The Prestige
Page 21
Using the files of the Hastings & Bexhill Announcer, I obtained a description of Frederick’s older brother Julius (who according to the newspaper had won a prize at school). At the age of fifteen Julius was said to have straight blond hair. Frederick Borden is dark-haired, but there was a possibility that Julius was the stage double, having coloured his hair. This line of enquiry came to nothing, when I later discovered that Julius had died of consumption in 1870, when Frederick was fourteen.
There was a younger brother too. This was Albert Joseph Borden, seventh-born into the family, on 18th May 1858. (Albert + Frederick = Alfred? Is this how Frederick chose his first nom de théâtre?)
Again, the existence of a brother whose age was reasonably close to Frederick’s raised the possibility of a double. I dug out and examined Albert’s birth records at the hospital, but I found it difficult to discover much more about him. However, the enterprising Mr Koenig had suggested a visit to a photogenic portrait artiste called Charles Simpkins, who has his studio in Hastings High Street.
Mr Simpkins greeted me cordially and was pleased to show me a selection of his daguerreotypes. Amongst these, as Mr Koenig had hinted to me, was a studio portrait of Frederick Borden and his younger brother. It had been taken in 1874, when Frederick was eighteen and his brother was sixteen.
The two are clearly unalike in appearance. Frederick is tall, he has the sort of features often referred to as ‘noble’, and his bearing is arrogant (all of these I have frequently observed for myself), while Albert is much less prepossessing. He has a slack-jawed expression; his features are puffy, and his cheeks are round. His hair is wavier than his brother’s and apparently paler in colour; and from his stance I would say he was at least four or five inches shorter than his brother.
This portrait convinced me that Koenig was correct. Frederick Borden does not have a close relation he can use as a double.
It remains possible that he has scoured the streets of London to find a man sufficiently like him to pass as a double, with the aid of stage make-up, but no matter what Cutter says I have myself seen Borden’s performance. Most illusionists’ doubles are only briefly glimpsed, or they misdirect the perceptions of the audience by wearing identical costumes, so that in the few seconds in which the double is visible he seems to be the original.
Borden, after the transformation, allows himself to be seen, and to be seen clearly. He steps forward to the footlights, he bows, he smiles, he takes the hand of his female assistant, he bows again, he walks to and fro. There is no question but that the man who emerges from the second cabinet is the man who entered the first.
I still do not know how Borden works that damnable illusion, but I do at least know that he works it alone.
So it is with a certain frustrated equanimity that I am able to prepare myself for my long journey to the New World.
I am going to what is fast becoming the centre of the world of magic, and for two months I shall be meeting, and perhaps working with, some of the finest illusionists in the United States of America. There will be many there who can work out how it is done. I go to America to build my reputation, and to amass what must certainly be reckoned as a small fortune in fees, but I now have an extra quest.
I swear that when I return in two months I shall have Borden’s secret with me. I also swear that within a month of returning I shall be performing a superior version of the same trick on the London stage.
On board SS Saturnia 21st January 1893
One day out from Southampton, a vile day in the English Channel behind us, and a short stay in Cherbourg, and now we are in the Western Approaches ploughing steadily towards America. The ship is a magnificent vessel, coal-fired, triple-stacked, equipped to house and entertain the finest of Europe and America. My cabin is on the second deck, and I share it with an architect from Chichester. I have not told him my own profession, in spite of well-mannered and tentative enquiries. Already I am in pain – the pain of being away from my family.
I see them still in my mind’s eye on the rain-swept quay, waving and waving. At times like this I yearn for the magic reality my profession seems to conjure from nowhere: O! that I could wave my wand, utter some mumbo jumbo, and manifest them here with me!
Still on board SS Saturnia 24th January 1893
I have been suffering mal de mer, but not nearly as badly as my friend from Chichester, who last night spewed disgustingly across our cabin floor. The poor fellow was overcome with contrition and apology, but the deed was done. Partly as a consequence of this unenjoyable experience I have not eaten for two days.
27th January 1893
As I write, the city of New York is visible on the horizon ahead. I have arranged a meeting with Cutter in half an hour, to make sure he has right all the arrangements for disembarkation. No more time for diary writing!
Now the adventure begins.
13th September 1893
I am not surprised to discover that nearly eight months have elapsed since last I came to this diary to record my life. In returning to it I am tempted, as before I have sometimes been tempted, simply to destroy it in its entirety.
Such an act would stand as a summary of my own actions, as I have destroyed, removed or abandoned every aspect of my life that existed when I last wrote here.
One tiny shred remains, however. When I began the diary it was with a childish earnest to write of my entire life, no matter how it might turn out. I can no longer remember what I thought I might actually become, by my thirty-sixth year of life, but I certainly did not imagine this.
Julia and the children are gone. Cutter is gone. Much of my wealth is gone. My career has withered away and gone, through apathy.
