Letters on Natural Magic; Addressed to Sir Walter Scott, Bart.

by David Brewster

The surprise of the auditors was greatly increased by the circumstance, that an answer was returned to questions put in a whisper, and also by the conviction that nobody but a person in the middle of the audience could observe the circumstances to which the invisible figure frequently adverted.

Although the performances of speaking heads were generally effected by the methods now described, yet there is reason to think that the ventriloquist sometimes presided at the exhibition, and deceived the audience by his extraordinary powers of illusion. There is no species of deception more irresistible in its effects than that which arises from the uncertainty with which we judge of the direction and distance of sounds. Every person must have noticed how a sound in their own ears is often mistaken for some loud noise moderated by the distance from which it is supposed to come; and the sportsman must have frequently been surprised at the existence of musical sounds humming remotely in the extended heath, when it was only the wind sounding in the barrel of his gun. The great proportion of apparitions that haunt old castles and apartments associated with death, exist only in the sounds which accompany them. The imagination even of the boldest inmate of a place hallowed by superstition, will transfer some trifling sound near his own person to a direction and to a distance very different from the truth, and the sound which otherwise might have no peculiar complexion will derive another character from its new locality. Spurning the idea of a supernatural origin, he determines to unmask the spectre, and grapple with it in its den. All the inmates of the house are found to be asleep—even the quadrupeds are in their lair—there is not a breath of wind to ruffle the lake that reflects through the casement the reclining crescent of the night; and the massive walls in which he is enclosed forbid the idea that he has been disturbed by the warping of panelling or the bending of partitions. His search is vain; and he remains master of his own secret, till he has another opportunity of investigation. The same sound again disturbs him, and, modified probably by his own position at the time, it may perhaps appear to come in a direction slightly different from the last. His searches are resumed, and he is again disappointed. If this incident should recur night after night with the same result—if the sound should appear to depend upon his own motions, or be any how associated with himself, with his present feelings, or with his past history, his personal courage will give way; a superstitious dread, at which he himself perhaps laughs, will seize his mind; and he will rather believe that the sounds have a supernatural origin, than that they could continue to issue from a spot where he knows there is no natural cause for their production.

I have had occasion to have personal knowledge of a case much stronger than that which has now been put. A gentleman, devoid of all superstitious feelings, and living in a house free from any gloomy associations, heard night after night in his bed-room a singular noise, unlike any ordinary sound to which he was accustomed. He had slept in the same room for years without hearing it, and he attributed it at first to some change of circumstances in the roof or in the walls of the room, but after the strictest examination no cause could be found for it. It occurred only once in the night; it was heard almost every night, with few interruptions. It was over in an instant, and it never took place till after the gentleman had gone to bed. It was always distinctly heard by his companion, to whose time of going to bed it had no relation. It depended on the gentleman alone, and it followed him into another apartment with another bed, on the opposite side of the house. Accustomed to such investigations, he made the most diligent but fruitless search into its cause. The consideration that the sound had a special reference to him alone, operated upon his imagination, and he did not scruple to acknowledge that the recurrence of the mysterious sound produced a superstitious feeling at the moment. Many months afterwards it was found that the sound arose from the partial opening of the door of a wardrobe which was within a few feet of the gentleman’s head, and which had been taken into the other apartment. This wardrobe was almost always opened before he retired to bed, and the door being a little too tight, it gradually forced itself open with a sort of dull sound, resembling the note of a drum. As the door had only started half an inch out of its place, its change of position never attracted attention. The sound, indeed, seemed to come in a different direction, and from a greater distance.

When sounds so mysterious in their origin are heard by persons predisposed to a belief in the marvellous, their influence over the mind must be very powerful. An inquiry into their origin, if it is made at all, will be made more in the hope of confirming than of removing the original impression, and the unfortunate victim of his own fears will also be the willing dupe of his own judgment.

This uncertainty with respect to the direction of sound is the foundation of the art of ventriloquism. If we place ten men in a row at such a distance from us that they are included in the angle within which we cannot judge of the direction of sound, and if in a calm day each of them speaks in succession, we shall not be able with closed eyes to determine from which of the ten men any of the sounds proceed, and we shall be incapable of perceiving that there is any difference in the direction of the sounds emitted by the two outermost. If a man and a child are placed within the same angle, and if the man speaks with the accent of a child without any corresponding motion in his mouth or face, we shall necessarily believe that the voice comes from the child; nay, if the child is so distant from the man that the voice actually appears to us to come from the man, we shall still continue in the belief that the child is the speaker; and this conviction would acquire additional strength if the child favoured the deception, by accommodating its features and gestures to the words spoken by the man. So powerful, indeed, is the influence of this deception, that if a jack-ass, placed near the man, were to open its mouth, and shake its head responsive to the words uttered by his neighbour, we should rather believe that the ass spoke than that the sounds proceeded from a person whose mouth was shut, and the muscles of whose face were in perfect repose. If our imagination were even directed to a marble statue or a lump of inanimate matter, as the source from which we were to expect the sounds to issue, we would still be deceived, and would refer the sounds even to these lifeless objects. The illusion would be greatly promoted, if the voice were totally different in its tone and character from that of the man from whom it really comes; and if he occasionally speaks in his own full and measured voice, the belief will be irresistible that the assumed voice proceeds from the quadruped or from the inanimate object.

