§ 2. The Mechanician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin (1805–1871)

§ 2. The Mechanician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin (1805–1871)

If the name Robert-Houdin is familiar at all to Americans, it is because America’s most famous magician, Harry Houdini, born Ehrich Weiss, renamed himself after this most famous magician of France, born Jean-Eugène Robert. “When it became necessary for me to take a stage-name, and a fellow-player, possessing a veneer of culture, told me that if I would add the letter ‘i’ to Houdin’s name, it would mean, in the French language, ‘like Houdin,’ I adopted the suggestion with enthusiasm.” From the very beginning of his career Houdini strove to imitate Robert-Houdin: “My interest in conjuring and magic and my enthusiasm for Robert-Houdin came into existence simultaneously. From the moment that I began to study the art, he became my text-book and my gospel.” As of the late nineteenth century, when Houdini was growing up, not many first-class magicians had written books about conjuring techniques, as Robert-Houdin had; fewer still had written an autobiography describing their experiences, as Robert-Houdin had; and none of their lives had been as fascinating as Robert-Houdin’s had been. Houdini in turn wrote books about conjuring techniques, one of which he called The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin: “In the course of his ‘Memoirs,’ Robert-Houdin, over his own signature, claimed credit for the invention of many tricks and automata which may be said to have marked the golden age in magic. My investigations disproved each claim in order.” ^[53] But Robert-Houdin’s claims were no more exaggerated than those of the other stage magicians discussed by Houdini, whose inventiveness generally consisted of reworking or reclothing old tricks. Houdini eventually came to realize that the real deceptions in his book were his, not his model’s, although he could only bring himself to acknowledge one: “The only mistake I did make was to call it the name I did when it ought to have been ‘The History of Magic.’” ^[54] Everything having to do with stage magic, even writing about it, comes down to imitation and deception.

Robert-Houdin remains today one of the revered masters of the “tricks and automata which may be said to have marked the golden age in magic,” to use Houdini’s phrase, which reflects the consensus of historians of magic on the advanced state of that art in the early and mid-nineteenth century.^[55] So was the Frenchman essentially a magician and only incidentally a mechanician? Houdini’s phrase implies the answer: Legerdemain and automaton-building were considered two branches of the same tree of magical knowledge. From the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, most conjurers worth their saltpeter presented mechanical humans or animals in their shows. After all, both sleight-of-hand tricks and mechanical marvels demonstrated manual dexterity. And both legerdemain and automata featured deception: The power of the former depended on the implication that something supernatural was happening; the power of the latter on the implication that a machine could do what a human being or an animal can do. Watching a feat of legerdemain, the spectator’s mind was not persuaded of the presence of something supernatural, but the spectator’s senses were baffled. Watching an automaton, the spectator’s senses were not persuaded of the presence of a living being, but the spectator’s mind was perplexed by the thought that a living being might be no more than a very complicated machine. In neither case was the implication demonstrated, but in both cases it seemed to have been. As for Robert-Houdin, he built machines of one sort or another throughout his life and gave magic shows for only around a decade.

Jean-Eugène Robert was born in 1805 in the small town of Blois, which lies on the Loire River about a hundred miles south-southwest of Paris. His father, Prosper Robert, who had his own business, practiced clockmaking and related arts: “an excellent engraver, a jeweler of taste, he could even if need be sculpt an arm or a leg for a mutilated statue.” So boasted the son, anyway, who as a child wanted nothing more than to imitate his father. “I am tempted to believe that I came into the world with a file, a compass, or a hammer in my hand, because from my earliest childhood, these instruments were my toys, my playthings.” His early inclinations notwithstanding, his father sent him to Orléans, a large town nearby, to attend its collège, a secondary school designed to prepare its students for either higher education or direct entry into a professional career. Prosper Robert had the normal ambition to push his child at least one rung further up the social ladder from his own position. Jean-Eugène studied diligently if unenthusiastically and returned to Blois a graduate at the age of eighteen. His father, pleased by this success, allowed him to idle away a few months doing whatever he wanted, during which time he saw a sleight-of-hand artist perform on the street. “It was the first time I ever attended such a spectacle: I was amazed, stupefied, dumbfounded.” Finally Prosper asked his son to choose a profession and found that Jean-Eugène stubbornly clung to his desire to become a clockmaker.^[56]

The equally stubborn father placed his son in a notary’s office. A notary in nineteenth-century France was a kind of second-class attorney, handling a lot of routine legal documents; the occupation was low in the ranks of the professions, but it was a profession. “I leave the reader to imagine how this automaton’s labor suited my nature and my mind: pens, ink, nothing was less appropriate to the execution of the inventions for which I ceaselessly generated ideas.” Jean-Eugène suffered a notary copyist’s boredom for three years, spending much of his free time and some of his work time building mechanical gadgets. Finally, whether because his son had bowed to his wishes for so long, because his son’s stubbornness had proven superior to his own, or because he had ceded all further resistance in ceding his business to his nephew—Jean-Eugène’s cousin—the retired clockmaker agreed to allow his son to apprentice in his old shop under the supervision of its new owner.^[57]

Jean-Eugène Robert had found his way to half of his vocation. The other half, at least according to his autobiography, Confidences et révélations, found its way to him. Going out to a bookstore one day to buy a book on clockmaking, he returned with a book on conjuring that the bookseller had wrapped up for him by mistake. This “wrong book” enchanted him, so he set out to learn legerdemain.

I had often been struck by the facility with which pianists were able to read and execute, even at first sight, a melody and its accompaniment. It was clear to me that through practice one could create both an ability to see at a glance and a skill at the keyboard that allowed an artist to read several different things simultaneously while at the same time his hands were doing something very complicated. Now it was a similar ability that I wanted to acquire in order to apply it to prestidigitation; however, as music could not provide me with what I needed, I had recourse to the art of juggling.

I placed a book in front of me, and while my four balls flew in the air, I accustomed myself to reading without hesitation.

In conformity with the style of the period, I had on each side of my frock coat, called a frock coat à la propriétaire, pockets large enough so that I could easily move my hands around inside them. This was advantageous to me in that whenever one of my hands was not occupied with something outside, I could slide it into one of my pockets and begin to work with cards, coins, or one of the other objects that I have mentioned.

After completing his apprenticeship under his cousin, Jean-Eugène went to work for a clockmaker in nearby Tours. Whenever he had a free hand, sitting at his workbench, he continued to practice card and coin manipulation.^[58]

The wrong-book episode in Robert-Houdin’s autobiography is followed by the still less believable Torrini episode, which takes up almost a quarter of his book but not even a year of his life. Once, he writes, he fell sick from food poisoning. He became feverish, delirious, possessed by the idea that he was going to die and then by the desire to die at home in Blois. He managed to get into a public coach, fortunately empty, but the jolting of the vehicle gradually made the ride more and more unbearable to his rebellious intestines, and he finally jumped out, rolling unconscious to the side of the road. He came to himself after an unknown period of time in an unknown moving vehicle. It turned out to be a large wagon that when closed up served as living quarters and when opened out served as a small stage for an itinerant magician who gave performances in provincial towns and villages. The magician, named Torrini, and his assistant, Antonio, had picked him up out of the road and were now nursing him back to health. He repaired an automaton for Torrini, proved himself generally useful with his mechanical skills, toured with the pair for an unspecified number of months, and was gradually initiated into the secrets of professional conjuring. Torrini told him many stories of his travels and of other magicians, including an absurd tale involving Giuseppe Pinetti, whom he claimed to have driven out of business with his superior magic. Pinetti had been the most famous magician in Europe at the end of the eighteenth century, surpassing even “Comus,” Vidocq’s childhood employer. Eventually Torrini confided that his real name was Edmond de Grisy; that his father had been a count; that he himself was a doctor turned magician; that the young clockmaker he had found half-dead in the road reminded him of his dead child; that he had accidentally killed the latter on stage doing a William Tell trick; that his wife—Antonio’s twin sister—had died of grief soon thereafter; and that Torrini was really Antonio’s surname, the whole implying that he, Grisy, was doomed to wander aimlessly for the rest of his life in a state of self-alienation. Finally returning to his own story, Robert-Houdin tells us that he substituted for Torrini/Grisy on stage after the latter was hurt in a crash of his wonderful all-purpose vehicle. The young clockmaker quickly earned enough to pay for the restoration of both the magician and his wagon. Bodies and souls healed all around, Torrini/Grisy drove off into the sunset and Robert-Houdin returned to Blois. “I found my father quite calm with respect to me. The reason was that, in order not to arouse his anxiety, I had used a ruse: A clockmaker of my acquaintance had forwarded my letters to him as though they came from Angers, and this friend likewise took the responsibility of sending me his responses.” ^[59]

The many improbabilities in the Torrini episode tell the reader that it is a deception. The episode’s final story of how Robert-Houdin deceives his father, both by its extreme improbability and by the fact that it says outright that Robert-Houdin is a deceiver, drives the point home. There are undoubtedly elements of truth in the episode, but no one has yet succeeded in finding a historical trace of Torrini/Grisy. The Torrini episode is the wrong-book episode writ large. In both episodes, destiny, or at least events outside the young clockmaker’s control, lead him to the study of magic. That is, he cannot be blamed for any inconstancy toward the career he had insisted to his father so stubbornly on pursuing. Besides, magic is something he practices under the table or inside his pocket, in the wrong-book episode, or while recovering from an illness or on leave from his job, in the Torrini episode; in short, it is not to be counted as part of his real life. It is only a dream: a secret life, an imaginary life, an ideal life. He will continue to satisfy his duty toward his father, represented by his father’s nephew, under whom he serves his apprenticeship in the wrong-book episode, and by Torrini/Grisy, in the Torrini episode. But he will also satisfy his own desire to have a successful career as a magician. Both episodes are deceptions, but like those of a stage magician they are harmless, entertaining deceptions: The audience experiences the comfort both of seeing the conventions of society observed and of being informed that a deception is taking place, while at the same time it experiences the excitement of knowing it is being deceived without being able to figure out exactly how. For Robert-Houdin, the entertainer’s goal is to arouse wonder in his audience, or, put negatively, to avoid boring it with humdrum reality on the one hand or shocking its sensibilities on the other. An autobiography, like an automaton, should be a transparently deceptive, but still deceptive, copy of life.^[60]

His adventure having arrived at its happy conclusion, the young mechanician is placed by his older self back into his former position as a cog in a clockmaker’s workshop. Back to the boredom of the daily round of cleaning and repairing clocks. Back to familial Blois. But soon he was to meet a local clockmaker who had moved to Paris and built up a thriving business there, and who had a daughter. In 1830, the year of the July Revolution, of which there is no mention in his autobiography, Jean-Eugène Robert married Mademoiselle Houdin and went to work for Monsieur Houdin. In order to distinguish himself from the many other people in Paris named Robert—some of them also clockmakers—he appended his bride’s name to his own, an addition he later legalized, becoming Robert-Houdin.^[61]

