In 1892, though, came the idea I had been seeking. It happened indirectly, and the seed it sowed took a long time to germinate.
A Balkan inventor by the name of Nikola Tesla came to London in the February of that year to promote certain new effects he was then pioneering in the field of electricity. A Croatian of Serbian descent, with an allegedly impenetrable foreign accent, Tesla was to deliver several lectures about his speciality to the scientific community. Such events occur fairly frequently in London, and normally I would take little notice of them. However, in this case it turned out that Mr Tesla was a controversial figure in the USA, involved in scientific disputes about the nature and application of electricity, and it ensured him widespread reporting in the newspapers. It was from these articles that I was to glean my ideas.
What I had always needed was a spectacular stage effect, partly to highlight the effect of THE TRANSPORTED MAN, and partly to mask its working. I gathered from the news reports that Mr Tesla was able to generate high voltages which could be made to flash and spark about, harmlessly and without incurring burns.
After Mr Tesla had left to return to the United States his influence remained behind him. It was not too long before London and other cities began supplying small amounts of electricity to those who could afford to buy it. Because of its revolutionary nature, electricity was often in the news, being applied to this task or solving that problem, and so on. Some time later, when I heard that Angier was mounting an imitation of THE TRANSPORTED MAN, I began to think I should develop the illusion once again. I realised that without much difficulty I could probably include electricity in my act and I began a search through the obscure stocks of London scientific dealers. With the assistance of Tommy Elbourne, my ingénieur, I eventually managed to build stage equipment for THE NEW TRANSPORTED MAN. I was to go on adding to and improving it for years afterwards, but by 1896 the new effect had permanently entered my stage show. It caused a commotion of acclaim, ringing cash tills and fruitless speculation as to my secret. My illusion worked in a blinding flash of electrical light.
20
I will backtrack a little. In October 1891 I had married Sarah Henderson, whom I had met while I was taking part in a charity show performed in a Salvation Army hostel in Aldgate. She was one of the volunteer helpers, and during the interval in our performance she had sat informally with me while we both drank tea. My card tricks had amused her, and she teasingly challenged me to perform some more for her alone, so that she might see how I did them. Because she was young and pretty I did so, and greatly enjoyed the bafflement I saw in her eyes.
However, this was not only the first time I performed magic for her, it was also the last. My skill as a prestidigitator simply became irrelevant to our feelings about each other. We became walking-out companions soon after our meeting, and it was not long before we admitted to each other that we were in love. Sarah has no background in the theatre or the music halls, and in fact was a young woman of good birth. It is a testament to her devotion to me that even after her father threatened to disinherit her, which of course he eventually did, she remained true to me.
After our marriage we moved to rented rooms in the Bayswater area of London, but we did not have long to wait before success smiled on me. In 1893 we bought the large house in St Johns Wood where we have lived ever since. In the same year our twin children, Graham and Helena, were born.
I have always kept my professional life separate from my family life. During the period I am describing I practised my profession from my office and workshop in Elgin Avenue, and when touring shows took me abroad or to remoter parts of Britain I did not take Sarah with me. When based in London, or when between shows, I lived quietly and contentedly at home with her.
I stress my contented domestic life because of what was soon to happen.
Shall I continue?
21
I think I must; yes. I suspect I know to what I am referring here.
22
I had been advertising in theatrical journals for a replacement lady assistant, because my existing young woman, Georgina Harris, was planning to marry. I always dreaded the upheaval caused by the arrival of a new member of my staff, especially one so important as the stage assistant. When Olive Wenscombe wrote and applied for an interview she did not seem immediately suitable, and her letter went unanswered for some time.
She was, she said in her letter, twenty-six. This was a little older than I should have preferred, and she went on to describe herself as a trained danseuse who had moved over to the work of magical assistant. Many illusionists do employ dance artistes because of their fit and supple bodies, but I have usually employed young women with specific magical experience, rather than those who took it up simply because a job had been offered to them. Nevertheless, Olive Wenscombe’s letter came during one of those times when good assistants were hard to find, and so I finally made an appointment with her.
