Many people know of Charles Dickens’ literary accomplishments, but have you heard of his talent with conjuring? In the early 1840s Dickens repeatedly entertained his family and friends with feats of magic. He would have been familiar with the card tricks and sleight-of-hand used by the street performers of London. Maybe something he saw had stirred his imagination, because in 1842 he purchased “the entire stock-in-trade of a conjurer.” After that, he spent hours in his room practicing to perfect the timing and technique of his tricks. I used Charles Dickens’ interest in magic as my inspiration for Miss Willow’s story in Chapter 4 of A Tale of Two Hittys.
One of his first performances was on January 6, 1843, which was his eldest son Charley’s sixth birthday. Here is an excerpt of a letter from Dickens to his American friend, Cornelius Felton, from December 31, 1842:
The actuary of the national debt couldn’t calculate the number of children who are coming here on Twelfth Night, in honour of Charley’s birthday, for which occasion I have provided a magic lantern and divers other tremendous engines of that nature. But the best of it is that Forster and I have purchased between us the entire stock-in-trade of a conjurer, the practice and display whereof is intrusted to me. And O my dear eyes, Felton, if you could see me conjuring the company’s watches into impossible tea-caddies, and causing pieces of money to fly, and burning pocket-handkerchiefs without hurting ’em, and practising in my own room, without anybody to admire, you would never forget it as long as you live.
The Letters of Charles Dickens Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870
The “magic lantern” mentioned was an early version of a projector. It used glass slides and a lens which focused light from a candle or oil lamp to project images onto a wall. Some slides even had levers and sliding parts to make the images appear to move. You can see a selection of typical magic lantern slides at “The Art of the Magic Lantern.” I think the images look a little creepy, but it must have been quite a sight to see in an era without film and television.
Dickens was a charismatic performer who loved to entertain. Imagine a 30-year-old Charles Dickens giving his first magic show in his home at Devonshire Terrace in London. This portrait by Margaret Gillies from 1843 gives an idea of how he might have appeared at the time. He looks quite dapper!
This particular portrait has an interesting history. It was lost for over 130 years and resurfaced only five years ago in an auction in South Africa. The author Lucinda Hawksley, a Dickens descendant, wrote an interesting article about Margaret Gillies and the painting. The portrait was purchased by the Charles Dickens Museum, with the help of Art Fund.
Nearly a year after his son Charley’s birthday, on December 26th, 1863, Dickens was performing again, this time at the birthday party of Mrs. Nina Macready. Nina was the wife of Dickens’ good friend, an actor named William Macready, who was on a tour in America. For this special event, Dickens added a new trick to his repertoire: baking a plum pudding in a hat. First, Dickens asked to borrow a top hat from his friend, Clarkson Stanfield (who was actually his assistant and no doubt aware of how the trick worked). Dickens added all the raw ingredients for a pudding into a saucepan which he placed inside the hat. He then “kindled” the mixture over a flame. When he turned the hat upside down, a steaming pudding tumbled out. You can learn how the trick was done by reading a description in the book, Modern Magic by Professor Hoffman. First published in 1876, this book revealed many of the methods used by magicians of the Victorian era.
In Victorian times, a traditional plum pudding was often cooked and then set aside for a few days to let the flavors mature, then re-steamed just before serving. To perform the trick, Dickens would have to make a pudding ahead of time, reheat it, set it on a hidden shelf under the table while he was performing, and finally transfer it into the saucepan at the end of the trick.
Many of Dickens’s tricks required special apparatus, such as the saucepan used in the pudding trick. He may have purchased the magical apparatus from a famous London toy store named Hamley’s. Founded by William Hamley in 1760, the toy store, originally named “Noah’s Ark,” was located at No. 231 High Holborn Street in London in the 1830s when Dickens visited. The store was so successful that in 1881, a new branch was opened at 188-196 Regent Street. This branch is still in business today as the world’s largest and oldest toy store, with an amazing seven floors of merchandise.
Mamie Dickens tells of visits to the toy store as a young child to pick out Christmas presents:
In our childish days my father used to take us, every twenty-fourth day of December, to a toy shop in Holborn, where we were allowed to select our Christmas presents, and also any that we wished to give to our little companions. Although I believe we were often an hour or more in the shop before our several tastes were satisfied, he never showed the least impatience, was always interested, and as desirous as we, that we should choose exactly what we liked best.
MY FATHER AS I RECALL HIM by Mamie Dickens
With its large inventory of toys and games, it is certainly possible that Dickens purchased many of his magic tricks at Noah’s Ark, such as the traveling doll which Mamie also described:
One of these conjuring tricks comprised the disappearance and reappearance of a tiny doll, which would announce most unexpected pieces of news and messages to the different children in the audience; this doll was a particular favorite, and its arrival eagerly awaited and welcomed.
