Closely connected with the subject of patter is the use of the wand,
which in my own opinion cannot be too sedulously cultivated. To the cases
in which the wand itself forms the prominent item of the trick, I devoted
a special chapter in “Later Magic.” To these therefore I need not further
refer. More important, however, is the part played by the wand from the
point of view of general utility.
In the first place, it is the only remnant of the traditional outfit
of the magician. Time was, when the regulation costume of the wizard
was a sugarloaf hat, and a robe embroidered with highly coloured mystic
symbols. Such a robe is still worn as part of their make-up, by Chung
Ling Soo and a few other Orientals, but the orthodox costume of the
latter-day wizard is ordinary evening dress. The wand alone remains; the
symbol and the professed instrument of his mystic powers, and from its
traditional connection with magic, there is a special prestige attached
to it.
For these reasons alone it would be desirable to retain the use of the
wand, but apart from them, its practical uses are many and various.
One of the first difficulties of the novice, as he comes forward to
introduce himself to his audience, is to know what to do with his hands.
He can hardly advance with hand on heart, within his vest, _à la_
Pecksniff. Held open, with arms hanging down by the sides, the hands look
too stiff, and to advance with them in his pockets would hardly be good
form. By coming forward wand in hand, he avoids these difficulties. The
hand holding it automatically assumes an easy and natural position, and
he ceases to think about the other. With the wand held in the right hand
across the body, its free end resting on the palm of the opposite hand,
he is in an ideal attitude for delivering his introductory patter. Later
on, by holding the wand in the hand, he effectually disguises the fact
that he has some object, a card, a coin, or a watch concealed therein.
If he has occasion to call attention directly to any object, the wand
forms the most natural pointer. If he finds it necessary, for some reason
connected with the trick in hand, to make a turn or half-turn away from
the spectators, the fact that he has left his wand upon the table affords
him the needful opportunity.
Lastly, if the wand is habitually used as the professed instrument of
a desired transposition or transformation, a certain portion of an
average audience gradually becomes impressed with the idea that there
really must be some occult connection between the touch of the wand
and the effect produced. There is much virtue in what may be called a
magical atmosphere, and after the wizard has proved his magical power
by performing two or three apparent impossibilities, the mind of the
spectator (though in his calmer moments, he knows, or should know,
better), is led to adopt in a greater or less degree the solution
“forced” upon him by the conjurer. Habitual use of the wand, with
apparent seriousness, goes far to create the desired atmosphere.
A good effect may be produced by “electrifying” the wand now and then,
by rubbing it with a handkerchief. The main uses of electricity are so
widely known, and so little understood by the million, that they are
quite ready to give it credit for still more marvellous possibilities.
My friend Mr. Holt Schooling, mentioned in connection with _The Secret
of the Pyramids_, finds an additional use for the wand. He uses, not one
only, but half a dozen, of different appearance, each credited with some
special magical virtue. At the outset of his show these are arranged
horizontally, one above another on pins projecting from a small sloping
blackboard. For each fresh trick the wand professedly appropriate to it
is brought into action, the one last used being at the same time replaced
on the stand. The spectators do not suspect that behind each top corner
of the board is a small servante, enabling the performer, under cover of
the change of wands, to change a pack of cards, or to effect some other
substitution necessary for the purpose of his next item.
_Verbum sap_, by all means cultivate the use of the wand, and for the
sake of effect, let it be of an elegant and distinctive character. An
office-ruler or a piece of cane would serve many of its mechanical
purposes, but would lack the prestige attached to what is, professedly,
the genuine article.
One of the most striking proofs of the extensive use and appreciation of
the wand by modern magicians is furnished by the remarkable collection of
such implements got together by Dr. Saram R. Ellison, of New York.
Dr. Ellison[20] is an eminent and popular physician, whose ruling passion
is wanting to know things, particularly things that other people don’t
know. Such being his temperament, it goes almost without saying that at
an early period of his career he became a Freemason. Having been duly
initiated into the mysteries of the ordinary lodge, and learnt all it
had to teach him, he still yearned for “more light,” and accordingly
worked his way up step by step through intervening degrees in masonry
till he reached what is known as the thirty-third degree, an order even
more exclusive than that of the Garter, and claiming to possess secrets
as to which the ordinary “blue” mason, even though he be a Past Grand
Everything, knows no more than the veriest outsider.