The same incident also showed that, as a result of these two forces acting on his life, Robert-Houdin would never make a good employee: “I could not resolve to limit my imagination to the execution of other people’s ideas; I wanted at all costs to invent or to perfect. All my life I have been ruled by this passion, or, if you like, by this mania.” Thus he continued to work on his own projects as well as those of his employer after being hired by his father-in-law, who apparently indulged him.^[63] We know little more than this about Robert-Houdin’s activities from 1830 until 1837, when he took out his first patent, for a Réveil-Briquet (Alarm Clock-Lighter). Before the invention of the electric light, when one arose before dawn one had to fumble around in the dark for matches to light the lamps or candles. Robert-Houdin’s device lit a candle at the same time that it sounded an alarm bell to awaken the sleeper, thus obviating fumbling. Other inventions soon followed, a timely development for Robert-Houdin, since in 1838 Monsieur Houdin was bankrupted by the bankruptcy of his notary. The father-in-law lost his business but soon found employment with a leading clockmaker of Paris; the son-in-law decided to go it alone. The Réveil-Briquet awakened Robert-Houdin from the nightmare of working for others. Indeed, as a result of improvements to it patented in 1840, he became an employer himself. He hired several workers to increase production and to give himself the free time to realize new ideas.^[64]

In 1839 he showed two inventions at the Exposition des Produits de l’Industrie, which had become a regular, quinquenniel event. One of them, perhaps his first automaton, represented that archetypal sleight-of-hand artist, the cups-and-ball manipulator. The second made Robert-Houdin’s name as a clockmaker. The Pendule Mystérieuse (Mysterious Clock) had a dial that consisted of two parallel clear-glass disks of the same size joined by a metal band at their circumferences; that is, one could see all the way through the clock, which sat on a table rather than hanging on a wall. The minute and hour hands rotated between the two glass disks, pivoting around a peg that joined the centers of the two disks, the minute hand extending to their circumferences. The dial perched atop a narrow clear-glass cylinder, whose bottom end fit into the housing of the clockworks. Thus, there seemed to be nothing to communicate movement from the works to the hands of the clock, a transparent deception. In fact, a second glass cylinder rotating inside the narrow glass cylinder that held the dial aloft connected the clockworks to a second metal band, just inside the first one, the one that joined the circumferences of the glass disks. This second band rotated almost invisibly, hidden by the fixed outer band. The pointer end of the clock’s minute hand was connected to the second band, so that the minute hand rotated as the band rotated. Tiny gears connected the minute hand to the hour hand at the pivot in the center of the dial. In its report on the exposition the Moniteur universel called the Pendule Mystérieuse “the most remarkable” of the many clocks exhibited there. “We render full justice to the inventive skill of M. Robert-Houdin in acknowledging that he has made a truly remarkable piece; but we can only regret that he has expended so much talent with the sole purpose of torturing the minds of his colleagues, when he could have employed the resources of his fertile imagination more usefully.” The judges of the exposition awarded him a bronze medal.^[65]

The goal of mounting the stage one day always remained in the back of Robert-Houdin’s mind. During the late 1830s and early 1840s he applied much of his inventive energy to automata. In addition to the cups-and-ball manipulator, he built a mechanical orange tree that produced first flowers and then fruit in a short space of time, some singing birds à la Jaquet-Droz, a trapeze acrobat à la Maelzel, a writing and sketching figure à la Jaquet-Droz, and two clowns; he also rebuilt the Componium of a German mechanician named Koppen. This machine did not compose, like Winkel’s Componium, but imitated a full orchestra, like Maelzel’s Panharmonicon.^[66]

Robert-Houdin made his mechanical orange tree look as much like the real thing as possible. It represented a fully foliated, dwarf tree and sat on a table. Some of its “branches,” in reality hollow metal tubes, held concealed within their ends folded-up paper or silk “flowers” and, just behind the flowers, deflated “oranges.” Air secretly pumped into the tubes forced the flowers to gradually emerge and open up, or “blossom.” More air pushed the oranges out, causing the flowers to flutter down, and then swelled the oranges in a simulation of growth.^[67]

He named his two mechanical clowns after two well-known human clowns of the time, Auriol and Deburau: “The latter held firmly above his head a chair, on which his happy comrade gamboled, did gymnastics, and executed feats of strength, just like the artist of the Champs-Élysées circus. After these exercises, my Auriol smoked a pipe and finished the session by accompanying on a small flageolet a melody played by the orchestra.” ^[68]

Koppen’s Componium had been disassembled sometime after its exhibition in Paris in 1829, Robert-Houdin writes, and its pieces bought by someone he refers to as D***. The new owner had advertised for a mechanician to reassemble it, and Robert-Houdin had presented himself. “They brought me, in a vast room that was to serve as my workshop, all the boxes containing the pieces of the Componium and emptied them pell-mell onto some bedsheets that had been laid out on the floor for this purpose.” He relates that it took him a year to do it, but that he put all the pieces back together again and made a working machine.^[69]

Robert-Houdin’s Écrivain-Dessinateur (Writer-Sketcher) brought him more recognition than any other creation of this period of his life. In order to produce it and one other automaton, a singing and fluttering night-ingale for which he had an order from Russia, he secluded himself for eighteen months in an apartment in the quiet suburb of Belleville, leaving his Paris workshop under the supervision of one of his employees and seeing his family just twice a week. The Écrivain-Dessinateur represented a nobleman whose dress, chair, and writing table were all in the style of the period of Louis XV. Thus, it harked back to the days of the Écrivain, Dessinateur, and Musicienne of the Jaquet-Drozes. It seems likely that Robert-Houdin had at least read about these three if he had not actually seen them. After they were sold by the Jaquet-Drozes in 1789, they reappeared in Paris intermittently in exhibitions and magic shows, as did one or two of the Jaquet-Droz-Maillardet combination Écrivain-Dessinateurs. Robert-Houdin may have gotten the idea for his automaton from one of these pieces, or he may have copied the mechanism, or he may even have bought and reworked an existing Écrivain-Dessinateur. Some of the sketches made by the Robert-Houdin piece are quite similar to those made by the original Jaquet-Droz Dessinateur. In any case, Robert-Houdin showed his Écrivain-Dessinateur at the exposition of 1844 and won a silver medal. King Louis-Philippe, on his tour of the exhibits, stopped to see the mechanician put the figure through its paces and expressed his admiration. One of the judges at the exposition, however, repeated the admonition of five years earlier: “It is really too bad, M. Robert-Houdin, that you have not applied to serious works the mental effort that you have expended in such whimsical objects.” He sold the automaton that same year or the next to P-T. Barnum for “a good round price,” probably to help finance the construction of a theater of magic. Barnum, who was touring Europe, sent it back to his American Museum, located in New York City, where it could be seen until the museum burned down in 1865.^[70]

Robert-Houdin’s nightingale is also reminiscent of the works of the father and son Jaquet-Droz, a name that does not appear in any of his writings. In his autobiography he tells how he used to go out to the woods and climb trees so as to be able to hear the bird’s song more clearly, listening carefully and then trying to imitate it. Next he had to contrive a whistle mechanism that would reproduce the sounds he heard. Finally, “I had also to animate this bird: I was supposed to make it move its beak in time with the sounds it emitted, beat its wings, jump from branch to branch, etc.” He sold this piece, too, for a large sum.^[71]

If Robert-Houdin had done nothing more than duplicate or reinvent automata that had been first created a half-century earlier, he would not be entitled to a prominent place in the history of their evolution. But finally his turn came to be a true creator in the art of automaton-building.

He hit upon one novel idea so striking that he used it as the basis of at least three different mechanical pieces. Each piece was sized to sit on a table. Each had its works in a large ornate base on which was posed a small interior scene containing a human figure. In one, the figure represented a young woman in Turkish costume seated on an ottoman and shaded by a fringed parasol. In another, a woman in a mid-nineteenth-century dress sat on a Louis XV chair at a Louis XV table, on which rested an ornate clock of the same vintage. In the third, another woman in contemporary clothes stood at the railing of a landing at the top of a short flight of stairs. Each mechanical woman held a serinette. Each addressed a mechanical canary sitting on a perch arising from a base appropriate to the decor of the scene. The woman cranked the serinette, which played a tune. The canary imitated it imperfectly. The woman cranked again and this time the canary imitated it more accurately. The lesson continued until the canary, from “hearing” it repeatedly, “learned” the tune.^[72]

We have seen that the eighteenth-century vogue for canaries, and for teaching canaries to sing human songs, led to the invention of organized flageolets, then to serinettes, and finally to mechanical singing birds. But in this last phase the learning process had disappeared. Robert-Houdin restored it, and without sacrificing any of the previous mechanical advances, indeed adding an advance of his own, by combining a serinette, a mechanical bird, and an android into a single complex mechanical masterpiece. In the century and a half since, there have been no more advances. To a machine that imitates song, and a machine that imitates a singer of a song, he added a machine that imitates a teacher of a song, but still there is no machine that imitates a creator of a song

there is no machine that imitates a creator

there is no machine

there is

While working as a clockmaker and building automata, Robert-Houdin attended magic shows often and watched the magicians closely. He criticized their deceptions in Confidences et révélations, just as Houdini would later criticize his deceptions in The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin.

My first care, upon arriving in Paris, had been to attend some performances of [Louis-Apollinaire] Comte, who had reigned for a long time in his theater in the Choiseul Arcade. This famous physicist was already resting on his laurels, and only performed once a week.…Comte’s experiments were almost all drawn from a repertoire with which I was perfectly familiar: It was that of Torrini and of all the conjurers of the period.

