Mr Norrell made many new acquaintances, but kindled no pure flame of friendship in the hearts of any. In general, London found him disappointing. He did no magic, cursed no one, foretold nothing. Once at Mrs Godesdone’s house he was heard to remark that he thought it might rain, but this, if a prophecy, was a disappointing one, for it did not rain – indeed no rain fell until the following Saturday. He hardly ever spoke of magic, and when he did it was like a history lesson and no one could bear to listen to him. He rarely had a good word to say for any other magician, except once when he praised a magician of the last century, Francis Sutton-Grove.⁶

“But I thought, sir,” said Mr Lascelles, “that Sutton-Grove was unreadable. I have always heard that De Generibus Artium was entirely unreadable.”

“Oh!” said Mr Norrell, “how it fares as an amusement for ladies and gentlemen I do not know, but I do not think that the serious student of magic can value Sutton-Grove too highly. In Sutton-Grove he will find the first attempt to define those areas of magic that the modern magician ought to study, all laid out in lists and tables. To be sure, Sutton-Grove’s system of classification is often erroneous – perhaps that is what you mean by ‘unreadable’? – nevertheless I know of no more pleasant sight in the world than a dozen or so of his lists; the student may run his eye over them and think ‘I know this,’ or, ‘I have this still to do,’ and there before him is work enough for four, perhaps five years.”

The tale of the statues in the Cathedral of York grew so stale in the retelling that people began to wonder if Mr Norrell had ever done anything else and Mr Drawlight was obliged to invent some new examples.

“But what can this magician do, Drawlight?” asked Mrs Godesdone one evening when Mr Norrell was not present.

“Oh, madam!” cried Drawlight. “What can he not do? Why! It was only a winter or so ago that in York – which as you may know, madam, is Mr Norrell’s native city – a great storm came out of the north and blew everybody’s washing into the mud and the snow – and so the aldermen, thinking to spare the ladies of the town the labour of washing everything again, applied to Mr Norrell – and he sent a troop of fairies to wash it all anew – and all the holes in people’s shirts and nightcaps and petticoats were mended and all the frayed edges were made whole and good again and everybody said that they had never seen such a dazzling whiteness in all their days!”

This particular story became very popular and raised Mr Norrell in everyone’s estimation for several weeks that summer, and consequently when Mr Norrell spoke, as he sometimes did, of modern magic, most of his audience supposed that this was the sort of thing he must mean.