The Prestige

I had been advertising in theatrical journals for a replacement lady assistant, because my existing young woman, Georgina Harris, was planning to marry. I always dreaded the upheaval caused by the arrival of a new member of staff, especially one so important as the stage assistant. When Olive Wenscombe wrote and applied for an interview she did not seem immediately suitable, and her letter went unanswered for some time.

She was, she said in her letter, twenty-six. This was a little older than I would have liked, and she went on to describe herself as a trained danseuse who had moved over to the work of magical assistant. Many illusionists do employ dance artistes because of their fit and supple bodies, but I have always preferred to employ young women with specific magical experience, rather than those who took it up simply because a job had been offered to them at some time in the past. Nevertheless, Olive Wenscombe's letter came during one of those times when good assistants were hard to find, and so I finally made an appointment with her.

The work of magician's assistant is not one to which many people are suited. A young woman has to possess certain physical characteristics. She has to be young, of course, and if not naturally pretty then she has to have pleasing features that are capable of being made up to look pretty. In addition she has to have a slim, lithe and strong body. She has to be willing to stand, crouch, kneel or lie in confined places, often for several minutes at a time, and on release appear perfectly relaxed and unmarked by her period of enclosure. Above all, she has to be willing to endure the unusual demands and strange requests made to her by her employer, in pursuit of his illusions.

Olive Wenscombe's interview took place, as did all such, at my workshop in Elgin Avenue. Here, in opened cabinets and mirrored cubes and curtained alcoves, were laid bare many of the incidental secrets of my business. Although I never made a point of showing any of my staff exactly how a trick was worked, unless of course that knowledge was crucial to their part in it, I wanted them to understand that each trick had a rational explanation behind it and that I knew what I was doing. Some stage illusions, and some of those that I performed, used knives or swords or even firearms, and from the auditorium looked dangerous. The New Transported Man, in particular, with its explosive electrical reactions and clouds of carbon discharge, regularly scares the wits out of the front six rows at any performance! But I wanted no one who worked for me to feel at risk. The only illusion whose secret I guarded fastidiously was The New Transported Man itself, and its working was concealed even from the young woman who shared the stage with me until the moment before the illusion began.

It should be clear from this that I do not work entirely alone, nor does any modern illusionist. In addition to my stage assistants, I had working for me Thomas Elbourne, my irreplaceable ingйnieur , and two of his own young artisans, who helped him build and maintain the apparatus. Thomas had been in my employ almost from the start. Before he worked for me he had been at the Egyptian Hall, under Maskelyne.

(Thomas Elbourne knew my most guarded secret; he had to. But I trusted him; I had to. I say this as simply as possible, to convey the simplicity of my belief in him. Thomas had worked with magicians all his life, and nothing any more surprised him. There is little I know about magic today that I did not learn from him one way or the other. Yet never once, in all the years I worked with him — he retired several years ago — did he ever explicitly reveal the secret of another magician to me or to anyone else. To call his trust into question would be to question my very sanity. Thomas was a Londoner from Tottenham, a married man without children. He was many years older than me, but I never discovered exactly how many. At the time Olive Wenscombe began working for me I assume he must have been in his middle or late sixties.)