In the same year Henry issued a challenge open to the whole world, defying any performer to equal his manipulation of the cup and ball trick. He also employed as an adjunct of his conjuring performances Signor de Fedori of Rome, an armless wonder, who used his feet to play the drum, violin, and triangle.
A contemporary of Henry was Charles, the great ventriloquist, who varied his performance as did all ventriloquists of his day, by presenting “Philosophical and Mechanical Experiments” to make up a two-hour-and-a-half performance. Charles made several tours of the English provinces, and played in London at intervals. On a London programme which is undated, but which announces M. Charles as playing at Mr. Wigley’s Large Room, Spring Gardens, the second automaton on his list is described as “The Russian Inn, out of which comes a little Woman and brings the Liquor demanded for.” Two of his programmes dated Theatre Royal, Hull, April, 1829, now in my collection, carry a pathetic foot-note written in the handwriting of the collector through whom they came into my possession: “The audiences on both the evenings were extremely small, and the money was refunded.”
By referring to the chapter on the writing and drawing figure, Chapter III, Page 113, a Schmidt programme of 1827 will be found, in which he features “The Enchanted Dutch Coffee-House, an elegant little building. On the traveller ringing the bell, the door opens, the hostess attends and provides him with any liquor he may call for.”
Schmidt seems to have confined his exhibitions to London and the provinces and was often connected with other magicians, including Gyngell and Buck. The latter was an English conjurer, best known as the man who was horribly injured when presenting “The Gun Delusion.” This consisted of having a marked bullet shot at the performer, who caught it between his teeth on a plate, or on the point of a needle or knife. Some miscreant loaded the gun with metal after Buck had it prepared for the trick, and the unfortunate performer’s right cheek was literally shot away.
In 1828 Jules de Rovere, a French conjurer, whose fame rests principally on the fact that he coined the new title “prestidigitator,” appeared at the Haymarket Theatre, London, and also toured the English provinces. A clipping from the Oxford Herald of that year includes this description of his automaton: “One of the clowns vanishes from the box, and instantly at the top of the hall a little lady, in a little hotel brilliantly illuminated, gives out wines and liquors to them who ask for them, without any apparent communication with the artiste, and yet the lady is only six inches high.”
In the late 30’s Rovere made his headquarters in Paris, and there he and Robert-Houdin met. The latter refers to this meeting on page 153 of his “Memoirs,” when writing of the misfortunes which had overtaken Father Roujol, whose shop had once been headquarters for conjurers: “Still I had the luck to form here the acquaintance of Jules de Rovere, the first to employ a title now generally given to fashionable conjurers.”
And after Rovere, Phillippe, who is by far the most important presenter of the Pastry Cook of the Palais Royal, as bearing upon Robert-Houdin’s claims.
For Phillippe’s early history we must depend largely upon Robert-Houdin’s “Memoirs.” According to these, Phillippe started life as a confectioner or maker of sweets, and his real name was Phillippe Talon. According to an article published in L’Illusionniste in January, 1902, he was born in Alias, near Nîmes, December 25th, 1802, and died in Bokhara, Turkey, June 27th, 1878.