The art of the ventriloquist is well known: it consists in making his
auditors believe that words and sounds proceed from certain persons and
certain objects in his vicinity, while they are uttered by himself; and it
is founded on that property of sound in virtue of which the human ear is
unable to judge with any accuracy of the direction in which sounds reach
it. This incapacity of the ear is the fertile source of many of those
false judgments which impress a supernatural character upon sounds that
have a fixed locality and a physical origin.--We know of a case, where a
sort of hollow musical sound, originating within three or four feet of the
ears of two persons in bed, baffled for months every attempt to ascertain
its cause. Sometimes it seemed to issue from the roof, sometimes from a
neighbouring apartment, but never from the spot from which it really came.
Its supposed localities were carefully examined, but no cause for its
production could be ascertained. Though it was always heard by both
persons together, it was never heard when A. alone was in the apartment,
and the time of its occurrence depended on the presence of B. This
connected it with his destiny, and the imagination was not slow in turning
the discovery to its own purposes. An event, however, which might never
have occurred in the life-time of either party, revealed the real cause of
the sound, the locality of which was never afterwards mistaken.
In order to understand what part this indecision of the ear performs in
the feats of the ventriloquist, let the reader suppose two men placed
before him in the open air, at the distance of one hundred feet, and
standing close together. If they speak in succession, and if he does not
know their voices, or see their lips move, he will be unable to tell which
of them it is that speaks. If a man and a child are now placed so near the
auditor that he can distinguish, without looking at them, the direction of
the sounds which they utter, that is, whether the sound comes from the
right or the left hand person, let the man be supposed capable of speaking
in the voice of a child. When the man speaks in the language and the
accents of the child, the auditor will suppose that the child is the
speaker, although his ear could distinguish, under ordinary circumstances,
that the sound came from the man. The knowledge conveyed to him by his ear
is, in this case, made to yield to the more forcible conviction that the
language and accents of a child could come only from the child; this
conviction would be still further increased if the child should use
gestures, or accommodate his features to the childish accents uttered by
the man. If the man were to speak in his own character and his own voice,
while the child exhibited the gestures and assumed the features which
correspond with the words uttered, the auditor might be a little puzzled;
but we are persuaded that the exhibition made to the eye would overpower
his other sources of knowledge, and that he would believe the accents of
the man to be uttered by the child: we suppose, of course, that the
auditor is not allowed to observe the _features_ of the person who
speaks.
In this case the man has performed the part of a ventriloquist, in so far
as he imitated accurately the accents of the child; but the auditor could
not long be deceived by such a performance. If the man either hid his face
or turned his back upon the auditor when he was executing his imitation, a
suspicion would immediately arise, the auditor would attend more
diligently to the circumstances of the exhibition, and would speedily
detect the imposition. It is absolutely necessary, therefore, that the
ventriloquist shall possess another art, namely, that of speaking without
moving his lips or the muscles of his face: how this is effected, and how
the art is acquired, we do not certainly know; but we believe that it is
accomplished by the muscles of the throat, assisted by the action of the
tongue upon the palate, the teeth, and the inside of the lips--all of them
being movements which are perfectly compatible with the immutability of
the lips themselves, and the absolute expression of silence in the
countenance. The sounds thus uttered are necessarily of a different
character from those which are produced by the organs of speech when
unimpeded, and this very circumstance gives double force to the deception,
especially when the ventriloquist artfully presents the contrast to his
auditor by occasionally speaking with his natural voice. If he carries in
his hand those important personages Punch and Judy, and makes their
movements even tolerably responsive to the sentiment of the dialogue, the
spectator will be infinitely more disposed to refer the sounds to the
lantern jaws and the timber lips of the puppets than to the conjurer
himself, who presents to them the picture of absolute silence and repose.
