What Rauscher means is that if you told Mr. Christopher that Howard Thurston visited his press agent John Northern Hilliard on Saturday July 20th at 1pm at his office on the 6th floor of his Chicago office, Christopher would likely reply “Yes, but did you know that Thurston made the following stops before see-ing Hilliard?” I can confirm Rauscher’s theory. In 1980, I sat, as I usually did for three hours in Mr. Christopher’s apartment sur-rounded by artifacts from over 500 years of magic. I was some-what curious as to Mr. Christopher’s thoughts on his essays on showmanship in his 1977 Milbourne Christopher’s Magic Book.
The reason was, I was magically literate enough at age 19 to be very wary that Christopher had copped a good deal of writing from his friend John Mulholland (1898 — 1970). In Mulholland’s 1963 John Mulholland’s Book of Magic he gives a great deal
DO YOU
his illusions to his audience, and to make his performance agreeable and entertaining.”
Yet, about twenty years after discov-ering Mulholland’s antecedent I was gobsmacked to discover another reference and use of these profound words in an 1882 book by John J.
Jennings titled Theatrical and Circus Life: Or, Secrets of the Stage, Green-room and Sawdust Arena. On page 33, discussing Shakespeare’s As You Like It, and the failure of stage trappings, the author writes, “We see nothing which in any way favors the agreeable illusion…”
Ah, where Mulholland got it…of course…but perhaps it goes back further, maybe to the Greeks?
My search continues, but, I know what I have found depicts a point that I feel deserves some real atten-tion by the modern practiatten-tioner of illusion, whether it be close-up or on the stage.
Magic suffers to be recognized as an art because so few people who want to call themselves magicians take the time to really study where the art comes from. I am not talking about tricks. I am talking about learning to have the ability to have the audience willingly suspend their disbelief, as the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge
wrote in 1817.
I am often told by audiences who either see me perform on a stage in a theatre with my new touring show;
or in a backyard performance for chil-dren at a pool party (I’ve done both recently) that mine is not an “act” nor a “series of clever tricks,” but rather—a show. Do you know what makes the difference?
Whether you do or not, I am bet-ting you would like to know how to make your magic more effective. It depends on your goal of course. Do you want to be the life of the office?
Be more attractive to those you find attractive? Have an income from your performance?
I can categorically tell you after thirty years making my living as a magician (with an additional ten years that also included four years where I paid for my entire college education do-ing magic weekly) that my success is based on constant study of one book. That book is Our Magic by Nevil Maskelyne, son of John Nevil Maske-lyne, and his theatrical partner in Eng-land’s extremely famous showplace, The Egyptian Hall, Mr. David Devant.
Our Magic published by E. P. Dutton and Co. in 1911 and they had of-fices in both London and New York.
The imprimatur of the 1911 edition I recently acquired states that it was printed in New York City. It is a thick book; so dense most magicians pass over it as no longer applicable be-cause the modern/digital age is so different from the days in which men wore pocket watches as a matter of evening dress (yes there really was a time where people dressed well to attend the theatre).
I initially read about Our Magic in the pages of the book that has since become my favorite instructional magic book of all time: The Amateur Magicians Handbook by Henry Hay (ne June Barrows Mussey). As a boy I wondered what secrets were inherent to the book that Hay wrote so glow-ingly about. Hay also recommended Henning Nelms’ 1969 volume Magic &
Showmanship. It occurred to me then, as it does now, that neither book I cite here could have come to be without the work of Maskelyne and Devant first blazing the trail.
My study of Our Magic is perpetual.
Not a day goes by where I don’t think about the precepts they espouse;
and how they are applicable today, over one hundred years since it was
published. Given the modern art of magic is less than 200 years old as a modern stage art, it is likely, one hundred years from now, the art of magic will be in a very different place. While conjurors standing on stages have changed in terms of style, costume, pacing and technique (to a small degree), the digital age chal-lenges those who want to practice magic as dictated by the great clas-sic texts. I do not count those that have bastardized the art by using TV editing to present their “new” magic on television. While I think magic did work on TV for Mark Wilson, and that Mr. Wilson held strong with ethics, unfortunately his model has not been followed. Beginning in the 1980’s one magician in particular in the US boldly used editing to affect his wonders.
Today, this has become the norm, unfortunately. To me, magic does not work on TV. Period.
Enter Our Magic.
