Ventriloquist

“ Secondly, we have ventriloquism proper, which consists in the imitation of such voices,, sounds, and noises, not as originating in him, but in some other appropriate source at a given or varying distance, in any or even in several directions, either singly or together—a process exciting both wonder and amusement, and which may be accomplished by thousands who have hitherto viewed the ventriloquist as invested with a power wholly denied by nature to themselves. ”

“ If there were two doors, the person first moving his head towards one of them, would probably give a direction to the imaginations of all the others; unless, indeed, the ventriloquist himself, by his words, or his own movements, as is usually the case, should assume the initiative. Every ventriloquist takes especial care to direct the imagination of his listener to the desired point, either by what he says, by some gesture, or by some movement. Such, undeniably, is the fact in regard to ventriloquism; for we know enough of the philosophy of sound, to be certain it can he nothing else. ”

“ The art of the ventriloquist to convey his voice to the place he wills—into the gaunt jaws of a dead man’s skull—into the moveable lips of a tutored dog, or into the invisible spirits of a magical globe—may be easily recognised. ”

“ The ventriloquist not only seems to "throw his voice," as it is said, or simulates the sound as it usually appears at a distance with but little motion of the lips and face, but he imitates the voices of an infant and of a feeble old man, of a drunken man disputing with an exasperated wife, the broken language of a foreigner, the cry of an animal in distress, demonstrating that the performer must be proficient in the art of mimicry. ”

“ And yet how very, very seldom one meets with a ventriloquist; what a rare power his is. Why I, who have made the subject a study, have never met with more than one amateur ventriloquist capable of executing that Me-ow, and that was a Crichton of a friend of mine in the Engineers, who could do everything and anything but make his whiskers and moustache grow, and that he never could accomplish. ”

“ Too much attention cannot be bestowed on the study of sound as it falls on the ear, and an endeavor to imitate it as it is heard—for the “secret” of the art is, that as perspective is to the eye so is ventriloquism to the ear. When we look at a painting of a landscape, some of the objects appear at a distance; but we know that it is only the skill of the artist which has made it appear as the eye has seen it in reality. In exactly the same manner a ventriloquist acts upon and deceives the ear, by producing sounds as they are heard from any known distances. ”

“ If sound were propagated in straight lines, like light, and if the ear appreciated the direction of the one, as the eye does that of the other, the ventriloquist would exercise in vain all the powers of imitation and of internal utterance. Even in the present constitution of the ear, his art has its limits, beyond which he must be cautious of pushing it, unless he calls to his aid another principle, which, we believe, has not yet been tried. In order to explain this, we shall analyze some of the most common feats of ventriloquism. ”

“ He accurately judges it to be approaching, passing, or receding, as the case may be, by the gradations of loudness, but is unable to decide with certainty whether its approach or recession is from up or down the street. Enough has been stated to show that we do not hear, but that we judge the direction a sound has travelled from its source on reaching the ear.” The ventriloquist indicates, either directly or indirectly, the direction from which he wishes his audience to believe the sound is coming. ”

“ There is one trick that always tends to confirm the spectator’s illusion, and that is this: in the little prefatory speech that the ventriloquist makes, he gives out that he is a foreigner, and does not speak the language of his audience well; in fact, he expresses himself with difficulty and with a strong accent. His dummies, on the contrary, answer in very good French or English, as the case may be; and when the auditors hear them, they are led to believe that ventriloquism counts for nothing in their answers or conversation. ”

“ But the ventriloquist knows full well that the judgment must be led astray quite as much as the ear; therefore, in disguising the true direction of his voice—or those assumed voices which he has added to his own—he requires finesse of a high order, which, while he shall be apparently unconscious of doing so, must lead his audience to certain conclusions respecting the situation of the sounds. In this he is greatly assisted by Nature, which lays the foundation of the art in the fact of the uncertainty of their direction as well as distance. ”

“ The sound vibrations made in the mouth are transmitted along this tube to the interior part of the organs of hearing. Now it is by a nice judgment of sound by this tube that the professional ventriloquist judges the majority of his voices, especially those greatly obscured or muffled. Not only must the auric nerves of the would-be ventriloquist be perfect, but he will become more proficient as he is able to study and understand the human voice. There is the language of emotion, or natural language. ”

“ He said nothing, but concentrated an intent speculative gaze on the face of Valeria, who had pulled off her faint green sun-bonnet and in a flush of eager hopefulness fanned with the slats.
"Ventriloquist?" the portly man repeated with a note of surprise, as Brent made known his gifts and his desire for an engagement. "Oh, well—ventriloquism is a chestnut."
Then with a qualm of pity, perhaps, for the blank despair that settled down on the two young faces he explained: "Nothing goes in the circus business but novelty. The public is tired out with ventriloquism. ”

“ Alpha was trembling now in her trance-like state.
“Maude sends her love and asks you not to be unhappy. Don't grieve for her!”
Creedon did not know precisely how to take it. It shook his new scepticism to its shallow foundation. As for me, I wondered. It was not ventriloquism. The ventriloquist is not so successful in the dark. It is not the ear he deceives. It is the eye. He directs your attention to a place from which he wants you to think the voice comes. ”

“ The gifts of this world have been distributed fairly equally, and you may be sure that the young girl who has been born a ventriloquist very likely is totally unable to spell difficult words correctly or carry even a simple tune. Ventriloquism, by the way, is also passing out as a form of dinner party diversion, and it is no longer considered a priceless accomplishment to be able to make a dog bark or a baby cry under the hostess’s chair. ”

