Authors: Christopher Priest
However, I cannot miss the tour. Setting aside the matter of the generous fees, I am
probably the youngest magician from Britain or Europe to have been invited to follow in
the steps of some of magic's greatest performers. The New World is the source and location
of some of the finest magicians currently in performance, and it is a magnificent
compliment to be invited to undertake this tour.
And Borden has not so far visited the USA!
10th December 1892
I had been looking forward to a quiet Christmas at home. No magic, no rehearsals, no
travelling. I wanted to submerge myself in my family, and set everything else aside. But
following a cancellation I have been offered a lucrative and irresistible two-week
residency in Eastbourne, and it is such that I might take my entire household with me. My
family shall spend Christmas at the Grand Hotel, overlooking the sea!
11th December 1892
A propitious discovery. Looking at a gazetteer this afternoon I could not help but notice
that Eastbourne is just a few miles away from Hastings, and that the two towns are linked
by a direct railway line. I think I shall spend a day or two in Hastings. I hear it is a
pleasant place to visit.
17th January 1893
All of a sudden my life is overshadowed by the immensity of the journey before me. In two
days’ time I leave for Southampton, and embark for New York City, thence to Boston and
beyond, into the American heartland. The last week has been a nightmare of packing and
preparations, and arranging for the apparatus I need with me to be dismantled, crated,
then despatched ahead of me. Nothing can be left to chance, for without my equipment I
have no stage show. A lot depends on this transatlantic adventure!
But now I have a day or two of leisure in which to prepare myself mentally and relax at
home for a while. Today I have visited London Zoo with Julia and the children, already
feeling a sense of loss because I know I shall be away from them for so long. The children
are asleep, Julia is reading in her sitting room, and in the calm of this dark January
evening, quietly in my study, I may at last record, thanks to the industrious Mr Koenig,
the fruits of my enquiries about Mr Alfred Borden.
The following are facts I have personally verified.
He was born on 8th May 1856, in the Royal Sussex Infirmary in Bohemia Road, Hastings.
Three days after his birth he and his mother, Betsy Mary Borden, returned to their house
at 105 Manor Road, where the father worked as a carpenter. The child's full name was
Frederick Andrew Borden, and according to the almoner's records his was a single birth.
Frederick Andrew Borden was not one of two identical twins at birth, so therefore neither
can he be one today.
Next I looked into the possibility of Frederick Borden having brothers of a close age to
him, and bearing a strong family resemblance. Frederick was the sixth-born child. He had
three older sisters and two older brothers, but of these one brother was eight years his
senior, and the other had died at the age of two weeks.
Using the files of the
Hastings & Bexhill Announcer
, I obtained a description of Frederick's older brother Julius (who according to the
newspaper had won a prize at school). At the age of fifteen Julius was said to have
straight blond hair. Frederick Borden is dark-haired, but there was a possibility that
Julius was the stage double, having coloured his hair. This line of enquiry came to
nothing, when I later discovered that Julius had died of consumption in 1870, when
Frederick was fourteen.
There was a younger brother too. This was Albert Joseph Borden, seventh-born into the
family, on 18th May 1858. (Albert + Frederick = Alfred? Is this how Frederick chose his
first
nom de théâtre
?)
Again, the existence of a brother whose age was reasonably close to Frederick's raised the
possibility of a double. I dug out and examined Albert's birth records at the hospital,
but I found it difficult to ascertain much more about him. However, the enterprising Mr
Koenig had suggested a visit to a photogenic portrait artiste called Charles Simpkins, who
has his studio in Hastings High Street.
Mr Simpkins greeted me cordially and was pleased to show me a selection of his
daguerreotypes. Amongst these, as Mr Koenig had hinted to me, was a studio portrait of
Frederick Borden and his younger brother. It had been taken in 1874, when Frederick was
eighteen and his brother was sixteen.
The two are clearly unalike in appearance. Frederick is tall, he has the sort of features
often referred to as “noble”, and his bearing is arrogant (all of these I have frequently
observed for myself), while Albert is much less prepossessing. He has a slack-jawed
expression; his features are puffy, and his cheeks are round; his hair is wavier than his
brother's and apparently paler in colour; and from his stance I would say he was at least
four or five inches shorter than his brother.
This portrait convinced me that Koenig was right: Frederick Borden does not have a close
relation he can use as a double.
It remains possible that he has scoured the streets of London to find a man sufficiently
like him to pass as a double, with the aid of stage make-up, but no matter what Cutter
says I have myself seen Borden's performance. Most illusionists’ doubles are only briefly
glimpsed, or they misdirect the perceptions of the audience by wearing identical costumes,
so that in the few seconds in which the double is visible he seems to be the original.
Borden, after the transformation, allows himself to be seen, and to be seen clearly. He
steps forward to the footlights, he bows, he smiles, he takes the hand of his female
assistant, he bows again, he walks to and fro. There is no question but that the man who
emerges from the second cabinet is the man who entered the first.
So it is with a certain frustrated equanimity that I am able to prepare myself for my long
journey to the New World.
I still do not know how Borden works that damnable illusion, but I do at least know that
he works it alone.
I am going to what is fast becoming the centre of the world of magic, and for two months I
shall be meeting, and perhaps working with, some of the finest illusionists in the United
States of America. There will be many there who can work out how it is done. I go to
America to build my reputation, and to amass what must certainly be reckoned as a small
fortune in fees, but I now have an extra quest.
I swear that when I return in two months I shall have Borden's secret with me. I also
swear that within a month of returning I shall be performing a superior version of the
same trick on the London stage.
