pages: unmaskingrobert00houdgoog.pdf, 325
This data as json
path | page | folder | text |
---|---|---|---|
unmaskingrobert00houdgoog.pdf | 325 | THE UNMASKING OF ROBERT-HOUDIN the lad shared his stage triumphs. His other children he never mentions by name. The second wife, who, he grudgingly admits, stood valiantly by him in his days of poverty and disappointment, he does not honor by so much as stating her name before marriage. Rather, he refers to her as a person whom he was constrained to place in charge of his household in order that he might continue his experiments and his work on automata. A less gracious tribute to wifely devotion was never penned. But it is in dealing with contemporary magicians or those whose handiwork in bygone years he cleverly pur- loined and proclaimed as his original inventions, that the petty jealousy of the man comes to the surface. When- ever he desires to claim for himself credit due a prede- cessor in the world of magic, he either ignores the man's very existence or writes of his competitor in such a man- ner that the latter's standing as man and magician is lowered. Not that he makes broad, sweeping statements. Rather, he indulges in the innuendo which is far more dangerous to the party attacked. He never strikes a pen-blow which, because of its brutality, might arouse the sympathy of his readers for the object of his attack. Here, in the gentle art of innuendo and belittling, if not in the conjurer's art, Robert-Houdin is a master. In writing his "Memoirs" he deliberately ignores Compars Herrmann, Henri Robin, Wiljalba Frikell, M. Jacobs, and P. T. Barnum, all of whom he knew person- ally. He might have written most entertainingly of these men, but in each case he had an object in avoiding refer- ence to the acquaintance. P. T. Barnum knew the true history of the writing and drawing figure, as reference to [296] |