WHAT is magic?

We will pass over until a later chapter the magic of olden days, when magicians were popularly supposed to possess supernatural powers. The modern conjurer makes no such claims, partly perhaps because he knows that, were he to do so, his supporters would be few, and partly because he knows that such a reputation, gained perhaps by one special trick after many years of unceasing labour, would assuredly be very short-lived. What, then, is the magic of to-day?

Perhaps the easiest way of answering that question is to state what magic is not. At the risk of offending many very proficient conjurers--both amateurs and professional--I make bold to state that magic does not consist in a few so-called secrets which can be mastered by any intelligent person in a few hours. Magic is very much more than this.

A man may study every work on conjuring or magic that has ever been published; he may take lessons, work hard, and achieve a certain manual dexterity; but at the end of it all he may still possibly be ignorant of what magic is. His knowledge of secrets will not help him to discover that particular secret.

Magic is an art by means of which a man can exercise, as it were, a spell over others, and persuade them into believing that they have seen some natural law disobeyed. A man may have mastered this art in a small degree, and yet be ignorant of what have often been erroneously called the principles of conjuring, but which have not necessarily anything to do with the art. I have always maintained that the art of the conjurer is closely allied to that of the actor, but with this difference: the actor selects a character and impersonates it; he has all the advantages of a proper dress, suitable to the character he is playing, or beautiful scenery, and music, and lighting, and the various other little things which are comprised in the theatrical word "effects".

The actor uses all these aids to assist him in persuading people that the man they see is not the actor but the character the actor is impersonating. It has always seemed to me that the art of the conjurer is in many ways more difficult than that of the actor, and the reason that this opinion is not generally held is that the art of conjuring is not understood.

I do not hold the opinion that any man who can get up and do a few tricks--even though he may do them well enough to entertain his audience--is necessarily a conjurer, because it is quite possible that he may be a mere exhibitor of tricks. To say that a man who can show a few tricks is a conjurer is about as absurd as to say that a man who can recite "The Merchant of Venice" by heart is an actor.

In some ways the art of the conjurer is more difficult than that of the actor, and for this reason: whereas the actor has the advantage of all the accessories that I have alluded to, the conjurer has to rely entirely on himself for producing the impression that he wishes to convey. Also if the conjurer wishes to be original, he must first invent his own trick, and then surround it with a suitable plot or story, also of his own making.

I regard a conjurer as a man who can hold the attention of his audience by telling them the most impossible fairy tales, and by persuading them into believing that those stories are true by illustrating them with his hands, or with any object that may be suitable for the purpose.

I have always thought that the recognition that is accorded to other artists is too often withheld from conjurers. The reason is not far to seek. The general public are always a little annoyed with a conjurer for taking them in. The public may be amused and entertained by a conjurer, and yet, when the performance is all over and the public are quietly thinking about what they have seen, they are a little troubled at the thought that they have not been able to discover "how it was done". This has always seemed to me to be an imperfect way of regarding a conjuring performance.

In my opinion a conjuring performance cannot be properly and thoroughly appreciated by anyone who does not know something about the art, for the attraction is not--or should not be--wholly centred in the secret, however wonderful it may be, which enables the conjurer to get one of his effects. When a member of an audience knows that secret he ceases to be curious about it, and so devotes his whole attention to the way in which the conjurer presents his little fairy story.

There is another reason why, in my opinion, the conjurer is not allowed to rank with other artists. The conjurer leads a life of deception--at any rate for the brief periods that he is before an audience--and the popular idea is that his methods of deceiving people are all cut and dried beforehand for him, and that all his work consists entirely in using his hands dexterously.

The public are right in believing that the conjurer must deceive his audience, but the public are wrong in holding the opinion that the conjurer achieves this end by mere manual dexterity. A good conjurer will present his performance in such a way that not even a man who knows the secret of how it is done will see at what particular moment the conjurer makes use of that secret. The conjurer must be an actor. By the expression on his face, by his gestures, by the tone of his voice, in short, by his acting, he must produce his effects. He may bewilder his audience as much as he pleases, but he must also entertain them.

It has been suggested that a conjurer cannot be regarded in the same light as a musician or an actor because the conjurer's work--everything he does--is too trifling, and that therefore a conjurer at his best can be only an entertainer as well as an exhibitor of tricks. To this I reply that the best of comedians is "only an entertainer" but that I do not think any the less of him on that account.

The public do not grudge the highest praise to the man who can amuse them with a humorous recitation or a song, but I fear that they too often regard the conjurer--whose recitation is usually original--from quite a different point of view. I am endeavouring to show that a good actor, who possesses the knowledge of a very few of the secrets of conjuring, can be a very good conjurer, but that a man who has learnt all that can be learnt from books about conjuring will never be a good conjurer if he be an indifferent actor.

One of my objects in writing this chapter is to enable people to distinguish between good and bad conjuring, and to impress upon them the fact that the trick is not the main part of the performance. The presentation of the trick is everything; the little secret round which the performance has been woven is comparatively unimportant.

