World of Wonders

by Robertson Davies

  “Come along, Magnus. Enough of this. We want to know and you want to tell. I can feel it. When did you ever perform in the London streets?”

  “After I got away from France, and the travelling circus, and the shadow of Willard. I came to London, which was dangerous with the kind of passport I carried, but I managed it. What was I to do? You don’t get jobs in variety theatres just by hanging around the stage doors. It’s a matter of agents, and having press cuttings, and being known to somebody. And I was down and out. I hadn’t a penny. No, that’s not quite true; I had forty-two shillings and that was just enough to buy a few old ropes and chains. So I took a look around the West End, and soon found out that the choice position for open-air shows was the place we’ve just visited. But even that wasn’t free; street-artists of long standing had first call on the space. I tried to do my little act when they weren’t busy, and three of them took me up an alley and convinced me that I had been tactless. Nevertheless, with a black eye I managed to show them a little magic that persuaded one of them to let me add something to his own show, and for that I got a very small daily sum. Still, I was seen, and it wasn’t more than a few days before I was taken to Milady, and after that everything was glorious.”

  “Why should Milady want to see you? Really, Magnus, you are intolerable. You are going to tell us, so why don’t you do it without making me corkscrew every word out of you?”

  “If I tell you now, in the street, don’t you think I am being rather unfair to Lind? He wants to know too, you know.”

  “Last night you virtually ordered Lind and his friends out of the hotel. Do you mean you are going to change your mind about that?”

  “I was annoyed with Ingestree.”

  “Yes, I know that. But what’s so bad about Ingestree? He doesn’t agree with you about Milady. Is the man to have no mind of his own? Must everybody agree with you? Ingestree isn’t a bad fellow.”

  “Not a bad fellow. A fool perhaps.”

  “Since when is it a criminal offence to be a fool? You’re rather a fool yourself, especially about women. I insist on knowing whatever there is to know about Milady.”

  “And so you shall, my dear Liesl. So you shall. You have only to wait until this evening. I guarantee that when we go back to the Savoy we shall find that Lind has called, that Ingestree is ready to apologize, and that we are all three asked to dinner tonight so that I may very graciously go on with my subtext to Hommage. Which I am perfectly willing to do. And Ramsay will be pleased, because the free dinner he gets tonight will somewhat offset the cost of the dinner he had to share in giving last night. You see, all things work together for good to them that love God.”

  “Sometimes I wish I were a professing Christian, so that I would have the right to tell you how much your blasphemous quoting of Scripture annoys me. And you mustn’t torment Ramsay. He hasn’t had your advantages. He’s never been really poor, and that is a terrible drawback to a man.—Will you promise to be decent to Ingestree?”

  An unwonted sound: Eisengrim laughed aloud: Merlin’s laugh, if ever I heard it.

  (3)

  Magnus was having one of his tiresome spells, during which he was right about everything. We were indeed asked to dine as Lind’s guests after the showing of Hommage. What we saw in the poky little viewing-room was a version of the film that was almost complete; everything that was to be cut out had been removed, but a few shots—close-ups of Magnus—had still to be taken and incorporated. It was a source of astonishment, for I saw nothing that I had not seen while it was being filmed; but the skill of the cutting, and the juxtapositions, and the varieties of pace that had been achieved, were marvels to me. Clearly much of what had been done owed its power to the art of Harry Kinghovn, but the unmistakable impress of Lind’s mind was on it, as well. His films possessed a weight of implication—in St Paul’s phrase, “the evidence of things not seen”—that was entirely his own.

  The greatest surprise was the way in which Eisengrim emerged. His unique skill as a conjuror was there, of course, but somehow magic is not so impressive on the screen as it is in direct experience, just as he had said himself at Sorgenfrei. No, it was as an actor that he seemed like a new person. I suppose I had grown used to him over the years, and had seen too much of his backstage personality, which was that of the theatre martinet, the watchful, scolding, impatient star of the Soirée of Illusions. The distinguished, high-bred, romantic figure I saw on the screen was someone I felt I did not know. The waif I had known when we were boys in Deptford, the carnival charlatan I had seen in Austria as Faustus LeGrand in Le grand Cirque forain de St Vite, the successful stage performer, and the amusing but testy and incalculable permanent guest at Sorgenfrei could not be reconciled with this fascinating creature, and it couldn’t all be the art of Lind and Kinghovn. I must know more. My document demanded it.

