Strange smiled. “Yes, that is good enough. Go back to Mr Norrell and present my compliments. Tell him I hope he will be pleased with the answers I have given you. If there is any thing else he wishes to know, you will find me at home tomorrow at about four.”

“Thank you, sir. You have been very frank and open.”

“And why should I not? It is Norrell who likes to keep secrets, not I. I have told you nothing that is not already in my book. In a month or so, every man, woman and child in the kingdom will be able to read it and form their own opinions upon it. I really cannot see that there is any thing Norrell can do to prevent it.”

49
Wildness and madness

March 1816

A few days after the visit to the engravers Strange invited Sir Walter and Lord Portishead to dinner. Both gentlemen had dined with Strange upon many occasions, but this was the first time they had entered the house in Soho-square since the death of Mrs Strange. They found it sadly changed. Strange seemed to have reverted to all his old bachelor habits. Tables and chairs were fast disappearing under piles of papers. Half-finished chapters of his book were to be found in every part of the house and in the drawing-room he had even taken to making notes upon the wallpaper.

Sir Walter started to remove a pile of books from a chair.

“No, no!” cried Strange, “Do not move those! They are in a very particular order.”

“But where shall I sit?” asked Sir Walter in some perplexity.

Strange made a small sound of exasperation as if this were a most unreasonable request. Nevertheless he moved the books and only once became distracted in the process and fell to reading one of them. As soon as he had read through the passage twice and made a note of it upon the wallpaper he was able to attend to his guests again.

“I am very pleased to see you here again, my lord,” he said to Portishead. “I have been asking everyone about Norrell – as much, I believe, as he has been asking about me. I hope you have a great deal to tell me.”

“I thought I had already told you all about that,” said Sir Walter, plaintively.

“Yes, yes. You told me where Norrell has been and whom he has been speaking to and how he is regarded by all the Ministers, but I am asking his lordship about magic and what you understand about magic would barely …”

“… fill a square inch of wallpaper?” offered Sir Walter.

“Quite. Come, my lord. Tell me. What has Mr Norrell been doing lately?”

“Well,” said Lord Portishead, “at the request of Lord Liverpool he has been working on some magic to help guard against Napoleon Buonaparte ever escaping again – and he has been studying the Discourses upon the Kingdom of Light and the Kingdom of Darkness. He believes he has made some discoveries.”