In Chapters 51-54, Jonathan Strange spends some time with the Greysteels, but mostly he spends his time obsessing over his quest to summon a fairy servant. He’s become fixated on the idea that fairies are attracted to madness, and so his primary goal at this point is to find a way to become mad himself.

Strange’s Letters

I love epistolary works, and I think a complex pastiche like Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell would be incomplete without some homage to that form. Fortunately, we don’t have to do without. Chapter 51 consists, in part, of several letters from Jonathan Strange to his friends in England in which Strange describes his travels. It’s an excellent way to reveal a bit more of Strange’s character, which is where the epistolary form really shines. Through these letters, we get some sense of Jonathan Strange’s feelings about the Greysteels, we see his remarkably philosophical response to Norrell’s response to The History and Practice of English Magic, and we learn how Norrell’s act of censorship leads to Strange’s reconciliation with Lord Byron.

All in all, these short letters make for an amusing read without the author overdoing it. Especially this late in the book, I think it would have been a mistake to do a lengthy epistolary section. This small bit feels just right to me, though.

Summoning

Right at the end of Chapter 51, Jonathan Strange has his first success in summoning a fairy, although he doesn’t know it. The gentleman with the thistledown hair shows up, Stephen Black in tow, only to remain stubbornly invisible to Strange. The gentleman, once so eager to “assist” Norrell, is positively abusive now towards Strange, and absolutely not inclined to work with any magician now.

The Cat Lady

While Jonathan Strange is consumed with his work, the Greysteels pay a charitable visit to an old woman living in a Jewish neighborhood in Venice. Her name is Mrs. Delgado, and the Greysteels find her entirely alone, unresponsive, and surrounded by a great many cats. Mrs. Delgado seems to barely eat, having more in common with her cats than with any human visitors she may have.

The old woman is quite mad, as Flora Greysteel later communicates to Jonathan Strange. She wants to know if he could cure Mrs. Delgado by magic. Unfortunately, he cannot, but he soon comes up with a new plan on how he might finally ensnare a fairy.

Tincture of Madness

Strange goes to visit Mrs. Delgado, who remains nearly as unresponsive to him as she was to the Greysteels. He wants her to teach him to be mad, and he’s willing to give her something she wants in exchange. Shortly, Mrs. Delgado has been turned into a cat and Jonathan Strange has obtained a dead mouse, which he grinds up and makes into drops which he can take in order to induce insanity.

The Color of Heartache

While his tincture works quite well in giving Strange the experience of madness, it takes a few days before he achieves his end goal. Finally, though, Strange manages to not just summon a fairy, but see and speak to one. Unfortunately, what with the effects of the tincture, he’s not in particularly good shape to deal with the gentleman with the thistledown hair very well.

Strange’s second meeting with the fairy goes somewhat better. The gentleman, for his part, has determined that in order to get the magician to leave him alone he will just make Strange some gift of something that will sate his desire for fairy assistance. Rather than asking for anything material or monetary, however, Strange requests that the fairy bring him something that was gotten in the fairy’s last dealing with an English magician.

What Strange receives, that very evening, is a small box “the color of heartache” (a phrase that I love because it’s both incredibly non-descriptive and amazingly evocative at once) that contains a small, severed finger that the reader knows belongs to Lady Pole but which is baffling to Jonathan Strange:

“I thought that if I had a fairy to explain everything to me, then all the mysteries would become clear. But all that has happened is that I have acquired another mystery!”

I would say that in these chapters the shit hits the fan, but I feel like at this point in the book there’s no way for me to divide up the chapters in a way were I don’t feel that way about every section I read. The last quarter of the book is just absolutely riveting as Susanna Clarke’s juggernaut of a plot continues to pick up speed and gain force.

Wildness and Madness 

While still working on finishing his book, Jonathan Strange is looking for students, although his friends, Sir Walter and Lord Portishead, are a little skeptical when they learn that not all of the prospective students are wealthy gentlemen. Indeed, the most promising of Strange’s first three students is Tom Levy, who is Jewish and a dancing master, but is also the only one of the three to have actually done magic.

While Strange is definitely interested in educating other magicians, what he is mostly consumed with these days is summoning a fairy servant. However, his friends are worried about him. They are certain that Strange is much changed since Arabella’s death, that he is falling into bad habits, and they are positively appalled when Strange suggests that perhaps madness is the way to catch a fairy and proposes going wandering for a while in search.