“ At every stage he takes him out, to give him air and make him say his lesson. He carries on the conversation with infinite drollery, and surprising skill as a ventriloquist. The boy’s resistance to being shut up in his box again,—the way in which his murmurs and complaints die away, like the waltz in the Freischütz, till at length the lid is clapped to, and the last tones come from the shut case like a faint echo,—are inconceivably comic. ”

“ The ventriloquist was therefore able to carry on a dialogue in which the dramatis voces, as they may be called, were numerous; and, when on the outside of an apartment, could personate a mob with its infinite variety of noise and vociferation. Their influence over the minds of an audience was still further extended by a singular power which they had obtained over the muscles of the body. ”

“ It is possible to teach a dog to open his mouth and follow the motions of his master’s hand; and if the master be any sort of a ventriloquist, he can easily make believe that he has an animal endowed with speech.
The ventriloquist who, standing near his dummies, succeeds in keeping his facial muscles absolutely immovable, while his figures become animate and move their lips and seem to speak, produces such an illusion among the spectators by virtue of the acoustic principle that we have just noted ”

“ The Ventriloquist perseveres a little longer, though even his own belief in the dummies seems to be shaken, and at length he gives them up as hopeless, and carries them off ignominiously, [pg 197] one under each arm. Whereupon the party breathe freely once more, only to gasp in impotent horror the next moment, as the irrepressible Young Man returns with a smaller figure, modelled and dressed to represent an almost inconceivably repulsive infant. ”

“ The sound of the bells, instead of arriving constantly at the ears of the person so situated, is frequently reflected in a short time from two or three different places. These deceptions are, in many cases, so much diversified by the successive interpositions of fresh objects, that the steeple appears, in the hearer’s judgment, to perform the part of an expert ventriloquist on a theatre—the extent of which is adapted to its own powers, and not to those of the human voice. ”

“ Let us take ventriloquism as a parallel case to that of animal magnetism. Ventriloquism is neither more nor less than imitation; and yet, aided by the imagination, perhaps a majority of those who know anything about it, are inclined to believe there is really such a faculty as that which is vulgarly attributed to ventriloquism. The whole art of the ventriloquist consists in making such sounds as would be produced by a person, or thing, that should be actually in the circumstances that he wishes to represent. ”

“ This is an example almost invariably successful, and is constantly used by skilled professors of the art. As we have before repeatedly intimated, the eyes and attention of the audience must be directed to the supposed spot from whence the illusive voice is supposed to proceed.
[2] It is very rarely that a ventriloquist shows a full face to his audience: it is only done when he is at a great distance from them, and is pronouncing the labial sounds, in the manner given, for any movement of the jaws would help to destroy the illusion.
Student: Are you up there, Jem? ”

“ This voice must always be used when the ventriloquist wishes it to appear that the sound comes from some one close at hand, but through an obstacle. The description of voice and dialogue may be varied as in the following examples—
Ex. 1. The Suffocated Victim.—This was a favorite illustration of Mr. Love, the polyphonist. A large box or close cupboard is used indiscriminately, as it may be handy. The student will rap or kick the box apparently by accident. The voice will then utter a hoarse and subdued groan, apparently from the box or closet. ”

“ The voice, of course, may be made to come nearer or to recede, according to the varying size of the cavity described.
A ventriloquist should always have in his mind the knowledge that distant or muffled sounds are more or less indistinct, and as certain consonant sounds are ventriloquially difficult to utter, they may safely be slurred over, rather than risk the success of the illusion by moving the lips. ”

“ Dugald Stewart, who has written an interesting article on ventriloquism in the appendix to the third volume of the “Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind,” has, we think, taken a very imperfect view of the subject. He not only doubts the fact, that ventriloquists possess the power of fetching a voice from within, but “he cannot conceive what aid the ventriloquist could derive in the exercise of his art from such an extraordinary power, if it were really in his possession.” ”

“ A ventriloquist, on the other hand, with whom these relations are reversed, hears his own voice reflected from without, inwardly, while, if he continues in the same condition while listening to another person's voice, he will hear the latter from within, outwardly. ”

“ VENTRILOQUISM AND ANIMATED PUPPETS.
Ventriloquists may, according to their specialties, be divided into various categories. Some devote their talent to the imitation of the cries of animals, the songs of birds, the noise of tools, etc.; others imitate the sound of musical instruments; some mock the noise produced by a crowd, a regiment, or a procession; while others, again, make dolls or dummies speak. ”

“ Ventriloquists almost always exaggerate nature, especially as a means of indicating distance; and they make up the illusion by prompting their audiences to imagine the effects they fail themselves to represent completely; as any one may see any night of his life in the case of Herr Von Joel, who persists in looking and inducing his audience to look for his “leetle singing lark,” up in the ceiling of Evans’s supper room.
With the assistance of this sort of prompting, it is really extraordinary what ventriloquists can accomplish, and the extent to which they can affect a sympathising audience. ”

“ His surprise and alarm, our hero concluded, was all a pretense and a part of his little joke, and it was then that Ike turning away uttered the ejaculation "Great Cæsar!" His blood was up; the professor was a wonderful ventriloquist, but Ike determined to have some sport and give the professor ventriloquist, as he appeared to be, the surprise of his life. He determined to make the mummy do some tall talking and force the professor to a betrayal of genuine surprise.
"Yes," mentally concluded Ike, "the next time you'll shed your goggles for fair." ”

“ By so doing the cavity of the mouth will be very much enlarged. This will cause the voice to be obscured, and so appear to come nearer by degrees. At the same time, care must be taken not to articulate the consonant sounds plainly, as that would cause the disarrangement of the lips and cavity of the mouth; and in all imitation voices the consonants must scarcely be articulated at all, especially if the ventriloquist faces the audience. ”