On a particularly gloomy day when a cold, grey rain fell in the dirty streets and pooled in the mud, a carriage came down Elder-street in Spitalfields and stopped at a tall, thin house. The coachman and footman belonging to this carriage wore deep mourning. The footman jumped down from the box, put up a black umbrella and held it up as he opened the door for Jonathan Strange to get out.

Strange paused a moment on the pavement to adjust his black gloves and to cast his glance up and down Elder-street. Apart from two mongrel dogs industriously excavating a heap of refuse, the street was deserted. Yet he continued to look about him until his eye was caught by a doorway on the opposite side of the street.

It was the most unremarkable of doorways – the entrance to a merchant’s warehouse or some such. Three worn stone steps led up to a massive black door of venerable construction, surmounted by a great jutting pediment. The door was much papered over with tattered playbills and notices informing the reader that upon such-and-such a day at such-and-such a tavern all the property of Mr So-and-so Esq. (Bankrupt) would be put up for sale.

“George,” said Strange to the footman who held the umbrella, “do you draw?”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Were you ever taught drawing? Do you understand its principles? Fore-grounds, side-screens, perspective, that sort of thing?”

“Me, sir? No, sir.”

“A pity. It was part of my education. I could draw you a landscape or portrait perfectly proficient and perfectly uninteresting. Exactly like the productions of any other well-educated amateur. Your late mistress had none of the advantages of expensive drawing-masters that I had, yet I believe she had more talent. Her watercolours of people and children would horrify a fashionable drawing-master. He would find the figures too stiff and the colours too bright. But Mrs Strange had a genius for capturing expressions both of face and figure, for finding charm and wit in the most commonplace situations. There is something in her pictures, altogether lively and pretty which …” Strange broke off and was silent a moment. “What was I saying? Oh, yes. Drawing teaches habits of close observation that will always be useful. Take that doorway for instance …”

The footman looked at the doorway.

“… Today is cold, dark, rainy. There is very little light and therefore no shadows. One would expect the interior of that doorway to be gloomy and dim; one would not expect that shadow to be there – I mean the strong shadow going from left to right, keeping the left-hand of the doorway in utter blackness. And I believe I am right in saying that even if today were sunny and bright, a shadow would fall in the opposite direction. No, that shadow is altogether an oddity. It is not a thing that appears in Nature.”