Sir Walter and Lord Portishead are somewhat mollified when Strange admits that he doesn’t actually intend to go live as a vagrant, but they are still concerned about him. Meanwhile, Mr. Norrell is very upset about, well, everything Jonathan Strange does. Especially upsetting to Norrell is that Strange continues to be commissioned for government work and has even branched out so far as to do some work for the East India Company.

While Strange is definitely more open to teaching new magicians and sharing his knowledge than Norrell ever was, it soon becomes clear that he’s not necessarily any better suited to the task than Norrell was:

…whereas Strange had had Norrell’s evasiveness to contend with, [Strange’s students] were continually thwarted by Strange’s low spirits and restlessness.

By summer of 1816, Strange has determined to go abroad for some time, leaving his students entirely, although with the promise that their studies will continue when he returns.

Strange and Byron

In one of my favorite allusions to actual history in the novel, Strange’s travels through Europe follow basically the same path as did Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and Mary Shelley in 1816. Even, better, we get to read some of Jonathan Strange’s letters to his friends in England, in which he complains about what an asshole Byron is, which is a nice bit of comic relief at this point in the book. Because of course these two guys don’t get along well (although they do patch things up later).

The Greysteels

The Greysteels are introduced in Chapter 51. These are an English family that Jonathan Strange meets while traveling, and among their number is Miss Flora Greysteel, a charming young lady who takes a lively interest in Jonathan Strange.

Mr. Norrell’s Rebuttal

Jonathan Strange’s book, The History and Practice of English Magic, is published while he is abroad, and Norrell’s response to it is possibly the most important thing to happen in the whole novel so far.

The day of the book’s publication, copies of The History and Practice of English Magic sell like hotcakes. Then things get weird. People start coming back and buying second and third copies. Then people start complaining that their books are disappearing. The publisher, Murray, is very upset and confused and desperately trying to figure out what is going on when he comes upon John Childermass in a bookstore.

Mr. Norrell is “just buying some books” he informs the publisher, and communicates Norrell’s offer to compensate Murray for the whole printing. However, it’s also made clear that Norrell is prepared to keep magicking away people’s copies of the book if his demands are not met. Murray asks about his profits, to which Childermass responds that he’d have to ask Norrell about it.

In the meantime, Murray learns that even the copies of the book left in the warehouse have had their pages erased. He goes to Strange’s students, who have ideas for how they might combat Norrell’s magic, but this turns out to be in vain. The students just don’t have the skill to do anything.

In the end, Murray refuses Norrell’s money on principle, hoping instead to make Norrell pay in the future for a new edition of the book and the promotion of it. Childermass thinks this is unlikely, but he leaves Murray with the knowledge that the book is not entirely lost:

“I will tell you this,” he said. “The book is not destroyed however it may seem at present. I have dealt my cards and asked them if there are any copies left. It seems that two remain. Strange has one and Norrell the other.”

Norrell’s censorship of Strange’s book leaves him with fewer friends than ever before (Norrell’s allies are now just Lascelles and Childermass) and actually negatively impacts the reputation of magicians in general as people don’t take kindly to having their books stolen from them by magic. With Strange abroad, though, and distracted by Miss Greysteel and his struggle to summon a fairy servant, there is really no one in England capable of doing anything about Mr. Norrell whatsoever. Aside from a new batch of magical schools and shops popping up, of which Norrell deeply disapproves, and some muttering in Parliament about how something ought to be done, Norrell faces no real consequences for his actions.

It’s very clear as we enter the fourth quarter of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that the two magicians are truly each other’s only peers. No matter how many friends they accumulate and no matter how many interesting personages Susanna Clarke manages to populate her novel with, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell are always the suns around which everything else revolves. Their relationship is the most important one, and the primary purpose of the book is to explore that.

In these chapters, the story continues to move along nicely. We also get our first glimpse of Jonathan Strange since Arabella’s death; he’s not doing well, but he’s not doing well in a very highly functional manner.

The Madhouse

Following her attempt on Mr. Norrell’s life, Lady Pole is being packed off to a madhouse, accompanied on her way by Stephen Black. The place is Starecross Hall, which John Segundus has turned into a country asylum following Norrell’s sabotage of his school of magic. Lady Pole is Segundus’s first patient, and she, surprisingly, seems to think Starecross may be a good place for her. I suppose it couldn’t be much worse than any other place would be for poor Lady Pole.

