“Hence a reaction to a severer and simpler school of conjuring, of which Wiljalba Frikell was the earliest exponent, the school which professes, so far as the public is concerned, to work without apparatus and which in fact reduces its apparatus to the smallest possible dimensions. Many high class performers now give what is known in England as a ‘carpet bag’ show, and will keep an audience wonder bound for a couple of hours, using no more apparatus than can be carried in an ordinary gripsack.
ST. JAMES’ THEATRE
(LONDON, 1854)
PROFESSOR WILJALBA FRIKELL
Appointed Physicien to their Majesties the Emperor and Empress of Russia
- 1.—The Secret Power and Wonderful Appearance
- 2.—You Shall and Must Laugh
- 3.—The Drunken Bracelet
- 4.—Something for Everybody and the Pleasant Pastime
- 5.—Time in a Fix
- 1.—The Little Devil and the Secret Dispatch
- 2.—Aladdin’s Magic Lamp
- 3.—Grand Military Manœuvre, or the Courage of Prof. Frikell
- 4.—Das Geheimnisz, and Flight in the Air
- 5.—The Children’s Delight and Christmas Presents of Prof. Wiljalba Frikell
THE ABOVE IS A COPY OF ONE OF FRIKELL’S PROGRAMMES.
“Broadly speaking this is undoubtedly an advance, for of two performers, the one who can produce by the magic of his own fingers the same degree of illusion for which the other needs elaborate apparatus, the former is surely the greater artist. But {187} the striving for simplicity may be overdone. The performer is apt to lose his feeling for breadth of effect, and to fritter away his skill over illusions too minute and too soon over to make any permanent impression. One of the most skilful sleight of hand performers we have ever seen throws away half the value of his work by going too fast, and producing small effects, individually brilliant, so rapidly that his audience has not time fairly to appreciate one before another is presented. The spectator, under such circumstances, takes away with him a mere blurred impression, rather than a clear mental photograph of what he has seen, and the show suffers in his estimation accordingly.
“Another danger attending the non-apparatus school lies in the fact that the performer is apt, by carrying the principle to needless lengths, unduly to limit his methods.
“On the whole we are inclined to think that the most successful magician of the future will be one who judiciously combines apparatus and non-apparatus tricks; such apparatus, however, to be of a simple and homely kind and not made admittedly for the purpose of the trick. The ideal entertainment, from the standpoint of the spectator, will be one in which feats of dexterity or supposed dexterity, are worked in conjunction with brilliant stage effects of a more spectacular kind, such as are exhibited by Mr. Maskelyne at the Egyptian Hall, London.”
And so I ring down the curtain on the old-time conjurers. They played their parts in the great drama of life, and enriched the history of the stage with their adventures. What could be more romantic than the career of the incomparable Bosco?