The work of magician’s assistant is not one to which many people are suited. A young woman has to possess certain physical characteristics. She has to be young, of course, and if not naturally pretty then she has to have pleasing features that are capable of being made up to look pretty. In addition she has to have a slim, lithe and strong body. She has to be willing to stand, crouch, kneel or lie in confined places, often for several minutes at a time, and on release appear perfectly relaxed and unmarked by her period of enclosure. Above all, she has to be willing to endure the unusual demands and strange requests made to her by her employer, in pursuit of his illusions.
Olive Wenscombe’s interview took place, as did all such, at my workshop in Elgin Avenue. Here, in opened cabinets and mirrored cubes and curtained alcoves, were laid bare many of the incidental secrets of my business. Although I never made a point of showing any of my staff exactly how a trick was worked, unless of course that knowledge was crucial to their part in it, I wanted them to understand that each trick had a rational explanation behind it and that I knew what I was doing. Some stage illusions, and some of those that I performed, used knives or swords or even firearms, and from the auditorium looked dangerous. THE NEW TRANSPORTED MAN, in particular, with its explosive electrical reactions and clouds of carbon discharge, regularly scares the wits out of the front six rows at any performance! But I wanted no one who worked for me to feel at risk. The only illusion whose secret I guarded fastidiously was THE NEW TRANSPORTED MAN itself, and its working was concealed even from the young woman who shared the stage with me until the moment before the illusion began.
It should be clear from this that I do not work entirely alone, nor does any modern illusionist. In addition to my stage assistants, I had working for me Thomas Elbourne, my irreplaceable ingénieur, and two of his own young artisans, who helped him build and maintain the apparatus. Thomas had been in my employ almost from the start. Before he worked for me he had been at the Egyptian Hall, under Maskelyne.
(Thomas Elbourne knew my most guarded secret; he had to. But I trusted him; I had to. I say this as simply as possible, to convey the simplicity of my belief in him. Thomas had worked with magicians all his life, and nothing any more surprised him. There is little I know about magic today that I did not learn from him one way or the other. Yet never once, in all the years I worked with him – he retired several years ago – did he ever explicitly reveal the secret of another magician to me or to anyone else. To call his trust into question would be to question my very sanity. Thomas was a Londoner from Tottenham, a married man without children. He was many years older than me, but I never discovered exactly how many. At the time Olive Wenscombe began working for me I assume he must have been in his middle or late sixties.)
I decided to employ Olive Wenscombe almost as soon as she arrived. She was neither tall nor broad, but had an attractive and slim body. She held her head erect as she walked or stood, and her face had well-defined features. She was American-born, and had an accent she identified as East Coast, but had lived and worked in London for several years. I i
ntroduced her as informally as possible to Thomas Elbourne and Georgina Harris, then asked to see whatever references she might have brought with her. I generally gave references a great deal of weight when choosing an applicant, because a recommendation from a magician whose work I knew would almost certainly gain the applicant the job. Olive had brought two such references with her. One was from a magician working the resort towns of Sussex and Hampshire, whose name I did not recognise, but the other was from Joseph Buatier de Kolta, one of the greatest living performers. I was, I admit, impressed. I quietly passed de Kolta’s letter to Thomas Elbourne, and watched his expression.
‘How long did you work for Monsieur de Kolta?’ I asked her.
‘Only for five months,’ she said. ‘I was hired for a tour of Europe, and he let me go at the end of it.’
‘So I see.’
After that, employing her was something of a formality, but even so I felt I had to subject her to the usual tests. It was for these that Georgina had come along to the audition, as it would not be right to ask any applicant, even one as experienced as Olive Wenscombe, to demonstrate her abilities without the presence of a chaperone.
‘Did you bring a rehearsal costume with you?’ I said.
