The Prestige

by Christopher Priest

  Ten shillings and sixpence! More than a week’s rent for these lodgings. Riches indeed!

  19th June 1877

  One of the books I have studied is by a Hindoo magician called Gupta Hilel. In this he gives advice to the illusionist whose trick goes wrong. There are several resorts Hilel offers, and most of them are concerned with methods of distracting the audience. But he also offers the counsel of fatalism. A magic career is full of disappointment and failure, which must be expected and dealt with stoically.

  So it is with stoicism that I record the launch of Danton’s professional magical career. I merely report that the first trick I attempted (a simple card shift) went wrong, immobilizing me with sheer terror and ruining the rest of my act.

  I was paid off with a half-fee of five shillings and three-pence, and the promoter advised me that I should practise more before trying again. Mr Hilel also advises this.

  20th June 1877

  Despairing, I have decided to abandon my magical career.

  14th July 1877

  I have been back to Derbyshire to see Mama, and have now returned in a darker mood of melancholy than the one that was blighting me before I left. Also there is news that my rent is to increase to ten shillings a week from next month.

  I still have just over a year before I must be able to support myself.

  10th October 1877

  I am in love! Her name is Drusilla MacAvoy.

  15th October 1877

  Too hasty by far! The MacAvoy woman was not for me. I am planning to kill myself, and if the remainder of these pages are blank anyone who comes across this diary will know I succeeded.

  22nd December 1877

  Now at last I have found the real woman in my life! I have never been so happy. Her name is Julia Fensell, she is but two months younger than I, her hair is a glowing reddish brown and it cascades about her face. She has blue eyes, a long straight nose, a chin with a tiny dimple, a mouth that seems always about to smile, and ankles whose slender shape drives me wild with love and passion. She is easily the most beautiful young woman I have ever seen, and she says she loves me as much as I love her.

  It is impossible to believe, impossible to credit my good fortune. She drives from my mind all worries, all fears, all anger and despair and ambitions. She fills my life entirely. I almost cannot bear to write of her, in case I again curse myself with ill-fortune!

  31st December 1877

  I still cannot write of Julia, or of my life in general, without trembling. The year is ending, and tonight, at 11.00 p.m., I am joining Julia so that we might be together as the new year begins.

  Total Income for 1877:5s 3d.

  3rd January 1878

  I have been seeing Julia every day since the middle of last month. She has become my dearest, closest friend. I must write of her as objectively as possible, for my knowing her has already set fair to change my fortune.

  First let me record that since my abysmal performance at the Langham Street Hotel several months ago I have not secured any other bookings. My confidence was low, and for a day or two I could not summon even false optimism to get me round the agency offices. However, I had to resume, for it is the only way to find work. It was during one of these melancholy tours that I first met Julia. I had seen her before, as I saw everybody on that circuit, but her sheer beauty had made her forbidden to me. We finally spoke to each other while being made to wait together in the outer office of one of the agents in Great Portland Street. It was unheated, bare-boarded, drably painted, furnished with the hardest of wooden seats. Alone with her I could not pretend not to notice her so I plucked up my courage and spoke to her. She said she was an actress; I said I was an illusionist. From the few bookings I soon learned she had been getting recently, her description of herself was as theoretical as my own. We found our duplicity amusing and became friends.

  Julia is the first person, apart from Grierson, to whom I have shown my tricks in private. Unlike Grierson, who always applauded anything I did, no matter how clumsy or ill performed, Julia was critical and appreciative in more or less equal measure. She encouraged me, but also she devastated and withered me if she found me failing. From anyone else I should have taken this poorly, but whenever her criticism was most merciless, words of love, or support, or constructive suggestion soon followed.

  I began with simple sleight of hand involving coins, some of the first tricks I had learned. Card tricks followed, then handkerchief tricks, hat tricks, billiard ball tricks. Her interest spurred me on. I gradually worked my way through most of my repertoire, even the illusions I had not yet fully mastered.

  Sometimes, in her turn, Julia would recite for me: lines from the great poets, the great playwrights, work that was always new to me. It amazed me that she could remember so much, but she said there were techniques that were easily learned. This was Julia – half artiste, half craftsman. Art and technique.

  Soon Julia began talking to me about presentation, a subject close to my heart. Our affair began to deepen.

  Over the Christmas holiday, while the rest of London celebrated, Julia and I were alone, chastely, in my rented lodgings, teaching each other the disciplines to which we each had become attached. She came to me in the mornings, stayed with me through the short hours of daylight, then soon after nightfall I would walk her back to her own lodgings in Kilburn. I spent the evenings and nights alone, thinking of her, of the excitement she was bringing me, of the matters of the stage to which she was introducing me.

  Julia is gradually, inexorably, drawing out of me the true talent I think I have always possessed.

  12th January 1878

  ‘Why should we not, between us, devise a magical act of a kind no one before us has ever performed?’