Mr. Dugald Stewart, who has written an interesting article on
ventriloquism in the appendix to the third volume of the "Elements of the
Philosophy of the Human Mind," has, we think, taken a very imperfect view
of the subject. He not only doubts the fact, that ventriloquists possess
the power of fetching a voice from within, but "he cannot conceive what
aid the ventriloquist could derive in the exercise of his art from such an
extraordinary power, if it were really in his possession." He expresses
himself "fully satisfied, that the imagination alone of the spectators,
when skilfully managed, may be rendered subservient in a considerable
degree to the purposes of the ventriloquist;" and he is rather inclined to
think, that "when seconded by such powers of imitation as some mimics
possess, it is quite sufficient to account for all the phenomena of
ventriloquism of which we have heard."
From these observations it would appear, that Mr. Stewart had never
witnessed those feats of the ventriloquist where his face is distinctly
presented to the audience--a case in which he must necessarily speak
_from within_. But independent of this fact, it is very obvious that
there are many imitations, especially those of the cries of particular
animals, and of sounds of a high pitch, which cannot be performed _pleno
ore_, by the ordinary modes of utterance, but which require for their
production that very faculty, of which Mr. Stewart doubts the existence.
Such sounds are necessarily produced by the throat, without requiring the
use of the mouth and lips; and the deception actually depends on the
difference between such sounds, and those which are generated by the
ordinary modes of utterance.
The _art_ of ventriloquism, therefore, consists in the power of
imitating all kinds of sound, not only in their ordinary character, but as
modified by distance, obstructions, and other causes; and also in the
power of executing those imitations by muscular exertions which cannot be
seen by the spectators. But these powers, to whatever degree of perfection
they may be possessed, would be of no avail if it were not for the
incapacity of the ear to distinguish the directions of sounds--an
incapacity not arising from any defect in the organ itself, but from the
very nature of sound. If sound were propagated in straight lines, like
light, and if the ear appreciated the direction of the one, as the eye
does that of the other, the ventriloquist would exercise in vain all the
powers of imitation and of internal utterance. Even in the present
constitution of the ear, his art has its limits, beyond which he must be
cautious of pushing it, unless he calls to his aid another principle,
which, we believe, has not yet been tried. In order to explain this, we
shall analyze some of the most common feats of ventriloquism. When M.
Fitzjames imitated the watchman crying the hour in the street, and
approaching nearer and nearer the house, till he came opposite the window,
he threw up the window-sash, and asked the hour, which was immediately
answered in the same tone, but clearer and louder; and upon shutting the
window, the watchman's voice became less audible, and all at once very
faint, when the ventriloquist called out, in his own voice, that he had
turned the corner. Now, as the artist was stationed at the window, and as
the sound from a real watchman must necessarily have entered by the
window, the difference between the two directions was considerably less
than that which the ear is unable to appreciate. Had the ventriloquist
stood at one window, and tried to make the sound of a watchman's voice
enter _another_ window, he would have failed in his performance,
because the difference of the two directions was too great. In like
manner, when M. Alexandre introduced a boy from the street, and made him
sing from his stomach the song of Malbrook, he placed his head as near as
possible to the boy's chest, under the pretence of listening, whereas the
real object of it was to assimilate as much as possible the true and the
fictitious direction of the sounds. Had he placed the boy at the distance
of six or eight feet, the real singer would have been soon detected.
We have made several experiments with a view of determining the angle of
uncertainty, or the angle within which the ear cannot discover the
direction of sounds; but this is not easily done, for it varies with the
state of the air and of surrounding objects. If the air is perfectly pure,
and if no objects surround the sounding body, the angle of uncertainty
will be less than under any other circumstances, as the sound suffers
neither deviation nor reflection. If the sounding body is encircled with
objects which reflect sound, the echoes arrive at the ear, at short
distances, nearly at the same time with the direct sound; and as they form
a single sound, the angle of uncertainty must then be much greater, for
the sound really arrives at the ear from various quarters. The
ventriloquist, therefore, might avail himself of this principle, and
choose an apartment in which the reverberations from its different sides
multiply the directions of the sounds which he utters, and thus facilitate
his purpose of directing the imagination of his audience to the object
from which he wishes these sounds to be thought to proceed.
_Quarterly Review._
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