When in this direction there were no more mysteries left for him to
conquer, Dr. Ellison naturally turned his attention to Magic: and in
accordance with his habitual determination to know all that there is
to be known with regard to his hobby for the time being he began to
collect books upon the subject. At first there were but few to collect,
but the literature of magic has grown, and grown, and side by side with
its advance Dr. Ellison’s collection has grown larger and larger till
it numbers some hundreds of volumes. Harry Kellar, the dean of American
magicians, and himself an enthusiastic collector, yearned to possess it,
and offered the doctor for it the handsome sum of two thousand dollars,
equivalent in English money to about four hundred pounds. But Dr. Ellison
was not to be tempted. In order that the collection should be preserved
intact, he donated it, some years ago, to the New York Public Library,
also providing a fund for its upkeep and further development.
But Dr. Ellison’s interest in, and services to Magic did not end here.
He has made a collection of models, entirely the work of his own hands,
of the appliances for over sixty stage illusions. Some are of full size,
others quite miniature affairs, but one and all exact to scale. Further,
the doctor has a special affection for souvenirs of famous magicians,
past and present, especially in the shape of wands, as being the most
characteristic possession of the wizard. Accordingly, some years ago,
he began to collect wands, and he now possesses more than eighty such,
each a wand which has been habitually yielded by some more or less
famous magician. By the courtesy of Dr. Ellison I am enabled to furnish
particulars of some of them; as given in a very interesting pamphlet by
Epes W. Sargent, a well-known American writer.
The catalogue commences with a wand formerly belonging to Professor
Anderson, the once famous “Wizard of the North.” Here are found also the
wands used by the two Herrmanns (Carl and Alexander), Buatier de Kolta,
Lafayette, Martin Chapender, Carl Willmann and others who tread the stage
no more. As regards the living, there is here a memento of nearly every
English-speaking conjurer of note: besides many others of cosmopolitan
celebrity.
The wand here exhibited is not always the conventional ebony and
ivory affair, some of the specimens being indeed of a highly original
character. For instance, the wand contributed by a Hindu magician
consists of the leg bone of a sacred monkey from the temple of Hanuman,
the monkey god, at Benares. The wands of Madame Adelaide Herrmann and
Chung Ling Soo take the shape of fans. Horace Goldin’s is a cut-down
whip-handle, and those of Clement de Lion and Imro Fox are portions of
one-while walking-sticks, promoted to a nobler use. Mr. J. N. Maskelyne’s
“wand” is an ordinary file, which, from the inventor point of view, he
regards as the greatest of wonder-working appliances.
My own contribution may claim to be of exceptional interest, not merely
as being in itself a curio, but as a memento of a very remarkable
man, so remarkable, indeed, that a brief notice of his career may be
interesting. It was presented to me by Professor Palmer, a gentleman who
was not, like myself, a bogus professor, but the real thing, and withal
an exceptionally eminent man. Skill in sleight-of-hand was the least of
his accomplishments. He had a marvellous gift of tongue, there being
scarcely a European or Oriental language with which he was not thoroughly
familiar. He was born at Cambridge in 1840, and from his earliest years
showed indications of his peculiar gift for acquiring languages. As
a school-boy he made friends among the gipsies, and learned to speak
their queer language so perfectly as to deceive even those to whom it
was their native tongue. In later life it was a favourite joke of his
to saunter, in company with his equally accomplished friend, Leland,
into some gipsy encampment where they were not known, and after paying
their footing by having their fortunes told, to ask some of the nomads
gathered round the fire, to talk a little Rommany for their benefit.
Gipsies are chary of speaking Rommany except among their own people, and
the inquisitive strangers were frequently told that there was no such
language; whereupon, one of them would turn to the other, and in purest
Rommany quietly express an opinion that their temporary hosts were not
thorough-bred gipsies, but of some inferior stock. This produced Rommany
in plenty, and the visitors were energetically taken to task for that,
being themselves gipsies, they should ape the dress and manners of the
Gorgio. A friendly explanation made all end happily.
Palmer made his first start in life as a clerk in the City of London,
where in his spare time he made himself master of French and Italian.
A little later he took up the study of Persian, Arabic and Hindustani,
and speedily conquered them. In 1867, after taking his degree at the
University of Cambridge, he was elected a Fellow by his College, an
honour conferred on him in recognition of his mastery of the Oriental
languages. During the years 1868-1870 he was employed on behalf of the
Palestine Exploration Fund, to make a survey of Mount Sinai, in the
course of which he became upon friendly and indeed almost brotherly
terms with many of the wild Arab tribes, among whom he was known as
the Sheikh Abdullah. As in England he had been made free of the gipsy
tent, so in Palestine he could drop in upon many a Bedouin encampment,
and be sure of a hearty welcome. His skill in sleight-of-hand, which
he had in the first instance taken up merely as a pastime, proved to be
of immense service to him in his desert wanderings; adding not only to
his popularity but frequently gaining for him the prestige of a genuine
magician, and thereby increasing his influence.
