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.