Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

by Susanna Clarke

  It was like plunging beneath a waterfall or having two thousand trumpets sound in one’s ear. Everything he thought before, everything he knew, everything he had been was swept away in a great flood of confused emotion and sensation. The world was made again in flame-like colours that were impossible to bear. It was shot through with new fears, new desires, new hatreds. He was surrounded by great presences. Some had wicked mouths full of teeth and huge, burning eyes. There was a thing like a horribly crippled spider that reared up beside him. It was full of malice. He had something in his mouth and the taste of it was unspeakable. Unable to think, unable to know, he found from God-knows-where the presence of mind to spit it out. Someone screamed …

  He found that he was lying on his back staring up into a confusion of darkness, roof beams and moonlight. A shadowy face appeared and peered into his own face in an unnerving manner. Its breath was warm, damp and malodorous. He had no recollection of lying down, but then he did not have much recollection of any thing. He wondered vaguely if he were in London or Shropshire. There was the queerest sensation all over his body as if several cats were walking on him at once. After a moment he raised his head and found that this was indeed the case.

  He sat up and the cats leapt away. The full moon shone down through a broken window. Then, mounting from recollection to recollection, he began to piece the evening together. He remembered the spell by which he had transformed the old woman, his plan to bring madness upon himself in order to see the fairy. At first it seemed to him so distant that he thought he must be remembering events that had happened, oh!, perhaps a month or so ago. Yet here he was in the room and he found by his pocket-watch that scarcely any time had passed at all.

  He managed to rescue the mouse. By luck his arm had fallen upon it and kept it safe from the cats. He tucked it into his pocket and left the room hurriedly. He did not want to remain there a moment longer; the room had been nightmarish to begin with – now it seemed to him a place of untold horror.

  He met several people on the stairs, but they took not a scrap of notice of him. He had previously cast a spell over the inhabitants of the house and they were quite convinced that they saw him every day, that he frequented these rooms regularly, and that nothing was more natural than that he should be there. But if any one had asked them who he was, they would have been quite unable to say.

  He walked back to his lodgings at Santa Maria Zobenigo. The old woman’s madness still seemed to infect him. People he passed in the street were strangely changed; their expressions seemed ferocious and unintelligible, and even their gait was lumbering and ugly. “Well one thing is clear,” he thought, “the old woman was very mad indeed. I could not possibly summon the fairy in that condition.”

  The next day he rose early and immediately after breakfast began the process of reducing the flesh and guts of the mouse to a powder, according to various well-known principles of magic. The bones he preserved intact. Then he turned the powder into a tincture. This had two advantages. First (and by no means least), it was considerably less repulsive to swallow a few drops of tincture than to put a dead mouse in his mouth. Secondly, he believed that in this way he might be able to regulate the degree of madness he imposed upon himself.

  By five o’clock he had a darkish brown liquid, which smelt chiefly of the brandy he had used to make the tincture. He decanted it into a bottle. Then he carefully counted fourteen drops into a glass of brandy and drank it.

  After a few minutes he looked out of the window and into the Campo Santa Maria Zobenigo. People were walking up and down. The backs of their heads were hollowed out; their faces were nothing but thin masks at the front. Within each hollow a candle was burning. This was so plain to him now, that he wondered he had never noticed it before. He imagined what would happen if he went down into the street and blew some of the candles out. It made him laugh to think of it. He laughed so much that he could no longer stand. His laughter echoed round and round the house. Some small remaining shred of reason warned him that he ought not to let the landlord and his family know what he was doing so he went to bed and muffled the sound of his laughter in the pillows, kicking his legs from time to time with the sheer hilarity of the idea.

  Next morning he awoke in bed, fully dressed and with his boots still on. Apart from the dull, greasy feeling that generally results from sleeping in one’s clothes, he believed he was much as usual. He washed, shaved and put on fresh clothes. Then he went out to take something to eat and drink. There was a little coffee-house he liked on the corner of the Calle de la Cortesia and the Campo San Angelo. All seemed well until the waiter approached his table and put the cup of coffee down upon it. Strange looked up and saw a glint in the man’s eye like a tiny candle-flame. He found he could no longer recall whether people had candles in their heads or not. He knew that there was a world of difference between these two notions: one was sane and the other was not, but he could not for the life of him remember which was which.

  This was a little unsettling.

  “The only problem with the tincture,” he thought, “is that it is really quite difficult to judge when the effects have worn off. I had not thought of that before. I suppose I ought to wait a day or two before trying it again.”

  But at midday his impatience got the better of him. He felt better. He was inclining to the view that people did not have candles in their heads. “And anyway,” he thought, “it does not much matter which it is. The question has no relevance to my present undertaking.” He put nine drops of the tincture into a glass of Vin Santo and drank it down.

  Immediately he became convinced that all the cupboards in the house were full of pineapples. He was certain that there were other pineapples under his bed and under the table. He was so alarmed by this thought that he felt hot and cold all over and was obliged to sit down on the floor. All the houses and palazzi in the city were full of pineapples and outside in the streets people were carrying pineapples, hidden under their clothes. He could smell the pineapples everywhere – a smell both sweet and sharp.

