Mr Segundus looked up. “Oh! I know that Mr Strange and Mr Norrell have parted, but still I should not like to be a cause of argument between them.”

“Nonsense!” cried Mr Honeyfoot. “Have you not read the recent issues of The Modern Magician? This is the very thing Strange wants! – some principle of Norrellite magic that he can attack openly and so bring the whole edifice tumbling down. Believe me, he will consider himself obliged to you for the opportunity. You know, Segundus, the more I think of it, the more I like this plan!”

Mr Segundus thought so too. “Let me only consult Mrs Lennox and if she is in agreement, then I shall certainly do as you suggest!”

Mrs Lennox’s ignorance concerning recent magical events was extensive. She knew very little of Jonathan Strange other than his name and that he had some vague connexion to the Duke of Wellington. But she was quick to assure Mr Segundus that if Mr Strange disliked Mr Norrell, then she was very much in his favour. So on the 20th December Mr Segundus sent Strange a letter informing him of Gilbert Norrell’s actions in regard to the school at Starecross Hall.

Unfortunately, far from leaping to Mr Segundus’s defence, Strange never even replied.

42
Strange decides to write a book

June–December 1815

It may very easily be imagined with what pleasure Mr Norrell received the news that on his return to England Mr Strange had gone straight to Shropshire.

“And the best part of it is,” Mr Norrell told Lascelles, “that in the country he is unlikely to publish any more of those mischievous articles upon the magic of the Raven King.”

“No indeed, sir,” said Lascelles, “for I very much doubt that he will have time to write them.”

Mr Norrell took a moment to consider what this might mean.

“Oh! Have you not heard, sir?” continued Lascelles. “Strange is writing a book. He writes to his friends of nothing else. He began very suddenly about two weeks ago and is, by his own account, making very rapid progress. But then we all know with what ease Strange writes. He has sworn to put the entirety of English magic into his book. He told Sir Walter that he would be greatly astonished if he could cram it all into two volumes. He rather thinks that it will need three. It is to be called The History and Practice of English Magic and Murray has promised to publish it when it is done.”

There could scarcely have been worse news. Mr Norrell had always intended to write a book himself. He intended to call it Precepts for the Education of a Magician and he had begun it when he had first become tutor to Mr Strange. His notes already filled two shelves of the little book-lined room on the second floor. Yet he had always spoken of his book as something for the distant future. He had a quite unreasonable terror of committing himself to paper which eight years of London adulation had not cured. All his volumes of private notes and histories and journals had yet to be seen by anyone (except, in a few instances, by Strange and Childermass). Mr Norrell could never believe himself ready to publish: he could never be sure that he had got at the truth; he did not believe he had thought long enough upon the matter; he did not know if it were a fit subject to place before the public.