Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (101 page)

In this way Stokesey learnt enough to gain power over Col Tom Blue. But before he could use his new knowledge, Col Tom Blue came to him and said he had reconsidered: he believed he would like to serve Stokesey after all.

What had happened was this: Col Tom Blue had discovered that the East Wind, the West Wind, the North Wind and the South Wind had all been asking questions about him. He had no idea what he could have done to offend these important personages, but he was seriously alarmed. An alliance with a powerful and learned English magician suddenly seemed a great deal more attractive.

Chapter 55: The second shall see his dearest possession in his enemy’s hand

1
The last English magician to enter Faerie willingly before Strange was Dr Martin Pale. He made many journeys there. The last was probably some time in the 1550s.

2
See Chapter 54, footnote 4.

3
Italian party.

4
Presumably John Uskglass’s
Sidhe
name.

5
A particular problem in mediaeval England was the great abundance of
cowans
. It is a term (now obsolete) properly applied to any unqualified or failed craftsmen, but here has special application to magicians.

6
Several authorities have noted that long-lived fairies have a tendency to call any substantial period of time “four thousand years”. The fairy lady simply means she has known the
brugh
time out of mind, before any one troubled to reckon up time into years, centuries and millennia. Many fairies, when asked, will say they are four thousand years old; they mean they do not know their age; they are older than human civilization — or possibly than humankind.

7
Meaning Venice: Altinum was the city on Italy’s eastern coast whence came the first inhabitants of Venice.

Chapter 56: The Black Tower

1
German for magician.

2
A somewhat poetical name for fairies.

3
Lord Byron is speaking of Great Britain.

4
See Byron’s letter to Augusta Leigh, October 28th, 1816.

Chapter 57: The Black Letters

1
Strange’s later Venetian letters (in particular his letters to Henry Woodhope) have been known by this name since their publication in London in January 1817. Lawyers and magical scholars will doubtless continue to argue over whether or not the publication was legal. Certainly Strange never gave his permission and Henry Woodhope has always maintained that neither did he. Henry Woodhope also said that the published letters had been altered and added to, presumably by Henry Lascelles and Gilbert Norrell. In his
The Life of Jonathan Strange
John Segundus published what he and Woodhope claimed were the originals. It is these versions which are reprinted here.

2
This letter has never been found. It is probable that Strange never sent it. According to Lord Byron (letter to John Murray, Dec. 31st, 1816.) Strange would often write long letters to his friends and then destroy them. Strange confessed to Byron that he quickly became confused as to which he had and had not sent.

3
Byron died of a chill five years later in Greece.

Chapter 59: Leucrocuta, the Wolf of the Evening

1
The prison where Drawlight was imprisoned for debt in November 1814.

Chapter 61: Tree speaks to Stone; Stone speaks to Water

1
See Chapter 3, footnote 1.

2
Restoration and Rectification was a spell which reversed the effects of a recent calamity.

3
Teilo’s Hand was an ancient fairy spell which halted all sorts of things: rain, fire, wind, coursing water or blood. It presumably was named after the fairy who had first taught it to an English magician.

4
Chauntlucet: a mysterious and ancient spell which encourages the moon to sing. The song the moon knows is apparently very beautiful and can cure leprosy or madness in any who hear it.

5
Daedalus’s Rose: a fairly complicated procedure devised by Martin Pale for preserving emotions, vices and virtues in amber or honey or beeswax. When the preserving medium is warmed, the imprisoned qualities are released. The Rose has — or rather had — a huge number of applications. It could be used to dispense courage to oneself or inflict cowardice on one’s enemy; it could provoke love, lust, nobility of purpose, anger, jealousy, ambition, self-sacrifice, etc., etc.

6
Like many spells with unusual names, the Unrobed Ladies was a great deal less exciting than it sounded. The ladies of the title were only a kind of woodland flower which was used in a spell to bind a fairy’s powers. The flower was required to be stripped of leaves and petals — hence the “unrobing”.