Robert-Houdin employs here a somewhat dated vocabulary, current in the second half of the eighteenth century, when scientists and popularizers of science performed tricks illustrating such little-understood phenom-ena as magnetism. The tricks were called “experiments” (expériences), the performers “physicists” (physiciens), and the performances “scientific amusements” (physique amusante). This terminology was adopted by conjurers who had no particular interest in recent discoveries in physics and whose acquaintance with science went no further than a practical psychology of deception. Whether or not Comte’s program was dated, he had other things to recommend him. He excelled at ventriloquism. And his way of flattering the women in the audience in his patter taught Robert-Houdin a lesson, in what to avoid as well as in what to imitate. “Just as Comte was friendly toward the ladies, he was merciless toward the gentlemen.” Robert-Houdin learned that gallantry toward the members of the audience could gain a performer many adherents, and he himself resolved to be gallant toward all.^[73]

He also saw the well-known Italian conjurer Bartolomeo Bosco and appears to have been somewhat mystified by his popularity. He found him still doing the old cups-and-ball routine: “I would never have thought that in the year of grace 1838 one would have dared to perform it inside a theater. This was all the more improbable in that every day one saw in the streets of Paris two outdoor artists, Miette and Lesprit, who had no fear of rivals.” Perhaps Bosco’s most celebrated trick consisted of decapitating two pigeons, one white and one black, putting the corpses in a box, and retrieving from the same box two live pigeons, one with a white body and a black head, the other with a black body and a white head. Robert-Houdin was offended by this cruelty toward animals and concluded that the audience must have believed Bosco did not really kill the pigeons he appeared to decapitate.^[74]

Philippe Talon, billed simply as Philippe, arrived in Paris in 1841 and had his own theater, the Palais des Prestiges (Palace of Prodigies), built soon thereafter. Robert-Houdin describes Philippe’s entrance: “An orchestra, composed of six musicians of debatable talent, performed a symphony with the help of a Mélophone.” Then the magician appeared, barely visible on the darkened stage, and fired a pistol, whereupon dozens of candles instantly blazed to light, thanks to an almost invisible electrical wire with gaps across the candle wicks and hidden jets of hydrogen gas just behind the wicks. Philippe exhibited several automata:

the Cossack, which one could equally well have called the Grimacer, on account of the comical contortions he underwent; what’s more, this Cossack was a very skillful conjurer, because he adroitly slipped into his pockets various pieces of jewelry that his master had borrowed from the spectators;

the Magic Peacock, which emitted an unmelodious warble, and which displayed its sumptuous plumage and ate out of one’s hand;

and finally a Harlequin, like that which Torrini had had.

In a celebrated trick that Robert-Houdin later adopted for his own use, Philippe made appear from under a shawl a large glass bowl of water, open on top, in which goldfish could be seen swimming.^[75]

Robert-Houdin finally opened his own theater of magic, built to his design. Its two hundred seats filled up and stayed filled from almost the first performance, on 5 July 1845. On 6 July the Moniteur universel gave the “Soirées Fantastiques” a warm, if brief, recommendation. On 10 July, the Charivari told its readers: “You will wonder whether M. Robert-Houdin deserves to be burned or worshipped.…It’s the science of Vaucanson, Maelzel, and Stévenard combined with the art of Bosco, Comte, and Philippe; it’s mechanics and prestidigitation united, and all that in a charming hall decorated with taste.” Style Louis XV, of course. By 19 July, he rated almost an entire page, with engraving, in the weekly Illustration. An invitation the following year to give a performance in the palace at Saint-Cloud for the family of King Louis-Philippe put the royal seal on his success.^[76]

Several of the automata Robert-Houdin presented in his Soirées Fantastiques have already been mentioned. In addition to the cups-and-ball manipulator, the orange tree, the clowns Auriol and Deburau, and the trapeze acrobat, he also showed a Garde-Française (National Guardsman) and his celebrated Pâtissier du Palais-Royal (Pastry Cook of the Palais-Royal). The fully uniformed Garde-Française stood about two feet tall on a small base. From his place on a table, he saluted the spectators, “blew several kisses to the children he saw in the hall,” and appeared to shoot onto a crystal column standing on another table several rings borrowed from women in the audience and loaded into his musket by Robert-Houdin.^[77]

The Palais-Royal, whose long wings had been partitioned into spaces for retail shops and whose large courtyard sheltered more dubious enterprises under wooden arcades, had functioned as a sort of year-round fair since the 1780s. By the 1840s many pleasure-seekers had deserted it for the Grand Boulevards, though its restaurants and pastry shops still maintained their superior savor, among them Gendron’s, where Carême had worked. An attached building still housed the Comédie-Française, and the Palais-Royal itself housed several other theaters.^[78] Robert-Houdin chose to build his own small theater there and thus called his new automaton the Pâtissier du Palais-Royal. His mechanical pastry cook bustled in and out of a large rectangular cabinet, about the same size as the cabinet of Kempelen’s Chess Player, that is, about four feet wide, two and a half feet deep, and three feet high, decorated to look like a pastry shop. “Warm brioches just out of the oven, cakes of all sorts, syrups, liqueurs, ices, etc., are brought by him as soon as the spectators have asked for them.” In addition to bringing the particular items ordered by the spectators, Robert-Houdin’s pastry cook also gave them the correct change when they paid him.^[79] The Pâtissier could think as well as the Chess Player.

A year before Robert-Houdin opened his theater,

The Canard of Vaucanson himself was exhibited at Paris in a hall in the Palais-Royal. I was, as one can imagine, among the first to attend, and left struck with admiration at the numerous and skillful devices in this masterpiece of mechanics.

Some time later, one of the wings of the automaton having been rendered inoperable, the repair was entrusted to me and I was initiated into the celebrated mystery of the digestion. To my great astonishment, I saw that the illustrious master had not disdained to have recourse to an artifice that I would not have disowned in a conjuring trick. The digestion, the tour de force of his automaton; the digestion, so pompously trumpeted in his memoir, was only a mystification, a true canard. Decidedly, Vaucanson was not only my master in mechanics; I had also to bow before his genius at conjuring.

In short, there was no connection between the seed ingested by Vaucanson’s duck and the excreted waste. The latter had been prepared in advance simply to look its part and be expelled at the appropriate time. “This artifice, far from changing the high opinion that I had conceived of Vaucanson, on the contrary inspired me with a double admiration for his knowledge (savoir) and his savoir-faire.” Some doubt whether Robert-Houdin ever saw the real Canard of Vaucanson; they suspect he may have seen a copy, of which at least one is known to have existed. No matter, for Vaucanson’s canard was real enough and had been exposed as early as 1783 by C.-F. Nicolaï. Nicolaï had seen the Canard in Nuremberg, where it had been left by one of the Lyon entrepreneurs who had bought it from Vaucanson in 1743. He published his description of the deception in a travel book. Furthermore, the Canard had been restored and exhibited in Milan if not also in Paris, and written up, around the time Robert-Houdin claimed to have seen it.^[80]

Nor had the punctilious Swiss mountain dwellers the Jaquet-Drozes been entirely above deception. Johann Bernoulli had described a perplexing feature of the Écrivain: “The mechanism of the writing automaton is inconceivable, especially because it can write any word of French and can even, after it has begun to write a word that has been dictated to it, as soon as one orders it to leave off this word and write another, break off and begin to write the other.” According to a biopsy of the Écrivain performed a century and a quarter later:

There have survived down to this day some quite delicate levers, with eyelets for attaching wires to, levers which are no longer in use. One likewise sees numerous holes and notches into which must have been placed pieces now missing. The base, covered with velours, is riddled with holes and furrowed with converging grooves; one of the legs of the table is pierced through its entire length, and little mortises, cut into the corners, must have held tiny pulleys serving to guide the wire(s) and to lead them down to the floor. These wires must have been operated by one or two pedals.^[81]

Robert-Houdin’s Garde-Française was likewise controlled from outside by means of hidden wires and pedals, and thus not a true automaton. And the magician’s young son was hiding inside his miniature pastry shop and serving as the pâtissier’s indispensable assistant.^[82]

Robert-Houdin’s most renowned and most imitated trick, Seconde Vue (Second Sight), his new version of an old routine, also involved his son. In this case, the audience was hidden from his son, rather than vice versa. His son sat blindfolded on stage while Robert-Houdin himself roamed through the audience asking the spectators to hand him any object whatsoever and having his son describe the object in detail after “seeing” it with “second sight.” ^[83]

The success of Seconde Vue notwithstanding, Robert-Houdin was much better known for his mechanical than for his nonmechanical tricks. One of the newspaper accounts of the opening of his theater reported that,

M. Robert-Houdin, the high priest of this temple, walking in the footsteps of Vaucanson and Maelzel, is less a physicist than a skillful mechanician, who, tired of building for every magician past and present the ingenious devices that have made their whole reputation, believes it is high time for him to bring directly before the public a series of entertainments all the more perfect in that he has prepared them for his own use and in order to demonstrate his talent as a mechanician.

The demand for his machines among other magicians continued. A few years later the Moniteur universel reported in its column of lawcourt news: “No sooner had Legrand left him [Robert-Houdin] than he heard from all quarters that this worker had committed the greatest acts of betrayal toward him, that he had copied and sold most of his mechanical pieces. A search of Legrand’s residence uncovered a large number of objects belonging to M. Robert-Houdin or reproduced from originals invented by him.” Legrand was convicted of fraud, or illegal imitation and deception.^[84]

Considering his subsequent stature among professional magicians, Robert-Houdin’s stage career did not last very long. From 1845 to 1848 he performed mostly in his own Soirées Fantastiques, sometimes also doing a few tricks at one or another variety theater in Paris. In 1846 he gave a short series of performances in Belgium. The Revolution of 1848 drove him across the Channel to Great Britain. He began at the Théâtre Français in London in May 1848, and success following success, performed twice for Queen Victoria, toured extensively in England, Ireland, and Scotland, and did not return to France until October 1849. Upon the resumption of his Soirées Fantastiques, Robert-Houdin conceived the idea of training a successor, who began to spell him as early as the summer of 1850 and in January 1852 bought his theater. The not-quite-retired magician performed intermittently in England, Belgium, and France from the summer of 1852 to the summer of 1853; made a tour of the spas of Germany in the fall of 1853; and concluded his career with a three-month run in Berlin in the winter of 1853–54.^[85]

Robert-Houdin engaged in several duels of magic. He boasts that when he opened his show in London in May 1848 he stole the audience of John Henry Anderson, a Scottish magician who had been performing there for some time. While the Frenchman continued to give essentially the same program he had been giving in Paris, the Scot’s program changed dramatically and many of his new tricks were obvious copies of or responses to Robert-Houdin’s. Anderson had his revenge in 1853, however, when the Frenchman’s second sojourn in England consisted of only a few scattered shows, a sojourn he does not even mention in his autobiography.^[86]

Robert-Houdin relates that the “physicist” Comte once came to see him perform at his theater in the Palais-Royal. Comte stayed after the show to chat, after which Robert-Houdin escorted his guest down the stairs to the outside door. At that point he heard what sounded like one of his cashiers calling him from the top of the stairs. His guest offered to wait until the presumably minor problem was taken care of before saying good night. The host ascended the stairs again but could find no one around and finally realized that Comte had duped him with ventriloquism.

I calmly descended.

“What did that person from your ticket office want?” Comte asked me, sounding well-satisfied with his deception.

“Can’t you guess?” I responded, imitating his intonation.

“No indeed!”

“Then I will tell you: It was a repentent thief, who begged me to return these objects that he had taken from you. Here they are, my mentor!”

So saying, Robert-Houdin returned the handkerchief and snuff box he had picked from Comte’s pocket when they had descended the stairs together earlier. That is how Robert-Houdin tells it in his autobiography, anyway. There is a French idiom, avoir l’esprit de l’escalier, “to have staircase wit,” which means to think of good responses belatedly, as one is descending the staircase to depart, whether from a soirée, from a career, or from life.^[87]

In 1856 the French colonial government in Algeria persuaded Robert-Houdin to step temporarily out of retirement and travel there on a quasi-official mission. The government’s problem was an insurgency movement among Arabs, fomented by marabouts, Muslim religious leaders, who demonstrated their divine protection by eating nails and crushed glass with impunity and performing other miracles. Robert-Houdin’s mission was “to show them we are their superiors in all things and that when it comes to sorcerers there is nothing to compare with the French.” The French governor invited a group of Arab chieftains to a theater, furnished them with translators, and turned the stage over to the magician. Robert-Houdin asked for volunteers from the audience for several of his tricks. One was in the tradition of physique amusante: He made a muscular Arab appear strong or weak at will by asking him several times to lift up a wooden box resting on the floor, which the Arab sometimes could and sometimes could not do, thanks to an iron plate inside the box and an electro-magnet directly beneath it just under the floorboards. Another, a variation on the William Tell trick, was strictly legerdemain: He had a marabout mark a bullet, load it into a pistol, and shoot it at him while he held up an apple on the end of a knife; after the shot he removed the marked bullet from inside the apple. The show seems to have impressed the chieftains, for they afterward gave him a placard-sized poetic homage in Arabic and French calligraphy, richly ornamented, and affixed with the seals of their tribes.^[88] The poet Baudelaire, less impressed, delivered this epithet: “It was appropriate that an unbelieving society should send Robert-Houdin to the Arabs to turn them away from miracles.” ^[89] Oddly, France’s avant-garde amoralist deplored the campaign to demoralize Algeria that he believed his country was engaged in, and he believed that the unbelieving magician had been engaged in the avant-garde of the campaign. Robert-Houdin criticized the deceptions of North African marabouts in the final pages of his autobiograpy, just as he had criticized the deceptions of European conjurers earlier in the same work.

He produced four full-length books: his autobiography, Confidences et révélations (first published in 1858); a systematic study of the techniques used by cheaters at cards, called Les Tricheries des Grecs dévoilées (Tricks of Cardsharpers Exposed, 1863); a systematic exposition of sleight-of-hand techniques and tricks, called Comment on devient sorcier (How to Become a Magician, 1868); and an explanation of some of the more complicated magic tricks performed by professionals, called Magie et physique amusante (Magic and Scientific Amusements, published posthumously in 1877).^[90]

In Magie et physique amusante, Robert-Houdin tells a story about a device he contrived for a count who had once bought a clock from him and then gradually become a regular visitor to his workshop. Several times the count had had money taken from his desk drawer, which he kept locked, and he could not discover the culprit. Robert-Houdin outfitted the drawer with a trap, such that when someone opened it a pistol fired, presumably a blank, to alert the count, and “a kind of cat’s claw” sprang out to scratch the hand of the person opening the drawer. By means of this, the count caught one of his servants literally red-handed. In gratitude the count insisted that Robert-Houdin accept a personal loan in order to be able to build his long-desired theater of magic. Well-executed deceptions, whether by a thief or a detective, by sleight of hand or machinery, in a private home or a public theater, in a live performance or a book, all produce money.^[91]

Robert-Houdin’s cat’s claw was not the first such device; Houdini traced the invention back as far as the mid-seventeenth century. And in writing a detective story Robert-Houdin may have been imitating the detective writer Émile Gaboriau, whose novels, serialized in newspapers and also sold in book form, were extremely popular during the time Robert-Houdin was at work on Magie et physique amusante. Gaboriau was influenced not only by Vidocq’s Mémoires but also by Poe’s short stories, or at least by the French translations of them, which had been made by Baudelaire in the 1850s and have been repeatedly praised ever since as models “so excellent that they seem to be original works.” ^[92] Well-executed imitations are also rewarded.

Robert-Houdin did do some real-life detective work. In Les Tricheries des Grecs dévoilées he mentions two occasions on which examining magistrates asked him to inspect decks of playing cards to determine whether they were marked; in both cases they were. One magistrate reported that Robert-Houdin gave a courtroom demonstration of how cardsharpers cheat at the game of écarté, executing unperceived, right under the noses of the judge, the attorneys, and other onlookers, a fraudulent cut of the deck so as to give himself a high card.^[93]

Robert-Houdin’s Les Tricheries des Grecs dévoilées is reminiscent of Vidocq’s Les Voleurs. A large portion of each is devoted to cataloguing swindling techniques. Robert-Houdin’s book catalogues card swindles specifically; Vidocq’s catalogues swindles more generally. Both also contain many anecdotes, some based on first-hand knowledge and some from unknown sources. Among the anecdotes told by Robert-Houdin are tales of swindles unrelated to cards. A long series of his anecdotes has the same protagonist, a gambling addict named M. Raymond, and, taken as a whole, amounts to the insertion of a novella into his treatise.^[94] This is reminiscent of another of Vidocq’s books, his Mémoires. One of Vidocq’s ghostwriters actually did insert a previously published novella, having no connection to Vidocq’s life, into that work.^[95] Robert-Houdin makes brief personal appearances from time to time in his novella of M. Raymond, thus maintaining at least the semblance of a connection to reality. But it is mostly, if not entirely, fiction. It is there to balance the dry catalogue of card swin-dles and to take advantage of the recent surge of interest in crime writing. Some have suggested that the Confidences, like Vidocq’s Mémoires, was ghostwritten, but unlike the latter, no candidates for ghostwriter have been named and no real evidence produced.^[96] It is indeed unexpected that Robert-Houdin’s first book would have turned out to be as well written and engaging as it is, or as successful as it was. Like Vidocq’s Mémoires, it went through several editions and appeared in translation within a few years of its initial publication.

The last chapter of Les Tricheries des Grecs dévoilées is entitled “Petites tricheries” (Little Tricks). Robert-Houdin writes that “one knows very well where cheating ends, but one has great difficulty saying where it begins.” To prove his point he says he is going to enumerate a series of card-table irregularities, “beginning with the most innocent,” such as accidentally seeing cards held by an opponent, upon which, according to strict justice, one should acknowledge it and allow the cards to be redealt; “then I will advance along this path all the way up to swindling, asking the reader to establish for himself where the limit of honesty lies.” ^[97] His novella of M. Raymond earlier in this same book should probably be counted as a petite tricherie.

Robert-Houdin’s Comment on devient sorcier is considered by some to have been the first systematic treatment of the art of conjuring. In that work, he divides conjuring into its various branches, enumerates its principles, describes sleight-of-hand techniques in detail, explains a large number of coin and card tricks, and concludes with a variety of other kinds of legerdemain involving feathers, corks, cannon balls, interlocking rings, cups-and-ball manipulation, etc. Finally, he promises to explain the most complex conjuring tricks in a sequel.^[98]

During his retirement Robert-Houdin worked with machinery as well as words. He did pioneering work in electrical technology. The heavy-and-light-wooden-box trick that he used in Algiers he first performed in Paris in 1845 when, as he knew better than anyone, “the phenomena of electro-magnetism were wholly unknown to the general public.” More important, he patented an inexpensive electric clock, an electric bell for clocks, a battery, a current regulator, a current interruptor, and a current distributor. The highly respected science journal Cosmos reviewed several of these inventions very favorably. The journal’s editor wrote: “M. Robert-Houdin, who has centupled his power with his distributor, is today the sole person who can solve, if it can be solved, the greatest of the problems still facing us and realize at last the electro-magnetic motor. If we were on the jury, we would vote him a medal of honor for the distributor, and it would be one of the most deserved.” The jury at the 1855 Exposition des Produits de l’Industrie, France’s first international industrial exposition and Europe’s second, after Great Britain’s 1851 extravaganza in the Crystal Palace, withheld the medal of honor but did award him a “first-class” medal, the equivalent of a gold. The medal and the praise vindicated him for the criticisms of frivolity that had been made of his work at the expositions of 1839 and 1844. Robert-Houdin also pioneered in electric lighting. He made and successfully tested an incandescent bulb as early as 1851, an achievement that places him among the first producers of such lights. His bulbs may have been the very first to use a vegetal filament, as Edison’s bulbs later did. For the celebration of his daughter’s first communion in 1863 he lit up a room of his house electrically. But he seems to have abandoned this line of experimentation on account of its apparent economic infeasibility.^[101]

Robert-Houdin never entirely disengaged himself from automata. In 1866, for example, the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers called on him to repair a recently donated piece, Kintzing and Roentgen’s Joueuse de Tympanon (Dulcimer Player), the automaton that had been commissioned in the 1780s by Queen Marie-Antoinette. After he finished work on it, he attached to the piece a handwritten note describing the circumstances of his involvement and affirming that he had made no improvements, having limited his role to that of a restorer.^[102]

Two years later, he built a replica of Kempelen’s Chess Player. In his autobiography, Robert-Houdin claims to have seen the original Turk in 1844 in the workshop of a mechanician in Belleville, the quiet suburb of Paris where he had secluded himself for eighteen months in order to work undisturbed on two of his most intricate automata. He also claims to have the story of the origins of the Chess Player: Kempelen built it in Russia where he was visiting a Doctor Osloff. Osloff had saved the life of a wounded Polish soldier named Worousky but had had to amputate both his legs. Kempelen built the automaton in order to provide Worousky, a good chess player, with employment and to smuggle him out of Russia in it. But first they gave exhibitions inside Russia, eventually finding their way to the court of Catherine the Great, who challenged the Turk to a game and lost. Finally they succeeded in escaping and continued their tour in Europe. Robert-Houdin claims to have learned all this from a nephew of Osloff.^[103]

This story, contained in his very popular autobiography, seems to have revived interest in the Turk. Two playwrights built a theater piece out of it and hired the old magician to do the special effects. The piece, entitled La Czarine (The Czarina), was really about Catherine the Great. It played at the Théâtre de l’Ambigu-Comique in 1868. Robert-Houdin created a spectral illusion for the last scene, using a light, a mirror, and a glass plate to project the ghost of Czar Peter III onto the stage to haunt Catherine. He also built a replica of the Turk for a long scene depicting its victory over the enlightened czarina.^[104]

Thus we have arrived at the end of the hall of mirrors. Just before the magician’s organic life vanished for all time behind the self-construction of his autobiography, he constructed a copy of a fake automaton made a century earlier that simulated a chess player. He constructed it for a dramatic representation, that is, a work of fiction, that was based on his own fictional retelling of the history of the simulacrum chess player. In other words, he made a counterfeit of a counterfeit of a counterfeit chess player for a counterfeit account of his own counterfeit account of the story of the counterfeit of a counterfeit chess player. And then he was gone.

