The Prestige

Because the yard was prospering my parents could afford to send me to the Pelham Scholastic Academy, a dame school run by the Misses Pelham in East Bourne Street, next to the remains of the mediaeval Town Wall and close to the harbour. There, amid the persistent stench from the rotten fish which littered the beach and all the environs of the harbour, and against the constant but eloquent braying of the herring gulls, I learnt the three Rs, as well as a modicum of History, Geography and the fearsome French language. All of these were to stand me in good stead in later life, but my fruitless struggles to learn French have an ironic outcome, because in adult life my stage persona is that of a French professor.

My way to and from school was across the ridge of West Hill, which was built up only in the immediate neighbourhood of our house. Most of the way led along steep narrow paths through the scented tamarisk bushes that had colonized so many of Hastings’ open spaces. Hastings at the time was experiencing a period of development, as numerous new houses and hotels were being built to accommodate the summer visitors. I saw little of this, because the school was in the Old Town, while the resort area was being built beyond the White Rock, a former rocky spur that one day in my childhood was enthrallingly dynamited out of existence to make way for an extended seafront promenade. Despite all this, life in the ancient centre of Hastings continued much as it had done for hundreds of years.

I could say much about my father, good and bad, but for the sake of concentrating on my own story I shall confine myself to the best. I loved him, and learnt from him many of the cabinet-making techniques which, inadvertently by him, have made my name and fortune. I can attest that my father was hard-working, honest, sober, intelligent and, in his own way, generous. He was fair to his employees. Because he was not a God-fearing man, and no churchgoer, he brought up his family to act within a benign secularism, in which neither action nor inaction would occur to cause hurt or harm to others. He was a brilliant cabinet-maker and a good wheelwright. I realized, eventually, that whatever emotional outbursts our family had to endure (because there were several) his anger must have been caused by inner frustrations, although at what and of what sort I was never entirely sure. Although I was never myself a target for his worst moments, I grew up a little scared of my father but loved him profoundly.

My mother's name was Betsy May Borden (nйe Robertson), my father's name was Joseph Andrew Borden. I had a total of seven brothers and sisters, although because of infant deaths I knew only five of them. I was neither the oldest nor the youngest child, and was not particularly favoured by either parent. I grew up in reasonable harmony with most, if not all, of my siblings.

When I was twelve I was taken away from the school and placed to work as a wheelwright's apprentice in my father's yard. Here my adult life began, both in the sense that from this time I spent more time with adults than with other children, and that my own real future started to become clear to me. Two factors were pivotal.

The first was, simply enough, the handling of wood. I had grown up with the sight and smell of it, so that both were familiar to me. I had little idea how wood felt when you picked it up, or cleaved it, or sawed it. From the first moment I handled wood with purposeful intent I began to respect it, and realize what could be done with it. Wood, when properly seasoned, and hewed to take advantage of the natural grain, is beautiful, strong, light and supple. It can be cut to almost any shape; it can be worked or adhered to almost any other material. You can paint it, stain it, bleach it, flex it. It is at once outstanding and commonplace, so that when something manufactured of wood is present it lends a quiet feeling of solid normality, and so is hardly ever noticed.

In short it is the ideal medium for the illusionist.

At the yard I was given no preferential treatment as the proprietor's son. On my first day, I was sent to begin learning the business by taking on the roughest, hardest job in the yard — I and another apprentice were put to work in a saw-pit. The twelve-hour days of that (we started at 6.00 a.m. and finished at 8.00 p.m. every day, with only three short breaks for meals) hardened my body like no other work I can conceive of, and taught me to fear as well as respect the heavy cords of timber. After that initiation, which continued for several months, I was moved to the less physically demanding but more exacting work of learning to cut, turn and smooth the wood for the spokes and felloes of the wheels. Here I came into regular contact with the wheelwrights and other men who worked for my father, and saw less of my fellow apprentices.