Authors: Christopher Priest
There is no need for haste. All the magic books I have read advise the novitiate not to
rush, but instead to prepare thoroughly so that one's performance has surprise as well as
skill. If they know not who you are, it adds to the mystique of what you are, and what you
are about to do.
So it is said.
I wish, and this is my only wish in this saddest of weeks, that I could use my magic to
bring Papa back to his life. A selfish wish, because it would undoubtedly help restore my
own life to where it was three days ago, but also a fervently loving wish, because I loved
my Papa and already I miss him, and regret his passing. He was forty-nine years old, and I
believe that is too young by far to be a victim of failure of the heart.
2nd April 1873
The funeral has taken place, and my father has been laid to rest. After the ceremony in
the chapel, his body was taken to the family vault, situated beneath the East Rise. The
mourners all walked in a line to the entrance to the vault, and then Henry and I, together
with the undertaker and his staff, bore the coffin underground.
Nothing had prepared me for what followed. The vault is apparently a huge natural cavern
stretching back into the hill, but it has been widened and enlarged for use as the family
tomb. It is in complete darkness, the ground underfoot is uneven and rocky, the air is
foetid, we saw several rats, and the numerous jagged shelves and ledges protrude into the
passageway causing painful collisions in the dark. We were each carrying a lantern, but
once we were at the bottom of the steps and away from the daylight they proved of little
use. The undertakers accepted all this in a professional manner, even though carrying the
casket must have been extremely difficult under the circumstances, but for my brother and
I it was a short but significant ordeal. Once we had found a suitable ledge and deposited
the coffin, the senior undertaker intoned a few scriptural words and we returned without
delay to the surface. We emerged into the bright spring morning we had left a few minutes
earlier, where the East Lawn was festooned with daffodils and the buds were bursting from
the trees around us, but for me at least the sojourn in that dark tunnel cast a shadow
across the rest of the day. I shuddered as the stout wooden portal closed, and I could not
throw off the memory of those ancient broken caskets, the dust, the smell, the lifeless
despair of the place.
Evening
An hour or so ago came the ceremony, and I use the word with the sense that it is exactly
the one I want, the
ceremony
around which the day has been built. For this, the reading of my father's will, the
interment was a mere preliminary.
We were all there, assembled in the hall beneath the main staircase. Sir Geoffrey
Fusel-Hunt, my father's solicitor, called us to silencer and with steady, deliberate hands
opened the stout brown envelope that contained the dread document, and slipped out the
folded sheets of vellum. I looked around at the others. My father's brothers and sisters
were there, with their spouses and, in some cases, their children. The men who managed the
estate and who guarded the game, patrolled the moor, protected the farms and the fishery,
stood in a small group to one side. Next to them, also clustering, the tenant farmers,
eyes wide with hope. In the centre of the semi-circular group, directly facing Sir
Geoffrey across his desk, myself and Mama, with the servants behind us. In front of us
all, standing, arms folded across his chest, central to the moment, Henry dominated the
occasion.
There were no surprises. Henry's main inheritance is of course not subject to my father's
will, nor are the hereditary rights of property. But there are freeholds to be disposed
of, portfolios of shares, amounts of cash and stocks of valuables, and, most important of
all, rights of possession, of occupation.
Mama is given the choice, for the remainder of her life, of occupying a principal wing of
the main house or total occupation of the dower house by the gate. I am allowed to remain
in the rooms I presently occupy until I finish my education or gain my majority, after
which my fate will be decided by Henry. The destiny of our personal servants is linked to
our own; the rest of the household is to stay or be disposed of as Henry sees fit.
Our life is to be unravelled.
A few cash legacies have gone to favoured retainers, but the bulk of the fortune is now
Henry’s. He made no move, showed no sign, when this was announced. I kissed Mama, then
shook hands with several of the estate managers and farmers.
Tomorrow I shall try to decide how I am to live my life, and to make this decision before
Henry can make it for me.
3rd April 1873
What am I to do? There is more than another week before I return to school, for what will
be my last term.
3rd April 1874
It seems appropriate to return to this diary after the space of a year. I remain at
Caldlow House, partly because until I am twenty-one I am in the charge of Henry, my legal
guardian, but mainly because Mama wishes me to.
I am minded by Grierson. Henry has taken a residence in London, from where it is reported
that he daily attends the House. Mama is in good health, and I walk to the dower house
every morning, which is her best time, and we speculate unprofitably about what I might be
able to do once I gain my majority.
Following Papa's death I allowed my practice of legerdemain to fall into neglect, but
about nine months ago I returned to it. Since then I have been practising intently, and
taking every opportunity to watch the performance of stage magic. For this purpose I
travel to the music halls of Sheffield or Manchester, where although the standards are
variable I do see a sufficient variety of turns to stimulate my interest. Many of the
illusions are already known to me, but at least once in every performance I see something
that excites or baffles me. After this the hunt for the secret is on. Grierson and I now
have a well-trodden path around the various magic dealers and suppliers, where, with
persistence, we eventually gain access to what I require.
Grierson, alone in our diminished household, knows of my magical interest and ambition.
When Mama speaks pessimistically of what is to become of me, I dare not tell her what I
plan, but deep inside me I feel a knot of confidence that when I am eventually cast adrift
from this half-life in Derbyshire I shall have a career to follow. The magic journals to
which I subscribe write of the immense fees a top illusionist may now command for a single
performance, not to mention the social kudos that attaches to a brilliant career on the
stage.
Already I am playing a part. I am the disinherited younger brother of a peer, down on his
luck, reduced to hand-outs from a guardian, and I trudge through my dispiriting life in
these rainy hills of Derbyshire.
