pages: unmaskingrobert00houdgoog.pdf, 16
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unmaskingrobert00houdgoog.pdf | 16 | INTRODUCTION 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 in- vestigations disproved each claim in order. He had announced himself as the first magician to appear in regulation evening clothes, discarding flowing sleeves and heavily draped stage apparatus. The credit for this revo- lution in conjuring belonged to Wiljalba Frikell. Robert- Houdin's explanation of tricks performed by other magicians and not included in his repertoire, proved so incorrect and inaccurate as to brand him an ignoramus in certain lines of conjuring. Yet to the great charm of his diction and the romantic development of his personal reminiscences later writers have yielded unquestioningly and have built upon the historically weak foundations of his statements all the later so-called histories of magic. For a time the disappointment killed all. creative power. With no laurel wreath to carve, my tools lay idle. The spirit of investigation languished. Then came the reaction. There was work to be done. Those who had wrought honestly deserved the credit that had been taken from them. In justice to the living as well as the dead the history of the magic must be revised. The book, accepted for more than half a century as an authority on our craft, must stand forth for what it is, a clever romance, a well-written volume of fiction. That is why to-day I offer to the profession of magic, to the world of laymen readers to whom its history has always appealed, and to the literary savants who dip into it as a recreation, the results of my investigations. These, I believe, will show Robert-Houdin's true place in the [9] |