IV.
In the year 1843 there was situated in the Rue du Temple, Paris, a little shop, over the door of which was displayed the unpretentious sign, “M. Robert-Houdin, Pendules de Précision.” It was the shop of a watchmaker and constructor of mechanical toys. The proprietor was destined to be the greatest and most original fantaisiste of his time, perhaps of all times, the founder of a new and unique school of conjuring, and the inventor of some marvelous illusions. No one who stopped at the unpretentious place could have prophesied that the keen-eyed little Frenchman, in his long blouse besmeared with oil and iron filings, would become the premier prestidigitateur of France, the inventor of the electrical bell, improver of the electrical clock, author, and ambassador to the Arabs of Algeria. During his spare moments Houdin constructed the ingenious automata that subsequently figured in his famous Soirées Fantastiques. When he went abroad on business or for pleasure he wore the large paletot of the period and practiced juggling with cards and coins in the capacious pockets.
About the time of which I write he invented his “mysterious clock”—a piece of apparatus that kept admirable time, though apparently without works—and he sold one of them to a wealthy nobleman, the Count de l’Escalopier. The Count, who was an ardent lover of the art amusante, or science wedded to recreation, made frequent visits to the shop in the Rue du Temple, and sat for hours on a stool in the dingy workroom watching Houdin at work. A strong friendship grew up between the watchmaker and the scion of the Old Régime. It was not long before Houdin confided the secret of his hopes to the Count—his burning desire to become a great magician.
The nobleman approved the idea, and in order to give the conjurer opportunities for practice, so that he might acquire the confidence which he lacked, constantly invited him to pass the evening at the De l’Escalopier mansion, for the purpose of trying his skill in sleight-of-hand before a congenial and art-loving company. On one occasion, after a dinner given in honor of Monseigneur Affré, Archbishop of Paris, who was killed at the barricades during the Revolution of 1848, Houdin performed his clever trick of the “burnt writing restored.” In the language of Houdin, the effect was as follows: “After having requested the spectators carefully to examine a large envelope sealed on all sides, I handed it to the Archbishop’s Grand Vicar, begging him to keep it in his own possession. Next, handing to the prelate himself a small slip of paper, I requested him to write thereon, secretly, a sentence, or whatever he might choose to think of; the paper was then folded in four, and (apparently) burnt. But scarcely was it consumed and the ashes scattered to the winds, than, handing the envelope to the Archbishop, I requested him to open it. The first envelope being removed a second was found, sealed in like manner; then another, until a dozen envelopes, one inside another, had been opened, the last containing the scrap of paper restored intact. It was passed from hand to hand, and each read as follows:
“‘Though I do not claim to be a prophet I venture to predict, sir, that you will achieve brilliant success in your future career.’”
Houdin preserved this slip of paper as a religious relic for many years, but lost it during his travels in Algeria.
The Count de l’Escalopier, after the incident at the memorable dinner, urged Houdin to start out immediately as a conjurer. One day the watchmaker, after considerable hesitation, confessed his inability to do so on account of poverty.
“Ah,” replied the nobleman, “if that’s all, it is easily remedied. I have at home ten thousand francs or so which I really don’t know what to do with. Accept them, my dear Houdin, and begin your career.”
But Houdin, loath to incur the responsibility of risking a friend’s money in a theatrical speculation, without some guarantee of its being repaid, refused the generous offer. Again and again De l’Escalopier urged him to take it, but without success; finally the nobleman, annoyed at the mechanician’s obstinacy, left the shop in a state of pique. But after a few days he returned, saying, as he entered: “Since you are determined not to accept a favor from me, I have come to ask one of you. Listen! For the last year an escritoire in my sleeping-apartment has been robbed from time to time of large sums of money, notwithstanding the fact that I have adopted all manner of precautions and safeguards, such as changing the locks, having secret fastenings placed on the doors, etc. I have dismissed my servants, one after another, but, alas! have not discovered the culprit. This very morning I have been robbed of a couple of thousand-franc notes. There is a dark cloud of suspicion and evil hanging over my house that nothing will lift till the thief is caught. Can you help me?”
“I am willing to serve you,” said Houdin; “but how?”
“What!” replied De l’Escalopier; “you a mechanician, and ask how? Come, come, my friend; can you not devise some mechanical means for apprehending a thief?”
Houdin thought a minute, and said quietly: “I’ll see what I can do for you.” Setting to work feverishly, he invented the apparatus, and aided by his two workmen, who remained with him the whole of the night, he had it ready at eight o’clock the next morning. To the nobleman’s house Houdin went. The Count under various pretexts had sent all his servants away, so that no one should be aware of the mechanician’s visit.
While Houdin was placing his apparatus in position, the Count frequently expressed his wonderment at the heavy padded glove which the conjurer wore on his right hand.