I have lost everything.
But I have gained Olivia Svenson.
I shall write little of Olivia here, as in glancing back over the pages I see I depict my love for Julia with such enthusiasm that now I can only recoil in shame. I am old enough, and have travelled far enough in matters of the heart, no longer to trust my emotions in such things. It is enough to say that I have left Julia so that I might be with Olivia, after I fell in love with her during my American tour.
I met Olivia at a reception given in my honour in the fine city of Boston, Massachusetts, where she approached me and made her admiration known, in the way many women have approached me in the past. (I record this without vanity.) Perhaps it was because I was so far from home, and ironically so lonely without my family, that for once a woman’s forthright intention was one I could not resist. Olivia, then working as a danseuse, joined my party. When I left Boston she remained with us, and thereafter we travelled together. More than this, within a week or two she was working on stage with me as my assistant, and has returned with me to London.
Cutter did not care for this, and although he saw out the tour we parted immediately on our return.
As, inevitably, did Julia and I. Sometimes, even now, I lie awake at night to marvel at the madness of my sacrifice. Once Julia meant the very world to me, and indeed she helped build the world I inhabit today. My children, my three helpless and innocent children, are nothing less than victims of the same sacrifice. All I can say is that my madness is the madness of love. Olivia blinds me to every other feeling that is not passion for her.
So I cannot bring myself to write down, even in the privacy of this journal, what was said, done and suffered at that time. Much of the saying and doing was mine, while all the suffering was Julia’s.
I now support Julia in a household of her own, where to maintain appearances she lives the life of a widow. She has the children with her, she has her material needs taken care of, and she has never to see me again if that should be what she wants. Indeed, were I to be seen at her house the appearances would be betrayed, so I have perforce become a dead man. I can never meet my children in their own house again, and have to make do with the occasional excursion with them. Naturally, I blame only myself for this predicament.
Julia and I meet briefly on such occasio
ns, and her sweetness of nature wrenches at my heart. But there is no going back. I have made my bed and now I lie in it. When I manage to close my mind to the family I have lost I am a happy man. I expect no favourable judgement of myself. I know I have wronged my wife.
I have always tried never to hurt the people around me. Even in my dealings with Borden I have shrunk from causing him pain or danger, preferring to take revenge by irritating or embarrassing him. But now I find I have caused the greatest hurt of all, to the four people who meant the most to me. At the risk of humbug, I can only aver that I shall never do anything like this again.
14th September 1893
My career struggles towards a new version of stability. In the upheavals of the weeks following my return from the United States, I let go most of the bookings Unwin had taken while I was away. I had, after all, returned from the tour with a tidy sum in hand, so I felt that I could survive for some time without having to work.
This diary entry is to record, though, that I feel at last I can emerge from the hole of misery and lethargy into which I declined, and I am ready to return to the stage. I have instructed Unwin to find me bookings, and my career may resume.
To celebrate the decision, Olivia and I went this afternoon to the premises of a theatrical costumier, where she chose, and was measured for, her new stage outfit.
1st December 1893
In my appointments book I have a thirty-minute Christmas show that I am to perform for a school of orphans. Other than that, my book is empty. 1894 looms up, bereft of work. Since the end of September I have earned only £18. 18s. od.
Hesketh Unwin speaks of a whispering campaign against me. He warns me to disregard it, because the success of my tour of America is well known and it is easy to cause jealousy.
I am disturbed by this news. Is Borden behind it?
Olivia and I have been discussing a return to spiritism, to keep body and soul together, but so far I am thinking of it only as a last-ditch resort.
Meanwhile, I occupy my days with practice and rehearsal. A magician can never practise enough, because every moment spent will improve his performance. So I toil in my workshop, usually alone, but sometimes with Olivia, and rehearse until I feel sick with preparation. Although my skill with prestidigitation increases, sometimes, in my darker moments, I do wonder why I am continuing to rehearse at all.
At least the orphans will see a marvellous entertainment!
14th December 1893
Bookings have been made for January and February. Not major appearances, but our spirits have nevertheless risen.
20th December 1893
More bookings for January, one of them, I do declare, left vacant by a certain Professeur de Magie! I am pleased to take his guineas.
23rd December 1893
A Happy Christmas! I have been visited with an amusing idea, one I hasten to record before I change my mind. (Once committed to pen and paper, my actions will be set!) Unwin has sent me the contract for my appearance on 19th January at the Princess Royal Theatre in Streatham. This happens to be the booking left free by Borden. I was glancing through the contract (contracts have lately been so few and far between that I should likely have signed anything) when my gaze fell on one of the clauses toward the end. It contained a common enough provision found when one act is booked in place of another; that my performance should be to the same general standard of excellence as the act that was being replaced.
My first reaction was a sardonic snort. The idea that I should live up to Borden’s standards was ironic indeed. Then I thought again. If I was to replace Borden, why should I not produce a replica of the act they were no longer going to see? In short, why shall I not at last perform Borden’s illusion for him?