The Blue Man

Stephen Black begins is on his way back to London when his horse breaks its back and he’s forced to hitch a ride. There is already another hitchhiker in the cart with Stephen and it turns out to be Vinculus, who the cart driver described as “blue” as Stephen is black. This isn’t the case, Stephen learns. Vinculus tells him the prophecy of the nameless slave, who will become a king of a strange country, and Vinculus also reveals that he isn’t really blue at all–he’s covered with dense writing, like tattoos, all over his body.

The Wolf Hunt

Stephen is unsettled by his meeting with Vinculus and still not quite recovered when the gentleman with the thistledown hair comes for him a few days later. This time, they are off to watch a wolf hunt.

Stephen asks the fairy about the prophecy Vinculus delivered, and the fairy responds that it’s a prophecy about the Raven King, so it’s already been fulfilled. I think the fairy gentleman might really believe this, but it seems like a misinterpretation. However, it’s not really clear in the book at the point if the fairy knows about the rest of the prophecy, that which concerns the two magicians. From some things he said very early on in the novel, I would think so, but it’s not mentioned here.

The Famulus

In Chapter 48, we finally get to see how Jonathan Strange is doing these days. Surprisingly well, apparently, though not quite himself. Since Arabella’s death, Strange has really thrown himself into his work. His book is coming along nicely, and he’s even begun his own periodical, The Famulus, to compete with Norrell’s  Friends of English Magic. He’s also gotten some somewhat famous engravers to do the illustrations for his book, and this has created some buzz around it.

Norrell, of course, is appalled by this development, convinced that Strange is out to destroy him and increasingly frantic to know what is in Jonathan Strange’s book. As always, when Norrell needs dirty work done–like spying–he sends Childermass to do it.

A Bargain

Childermass catches up with Jonathan Strange on a gloomy day in late winter, Childermass hiding as a shadow in a doorway across a street to watch as Strange goes about his business. Strange notices him almost immediately, but he isn’t displeased. Indeed, he’s been expecting Childermass for days, and he’s anxious for news of Norrell.

Strange takes Childermass with him to visit the French engravers who are doing illustrations for The History and Practice of English Magic, and Childermass is dutifully impressed, asking intelligent questions about the engravings and about Jonathan Strange’s magical travels. Strange is only too happy to oblige, answering Childermass’s inquiries and explaining the magic he’s used so that Childermass could duplicate it if he wishes. He even offers to take Childermass on as a pupil and assistant, at which Childermass laughs.

Throughout the book it’s been pretty clear that Childermass is something more than just a simple servant to Norrell. He’s a magician in his own right, for all the Norrell chooses not to acknowledge it, and he doesn’t always agree with his master. It becomes clear that Childermass isn’t a Norrellite partisan–he has plenty of his own ideas and opinions on magic–but he’s not about to sign up to be a Strangeite, either. Instead, he makes a promise to Jonathan Strange:

“If you fail and Mr. Norrell wins, I will indeed leave his service. I will take up your cause, oppose him with all my might and find arguments to vex him–and then there shall still be two magicians in England and two opinions upon magic. But, if he should fail and you will win, I will do the same for you.”

Strange is pleased with this answer, and Childermass is sent back to Norrell with Strange’s compliments. The chapter ends with Strange reiterating his own opposition to secret-keeping and his optimism about the publication of his book:

“I really cannot see that there is any thing Mr. Norrell can do to prevent it.”

I love these sort of chapter endings, personally. I know that it heavily telegraphs what will happen next in a way that goes well beyond simple foreshadowing, but I almost never get tired of anything like this that elicits the response from me of, “well, we’ll see about that.“

The last two chapters of Volume II find Mr. and Mrs. Strange finally getting a chance to settle back into life at their home in Shropshire. Then something goes terribly wrong.

Ashfair

Jonathan Strange is interrupted from his work one day when his neighbor, Mr. Hyde, stops by to tell him that he saw Mrs. Strange wandering around outside in a black dress. It’s the dead of winter, though, and snowing, and Mrs. Strange has been safely inside the house all this time.

This is somewhat quickly forgotten when Arabella’s brother, Henry Woodhope, comes to visit. After several years in London, Arabella is saddened to learn that she no longer has much in common with Henry, who is a country clergyman. For his part, Henry finds much to criticize in the Stranges, who are not at all what he thinks a good country family should be like. Even the house is viewed by Henry with a critical eye.