Today’s automatic chess players, which are currently attracting more public attention to chess than at any time since the intermittent reincarnations of the Turk, are so far from resembling human beings that they do not even move the chessmen. They only think of the moves, which are then physically made by human beings. Computer chess programs thus represent the Turk turned inside out. They really are automatic. And today’s Philidors have real reason to fear them. In 1997, Gary Kasparov lost a six-game match to IBM’s Deep Blue, the first loss of a reigning world chess champion to a machine.^[105] Is this the outcome of the systematic analysis of chess begun by Philidor and his followers? Of the ever-widening gap, as in the case of what people eat, between people and nature? Of the persistent use of the inductive method so widely disseminated in detective stories? Of the reconstitution of so many activities, such as the performance of music, into physical challenges? Of the series of automata and pseudo-automata built by Robert-Houdin and his predecessors?

Or is it the outcome of a perpetual craving on the part of audiences for entertaining spectacles? Of a limitless drive among experts to better their technical skill? Of an extreme and ultimately paradoxical assertion of the individual self?

Notes

On the general history of automata: Alexander Buchner, Mechanical Musical Instruments, trans. Iris Unwin (London: Batchworth, n.d. [1950s?]); Alfred Chapuis and Édouard Gélis, Le Monde des automates, étude historique et technique, 2 vols. (Geneva: Slatkine, 1984; reprint of Paris ed., 1928); Alfred Chapuis and Edmond Droz, Les Automates: Figures artificielles d’hommes et d’animaux (Neuchâtel: Griffon, 1949); Alfred Chapuis et al., Histoire de la boîte à musique et de la musique mécanique (Lausanne: Scriptar, 1955); Pierre Devaux, Automates et automatisme (Paris: P.U.F., 1941); Pierre Latil, Il faut tuer les robots! ([Paris:] Grasset, 1957); Éliane Maingot, Les Automates (Paris: Hachette, 1959); Jean Prasteau, Les Automates (Paris: Grü–, 1968); Albert Protz, Mechanische Musikinstrumente (Kassel: Bärenreiter, [1940]). For the particulars mentioned here: Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 1, chap. 2 (Ctesibius); vol. 1, chap. 7 (jaquemarts); vol. 1, chap. 11 (cuckoo clock).

For a description of the Flûteur: [Jacques] Vaucanson, Le Mécanisme du flûteur automate (Buren, the Netherlands: Knuf, 1979; reprint of 1st ed., Paris, 1738), pp. 9–16; “Le Flûteur,” Le Mercure de France, April 1738, pp. 738–39 (incl. “fourteen airs” quotation); Académie Royale des Sciences report on Vaucanson’s exhibition, Le Journal des sçavans, April 1739, pp. 435–52 (which stated that the Flûteur played only twelve airs). Vaucanson does not say what powered his automata, but his biographers are fairly confident that it was weights; André Doyon and Lucien Liaigre, Jacques Vaucanson, mécanicien de génie (Paris: P.U.F., 1967), p. 75. For the historical context: Apel, “Flute,” in Harvard Dictionary of Music, p. 322 (adoption of transverse flute as concert instrument); David Lasocki, pref. to Vaucanson, Mécanisme du flûteur automate, unpaginated (little written about transverse flute in Vaucanson’s day); Chapuis et al., Histoire de la boîte à musique, chaps. 1, 2, 12 (history of pegged cylinders in mechanical musical instruments); Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 1, p. 113 (origins of weight-driven clocks).

Vaucanson, Mécanisme du flûteur automate, pp. 19–21.

Ibid., p. 21.

Doyon and Liaigre, Jacques Vaucanson, pp. 23–33, 84–92.

For the Académie Royale des Sciences report: Journal des sçavans, April 1739, pp. 435–52. On the king’s visit to the exhibition: Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets, vol. 23, p. 259.

M. Imbert, “Nécrologie (mort de Vaucanson),” Le Mercure de France, 15 March 1783, pp. 116–19; Anon., “Vaucanson,” in Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne, [1st ed.], ed. [Joseph-F. and Louis-Gabriel] Michaud, 52 vols. (Paris: Michaud, 1811–28), vol. 48, pp. 16–18; Doyon and Liaigre, Jacques Vaucanson, chaps. 7, 8, 9, 11; Alfred Cobban, A History of Modern France, 3 vols. (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1957–65), vol. 2, pp. 45–46.

On Vaucanson compared to Prometheus: Voltaire, Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, 75 vols. (Paris: Baudouin, 1825–28), vol. 15, p. 363; La Mettrie, Man a Machine, pp. 70 (French version), 140–41 (English). On Vaucanson in the Académie Royale des Sciences: Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet, “Éloge de M. de Vaucanson,” in Oeuvres, 12 vols. (Stuttgart: Fromann, 1968; reprint of Paris ed., 1847–49), vol. 2, pp. 657–58; Doyon and Liaigre, Jacques Vaucanson, app. 2, pp. 443–54. On Vaucanson’s mechanical asp: [Jean-François] Marmontel, Mémoires de Marmontel, ed. Maurice Tourneux, 3 vols. (Paris: Librairie des Bibliophiles, 1891), vol. 1, pp. 247–48; Friedrich Melchior von Grimm et al., Correspondance littéraire, 16 vols. (Paris: Garnier, 1877–82), vol. 14, p. 72. Marmontel’s play had eleven performances; the playwright blamed Vaucanson’s snake for diverting attention from his dialogue.

Condorcet, “Éloge de M. de Vaucanson,” in Oeuvres, vol. 2, pp. 660, 656. On Vaucanson’s bequest: Doyon and Liaigre, Jacques Vaucanson, pp. 384–406. On the founding of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers: Tulard, Fayard, and Fierro, Histoire et dictionnaire de la Révolution, pp. 673–74.

Condorcet, “Éloge de M. de Vaucanson,” in Oeuvres, vol. 2, p. 660; M. Guichard de Meinieres, “Nécrologie,” Le Journal de Paris, 10 December 1782, p. 1399; “Le Flûteur,” Mercure de France, April 1738, p. 739.

The source of Condorcet’s quotation: Condorcet, “Éloge de M. de Vaucanson,” in Oeuvres, vol. 2, p. 645. For the argument that Vaucanson may have originally conceived his three automata as anatomies mouvantes: Doyon and Liaigre, Jacques Vaucanson, chaps. 1, 5 (the quotation is on p. 109). On Vaucanson’s later, unrealized anatomies mouvantes projects: Doyon and Liaigre, Jacques Vaucanson, chap. 7 (the quotation is on p. 148).

Vaucanson, Mécanisme du flûteur automate, pp. 4–8 (physics of transverse flute), 21 (quotation concerning the galoubet), 19 (quotation concerning the Canard’s digestion). On Vaucanson and the contemporary debate over the process of digestion: Doyen and Liaigre, Jacques Vaucanson, chap. 5.

Johann Heinrich Moritz [von] Poppe, Ausführliche Geschichte der theoretisch-praktischen Uhrmacherkunst (Leipzig: Roch, 1801), pp. 375–84; Johann Bernoulli, Johann Bernoulli’s Sammlung kurzer Reisebeschreibungen, 16 vols. and 2 suppl. vols. (Berlin: bei dem Herausgeber, 1781–85), 1st suppl. vol., p. 142.

Charles Perregaux and F.-Louis Perrot, Les Jaquet-Droz et Leschot (Neuchâtel: Attinger, 1916), chaps. 10, 11. Neuchâtel was under Prussian suzerainty from 1708 to 1857, with the exception of 1806–15, when it formed part of the Napoleonic Empire; William L. Langer, ed., An Encyclopedia of World History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968), pp. 497, 641, 651, 715.

Bernoulli, Johann Bernoulli’s Sammlung kurzer Reisebeschreibungen, 1st suppl. vol., pp. 154–56; Perregaux and Perrot, Les Jaquet-Droz et Leschot, pp. 56–58; Chapuis et al., Histoire de la boîte à musique, pp. 49–51; Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 1, pp. 241–44. The clock was still to be found in the royal palace in Madrid as recently as 1955, although most of its mechanisms were not in working order.

Perregaux and Perrot, Les Jaquet-Droz et Leschot, pp. 91–105.

The prospectus is reproduced in full in Perregaux and Perrot, Les Jaquet-Droz et Leschot, pp. 103–5. The machinery of the androids is discussed in varying degrees of detail in the following sources: ibid., pp. 185–89; Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 2, pp. 233–49, 270–79; Chapuis and Droz, Automates: Figures artificielles, pp. 287–91, 301–3; Chapuis et al., Histoire de la boîte à musique, pp. 60–63. The ability of the Écrivain to “take dictation” is also discussed in C. Sivan, “Encore l’Écrivain de Jaquet Droz,” Le Journal suisse d’horlogerie et de bijouterie 31, no. 12 (June 1907): 412–15. The androids are still in existence and on display in the Musée d’art et d’histoire, Neuchâtel.

On the automata’s attraction of visitors to La Chaux-de-Fonds: Letter of Isaac Droz of Locle to Governor de Lentulus, quoted in Perregaux and Perrot, Les Jaquet-Droz et Leschot, p. 102 (“people came” quotation). On the automata’s travels to Paris and Versailles: Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets, vol. 7, pp. 273, 284. On the automata’s tour of Europe: Perregaux and Perrot, Les Jaquet-Droz et Leschot, pp. 110–11; Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 2, p. 192. On the automata’s return visit to Paris: various issues of Le Journal de Paris, cited in Émile Campardon, Les Spectacles de la foire, 2 vols. (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970; reprint of Paris ed., 1877), vol. 1, pp. 276–77, and in Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy, pp. 49, 262 <$f$>n. 125; exhibition prospectus cited in Maingot, Automates, p. 24.

Perregaux and Perrot, Les Jaquet-Droz et Leschot, p. 95, chap. 15.

Ibid., p. 114.

[First name unknown] Weiss, “Droz (Henri-Louis Jacquet)” [sic], in Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne, [1st ed.], vol. 12, p. 39; Anon., “Droz (Henri-Louis-Jacquet),” in Nouvelle biographie générale, vol. 14, col. 813; Perregaux and Perrot, Les Jaquet-Droz et Leschot, p. 166. On Grimod, see chapter 2 above, p. 77.

Perregaux and Perrot, Les Jaquet-Droz et Leschot, pp. 110, 216–17; Alfred Chapuis, “Les ‘Répliques’ des androïdes Jaquet-Droz,” Le Musée neuchâtelois, new ser., 13 (1926): 88–105; Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 2, pp. 249–51, 278; Chapuis and Droz, Automates: Figures artificielles, pp. 291, 306–9; Alfred Chapuis, “Nouveaux documents sur les automates Jaquet-Droz et Maillardet,” Le Musée neuchâtelois, new ser., 38 (1951): 33–42.

