Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Childermass is writing invoices and dry reports to the government when he begins to shift between the mundane world and the magical world. The sky, earth, and trees begin talking to him, but he can’t find the words to reply. The landscape is desolate, and he sees a woman he later realizes is Emma Pole walking in front of him. He casts a spell to detect magic and identify the magician who must be performing magic so prodigious that it is warping the world. He goes outside and zeroes in on Lady Pole. Norrell arrives home, and the woman tries to shoot him with a pistol. Childermass intercepts the bullet, and he is certain that Lady Pole used magic to pierce the separation between the mundane world and the realm of Faerie.

Rather than thanking Childermass, Norrell is upset that his servant performed a spell without permission. He tells Childermass that Lady Pole escaped from her house with a weapon after Stephen carelessly left the key to the gun cabinet out. Lady Pole hates Norrell. Pole promises to lock Lady Pole up far away from London, and Norrell accepts this solution because he knows he needs Pole’s influence. Childermass, watching Norrell fawn over him after guests praise his care for his servants, remembers Vinculus’s warning that all magicians lie and starts to wonder if Norrell is hiding something about Lady Pole’s resurrection.

Stephen escorts Lady Pole to Starecross Hall, which Segundus converted to a psychiatric facility after Childermass warned him against opening a school of magic. Stephen can see that, despite the distance from London, Starecross Hall is part of Lost-hope. Segundus questions Stephen. Segundus can see magic all around Stephen and Lady Pole. Segundus can also perceive that Stephen wears a crown, and that both Lady Pole and Stephen have roses alongside their mouths (a mark of the spell that makes them spout nonsense whenever they try to talk about Lost-hope).

On the way home, a carriage driver lashes Stephen with a whip and breaks the back of the butler’s horse. Stephen catches a ride from a carter who is amazed by the butler’s dark skin. In the back of the cart is Vinculus, whose body is covered in the bird-like characters of Uskglass. Vinculus repeats the prophecy about a nameless enslaved person becoming king and declares that his job is done now that he has told the prophecy to the two magicians and to Stephen. The butler assumes that the prophecy is about him, but Vinculus says it is no prophecy. Instead, it is the story of the Raven King’s conquest of England.

Strange visits two French exiles who are designing the engravings for his book, about which there is much excitement, especially since he has published previews in his new journal Famulus. The neighborhood and home of the two starving exiles are wretched places. Strange discovers Childermass spying on him and using spells, and he openly shares with Childermass that the engravings represent his travels on the King’s Roads. He even shares the spells for finding and navigating the King’s Roads, an act calculated to entice Childermass to become his pupil. Childermass declines the offer but makes a bargain instead, promising to become the nemesis of whichever magician manages to destroy the other.

Walter Pole warns Strange that it is an ill-advised time to write a book praising the Raven King and the wild magic for which he was famous. Pro-labor, anti-technology protestors are raising the Raven King’s banners in the north of England, destroying the factories that have taken their jobs, and preparing to revolt. The king of England is technically just a warden for the north of England until the return of the Raven King, so the actions of saboteurs who claim to be servants of the Raven King are deeply worrisome to the government. Strange ignores the warning. With Arabella dead, he only cares about magic.

Walter Pole and Lord Portishead have dinner at Strange’s house, which is littered with books, chapter drafts, and notes scribbled on the wall. Strange tells them he means to take commoners as students and would even be willing to teach women magic if propriety didn’t forbid unmarried men and women from spending so much time together. Walter Pole believes that magic should only be practiced by gentlemen and learned from books, so he is appalled at the idea. To practice the wild sort of magic that early magicians and Uskglass did, Strange believes he needs to call up a fairy servant, but he has so far failed in that effort. He wonders if he has become “too tame, too domestic a magician” and speculates that he should explore the famous English moors in the hopes that “[p]erhaps wild England will make [him] mad” (594).

Strange travels to Italy, and his friends agree it is a good idea since he seems to grow increasingly gloomy. The established publisher Murray prints Strange’s book while Strange is traveling, but Norrell enchants every copy so that the words disappear as soon as the buyer opens the book. Norrell sends letters to unhappy purchasers explaining that he is doing this for their own good and to protect proper English magic. He offers to pay each person a guinea for the loss of their book and then offers to reimburse Murray for the printing and advertising costs. Many people, including the ministers of government, are unhappy with his high-handed actions, and several people sue him in court for theft. Strange has left behind several pupils with indifferent magical skills, so they are unable to counter Norrell’s spell. Strange doesn’t respond when friends write for him to come home to address this challenge.