  Some time later there was a knock at his door. He was surprized to find it was now evening and the room was quite dark. The knock sounded again. The landlord was at the door. The landlord began to talk, but Strange could not understand him. This was because the man had a pineapple in his mouth. How he had managed to cram the whole thing in there, Strange could not imagine. Green, spiky leaves emerged slowly out of his mouth and then were sucked back in again as he spoke. Strange wondered if perhaps he ought to go and fetch a knife or a hook and try and fish the pineapple out, in case the landlord should choke. But at the same time he did not care much about it. “After all,” he thought with some irritation, “it is his own fault. He put it there.”

  The next day in the coffee-house on the corner of the Calle de la Cortesia one of the waiters was cutting up a pineapple. Strange, huddled over his coffee, shuddered to see it.

  He had discovered that it was easier – far easier than any one could have supposed – to make oneself mad, but like all magic it was full of obstacles and frustrations. Even if he succeeded in summoning the fairy (which did not seem very likely), he would be in no condition to talk to him. Every book he had ever read on the subject urged magicians to be on their guard when dealing with fairies. Just when he needed all his wits, he would have scarcely any wits at all.

  “How am I supposed to impress him with the superiority of my magicianship if all I can do is babble about pineapples and candles?” he thought.

  He spent the day pacing up and down his room, breaking off every now and then to scribble notes upon bits of paper. When evening came he wrote down a spell for summoning fairies and put it on the table. Then he put four drops of tincture into a glass of water and swallowed it.

  This time the tincture affected him quite differently. He was not assailed by any peculiar beliefs or fears. Indeed in many ways he felt better than he had in a long time: cooler, calmer, less troubled. He found that he no longer cared very much about
magic. Doors slammed in his mind and he went wandering off into rooms and hallways inside himself that he had not visited in years. For the first ten minutes or so he became the man he had been at twenty or twenty-two; after that he was someone else entirely – someone he had always had the power to be, but for various reasons had never actually become.

  His first desire after taking the tincture was to go to a Ridotto. It seemed ridiculous that he should have been in Venice since the beginning of October and never visited one. But on examining his pocket-watch he discovered that it was only eight o’clock. “That is much too early,” he remarked to no one in particular. He was feeling talkative and looked round for someone to confide in. For lack of any one better, he settled upon the little wooden figure in the corner. “There will be no one worth seeing for three or four hours yet,” he told it.

  To fill the time he thought he might go and find Miss Greysteel. “But I suppose her aunt and father will be there.” He made a small sound of irritation. “Dull! Dull! Dull! Why do pretty women always have such herds of relatives?” He looked at himself in a mirror. “Dear God! This neckcloth looks as if it was tied by a ploughman.”

  He spent the next half hour tying and re-tying the neckcloth until he was satisfied with it. Then he discovered that his fingernails were longer than he liked and not particularly clean. He went to look for a pair of scissars to cut them with.

  The scissars were on the table. And something else besides. “What have we here?” he asked. “Papers! Papers with magic spells on them!” This struck him as highly amusing. “You know, it is the queerest thing,” he told the little wooden figure, “but I know the fellow who wrote this! His name is Jonathan Strange – and now that I think about it, I think these books belong to him.” He read a little further. “Ha! You will never guess what idiocy he is engaged in now! Casting spells to summon fairies! Ha! Ha! He tells himself he is doing it to get himself a fairy-servant and further the cause of English magic. But really he is only doing it to terrify Gilbert Norrell! He has come hundreds of miles to the most luxurious city in the world and all he cares about is what some old man in London thinks! How ridiculous!”

  He put the piece of paper down again in disgust and picked up the scissars. He turned and just avoided striking his head against something. “What in the world …?” he began.

  A black ribbon hung from the ceiling. At the end of it were a few tiny bones, a phial of some dark liquid – blood perhaps – and a piece of paper with writing on it, all tied up together. The length of the ribbon was such that a person moving about the room was almost certain to knock against it sooner or later. Strange shook his head in disbelief at other people’s stupidity. Leaning against the table, he began to cut his nails.

  Several minutes passed. “He had a wife, you know,” he remarked to the little wooden figure. He brought his hand near to the candlelight to examine his nails. “Arabella Woodhope. The most charming girl in all the world. But dead. Dead, dead, dead.” He picked up a nail-buffer from the table and began to polish his nails with it. “In fact, now that I come to think of it, was I not in love with her myself? I think I must have been. She had the sweetest way of saying my name and smiling at the same time, and every time she did so, my heart turned over.” He laughed. “You know, it is really very ridiculous, but I cannot actually remember what my name is. Laurence? Arthur? Frank? I wish Arabella were here. She would know. And she would tell me too! She is not one of those women who tease one and insist upon making a game of everything long after it has ceased to be amusing. By God, I wish she were here! There is an ache here.” He tapped his heart. “And something hot and hard inside here.” He tapped his forehead. “But half an hour’s conversation with Arabella would put both right, I am sure. Perhaps I ought to summon this fellow’s fairy and ask him to bring her here. Fairies can summon the dead, can they not?” He picked up the spell from the table and read it again. “There is nothing to this. It is the simplest thing in the world.”