Prior to this English work, fifty years earlier in France, Robert-Houdin penned two seminal books: The Secrets of Stage Conjuring and The Secrets of Conjuring and Magic. Both are still worth reading. In the latter monsieur Houdin relates his famous dictum: A magician is an actor playing the part of a magician.
It is a definition by one who knew. It
is also one of those platitudes that are seemingly so simple; while in reality, it is quite complex. After all, if you ad-here to what Robert-Houdin was writ-ing, then you might want to inquire as to what goes into being an actor before you can be an actor. (Acting is complex too, and the study of it, if done correctly, perpetual. I was quite impressed to meet Diane Keaton well after her Academy Award and we had a very interesting discussion about her study of acting and she told me then, that she still took acting classes!) Then, you have to learn what being a magician is; and finally, how to do magic! While space prohibits detail-ing the many precepts discussed in Our Magic, consider this. Maskelyne and Devant changed Robert-Houdin’s definition just slightly, but it is an im-portant change. They wrote, “A magi-cian is an actor playing the part of a great magician.” See the difference?
Doug Henning told me personally in 1975 “Magic is a hard thing to learn.”
Doug counseled that the works and life of John Booth were very much worth my study. I found that both Doug Henning and John Booth esteemed Our Magic as one of the cornerstones of their study of magic.
Recently I received an original copy of Our Magic from a dearly departed friend. It is one of the rare volumes
that were printed with the instruc-tions aided by photographs of David Devant explaining sleight of hand, the positioning of props for several brilliant illusions. Given that David Devant is a real hero to me, and I often feel as if my sensibilities are more of the 19th century than of the 21st, I’ve been very excited to match the line drawings most have become familiar with in the editions that have followed (most famously the Paul Fleming edition with marvelous foot-notes) to the photos from which they were made. I’ve learned a great deal.
In some cases the line drawings are better. But, what is fascinating is that the sketch artist neglected to show the modern viewer what the stage of the Egyptian Hall really looked like…
and this is a revelation!
It is interesting what you find. I won’t spoil the surprises should you have the opportunity to do as I have. But, I can tell you that there are “hidden realms” in all books on magic. I am not speaking about codes or complex acrostics. Rather, I am confident that between the lines of Our Magic you will find clues and passages to cre-ate your own magic. Yes, the day has passed when most men wore pocket watches. Yes, most magicians would be hard-pressed to perform The Ser-pent Handkerchief given that few carry pocket-handkerchiefs anymore. But, the tricks are not the entire lesson
of this masterful volume. We always hear “it’s not what you do, but how it is done.” To me, that means, the presenta-tion tops the trick…to a degree. Many perform the cups and balls, but to see Johnny Ace Palmer do it, he elicits standing ovations when he performs this classic. Hence, I find the lessons in theatrical performance more helpful to my overall performance than the tricks included in Our Magic.
Maskelyne and Devant’s analysis of the conjuror’s performance is what can make you a better magician. It takes work. You have to be unafraid to fail in front of an audience. You have to learn how to fail and still give a successful performance. There are places to learn your work, such as in a hospital show where often you are not being paid;
an ideal area to give entertainment and “work out” the kinks to an illusion.
When you are being paid well to pres-ent on stage for a ticket-buying public that is precisely the wrong time to experiment.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, all magic writing is based on earlier work. If you don’t have the patience to read a book over a hun-dred years old, and then work hard to discover its secrets, and you’d rather
“read modern” than I can unhesitat-ingly (without a stake in
ei-ther) recommend Darwin Ortiz’s STRONG MAGIC and Ken Weber’s Maximum Enter-tainment. Both shall provide you with a sound basis for discovering what Maske-lyne and Devant described in their brilliant tome. Over a hundred years ago their discussion of The Art of Magic and the Art In Magic verily revolutionized the art. It set standards. I have often won-dered what is the nucleus of
“greatness.” Our Magic gives a concise reason, if not a blue-print for attaining this goal.
Both Darwin Ortiz and Ken Weber are top-notch magi-cians and mentalists. I would bet, not having talked to
either, that they would agree that the writing of Nevil Maskelyne and David Devant in some way influenced their work. I believe it is a very simple thing to state, but a hard thing to do — if you want to be a better magician, read and engage in the active study of this brilliant book. John Mulholland wrote that Our Magic was “the great-est book ever written on the theory of magic performance.” Having taken their words on the page and put them into practice on the stage, I can attest that Mulholland was correct.