The Prestige

by Christopher Priest

  I intend to write, firstly: a short description of what the audience sees.

  And then, secondly: A Revelation of the Secret Behind It!

  Such is the purpose of this account. Now I set aside my pen, as agreed.

  11

  I have refrained from writing in this book for three weeks. I do not need to say why; I do not need to be told why. The secret of THE NEW TRANSPORTED MAN is not mine alone to reveal, & there’s an end to it. What madness infects me?

  The secret has served me well for many years, & has resisted numerous prying assaults. I have spent most of my lifetime protecting it. Is this not reason enough for the Pact?

  Yet now I write that all such secrets are trivial. Trivial! Have I devoted my life to a trivial secret?

  The first two of my three silent weeks slipped by while I reflected on this galling insight into my life’s work.

  This book, journal, narrative – what should I call it? – is itself a product of my Pact, as I have already recorded. Have I thought through all the ramifications of that?

  Under the Pact, if I once make a statement, even something ill-advised or uttered in an unguarded moment, I always assume responsibility for it as if I had spoken the words myself. As do I when rôles are reversed, or so I have always assumed. This oneness of purpose, of action, of words, is essential to the Pact.

  For this reason I do not insist that I go back & delete those lines above, where I promise a revelation of my secret. (For the same reason I may not later delete the very lines I am writing now.)

  However, no revelation of my secret may be made, & is not even to be considered again. I must hobble a while longer.

  I am ignoring the fact that Rupert Angier yet lives! I do indeed sometimes put him from my mind, wilfully drawing veils of forgetfulness across him & his deeds, but the wretch continues to draw breath. So long as he remains alive my secret is in peril.

  I hear he still performs his version of THE NEW TRANSPORTED MAN, & during his execution of it continues to make that offensive remark across the footlights that what the audience is about to see ‘has often been copied, but has never been improved upon’. I rankle at these reports, & more at other reports from insiders. Angier has hit on a new method of transportation, & it is said to look good when performed. His fatal flaw, though, is that his effect is slow. Whatever he might claim, he still cannot do the trick as quickly as me! How he must burn to know my truth!

  The Pact must remain in place. No revelations!

  12

  Since Angier has been brought into the story I shall describe the problem he first presented to me, and give a detailed account of how our dispute began. It will soon become apparent that I started the feud, and I make no bones about this responsibility.

  However, I was led astray by adhering to what I thought were the highest principles, and when I realised what I had done I did try to make amends. Here is how it started.

  On the fringes of professional magic there are a few individuals who see prestidigitation as an easy way of gulling the credulous and the rich. They use the same magical devices and apparatus as legitimate magicians, but they pretend their effects are ‘real’.

  It can be seen that this is only a shade away from the artifice of the stage magician, who acts the role of sorcerer. That shade of difference is crucial.

  For example, I sometimes open my act with an illusion called CHINESE LINKING RINGS. I begin by taking up a position in the centre of a lighted stage, holding the rings casually. I make no claim for what I am about to do with them. The audience sees (or thinks it sees, or allows itself to think it sees) ten large separate rings made of shining metal. The rings are shown to a few members of the audience who are permitted to handle and inspect them, and discover on behalf of everyone present that the rings are solid, without joints, without openings. I then take the rings back and to everyone’s amazement I immediately join them into one continuous chain, holding them up for all to see. I link and unlink rings at the touch of a spectator’s hand on the exact spot where the joining or unjoining takes place. I link some of the rings into figures and shapes, then unlink them just as quickly, looping them casually over one of my arms or around my neck. At the end of the trick I am seen (or thought to be seen, et cetera) to be holding, once again, ten separate solid rings.

  How is it done? The actual answer is that such a trick can only be performed after years of practice. There is a secret, of course, and because CHINESE LINKING RINGS is still a popular and widely performed trick, I cannot lightly reveal what it is. It is a trick, an illusion, one that is judged not for the apparently miraculous secret, but for the skill, the flair, the showmanship with which it is performed.

  Now, take another magician. He performs the same illusion, using the identical secret, but he claims aloud that he is linking and unlinking the rings by sorcerous means. Would not his performance be judged differently? He would appear not skilled but mystical and powerful. He would be not a mere entertainer but a miracle worker who defied natural laws.

  If I, or any other professional magician, were there, I should have to say to the audience: ‘That is just a trick! The rings are not what they seem. You have not seen what you think you have seen.’

  To which the miracle-worker would reply (falsely): ‘What I have just shown the audience is a product of the supernatural. If you claim it is merely a conjuring trick, then pray explain to everyone how it is done.’

  And here I would have no reply. I would not be able to reveal the workings of a trick, bound as I am by professional honour.

  So the miracle would seem to remain a miracle.

  When I first began performing there was a vogue for spirit effects, or ‘spiritism’. Some of these manifestations were performed openly on the theatrical stage; others took place more covertly in studios or private homes. All had features in common. They allegedly gave hope to the recently bereaved or the elderly by making it seem that there was a life after death. Much money changed hands in pursuit of this reassurance.

