Irving’s Tempters and Stoker’s Vanishing Ladies: Supernatural Production, Mesmeric Influence and Magical Illusion

Abstract

In February 1865, three actors, Irving, Philip Day and Fred Maccabe, from the Theatre Royal in Manchester, re-enacted the public séances of William and Ira Davenport, with the intention of exposing the fraudulence of the celebrated American mediums. These actors exposed how the Davenports’ feats, which included the generation of ‘spirit’ manifestations, such as the playing of musical instruments from inside a wooden cabinet within which the brothers were tied up, were in fact conjuring tricks. In his 1930 study of Irving, Edward Gordon Craig, Terry’s son, presents the event as a seminal moment for the young actor: ‘Having shown how the Davenport brothers did their little trick, he went home to his lodgings, and slowly there dawned an expression on his face […] as he recalled the gaping faces of the sturdy spectators he had that day seen watching him unveil a mystery’ (1930: 109). By rehearsing their tricks he came ‘by easy stages to the far more profound thoughts of Mesmer, and to the most surprising powers of Cagliostro’ and perceived that ‘he possessed something of these powers too [which] he developed in himself to an astonishing degree’ (1930: 110).