  This is what Julia said, the day after I wrote the entry above.

  Such simple words! Such havoc on my life, one that had become settled into a cycle of despair and depression, because we are building a mentalist act. Julia has been teaching me her techniques of memory. I am learning the science of mnemonics, the use of memory aids.

  Julia’s memory has always seemed to me extraordinary. When I first knew her, and had been showing her some of my hard-learned card tricks, she challenged me to call out any two-digit numbers I cared to think of, in any order at all, and to write them down so she could not see. When I had filled a whole page of my notebook, she calmly recited the numbers to me, without pause or error . . . and while I was still marvelling, she recited them again, this time in reverse order!

  I assumed it was magic, that she had somehow forced me into nominating numbers she had previously memorised, or that she somehow had access to the notes that I thought I was keeping privy. Neither of these was true, she assured me. It was no trick, and there was no subterfuge. In opposition to the methods of a magician, the secret of her performance was exactly as it seemed – she was memorizing the numbers!

  Now she has revealed to me the secret of mnemonics. I am not yet as adept as her, but already I am capable of apparent feats of memory that once I should always have doubted.

  26th January 1878

  We are ready. Imagine that I am seated on a stage, my eyes blindfolded. Volunteers from the audience have supervised the placing of the blindfold, and have satisfied themselves that I cannot see out. Julia moves amongst the audience, taking items of their personal property and holding them aloft for everyone, bar myself, to see.

  ‘What do I hold?’ she cries.

  ‘It is a gentleman’s wallet,’ I answer.

  The audience gasps.

  ‘Now I have taken—?’ says Julia.

  ‘It is a wedding ring made of gold.’

  ‘And it belongs to—?’

  ‘A lady,’ I declare.

  (Were she to say, ‘Which belongs to—?’ I should reply, with equal conviction, ‘A gentleman.’)

  ‘Here I am holding?’

  ‘A gentleman’s watch.’

  And so it goes. A litany of pre-arranged questions and answers,
but one which presented with sufficient aplomb to an audience unready for the spectacle, will clearly imply mentalist contact between the two performers.

  The principle is easy, but the learning is hard. I am still new to mnemonics, and, as in all magic, practice has to make perfect.

  While the practice goes on we are able to avoid thinking about the most difficult part – obtaining an engagement.

  1st February 1878

  Tomorrow night we begin. We have wasted two weeks trying to obtain a firm booking from a theatre or hall, but this afternoon, while we walked disconsolately on Hampstead Heath, Julia suggested we should take matters into our own hands.

  Now it is midnight, and I have just returned from an evening of preliminary reconnoitre. Julia and I visited a total of six taverns within a reasonable walking distance, and selected the one which seemed the most likely. It is the Lamb and Child, in Kilburn High Road, on the corner with Mill Lane. The main bar is a large, well-lit room, with a small raised platform at one end (presently bearing a piano, which was not being played while we were there). The tables are set out with sufficient room for Julia to move between them while speaking to members of the audience. We did not make our intentions known to the landlord or his staff.

  Julia has returned to her lodgings, and soon I will be abed. We rehearse all day tomorrow, then venture forth in the evening.

  3rd February 1878

  Between us Julia and I have counted £2 4s 9d, tossed to us in single coins by an appreciative crowd in the Lamb and Child. There was more, but I fear some of it was stolen, and some might have been lost when the landlord’s patience with us ran out and we were removed to the street.

  But we did not fail. And we have learnt a dozen lessons about how to prepare, how to announce ourselves, how to claim attention, and even, we think, how to ingratiate ourselves with the landlord.

  Tonight we are planning to visit the Mariner’s Arms in Islington, a good distance from Kilburn, where we shall try again. Already we have made changes to our act, based on Saturday night’s experience.

  4th February 1878

  Only 15s 9d between us, but again what we lack in financial reward we have gained in experience.

  28th February 1878

  As the month ends I can record that Julia and I have so far earned a total of £11 18s 3d from our mentalist act, that we are exhausted by our efforts, that we are elated by our success, that we have now made enough mistakes that we believe we know how to proceed in future, and that already (sure sign of success!) we have heard of a rival pair performing in the inns of south London.

  Furthermore, on the 3rd of next month, I shall be performing a legitimate magical act at Hasker’s Music Hall in Ponders End. Danton is to appear seventh on the bill after a singing trio. Julia and I have temporarily retired from our mentalist act so as to rehearse me for this great occasion. Already it seems a rather staid booking after the uncertain thrills of busking our act through the gin palaces of London, but it is a real job in a real theatre, and it is what I have worked for over all these years.

  4th March 1878

  Received: £3 3s 0d from Mr Hasker, who has said he would like to book me again in April. My trick with the coloured streamers was especially popular.

