On a bright May morning Mr Norrell was seated in a drawing-room in Wimpole-street at the house of a Mrs Littleworth. Among the people gathered there were Mr Drawlight and Mr Lascelles. Mr Lascelles was exceedingly fond of Mr Norrell’s society, indeed he came second only to Mr Drawlight in this respect, but his reasons for courting Mr Norrell’s notice were quite different. Mr Lascelles was a clever, cynical man who thought it the most ridiculous thing in the world that a scholarly old gentleman should have talked himself into the belief that he could perform magic. Consequently, Mr Lascelles took great pleasure in asking Mr Norrell questions about magic whenever the opportunity arose so that he might amuse himself with the answers.

“And how do you like London, sir?” he asked.

“Not at all,” said Mr Norrell.

“I am sorry to hear it,” said Mr Lascelles. “Have you discovered any brother-magicians to talk to?”

Mr Norrell frowned and said he did not believe there were any magicians in London, or if so, then all his researches had not been able to uncover them.

“Ah, sir!” cried Mr Drawlight. “There you are mistaken! You have been most abominably misinformed! We have magicians in London – Oh! forty at least. Lascelles, would not you agree that we have hundreds of magicians in London? One may see them upon practically every street corner. Mr Lascelles and I will be very happy to make you acquainted with them. They have a sort of king whom they call Vinculus – a tall, ragged scarecrow of a man who has a little booth just outside St Christopher Le Stocks, all splashed with mud, with a dirty yellow curtain and, if you give him two pennies, he will prophesy.”

“Vinculus’s fortunes are nothing but calamities,” observed Mr Lascelles, laughing. “Thus far he has promised me drowning, madness, the destruction by fire of all my property and a natural daughter who will do me great injury in my old age by her spitefulness.”

“I shall be glad to take you, sir,” said Drawlight to Mr Norrell. “I am as fond as any thing of Vinculus.”

“Take care if you do go, sir,” advised Mrs Littleworth. “Some of these men can put one in a dreadful fright. The Cruickshanks brought a magician – a very dirty fellow – to the house to shew their friends some tricks, but when he got there it seemed he did not know any – and so they would not pay him. In a great rage he swore that he would turn the baby into a coal scuttle; and then they were in great confusion because the baby was nowhere to be found – though no new coal scuttles had appeared, just the old familiar ones. They searched the house from top to bottom and Mrs Cruikshank was half-dead with anxiety and the physician was sent for – until the nursemaid appeared with the baby at the door and it came out that she had taken it to shew her mother in James-street.”