Arabella gently removed her arm from his and begged his pardon. She was quite unable to supply him with the information he required. She knew nothing of any little bottles or powders.

She returned to the concert with much less agreeable feelings than she had taken away.

“Odious, odious little man!”

28
The Duke of Roxburghe’s library

November 1810—January 1811

At the end of 1810 the Government’s situation was about as bad as it could possibly be. Bad news met the Ministers at every turn. The French were everywhere triumphant; the other great European powers who had once combined with Britain to fight the Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte (and who had subsequently been defeated by him) now discovered their mistake and became instead his allies. At home, trade was destroyed by the war and men in every part of the kingdom were bankrupted; the harvest failed two years together. The King’s youngest daughter fell ill and died, and the King went mad from grief.

The war destroyed every present comfort and cast a deep gloom over the future. Soldiers, merchants, politicians and farmers all cursed the hour that they were born, but magicians (a contrary breed of men if ever there was one) were entirely delighted by the course events were taking. Not for many hundreds of years had their art been held in such high regard. Many attempts to win the war had ended in disaster and magic now seemed the greatest hope Britain had. There were gentlemen from the War Office and all the various boards and offices of the navy who were most anxious to employ Mr Norrell and Mr Strange. The press of business at Mr Norrell’s house in Hanover-square was often so great that visitors were obliged to wait until three or four in the morning before Mr Strange and Mr Norrell were able to attend to them. This was no very great trial as long as there was a crowd of gentlemen in Mr Norrell’s drawing-room, but woe to the one who was last, for it is never a pleasant thing to have to wait in the middle of night outside a closed door and know that behind the door are two magicians doing magic.¹

A story which was circulating at the time (one heard it everywhere one went) was the tale of the Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte’s bungled attempts to find a magician of his own. Lord Liverpool’s spies² reported that the Emperor was so jealous of the success of English magicians that he had sent out officers to search through all his Empire for some person or persons with magical abilities. Thus far, however, all that they had discovered was a Dutchman called Witloof who had a magic wardrobe. The wardrobe had been taken to Paris in a barouche-landau. At Versailles, Witloof had promised the Emperor that he could find the answer to any question inside the wardrobe.

According to the spies, Buonaparte had asked the wardrobe the following three questions: “Would the baby the Empress was expecting be male?”; “Would the Czar of Russia change sides again?”; “When would the English be defeated?”