  He rattled off the words of the spell and then, because it seemed important to do so, he went back to shining his nails.

  In the shadows by the painted cupboard there was a person in a leaf-green coat – a person with hair the colour of thistle-down – a person with an amused, superior sort of smile upon his face.

  Strange was still intent upon his nails.

  The gentleman with the thistle-down hair walked very rapidly over to where Strange stood and put out his hand to pull Strange’s hair. But before he could do so, Strange looked directly at him and said, “I don’t suppose that you happen to have such a thing as a pinch of snuff, do you?”

  The gentleman with the thistle-down hair froze.

  “I have looked in every pocket of this damned coat,” continued Strange, perfectly unaware of the gentleman’s astonishment, “but there is not a snuff box anywhere. I cannot imagine what I was thinking of to come out without one. Kendal Brown is what I generally take, if you have it.”

  As he spoke he fished in his pockets again. But he had forgotten about the little bone-and-blood posy that hung from the ceiling and as he moved, he knocked his head against it. The posy swung back, swung forward again and struck him fairly in the middle of his forehead.

  54

  A little box, the colour of heartache

  1st and 2nd December 1816

  There was a kind of snap in the air, followed immediately by a faint breeze and a new freshness, as if some stale odour had suddenly been swept from the room.

  Strange blinked two or three times.

  His first thought upon coming to himself was that his whole elaborate scheme had worked; here was someone – without a doubt a fairy – standing before him. His second thought was to wonder what in the world he had been doing. He pulled out his pocket-watch and examined it; almost an hour had passed since he had drunk the tincture.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said, “I know it is an odd question, but have I asked any thing of you yet?”

  “Snuff,” said the gentleman with the thistle-down hair.

  “Snuff?”

  “You asked me for a pinch of snuff.”

  “When?”

  “What?”

  “When did I ask you for snuff?”

  “A moment ago.”

  “Ah! Ah. Good. Well, you need not trouble yourself. I do not need it now.”

  The gentleman with the thistle-down hair bowed.

  Strange was conscious that his confusion shewed in his face. He remembered all the stern warnings he had read against letting members of this tricksy race suspect that they know more than oneself. So he covered up his perplexity with sarcastic looks. Then, remembering that it is generally considered even more perilous to appear superior and so make the fairy-spirit angry, he covered up his sarcasm with a smile. Finally he went back to looking puzzled.

  He did not notice that the gentleman was at least as uncomfortable as himself.

  “I have summoned you here,” he said, “because I have long desired one of your race to aid me and instruct me in magic.” He had rehearsed this little pronouncement several times and was pleased to find that it sounded both confident and dignified. Unfortunately he immediately spoilt the effect by adding anxiously, “Did I mention that before?”

  The gentleman said nothing.

  “My name is Jonathan Strange. Perhaps you have heard of me? I am at a most interesting point in my career. I believe it is no exaggeration to say that the entire future of English magic depends upon my actions in the coming months. Agree to help me and your name will be as famous as those of Col Tom Blue and Master Witcherley!”1

  “Tut!” declared the gentleman in disgust. “Low persons!”

  “Really?” said Strange. “I had no idea.” He pressed on. “It was your …” He paused to find the right phrase. “… kind attentions to the King of England that first brought you to my notice. Such power! Such inventiveness! English magic today lacks spirit! It lacks fire and energy! I cannot tell you how bored I am of the same dull
spells to solve the same dull problems. The glimpse I had of your magic proved to me that it is quite different. You could surprize me. And I long to be surprized!”

  The gentleman raised one perfect fairy eye-brow, as if he would not object in the least to surprizing Jonathan Strange.

  Strange continued excitedly. “Oh! and I may as well tell you immediately that there is an old person in London called Norrell – a magician of sorts – who will be driven into fits of rage the moment he learns that you have allied yourself to me. He will do his best to thwart us but I dare say you and I will be more than a match for him.”

  The gentleman appeared to have stopped listening. He was glancing about the room, fixing his gaze first upon one object, then upon another.

  “Is there something in the room which displeases you?” asked Strange. “I beg you will tell me if that is the case. I dare say your magical sensibilities are much finer than my own. But even in my case there are certain things which can disrupt my ability to do magic – I believe it is so with all magicians. A salt-cellar, a rowan-tree, a fragment of the consecrated host – these all make me feel decidedly unsettled. I do not say I cannot do magic in their presence, but I always need to take them into account in my spells. If there is something here you dislike, you have only to say so and I shall be happy to remove it.”

  The gentleman stared at him a moment as if he had not the least idea what Strange was talking about. Then suddenly he exclaimed, “My magical sensibilities, yes! How clever of you! My magical sensibilities are, as you suppose, quite tremendous! And just now they inform me that you have recently acquired an object of great power! A ring of disenchantment? An urn of visibility? Something of that nature? My congratulations! Shew me the object and I shall immediately instruct you as to its history and proper use!”