But Mr Honeyfoot did not understand this at all. “No gentleman likes to be told to hide,” he said, “and if Mr Norrell should mean any harm to Mr Strange – which I am very far from allowing to be the case – then I am sure that Mr Strange will be the first to find it out.”

24
Another magician

September 1809

Mr Drawlight turned slightly in his chair, smiled, and said, “It seems, sir, that you have a rival.”

Before Mr Norrell could think of a suitable reply, Lascelles asked what was the man’s name.

“Strange,” said Drawlight.

“I do not know him,” said Lascelles.

“Oh!” cried Drawlight. “I think you must. Jonathan Strange of Shropshire. Two thousand pounds a year.”

“I have not the least idea whom you mean. Oh, but wait! Is not this the man who, when an undergraduate at Cambridge, frightened a cat belonging to the Master of Corpus Christi?”

Drawlight agreed that this was the very man. Lascelles knew him instantly and they both laughed.

Meanwhile Mr Norrell sat silent as a stone. Drawlight’s opening remark had been a terrible blow. He felt as if Drawlight had turned and struck him – as if a figure in a painting, or a table or a chair had turned and struck him. The shock of it had almost taken his breath away; he was quite certain he would be ill. What Drawlight might say next Mr Norrell dared not think – something of greater powers, perhaps – of wonders performed beside which Mr Norrell’s own would appear pitiful indeed. And he had taken such pains to ensure there could be no rivals! He felt like the man who goes about his house at night, locking doors and barring windows, only to hear the certain sounds of someone walking about in an upstairs room.

But as the conversation progressed these unpleasant sensations lessened and Mr Norrell began to feel more comfortable. As Drawlight and Lascelles talked of Mr Strange’s Brighton pleasure-trips and visits to Bath and Mr Strange’s estate in Shropshire, Mr Norrell thought he understood the sort of man this Strange must be: a fashionable, shallow sort of man, a man not unlike Lascelles himself. That being so (said Mr Norrell to himself) was it not more probable that “You have a rival,” was addressed, not to himself, but to Lascelles? This Strange (thought Mr Norrell) must be Lascelles’s rival in some love affair or other. Norrell looked down at his hands clasped in his lap and smiled at his own folly.

“And so,” said Lascelles, “Strange is now a magician?”

“Oh!” said Drawlight, turning to Mr Norrell. “I am sure that not even his greatest friends would compare his talents to those of the estimable Mr Norrell. But I believe he is well enough thought of in Bristol and Bath. He is in London at present. His friends hope that you will be kind enough to grant him an interview – and may I express a wish to be present when two such practitioners of the art meet?”