“All in good time, my dear Count,” said Houdin. When everything was arranged, the mechanician began his explanation of the working of the secret detective apparatus. “You see, it is like this,” he remarked. “The thief unlocks the desk, but no sooner does he raise the lid, ever so little, than this claw-like piece of mechanism, attached to a light rod, and impelled by a spring, comes sharply down on the back of the hand which holds the key, and at the same time the report of a pistol is heard. The noise is to alarm the household, and——”
“But the glove you wear!” interrupted the nobleman.
“The glove is to protect me from the operation of the steel claw which tattooes the word Robber on the back of the criminal’s hand.”
“How is that accomplished?” said De l’Escalopier.
“Simplest thing in the world,” replied Houdin. “The claw consists of a number of very short but sharp points, so fixed as to form the word: and these points are shoved through a pad soaked with nitrate of silver, a portion of which is forced by the blow into the punctures, thereby making the scars indelible for life. A fleur de lys stamped by an executioner with a red-hot iron could not be more effective.”
“But, M. Houdin,” said the Count, horror-stricken at the idea. “I have no right to anticipate Justice in this way. To brand a fellow-being in such a fashion would forever close the doors of society against him. I could not think of such a thing. Besides, suppose some member of my family through carelessness or forgetfulness were to fall a victim to this dreadful apparatus.”
“You are right,” answered Houdin. “I will alter the mechanism in such a way that no harm can come to any one, save a mere superficial flesh wound that will easily heal. Give me a few hours.”
The Count assented, and the mechanician went home to his work-shop to make the required alterations. At the appointed time, he returned to the nobleman’s mansion, and the machine was adjusted to the desk. In place of the branding apparatus, Houdin had arranged a kind of cat’s claw to scratch the back of the thief’s hand. The desk was closed, and the two men parted company.
The Count did everything possible to excite the cupidity of the robber. He sent repeatedly for his stock-broker, on which occasions sums of money were ostentatiously passed from hand to hand; he even made a pretense of going away from home for a short time, but the bait proved a failure. Each day the nobleman reported, “no result,” to Houdin, and was on the point of giving up in despair. Two weeks elapsed. One morning De l’Escalopier rushed into the watchmaker’s shop, sank breathlessly on a chair, and ejaculated: “I have caught the robber at last.”
“Indeed,” replied Houdin; “who is he?”
“But first let me relate what happened,” said the Count. “I was seated this morning in my library when the report of a pistol resounded in my sleeping-apartment. ‘The thief!’ I exclaimed excitedly. I looked around me for a weapon, but finding nothing at hand, I grasped an ancient battle-ax from a stand of armor near by, and ran to seize the robber. I pushed open the door of the sleeping-room and saw, to my intense surprise, Bernard, my trusted valet and factotum, a man who has been in my employ for upwards of twenty years. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked; ‘what was that noise?’
“In the coolest manner he replied: ‘I came into the room just as you did, sir, at the explosion of the pistol. I saw a man making his escape down the back stairs, but I was so bewildered that I was unable to apprehend him.’
“I rushed down the back stairs, but, finding the door locked on the inside, knew that no one could have passed that way. A great light broke upon me. ‘Great God!’ I cried, ‘can Bernard be the thief?’ I returned to the library. My valet was holding his right hand behind him, but I dragged it forward, and saw the imprint of the claw thereon. The wound was bleeding profusely. Finding himself convicted, the wretch fell on his knees and begged my forgiveness.
“‘How long have you been robbing me?’ I asked.
“‘For nearly two years,’ he said.
“‘And how much have you taken?’ I inquired.
“‘Fifteen thousand francs, which I invested in Government stock. The scrip is in my desk.’
“I found the securities correct, and in the presence of another witness, made Bernard sign the following confession:
“‘I, the undersigned, hereby admit having stolen from the Count de l’Escalopier the sum of 15,000 francs, taken by me from his desk by the aid of false keys.
“‘Bernard X——.
“‘Paris, the — day of ——, 18—.
“‘Now go,’ I exclaimed, ‘and never enter this house again. You are safe from prosecution; go, and repent of your crime.’
“And now,” said the Count to Houdin, “I want you to take these 15,000 francs and begin your career as a conjurer; surely you cannot refuse to accept as a loan the money your ingenuity has rescued from a robber. Take it——”
The nobleman produced the securities, and pressed them into Houdin’s hands. The mechanician, overcome by the Count’s generosity, embraced him in true Gallic style, and this embrace, Houdin says, “was the only security De l’Escalopier would accept from me.”
Without further delay the conjurer had a little theatre constructed in the Palais Royal, and began his famous performances, called by him: “Soirées Fantastiques de Robert-Houdin,” which attained the greatest popularity. He was thus enabled within a year to pay back the money borrowed from the Count de l’Escalopier.