  From the viewpoint of the professional magician, spiritism had two significant features. First, standard magical techniques were being used. Second, the perpetrators invariably claimed that the effects were supernaturally produced. In other words, false claims were being made about miraculous ‘powers’.

  This was what aggravated me. Because the tricks were all easily reproducible by any stage illusionist worthy of the name, it was irritating, to say the least, to hear them claimed as paranormal phenomena, whose manifestation therefore ‘proved’ that there was an afterlife, that spirits could walk, that the dead could speak, and so on. It was a lie, but it was one that was difficult to prove.

  I arrived in London in 1874. Under John Henry Anderson’s tutelage, and Nevil Maskelyne’s patronage, I began trying to obtain work in the theatres and music halls found all over the great capital. There was in those days a demand for stage magic, but London was full of clever magicians and an entry into the circuit was not easy. I managed to take a modest place in that world, finding what work I could, and although my magic was always well received my rise to prominence was a slow one. THE NEW TRANSPORTED MAN was then a long way from fruition, although to be entirely frank I had started to plan this great illusion even while I still hammered and fretted in my father’s yard in Hastings.

  At this time the spirit magicians were often seen advertising their services in newspapers and periodicals, and some of their doings were much discussed. Spiritism was presented to the populace as a more exciting, powerful and effective kind of magic than what they could see on the stage. If one is skilled enough to put a young woman into a trance and make her hover in mid-air, the argument seemed to go, why not direct that skill more usefully and communicate with the recently departed? Why not indeed?

  13

  Rupert Angier’s name was already familiar to me. Writing from an address in North London he was an opinionated and long-winded correspondent to the letter columns of two or three of the private-circul
ation magic journals. His purpose was invariably to pour scorn on the people he described as the ‘establishment’ of older magicians, who with their secretive ways and courteous traditions were held up as tiresome relics of a former age. Although I worked within those traditions I did not allow myself to be drawn into Angier’s various controversies, but some of the magicians I knew were greatly provoked by him.

  One of his theories, to take a fairly typical example, was that if magicians were as skilful as they claimed to be, then they should be prepared to perform magic ‘in the round’. That is to say, the magician would be surrounded on all sides by the audience, and would therefore have to create illusions that did not depend on the framing, audience-excluding effect of the proscenium arch. One of my distinguished colleagues, by way of reply, gently pointed out the self-evident fact that no matter how well the magician prepared his act, there would always be a segment of the audience who could see the trick being worked. Angier’s response was to deride the other correspondent. First, he said, the magical effect would be increased if the illusion could be viewed from all angles. Secondly, if it could not, and a small segment of the audience had to glimpse the secret, it did not matter! If five hundred people are baffled, he said, it was of no importance that five others should see the secret.

  Such theories were almost heretical to the majority of professionals, not because they held secrets to be inviolable (which Angier seemed to imply), but because Angier’s attitude to magic was radical and careless of the traditions which had held good for so long.

  Rupert Angier was therefore making a name for himself, but perhaps not the one he had planned. One observation I often heard was the mock surprise that Angier rarely if ever performed on the public stage. His colleagues were therefore unable to admire his no doubt brilliant and innovative magic.

  As I say, I did not get involved and he was not of great interest to me. However, destiny was soon to take a hand.

  It happened that one of my father’s sisters, living in London, had recently been bereaved and in her grief was intending to consult a spiritist. She had accordingly arranged a séance at her house. I heard about it in one of my mother’s regular letters, passed to me as family chitchat, but at once my professional curiosity was aroused. I promptly made contact with my aunt, offered her belated condolences on the loss of her husband, and volunteered to be with her in her search for solace.

  When the day came I was lucky that my aunt had invited me to lunch beforehand, because the spiritist arrived at the house at least an hour before he was expected. This threw the household into some confusion. I imagine it was part of his design, and enabled him to take certain preparations in the room where the séance was to be conducted. He and his two young assistants, one male and one female, darkened the room with black blinds, moved unwanted furniture to the side while importing some of their own which they had brought with them, rolled back the carpet to bare the floorboards, and erected a certain wooden cabinet whose size and appearance was enough to convince me that conventional stage magic was about to be performed. I stayed discreetly but attentively in the background while these preparations were put in place. I did not wish to make myself at all interesting to the spiritist, because if he was alert he might have recognised me. The previous week my stage act had drawn a favourable press notice or two.

  The spiritist himself was a young man of about my own age, slight of build, dark of hair and narrow of forehead. He had a wary look to him, almost like that of a foraging animal going about its business. He made quick precise movements with his hands, a sure sign of a long-practising prestidigitator. The young woman who worked with him had a slender, agile body (because of her physique I assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that she would be employed in his illusions), and a strong, attractive face. She wore dark and modest clothes, and rarely spoke. The other assistant, a burly young man not long in his majority, had a broad thatch of fair hair and a churlish face, and he jibed and complained as he hauled in the heavy pieces of furniture.

