ROBERT HOUDIN'S MEMOIRS..
HAVING retired from the stage on a competence earned by the brilliant performances of half-a-dozen years, M. Robert Houdin, facile prineeps of conjurors, reappears before the world as his own biographer. He is enjoying a life as happy as family affections, peace of mind, work and study can make it ; and yet every even- ing he is seized with a feverish emotion when the clock strikes eight, the hour when his eye used to be fixed on the peephole in the curtain, surveying with intense pleasure the crowd that had flocked in to see him. He loves to recal the feelings and the in- cidents of his professional life ; he recounts them to his family circle ; and at last the thought strikes him, why should he not impart them to a still wider audience ? lie will do so. Each evening when the clock strikes eight he will continue his perform- ances under another form ; his public shall be the reader, and his stage a book—the book we have now before us.
M. Robert Houdin writes, as he conjures, with neatness and easy vivacity, and keeps his reader amused from his first page to his last. His life illustrates the ancient adage that "no man ever achieved greatness without some divine afflatus "—that is to say, without a passionate devotion to his chosen pursuit, and the faith that removes mountains. A love for mechanism was here-
• ditary in Robert Houdin, and though his memory does not extend .so far back as the 6th of December 1805, the day when he was born, he is inclined to believe that he came into the world with a file or a hammer in his hand, for from his earliest youth those implements were his toys and his delight. His father was a watchmaker of Blois, and an amateur workman of great skill in sundry other arts such as engraving, carving, enamelling, and so forth. The first eight years of the boy's life were years of bliss, his days spent among the precious realities of his father's .workshop, and his nights in dreams of transcendental tools piled up in fairy palaces of industry. But a watchmaker rarely makes • Memoirs of Robert Houdin, Ambassador, Author, and Conjuror. Written by Himself. In two volumes. Published by Chapman and Hall. a fortune in a French country town, and the prudent father, de- siring to prepare his son for a higher destiny by a liberal eduaa- tion, sent the boy when he was eight years old to a. collegiate school, where he remained ten years. Young Robert's ingenuity in making snares, gins, traps, and cages with all sorts of gym- nestle torments for imprisoned mice and birds, was highly aprarz elated by his schoolfellows but brought him to grief at Having been sentenced to twelve hours in the black hole for some misdemeanour, he WRS found with a live rat in his possession, which he had caught during his imprisonment for the purpose of harnessing it to a superb machine of his own construction. Unfor- tunately the rat had gnawed a hole through the stocking, shoe, and trowsers into which he had thrust it head foremost for safe keeping ; and the owner of the damaged attire was summoned be- fore the head master. Robert gave him a frank and full account of his misdeeds and the good man, after a hearty fit of laughter, forgave the delinquent, on condition that he would. pledge his word of honour to give up the fons et origo malornm, his tools, and thenceforth apply. himself diligently to study. The promise was made and faithfully kept. The temptation to break it was often strong, but honour prevailed. "All I allowed myself," says the biographer with charming naivete, "was to set down on paper a few ideas that occurred to me, though I did not know whether I should ever have a chance to put them in practice."
From college Robert passed into the office of a solicitor in Blois for the purpose of learning the profession : but there the old mania broke out so strongly, that the lawyer, after vainly strug- gling against it, very wisely counselled his pupil's father no longer to oppose what appeared to be an irresistible vocation,. The result was, that Robert soon afterwards found himself to his unbounded delight seated before a vice, file in hand, receiving his first lesson from a cousin who had succeeded to the business from which his father had retired. In process of time, Robert became an expert in the trade, but it never satisfied the cravings of his inventive genius. A mistake made by a book- seller, to whom he had applied for a treatise on elookmaking, was the means of giving him what his soul thirsted for. Instead of Berthoud's two volumes, the bookseller handed him two of the Encyclopaedia, one of which was labelled "Scientific Amuse- ments," and contained a complete treatise on white magic. The reading of that book was to him like the acquisition of a new sense. He devoured the contents with the extasy of one who "saw laid bare before him the secrets of an art for which he was unconsciously predestined." Unconscious no longer, henceforth he devoted himself with incessant ardour to the accomplishment of his destiny, and thus he says, "The resemblance between two books, and the hurry of a bookseller, were the oommonplaoe causes of the most important event in my life."