  12th July 1878

  A departure. My wife (I have not written in this diary for some time, but Julia and I were wed on 11th May, and now live together contentedly at my lodgings in Idmiston Villas) is feeling that we should once again branch out. I agree. Our mentalist act, although impressive to those who have not seen it before, is repetitive and tiring to perform, and the behaviour of the audiences is unpredictable. I am blindfolded for much of the act so that Julia is, to a great extent, alone in an often drunken and rowdy crowd. Once, while I sat in blindfolds, my pocket was picked.

  We both feel it is time for a change, even though we have been earning money regularly. I cannot yet make a living from the stage, and in just over two months I will receive the last of my monthly allowances.

  Theatrical bookings have in fact shown a recent improvement, and I have six of them between now and Christmas. In readiness, and while I am still relatively solvent, I have been investing in some large-scale illusions. My workshop (this I acquired last month) is stocked with magical devices, from which I may at fairly short notice put together a fresh and stimulating performance.

  The real problem with theatrical bookings is that while they pay well they provide no continuity. Each is at the end of a blind alley. I do my act, I take my applause, I collect my fee, but none of these ensures another booking. Even the reviews in the press are small and grudging. For instance, after a performance at the Clapham Empire, one of my best so far, the Evening Star remarked, ‘. . . and a conjuror named Dartford followed the soubrette.’ With such pebbles of formal encouragement I am supposed to lay the path of my career!

  The idea for a new departure came to me (or I should more properly say, it came to Julia) while I was glancing through a daily newspaper.

  I saw a report that evidence had emerged recently that life, or a form of it, continued after death. Certain psychic adepts were able to make contact with newly deceased people, and communicate back from the after-world to their bereaved relatives. I read out a part of the report to Julia. She stared at me for a moment, and I could see her mind was working.

  ‘You don’t believe that, do you?’ she said at last.

  ‘I take it seriously,’ I confirmed. ‘After all, there are an increasing number of people who have made contact. I treat evidence as it arises. You must not ignore what people say.’

  ‘Rupert, you cannot be serious!’ she cried.

  I continued oafishly, ‘But these séances have been investigated by scientists with the highest academic qualifications.’

  ‘Am I hearing you properly? You, whose very profession is deception!’

  At this I began to see the argument she was making, but still I could not forget the testimony from (for instance) Sir Angus Johns, whose endorsement of the existence of the spirit world I had just read in the newspaper. ‘You are always saying,’ my beloved Julia continued, ‘that the easiest people to deceive are those who are the best educated. Their intelligence blinds them to the simplicity of magic secrets!’

  At last I had it.

  ‘So you are saying these séances are . . . ordinary illusions?’

  ‘What else could they be?’ she said triumphantly. ‘This is a new enterprise, my dear. We must be part of it.’

  And so, I think, our departure is to be into the world of spiritism. In recording this exchange with Julia, I know it must make me seem stupid. I have always had difficulty understanding magic until the secret is pointed out to me.

  15th July 1878

  It has happened that two of the letters I wrote to magic journals at the end of last year have appeared this week. I am a little disconcerted to see them! A lot has changed in my life since then. I remember drafting one of the letters, for example, the day after I discovered the truth about Drusilla MacAvoy. As I read my own words I remember that dreary October day in my poorly heated lodgings, sitting at my desk and venting my feelings on some hapless magician who had been whimsically reported, in the journal, as wishing to set up some kind of bank in which magical secrets would be stored and protected. I realise now that it was one of those comments made half in jest, but there is my letter, in full flood of tedious seriousness, castigating the poor fellow for it.

  And the other letter, just as embarrassing now to behold, and one for which I cannot even recall mitigating circumstances in which I might have written it.

  All this has reminded me of the state of emotional bitterness in which I had lived until I met dear Julia.

  31st August 1878

  We have attended a total of four séances, and know what is involved. The trickery is generally of a low standard. Perhaps the recipients are in such a state of distress that they would be receptive to almost anything. Indeed, on one of these unfortunate occasions th
e effects were so patently unconvincing that self-willed credulousness could be the only explanation.

  Julia and I have spent much time discussing how we might go about this, and we have decided that the best and only way is to think of our efforts as professional magic, performed to the highest standards. There are already too many charlatans doing the rounds in spiritism, and I have no wish to become one more of them.

  This endeavour is for me a means to an end, a way of making and perhaps accumulating a little money until I can support myself in a theatrical career.

  The illusions involved in a séance are simple, but already we have seen ways of elaborating them a little to make them seem more supernatural in effect. As we found with our mentalist act, we will learn by experience, and so we have already drafted and paid for our first advertisement in one of the London gazettes. We shall charge modestly at first, partly because we can afford to do so while we learn, and partly so as to ensure as many commissions as possible.

  I am already in receipt of, and therefore spending, my last month’s allowance. Three weeks from now I shall be entirely self-sufficient, whether I like it or not.

  9th September 1878

  Our advertisement has elicited fourteen enquiries! As we offered our services at two guineas a time, and the advertisement cost me 3s 6d, we are already making a profit!