The descriptions of Jonathan Strange’s house, Ashfair, are wonderful. While they are somewhat reminiscent of the descriptions of Norrell’s Hurtfew Abbey, this is only because the two places are similarly weird. However, they are also as different as their owners. By far my favorite line about the house, though, is that it’s “an old-fashioned house–the sort of house in fact, as Strange expressed it, which a lady in a novel might like to be persecuted in.” It’s a really lovely idea that works as a bit of characterization for Strange–so wry, so witty–and as a piece of rather funny meta-commentary in a book that is so clearly a pastiche of several genres of literature, including the Gothic novels that were so popular in the early 19th century.

One thing I will say about rereading this book in my thirties is that I appreciate this sort of thing much more now than I did in my early twenties. It’s definitely a style of book that is much better enjoyed the more one has read of other English literature. This is definitely a book that benefits from rereading, and I’m now very much looking forward to reading it again ten years from now.

Who was lost and what was found

Volume II ends with a heartbreak and a mystery that will define the last third of the novel.

One night, Jonathan Strange is awoken and sees Arabella, dressed, at the foot of the bed. Thinking that he’s only dreaming, he goes back to sleep and no one notices anything amiss until after breakfast, when Mr. Hyde arrives again to say that he saw Mrs. Strange only an hour before, wandering in the nearby hills. Jonathan Strange at first dismisses this again, but becomes alarmed when one of the household servants informs him that Arabella actually is not in the house, has actually been gone all morning.

Jonathan Strange immediately begins using magic to search for her, although Henry Woodhope doesn’t understand the purpose of this, thinking they should just go out and look themselves. This, in the end, is what they end up doing, as Jonathan Strange’s scrying is ineffectual–Arabella isn’t in England, Scotland, Wales, or France, which is confusing to Jonathan but not to the reader.

When Arabella is finally found, she’s wearing a black dress, covered in black mossy water, and saying weird stuff that sounds much more like the ramblings of a traumatized piece of wood than anything a real woman would say. Probably because this is not actually Arabella, but the piece of wood that Stephen Black and the fairy gentleman dug up several chapters ago.

On the third day after her “return” Arabella dies, and this is one part of the book that I wish I could read for the first time again. I know that a careful reader should know exactly what is going on here, as everything has been explained to the reader pretty thoroughly through our views of other characters. However, just the line, “On the third day she died,” is marvelous. It’s a shocking end of a chapter, and it’s a shocking end to the second volume of the book.

It’s an amazing cliffhanger, and a perfect use of it. Even though the reader should have a pretty good idea of what’s going on here, this ending still manages to shock, and I think it is very difficult to not keep reading after this just to see how the characters react.

Prologue to The History and Practice of English Magic

Possibly the best thing Susanna Clarke could have followed this cliffhanger with is the thing she actually follows the cliffhanger with. It’s not, however, the reactions of Jonathan Strange or Henry Woodhope to Arabella’s death. It’s not a scene confirming that Arabella is in fairy land. Nope. It’s the prologue to Jonathan Strange’s book.

In this prologue, we learn more of the history of the Raven King, John Uskglass, and how he came to England in the first place. We also learn a little more of fairies. Mostly, though, we learn about Jonathan Strange’s opinions on John Uskglass and fairies.

All Magicians Lie

When we return to the actual story in Chapter 46, it’s still not to see how Jonathan Strange is getting along. Instead, this chapter is centered around Childermass’s point of view.

In Mr. Norrell’s library, Childermass is writing letters of business when he starts feeling very weird and slipping into a sort of dreamy trance where he sees strange and disturbing visions that the reader may recognize as connected to the book’s larger themes of the Raven King and fairies and the magic of England–and especially reminiscent of Vinculus’s prophecies.

Childermass quickly recognizes these visions as magical, and he tries to figure out whose magic it is. When he finds out that Norrell is not at home, Childermass becomes consumed with tracking down his master, and he reaches Norrell just in time to save him from being shot by Lady Pole, who is distraught over Mrs. Strange and holds Norrell responsible.

As Norrell, acting much put upon and aggrieved, discusses these events with Childermass, the chapter ends with Childermass recalling Vinculus’s words about Norrell:

All magicians lie and this one more than most.