21st January 1893
On board SS
Saturnia
One day out from Southampton, a vile day in the English Channel behind us, and a short
stay in Cherbourg, and now we are in the Western Approaches ploughing steadily towards
America. The ship is a magnificent vessel, coalfired, triple-stacked, equipped to house
and entertain the finest of Europe and America. My cabin is on the second deck, and I
share it with an architect from Chichester. I have not told him my own profession, in
spite of well-mannered and tentative enquiries. Already I am in pain — the pain of being
away from my family.
I see them still in my mind's eye on the rain-swept quay, waving and waving. At times like
this I yearn for the magic reality my profession seems to conjure from nowhere: 0! that I
could wave my wand, utter some mumbo jumbo, and manifest them here with me!
24th January 1893
Still on board SS
Saturnia
I have been suffering
mal de mer
, but not nearly as badly as my friend from Chichester, who last night spewed disgustingly
across our cabin floor. The poor fellow was overcome with contrition and apology, but the
deed was done. Partly as a consequence of this unenjoyable experience I have not eaten for
two days.
27th January 1893
As I write, the city of New York is clearly visible on the horizon ahead. I have arranged
a meeting with Cutter in half an hour, to make sure he has right all the arrangements for
disembarkation. No more time for diary writing!
Now the adventure begins!
13th September 1893
I am not surprised to discover that nearly eight months have elapsed since last I came to
this diary to record my life. In returning to it I am tempted, as before I have sometimes
been tempted, simply to destroy it in its entirety.
Such an act would stand as a summary of my own actions, as I have destroyed, removed or
abandoned every aspect of my life that existed when I last wrote here.
One tiny shred remains, however. When I began the diary it was with a childish earnest to
write of my entire life, no matter how it might turn out. I can no longer remember what I
thought I might actually become, by my thirty-sixth year of life, but I certainly did not
imagine this.
Julia and the children are gone. Cutter is gone. Much of my wealth is gone. My career has
withered away and gone, through apathy.
I have lost everything.
But I have gained Olivia Svenson.
I shall write little of Olivia here, as in glancing back over the pages I see I depict my
love for Julia with such enthusiasm that now I can only recoil in shame. I am old enough,
and have travelled far enough in matters of the heart, no longer to trust my emotions in
such things.
It is sufficient to say that I have left Julia so that I might be with Olivia, after I met
and fell in love with her during my American tour earlier this year. I met Olivia at a
reception given in my honour in the fine city of Boston, Massachusetts, where she
approached me and made her admiration known, in the way many women have approached me in
the past. (I record this without vanity.) Perhaps it was because I was so far from home,
and ironically so lonely without my family, that for once the forthright intention was one
I could not resist. Olivia, then working as a
danseuse
, joined my party. When I left Boston she remained with us, and thereafter we travelled
together. More than this, within a week or two she was working on stage with me as my
assistant, and has returned with me to London.
Cutter did not care for this, and although he saw out the tour we parted immediately on
our return.
As, inevitably, did Julia and I. Sometimes, even now, I lie awake at night to marvel at
the madness of my sacrifice. Once Julia meant the very world to me, and indeed she helped
build the world I inhabit today. My children, my three helpless and innocent children, are
nothing less than victims of the same sacrifice. All I can say is that my madness is the
madness of love; Olivia blinds me to every other feeling that is not passion for her.
So I cannot bring myself to write down, even in the privacy of this journal, what was
said, done and suffered at that time. Much of the saying and doing was mine, while all the
suffering was Julia’s.
I now support Julia in a household of her own, where to maintain appearances she lives the
life of a widow. She has the children with her, she has her material needs taken care of,
and she has never to see me again if that should be what she wants. Indeed, were I to be
seen at her house the appearances would be betrayed, so I have perforce become a dead man.
I can never meet my children in their own house again, and have to make do with the
occasional excursion with them. Naturally, I blame only myself for this predicament.
Julia and I meet briefly on such occasions, and her sweetness of nature wrenches at my
heart. But there is no going back. I have made my bed and now I lie in it. When I manage
to close my mind to the family I have lost I am a happy man. I expect no favourable
judgement of myself. I know I have wronged my wife.
I have always tried never to hurt the people around me. Even in my dealings with Borden I
have shrunk from causing him pain or danger, preferring to take revenge by irritating or
embarrassing him. But now I find I have caused the greatest hurt of all, to the four
people who meant the most to me. At the risk of humbug, I can only aver that I shall never
do anything like this again.
14th September 1893
My career struggles towards a new version of stability. In the upheavals of the weeks
following my return from the United States, I let go most of the bookings Unwin had taken
while I was away. I had, after all, returned from the tour with a tidy sum in hand, so I
felt that I could survive for some time without having to work.
This diary entry is to record, though, that I feel at last I can emerge from the hole of
misery and lethargy into which I declined, and I am ready to return to the stage. I have
instructed Unwin to find me bookings, and my career may resume.
To celebrate the decision, Olivia and I went this afternoon to the premises of a
theatrical costumier, where she chose, and was measured for, her new stage outfit.
1st December 1893
In my appointments book I have a thirty-minute Christmas show that I am to perform for a
school of orphans. Other than that, my book is empty. 1894 looms up, bereft of work. Since
the end of September I have earned only £18 18s.
Hesketh Unwin speaks of a whispering campaign against me. He warns me to disregard it,
because the success of my tour of America is well known and it is easy to cause jealousy.
I am disturbed by this news. Is Borden behind it?
Olivia and I have been discussing a return to spiritism, to keep body and soul together,
but so far I am thinking of it only as a last-ditch resort.
Meanwhile, I occupy my days with practice and rehearsal. A magician can never practise
enough, because every moment spent will improve his performance. So I toil in my workshop,
usually alone, but sometimes with Olivia, and rehearse until I feel sick with preparation.
Although my skill with prestidigitation increases, sometimes, in my darker moments, I do
wonder why I am continuing to rehearse at all.