‘Yes, sir, I did.’
‘Then if you would be so kind—’
A few minutes later, wearing a body-hugging costume, Olive Wenscombe was led by Thomas to a few of our cabinets, and asked to take up position inside one. The production of a living, healthy young woman from what appears to be an empty cabinet is one of the traditional stand-bys of magic. To bring off the effect, the assistant has to insinuate herself into a concealed compartment, and the smaller this compartment can be the more surprising the effect of the illusion. Careful choice of a voluminous costume, and one that is made of bright colours and has glittery ribbons sewn into the fabric, to catch and reflect the limelight, will enhance the mystery. It was obvious to us all that Olive was well versed in secret compartments and panels. Thomas took her first to our PALANQUIN (which even by that time we rarely used in the act, since the trick had become so well known), and she knew exactly where the hidden compartment was and promptly climbed into it.
Thomas and I next asked her to essay the illusion known as VANITY FAIR, in which a young woman is apparently made to pass through a solid mirror. This is not a difficult illusion to perform, but it does require agility and quickness of movement on the part of the girl. Although Olive said she had not taken part in it before, once we had explained the mechanism she showed she could wriggle through with commendable speed.
There remained only the need to test her for physical size, although by this time I think both Thomas and I would have rebuilt some of the apparatus for her had she proved too large. We need not have worried. Thomas placed her inside the cabinet used in the illusion called THE DECAPITATED PRINCESS (a notoriously tight fit for most assistants, and requiring several minutes of uncomfortable immobility), but she was able to climb in and out smoothly, and said she would not find it distressing to be kept inside during a performance.
Sufficient to say that Olive Wenscombe proved herself most suitable by all the usual tests, and as soon as these preliminaries were concluded I retained her at the customary wage. Within a week I had trained her to perform in all the illusions in my repertoire where she would be needed. In due course, Georgina left to marry her beau, and Olive took her place as my full-time assistant.
23
How neat it all seems when I write it down, how calm & professional! Now I have written the ‘official’ version of Olive, let me under our Pact add the ineradicable truth, the truth I have so far concealed from all those who matter most. Olive nearly made a fool of me, & the true account must be appended.
Georgina wasn’t present at the audition, of course. Nor was I. Tommy Elbourne was there, but as always he kept out of the way. She & I were effectively alone in my workshop.
I asked Olive about a costume, & she said she hadn’t brought one. She looked me straight in the eye when she said this, & there was a long silence while I thought about what that meant & what she must think about what it meant. No young woman applying for the job would expect to be hired without being measured or fitted or tried out in some way. Applicants always brought a rehearsal costume.
Well, Olive apparently had not. Then she said, ‘I don’t need a costume, honey.’
‘There is no chaperone present, my dear,’ I said.
‘I guess you can put up with that!’ she said.
She promptly took off her outer clothes, & what she was wearing beneath was of the boudoir; she was left in garments that were immodest, loose-fitting & prone to accidents. I took her to the PALANQUIN, where although she obviously knew what it was & where she had to conceal herself, she asked me to help her climb inside. This required much intimate handling of her semi-clad body! The same happened when I showed her the mechanism of VANITY FAIR. Here she pretended to stumble as she came through the trap, & fell into my arms. The rest of the interview was conducted on the couch at the back of the workshop. Tommy Elbourne left quietly, without either of us noticing. He was not there afterwards, anyway.
The rest is substantially correct. I took her on as my assistant, & she learned how to operate all the illusions in which I needed her.
24
My performance always opens with the CHINESE LINKING RINGS. It is a routine which is a pleasure to work, and audiences love to watch it, no matter if they have seen it before. The rings gleam brightly in the limelight, they jingle metallically against each other, the rhythmic movements of the prestidigitator’s hands and arms and the gentle linking and unlinking of the rings seem almost to Mesmerise the audience. It is a trick impossible to see through, unless you are standing a few inches away from the performer and are able to snatch the rings away from him. It always charms, always creates that electrifying sense of mystery and miracle.
