27 The magician’s wife

1 On May 14th, 1810 Strange wrote to John Segundus:

“… There is a great passion here for seeing visions, which I am always glad to satisfy whenever I can. Whatever Norrell may say, it is very little trouble and nothing delights the layman so much. My only complaint is that people always end by asking me to shew them their relations. I was in Tavistock-square on Tuesday at the house of a family called Fulcher. I spilt some wine upon the table, did the magic and shewed them a sea-battle which was at that moment raging in the Bahamas, a view of a ruined Neapolitan monastery by moonlight and finally the Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte drinking a cup of chocolate with his feet in a steaming bowl of water.

“The Fulchers were well-bred enough to seem interested in what I was doing, but at the end of the evening they asked me if I might be able to shew them their aunt who lives in Carlisle. For the next half an hour Arabella and I were obliged to converse with each other while the family stared, enraptured, at the spectacle of an old lady seated by the fire, in a white cap, knitting.” Letters and Miscellaneous Papers of Jonathan Strange, ed. John Segundus, pub. John Murray, London, 1824.

2 One of Mr Norrell’s books. Mr Norrell mentioned it, somewhat obliquely, when Mr Segundus and Mr Honeyfoot waited upon him in early January 1807.

3 These were Venetian paintings which Mr Norrell had seen at Mrs Wintertowne’s house two years before. Mrs Wintertowne had informed Mr Norrell at the time that she intended to give them to Sir Walter and Miss Wintertowne as a wedding-present.

28 The Duke of Roxburghe’s library

1 Among the forms of magic which Strange and Norrell performed in 1810 were: causing an area of sea in the Bay of Biscay to silt up and a vast wood of monstrous trees to appear there (thus destroying twenty French ships); causing unusual tides and winds to baffle French ships and destroy French crops and livestock; the fashioning of rain into fleets of ships, walled cities, gigantic figures, flights of angels, etc., etc., in order to frighten, confuse or charm French soldiers and sailors; bringing on night when the French were expecting day and vice versa.

All the above are listed in De Generibus Artium Magicarum Anglorum by Francis Sutton-Grove.

2 The previous Secretary of War, Lord Castlereagh, had quarrelled violently with Mr Canning in late 1809. The two gentlemen had fought a duel, after which both had been obliged to resign from the Government. The present Secretary of War, Lord Liverpool, was in fact the same person as Lord Hawkesbury, who has been mentioned before in these pages. He had left off one title and assumed another when his father died in December 1808.

3 Thaumatomane: a person possessed of a passion for magic and wonders, Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson.