And the reminders of what I did then are the materials that later had to be put away. I could not even face that gruesome task until New Year's Eve, as I have described.
Yesterday, here in London, in the electrical brightness and familiarity of my workshop, with the Tesla equipment reassembled, I felt I should undergo two more rehearsals. I am a performer, a professional. I must give an appearance to what I do, give it a sheen and a glamour. I must project myself about the theatre in a flash, and at the moment of arrival I must appear to be a magician who has successfully performed the impossible.
To sink to my knees, as if poleaxed, would be out of the question. To reveal even a glimpse of the millionth-second of agony I have endured would also be unconscionable.
The point is that I have a double level of subterfuge to convey. A magician ordinarily reveals an effect that is "impossible": a piano seems to disappear, a billiard ball magically reproduces itself, a lady is made to pass through a sheet of mirror glass. The audience of course knows that the impossible has not been made possible.
In a Flash, by scientific method, in fact achieves the hitherto impossible. What the audience sees is actually what has happened! But I cannot allow this ever to be known, for science has in this case replaced magic.
I must, by careful art, make my miracle less miraculous. I must emerge from the elemental transmitter as if I have not been slammed apart, and slammed together again.
So I have been trying to learn how to prepare for and brace myself against the pain, how to react to it without keeling over, how to step forward with my arms raised and with a flashing smile to bow and acknowledge applause. To mystify sufficiently, but not too much.
I write of what happened yesterday, because last night, when I returned home, I was in too great a despair even to think of recording what had happened. Now it is the afternoon and I am more or less myself again, but already the prospect of two more rehearsals tomorrow is daunting and depressing me.
16th February 1901
I am full of trepidation about tonight's performance at the Trocadero. I have spent the morning at the theatre, setting up the apparatus, testing it, dismantling it, then locking it away again safely in its crates.
After that, as anticipated, came the protracted negotiations with the scene-shifters, actively hostile to my intentions of boxing the stage. In the end, a straightforward cash transaction settled the matter and my wishes prevailed, but it has meant a huge dent in my income for the show. This illusion is clearly only performable if I can demand fees greatly in excess of anything I have earned before. A lot depends on the show tonight.
Now I have an hour or two of free time, before I must go back to Holloway Road. I plan to spend part of it with Julia and the children, and try to take a short nap in whatever is left. I am so keyed up, however, that sleep seems only remotely possible.
17th February 1901
Last night I safely crossed the aether from the stage of the Trocadero to the royal box. The equipment worked perfectly.
But the audience did not applaud because it did not see what was happening! When finally the applause came it was more bemused than enthusiastic.
The trick needs a stronger build-up, a greater sense of danger. And the point of arrival must be picked out with a spotlight, to draw attention to my position as I materialize. I have talked to Adam about it, and he suggests, ingeniously, that I might be able to rig up an electrical spur from the apparatus so that turning on the light is not left to a stagehand but is commanded by me from the stage. Magic always improves.
We perform again on Tuesday at the same theatre.
I have left the best to last — I was able to disguise completely the shock of the impact on me. Both Julia, who saw the show from the auditorium, and Adam, who was watching from the rear of the stage through a small flap in the box screen, say my recovery was almost flawless. In this case it works to my advantage that the audience was not fully attentive, because only these two noticed the single weakness that occurred (I took one inadvertent step backwards).
For myself, I can say that practice with the apparatus has meant the terrible shock is not nearly as terrible as before, and that it has been getting slightly better each time I try it. I can foresee that in a month or so I will be able to bear the effect with outward indifference.
I also note that the consequent gloom I suffer is much less than after my first attempts.
23rd February 1901
In Derbyshire
My performance on Tuesday, much improved after the lessons of the weekend, gained me a laudatory review in The Stage , an outcome more to my favour than anything else I can imagine! On the train yesterday Julia and I read and re-read the words to each other, glorying in the undoubted effect they will have on my career. By our temporary exile here in Derbyshire we will not learn of tangible results until we are back in London early next week, when we have finished here. I can wait contented. The children are with us, the weather is cold and brilliant, and the moorland scenery is ravishing us with its muted colours.
I feel I am at last approaching the peak years of my career.
2nd March 1901
In London
I have an unprecedented thirty-five confirmed bookings in my appointments diary, accepted for the period of the next four months. Three of these are for shows in my own stage name, and one of these is to be called The Great Danton Entertains ; in seventeen theatres I shall top the bill; the remainder of the dates amply repay in money what they do not offer in prestige.
With this richness of choice I have been able to demand details of technical specifications of the backstage area before accepting, as well as forcing through compliance with my need to box the stage. I have made it a standard term of contract that I am supplied with an accurate plan of the auditorium, as well as being given firm undertakings about the steadiness and reliability of the electrical supply. In two cases, the theatre managements are so anxious to attract me to their houses that they have guaranteed to convert over to electricity in advance of my show.
I shall be roaming the country. Brighton, Exeter, Kidderminster, Portsmouth, Ayr, Folkestone, Manchester, Sheffield, Aberystwyth, York, all these and many more will greet me on my first tour, as well as the capital itself, where I have several dates.
In spite of the travelling (which will be in first-class trains and carriages and paid for by others), the schedule is leisurely within reason, and as my little entourage crisscrosses the country we shall have abundant opportunity to make our necessary visits to Caldlow House.
The agent is already speaking of foreign tours, with perhaps yet another trip to the USA in the offing. (There would be certain extra problems here, but none is beyond the wit of a magician in his prime!)
It is all extremely satisfactory, and I hope I may be forgiven for recording it in a state of unqualified self-confidence.
10th July 1901
In Southampton
I am in the middle of a week's run at the Duchess Theatre here in Southampton. Julia came down to visit me yesterday, bringing with her at my request my portmanteau of papers and files, and as I therefore have access to this diary it seems like a good moment to make one of my periodic entries.
I have been continually revising and rehearsing In a Flash for some months, and it is now more or less a perfected skill. All my earlier hopes for it have come to fruition. I can pass through the aether without registering any reaction to the physical traumas I endure. The transition is smooth and seamless, and from the point of view of the audience impossible to explain.