I.
What is the meaning of this Egyptian Temple, transplanted from the banks of the Nile to prosaic London? The smoke and grime have attacked it and played sad havoc with its sandstone walls, painted with many hieroglyphics. The fog envelops it with a spectral embrace. No Sphinxes guard its portal. Alas, its glories have departed! But stop a bit! There is a gentleman in evening dress, with a tall hat pushed well back from his forehead, sitting in a small box-like receptacle on one side of the colossal entrance, his face framed in by a small window; and another man, similarly attired, standing at an iron wicket leading into the sanctum sanctorum. The temple, then, is guarded by two up-to-date, flesh-and-blood Sphinxes in swallow-tail coats and opera hats. Ah me, what a travesty on the human-headed monsters of the land of Mizraim. See the long line of worshipers waiting to obtain admission to the Mysteries. Has the cult of Isis and Osiris been revived? The devotees deposit coins with Sphinx No. 1 and receive from him yellow tickets in exchange, the presentation of which to Sphinx No. 2 permits their entrance into the temple.
What does it all mean?
Dear reader, this is Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, London, and the people are crowding to see a conjuring exhibition by Colonel Stodare. His Sphinx trick is the great attraction.
Stodare is dust long ago, and the Sphinx no longer a mystery. Its riddle has been solved. {319}
THE SPHINX ILLUSION.
(From the English edition of Hoffmann’s Magic. London, 1877.)
{320}
But let us rehearse its history.
The Sphinx illusion, which has formed the basis of nearly all tricks performed by the aid of looking-glasses, was invented by Thomas Tobin, of the Polytechnic Institution, London. Colonel Stodare, the conjurer, had the honor of first introducing it to the world. The “London Times” (October 19, 1865) describes it as follows:
“Most intricate is the problem proposed by Colonel Stodare, when, in addition to his admirable feats of ventriloquism and legerdemain, he presents to his patrons a novel illusion called the ‘Sphinx.’ Placing upon an uncovered table a chest similar in size to the cases commonly occupied by stuffed dogs or foxes, he removes the side facing the spectators, and reveals a head attired after the fashion of an Egyptian Sphinx. To avoid the suspicion of ventriloquism, he retires to a distance from the figure, supposed to be too great for the practice of that art, taking his position on the border-line of the stalls and the area, while the chest is on the stage. Thus stationed, he calls upon the Sphinx to open its eyes, which it does—to smile, which it does also, though the habitual expression of its countenance is most melancholy, and to make a speech, which it does also, this being the miraculous part of the exhibition. Not only with perspicuity, but with something like eloquence, does it utter some twenty lines of verse; and while its countenance is animated and expressive, the movement of the lips, in which there is nothing mechanical, exactly corresponds to the sounds articulated.
“This certainly is one of the most extraordinary illusions ever presented to the public. That the speech is spoken by a human voice there is no doubt, but how is a head to be contrived which, being detached from anything like a body, confined in a case, which it completely fills, and placed on a bare-legged table, will accompany a speech, that apparently proceeds from its lips, with a strictly appropriate movement of the mouth, and a play of the countenance that is the reverse of mechanical? Eels, as we all know, can wriggle about after they have been chopped into half a dozen pieces; but a head that, like that of the Physician Douban, in the Arabian tales, pursues its eloquence after it has been severed from the body, scarcely comes within the reach of possibilities; unless, indeed, the old-fashioned assertion that ‘King Charles walked and talked half an hour after his head was cut off,’ is to be received, not as an illustration of defective punctuation, but as a positive historical statement.
“Davus might have solved the ‘Anthropoglossus,’ but Colonel Stodare presents us with a Sphinx that is really worthy of an Oedipus.”