In proof of that statement I could give particulars of numerous tricks which are always very effective when presented well, but which depend for their effectiveness on no complicated mechanism or marvellous exhibition of manual dexterity. It is the acting of the man who presents those tricks that makes them acceptable to an audience.

Conjurers have suffered at times from the misdeeds of members of their own craft, men who have used conjuring for the purpose of swindling people or imposing on them in some way. There are also men who pretend to do marvellous things by the aid of science, but who nevertheless rely on magic for their effect. I allude to the men who profess to be mediums in mesmeric and spiritualistic performances. But I maintain that it is not fair to condemn all conjurers--as is frequently done--because of the misdeeds of a few.

I am well aware that the general public too often regard conjurers as being little better than swindlers; or, at any rate, as men who, if necessity compelled, would make very good swindlers. Therefore the public do not always give the honest conjurer his due. Sometimes the public hear of a person who has put a piece of soap in his mouth and has acted the part of a man in a fit. He has done this so well that philanthropists have been deceived. But the same public does not think less of the art which has enabled the swindling soap-fit man to produce that impression--the same art which the comedian uses when he knocks his stick on the stage and holds one foot up quickly, to convey the impression that he has hurt himself badly.

It has often been put forward as an argument against the proposition that acting is an art, that the actor creates nothing, and that therefore he is not an artist in the truest sense of the word. Such a charge cannot be levelled against conjuring. The good conjurer creates the story that he wishes to tell his audience, and then invents the means of illustrating that story. Therefore, if there is anything in the theory that an artist has no claim to the name if he does not create, surely the conjurer has a better right to be called an artist than an actor.

I should not like it to be thought that I regard the conjurer solely as an actor, or that I have not a proper appreciation of the many secrets known to conjurers. I merely wish to point out that the mysterious side of the art is not the only side. The secrets may be regarded as the artist's tools, without which he can do no work, but he should always remember that they are only tools, and but means to an end.

The most accomplished musician does not attempt to make scale-playing interesting to an audience, and the conjurer who merely asks an audience to notice the dexterity with which he wields his tools is not giving a conjuring performance. The man who wishes to become a conjurer may also bear in mind that the very best secrets will be those which he discovers for himself. When the conjurer has discovered an original way of doing and presenting an old trick, he may consider that he has a better secret than any that a book can impart, because it is his own. Having arrived at such a success, the conjurer has found the best answer to the question, "What is magic?"

Yet it is only after many years of work that a conjurer realizes the limitations of conjuring. The fresh young amateur begins his study of the art in the confident assurance that he will learn how to become a source of perpetual wonder to his friends. That ambition is seldom fulfilled.

After reading part of the book that is to teach him the art of conjuring, the amateur will perhaps try to do a few tricks. He fails at the first few attempts, and because he has no perseverance, and no real desire to learn conjuring, he throws the book on one side and vows that conjuring is silly, and that he has no time to give to it. He is confident that if he gave up a certain amount of time to practising tricks he would succeed in becoming a conjurer.

Perhaps the amateur is not always to blame for coming to this conclusion, for it is the lesson that most of the books on conjuring set out to teach. Practise hard, these teachers say, and you will succeed. Then they set the amateur conjurer a difficult exercise to practise, knowing full well that he will be discouraged long before he has attained any proficiency.

Nevertheless, many of the difficulties hitherto considered to be inseparable from conjuring are in no way necessary to a man who wishes to know something about the art. Some years ago children who were taught to speak French were compelled first of all to wade laboriously through the French grammar. Since then we have discovered that the best way to learn to speak French is to speak French.

Similarly, the best way to learn how to do conjuring is to do some tricks. It is quite possible--and very probable--that the time spent in learning and practising the various "palms" and passes and changes, and other things, that have been described in conjuring books from time immemorial, may be entirely wasted. A knowledge of such things is useful, and therefore they will be briefly explained in the next chapter, in which I also propose to show easier methods of obtaining the same results.

Before leaving the subject of the public's attitude towards magic, there is one essential rule to be borne in mind--a rule that I learned early in my career and after bitter experience. This is that the last thing a public performer may do is to allow his audience to see that he is not in his very best form. Once let the public in front of you get the idea that you are performing simply because they have paid to come in and see you, and that you do not want to perform, and you make yourself a failure at once. The public like to think that your performance amuses you as much as it does them. Perhaps it does sometimes.

Unless you are at your best the public think that it has been defrauded of part of their money. I have heard it suggested that the public, in doing this, are very hardhearted and exacting. Personally, I do not think that they are anything of the kind. They have paid their money in the expectation of being entertained, and if they are not amused they have a perfect right to be cross at having spent their money badly. Whether in this case the entertainer ought conscientiously to return the money at the doors as the public go out is a matter so serious that I cannot bear to think of it. I may add that I have never felt myself called upon to return any money.