Charles Bertram who wrote “Isn’t it Wonderful?” closed the nineteenth-century list of English writers on magic, but his work is marred by mis-statements which even the humblest of magicians could refute, and, like Frost, he drew heavily on writers who preceded him.
So far, in the twentieth century, the most notable contribution to the literature of magic is Henry Ridgely Evans’ “The Old and the New Magic,” but Mr. Evans falls into the error of his predecessors in accepting as authoritative the history of magic and magicians furnished by Robert-Houdin. He has made no effort whatever to verify or refute the statements made by Robert-Houdin, but has merely compiled and re-written them to suit his twentieth-century readers.
The true historian does not compile. He delves for facts and proofs, and having found these he arrays his indisputable facts, his uncontrovertible proofs, to refute the statements of those who have merely compiled. That is what I have done to prove my case against Robert-Houdin. I have not borrowed from the books of other writers on magic. I have gone to the very fountain head of information, records of contemporary literature, newspapers, programmes and advertisements of magicians who preceded Robert-Houdin, sometimes by a century. It would cost fully a million dollars to forge the collection of evidence now in my hands. Men who lived a hundred years before Robert-Houdin was born did not invent posters or write advertisements in order to refute the claims of those who were to follow in the profession of magic. These programmes, advertisements, newspaper notices, and crude cuts trace the true history of magic as no romancer, no historian of a single generation possibly could. They are the ghosts of dead and gone magicians, rising in this century of research and progress to claim the credit due them.
