus by the shoulder and began to shake him …

  Mr Segundus found that Mr Honeyfoot had grasped his shoulder and was gently shaking him.

  “I beg your pardon!” said Mr Honeyfoot. “But you cried out in your sleep and I thought perhaps you would wish to be woken.”

  Mr Segundus looked at him in some perplexity. “I had a dream,
” he said. “A most curious dream!”

  Mr Segundus told his dream to Mr Honeyfoot.

  “What a remarkably magical spot!” said Mr Honeyfoot, approvingly. “Your dream – so full of odd symbols and portents – is yet another proof of it!”

  “But what does it mean?” asked Mr Segundus.

  “Oh!” said Mr Honeyfoot, and stopt to think a while. “Well, the lady wore blue, you say? Blue signifies – let me see – immortality, chastity and fidelity; it stands for Jupiter and can be represented by tin. Hmmph! Now where does that get us?”

  “Nowhere, I think,” sighed Mr Segundus. “Let us walk on.”

  Mr Honeyfoot, who was anxious to see more, quickly agreed to this proposal and suggested that they explore the interior of the Shadow House.

  In the fierce sunlight the house was no more than a towering, green-blue haze against the sky. As they passed through the doorway to the Great Hall, “Oh!” cried Mr Segundus.

  “Why! What is it now?” asked Mr Honeyfoot, startled.

  Upon either side of the doorway stood a stone image of the Raven King. “I saw these in my dream,” said Mr Segundus.

  In the Great Hall Mr Segundus looked about him. The mirrors and the paintings that he had seen in his dream were long since gone. Lilac and elder trees filled up the broken walls. Horse-chestnuts and ash made a roof of green and silver that flowed and dappled against the blue sky. Fine gold grasses and ragged robin made a latticework for the empty stone windows.

  At one end of the room there were two indistinct figures in a blaze of sunlight. A few odd items were scattered about the floor, a kind of magical debris: some pieces of paper with scraps of spells scribbled upon them, a silver basin full of water and a half-burnt candle in an ancient brass candlestick.

  Mr Honeyfoot wished these two shadowy figures a good morning and one replied to him in grave and civil tones, but the other cried out upon the instant, “Henry, it is he! That is the fellow! That is the very man I described! Do you not see? A small man with hair and eyes so dark as to be almost Italian – though the hair has grey in it. But the expression so quiet and timid as to be English without a doubt! A shabby coat all dusty and patched, with frayed cuffs that he has tried to hide by snipping them close. Oh! Henry, this is certainly the man! You sir!” he cried, suddenly addressing Mr Segundus. “Explain yourself!”

  Poor Mr Segundus was very much astonished to hear himself and his coat so minutely described by a complete stranger – and the description itself of such a peculiarly distressing sort! Not at all polite. As he stood, trying to collect his thoughts, his interlocutor moved into the shade of an ash-tree that formed part of the north wall of the hall and for the first time in the waking world Mr Segundus beheld Jonathan Strange.

  Somewhat hesitantly (for he was aware as he said it how strangely it sounded) Mr Segundus said, “I have seen you, sir, in my dream, I think.”

  This only enraged Strange more. “The dream, sir, was mine! I lay down on purpose to dream it. I can bring proofs, witnesses that the dream was mine. Mr Woodhope,” he indicated his companion, “saw me do it. Mr Woodhope is a clergyman – the rector of a parish in Gloucestershire – I cannot imagine that his word could be doubted! I am rather of the opinion that in England a gentleman’s dreams are his own private concern. I fancy there is a law to that effect and, if there is not, why, Parliament should certainly be made to pass one immediately! It ill becomes another man to invite himself into them.” Strange paused to take breath.

  “Sir!” cried Mr Honeyfoot hotly. “I must beg you to speak to this gentleman with more respect. You have not the good fortune to know this gentleman as I do, but should you have that honour you will learn that nothing is further from his character than a wish to offend others.”

  Strange made a sort of exclamation of exasperation.

  “It is certainly very odd that people should get into each other’s dreams,” said Henry Woodhope. “Surely it cannot really have been the same dream?”

  “Oh! But I fear it is,” said Mr Segundus with a sigh. “Ever since I entered this garden I have felt as if it were full of invisible doors and I have gone through them one after the other, until I fell asleep and dreamt the dream where I saw this gentleman. I was in a greatly confused state of mind. I knew it was not me that had set these doors ajar and made them to open, but I did not care. I only wanted to see what was at the end of them.”

  Henry Woodhope gazed at Mr Segundus as if he did not entirely understand this. “But I still think it cannot be the same dream, you know,” he explained to Mr Segundus, as if to a rather stupid child. “What did you dream of?”

  “Of a lady in a blue gown,” said Mr Segundus. “I supposed that it was Miss Absalom.”