MY FATHER AS I RECALL HIM by Mamie Dickens
I learned more about this particular trick in an excellent book by Ian Keable called, Charles Dickens Magician: Conjuring in Life, Letters and Literature. Keable goes into detail about many of the magic tricks which Charles Dickens performed. The traveling doll is one of the oldest tricks known, performed by street conjurers for hundreds of years and described in the 1634 first edition of Hocus Pocus Junior. Also called the “Bonus Genius,” the trick requires a small wooden doll and a circular cloak. The doll’s head is attached to the body with a peg. When the doll was wearing the cape, the magician would reach underneath it to remove and hide the body in his pocket. The small head could then be stored in a specially made pocket in the cape, making it seem as if the doll had completely disappeared.
You can read an article about the Bonus Genius trick and how it was performed on the Deceptology web site.
And here is how Professor Hoffman describes the trick.
In Chapter 4 of A Tale of Two Hittys, I named the traveling doll “Swansea Jack.” According to Wikipedia, Swansea Jack was a nickname for people born in Swansea, UK (in Wales), who had a reputation for being skilled sailors. It made sense to me that a well-traveled doll would be a sailor, like this one pictured as “The True British Tar.”
To perform the traveling doll trick, a magician creates a script to distract the audience. This is called “patter.” In my story, this dialog with the doll gives Dickens an excuse to pocket the doll in order to make it disappear.
Mr. Dickens turned back to the doll and said, ’Right, then. Swansea Jack, I bid you travel to New York and tell me what my friend, Washington Irving, is having for dinner on this fine Boxing Day.’ The little doll shook its head. ‘What’s that, you won’t do it? Oh, I see. You need your traveling expenses.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out an invisible coin. ‘Jack uses fairy money so it won’t weigh him down. Now Jack, FLY!’ He hit the doll on the head, and it disappeared. To prove the doll was gone, he shook out the cape, and the doll was nowhere to be seen.
From Chapter 4 of A TALE OF TWO HITTYS
Charles Dickens didn’t just perform magic tricks for his friends and family. He had at least one public performance in Bonchurch, a small village on the Isle of Wight, in August or September of 1849. The book, Charles Dickens Magician, goes into detail about the “Bonchurch Playbill,” which tells all about the performance. For the show, Dickens assumed the name, “Rhia Rhama Rhoos, The Unparalleled Necromancer.” The tricks he performed were called, “The Pyramid Wonder,” “The Conflagration Wonder,” “The Loaf of Bread Wonder,” “The Travelling Doll Wonder,” and “The Pudding Wonder.” He likely dressed up in East Indian robes and might have even worn blackface (not politically correct today, but very common in the Victorian era). Here is an article about the Bonchurch performance called “Charles Dickens, a.k.a. ‘The Unparalleled Necromancer'” from Mental Floss.
Dickens likely stopped performing magic by the end of the 1840s. It is hard to know precisely why, but since his tricks required special apparatus, performing the same trick repeatedly would have lessened the impact. Also, he had a large family to support, so most of his time was spent writing. And write, he did! His novel David Copperfield first debuted as a serial published in the year 1849, and in the following decade he would write Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit and A Tale of Two Cities. Perhaps his greatest trick of all was his ability to entertain readers all over the globe through his love of words and writing, and to create books which are still admired 170 years after he wrote them.
Sources:
“The Art of the Magic Lantern.” http://www.artofthemagiclantern.co.uk/. Accessed February 2022.
Dickens, Charles. The Letters of Charles Dickens Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870, Project Gutenberg. Release Date: June 20, 2008 [EBook #25854]. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25854. Accessed February 2022.
Dickens, Mamie. My Father as I Recall Him, Project Gutenberg. Release Date: November 11, 2008 [eBook #27234]. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27234. Accessed February 2022.
Gillies, Margaret. Painting of Dickens by Margaret Gillies. Wikimedia Commons.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_Charles_John_Huffman_Dickens_(crop).jpg Accessed February 2022.
“Hamleys.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamleys. Accessed February 2022.
Hoffman, Professor. Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring by Professor Hoffmann, Project Gutenberg. Release Date: October 8, 2018 [EBook #58057]. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58057. Accessed February 2022.
“Jack Tar.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Tar. Accessed February 2022.
Keable, Ian. Charles Dickens Magician: Conjuring in Life, Letters and Literature. Berfort’s Information Press, 2014. www.iankeable.co.uk
“The lost portrait of Charles Dickens.” BBC. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20191220-the-lost-portrait-of-charles-dickens. Accessed February 2022.
Smith, Colin. “Hamleys Toy Shop.” Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hamleys_Toy_Shop_-geograph.org.uk-_2381703.jpg. Accessed February 2022.
“The True British Tar.” Carington Bowles, 1785. © The Trustees of the British Museum. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1935-0522-1-18. Accessed February 2022.