Perregaux and Perrot, Les Jaquet-Droz et Leschot, p. 119.

On Defrance’s automata: Les Affiches de Paris, 1746, quoted in Campardon, Spectacles de la foire, vol. 1, p. 225. On Lagrelet’s automata: Les Affiches de Paris, 1750, quoted in Campardon, Spectacles de la foire, vol. 2, pp. 19–20. On the Palais Magique’s automata: [François-] Victor Fournel, Le Vieux Paris: Fêtes, jeux, spectacles (Paris: Valtat, 1979; reprint of Tours ed., 1887), pp. 321–22. On Mical’s automata: Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets, vol. 26, p. 215; [Antoine Rivarol], Lettre à M. le Président de *** sur le globe aérostatique, sur les têtes parlantes…(London: Cailleau, 1783), p. 29. On Knauss’s automata: Friedrich von Knauss, Friedrichs von Knauss selbstschreibende Wundermaschinen (Vienna: n.p., 1780), pp. 103–5 (flageolet player, completed 1757), 13–93 (writers, completed 1753, 1758, 17??, 1760). On Richard’s automata: “Concert mécanique,” Le Mercure de France, August 1771, pp. 152–54; Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 2, p. 289; Chapuis and Droz, Automates: Figures artificielles, p. 278. On Pelletier’s automaton: Fournel, Vieux Paris, p. 323; Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 2, p. 269; Hillairet, Dictionnaire historique, vol. 2, p. 222.

Léon Montandon and Alfred Chapuis, “Les Maillardet,” Le Musée neuchâtelois, new ser., 3 (1916): 152–67; 4 (1917): 24–45; Chapuis, “‘Répliques’ des androïdes,” Musée neuchâtelois, new ser., 13, pp. 88–105; Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 2, pp. 161–64, 196–98, 251–58, 278–79; Chapuis and Droz, Automates: Figures artificielles, pp. 253–54, 268, 311–17; Chapuis, “Nouveaux documents sur les automates,” Musée neuchâtelois, new ser., 38, pp. 33–42; A. Michaud, ed., “Un Prospectus des Maillardet,” Le Musée neuchâtelois, 1st ser., 39 (1902): 214–15.

Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 2, pp. 279–86. Marie-Antoinette may have seen the Jaquet-Droz Musicienne again in the early 1780s; see note 18 above. Roentgen and Kintzing lived and worked in Neuwied, the capital of the autonomous Grafschaft (county) of Wied.

The National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints; The British Library Catalogue of Printed Books to 1975; Catalogue générale des livres imprimés de la Bibliothèque nationale (ouvrages publiés avant 1969).

On canaries, flageolets, serinettes, and mechanical songbirds: Perregaux and Perrot, Les Jaquet-Droz et Leschot, chaps. 18, 19; Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 1, p. 279; vol. 2, chap. 18; Chapuis and Droz, Automates: Figures artificielles, pp. 127, 199–202; Buchner, Mechanical Musical Instruments, pp. 83–84.

Knauss’s writers nonetheless constituted a great mechanical achievement.

Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 2, p. 289; Anon., “Mical,” in Biographie universelle et portative, vol. 5, p. 461.

H[enri] Decremps, La Magie blanche dévoilée, 4 vols. (Paris: Desoer, 1789–91; first published 1784–88), vol. 4, Codicile de Jérome Sharp, chap. 12; Chapuis, “‘Répliques’ des androïdes,” Musée neuchâtelois, new ser., 13, p. 96. On quasi- and pseudo-automata in general: Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 2, chap. 26, Chapuis and Droz, Automates: Figures artificielles, chap. 18; Adolphe Blind, Les Automates truqués (Geneva: Eggiman, 1927). Payen’s automaton writer, exhibited in Paris in 1771, was probably a true automaton; “L’Écrivain automate,” Le Mercure de France, September 1771, pp. 175–76; Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 2, p. 254.

The biographical sketch of Kempelen presented here is based on these sources: Charles Gottlieb de Windisch, Lettres sur le joueur d’échecs de M. de Kempelen (Basel: Chrétien de Mechel, 1783; the German ed., Karl Gottlieb von Windisch, Briefe über den Schachspieler des Herrn von Kempelen, bears the same imprint); J. Karl Unger, “Wolfgang von Kempelen,” in Zeitschrift von und für Ungarn, zur Beförderung der vaterlä–ischen Geschichte, Erkunde und Litteratur 5 (1804): fasc. 5, pp. 313–17; Anon., “Kempelen, Wolfgang Ritter von,” in Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich, ed. Constant[in] Wurzbach, 60 vols. (New York: Johnson, 1966; reprint of Vienna ed., 1856–91), vol. 11, pp. 158–63. Unless otherwise noted, all information on Kempelen in this section, including quotations, derives from these three sources.

[Sébastien] Guillié, Essai sur l’instruction des aveugles; ou, Exposé analytique des procédés employés pour les instruire (Paris: n.p., 1817), pp. 96, 121; Anon., “Paradis, auch, jedoch unrichtig Paradies, Maria Theresia von,” in Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich, vol. 21, p. 288.

L[ouis] Dutens, “Lettre…au sujet de l’Automate qui joue aux échecs,” Le Mercure de France, March 1771, pp. 153–56; Windisch, Lettres sur le joueur d’échecs, pp. 38–40.

Contemporary observers did not give mutually corroborative descriptions of Kempelen’s procedure. On this and other matters concerning the Chess Player, the present study follows for the most part, but not always or entirely, the definitive study of Charles Michael Carroll, The Great Chess Automaton (New York: Dover, 1975). On Kempelen’s procedure, see in that work pp. 54–55. The sketch of the automaton presented here is based on reports of contemporary observers, principally L[ouis] Dutens, “Lettre sur une Automate qui joue aux échecs,” Le Mercure de France, October 1770, vol. 2, pp. 186–90, and idem, “Lettre…au sujet de l’Automate” Le Mercure de France, March 1771, pp. 153–56; Windisch, Lettres sur le joueur d’échecs (1783); Decremps, Magie blanche dévoilée (1784), vol. 1, pp. 65–69; Josef Friedrich, Freiherr zu Racknitz, Ueber den Schachspieler des Herrn von Kempelen und dessen Nachbildung (Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1789); [Robert Willis], An Attempt to Analyse the Automaton Chess Player, of Mr. de Kempelen (London: Booth, 1821).

Windisch, Lettres sur le joueur d’échecs, pp. 40–41.

On late-eighteenth-century speaking machines: David Brewster, Letters on Natural Magic, Addressed to Sir Walter Scott, Bart. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1883; first published 1832), pp. 268–70; Chapuis and Droz, Automates: Figures artificielles, chap. 15; Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 2, chap. 22; Thomas L. Hankins and Robert J. Silverman, Instruments and the Imagination (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), chap. 8. Knauss apparently constructed four talking heads around 1770, but little is known about them; Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 2, p. 202. On Mical’s talking heads: “Mécanique,” Le Journal de Paris, 6 July 1783, p. 778; Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets, vol. 26, pp. 214–16; Aoine] Rivarol, Discours sur l’universalité de la langue française, in Oeuvres choisies de A. Rivarol, 2 vols. (Paris: Librairie des Bibliophiles, 1880), vol. 1, pp. 79–82; idem, Lettre à M. le Président de *** sur le globe aérostatique, sur les têtes parlantes…, pp. 20–24, 29–30 (Rivarol’s quotation is on p. 30); L. Louvet, “Mical,” in Nouvelle biographie générale, vol. 35, col. 312. Both Vicq d’Azyr, in his official report to the Académie Royale des Sciences (according to Louvet’s article), and Bachaumont found the pronunciation of Mical’s talking heads defective, but without making a comparison to Kempelen’s speaking machine. The source of the quotation rating Kempelen’s speaking machine above Mical’s talking heads: Grimm et al., Correspondance littéraire, vol. 13, p. 359. On Kempelen’s speaking machine: Windisch, Lettres sur le joueur d’échecs, pp. 45–49; Wolfgang von Kempelen, Wolfgangs von Kempe-len Mechanismus der menchlichen Sprache nebst der Beschreibung seiner sprechenden Maschine (Stuttgart: Frommann, 1970; reprint of Vienna ed., 1791).

The pamphlet of 1783 heralding the tour was Windisch, Lettres sur le joueur d’échecs. The various editions of it are mentioned in Carroll, Great Chess Automaton, p. 18. That same work, pp. 108–13, contains an excellent bibliography of the most important works on the Chess Player and explains: “A list of all the literature dealing with the automaton chess player, without a lifetime or two in which to trace all the periodical entries, represents a well-nigh impossible task.”

For notices of the Paris exhibitions of the Chess Player: articles titled “Mécanique” in Le Journal de Paris, 18 April 1783, pp. 453–54; 24 April 1783, p. 477; 2 May 1783, p. 508; 12 June 1783, pp. 682–83; 23 June 1783, p. 718. On Bernard and the Chess Player: Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets, vol. 22, pp. 305–6; vol. 23, pp. 3–5; Grimm et al., Correspondance littéraire, vol. 13, pp. 354–58. On Philidor and the Chess Player: Lardin, “Philidor peint par lui-même,” Le Palamède, 2d ser., 7, no. 1, pp. 12–13; Twiss, Chess, vol. 1, pp. 186–87.

Carroll, Great Chess Automaton, pp. 22–27.

The present biographical sketch of Maelzel is based on these sources: Anon., “Maelzel (Léonard),” in Biographie universelle et portative, vol. 5, pp. 428–29; Anon., “Mälzel, Johann Nepomuk,” in Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich, vol. 16, pp. 248–50; George Allen, “The History of the Automaton Chess-Player in America,” in The Book of the First American Chess Congress, ed. Daniel Willard Fiske (New York: Rudd and Carleton, 1859), pp. 420–84; Carroll, Great Chess Automaton, pp. 42–51, 65–92; Fétis, “Maelzel (Jean-Népomucène),” in Biographie universelle des musiciens, vol. 5, pp. 396–97; Theodor von Frimmel, “Mälzels Kunstkabinett,” Feuilleton of the Wiener Zeitung, 26 July 1914, pp. 10–12; L. Louvet, “Maelzel (Léonard),” in Nouvelle biographie générale, vol. 32, cols. 643–44. Leonhard Maelzel (1783–1855) was the brother of Johann and also a mechanician; their names were often confused with each other.