  Liesl, too, was impressed, and I am sure she was as curious as I. So far as I knew, she had at some time met Magnus, admired him, befriended him, and financed him. They had toured the world together with their Soirée of Illusions, combining his art as a public performer with her skill as a technician, a contriver of magical apparatus, and her artistic taste, which was far beyond his own. If he was indeed the greatest conjuror of his time, or of any time, she was responsible for at least half of whatever had made him so. Moreover, she had educated him, in so far as he was formally educated, and had transformed him from a tough little carnie into someone who could put up a show of cultivation. Or was that the whole truth? She seemed as surprised by his new persona on the screen as I was.

  This was clearly one of Magnus’s great days. The film people were delighted with him, as entrepreneurs always are with anybody who looks as if he could draw in money, and at dinner he was clearly the guest of honour.

  We went to the Café Royal, where a table had been reserved in the old room with the red plush benches against the wall, and the lush girls with naked breasts holding up the ceiling, and the flattering looking-glasses. We ate and drank like people who were darlings of Fortune. Ingestree was on his best behaviour, and it was not until we had arrived at brandy and cigars that he said—

  “I passed the Irving statue this afternoon. Quite by chance. Nothing premeditated. But I saw your flowers. And I want to repeat how sorry I am to have spoken slightingly about your old friend Lady Tresize. May we toast her now?”

  “Here’s to Milady,” said Magnus, and emptied his glass.

  “Why was she called that?” said Liesl. “It sounds terribly pretentious if she was simply the wife of a theatrical knight. Or it sounds frowsily romantic, like a Dumas novel. Or it sounds as if you were making fun of her. Or was she a cult figure in the theatre? The Madonna of the Greasepaint? You might tell us, Magnus.”

  “I suppose it was all of those things. Some people thought her pretentious, and some thought the romance that surrounded her was frowsy, and people always made a certain amount of fun of her, and she was a cult figure as well. In addition she was a wonderfully kind, wise, courageous person who was not easy to understand. I’ve been thinking a lot about her today. I told you that I was a busker beside the Irving statue when I came to London. It was there Holroyd picked me up and took me to Milady. She decided I should have a job, and made Sir John give me one, which he didn’t want to do.”

  “Magnus, do please, I implore you, stop being mysterious. You know very well you mean to tell us all about it. You want to, and furthermore, you must. Do it to please me.” Liesl was laying herself out to be irresistible, and I have never known a woman who was better at the work.

  “Do it for the sake of the subtext,” said Ingestree, who was also making himself charming, like a naughty boy who has been forgiven.

  “All right. So I shall. My show under the shadow of Irving was not extensive. The buskers I was working with wouldn’t give me much of a chance, but they allowed me to draw a crowd by making some showy passes with cards. It was stuff I had learned long ago with Willard—shooting a deck into the air and ma
king it slide back into my hand like a beautiful waterfall, and that sort of thing. It can be done with a deck that is mounted on a rubber string, but I could do it with any deck. It’s simply a matter of hours of practice, and confidence that you can do it. I don’t call it conjuring. More like juggling. But it makes people gape.

  “One day, a week or two after I had begun in this underpaid, miserable work, I noticed a man hanging around at the back of the crowd, watching me very closely. He wore a long overcoat, though it wasn’t a day for such a coat, and he had a pipe stuck in his mouth as if it had grown there. He worried me because, as you know, my passport wasn’t all it should have been. I thought he might be a detective. So as soon as I had done my short trick, I made for a near-by alley. He was right behind me. ‘Hi!’ he shouted, ‘I want a word with you.’ There was no getting away, so I faced him. ‘Are you interested in a better job than that?’ he asked. I said I was. ‘Can you do a bit of juggling?’ said he. Yes, I could do juggling, though I wouldn’t call myself a juggler. ‘Any experience walking a tightrope?’ Because of the work I had done with Duparc I was able to say I could. ‘Then you come to this address tomorrow morning at twelve,’ said he, and gave me a card on which was his name—James Holroyd—and he had scribbled a direction on it.

  “Of course I was there, next day at noon. The place was a pub called The Crown and Two Chairmen, and when I asked for Mr Holroyd I was directed upstairs to a big room, in which there were a few people. Holroyd was one of them, and he nodded to me to wait.

