“And do you perform this ceremony every year, sir? I feel sure I would have remembered it if I had seen it before. It is so very … striking.”

“I am glad you think so. I perform it whenever I think of it. Of course it was a great deal more striking when we used real children.”

27
The magician’s wife

December 1809–January 1810

There were now two magicians in London to be admired and made much of and I doubt if it will come as much surprize to any one to learn that, of the two, London preferred Mr Strange. Strange was everyone’s idea of what a magician ought to be. He was tall; he was charming; he had a most ironical smile; and, unlike Mr Norrell, he talked a great deal about magic and had no objection to answering any body’s questions on the subject. Mr and Mrs Strange attended a great many evening- and dinner-parties, and at some point in the proceedings Strange would generally oblige the company with a shew of one of the minor sorts of magic. The most popular magic he did was to cause visions to appear upon the surface of water.¹ Unlike Norrell, he did not use a silver basin which was the traditional vessel for seeing visions in. Strange said that really one could see so little in a basin that it was scarcely worth the trouble of casting the spells. He preferred instead to wait until the servants had cleared the dishes off the table and removed the cloth, then he would tip a glass of water or wine over the table and conjure visions into the pool. Fortunately his hosts were generally so delighted with the magic that they hardly ever complained of their stained, spoilt tables and carpets.

For their part Mr and Mrs Strange were settled in London much to their satisfaction. They had taken a house in Soho-square and Arabella was deep in all the pleasant cares connected with a new home: commissioning elegant new furniture from the cabinetmakers, entreating her friends to help her to some steady servants and going every day to the shops.

One morning in mid-December she received a message from one of the shopmen at Haig and Chippendale’s Upholstery (a most attentive person) to say that a bronze silk with alternate satin and watered stripes had just arrived in the shop and he believed it might be the very thing for Mrs Strange’s drawing-room curtains. This necessitated a little re-organization of Arabella’s day.

“It appears from Mr Sumner’s description to be very elegant,” she told Strange at breakfast, “and I expect to like it very much. But if I chuse bronze-coloured silk for the curtains, then I believe I must give up any notion of having a wine-coloured velvet for the chaise-longue. I do not think bronze-colour and wine-colour will look well together. So I shall to go to Flint and Clark’s to look at the wine-coloured velvet again, and see if I can bear to give it up. Then I will go to Haig and Chippendale’s. But that means I will have no time to visit your aunt – which I really ought to do as she is leaving for Edinburgh this morning. I want to thank her for finding Mary for us.”