  By the time my aunt’s other guests arrived (she had invited some eight or nine of her friends to be present, presumably to help spread the cost a little), the spiritist’s preparations were complete and he and his assistants were sitting patiently in the prepared room, waiting for the time appointed. It was therefore impossible for me to examine their apparatus.

  The presentation, which with all the preamble and atmospheric pauses lasted for well over an hour, broke down into three main illusions, carefully arranged so as to create feelings of apprehension, excitement and suggestibility.

  First the spiritist performed a table-tipping illusion with a dramatic physical manifestation; the table spun around of its own accord, then reared up terrifyingly into the air, causing most of us to sprawl uncomfortably on the bare floor. After this the attendees were shaking with excited agitation, and ready for anything that might follow. What did follow was that with the aid of his female accomplice the spiritist appeared to fall into a Mesmeric trance. He was then blindfolded, gagged, and bound hand and foot by his assistants, and placed helpless within his cabinet, whence emanated, soon enough, numerous noisy, startling and inexplicable paranormal effects: strange lights flashed brilliantly, trumpets, cymbals and castanets sounded, and eerie ‘ectoplasmic matter’ rose of its own accord from the heart of the cabinet, and floated into the room illuminated by a mysterious light.

  Released from the cabinet and his bonds (when the cabinet was opened he was found as efficiently tied up as when he went inside), and miraculously restored from his Mesmerised state, the spiritist then got down to his main business. After a short but colourful warning about the dangers of ‘crossing over’ to the spirit world, and a hint that the results justified the risk, the spiritist fell into another trance and soon was in touch with the other side. Before too long he was able to identify the spirit presence of certain departed relatives and close friends of the people gathered in the room, and comforting messages were conveyed from one group to the other.

  14

  How did the young spiritist achieve all this?

  As I have already said, professional ethics constrain me. I could not then, and cannot now, reveal more than the barest outline of the secrets of what were without question straightforward magical effects.

  The tipping table is actually not a conjuring trick at all (although it can be presented as one, as on this occasion). It is a little-known physical phenomenon that if ten or a dozen people cluster around a circular wooden table, press the palms of their hands on the surface, and are then told that soon the table will start to rotate, it is only a matter of a minute or two before that starts to happen! Once the motion is felt, the table almost invariably begins to tip to one side or the other. An adroitly placed foot suddenly lifting the appropriate table leg will dramatically unbalance the table, causing it to rear up and crash excitingly to the floor. With luck, it will take with it many of the participants, causing surprise and excitement but not physical harm.

  I need not emphasise that the table being used at my aunt’s was one of the spiritist’s own props. It was constructed so that the four wooden legs connected to the central pillar in such a way that there was room for a foot to be slipped underneath.

  The cabinet manifestations can only be adumbrated here; a skilled magician may easily escape from what appear to be irresistible bonds, especially if the ropes and knots have been tied by two assistants. Once inside the cabinet it would be the work of a few seconds to release himself sufficiently to make happen the otherwise perplexing display of paranormal effects.

  As for the ‘psychic’ contacts which were the main purpose of the meeting, here too there are standard techniques of forcing and substitution which any good magician can readily perform.

  15

  I had gone to my aunt’s house to satisfy professional curiosity, but instead, to my eventual shame and regret, I came away with a case of righteous indignation. Standard stage illusions had been used to gull a group of suggesti
ble and vulnerable people. My aunt, believing that she had heard words of comfort from her beloved husband, was so overcome by grief that she retired immediately to her chamber. Several of the others were almost as deeply moved by messages they had heard. Yet I knew, I alone knew, that it was all a sham.

  I felt an exhilarating sense that I could and should expose him as a charlatan, before he did any more harm. I was tempted to confront him then and there, but I was a little intimidated by the assured way he had performed his illusions. While he and his female assistant were putting away their apparatus I spoke briefly to the thatch-haired young man and was given the spiritist’s business card.

  Thus it was that I learned the name and style of the man who was to dog my professional career:

  Rupert Angier

  Clairvoyant, Spirit Medium, Séantist

  Strictest Confidence Observed

  45 Idmiston Villas, London N

  I was young, inexperienced, heady with what I saw as high principles, and these, to my later chagrin, blinded me to the hypocrisy of my position. I set out to hound Mr Angier, intent on exposing his swindles. Soon enough, by methods I need not record here, I was able to establish where and when his next séance was to take place.

  Once again it was a meeting in a private house in a suburb of London, although this time my connection with the family (bereaved by the sudden death of the mother) was contrived. I was able to attend only by presenting myself at the house the day before and claiming to be an associate of Angier’s whose presence had been requested by the ‘medium’ himself. In their all-too-evident grief the remaining family seemed hardly to care.

  The next day I made sure I was in the street outside the house well before the appointment, and thus was able to confirm that Angier’s own early arrival at my aunt’s house had been no accident, and indeed was a necessary part of the preparations. I watched covertly as he and his assistants unpacked their paraphernalia from a cart and carried it into the house. When I finally presented myself at the house an hour later, close to the appointed time, the room had been arranged and was in semi-darkness.