I am so taken with the idea that I have been dashing around London all day, trying to find someone who will act as my double. This is the wrong time of year to be looking: all the unemployed actors one can generally count on finding in any public bar in the West End are working in the numerous pantomimes and Christmas shows around the town.
I have just over three weeks in which to prepare. Tomorrow I shall start to build the cabinets!
4th January 1894
Two weeks to go, and at last I have my man! His name is Gerald William Root, an actor, reciter of declamatory verse, monologist … and, by all accounts, regular drunkard and brawler. Mr Root is however desperate for cash and I have drawn from him a pledge that so long as he works for me he shall only taste liquor after each performance. He is anxious to please, and the cash that even I am able to offer him is so generous, by his usual standards, that I believe I can purchase his reliability.
He is the same height as me, and his general stance and figure are roughly mine. He is a little stouter than I am, but either he will lose those extra folds of flesh, or I shall wear padding. It is of no concern. His colouring is fairer than mine, but again this is a small matter that can be solved with greasepaint. Although his eyes are an impure blue, while mine are the colour generally described as hazel, the difference is not noticeable, and again we can use theatrical make-up to misdirect attention.
None of the details matters. More potentially serious is the problem of his gait, which is noticeably looser than mine, with longer strides, and his feet turn slightly outwards as he walks. Olivia has taken charge of the problem and believes she can coach him in time. As any actor knows, you convey more about a character with a walk or a bearing than any number of facial characteristics, accents or gestures. If my double walks differently from me while on the stage he will not be mistaken for me. It is as simple as that.
Root, fully briefed in the deception to which he is privy, says that he understands the problem. He tries to dismiss my worries on this score by regaling me with his professional reputation, but I care for none of it. Provided that on the night he is mistaken for me, he will have earned his money.
A fortnight remains in which to rehearse.
6th January 1894
Root goes through the movements in which I rehearse him, but I cannot help feeling that he does not relish the illusion. Actors play a part, but the audience is in on the deception throughout. They know that behind the appearance of Prince Hamlet is a man who merely speaks the lines. My audiences must leave the theatre foxed by what they have seen. They must both believe and disbelieve the evidence of their eyes!
10th January 1894
I have given Mr Root tomorrow as a day off, so that I might consider. He is not right, not right at all! Olivia too thinks it is all a mistake, and urges me to drop the Borden illusion from my act.
But Root is a disaster.
12th January 1894
Root is a marvel! We both needed the time to think it through. He told me he passed the day with friends, but I suspect from the smell about him that he spent the time with a bottle to his lips.
No matter. His moves are right, his timing is nearly right, and as soon as we have been fitted out in our identical costumes, the deception will be good enough to pass muster.
Tomorrow, I go with Root and Olivia to Streatham, where we will inspect the stage, and make final preparations.
18th January 1894
I am unaccountably nervous about tomorrow’s performance, even though Root and I have rehearsed it until we are sick of it. In perfection lies a risk: if tomorrow I perform Borden’s illusion, and improve on it, and I shall, word that I have done so will reach him within days.
In these quiet hours around midnight, with Olivia abed, the house silent and my thoughts welling around me, I know there is yet a terrible truth that I have not faced up to. It is that Borden will instantly know the means by which I have brought off the illusion, but I still do not know his.
20th January 1894
It was a triumph! Applause rang out to the very rafters! Today, in its final edition, the Morning Post describes me as ‘probably Britain’s greatest living illusionist’. There are two small qualifications there that I could gladly live without, but it will be enou
gh to rattle Mr Borden’s complacency.
It is sweet. But it also has a sour side I had not anticipated. How could I not have thought of this? At the conclusion of the illusion, at the climax of my act, I am perforce huddled ignominiously in the artfully collapsed panels of my cabinet. While the applause fills the hall, it is the drunkard Root who strides out in the spotlight. It is he who takes the ovation, who holds Olivia’s hand in his, who bows and waves and blows kisses, who acknowledges the bandmaster, who salutes the gentry in the loges, who doffs his hat and bows again and again—
And I can only wait for the darkness of the stage when the curtain descends, before I make my escape.
This will have to change. We must arrange it that I am the one who emerges from the unexpected cabinet, so the switch with Root must be made before the illusion begins. I shall have to think of a way.
21st January 1894
Yesterday’s notice in the Post has made its impact, and already today my agent has taken several enquiries about and three firm bookings for my act. My miraculous illusory switch is demanded each time.
I have rewarded Root with a small cash bonus.
30th June 1895
Already the events of two years ago seem like a fading nightmare. I return to this journal at the half-year merely to record that I am once again on an even keel. Olivia and I co-exist harmoniously, and although she can never be the driving stimulus that Julia once was, her quiet support has become the bulwark on which I build my life and career.