Not content with destroying all copies of Strange’s book, Norrell tries to prevent English military people and members of the trading conglomerate the East India Company from using Strange’s magic. Lord Liverpool explains to him that they have no control over whom the military chooses to hire; furthermore, the East India Company is important to the financial future of England, and Norrell already once declined to help them when they asked.

Norrell loses support from his former friends, and the ministers begin to worry about the implications of his feud with Strange. They even consider convening the Cinque Dragownes to end Norrell’s actions. Portishead deserts Norrell. Meanwhile, Strange’s friends begin to hear that he has taken up with a family called the Greysteels, and he writes increasingly of Flora Greysteel, the pretty daughter of Dr. Lancelot Greysteel.

Strange writes letters to Walter Pole about how he is spending his time in Italy and about his growing friendship with the Greysteels. He is angry about Norrell’s destruction of his book but refuses to return to England until he completes more research on the Raven King. He continues work on the second volume of his book on English magic. One night as he is headed out on a gondola ride with the Greysteels, he thinks for just a moment that he sees a woman stretching out her hand from the water to reach him. He is afraid to go on board the gondola. Later, Flora Greysteel tells him that she saw a young lady beckoning to him, and her feelings are hurt because she believes he is paying attention to another young woman. Strange has also been hearing the odd, sad bells that accompany the presence of fairies. In his small garret, he tries to improvise a spell to conjure a fairy, but the man with the thistle-down hair, accompanied by Stephen, refuses to show himself since Strange doesn’t have a spell to compel him to do so. Stephen reaches into the mundane world to clean up a mess that Strange makes in the attempt to cast spells.

The Greysteels call on Mrs. Delgado, a poor woman who lives in a Jewish ghetto of Venice, as a favor to one of her distant family members. When they enter her very small apartment, she doesn’t say a word to them. The place is overrun with cats, and no matter how they greet her, she says nothing. As they exit the apartment, one of the cats in the apartment brings a dead bird to the woman. For the first time, Mrs. Delgado jumps up and responds. They leave before they can see her eat it. Local people talk about her as a tale to frighten small children.

Flora and her aunt bring a meal to Mrs. Delgado, but they can’t convince her to eat. On the way back to their lodgings, Flora hides when she sees Strange making his way to Mrs. Delgado’s apartment. After hearing the Greysteels’ story of Mrs. Delgado, Strange visits her to learn the secret of being “mad.” He performs a spell that culminates with her transformation into a cat. When she leaves, all that is left is the dead mouse in her saucer. Strange takes the mouse and puts it in his mouth. As soon as he does, he becomes “mad” and has many strange visions before he is only just able to return himself to the mundane world. He takes the mouse back to his lodgings, grinds it up, and puts it in a tincture.

Strange doses himself with the tincture over the next few days to determine how much he needs to take, and he has hallucinations. On the last day that he takes the tincture, he is able to summon the man with the thistle-down hair. At this point, Strange is so far gone on the tincture that he doesn’t even know his own name or identity. He acts like a jaded, younger man who primps and considers which casino he should visit (much like Strange did before he met Arabella). The man with the thistle-down hair is shocked that Strange can see him at all.

The man with the thistle-down hair finds Strange tiresome and conceited. Strange wants the man with the thistle-down hair to give him something having to do with the last magic the fairy performed for an English magician. Strange thinks he will receive knowledge of the prior workings of John Uskglass or one of the later magicians. The fairy causes a box with the little finger of Lady Pole to appear, but Strange doesn’t recognize the finger.

Strange continues socializing with the Greysteels and feels flattered by the earnest attention that Flora gives him when he reads simple books of magic to her. Her father begins to view Strange with suspicion when he learns that Strange also socializes with Lord Byron, a hero of the Romantic poets and a lord whose affairs with various family members run afoul of propriety. Strange has visions even after the tincture wears off. He takes it again to use a spell to create a direct link between the mundane world and Faerie, for he wants to catch the man with the thistle-down hair unawares.

Strange ends up in Lost-hope. When Stephen sees him, the butler warns him that he needs to leave immediately. Then the man with the thistle-down hair sees Strange and is furious. He asks Stephen what he must do. Stephen, knowing how mercurial the fairy’s temper is, suggests that he free one of the desolate women from Lost-hope, but the fairy takes Stephen to mean that he should banish the man back to Venice. The man with the thistle-down hair also mentions that he intends to add Flora to his collection. Strange encounters his wife and Lady Pole in Lost-hope. Lady Pole is skeptical of his intentions and warns Arabella not to hope that Strange has come to rescue her. Strange admits as much, and Arabella leaves before he can explain himself and return Lady Pole’s little finger to her. The man with the thistle-down hair performs a piece of magic so powerful that it weakens him. He throws Strange back to Venice.