An earlier version of the Panharmonicon is described in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 2, no. 23 (5 March 1800), cols. 414–15. On the Panharmonicon of 1805: Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 8, no. 44 (30 July 1806), cols. 701–2; “Arts Mécanique: Le Panharmonicon,” Feuilleton of Le Journal de l’Empire, 9 March 1807, pp. 1–3; Prudhomme, Miroir historique, vol. 5, pp. 156–59; Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 2, p. 289; Chapuis and Droz, Automates: Figures artificielles, p. 279; Chapuis et al., His-toire de la boîte à musique, pp. 91–92; Buchner, Mechanical Musical Instruments, pp. 77–78. It was perhaps this instrument that ended up in Stuttgart’s Industrial Museum, which was destroyed during World War II, but not before two photographs of the instrument had been taken; they are reproduced in ibid., plates 131, 132.

On Maelzel’s Trompeter: “Arts Mécaniques: Le Trompette Automate, par M. Maelzel, de Vienne, auteur du Panharmonicon,” Feuilleton of Le Journal de l’Empire, 12 October 1808, pp. 1–3; Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 2, p. 286. On the industrial expositions: Achille de Colmont, Histoire des expositions des produits de l’industrie française (Paris: Guillaumin, 1855), chap. 2.

On Kaufmann’s trumpeter: Carl Maria von Weber, “Der Trompeter,” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 14, no. 41 (7 October 1812), cols. 663–66. On Kaufmann’s Belloneon: Buchner, Mechanical Musical Instruments, pp. 55, 80. On Napoleon and the Chess Player: Carroll, Great Chess Automaton, p. 43. On Maelzel’s chronogram for Napoleon: Anon., “Mälzel,” in Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich, vol. 16, p. 248. The chronogram was “taCe, MVnDVs ConCors,” Latin for “silence, the world is united”; the capitalized letters when rearranged yield MDCCCVV, Roman numerals for 1810.

Anton Schindler, Beethoven-Biographie, ed. A. C. Kalischer (Berlin: Schuster and Loeffler, 1909; first published 1840), pp. 237–43, 281–84; idem, The Life of Beethoven, trans. and ed. Ignace Moscheles, 2 vols. (Mattapan, Mass.: Gamut Music, 1966; first published 1841), vol. 1, pp. 143–56 (the quotation is on pp. 153–54, editor’s footnote); Thayer, Life of Beethoven, pp. 543–69, 579–80, 686–88, 1094–99 (app. G). The all-star orchestra for the Beethoven-Maelzel concert counted among its members Spohr, Dragonetti, Meyerbeer, Hummel, Salieri, and Moscheles, the last four on percussion.

For a biographical sketch of Winkel: Fétis, “Winkel,” in Biographie universelle des musiciens, vol. 8, pp. 476–77. On the Winkel-Maelzel metronome controversy: J[ohann Nepomuk] Maelzel, Notice sur le métronome de J. Maelzel ([Paris:] Carpentier-Méricourt, [1822]; first published 1816); “Maelzels Metronom,” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 19, no. 25 (18 June 1817), cols. 417–22; “Zur Geschichte der musikal. Metronomen,” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 20, no. 26 (1 July 1818), cols. 468–73; “Correspondance,” La Revue musicale, 1st ser., 6 (1830): 56–59; Chapuis et al., Histoire de la boîte à musique, chap. 10; Apel, “Metronome,” in Harvard Dictionary of Music, pp. 523–24; E. G. Richardson, “Metronome,” in New Grove Dictionary, vol. 12, pp. 222–23. On Winkel’s Componium: Buchner, Mechanical Musical Instruments, pp. 79–80; Chapuis et al., Histoire de la boîte à musique, chap. 9. Maelzel’s fortune at the time of his death was estimated at half a million thalers, or approximately two million francs.

[Marie-Pierre] Hamel, Nouveau manuel complet du facteur d’orgues, 3 vols. (Paris: Roret, 1849), vol. 1, pp. lvi–lviii (Maelzel’s talking dolls); vol. 3, pp. 458–59 (Maelzel’s acrobat). Hamel says that the dolls were exhibited at the exposition of 1824, but there was none in that year; he probably meant 1823. Colmont, Histoire des expositions des produits, lists the gold and silver medal winners at each of the expositions from the first one in 1798 until that of 1849; Maelzel’s name does not appear.

On Maelzel with a Jaquet-Droz writer-sketcher: Chapuis, “Nouveaux documents sur les automates,” Le Musée neuchâtelois, new ser., 38, pp. 41–42. The source of Barnum’s quotation: Barnum, Struggles and Triumphs, vol. 1, p. 114.

Allen, “History of the Automaton Chess-Player,” in First American Chess Congress, pp. 455–58.

For some early skeptics: Rigoley de Juvigny, “Lettre au sujet de l’Automate qui joue aux échecs,” Le Mercure de France, December 1770, pp. 181–88; Vincent de Montpetit, “Lettre sur l’Automate de M. de Kempell” [sic], Le Mercure de France, March 1771, pp. 157–60; Grimm et al., Correspondance littéraire, vol. 13, pp. 354–58 (entry for September 1783); Decremps, Magie blanche dévoilée (1784), vol. 1, pp. 65–69; Racknitz, Ueber den Schachspieler (1789), passim.

Anon. [perhaps Jacques-François Mouret], “Automate joueur d’échecs,” Le Magasin pittoresque 2 (1834), fasc. 20, p. 155; [Mathieu-Jean-Baptiste Nioche] de Tournay, “La Vie et les aventures de l’automate joueur d’échecs,” Le Palamède, 1st ser., 1, no. 3 ([15 May] 1836): 85–87; “L’Automate joueur d’échecs,” Le Palamède, 1st ser., 4, no. 3 [late 1839 or early 1840]: 68–69; Allen, “History of the Automaton Chess-Player,” in First American Chess Congress, pp. 436–38. On Mouret’s kinship to Philidor: Louvet, “Maelzel,” in Nouvelle biographie générale, vol. 32, cols. 643–44.

Allen, “History of the Automaton Chess-Player,” in First American Chess Congress, pp. 474, 483.

All three quotations are from Harry Houdini, The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin (New York: Publishers Printing, 1906), pp. 7–9.

Letter of Houdini to Harry Leat, 20 April 1926, cited in Maurice Sardina, Where Houdini Was Wrong: A Reply to “The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin,” trans. and ed. Victor Farelli (London: Armstrong, 1950), p. 119. Houdini said substantially the same thing to another magician as early as 1911; ibid., p. 17 <$f$>n. 1.

For example: Henry Ridgely Evans, History of Conjuring and Magic (Kenton, Ohio: International Brotherhood of Magicians, 1928), p. 75; David Price, A Pictorial History of Conjurers in the Theater (New York: Cornwall, 1985), p. 59.

Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations; comment on devient sorcier (Geneva: Slatkine, 1980; reprint of Paris ed., 1868), chaps. 1, 2 (the quotations are on pp. 6, 7, 18).

Ibid., chap. 2 (the quotation is on p. 24).

Ibid., chap. 3 (the quotations are on pp. 37–40).

Ibid., pp. 42–132 (the quotation is on p. 132).

The interpretation of the Torrini episode presented here is original. For other commentary on it: Jean Chavigny, Robert-Houdin, rénovateur de la magie blanche (Blois: Author, 1969), pp. 40–41; André Keime Robert-Houdin, Robert-Houdin, le magicien de la science (Paris/Geneva: Champion/Slatkine, 1986), p. 19; Michel Seldow, Vie et secrets de Robert-Houdin (Paris: Fayard, 1971), pp. 48–51; Alain Sergent, Le Roi des prestidigitateurs, Robert-Houdin (Paris: Seuil, 1952), pp. 20–22; Bernard C. Meyer, Houdini: A Mind in Chains; A Psychoanalytic Portrait (New York: Dutton, 1976), chap. 2.

Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, pp. 132–36; Chavigny, Robert-Houdin, rénovateur, p. 45.

Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, pp. 28–30.

Ibid., pp. 32 (quotation), 136–37.

Ibid., pp. 196–98; Chavigny, Robert-Houdin, rénovateur, pp. 50–52; Keime Robert-Houdin, Robert-Houdin, le magicien de la science, p. 81.

“Exposition des produits de l’industrie française (Sixième article),” Le Moniteur universel, 10 June 1839, p. 930; Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, pp. 198–99; Chavigny, Robert-Houdin, rénovateur, p. 52. For photographs of the Réveil-Briquet and the Pendule Mystérieuse: Keime Robert-Houdin, Robert-Houdin, le magicien de la science, unpaginated section of plates.

Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, pp. 174–214.

Ibid., p. 181 and unpaginated app., “Programme générale.” Robert-Houdin describes only how the trick looks to the audience, not how it is accomplished. The explanation given here is of Pinetti’s similar trick, as described by Decremps, Magie blanche dévoilée, vol. 1, chap. 19. Other magicians used pistons instead of air to push the folded-up flowers and fruit out of the hollow branches; Houdini, Unmasking of Robert-Houdin, p. 76.

Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, p. 181.

Ibid., pp. 174–78.

On the building of Robert-Houdin’s Écrivain-Dessinateur: ibid., pp. 199–214. On the reappearances of Jaquet-Droz automata: Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 2, pp. 192–94. On the reappearances of Jaquet-Droz–Maillardet Écrivain-Dessinateurs: citations in note 25 above. On the relationship between Robert-Houdin’s Écrivain-Dessinateur and Jaquet-Droz/ Jaquet-Droz–Maillardet automata: Chapuis, “‘Répliques’ des Androïdes,” Le Musée neuchâtelois, new ser., 1, pp. 99–103; Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 2, p. 259; Houdini, Unmasking of Robert-Houdin, chap. 3. On Robert-Houdin’s Écrivain-Dessinateur at the exposition of 1844: Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, pp. 236–38, 354 (quotation); Colmont, Histoire des expositions des produits, p. 562. On Barnum and Robert-Houdin’s Écrivain-Dessinateur: Barnum, Struggles and Triumphs, vol. 1, pp. 259–60; vol. 2, chap. 39.

Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, pp. 211–12.

Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 2, pp. 132–34; Chapuis and Droz, Automates: Figures artificielles, pp. 212–16; Maingot, Automates, pp. 71–73.

Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, pp. 137–48 (the quotations are on pp. 137–38, 144). On Comte, see also Evans, History of Conjuring and Magic, p. 102.

Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, pp. 187–94. On Bosco, see also Houdini, Unmasking of Robert-Houdin, pp. 302–7; Evans, History of Conjuring and Magic, pp. 118–20; Price, Pictorial History of Conjurers, pp. 45–47. Price says that Bosco used chickens, not pigeons; both he and Houdini suggest that Bosco may not really have killed the birds he apparently decapitated.

Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, pp. 225–35. On the pistol-shot lighting of candles, which may have been invented by Austrian magician Ludwig Döbler: idem, The Secrets of Stage Conjuring, trans. and ed. Prof. Hoffmann (London: Routledge, 1881; trans. of Magie et physique amusante), chap. 5. On Philippe, see also Evans, History of Conjuring and Magic, p. 103; Price, Pictorial History of Conjurers, pp. 65–67.