7
Stokesey’s Vitrification turns objects — and people — to glass.

Chapter 63: The first shall bury his heart in a dark wood beneath the snow, yet still feel its ache

1
It has often been observed that the Northern English, though never wavering in their loyalty to John Uskglass, do not always treat him with the respect he commands in the south. In fact Uskglass’s subjects take a particular delight in stories and ballads that shew him at a decided disadvantage,
c.f
. the tale of John Uskglass and the Charcoal Burner of Ullswater or the tale of the Hag and the Sorceress. There are many versions of the latter (some of them quite vulgar); it tells how Uskglass almost lost his heart, his kingdoms and his power to a common Cornish witch.

2
Like John Uskglass, the Magician of Athodel ruled his own island or kingdom. Athodel seems to have been one of the Western Isles of Scotland. But either it has sunk or else it is, as some people think, invisible. Some Scottish historians like to see Athodel as evidence of the superiority of Scottish magic over English; John Uskglass’s kingdom, they argue, has fallen and is in the hands of the Southern English, whereas Athodel remains independent. Since Athodel is both invisible and inaccessible this is a difficult proposition to prove or disprove.

3
In the tale of John Uskglass and the Charcoal Burner of Ullswater, Uskglass engages in a contest of magic with a poor charcoal-burner and loses. It bears similarities to other old stories in which a great ruler is outwitted by one of his humblest subjects and, because of this, many scholars have argued that it has no historical basis.

4
At the engravers’ house in Spitalfields in the early spring of 1816, Strange had told Childermass, “One can never help one’s training, you know …” Childermass had had several careers before he became Mr Norrell’s servant and adviser. His first was as a highly talented child pick-pocket. His mother, Black Joan, had once managed a small pack of dirty, ragged child-thieves that had worked the towns of the East Riding in the late 1770s.

5
A Yorkshire word meaning “cloth”.

Chapter 64: Two versions of Lady Pole

1
This is an old Northern English oath. John Uskglass’s arms shewed a Raven-in-Flight upon a white field (Argent, Raven Volant); those of his Chancellor, William Lanchester, shewed the same with the addition of an open book (Argent, Raven Volant above an open book).

For much of the thirteenth century John Uskglassdevoted himself to scholarship and magic, abandoning the business of government to Lanchester. Lanchester’s arms were displayed in all the great courts of law and upon many important legal documents. Consequently, the people fell into the habit of swearing by Bird and Book, the elements of those arms.

2
One autumn morning the Cumbrian child went out into her grandmother’s garden. In a forgotten corner she discovered a house about the height and largeness of a bee-skep, built of spiders’ webs stiffened and whitened with hoar-frost. Inside the lacy house was a tiny person who at times appeared immeasurably old and at other times no older than the child herself. The little person told the Cumbrian child that she was a songbird-herd and that for ages past it had been her task to watch over the fieldfares, redwings and mistle-thrushes in that part of Cumbria. All winter the Cumbrian child and the songbird-herd played together and the progress of their friendship was not in the least impeded by the difference in their sizes. In fact the songbird-herd generally did away with this obstacle by making herself as large as the Cumbrian child — or sometimes by making them both as small as birds, or beetles, or snowflakes. The songbird-herd introduced the Cumbrian child to many odd and interesting persons, some of whom lived in houses even more eccentric and delightful than the songbird-herd’s own.

3
Like most of Martin Pale’s magic, Restoration and Rectification involves the use of a tool or key made specifically for the purpose. In this case the key is a small cross-like object made of two thin pieces of metal. The four arms of the cross represent past state and future state, wholeness (or wellness) and incompleteness (or sickness). As he later reported in
The Modern Magician
, Mr Segundus used a spoon and a bodkin from Lady Pole’s dressing-case which Lady Pole’s maid tied together with a ribbon.

Chapter 65: The ashes, the pearls, the counterpane and the kiss

1
It is all very well in fairy-tales to ask, “Who is the fairest of them all?” But in reality no magic, fairy or human, could ever be persuaded to answer such an imprecise question.