  “Queer room. Just an empty space, with some chairs piled in a corner, and a few odds and ends of pillars, and obelisks and altar-like boxes, which I knew were Masonic paraphernalia, also stacked against a wall. It was one of those rooms common enough in London, where lodges met, and little clubs had their gatherings, and which theatrical people rented by the day for rehearsal space.

  “The people who were there were grouped around a man who was plainly the boss. He was short, but by God he had presence; you would have noticed him anywhere. He wore a hat, but not as I had ever seen a hat worn before. Willard and Charlie were hat men, but somehow their hats always looked sharp and dishonest—you know, too much down on one side? Holroyd wore a hat, a hard hat of the kind that Winston Churchill made famous later; a sort of top hat that had lost courage and hadn’t grown the last three inches, or acquired any gloss. As I came to know Holroyd I sometimes wondered if he had been born in that hat and overcoat, because I hardly ever saw him without both. But this little man’s hat looked as if it should have had a plume in it. It was a perfectly ordinary, expensive felt hat, but he gave it an air of costume, and when he looked from under the brim you felt he was sizing up your costume, too. And that was what he was doing. He took a look at me and said, in a kind of mumble, ‘That’s your find, eh? Doesn’t look much, does he, mph? Not quite as if he might pass for your humble, what? Eh, Holroyd? Mph?’

  “ ‘That’s for you to say, of course,’ said Holroyd.

  “ ‘Then I say no. Must look again. Must be something better than that, eh?’

  “ ‘Won’t you see him do a few tricks?’

  “ ‘Need I? Surely the appearance is everything, mph?’

  “ ‘Not everything, Guvnor. The tricks are pretty important. At least the way you’ve laid it out makes the tricks very important. And the tightrope, too. He’d look quite different dressed up.’

  “ ‘Of course. But I don’t think he’ll do. Look again, eh, like a good chap?’

  “ ‘Whatever you say, Guvnor. But I’d have bet money on this one. Let him flash a trick or two, just to see.’

  “The little man wasn’t anxious to waste time on me, but I didn’t mean to waste time either. I threw a couple of decks in the air, made them do a fancy twirl, and let them slip back into my hands. Then I twirled on my toes, and made the decks do it again, in a spiral, which looks harder than it is. There was clapping from a corner—the kind of soft clapping women produce by clapping in gloves they don’t want to split. I bowed toward the corner, and that was the first time I saw Milady.

  “It was a time when women’s clothes were plain; the line of the silhouette was supposed to be simple. There was nothing plain or simple about Milady’s clothes. Drapes and swags and swishes, and scraps of fur everywhere, and the colours and fabrics were more like upholstery than garments. She had a hat, like a witch’s, but with more style to it, and some soft stuff wrapped around the crown dangled over the brim to one shoulder. She was heavily made up—really she wore an extraordinary amount of make-up—in colours that were too emphatic for daylight. But neither she nor the little man seemed to be meant for daylight; I didn’t realize it at the time, but they always looked as if they were ready to step on the stage. Their clothes, and manner and demeanour all spoke of the stage.”

  “The Crummles touch,” said Ingestree. “They were about the last to have it.”

  “I don’t know who Crummles was,” said Magnus. “Ramsay will tell me later. But I must make it clear that these two didn’t look in the least funny to me. Odd, certainly, and unlike anything I had ever seen, but not funny. In fact, ten years later I still didn’t think them funny, though I know lots of people laughed. But those people didn’t know them as I did. And as I’ve told you I first saw Milady when she was applauding my tricks with the cards, so she looked very good to me.

  “ ‘Let him show what he can do, Jack,’ she said. And then to me, with great politeness, ‘You do juggling, don’t you? Let us see you juggle.’

  “I had nothing to juggle with, but I didn’t mean to be beaten. And I wanted to prove to the lady that I was worth her kindness. So with speed and I hope a reasonable amount of politeness I took her umbrella, and the little man’s wonderful hat, and Holroyd’s hat and the soft cap I was wearing myself, and balanced the brolly on my nose and juggled the three hats in an arch over it. Not easy, let me tell you, for all the hats were of different sizes and weights, and Holroyd’s hefted like iron. But I did it, and the lady clapped again. Then she whispered to the little man she called Jack.

  “ ‘I see what you mean, Nan,’ he said, ‘but there must be some sort of resemblance. I hope I’m not vain, but I can’t persuade myself we can manage a resemblance, mphm?’

