Christopher Priest - The Prestige

"I take it seriously," I confirmed. "After all, there are an increasing number of people who have made contact. I treat evidence as it arises. You must not ignore what people say."

"Rupert, you cannot be serious!" she cried.

I continued oafishly, "But these sйances have been investigated by scientists with the highest academic qualifications."

"Am I to believe I am hearing you properly? You, whose very profession is deception!" At this I began to see the argument she was making, but still I could not forget the testimony from (for instance) Sir Angus Johns, whose endorsement of the existence of the spirit world I had just read in the newspaper. "You are always saying," my beloved Julia continued, "that the easiest people to deceive are those who are the best educated. Their intelligence blinds them to the simplicity of magic secrets!"

At last I had it.

"So you are saying these sйances are… ordinary illusions?"

"What else could they be?" she said triumphantly. "This is a new enterprise, my dear. We must be part of it."

And so, I think, our departure is to be into the world of spiritism. In recording this exchange with Julia, I appreciate that it must make me seem stupid, so slow was I to realize what she was saying, but it illustrates my perpetual shortcoming. I have always had difficulty understanding magic until the secret is pointed out to me.

15th July 1878

It has happened that two of the letters I wrote to magic journals at the end of last year have appeared this week. I am a little disconcerted to see them! A lot has changed in my life since then. I remember drafting one of the letters, for example, the day after I discovered the truth about Drusilla MacAvoy; as I read my words now I remember that dreary December day in my poorly heated lodgings, sitting at my desk and venting my feelings on some hapless magician who had been whimsically reported, in the journal, as wishing to set up some kind of bank in which magical secrets would be stored and protected. I realize now that it was one of those comments made half in jest, but there is my letter, in the full spate of tedious seriousness, castigating the poor fellow for it.

And the other letter, just as embarrassing now to behold, and one for which I cannot even recall mitigating circumstances in which I might have written it.

All this has reminded me of the state of emotional bitterness in which I had lived until I met dear Julia.

31st August 1878

We have attended a total of four sйances, and know what is involved. The trickery is generally of a low standard. Perhaps the recipients are in such a state of distress that they would be receptive to almost anything. Indeed, on one of these unfortunate occasions the effects were so patently unconvincing that self-willed credulousness could be the only explanation.

Julia and I have spent much time discussing how we might go about this, and we have decided that the best and only way is to think of our efforts as professional magic, performed to the highest standards. There are already too many charlatans doing the rounds in spiritism, and I have no wish to become one more of them.

This endeavour is for me a means to an end, a way of making and perhaps accumulating a little money until I can support myself in a theatrical career.

The illusions involved in a sйance are simple in nature, but already we have seen ways of elaborating them a little to make them seem more supernatural in effect. As we found with our mentalist act, we will learn by experience, and so we have already drafted and paid for our first advertisement in one of the London gazettes. We shall charge modestly at first, partly because we can afford to do so while we learn, and partly so as to ensure as many commissions as possible.

I am already in receipt of, and therefore spending, my last month's allowance. Three weeks from now I shall be entirely self-sufficient, whether I like it or not.

9th September 1878

Our advertisement has elicited fourteen enquiries! As we offered our services at two guineas a time, and the advertisement cost me 3s 6d, we are already making a profit!

As I write this, Julia is drafting letters of response, trying to arrange a schedule of steady appointments for us.

All this morning I have been practising a technique known as the Jacoby Rope Tie. This is a technique in which a magician is tied to a plain wooden chair with an ordinary rope, yet which still allows an escape. With a minimum of supervision from the illusionist's assistant (Julia, in my case), any number of volunteers may tie, knot and even seal the rope, yet still permit escape. The performer, once hidden inside a cabinet, can not only release himself enough to perform apparent miracles within the cabinet, but can afterwards return to his bonds, to be found, checked and released by the same volunteers who restrained him.

This morning I was twice unable to free one of my arms. Because nothing must be left to chance, I shall devote the rest of this afternoon and evening to further rehearsal.

20th September 1878

We have our two guineas, the client was literally sobbing with gratitude, and contact, I modestly say, was briefly made with the dead.

However, tomorrow, which also happens to be my twenty-first birthday, and the day in which my adult life commences in every way, we have to conduct a sйance in Deptford, and we have much to prepare!

Our first mistake yesterday was to be punctual. Our client and her friends were waiting for us, and as we entered the house and tried to set up our equipment they were watching us. None of this must be allowed to happen again.

We need physical assistance. Yesterday we rented a cart to convey us to the address, but the carter was totally unwilling to help us carry our apparatus into the house (which meant that Julia and I had to do it alone, and some of it is heavy and most of it bulky). When we left the client's house the damned carter had not waited for us as instructed, and I was obliged to stand with all our magical apparatus in the street outside the house we had just left, while Julia went to find a replacement.

And we must never again depend on being able to find in situ the domestic furniture we need for some of our effects. Today we were lucky; there was a table we could use, but we cannot chance that next time!

Many of these improvements have already been arranged. I have today purchased a horse and cart! (The horse will have to be kept temporarily in the small yard behind my workshop until a proper stable can be rented.) And I have hired a man to drive the cart and to help us in and out with all our stuff. Mr Appleby might not be suitable in the long term (I was hoping to find a man closer to my own age, who would be physically strong), but for the time being he is a great improvement over that whey-faced churl of a carter who let us down yesterday.

Our expenses are increasing. For a mentalist act we required only ourselves, two good memories and a blindfold; to become spiritists requires us to make outlays that threaten to overwhelm our potential earnings. Last night I lay awake a long time, thinking of this, wondering how much more expense will follow.

Now we must travel to Deptford for our next! Deptford is one of the more inaccessible parts of London from here, being not only beyond the East End hut on the far side of the river too. To get there in good time means we must leave at dawn. Julia and I have agreed that in future we shall only accept commissions from people who live within reasonable distance of us, otherwise the work is altogether too hard, the day is too long, the financial rewards too small for what we have to do.

2nd November 1878

Julia is with child! The baby is expected next June. With all the excitement this has caused we have cancelled a few of our appointments, and tomorrow we are departing to Southampton, so as to take the news to Julia's mother.