Jean Eugène Robert, afterwards known to fame by the cognomen of Robert-Houdin, was born at Blois, the birthplace of Louis XII, on the sixth of December, 1805. His father was a watchmaker. At the age of eleven Robert was sent to a Jesuit college at Orleans, preparatory to the study of law, and was subsequently apprenticed to a notary at Blois, but finding the transcribing of musty deeds a tiresome task, he prevailed on his father to let him follow the trade of a watchmaker. While working in this capacity, he chanced one day to enter a bookseller’s shop to purchase a treatise on mechanics, and was handed by mistake a work on conjuring. The marvels contained in this volume fired his imagination, and this incident decided his future career, but he did not realize his ambition until later in life, when De l’Escalopier came to his aid.
In his early study of sleight-of-hand Houdin soon recognized that the organs performing the principal part are the sight and touch. He says in his memoirs: “I had often been struck by the ease with which pianists can read and perform at sight the most difficult pieces. I saw that, by practice, it would be possible to create a certainty of perception and facility of touch, rendering it easy for the artist to attend to several things simultaneously, while his hands were busy employed with some complicated task. This faculty I wished to acquire and apply to sleight-of-hand; still, as music could not afford me the necessary element, I had recourse to the juggler’s art.” Residing at Blois at the time was a mountebank who, for a consideration, initiated the young Houdin into the mysteries of juggling, enabling him to juggle four balls at once and read a book at the same time. “The practice of this feat,” continues Houdin, “gave my fingers a remarkable degree of delicacy and certainty, while my eye was at the same time acquiring a promptitude of perception that was quite marvelous.”
On Thursday evening, July 3, 1845, Houdin’s first Fantastic Evening took place in a small hall of the Palais Royal. The little auditorium would seat only two hundred people, but the prices of admission were somewhat high, front seats being rated at $1 or five francs, and no places were to be had under forty sous. The stage set represented a miniature drawing-room in white and gold in the Louis XV style. In the center was an undraped table, flanked by two small side tables of the lightest possible description; at the side wings or walls were consoles, with about five inches of gilt fringe hanging from them; and across the back of the room ran a broad shelf, upon which were displayed the various articles to be used in the séances. A chandelier and elegant candelabra made the little scene brilliant. The simplicity of everything on the conjurer’s stage disarmed suspicion; apparently there was no place for the concealment of anything. Prior to Houdin’s day the wizards draped all of their tables to the floor, thereby making them little else than ponderous confederate boxes. Conjuring under such circumstances was child’s play, as compared with the difficulties to be encountered with the apparatus of the new school. In addition, Houdin discarded the long, flowing robes of many of his predecessors, as savoring too much of charlatanism, and appeared in evening dress. Since his time, no first-class prestidigitateur has dared to offend good taste, by presenting his illusions in any other costume than that of a gentleman habited à la mode, nor has he dared to give a performance with draped tables. In fact, modern professors of the art magique have gone to extremes on the question of tables and elaborate apparatus, many of them using simple little guéridons with glass tops, unfringed. Houdin’s center table was a marvel of mechanical skill and ingenuity. Concealed in the body were “vertical rods each arranged to rise and fall in a tube, according as it was drawn down by a spiral spring or pulled up by a whip-cord which passed over a pulley at the top of the tube and so down the table leg to the hiding place of the confederate.” There were “ten of these pistons, and the ten cords, passing under the floor of the stage, terminated at a keyboard. Various ingenious automata were actuated by this means of transmitting motion.” The consoles were nothing more than shallow wooden boxes with openings through the side scenes. The tops of the consoles were perforated with traps. Any object which the wizard desired to work off secretly to his confederate behind the scenes was placed on one of these traps and covered with a paper, metal cover, or a handkerchief. Touching a spring caused the article to fall noiselessly through the trap upon cotton batting, and roll into the hands of the conjurer’s alter ego, or concealed assistant.
Let us now look at some of the illusions of the classic prestidigitateur of France. By far his best and greatest invention is the “light and heavy chest,” of which he himself wrote: “I do not think, modesty apart, that I ever invented anything so daringly ingenious.” The conjurer came forward with a little wooden box, to the top of which was attached a metal handle, and remarked as follows to the audience: “Ladies and gentlemen, I have here a cash box which possesses some peculiar qualities. I place in it, for example, a lot of bank-notes, for safe-keeping, and by mesmeric power I can make the box so heavy that the strongest man cannot lift it. Let us try the experiment.” He placed the box on the run-down, which served as a means of communication between the stage and the audience, and requested the services of a volunteer assistant.
