Authors: Christopher Priest
The idea for a new departure came to me (or I should more properly say, it came to Julia)
while I was glancing through a daily newspaper. I saw a report that more evidence had
emerged recently that life, or a form of it, continued after death. Certain psychic adepts
were able to make contact with newly deceased people, and communicate back from the
afterworld to their bereaved relatives. I read out a part of the report to Julia. She
stared at me for a moment, and I could see her mind was working.
“You don't
believe
that, do you?” she said at last.
“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 séances 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 séances 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 séances, 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 séance 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 séance 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.
15th November 1878
Yesterday and the day before were given over to séances; no problems at either, and the
clients were satisfied. I am growing concerned, however, at the possible effects of strain
on Julia, and I am thinking that I must quickly find and hire a female assistant to work
with me.
Mr Appleby, as suspected, handed in his notice after a few days. I have replaced him with
one Ernest Nugent, a strongly built man in his late twenties who until last year was a
corporal volunteer in Her Majesty's Army. I find him a bit of a rough diamond but he is
not stupid, he works all day without complaint, and already he has shown himself loyal. At
the séance two days ago (the first since our return from Southampton), I belatedly
discovered that one of the people I thought was a relative of the deceased was in fact a
reporter from a newspaper. This man was on some kind of mission to expose me as a
charlatan, but once we had realized his purpose, Nugent and I removed him quickly (but
politely) from the house.
So another precaution has to be added to this work — I must be on my guard against active
sceptics.
For indeed I
am
the sort of charlatan they seek to discredit. I am not what I say I am, but my deceptions
are harmless and, I do believe, helpful at a time of personal loss. As for the money that
changes hands the amounts are modest, and so far not a single client has complained to me
of short measure.
The rest of this month is filled with appointments, but there is a quiet patch before
Christmas. Already we have learned that these occasions are often the result of a sudden
tormented decision, not of a lengthy calculation. So we advertise, and will have to keep
advertising.
20th November 1878
Today Julia and I have interviewed five young women, all hopeful to replace Julia as my
assistant.
None was suitable.
Julia has been feeling continually sick for two weeks, but says now that this is starting
to improve. The thought of a baby son or daughter coming into our lives illumines our days.
23rd November 1878
A peculiarly unpleasant incident has occurred, and I am so engulfed in rage that I have
had to wait until now (11.25 p.m., when Julia is at last asleep) before I can trust myself
to record it with any equanimity.
We had gone to an address near the Angel, in Islington. The client was a youngish man,
recently bereaved by the death of his wife, and now having to cope with a family of three
young children, one of them barely more than a babe. This gentleman, whose name I shall
render as Mr L——, was the very first of our spiritist clients who had come to us on the
recommendation of another. For this reason, we had approached the appointment with
particular care and tact, because by now we appreciate that if we are to prosper as
spiritists then it must be by a spiral of gradually rising fees, sustained by the grateful
recommendation of satisfied clients.
We were just about to begin when a latecomer arrived. I was immediately suspicious of him,
and I say this without hindsight. None of the family seemed to know him, and his arrival
caused a feeling of nervousness in the room. I have already grown sensitive to such
impressions at the start of one of these performances.
I signalled to Julia, in our private unspoken code, that I suspected a newspaper reporter
was present, and I saw by her expression that she had come to a similar conclusion. Nugent
was standing before one of the screened-off windows, not privy to the silent language
Julia and I use with each other. I had to make a quick decision about what to do. If I
were to insist on the man's removal before the séance began, it would likely create an
unpleasant ruckus of the sort of which I already have some experience; on the other hand,
if I were to do nothing I would doubtless be exposed as a charlatan at the end of the
performance, thus probably denying me of my fee and my client of the solace he sought.
I was still trying to decide what to do when I realized that I had seen the man before. He
had been present at an earlier séance, and I remembered him because at the time his
staring at me throughout my work had been most disconcerting. Was his presence again a
coincidence? If so, what were the chances of his being bereaved twice in a short period,
and what extra chances were there that I should be called to officiate in a séance twice
in his company?
If not a coincidence, which I suspected, what was his game? Presumably he was there to
make some move against me, but he had had his chance before and had not taken it. Why not?
So went my thoughts in the extremity of the moment. I could barely concentrate on them,
such was the need to maintain the appearance of calm preparation for communion with the
departed. But my quick assessment was that on balance of probabilities I should go ahead
with the séance, and so I did. Writing this now I acknowledge that I made the wrong
decision.
For one thing, without raising a hand against me he almost ruined my performance. I was so
nervous that I could hardly concentrate on the matter in hand, to the extent that when
Julia and one of the other men present put me in the Jacoby Tie, I allowed one of my hands
to be restrained more tightly than I wanted. Inside the cabinet, thankfully away from the
baleful staring of my silent adversary's eyes I had a protracted struggle before I was
able to free my hands.