Transcriber’s note: The etext attempts to replicate the printed book asclosely as possible. Many obvious errors in spelling and punctuation havebeen corrected. Certain consistently used archaic spellings have been retained (i.e. secresy,boquet, unforseen, caligraphy, caligrapher, conjuror, etc.) A list ofthe corrections made follows the etext. The footnotes have been moved to the end of the text body. |
MEMOIRS
OF
R O B E R T - H O U D I N
AMBASSADOR, AUTHOR, AND CONJURER.
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.
EDITED BY
D r. R. S H E L T O N M A C K E N Z I E.
PHILADELPHIA:
GEO. G. EVANS, PUBLISHER,
NO. 439 CHESTNUT STREET.
1859.
———
Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by
G. G. EVANS,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania.
——————
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY RINWALT & CO.,
34 SOUTH THIRD STREET.
EDITOR’S PREFACE.
A MAN may not only “take his own life,” by writing his autobiography,without committing felo de se, but may carry himself into future timeby producing a book which the world will not willingly let die. This iswhat M. Robert-Houdin, the greatest artist in what is called Conjuring,has lately done in the remarkable book Confidences d’un Prestigiteur,a faithful translation of which is here presented to the Americanreading public. The work has had the greatest success in Europe, fromits lively style as well as the various information it contains,historical and philosophical, on the practice and principles ofsleight-of-hand, and the other details, mental as well as mechanical,which unite to make perfect the exhibition of White Magic, the antipodesof what our forefathers knew, persecuted, and punished as the Black Art.
Houdin has been considered of such importance and interest in France,that in Didot’s Nouvelle Biographie Générale, now in course ofpublication at Paris, a whole page is given to him. From this memoir,and from his own account in the pages which follow, we learn that hewas born at Blois, on the 6th December, 1805,—that his father, awatchmaker in that city, gave him a good education at the College ofOrleans,—that his inclination for escamotage (or juggling) was sodecided as to make him averse to pursue his father’s trade,—that heearly exhibited great taste for mechanical inventions, which he sosuccessfully cultivated that, at the Paris Exhibition of 1844, he wasawarded a medal for the ingenious construction of severalautomata,—that, having studied the displays of the great masters on theart of juggling, he opened a theatre of his own, in the Palais Royal inParis, to which his celebrated soirées fantastiques attractedcrowds,—that, in 1848, when the Revolution had ruined all theatricalspeculations in Paris, he visited London, where his performances at St.James’s Theatre were universally attractive and lucrative,—t