The Prestige

17th February 1901

Last night I safely crossed the aether from the stage of the Trocadero to the royal box. The equipment worked perfectly.

But the audience did not applaud because it did not see what was happening! When finally the applause came it was more bemused than enthusiastic.

The trick needs a stronger build-up, a greater sense of danger. And the point of arrival must be picked out with a spotlight, to draw attention to my position as I materialize. I have talked to Adam about it, and he suggests, ingeniously, that I might be able to rig up an electrical spur from the apparatus so that turning on the light is not left to a stagehand but is commanded by me from the stage. Magic always improves.

We perform again on Tuesday at the same theatre.

I have left the best to last — I was able to disguise completely the shock of the impact on me. Both Julia, who saw the show from the auditorium, and Adam, who was watching from the rear of the stage through a small flap in the box screen, say my recovery was almost flawless. In this case it works to my advantage that the audience was not fully attentive, because only these two noticed the single weakness that occurred (I took one inadvertent step backwards).

For myself, I can say that practice with the apparatus has meant the terrible shock is not nearly as terrible as before, and that it has been getting slightly better each time I try it. I can foresee that in a month or so I will be able to bear the effect with outward indifference.

I also note that the consequent gloom I suffer is much less than after my first attempts.

23rd February 1901

In Derbyshire

My performance on Tuesday, much improved after the lessons of the weekend, gained me a laudatory review in The Stage , an outcome more to my favour than anything else I can imagine! On the train yesterday Julia and I read and re-read the words to each other, glorying in the undoubted effect they will have on my career. By our temporary exile here in Derbyshire we will not learn of tangible results until we are back in London early next week, when we have finished here. I can wait contented. The children are with us, the weather is cold and brilliant, and the moorland scenery is ravishing us with its muted colours.

I feel I am at last approaching the peak years of my career.

2nd March 1901

In London

I have an unprecedented thirty-five confirmed bookings in my appointments diary, accepted for the period of the next four months. Three of these are for shows in my own stage name, and one of these is to be called The Great Danton Entertains ; in seventeen theatres I shall top the bill; the remainder of the dates amply repay in money what they do not offer in prestige.

With this richness of choice I have been able to demand details of technical specifications of the backstage area before accepting, as well as forcing through compliance with my need to box the stage. I have made it a standard term of contract that I am supplied with an accurate plan of the auditorium, as well as being given firm undertakings about the steadiness and reliability of the electrical supply. In two cases, the theatre managements are so anxious to attract me to their houses that they have guaranteed to convert over to electricity in advance of my show.

I shall be roaming the country. Brighton, Exeter, Kidderminster, Portsmouth, Ayr, Folkestone, Manchester, Sheffield, Aberystwyth, York, all these and many more will greet me on my first tour, as well as the capital itself, where I have several dates.

In spite of the travelling (which will be in first-class trains and carriages and paid for by others), the schedule is leisurely within reason, and as my little entourage crisscrosses the country we shall have abundant opportunity to make our necessary visits to Caldlow House.

The agent is already speaking of foreign tours, with perhaps yet another trip to the USA in the offing. (There would be certain extra problems here, but none is beyond the wit of a magician in his prime!)

It is all extremely satisfactory, and I hope I may be forgiven for recording it in a state of unqualified self- confidence.

10th July 1901

In Southampton

I am in the middle of a week's run at the Duchess Theatre here in Southampton. Julia came down to visit me yesterday, bringing with her at my request my portmanteau of papers and files, and as I therefore have access to this diary it seems like a good moment to make one of my periodic entries.

I have been continually revising and rehearsing In a Flash for some months, and it is now more or less a perfected skill. All my earlier hopes for it have come to fruition. I can pass through the aether without registering any reaction to the physical traumas I endure. The transition is smooth and seamless, and from the point of view of the audience impossible to explain.

Nor are the mental aftereffects, which so scourged me at the outset, a problem any more. I suffer no agonies of depression, or self-doubt. To the contrary (and I confide this to no one, and record it in no other document than in this secret and lockable diary), the wrenching apart of my body has become a pleasure to which I am almost addicted. At first I was disheartened by the imaginings of death, of living in an afterlife, but now I nightly experience my transmission as a rebirth, a renewal of self. In the early days I was concerned by the many times I should have to perform the trick to keep in practice, but now as soon as I have completed one performance I begin to crave the next.

Three weeks ago, during a temporary break in my round of engagements, I erected the Tesla equipment in my workshop and put myself through the process. Not to try out new performance techniques, not to perfect existing ones, but purely for the physical pleasure of the experience.

Disposal of the prestige materials produced at each show is still a problem, but after all these weeks we have developed a few routines so that the job is done with a minimum of fuss.

Most of the improvements I have made have been in the area of performance technique. My error at first was to assume that the sheer brilliance of the effect would be enough to dazzle my audiences. What I was neglecting was one of the oldest axioms of magic, that the miracle of the trick must be made clear by the presentation. Audiences are not easily misled, so the magician must provoke their interest, hold it, then confound every expectation by performing the apparently impossible.

By supplementing Tesla's apparatus with a range of magical effects and techniques (most of them familiar to professional illusionists), I make my presentation of In a Flash intriguing, more than a little terrifying to behold, and ultimately baffling. I do not use every effect at every performance, and deliberately vary the show to keep myself fresh and my rivals confounded, but here are some of the ways I engage and misdirect my audience:

I allow inspection of the apparatus before it is used, and, on some occasions and in some theatres, after it has been used;

I occasionally invite a committee of witnesses onto the stage from the audience;

I am able to produce a personal object donated by a member of the audience, and identifiable by them, after I have taken it through transmission;

I allow myself to be marked with flour or chalk or something similar, so that when I appear in my chosen place it can be seen that I am, beyond any doubt, the same man who was moments earlier fully visible on the stage;

I project myself to numerous different parts of the theatre, partly depending on the physical plan of the building, partly on the degree of effect I wish to achieve. I can travel instantly to the centre or rear of the stalls, to the dress circle, to one of the loges; I can arrange for myself to be transmitted to other stage props or artefacts placed in view for just this purpose. Sometimes, for example, I arrive in a large net that has been dangling empty from the roof of the auditorium all through the show. Another popular effect is when I project myself to a sealed box or crate, placed on a stand fully in view of the audience and surrounded by a committee so that I might not enter through a hidden door or trap.

However this freedom has made me reckless. One evening, almost on a whim, I projected myself into a glass tank of water placed on the stage. This was a grave mistake, because I committed the cardinal sin of the magician — I had not rehearsed the effect and I left much of it to chance. Although my sensational and aquatically explosive arrival in the water had the audience on its feet with excitement it also nearly killed me. My lungs