His book gave him the theory of his future art, but he was still without the first • rudiments of its practice as regards sleight of hand. In these he was instructed for a fee of ten francs by a fellow townsman, who, strange to say, was not rich, though he exercised the twofold profession of corn-cutter and juggler. From him Robert learned in a month all that he knew, except corn-eutting, and taught himself a great deal more. To acquire the perfection of sight and touch, which is requisite io the higher order of sleight-of-hand operations, Robert adopted a singular course of exercise, suggested to him by the ease with which pianists can read and perform at sight the most difficult pieces of music. By accustoming himself to read without any hesitation whilst juggling with four balls, Robert acquired extra- ordinary precision and promptitude of eye and finger, and the power of taking in many things at half a glance whilst his hands were occupied with delicate manipulations. On trying, while he was writing his memoirs, if he could perform this feat after thirty years' disuse of it, he found that he could still read with ease while keeping three balls up. . His self-education was pursued with a success proportioned to his untiring zeal, but he still wanted a master to form his style, and perfect him in the most delicate refinements of his art ; and this great acquisition he owed to what he calls the "fortunate') accident of having been poisoned almost to death by a ragout which had stood too long in a copper stewpan. As soon as he could rise from his bed in Tours, where the accident had befallen him, he put himself into a diligence for Blois,. that he might die among his own people. A fit of delirium seized him on the road, he threw himself out of the diligence, and; found himself, when he recovered his senses, in bed, and tenderly nursed, in the caravan of an itinerant conjuror, who had once been a physician. His professional name was by birth he was the Comte de Olney. The story of this accomplished relic of the court of LOMA XV. is told by his pupil in a manner that would not do discredit to Alexander Dumas himself. Robert profited so much under Torrini's instructions as to be able to supply his place on the stop with complete success when his master was for a while disabled by an accident. His education was now finished both as a mechani- cian and a presdigitator.
Returning to Blois he married Mademoiselle Houdin, whose fa-
ther was prospering as a watchmaker in Paris, added her name to his own patronymic, Roberts and became assistant to his father- in-law, a prudent man, but one whose tasetensdariharnomonmisaedndyerwtilothissi94his: own, and who encouraged his design of some day opening a room for the display of mechanical toys and sleight-of-hand tricks. He worked at this scheme for several years,
hides of fortune, while he was expending on bis won tomato, thought, labour, and money, that yielded no present re. turn towards maintaining the pot an lea, and_ at last bringing on himself a congestion of the brain by the intensity of his ap-
*cation. Finally he was able to produce his automata in the fans Exhibition of 18441 and in the following year he opened his theatre in the Palais Royal with the first of his Soirees Fantas- aquas, which went very near to being the last, for his debat be- fore a Paris audience was all hut a fiasco. He was going on swimmingly when the thought suddenly struck him, "Suppose I were to fail !"—a thought which nearly fulfilled itself by the flurry of spirits it occasioned. How he got through the rest of the performance he knows not, but he never passed so frightful a night as that which followed. Next day he had the bills taken down, gave no performance in the evening, and had quite made up his mind to all the consequences of this proceeding; but a good night's rest, and the sting given to his vanity by the condolences of a d—d good natured friend, who assured him he was perfectly rigid in quitting a profession beyond his strength, produced a revolution in his feelings for which he tenders his hearty thanks to its involuntary author. All the world knows the sequel. In 1852 Robert Houdin gave up his theatre to his brother-in- law and former pupil, and after a professional tour in North Ger- many he retired into private life, from which he has only once withdrawn himself, to fulfil the wishes of the French Govern- ment. As those false prophets and pretended sorcerers, the Ma- rabouts, were the inciters of most of the Arab insurrections in Algeria, the Government thought the best way to destroy their influence would be to prove to the Arabs that the tricks of their marabouts were mere child's play compared with what a French- man could do. This was accomplished. by Robert Houdin with the most satisfactory result. The Marabouts who ventured to eonfront him were overwhelmed with discomfiture and shame. Had he declared himself a Moslem, the Arabs would have worship- ped him as the greatest prophet that had appeared on earth since Mahomet ; and when he explained to them. that theMiracles which bad filled them with wonder and awe were all wrought by natural means, he implanted in their minds a wholesome scepticism, most fatal to the pretensions of the native thaumaturges. Speaking of the motives that induced him to undertake the task of thus en- lightening the Arabs, he says, "I was much influenced in my determination by the knowledge that my mission to Algeria had a quasi-political character. I, a simple conjuror, was proud of being able to render my country a service." That is all; he makes no claim to the pompous title of "ambassador," and it was a mauvaise plaislinterie on the part of his translator to append it, on the title page, to the name of a man who has always been con- apicuous for his disdain of charlatanism in every form. It was by the application of electricity to mechanism that Ro- bert Houdin accomplished many of his marvels on the stage, and now in his retirement he is continuing his labours in that field, but with a change of direction, his present purpose being to popu- larise electric clocks by making them as simple and exact as pos- sible. He "already dreams of the day when electric wires, issu- ing from a single regulator, will radiate through the whole of France, and bear the precise time to the largest towns and, the humblest villages." He promises also a supplement to his me- moirs, in a work which shall exhaust all that may be said about "Sleight of Hand and its Professors." His world-wide audience will give him a warm welcome on. his next appearance before them on the literary stage.
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