Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

by Professor Hoffmann

It is upon this system of mechanism that very many modern tricks have been based—notably, the great rope acrobatic figure of Theodin. In this case, what was thought by the audience to be a rope was really a tube made to imitate a rope, and the strings passed through this tube and worked from the side of the stage, the rope serving the same purpose as the bar stretched across the box in the harlequin automaton.

Houdin was said to be the inventor of the well-known Magic Clock. This was a glass dial plate with hands, but with no visible works. This clever invention has within the last year or two been reproduced, and exhibited in many jewelers’ windows. His chief automatic figures, besides the talking one I have already mentioned, were two performing French Clowns and the Cook of the Palais Royal. The clowns were shown one sitting on a chair, and the other standing beside it. At the request of the exhibitor, the standing clown raised the chair, with its occupant, above his head, while the latter went through a number of acrobatic performances that would have done honor to a living gymnast.

These capital figures were worked precisely on the same system as the Magic Harlequin, the strings, pistons, and machinery being necessarily of stronger make, and worked from beneath, instead of behind the stage. This was considered by the public, and Houdin himself looked upon it, as his chef d’œuvre, and a masterpiece in automatic figures it certainly was.

The Cook of the Palais Royal was a very amusing piece of mechanical application. It consisted of a faithful representation of a detached villa. Houdin handed round a list of wines and liquors, requesting his audience to select which they liked best on the bill of fare. When one was mentioned, a figure of a young maid emerged from the doorway, descended the steps, and brought forward on a tray a glass of the desired wine. When the person at whose order the wine was brought removed the glass from the tray, the figure turned and glided back into the house, again emerging with another glass of wine, and so on until the list was exhausted or the bibulous propensities of the audience were fully satisfied.

The same basis of machinery used in the Magic Harlequin was also employed in the Cook of the Palais Royal, each piston working a tap containing one kind of wine. The operator at the back of the stage could hear the wine asked for, and thus knew which string to pull, and which tap to open, when the figure, which was made to pass under every tap, re-entered the house.

Houdin’s Orange Tree was a capital trick, and, although exceedingly simple in its mechanism, produced the most startling effects. Houdin borrowed a handkerchief, which he burnt, or rather which he led the audience to think he burnt, at the sacrifice of a duplicate, in front of a plant placed in a box upon a table, which, at word of command, gradually began to bloom. White blossoms were seen to emerge from four or five different shoots. These disappeared, giving place to oranges, which Houdin removed from the tree and distributed among his audience, with the exception of one, which he left on. This one opened, and out from it sprang two butterflies, and in the middle of the orange was found the burnt handkerchief.

In this trick also the spring pistons of the Magic Harlequin were used. The real oranges were fixed on pins and hidden by the leaves. A string or wire opened the leaves, gradually disclosing the oranges, which appeared at a distance to grow in size as the leaves spread wider. Another set of wires, worked by another string, pushed the blossoms up fine tubes, and as the paper emerged from the tube the separate parts spread out, giving the appearance of growing blossoms. As soon as the two halves of the sham orange in the centre were released, the butterflies, attached by wires to the stalk, and fixed upon delicate spiral springs, sprang out of their own accord, and presented the appearance of fluttering on the wing. The bona fide handkerchief was pushed into the halves of the orange through a hole in the back while Houdin was taking off the real oranges. A rose-tree, similar in its effects, was also exhibited by Houdin.

This clever mechanician was, I believe, the inventor of the Electric Bell, or, to be more precise, he produced it as a magical trick, long before the electric bell came into use.

The Magic Drum, swung from the ceiling by means of wires looking like cords, of which Houdin was the first exhibitor, was constructed on precisely the same principles as the modern continuous electric bell, only worked with a much stronger battery and a more powerfully made electro-magnet.