pages: unmaskingrobert00houdgoog.pdf, 262
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unmaskingrobert00houdgoog.pdf | 262 | THE SUSPENSION TRICK in the field of magic a clever rival, Compars Herrmann; a few months later came John Henry Anderson, the Wizard of the North. Both of these men presented the suspension trick in precisely the same manner claimed by Robert-Houdin as his original invention of 1847. Neither Anderson nor Herrmann claimed the honor of having invented the trick, and it is more than likely that the mechanician who made their apparatus for the suspension trick made the one used by Robert-Houdin also. Herr- mann, like Robert-Houdin, called the trick ethereal sus- pension. Anderson gave it the title of "Chloriforcene Suspension," as the reproduction of an Anderson litho- graph on page 234 will prove. During precisely the same period of time a brilliantly successful German conjurer, Alexander, was presenting the same trick in America, where he remained as a pro- fessional entertainer for ten years. In my collection, together with corroborative handbills and programmes, there will be found this statement from Alexander: "The suspension was at first produced by me in 1845 or 1846, after reading in an Oriental annual, edited by several officers of the Indian Army, the trick of a fakir who made a companion sit in the air by using a bamboo stick. My trick had no success, because the sitting was too near the ground. I then made him stand in the air, and the effect was marvellous." My meeting with Alexander, of which this correspond- ence was the result, marked an era in my search for material for this volume. Having read in a small book on magic, dated 1896, that a man named Heimburger, who had travelled in America as "Alexander the Conjurer," [ 233] |