When the sounds which are required to proceed from any given object are such as they are actually calculated to yield, the process of deception is extremely easy; and it may be successfully executed, even if the angle between the real and the supposed direction of the sound is much greater than the angle of uncertainty. Mr. Dugald Stewart has stated some cases in which deceptions of this kind were very perfect. He mentions his having seen a person who, by counterfeiting the gesticulations of a performer on the violin, while he imitated the music by his voice, riveted the eyes of his audience on the instrument, though every sound they heard proceeded from his own mouth. The late Savile Carey, who imitated the whistling of the wind through a narrow chink, told Mr. Stewart that he had frequently practised this deception in the corner of a coffee-house, and that he seldom failed to see some of the company rise to examine the tightness of the windows, while others, more intent on their newspapers, contented themselves with putting on their hats and buttoning their coats. Mr. Stewart likewise mentions an exhibition formerly common in some of the continental theatres, where a performer on the stage displayed the dumb-show of singing with his lips and eyes and gestures, while another person unseen supplied the music with his voice. The deception in this case he found to be at first so complete as to impose upon the nicest ear and the quickest eye; but in the progress of the entertainment, he became distinctly sensible of the imposition, and sometimes wondered that it should have misled him for a moment. In this case there can be no doubt that the deception was at first the work of the imagination, and was not sustained by the acoustic principle. The real and the mock singer were too distant, and when the influence of the imagination subsided, the true direction of the sound was discovered. This detection of the imposture, however, may have arisen from another cause. If the mock singer happened to change the position of his head, while the real singer made no corresponding change in his voice, the attentive spectator would at once notice this incongruity, and discover the imposition.

In many of the feats of ventriloquism the performer contrives, under some pretence or other, to conceal his face, but ventriloquists of great distinction, such as M. Alexandre, practise their art without any such concealment.

Ventriloquism loses its distinctive character if its imitations are not performed by a voice from the belly. The voice, indeed, does not actually come from that region; but when the ventriloquist utters sounds from the larynx without moving the muscles of his face, he gives them strength by a powerful action of the abdominal muscles. Hence he speaks by means of his belly, although the throat is the real source from whence the sounds proceed. Mr. Dugald Stewart has doubted the fact, that ventriloquists possess the power of fetching a voice from within: he cannot conceive what aid could be derived from such an extraordinary power; and he considers that the imagination, when seconded by such powers of imitation as some mimics possess, is quite sufficient to account for all the phenomena of ventriloquism which he has heard. This opinion, however, is strongly opposed by the remark made to Mr. Stewart himself by a ventriloquist, “that his art would be perfect, if it were possible only to speak distinctly without any movement of the lips at all.” But, independent of this admission, it is a matter of absolute certainty, that this internal power is exercised by the true ventriloquist. In the account which the Abbé Chapelle has given of the performances of M. St. Gille and Louis Brabant, he distinctly states that M. St. Gille appeared to be absolutely mute while he was exercising his art, and that no change in his countenance could be discovered.[16] He affirms, also, that the countenance of Louis Brabant exhibited no change, and that his lips were close and inactive. M. Richerand, who attentively watched the performances of M. Fitz-James, assures us that during his exhibition there was a distention in the epigastric region, and that he could not long continue the exertion without fatigue.

The influence over the human mind which the ventriloquist derives from the skilful practice of his art is greater than that which is exercised by any other species of conjuror. The ordinary magician requires his theatre, his accomplices, and the instruments of his art, and he enjoys but a local sovereignty within the precincts of his own magic circle. The ventriloquist, on the contrary, has the supernatural always at his command. In the open fields as well as in the crowded city, in the private apartment as well as in the public hall, he can summon up innumerable spirits; and though the persons of his fictitious dialogue are not visible to the eye, yet they are unequivocally present to the imagination of his auditors, as if they had been shadowed forth in the silence of a spectral form. In order to convey some idea of the influence of this illusion, I shall mention a few well-authenticated cases of successful ventriloquism.