The Prestige

5

Some years ago, a magician (I believe it was Mr David Devant) was reported as saying: “Magicians protect their secrets not because the secrets are large and important, but because they are so small and trivial. The wonderful effects created on stage are often the result of a secret so absurd that the magician would be embarrassed to admit that that was how it was done.”

There, in a nutshell, is the paradox of the stage magician.

The fact that a trick is ‘spoiled" if its secret is revealed is widely understood, not only by magicians but by the audiences they entertain. Most people enjoy the sense of mystery created by the performance, and do not want to ruin it, no matter how curious they feel about what they seem to have witnessed.

The magician naturally wishes to preserve his secrets, so that he may go on earning his living from them, and this is widely recognized. He becomes, though, a victim of his own secrecy. The longer a trick is part of his repertoire, and the more often it is successfully performed, and by definition the larger the number of people he has deceived with it, then the more it seems to him essential to preserve its secret.

The effect grows larger. It is seen by many audiences, other magicians copy or adapt it, the magician himself will let it evolve, so that his presentation changes over the years, making the trick seem more elaborate or more impossible to explain. Through all this the secret remains. It also remains small and trivial, and as the effect grows so the triviality seems more threatening to his reputation. Secrecy becomes obsessive.

So to the real subject of this.

I have spent my lifetime guarding my secret by appearing to hobble (I am alluding to Ching Ling Foo, not, of course, writing literally). I am now of an age, and, frankly, of an earned wealth, where performing on stage has lost its golden allure. Am I therefore to limp figuratively for the rest of my natural life so as to preserve a secret few know exists, and even fewer care about? I think not, and so I have set out at last to change the habit of a lifetime and write about The New Transported Man. This is the name of the illusion that has made me famous, said by many to be the greatest piece of magic ever performed on the international stage.

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.

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 roles 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 at 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!

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 realized 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 it 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 trick that is widely performed, 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?