The Prestige

I do not know what I have to do to better the illusion. Two years ago the mere suggestion that I might be prevailed upon to include it in my act was enough to double my fee. These days, it is almost an irrelevance. I am brooding long.

1st June 1897

I have been hearing rumours for some time that Borden has "improved" his switch illusion, but without further information I have taken no notice. It is years since I saw him performing it, and so yesterday evening I betook myself and Adam Wilson to a theatre in Nottingham, where Borden has been in residence for the last week. (I have a show tonight in Sheffield, but I left London a day early so that I might visit Borden at work en route .)

I disguised myself with greyed hair, cheek pads, untidy clothes, a pair of unnecessary eye-glasses, and took a seat only two rows from the front. I was just a few feet away from Borden as he performed all his tricks.

Everything is suddenly explained! Borden has substantially advanced his version of the illusion. He no longer conceals himself inside cabinets. There is no more stuff-and-nonsense with some object tossed across the stage (which I have been continuing to work with until this week). And he does not use a double.

I say with certainty: Borden does not use a double . I know everything there is to know about doubles. I can spot one as easily as I can spot a cloud in the sky. I am as sure as I can be that Borden works alone.

The first part of his act was performed before a half-drop, which only allowed the full stage set to be seen when he came to the climactic illusion. At this, the half-drop was raised and the audience saw an array of jars fuming with chemicals, cabinets adorned with coiling cables, glass tubes and pipettes, and above all a host of gleaming electrical wires. It was a glimpse into the laboratory of a scientific fiend.

Borden, in his embarrassing persona of a French academic, strolled around the equipment, lecturing the audience on the perils of working with electrical power. At certain moments he touched one wire against another, or to a flask of gas, and there came an alarming flash of light, or a loud bang. Sparks flew around him, and a mist of blue smoke began to hover about his head.

When he was ready to perform, he indicated that a roll of drums be played from the orchestra pit. He seized two heavy wires, brought them dramatically together and made an electrical connection.

In the brilliant flash that followed, the switch took place. Before our very eyes, Borden vanished from where he was standing (the two thick wires fell snaking to the stage floor, emitting a trail of dangerous fizzing sparks), and he instantly reappeared on the other side of the stage — at least twenty feet away from where he had been!

It was impossible for him to have moved across that distance by normal means. The switch was too quick, too perfect. He arrived with his hands still flexed as if gripping the wires, the ones that even at that moment were zigzagging spectacularly across the stage.

Borden stepped forward in tumultuous applause to take his bow. Behind him the scientific apparatus still frothed and fumed, a deadly backdrop that seemed, perversely, to heighten his ordinariness.

As the applause continued to thunder, he reached into his breast pocket as if to produce something. He smiled modestly, inviting the audience to urge him to one final magical production. The applause accordingly lifted, and with his smile broadening into a full beam Borden thrust his hand into the pocket and produced… a paper rose, brilliant pink in colour.

This production was a reference back to an earlier trick. In this he had allowed a lady from the audience to select one flower from a whole bunch, before wonderfully making it vanish. To see the rose reappear utterly charmed his audience. He held the little flower aloft — it was most definitely the one the lady had chosen. When he had displayed it long enough he turned it in his fingers, to reveal that part of it had been charred black, is if by some infernal force! With a significant glance towards his apparatus behind him, Borden made one more sweeping bow, then departed the stage.

The applause continued for long afterwards, and I report that my hands were clapping as loudly as anyone’s.

Why should this fellow-magician, so gifted, so endowed with skill and professionalism, pursue a sordid feud against me?

5th March 1898

I have been working hard, with little time for the diary. Once more, several months have passed between my last entry and this. Today (a weekend) I have no bookings, so I may make a brief entry.

To record that Adam and I have not included our switch illusion in my act since that night in Nottingham.