In 1871 he was appointed to the professorship of Oriental languages
at Cambridge, his official title being the Lord High Almoner’s Reader
of Arabic. In 1882, in anticipation of the Arabi trouble in Egypt, he
was entrusted by the then Government with the difficult and dangerous
task of winning over the Sinaitic tribes, and preventing the threatened
destruction of the Suez Canal.
His first trip, extending from Gaza to Suez, was carried out
successfully, but on penetrating farther into the desert, he and his
two companions, Captain Gill, R.E., and Lieutenant Charrington, R.N.,
fell into the hands of a tribe to whom Palmer was unknown, and were
barbarously put to death. Happily, their bodies were recovered, and
received from the nation the posthumous honour of burial in St. Paul’s
Cathedral.
The wand presented to me by Professor Palmer is a curiosity in many ways.
It is made of acacia wood (the “shittim” wood of the Old Testament)
brought by Palmer himself from Mount Lebanon. Around it, in spiral
form, is inscribed an invocation from the Koran, in Arabic characters.
The writing of the inscription is a genuine work of art, having
been executed as a special favour to Palmer, by Hassoun, an eminent
professional “scribe.”
I am reluctantly bound to admit that the Palmer wand, in my hands, did
not exhibit any special magical virtues, and when I ceased myself to use
it, it seemed to me that it could not find a worthier home than in Dr.
Ellison’s fine collection.
* * * * *
Reverting for a moment to the subject of patter, I will conclude by
quoting, for the amusement rather than the instruction of the reader,
an oration which (with variations) now and then formed my introductory
_boniment_, and might on occasion still serve, in default of better.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, and members of the Royal Family, if any happen to
be present, I am about to exhibit for your amusement, a few experiments
in Unnatural Philosophy, otherwise Magic.
“Magic in the olden times was a very different thing, as I daresay you
know, from what it is at present. In those days every respectable wizard
kept a familiar spirit: a sort of magical man of all work. He cleaned the
boots and knives, and when his master gave a show, it was the familiar
who worked all his miracles for him. The magician only did the talking,
and pocketed the takings. But the familiar did much bigger things than
that. If his master’s next-door neighbour made himself disagreeable, the
familiar would hoist him up and drop him in the water-butt, or into
the Red Sea, according to order. If the magician wanted a week at the
seaside, he had no need to pay railway fare. The familiar would just pick
him up, house and all, and land him gently in the middle of the mixed
bathing. The only drawback was that, sooner or later, a time came when
there was no performance, because the magician had been carried off by
his familiar on a pitchfork.
“As the French say, _nous avons changé tout cela_. Familiars are as
extinct as the dodo. Perhaps it’s as well, but it makes it very much
harder to be a magician. In the first place you must know all about
astrology, anthropology, Egyptology and all the other ologies. You must
be well posted in mathematics, hydrostatics, pneumatics and numismatics.
You must know all about clairvoyance, palmistry and thought reading,
sympathy and antipathy, magnetism, mesmerism, wireless telegraphy, X rays
and all the other kinds of rays. Of course you must be well up in Greek
and Latin, and a little Hebrew, not to mention a few other things which
I forget for the moment, but I won’t stop to think of them now. When you
have studied these little matters fourteen hours a day for nine or ten
years, you will be as ‘chock-full of science’ as old Sol Gills himself,
and you will be able to do all sorts of wonderful things, some of which I
hope to show you this evening.
“Before I begin, there is just one little matter I should like to
mention. You hear people talk about the quickness of the hand deceiving
the eye. I don’t know whether the quickness of the hand ever does deceive
the eye, but I want you to understand that you must not expect anything
of that sort from _me_. I am naturally slow. I was born twenty minutes
after I was expected, and I have been getting slower and slower ever
since.
“To-night, I intend to do everything even more slowly than usual: so that
you will only have to watch me closely to see exactly how it is all done.
Then, when you go home, if you do as I do, and say as I say, without
making any mistakes, no doubt you will be able to produce the same
results. If not, there must be ‘something wrong with the works.’”
[20] Since this was written Dr. Ellison has passed into the mysterious
beyond.