The fundamental principles which Robert-Houdin accepted and which he
seems to have taken over from Torrini, Messrs. Maskelyne and Devant have
elucidated in their philosophic disquisition, and yet in one particular
their practise is not yet level with their preaching. Before
Robert-Houdin and Frikell, or at least before Torrini, and even after
these three artists had set a better example, the majority of conjurers
filled the stage with gaudy apparatus and insisted on its blazing with
an unnecessary prodigality of lights. One magician in the middle of the
nineteenth century came forward on a stage absolutely dark, and suddenly
fired a pistol, thereby lighting two hundred candles arranged in
pyramids behind him. Another hung his stage with black velvet and
adorned it with skulls. Torrini and Robert-Houdin made an approach to
the unadorned simplicity of an actual drawing-room, altho Robert-Houdin
seems to have permitted himself a long shelf at the back of his stage on
which his various automatic figures were assembled awaiting their
summons to take part in the program. Even Messrs. Maskelyne and Devant
are satisfied with a stage-setting which is frankly only a
stage-setting--as stagy, in fact, as the ordinary scenery to be seen in
a variety-show.
Now, it may be admitted that a nondescript set of this sort, vaguely
Oriental, with arches and curtains, and somewhat suggestive of comic
opera, may not be inappropriate when any one of the bolder illusions is
to be presented--the Box Trick or the Aerial Suspension, the Mystic
Cabinet or the Talking Sphinx. Indeed, a special set of scenery is often
actually necessary for the presentation of marvels depending mainly on
optics or mechanics. But for the first part of the program, when the
performer appears in ordinary evening-dress, and when he is presenting
himself as a gentleman in a drawing-room, amusing other gentlemen, by
means of experiments in magic, every one of which may be likened to a
little play, why should not the stage-set be that of a drawing-room, or
of a bachelor's study, as accurately reproduced as similar rooms are
reproduced in the modern comedies of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones and Mr.
Augustus Thomas? The set accepted by Messrs. Maskelyne and Devant is
devoid of the actuality of a real room; it is fantastically stagy, and
therefore it lacks both veracity and dignity.
Sooner or later some modern magician, in advance over his rivals, will
take this final step, and the curtain will rise on a stage with a
box-set realistically reproducing a handsome room, with all its
decorations and hangings and furniture in harmony, Jacobean in style, or
Chippendale, as the performer's preference may be. There will be chairs
and tables in their proper places; there will be book-cases, and
window-boxes of flowers; and perhaps there will be a cellaret, where the
performer may procure any goblet or decanter he needs. There will be a
broad desk in the center, with its writing-pad and its book-rack, and
possibly its heap of magazines and weekly papers. This set thus
furnished will look like a room that has really been lived in; it will
have a door in each of the side walls, and when the curtain rises the
stage will be empty. Then the doorbell will ring, and the servant will
enter at one door, and, going across the stage to the other, he will
admit his master--the master at last of the truly modern art of magic.
The magician will give his hat and coat to the servant, who will take
them out, and who will never appear on the stage again except in
response to the master's pressure on the electric button, ordinarily
used to summon a servant. And the magician will present his succession
of experiments in magic, utilizing only the objects which he may borrow
from the spectators, or which would naturally be found in a gentleman's
room. The apparent absence of all apparatus, the naturalness of the
environment, the easy simplicity and the convincing reality of the
back-ground--all these elements will coalesce to heighten the effect of
the marvels to be wrought by a comedian playing the part of a magician.
(1912.)