With this accomplished I roll forward the MODERN CABINET, which has been standing upstage. A yard or so from the footlights I rotate the cabinet to show both sides and the back. I make sure that I am seen to pass behind it, to that the audience may glimpse my feet through the gap between the stage and the floor of the cabinet. They have seen that no one was clinging to the back of the cabinet, and now they can satisfy themselves that no one may be secreted beneath it. When I fling open the door to reveal the interior, then step inside to release the catch that holds the rear panel in place, the audience can see right through from front to back. They see me pass through, likewise from front to back, and close the back wall once more. The door hangs open, and while I am apparently busy behind the cabinet they take their chance to peer more intently at the interior. There is nothing for them to see: the cabinet is, must be, completely empty. Quickly, then, I slam the front door closed, rotate the cabinet on its castors, and throw open the door. Inside – beautiful, large, bulkily dressed, smiling and waving her arms, entirely filling the cramped interior of the cabinet – is a young woman. She steps down, takes her bow to thunderous applause and leaves the stage.
I roll the cabinet to the side of the stage, whence it is quietly retrieved by Thomas Elbourne.
So to the next. This is less spectacular, but involves two or three members of the audience. Every magic act includes a few moments with a pack of cards. The magician must show his skill with sleight of hand, otherwise he runs the risk of being thought by his professional colleagues merely to be an operator of self-working machinery. I walk to the footlights, and the curtains close behind me. This is partly to create a closed, intimate atmosphere for the card tricks, but mainly so that behind them Thomas may be setting up the apparatus for THE NEW TRANSPORTED MAN.
With the cards finished, I need to break the feeling of quiet concentration, and so I move swiftly into a series of colourful productions. Flags, streamers, fans, balloons and silk scarves stream out unstoppably from my hands, sleeves and pockets, creating a bright and chaotic display all around me. My female assistant walks on
stage behind me, apparently to clear away some of the streamers, but in reality to slip me more of the compressed materials for release. By the end, the brightly coloured papers and silks are inches deep around my feet. I acknowledge the applause.
While the audience is still clapping the curtains open behind me, and in semi-darkness my apparatus for THE NEW TRANSPORTED MAN may be seen. My assistants move quickly on to the stage, and deftly clear away the coloured streamers.
I return to the footlights, face the audience and address them directly, in my fractured, French-accented English. I explain that what I am about to perform has become possible only since the discovery of electricity. The performance draws power from the bowels of the Earth. Unimaginable forces are at work, that even I do not fully comprehend. I explain that they are about to witness a veritable miracle, one in which life and death are chanced with, as in the game of dice my ancestors played to avoid the tumbril.
While I speak the stage lights brighten, and catch the polished metal supports, the golden coils of wire, the glistening globes of glass. The apparatus is a thing of beauty, but it is a menacing beauty because everyone by now has heard for themselves of some of the deadly power of the electrical current. Newspapers have carried accounts of horrible deaths and burns caused by the new force already available in many cities.
The apparatus of THE NEW TRANSPORTED MAN is designed to remind them of these appalling accounts. It carries numerous incandescent electric lamps, some of which come alight even as I speak. At one side is a large glass globe, inside which a brilliant arc of electricity fizzes and crackles excitingly. The main part of the apparatus appears, to the audience, to be a long wooden bench, three feet above the floor of the stage. They can see past it, around it, underneath it. At one end, by the arc-lit glass chamber, a small raised platform is bestrewn with dangling wires, their bare ends dangerously exposed. Above the platform is a canopy where many of the incandescent lamps are placed. At the further end is a metal cone, decorated with a spiral of smaller glowing lamps. This is mounted on a gimbals device that allows it to be swivelled in several directions. All around the main part are small concavities and shelves, where bare terminals lie in wait. The whole thing is emitting a loud humming noise, as of immense hidden energies within.