The Enquirer

VENTRILOQUISM. OF THE CELEBRATED MR. FITZ JAMES

From the last Port Folio.

The 'busy indolence' of London has often, of late, been much engaged by the marvellous feats of Mr. Fitz-James, one of the most astonishing performers that has ever confounded the ignorant, or edified the philosopher. For the following account of his wonderful talents, we are indebted to Mr. W. Nicholson. the scientific Editor of the Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chymistry, and the Arts. What gives to this article the greatest weight and interest is, that Mr. Nicholson, a philosophical remarker, was an eye witness of the prodigies, which he describes.

I have now the satisfaction to give some account of the performance of Mr. Fitz James, one of the first masters of the art of ventriloquism ; who, in addition to his very striking powers as a speaker & an actor, has the candour and liberality to explain the nature of his performance to his auditors. I was present a few evenings ago at a public exhibition, which continues to be repeated at Dulau's in Soho Square; and though my account of what I saw and heard cannot but be very imperfect, & far from exciting the surprize, which the actual performance produces, it may, nevertheless, be of utility to establish a few principles, and remove some errors respecting this art.

After a comic piece had been read by Mons. Voiange, Mr. Fitz James, who was sitting among the audience, went forward, and expressed his suspicion that the ventriloquism was to be performed by the voices of persons concealed under a platform, which was covered with green cloth.- Replies were given to his observations, apparently from beneath that stage : and he followed the voices with the action and manner of a person, whose curiosity was much excited, making remarks in his own voice, and answering rapidly & immediately, in a voice which no one would have ascribed to him. He then addressed a bust which appeared to answer his questions in character, and after conversing with another bust in the same manner, he turned around, and in a neat & perspicuous speech, explained the nature of the subject of our attention; and from what he stated and exhibited before us, it appeared that by long practice he had acquired the faculty of speaking during the inspiration of the breath, with nearly the same articulation, though not so loud, nor so variously modulated, as the ordinary voice, formed by expiration of the air. The unusual voice, being formed in the cavity of the lungs, is very different, in effect, from the other. Perhaps it may issue, in a great measure, through the trunk of the individual. We should scarcely be disposed to ascribe any definite direction to it; and consequently are readily led to suppose it to come from the place best adapted to what was said. So that when he went to the door and asked, "Are you there?" to a person, supposed to be in the passage, the answer in the unusual voice was immediately ascribed, by the audience, to a person actually in the passage ; and upon shutting the door, and withdrawing from it, when he turned round, directing his voice to the door, & said, "Stay there till I call you ;" the answer, which was lower and well adapted to the supposed distance and obstacle interposed, appeared still more strikingly, to be out of the room. He then looked up to the ceiling, and called out in his own voice, "What are you doing above?" to which an immediate answer was given, which seemed to be in the room above, "I am coming down directly." The same deception was practised on the supposition of a person being under the floor, who answered in the unusual, but a very different voice from the other, that he was down in the cellar putting away some wine. An excellent deception of the watchman crying the hour in the street, and approaching nearer the house, till he came opposite the window, was practised. Our attention was directed to the street; by the marked attention which Fitz James himself appeared to pay to the sound. He threw up the sash and asked the hour, which was immediately answered in the same tone, but clearer and louder ; but upon his shutting the window down again, the watchman proceeded less audibly, and all at once the voice became very faint, and Fitz James, in his natural voice said, "he has turned the corner." In all these instances, as well as others, which were exhibited to the very great entertainment and surprise of the spectators, the acute observer will perceive that the direction of the sound was imaginary, and arose entirely from the well-studied and skilful combinations of the performer. Other scenes, which were to follow, required the imagination to be too completely misled, to admit of the actor being seen. He went behind a folding screen in one corner of the room, when he counterfeited the knocking at a door. One person called from within, and was answered by a person from without, who was admitted, and we found, from the conversation of the parties, that the latter was in pain, and desirous of having a tooth extracted. The dialogue and all the particulars of the operation that followed, would require a long discourse, if I were to attempt to describe them to the reader. The imitations of the natural and modulated voice of the operator, encouraging, soothing, and talking with his patient, the confusion, terror, and apprehension of the sufferer; the inarticulate noises produced by the chairs & apparatus, upon the whole, constituted a mass of sound, which produced a strange, but comic effect. Loose observers would not have hesitated to assert that they heard more than one voice at the time ; and though this certainly could not be the case, and it did not appear so to me, yet the transitions were so instantaneous, without the least pause between them, that the notion might very easily be generated. The removal of the screen satisfied the spectators that one performer had effected the whole.

The actor then proceeded to show us specimens of his art as a mimic, and here the power he had acquired over the muscles of his face was full as strange as the modulations of his voice. In several instances, he caused the opposite muscles to act differently from each other : so that while one side of his face expressed mirth and laughter, the other side appeared to be weeping. About eight or ten faces were shown to us in succession as he came from behind the screen, which together with the general habits and gait of the individual, totally altered him. In one instance he was tall, thin and melancholy : and the instant afterwards, with no greater interval of time than to pass round behind the screen, he appeared bloated with obesity and staggering with fulness. The same man another time exhibited his face simple, unaffected, and void of character, and the next moment, it was covered with wrinkles expressing slyness, mirth, and whim of different descriptions. How far this discipline may be easy or difficult, I know not, but he certainly appeared to me, to be far superior to the most practised masters of the countenance I have ever seen.

During this exhibition. he imitated the sound of an organ, the ringing of a bell, the noises produced by the great hydraulic machine of Marly, and the opening and shutting of a snuff-box.

His principal performance, however, consisted in the debates at Nantes, in which there were twenty different speakers, as is asserted in his advertisement; and certainly the number of different voices was very great. Much entertainment was afforded by the subject, which was taken from the late times of anarchy and convulsion in France : when the lowest, the most ignorant part of Society was called upon to decide the fate of a whole people, by the energies of folly and brutal violence. The same remark may be applied to this debate, as to other scenes, respecting tooth drawing: namely, that the quick and sudden transitions, and the great difference in the voices gave the audience various notions, as well as with regard to the number of speakers. as to their positions and the direction of their voices,