Luckily for the subject of this sketch, he was born too late to serve as food for powder. He lived to grow to man’s estate and honorable old age, and became the veritable Napoleon of necromancy. His career makes fascinating reading. Houdin’s father was a watchmaker, and from him he inherited his remarkable mechanical genius. At the age of eleven, Jean-Eugène was sent to college at Orleans. On the completion of his studies, he entered a notary’s office at Blois, but spent most of his time inventing little mechanical toys and devices, instead of engrossing {135} dusty parchment, so the notary advised him to abandon the idea of becoming a lawyer and take up a mechanical trade. Houdin joyfully took up his father’s occupation of watchmaking, for which he had a decided bent. One evening the young apprentice went to a bookseller’s shop in Blois and asked for a work on horology by Berthoud. The shopman by mistake handed him a couple of odd volumes of the Encyclopédie, which somewhat resembled Berthoud’s book. Jean-Eugène went home to his attic, lit a candle, and prepared to devote an evening to hard study, but judge of his surprise to find that the supposed treatise on watchmaking was a work on natural magic and pre­sti­di­gi­ta­tion, under the head of scientific amusements. He was delighted at the revelations contained in the mystic volume, which told how to perform tricks with the cards, to cut off a pigeon’s head and restore it again, etc., etc. Here was an introduction to the New Arabian Nights of enchantment. He slept with the book under his pillow, and possibly dreamed of African wizards, genii, and all sorts of incantations. This little incident brought about great changes in Houdin’s life. He secretly vowed to become a pre­sti­di­gi­ta­teur,—a rôle for which he was eminently fitted, psy­cho­log­i­cally and physically. The principles of sleight of hand Houdin had to create for himself, for the mystic volume, though it revealed the secrets of the tricks, gave the neophyte no adequate idea of the subtle passes and misdirection required to properly execute them.

Though an ardent devotee of legerdemain, Houdin did not neglect his trade of watchmaker. When his apprenticeship was over, he went to Tours as a journeyman, in the shop of M. Noriet, who afterwards became a noted sculptor. While in the employ of M. Noriet, Houdin was poisoned by eating a ragôut cooked in a stew pan in which there chanced to be verdigris. He was very ill, and his life was saved with difficulty. Possessed with the idea that he was soon to die, he escaped one day from his nurse and doctor and set out for Blois to bid adieu to his family before he departed from this sublunary sphere. A most singular adventure befell him, which reads like a romance. Those who believe in destiny have here a curious example of its {136} strange workings. The jolting of the lumbering old diligence gave Houdin great pain. He was burning with fever and delirious. Without any one knowing it, he opened the door of the rotonde, in which he happened to be the only passenger, and leaped out on the high road, where he lay unconscious. When he recovered his senses, he found himself lying in a comfortable bed. An unknown man with a phial of medicine in his hand bent over him. By the strangest luck, Houdin had fallen into the hands of a traveling conjurer named Torrini, who went about the country in a sort of house on wheels, which was drawn by a pair of big Norman horses. This unique vehicle which was six yards in length could be converted into a miniature theatre twice its size by an ingenious mechanical arrangement. The body was telescopic and could be drawn out, the projection being supported by trestles. Torrini early in life had been a physician and was able to tend his patient with intelligence and skill. Finding the young watchmaker a clever mechanician, Torrini gave him some magical automata to repair, and Houdin was introduced for the first time to the little Harlequin that jumps out of a box and performs various feats at the mandate of the conjurer. A delightful friendship began between the watchmaker and the wizard. Torrini, who was an expert with cards, initiated Houdin into the secrets of many clever tricks performed with the pasteboards. He also corrected his pupil’s numerous mistakes in legerdemain, into which all self-educated amateurs fall. It was a fascinating life led in this conjurer’s caravan. Besides Torrini and Houdin there was Antonio, the assistant, and man of all work. Torrini related many amusing adventures to his young pupil, which the latter has recorded in his admirable autobiography. It was he, the ci-devint, Comte de Grisy who performed the famous watch trick before Pius VII. and had so unique revenge upon the Chevalier Pinetti.

Torrini’s son was accidentally shot by a spectator in the gun trick during a performance at Strasburg, as has been explained in the chapter on the “History of Natural Magic and Prestidigitation.” Overcome with grief at the loss of his only child and at the subsequent death of his wife, he abandoned the great cities {137} and wandered about the French Provinces attended by has faithful assistant and brother-in-law, Antonio. But to return to Robert-Houdin.

One day at Aubusson the conjurer’s caravan collided with an enormous hay cart. Houdin and Antonio escaped with light contusions, but the Master had a leg broken and an arm dislocated. The two horses were killed; as for the carriage, only the body remained intact; all the rest was smashed to atoms. During Torrini’s illness, Houdin, assisted by Antonio, gave a conjuring performance at the town hall to replete the exchequer. Houdin succeeded very well in his first attempt, with the exception that he ruined a gentleman’s chapeau while performing the trick of the omelet in the hat.

Soon after this Houdin bid adieu to Torrini and returned to his parents at Blois. He never saw Torrini again in this life. After following watchmaking at Blois for quite a little while, he proceeded to Paris, with his wife,—for he had not only taken unto himself a spouse, but had adopted her name, Houdin, as part of his own cognomen. He was now Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, master-watchmaker. His recontre with the Count de l’Escalopier and the result have already been given.

Houdin completely revolutionized the art of conjuring. Prior to his time, the tables used by magicians were little else than huge 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, and appeared in evening dress. Since his time all first-class pre­sti­di­gi­ta­teurs have followed his example, both as to dress and tables.

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 ten cords passing under the floor of the stage, {138} terminating at a key-board. Various ingenious automata were actuated by this means of transmitting motion.”

Houdin’s stage was very handsome. It was a replica in miniature of a salon of the Louis XV. period—all in white and gold—illuminated by elegant candelabra and a chandelier. The magic table occupied the center of the room. This piece of furniture was flanked by little guéridons. At the sides were consoles, with about five inches of gold fringe hanging from them, and across the back of the apartment ran a broad shelf, upon which was displayed the various apparatus to be used in the séances. “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 sheet of paper, pasteboard cover or a handkerchief. Touching a spring caused the article to fall noiselessly through the trap upon cotton batting, and roll into the hand of the conjurer’s concealed assistant.”

HOUDIN’S TRICK-TABLE.