  “I put on a little more steam. I did some clown juggling, pretending every time the circle went round that I was about to drop Holroyd’s hat, and recovering it with a swoop, and at last keeping that one in the air with my right foot. That made the little man laugh, and I knew I had had a lucky inspiration. Obviously Holroyd’s hat was rather a joke among them. ‘Come here, m’boy,’ said the boss. ‘Stand back to back with me.’ So I did, and we were exactly of a height. ‘Extraordinary,’ said the boss; ‘I’d have sworn he was shorter.’

  “ ‘He’s a little shorter, Guvnor,’ said Holroyd, ‘but we can put him in lifts.’

  “ ‘Aha, but what will you do about the face?’ said the boss. ‘Can you get away with the face?’

  “ ‘I’ll show him what to do about the face,’ said the lady. ‘Give him his chance, Jack. I’m sure he’s lucky for us and I’m never wrong. After all, where did Holroyd find him?’

  “So I got the job, though I hadn’t any idea what the job was, and nobody thought to tell me. But the boss said I was to come to rehearsal the following Monday, which was five days away. In the meantime, he said, I was to give up my present job, and keep out of sight. I would have accepted that, but again the lady interfered.

  “ ‘You can’t ask him to do that, Jack,’ she said. ‘What’s he to live on in the meantime?’

  “ ‘Holroyd will attend to it,’ said the little man. Then he offered the lady his arm, and put his hat back on his head (after Holroyd had dusted it, quite needlessly) and they swept out of that grubby assembly room in the Crown and Two Chairmen as if it were a palace.

  “I said to Holroyd, ‘What’s this about lifts? I’m as tall as he is; perhaps a bit taller.’

  “ ‘If you want this job, m’boy, you’ll be short
er and stay shorter,’ said Holroyd. Then he gave me thirty shillings, explaining that it was an advance on salary. He also asked for a pledge in return, just so that I wouldn’t make off with the thirty shillings; I gave him my old silver watch. I respected Holroyd for that; he belonged to my world. It was clear that it was time for me to go, but I still didn’t know what the job was, or what I was letting myself in for. That was obviously the style around there. Nobody explained anything. You were supposed to know.

  “So, not being a fool, I set to work to find out. I discovered downstairs in the bar that Sir John Tresize and his company were rehearsing above, which left me not much wiser, except that it was some sort of theatricals. But when I went back to the buskers and told them I was quitting, and why, they were impressed, but not pleased.

  “ ‘You gone legit on us,’ said the boss of the group, who was an escape-man, like the one we saw this morning. ‘You and your Sir John-bloody-Tresize. Amlet and Oh Thello and the like of them. If you want my opinion, you’ve got above yourself, and when they find out, don’t come whinin’ back to me, that’s all. Don’t come whinin’ bloody back here.’ Then he kicked me pretty hard in the backside, and that was the end of my engagement as an open-air entertainer.

  “I didn’t bother to resent the kick. I had a feeling something important had happened to me, and I celebrated by taking a vacation. Living for five days on thirty shillings was luxury to me at that time. I thought of augmenting my money by doing a bit of pocket-picking, but I rejected the idea for a reason that will show you what had happened to me; I thought such behaviour would be unsuitable to one who had been given a job because of the interference of a richly-dressed lady with an eye for talent.

  “The image of the woman called Nan by Sir John Tresize dominated my mind. Her umbrella, as I balanced it on my nose, gave forth an expensive smell of perfume, and I could recall it even in the petrol stink of London streets. I was like a boy who is in love for the first time. But I wasn’t a boy; it was 1930, so I must have been twenty-two, and I was a thorough young tough—side-show performer, vaudeville rat, pickpocket, dope-pusher, a forger in a modest way, and for a good many years the despised utensil of an arse-bandit. Women, to me, were members of a race who were either old and tougher than the men who work in carnivals, or the flabby, pallid strumpets I had occasionally seen in Charlie’s room when I went to rouse him to come to the aid of Willard. But so far as any sexual association with a woman went, I was a virgin. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I was a hoor from the back and a virgin from the front, and so far as romance was concerned I was as pure as the lily in the dell. And there I was, over my ears in love with Lady Tresize, professionally known as Miss Annette de la Borderie, who cannot have been far off sixty and was, as Ingestree is eager to tell you, not a beauty. But she had been kind to me and said she would show me what to do about my face—whatever that meant—and I loved her.