“Nouvelles des théatres, spectacles, concerts, etc.,” Le Moniteur universel, 6 July 1845, p. 2064; “Soirées fantastiques de M. Robert-Houdin,” Le Charivari 14, no. 191 (10 July 1845), unpaginated; “M. Robert-Houdin,” L’Illustration; journal universel hebdomadaire 5, no. 125 (19 July 1845): 336; Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, pp. 240–57, 289–95; idem, Secrets of Stage Conjuring (trans. of Magie et physique amusante), chaps. 1, 2.

Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, app., “Programme général.”

Hillairet, Dictionnaire historique, vol. 2, pp. 219–24; Guillaume de Berthier de Sauvigny, Nouvelle histoire de Paris: La Restauration (Paris: Hachette, 1977), pp. 379–82; Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy, chap. 8.

Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, app., “Programme général.”

The source of the quotations: Ibid., pp. 158–59. See also Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 2, pp. 149–51; Chapuis and Droz, Automates: Figures artificielles, pp. 239–46; [Christoph] Friedrich Nicolaï, Beschreibung einer Reise durch Deutschland und die Schweiz im Jahre 1781, 6 vols. (Berlin: n.p., 1783–85), vol. 1, pp. 281–89; Doyon and Liaigre, Jacques Vaucanson, pp. 91–107.

Bernoulli, Johann Bernoulli’s Sammlung kurzer Reisebeschreibungen, 1st suppl. vol., p. 164; Sivan, “Encore l’Écrivain de Jaquet Droz,” Journal suisse d’horlogerie 31, no. 12, pp. 413–14.

Blind, Automates truqués, pp. 33–37; Chapuis and Droz, Automates: Figures artificielles, pp. 374–80. Robert-Houdin describes his use of pistons, wires, pulleys, and pedals to work his automata, but without naming any particular automaton; Robert-Houdin, Secrets of Stage Conjuring (trans. of Magie et physique amusante), pp. 41–43.

Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, pp. 262–66, 277–80, app., “Programme général”; Houdini, Unmasking of Robert-Houdin, chap. 7; Théophile Gautier, Histoire de l’art dramatique en France depuis vingt-cinq ans, 6 vols. (Bruxelles: Hetzel, 1858–59), vol. 4, pp. 163–65.

“M. Robert-Houdin,” Illustration, 19 July 1845, p. 336; “Tribunaux,” Le Moniteur universel, 26 June 1850, pp. 2176–77.

Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, pp. 272–354; Chavigny, Robert-Houdin, rénovateur, chaps. 3, 4 (dates). The 1846 trip to Belgium is described in a chapter excised from the “definitive” 1868 edition of Robert-Houdin’s autobiography, the last edition published in his lifetime, the edition that is the source for most of the later editions and translations, and the edition that has been cited heretofore. The excised chapter, entitled “Séductions d’un agent théâtral,” appears in these editions: Confidences d’un prestidigitateur (Paris: Librairie Nouvelle, 1859); Confidences de Robert-Houdin (Paris: Librairie Nouvelle, 1861).

Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, pp. 311–15; Sidney W. Clarke, “The Annals of Conjuring,” The Magic Wand and Magical Review 15 (1926): 34–38; Houdini, Unmasking of Robert-Houdin, pp. 44, 308–10; Sardina, Where Houdini Was Wrong, p. 104; Chavigny, Robert-Houdin, rénovateur, pp. 102, 113–14; Milbourne Christopher, The Illustrated History of Magic (New York: Crowell, 1973), chap. 8; Price, Pictorial History of Conjurers, pp. 61–64.

Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, pp. 146–48. Thanks to psy-chologist Dr. Barbara A. Augusta for pointing out and elucidating this idiom.

Ibid., pp. 354–419; article of Le Moniteur algérien 25, no. 1510 (5 November 1856), reprinted in Seldow, Vie et secrets de Robert-Houdin, p. 13; “Faits divers,” Le Moniteur universel, 9 October 1857, p. 1108. A photograph of the calligraphic placard may be found in Chavigny, Robert-Houdin, rénovateur, p. 129.

Charles Baudelaire, Fusées, in Oeuvres complètes, ed. Y.-G. Le Dantec and Claude Pichois (Paris: Pléiade, 1961), p. 1252. Baudelaire wrote this as a sort of aphorism, on which he did not elaborate.

The titles of Robert-Houdin’s books vary a great deal from edition to edition. His autobiography, for example, appeared as: Confidences d’un prestidigitateur; une vie d’artiste (1858, 1859), Confidences de Robert-Houdin; une vie d’artiste (1861), and Confidences et révélations; comment on devient sorcier (1868), among other titles. Sometimes in bibliographies the subtitle is listed as the main title, which is particularly confusing in the case of the “definitive” 1868 edition of the autobiography, whose subtitle, comment on devient sorcier, is the same as the main title of Robert-Houdin’s third book, Comment on devient sorcier; les secrets de la prestidigitation et de la magie. The titles of the English translations also vary a great deal. The titles used here are those of the most commonly cited French editions.

Robert-Houdin, Secrets of Stage Conjuring (trans. of Magie et physique amusante), chap. 1. Seldow, Vie et secrets de Robert-Houdin, p. 69, also treats the cat’s-claw story as a deception.

For predecessors of Robert-Houdin’s cat’s claw: Houdini, Unmasking of Robert-Houdin, pp. 280–81. For predecessors of Robert-Houdin’s detective story: Seldow, Vie et secrets de Robert-Houdin, p. 69. Seldow writes: “Un esprit imprudent n’hésiterait pas à opérer un rapprochement entre le petit récit policier inventé par Robert-Houdin et Le Dossier no. 113 du génial Gaboriau. ” But there is no particular resemblance between Robert-Houdin’s little detective story and Gaboriau’s Le Dossier no. 113; for example, there is no mechanical thief-trap in Gaboriau’s novel. For predecessors of Gaboriau’s detective stories: Roger Bonniot, Émile Gaboriau; ou, La naissance du roman policier (Paris: Vrin, 1985), chap. entitled “Les Précurseurs,” esp. pp. 161–69; see also the discussion of the detective story in chap. 3 of this volume. For praise of Baudelaire’s translations of Poe: Théophile Gautier, Portraits contem-porains: littérateurs, peintres, sculpteurs, artistes dramatiques (Paris: Charpentier, 1874), p. 159.

[Jean-Eugène] Robert-Houdin, Les Tricheries des Grecs dévoilées; ou, L’art de gagner à tous les jeux (Paris: Hetzel, 1863), pp. 243–44, 255–57; Victor DuBled, Histoire anecdotique et psychologie des jeux de cartes, dés, échecs (Paris: Delagrave, 1919), pp. 228–29. See also Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, pp. 220–25.

Robert-Houdin, Tricheries des Grecs dévoilées, chaps. 5–12. Seldow, Vie et secrets de Robert-Houdin, p. 138, calls this section of Robert-Houdin’s book “le premier ‘Roman d’un tricheur.’”

Vidocq, Mémoires, pp. 544–81. The novella, written by Vidocq’s ghostwriter, L.-F. L’Héritier de l’Ain, was previously published as Les Malheurs d’une libérée (Paris: Tenon, 1829); see J.-M. Quérard, La France littéraire, 12 vols. (Paris: Maisonneuve and Larose, n.d.), vol. 11, p. 252.

Houdini, Unmasking of Robert-Houdin, pp. 8, 47, 235–36. For a refutation, see Sardina, Where Houdini Was Wrong, p. 84.

Robert-Houdin, Tricheries des Grecs dévoilées, pp. 337–39.

Edition consulted: [Jean-Eugène] Robert-Houdin, Comment on devient sorcier; les secrets de la prestidigitation et de la magie (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1878). For the claim that this book was the first systematic treatment of conjuring: Clarke, “Annals of Conjuring,” Magic Wand, vol. 15, pp. 128–29.

Robert-Houdin, Secrets of Stage Conjuring (trans. of Magie et physique amusante), pp. 36–38; idem, Confidences et révélations, pp. 240–41.

For Robert-Houdin’s perhaps erroneous explanations of other magicians’ tricks: Houdini, Unmasking of Robert-Houdin, chap. 10. For Robert-Houdin’s explanations of spiritualists’ tricks: Robert-Houdin, Secrets of Stage Conjuring (trans. of Magie et physique amusante), chaps. 8, 13. On Robert-Houdin and spiritualists, see also [Jules] Eudes, marquis de M[irville], Pneumatologie: Des esprits et de leurs manifestations fluidiques (Prais: Vrayet de Surcy, 1853), pp. 2–16.

The source of Robert-Houdin’s quotation on the public’s ignorance of electro-magnetism: Robert-Houdin, Secrets of Stage Conjuring (trans. of Magie et physique amusante), p. 57. The source of the quotation from the Cosmos editor who praised Robert-Houdin: F. Moigno, “Exposition universelle,” Cosmos 7 (19 September 1855), p. 335. On Robert-Houdin’s “first-class” medal at the exposition of 1855: Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, pp. 354–55. On Robert-Houdin as an electrical inventor and experimenter: Keime Robert-Houdin, Robert-Houdin, le magicien de la science, chap. 3; Chavigny, Robert-Houdin, rénovateur, pp. 158–65. For list of Robert-Houdin’s most important patents: Keime Robert-Houdin, Robert-Houdin, le magicien de la science, pp. 81–82. For articles on Robert-Houdin in Cosmos, revue encyclopédique hebdomadaire des progrès des sciences: Anon., “Nouvelles et faits divers,” Cosmos 6 (16 February 1855): 173–74; Anon., “Académie des sciences,” Cosmos 6 (25 May 1855): 578–80; F. Moigno, “Exposition universelle,” Cosmos 7 (19 September 1855): 328–40; idem, “Exposition universelle,” Cosmos 7 (23 November 1855): 619; M. Sylvester, “Société d’ couragement: Médailles d’argent,” Cosmos 8 (21 March 1856): 294–95; Anon., “Nouvelles et faits divers,” Cosmos 9 (11 July 1856): 37; Anon., “Nouvelles et faits divers,” Cosmos 9 (1 August 1856): 120; Anon., “Nouvelles et faits divers,” Cosmos 9 (22 August 1856): 203.

For the complete text of the note: Chavigny, Robert-Houdin, rénovateur, p. 170. See also Chapuis and Gélis, Monde des automates, vol. 2, pp. 281–82.

Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, pp. 160–73.

Jules Adenis and Octave Gastineau, La Czarine (Paris: Michel-Lévy, 1868); Robert-Houdin, Secrets of Stage Conjuring (trans. of Magie et physique amusante), chap. 6; Seldow, Vie et secrets de Robert-Houdin, chap. 14.