2 General Rebecq also made up a Dutch version of his jingle which was sung by his soldiers on the way to Quatre Bras. They taught it to their English comrades and it later became a child’s skipping rhyme, both in England and the Netherlands.

3 Copenhagen, the Duke’s famous chestnut horse, 1808–36.

4 In 1810 Messrs George and Jonathan Barratt, the proprietors of Vauxhall Gardens, had offered Strange and Norrell a vast sum of money to stage displays of magic every night in the gardens. The magic which the Barratts were proposing was of exactly this sort – illusions of magical creatures, famous persons from the Bible and history etc., etc. Naturally enough, Mr Norrell had refused.

5 The accepted magical technique for creating confusion within roads, landscapes, rooms and other physical spaces is to make a labyrinth within them. But Strange did not learn this magic until February 1817.

Nevertheless this was arguably the decisive action of the campaign. Unknown to Strange, the French general, D’Erlon, was trying to reach the battlefield with 20,000 men. Instead he spent those crucial hours marching through a landscape which changed inexplicably every few minutes. Had he and his men succeeded in reaching Quatre Bras it is probable the French would have won and Waterloo would never have happened. Strange was piqued by the Duke’s abruptness earlier in the day and did not mention to any one what he had done. Later he told John Segundus and Thomas Levy. Consequently historians of Quatre Bras were perplexed to account for D’Erlon’s failure until John Segundus’s The Life of Jonathan Strange was published in 1820.

6 In actual fact Mr Pink was only one of the civilians whom the Duke pressed into service as unofficial aides-de-camp that day. Others included a young Swiss gentleman and another commercial traveller, this time from London.

42 Strange decides to write a book

1 William of Lanchester was John Uskglass’s seneschal and favourite servant, and consequently one of the most important men in England.

2 Thomas of Dundale, John Uskglass’s first human servant. See footnote 2, Chapter 45.

43 The curious adventure of Mr Hyde

1 The Dyke is a great wall of earth and stones, now much decayed, which divides Wales from England – the work of Offa, an eighth-century Mercian king, who had learnt by experience to distrust his Welsh neighbours.

2 At the time of Strange and Arabella’s marriage Henry had been Rector of Grace Adieu in Gloucestershire. While there he had conceived a wish to marry a young lady of the village, a Miss Parbringer. But Strange had not approved the young lady or her friends. The living of Great Hitherden had happened to fall vacant at this time and so Strange persuaded Sir Walter Pole, in whose gift it lay, to appoint Henry. Henry had been delighted. Great Hitherden was a much larger place than Grace Adieu and he soon forgot the unsuitable young lady.

3 The books Strange possessed were, of course, books about magic, not books of magic. The latter were all in the possession of Mr Norrell. C.f. Chapter 1, footnote 5.