2
St Anthony of Padua. Several of his miracles involve preserving from rain congregations to whom he was preaching, or maid-servants with whom he was friendly. He also helps people find things they have lost.

3
Penlaw is the name of the place in Northumbria where John Uskglass and his fairy army first appeared in England.

Chapter 66: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

1
These are the customary three elements of a traditional English summoning spell. The envoy finds the person summoned, the path brings him to the summoner and the handsel (or gift) binds him to come.

2
At the Shadow House in July 1809, Mr Segundus, Mr Honeyfoot and Henry Woodhope being present.

3
“
Florilegium
", “epitome" and “skimmer" are all terms for parts of spells. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries fairies in England were fond of adding to their magic, exhortations to random collections of Christian saints. Fairies were baffled by Christian doctrine, but they were greatly attracted to saints, whom they saw as powerful magical beings whose patronage it was useful to have. These exhortations were called
florilegia
(lit. cullings or gatherings of flowers) and fairies taught them to their Christian masters. When the Protestant religion took hold in England and saints fell out of favour,
florilegia
degenerated into meaningless collections of magical words and bits of other spells, thrown in by the magician in the hope that some of them might take effect.

An epitome is a highly condensed form of a spell inserted within another spell to strengthen or enlarge it. In this case an epitome of preservation and deliverance is intended to protect the magician from the person summoned. A skimmer is a sprinkling of words or charms (from a dialect word of Northern English, meaning to brighten or sparkle). A skimmer of supplication encourages the person summoned to aid the magician.

4
The last element of a successful summoning spell is temporal. The magician must somehow convey to the summoned person
when
he is meant to appear, otherwise (as Strange once observed) the summoned person might appear at any time and feel he had fulfilled his obligations. A candle stub is a very convenient device: the magician instructs the person summoned to appear when the flame goes out.

5
The chaos of ravens and wind is also described in the tale of the Newcastle glovemaker’s child (Chapter 39, footnote 1).

Chapter 68: “Yes.”

1
A surprizing number of kings and princes of Faerie have been human. John Uskglass, Stephen Black and Alessandro Simonelli are just three. Fairies are, by and large, irredeemably indolent. Though they are fond of high rank, honours and riches, they detest the hard work of government.

Chapter 69: Strangites and Norrellites

1
For years afterwards the people of Clun said that if you stood, slightly upon tiptoes, close by a particular tree in winter at full moon and craned your neck to look between the branches of another tree, then it was possible still to see Ashfair in the distance. In the moonlight and snow the house looked very eerie, lost and lonely. In time, however, the trees grew differently and Ashfair was seen no more.

2
This is by no means unusual as the following passage from
The Modern Magician
(Autumn, 1812) shews. “Where is Pale’s house? Where Stokesey’s? Why has no one ever seen them? Pale’s house was in Warwick. The very street was known. Stokesey’s house faced the cathedral in Exeter. Where is the Raven King’s castle in Newcastle? Every one who saw it proclaimed it to be the first house for beauty and splendour in all the world — but has any one ever seen it in the Modern Age? No. Is there any record of it being destroyed? No. It simply disappeared. All these houses exist somewhere, but when the magician goes away or dies, they disappear.
He
may enter and leave as he pleases, but no one else may find them.”

3
Many of the new magicians applied to Lord Liverpool and the Ministers for permission to go and find Strange and Norrell. Some gentlemen were so thoughtful as to append lists of equipment, both magical and mundane, which they thought they might need and which they hoped that the Government would be kind enough to supply. One, a man called Beech in Plymouth, asked for the loan of the Inn is killing Dragoons.

4
This slander was not entirely discredited until Arabella Strange herself returned to England in early June 1817.

5
There are very few modern magicians who do not declare themselves to be either Strangite or Norrellite, the only notable exception being John Childermass himself. Whenever he is asked he claims to be in some degree both. As this is like claiming to be both Whig and Tory at the same time, no one understands what he means.