I am waiting in the wings, however, because once I am of age my real life will begin!
31st December 1876
Idmiston Villas, London N
I have finally been able to get my boxes and cases from storage, and I spent a dismal
Christmas going through my old belongings, sorting out those that I no longer want, and
those I am glad to find again. This diary was one of the latter, and I have been reading
through it for the last few minutes.
I remember that once before I decided to set down the minutiae of my magical career, and
as I write this now I have the same thought. Too many gaps already exist, though. I tore
out all those pages where I described my rows with Henry, and with them went the records I
kept of my progress. I cannot be bothered to go back in memory and summarize all the
various tricks, forces, moves I learnt and practised in those days.
Also I see from my last entry, more than two and a half years ago, that I was then waiting
in dejected stupor to reach the age of twenty-one, so that Henry could throw me out of the
house. In fact, I did not wait that long, and took matters into my own hands.
So here I am, at the age of nineteen, living in rented lodgings in a respectable street in
a London suburb, a man free of his past, and, for the next two years at least (because
irrespective of where I am living Henry has to continue my allowance), free of financial
worries. I have already performed my magic once in public, but was not paid for it. (The
less said about that humiliating occasion the better.)
I have become, and shall remain, plain Mister Rupert Angier. I have turned my back on my
past. No one in this new life of mine will ever find out the truth of my birthright.
Tomorrow, being the first day of the new year, I shall summarize my magical aspirations
and perhaps set down my resolutions.
1st January 1877
The morning post has brought with it a small parcel of books from New York for which I
have been waiting for many weeks, and I have been looking through them for ideas.
I love to perform. I study the craft of using a stage, of presenting a show, of
entertaining an audience with a stream of witty or droll remarks… and I dream of laughter,
gasps of surprise, and tumults of applause. I know I can reach the top of my profession
simply by the excellence of presentation.
My weakness is that I never understand the working of an illusion until it is explained to
me. When I see a trick for the first time I am as baffled by it as any other member of the
audience. I have a poor magical imagination, and find it difficult to apply known general
principles to produce a desired effect. When I see a superb performance I am dazzled by
the shown and confounded by the unseen.
Once, in a stage performance at the Manchester Hippo drome, a magician presented a glass
carafe for all to see. He held it before his face, so that we could glimpse his features
through it; he struck it lightly with a metal rod, so that by its gentle ringing noise we
could tell it was symmetrically and perfectly made; finally, he held it upside down for a
moment so that we could see for ourselves it was empty. He then turned to his table of
props where a metal jug was in place. He poured from this, into the carafe, about half a
pint of clear water. Then, without further ado, he went to a tray of wineglasses set up on
one side of the stage and poured into each of them a quantity of red wine!
The point of this is that I already had in my possession the device that enabled me to
appear to pour water into a folded newspaper, then pour back from it a glass of milk (the
sheet of paper remaining unaccountably dry).
The principle was much the same, the presentation was different, and in admiring the
latter I lost all sight of the former.
I have spent a large amount of my monthly allowance in magic shops, where I have purchased
the secret or the device that has allowed me to add one trick or another to my steadily
expanding repertoire. It is devilish hard to discover secrets when they cannot be
purchased for cash! And even when I can, it is not always the answer, because as
competition increases so illusionists are forced to invent their own tricks. I find it
simultaneously a torment and a challenge to see such illusions performed.
Here the magic profession closes ranks on the newcomer. One day, I dare say, I shall join
those ranks myself and try to exclude newcomers, but for the present I find it vexing that
the older magicians protect their secrets so jealously. This afternoon I penned a letter
to
Prestidigitators’ Panel
, a monthly journal sold by subscription only, setting out my thoughts on the widespread
and absurd obsession with secrecy.
3rd February 1877
Every weekday morning, from 9.00 a.m. to midday, I patrol what has become a well-worn path
between the offices of the four main theatrical agencies who specialize in magic or
novelty acts. Outside the door of each one I brace myself against the inevitability of
rejection, then enter with as brave a face as I can feign, make my presence known to the
attendant who sits in the reception area, and enquire politely if any commissions might be
available to me.
Invariably, so far, the answer has been in the negative. The mood of these attendants
seems to vary, but most of the time they are courteous to me while brusquely saying no.
I know they are pestered endlessly by the likes of myself, because a veritable procession
of unemployed performers trudges the same daily path as me. Naturally I see these others
as I go about my applications, and naturally I have befriended some of them. Unlike most I
am not short of a bob or two (or at least will not be so while my allowance continues),
and so when we make tracks at lunchtime to one or another tavern in Holborn or Soho I am
able to stand a few drinks for them. I am popular for this, of course, but I do not fool
myself that it is for any other reason. I am glad of the company, and also for the more
subtle hope that through any of these hail-fellows I might one day make a contact who
might find or offer me some work.
It is a congenial enough life, and in the afternoons and evenings I have abundant time
left to myself in which to continue to practise.
And I have time enough to write letters. I have become a persistent and, I fancy, a
controversial correspondent on the subject of magic. I make a point of writing to every
issue of the magic journals I see, and try always to be acute, provocative, disputatious.
I am partly motivated by the sincere belief that there is much about the tawdry world of
magic which needs putting to rights, but also by a sense that my name will not become
known unless I spread it about in a way that makes it remembered.
Some letters I sign with my own name; others with the name I have chosen for my
professional career: Danton. The use of two names allows me a little flexibility in what I
say.
These are early days and few of my letters have so far been published. I imagine that as
they start to appear my name will soon be on the lips of many people.