  “Well, of course, it was Miss Absalom!” cried Strange in great exasperation as if he could scarcely bear to hear any thing so obvious mentioned. “But unfortunately the lady’s appointment was to meet one gentleman. She was naturally disturbed to find two and so she promptly disappeared.” Strange shook his head. “There cannot be more than five men in England with any pretensions to magic, but one of them must come here and interrupt my meeting with Absalom’s daughter. I can scarcely believe it. I am the unluckiest man in England. God knows I have laboured long enough to dream that dream. It has taken me three weeks – working night and day! – to prepare the spells of summoning, and as for the …”

  “But this is marvellous!” interrupted Mr Honeyfoot. “This is wonderful! Why! Not even Mr Norrell himself could attempt such a thing!”

  “Oh!” said Strange, turning to Mr Honeyfoot. “It is not so difficult as you imagine. First you must send out your invitation to the lady – any spell of summoning will do. I used Ormskirk.3 Of course the troublesome part was to adapt Ormskirk so that both Miss Absalom and I arrived in my dream at the same time – Ormskirk is so loose that the person one summons might go pretty well anywhere at any time and feel that they had fulfilled their obligations – that, I admit, was not an easy task. And yet, you know, I am not displeased with the results. Second I had to cast a spell upon myself to bring on a magic sleep. Of course I have heard of such spells but confess that I have never actually seen one, and so, you know, I was obliged to invent my own – I dare say it is feeble enough, but what can one do?”

  “Good God!” cried Mr Honeyfoot. “Do you mean to say that practically all this magic was your own invention?”

  “Oh! well,” said Strange, “as to that … I had Ormskirk – I based everything on Ormskirk.”

  “Oh! But might not Hether-Gray be a better foundation than Ormskirk?” asked Mr Segundus.4 “Forgive me. I am no practical magician but Hether-Gray has always seemed to me so much more reliable than Ormskirk.”

  “Indeed?” said Strange. “Of course I have heard of Hether-Gray. I have recently begun to correspond with a gentleman in Lincolnshire who says he has a copy of Hether-Gray’s The Anatomy of a Minotaur. So Hether-Gray is really worth looking into, is he?”

  Mr Honeyfoot declared that Hether-Gray was no such thing, that his book was the most thick-headed nonsense in the world; Mr Segundus disagreed and Strange grew more interested, and less mindful of the fact that he was supposed to be angry with Mr Segundus.

  For who can remain angry with Mr Segundus? I dare say there are people in the world who are able to resent goodness and amiability, whose spirits are irritated by gentleness – but I am glad to say that Jonathan Strange was not of their number. Mr Segundus offered his apologies for spoiling the magic and Strange, with a smile and a bow, said that Mr Segundus should think of it no more.

  “I shall not ask, sir,” said Strange to Mr Segundus, “if you are a magician. The ease with which you penetrate other people’s dreams proclaims your power.” Strange turned to Mr Honeyfoot, “But are you a magician also, sir?”

  Poor Mr Honeyfoot! So blunt a question to be applied to so tender a spot! He was still a magician at heart and did not like to be reminded of his loss. He replied that he had been a magician not so man
y years before. But he had been obliged to give it up. Nothing could have been further from his own wishes. The study of magic – of good English magic – was, in his opinion, the most noble occupation in the world.

  Strange regarded him with some surprize. “But I do not very well comprehend you. How could any one make you give up your studies if you did not wish it?”

  Then Mr Segundus and Mr Honeyfoot described how they had been members of the Learned Society of York Magicians, and how the society had been destroyed by Mr Norrell.

  Mr Honeyfoot asked Strange for his opinion of Mr Norrell.

  “Oh!” said Strange with a smile. “Mr Norrell is the patron saint of English booksellers.”

  “Sir?” said Mr Honeyfoot.

  “Oh!” said Strange. “One hears of Mr Norrell in every place where the book trade is perpetrated from Newcastle to Penzance. The bookseller smiles and bows and says, ‘Ah sir, you are come too late! I had a great many books upon subjects magical and historical. But I sold them all to a very learned gentleman of Yorkshire.’ It is always Norrell. One may buy, if one chuses, the books that Norrell has left behind. I generally find that the books that Mr Norrell leaves behind are really excellent things for lighting fires with.”

  Mr Segundus and Mr Honeyfoot were naturally all eagerness to be better acquainted with Jonathan Strange, and he seemed just as anxious to talk to them. Consequently, after each side had made and answered the usual inquiries (“Where are you staying?” “Oh! the George in Avebury.” “Well, that is remarkable. So are we.”), it was quickly decided that all four gentlemen should ride back to Avebury and dine together.

  As they left the Shadow House Strange paused by the Raven King doorway and asked if either Mr Segundus or Mr Honeyfoot had visited the King’s ancient capital of Newcastle in the north. Neither had. “This door is a copy of one you will find upon every corner there,” said Strange. “The first in this fashion were made when the King was still in England. In that city it seems that everywhere you turn the King steps out of some dark, dusty archway and comes towards you.” Strange smiled wryly. “But his face is always half hidden and he will never speak to you.”