The Travelling Doll Wonder: Dickens, Secular Magic, and Bleak House

Abstract

In summer 1849, a small group gathered at Winterbourne House at Bonchurch on Isle of Wight to watch a conjuring show by Unparalleled Necromancer Rhia Rhama a magician apparently educated cabalistically in Orange Groves of Salamanca and Ocean Caves of Alum Bay (Forster 89-90). The show promised a number of amazing set pieces, all of them 'wonders': Leaping Card, Pyramid, Conflagration, Loaf of Bread, Pudding, and Travelling (Forster 90). The audience watched conjuror as he made two cards selected by audience and replaced in pack leap forth at his command; another card was selected, named by conjuror, set on fire, and then reproduced from ashes; another audience member's card was locked in a box and then materialized in middle of a freshly cut loaf of bread. It is unlikely that many in audience would have known means by which these effects were achieved; it is certain, however, that they knew true identity of unparalleled necromancer Rhia Rhama Rhoos, who was none other than Charles Dickens. In this article, I consider connections between Dickens's fiction and art of conjuring, what Simon During calls (1)--that is, magic that makes no claim to supernatural, as opposed to magic in its supernatural or anthropological guises. I consider Rhia Rhama Rhoos's routine 'The Travelling Doll Wonder' as a paradigm for reading Dickens's fiction, and Bleak House in particular, arguing that Esther's doll, an uncanny subject/object that disappears and reappears at crucial points of text, is informed by Dickens's own performance with a disappearing doll that raises similar questions of perception and subjectivity. My wider aim is to demonstrate that what John O. Jordan calls the Bleak House effect--that is, the novel's way of luring its characters (and its readers) to imagine things that might have been but never were or that exist only in their minds (147)--can be understood in context of a similarly hyperphenomenological cultural practice with which Dickens engaged during composition and publication of novel, that is, secular magic. I argue that Dickens's interest in performance magic functions metacritically in his work, especially in Bleak House, and furthermore that while enchantment of conjuring underpins novel, Bleak House also draws attention to traumatic component of secular magic. Although not traumatic in itself, experience of conjuring resembles, in Cathy Caruth's phrase, unclaimed experiences of trauma, and it is in Bleak House that Dickens explores connection between these discourses. Dickens's interest in performance magic is well evidenced in his novels, letters, and performances. As John Forster records, he was a keen observer of such performances in both England and France; for instance, on May 3, 1853, Dickens invited Frank Stone to accompany him to a performance given by influential French conjuror Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin at Sadlers Wells (Letters 7: 76). Such performers became addressees, and subjects, of his writing; Dickens corresponded with magicians, in particular hugely popular Austrian conjuror Ludwig Dobler (Letters 4: 113-14), and depicted humbler conjurors in his fiction. Sweet William, one of travelling showmen in The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41), makes his living through card tricks and various other conjuring routines (150-51); in Dombey and Son (1844-46), Paul Dombey's roommate Tozer is taken by his uncle to see a conjuror, an occasion uncle ruins by turning it into a classics examination (251). Similarly, in Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44) card tricks performed by Jonas become a metaphor for his double dealing with Charity and Mercy Pecksniff (242). Household Words, too, carried writing on magic; edition of April 9, 1859, granted its front page to Saul Dixon's extensive review of English translation of Robert-Houdin's Memoirs (1859). …