When the latter had satisfied the audience that the box was almost as light as a feather, the conjurer executed his pretended mesmeric passes, and bade the gentleman lift it a second time. But try as he might, with all his strength, the volunteer would prove unequal to the task. Reverse passes over the demon box restored it to its pristine lightness. This extraordinary trick is performed as follows: Underneath the cloth cover of the run-down, at a spot marked, was a powerful electro-magnet with conducting wires reaching behind the scenes to a battery. At a signal from the magician a secret operator turned on the electric current, and the box, which had an iron bottom, clung to the electro-magnet with supernatural attraction. It is needless to remark that the bottom of the cash box was painted to represent mahogany, so as to correspond with the top and sides.
The phenomena of electro-magnetism were entirely unknown to the general public in 1845, when this trick of the spirit cash-box was first presented. As may be well imagined, it created a profound sensation. When people became more enlightened on the subject of electricity, Houdin added an additional effect, in order to throw the public off the scent as to the principle on which the experiment was based. After first having exhibited the trick on the “run-down,” he hooked the box to one end of a rope which passed over a pulley attached to the ceiling of the hall. Several gentlemen were now invited to hold the disengaged end of the rope. They were able to raise and lower the box with perfect ease, but at a wave of the magician’s wand the little chest descended slowly to the floor, lifting off their feet the spectators who were holding the rope, to the astonishment of everyone. The secret lay in the pulley and block. The rope, instead of passing straight over the pulley, in on one side and out on the other, went through the block and through the ceiling, working over a double pulley on the floor above, where a workman at a windlass held his own against the united power of the five or six gentlemen below. It is a simple mechanical principle and will be easily understood by those acquainted with mechanical power.
Houdin’s orange tree, that blossomed and bore fruit in sight of the audience, was a clever piece of mechanism. The blossoms, constructed of tissue paper, were pushed up through the hollow branches of the tree by the pistons rising in the table and operating against similar pistons in the orange-tree box. When these pedals were relaxed the blossoms disappeared and the fruit was gradually developed—real fruit, too, which was distributed among the spectators. The oranges were stuck on iron spikes affixed to the branches of the tree and hid from view by hemispherical wire screens painted green and secreted by the leaves. When these screens were swung back by pedal play the fruit was revealed. In performing this illusion Houdin first borrowed a handkerchief from a lady in the audience, and caused it to pass from his hand into an orange left on the tree. When the disappearance was effected, the fruit opened, revealing the handkerchief in its center. Two mechanical butterflies, exquisitely made, then took the delicate piece of cambric or lace and flew upwards with it. The handkerchief of course was exchanged in the beginning of the trick for a dummy belonging to the magician. It was worked into the mechanical orange by an assistant, before the tree was brought forward for exhibition.
Houdin was very fond of producing magically bon-bons, small fans, toys, bouquets, and bric-à-brac from borrowed hats. These articles he distributed with liberal hand among the spectators, exclaiming: “Here are toys for young children and old.” There was always a great scramble for these souvenirs. The conjurer found time to edit and publish a small comic newspaper, “Cagliostro,” copies of which were handed to every one in the theatre. The contents of this journal pour rire were changed from evening to evening, which entailed no small labor on the part of the hard-worked prestidigitateur. It was illustrated with comic cartoons, and was eagerly perused between the acts.
Here is one of Houdin’s bon mots: Le Ministre de l’Intérieur ne recevra pas demain, mais le Ministre des Finances recevra tous les jours ... et jours suivants.
The crowning event of Houdin’s life was his embassy to Algeria to counteract the influence of the Marabout priests over the ignorant Arabs. The Marabouts are Mohammedan miracle workers, and are continually fanning the flames of rebellion and discontent against French domination. The French Government invited Robert-Houdin to go to Algeria and perform before the Arabs in order to show them that a French wizard was greater than a Marabout fakir. It was pitting Greek against Greek! The marvels of optics, chemistry, electricity, and mechanics which Houdin had in his repertoire, coupled with his digital dexterity, were well calculated to evoke astonishment and awe. How well the famous French wizard succeeded in his mission is a matter of history. A full account of his adventures among the Arabs is contained in his memoirs and makes very entertaining reading. After his successful embassy to the land of the white bournous and turban, Houdin returned to France and settled down at St. Gervais near Blois, giving his time to electrical studies and inventions.
He received several gold medals from the French Government for the successful application of electricity to the running of clocks. The conjurer’s house was a regular Magic Villa, being full of surprises for the friends who visited the place. There were sliding panels in the walls, trap doors, automatons in every niche, descending floors, and electric wires from attic to cellar. Houdin died at St. Gervais in June, 1871. His son-in-law, M. Hamilton, continued to carry on the Temple of Enchantment at Paris, and at the present time there is a little theater on the Boulevard des Italiens called “Théâtre Robert-Houdin,” where strolling conjurers hold forth. It was a great disappointment to Houdin when his two sons refused to take up magic as a profession; one entered the French army, and the other became a watchmaker.