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                                MEMOIRS

                                   OF

                             ROBERT-HOUDIN

                   AMBASSADOR, AUTHOR, AND CONJURER.

                          WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.

                               EDITED BY

                       DR. R. SHELTON MACKENZIE.

                             PHILADELPHIA:
                       GEO. G. EVANS, PUBLISHER,
                        NO. 439 CHESTNUT STREET.
                                 1859.

     Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by

                              G. G. EVANS,

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of
                             Pennsylvania.

               STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY RINWALT & CO.,
                         34 SOUTH THIRD STREET.




EDITOR’S PREFACE.


A man may not only “take his own life,” by writing his autobiography,
without committing _felo de se_, but may carry himself into future time
by producing a book which the world will not willingly let die. This is
what M. Robert-Houdin, the greatest artist in what is called Conjuring,
has lately done in the remarkable book _Confidences d’un Prestigiteur_,
a faithful translation of which is here presented to the American
reading public. The work has had the greatest success in Europe, from
its lively style as well as the various information it contains,
historical and philosophical, on the practice and principles of
sleight-of-hand, and the other details, mental as well as mechanical,
which unite to make perfect the exhibition of White Magic, the antipodes
of what our forefathers knew, persecuted, and punished as the Black Art.

Houdin has been considered of such importance and interest in France,
that in Didot’s _Nouvelle Biographie Générale_, now in course of
publication at Paris, a whole page is given to him. From this memoir,
and from his own account in the pages which follow, we learn that he
was born at Blois, on the 6th December, 1805,--that his father, a
watchmaker in that city, gave him a good education at the College of
Orleans,--that his inclination for _escamotage_ (or juggling) was so
decided as to make him averse to pursue his father’s trade,--that he
early exhibited great taste for mechanical inventions, which he so
successfully cultivated that, at the Paris Exhibition of 1844, he was
awarded a medal for the ingenious construction of several
automata,--that, having studied the displays of the great masters on the
art of juggling, he opened a theatre of his own, in the Palais Royal in
Paris, to which his celebrated _soirées fantastiques_ attracted
crowds,--that, in 1848, when the Revolution had ruined all theatrical
speculations in Paris, he visited London, where his performances at St.
James’s Theatre were universally attractive and lucrative,--that he made
a tour through Great Britain with equal success, returning to Paris when
France had settled down quietly under the rule of a President,--that he
subsequently visited many other parts of Europe, every where received
with distinction and applause,--that at the Great Parisian Exhibition of
1855, he was awarded the gold medal for his scientific application of
electricity to clocks,--that, shortly after, he closed ten years of
active public life by relinquishing his theatre to Mr. Hamilton, his
brother-in-law, retiring with a well-earned competency to Blois,--and
that, in 1857, at the special request of the French Government, which
desired to lessen the influence of the Marabouts, whose conjuring
tricks, accepted as actual magic by the Arabs, gave them too much
influence, he went to Algeria, as a sort of Ambassador, to play off his
tricks against theirs, and, by greater marvels than they could shew,
destroy the _prestige_ which they had acquired. He so completely
succeeded that the Arabs lost all faith in the miracles of the
Marabouts, and thus was destroyed an influence very dangerous to