Abstract
In late eighteenth-century Paris, Nicolas Philippe Ledru (1731–1807), also known by his stage name Comus, performed shows of amusing physics consisting of a mix of experiments in electricity and phantasmagoria. As theater historian Arthur Pougin (1834–1921) later wrote, “Ledru was one of those hybrid beings, half-entertainer and half-scholar, who seemed to instruct and amuse.”1 Comus was one of many performers of the time who presented themselves as physicists, physicists-mechanic, or professors and staged shows of amusing physics and skillful tricks. During the French Revolution, the “Italian physicist” Pinetti (1750–1805) performed physical experiments and surprising tricks at the Cirque National, the physicist-mechanic Bontout presented demonstrations of mechanical automata and experiments of physics at the Salles des Petits Comédiens de Beaujolais, the performer Val gave “representations of amusing physics with experiments and new tricks” at the Waux-Hall d’Été, and the physicist Paulmier performed experiments and skillful tricks at the Salle des Bluettes Comique on the Boulevard du Temple.2
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Notes
Arthur Pougin, Dictionnaire historique et pittoresque du théâtre et des arts qui s’y rattachent (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1883), 597.
André Tissier, Les Spectacles à Paris pendant la révolution: Répertoire analytique, chronologique et bibliographique, vol. 1 (Genève: Droz, 1992), 347–351.
For more on this, see Tissier, Les Spectacles à Paris pendant la révolution, vol. 1, 347–351, and vol. 2, 352–354.
On Scot’s views of magic and conjurers, see Milbourne Christopher, The Illustrated History of Magic (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1973), 23–24; and Simon During, Modern Enchantments: The Cultural Power of Secular Magic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 75–76.
On the early history of magic and conjuring, see Christopher, The Illustrated History of Magic, 9–29; Max Dif, Histoire illustrée de la prestidigitation (Paris: Maloine, 1986), 9–82; During, Modern Enchantments. 1–11. On the historical association of conjuring, crime, and sorcery, see During, Modern Enchantments, 75–84.
On the theater of the fairs, see Émile Campardon, Les Spectacles de la foire. Tome 2. Reprint of the 1877 edition (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1970); and Isabelle Martin, Le Théâtre de la foire. Des tréteaux aux boulevards (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2002).
On Nollet, see, for example, Michael R. Lynn, Popular Science and Public Opinion in Eighteenth-Century France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 1–2, 22–25; and Lewis Pyenson and Jean-François Gauvin, eds., The Art of Teaching Physics: The Eighteenth-Century Demonstration Apparatus of Jean-Antoine Nollet (Sillery, Quebec: Septentrion, 2002).
On French theater and entertainment during the late eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth century, see Brigitte Brunet, Le Théâtre de boulevard (Paris: Nathan, 2004); Sally Debra Charnow, Theatre, Politics, and Markets in Finde-Siècle Paris: Staging Modernity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); F. W. J. Hemmings, Theatre and State in France, 1760–1905 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); F. W. J. Hemmings, The Theatre Industry in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); and John McCormick, Popular Theatres of the Nineteenth Century France (New York: Routledge, 1993).
Lynn, Popular Science and Public Opinion in Eighteenth-Century France, 60–61, 64–65; and Campardon, Les Spectacles de la foire. tome 2, 224. On eighteenth-century savants, see Bruno Belhoste, Paris savant: Parcours et rencontres au temps des Lumières (Paris: A. Colin, 2011).
On Ledru, see Gaspard Monge, Jean-Dominique Cassini, and Pierre Bertholon, Dictionnaire de physique; tome 3 (Paris: Hôtal de Thou, 1793), 645–646; and Arthur Pougin, Dictionnaire historique et pittoresque du théâtre et des arts qui s’y rattachent, 597; as well as Lynn, Popular Science and Public Opinion in Eighteenth-Century France, 63–64; Christopher, The Illustrated History of Magic, 82–96; and Belhoste, Paris savant, 150–152.
Tissier, Les Spectacles à Paris pendant la révolution, vol. 1, 350.
Henri Decremps, La Magie blanche dévoilée ou explication des tours surprenants qui font depuis peu l’admiration de la capitale et de la province (Paris: Langlois, 1784–1785).
E. G. Robertson, Fantasmagorie de Robertson, cour des capucines, près la place Vendôme. Tous les jours à sept heures (Paris: 1800), 7. On Robertson, see Françoise Levie, Etienne-Gaspard Robertson: La vie d’un fantasmagore (Longueuil: Le Préambule, 1990); and Mannoni, Le Grand art de la lumière et de l’ombre, 144–164. On phantasmagoria more generally, see Theodore Barber, “Phantasmagorical Wonders,” Film History 3, 2 (1989): 73–86; Laurent Mannoni, “The Phantasmagoria,” Film History 8 (1996): 390–415; and Stafford and Terpak, Devices of Wonder, 79–90, 301–303.
Christopher, The Illustrated History of Magic, 135–138; During, Modern Enchantments, 112–113; and Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations. Comment on devient sorcier (Blois: Lescene, 1868), 225–235.
On street vs. stage magic, see Edward Claflin and Jeff Sheridan, Street Magic: An Illustrated History of Wandering Magicians and Their Conjuring Arts (Garden City, NY: Dolphin Books, 1977), x–xi.
Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, 156–160. On Vaucanson and automata more generally, see Christian Bailly, L’Age d’or des automates. 1848–1914 (Paris: Éditions Scala, 1987); Michael Cardy, “Technology as Play: The Case of Vaucanson,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 241 (1986): 109–123; André Doyon and Lucien Liaigre, Jacques Vaucanson. Mécanicien de génie (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1966); Jessica Riskin, “The Defecating Duck, Or, The Ambiguous Origins of Artificial Life,” Critical Inquiry 20 (Summer 2003): 599–633; Jean-Claude Heudin, “Les Créatures artificielles au siècle des Lumières: Jacques de Vaucanson le précurseur,” MSH-Alpes (2010): 81–91; Minsoo Kang, Sublime Dreams of Living Machines: The Automaton in the European Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011); Chantal Spillemaecker (ed.), Vaucanson et l’homme artificiel (Grenoble: Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 2010); and Adelheid Voskuhl, Androids in the Enlightenment: Mechanics, Artisans, and Cultures of the Self (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 201 3). On machines and romanticism in Paris from the 1820s to the 1840s, see John Tresch, The Romantic Machine: Utopian Science and Technology after Napoleon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).
Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, 181–182. The orange tree recalled the mango tree trick, a classic of Indian magic, see Sarah Dadswell, “Jugglers, Fakirs, and Jaduwallahs: Indian Magicians and the British Stage,” New Theatre Quarterly (2007): 4. On Robert-Houdin in the context of automata building during and before this period, see Paul Metzer’s chapter, “Robert-Houdin and the Vogue of the Automaton-Builders,” in Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris during the Age of the Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 160–210; and Stafford and Terpak, Devices of Wonder, 35–47, 266–274.
Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, Les Secrets de la prestidigitation (Paris: Michel Lévy frères, 1868), 54.
Ibid., 82–84. James W. Cook makes a similar point in The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 167. Historians have written on dressing as an important marker of social position during the French Revolution and in the first decades of post-revolutionary France. See, for example, Denise Z. Davidson, “Making Society ‘Legible’: People-Watching in Paris after the Revolution,” French Historical Studies 28, 2 (2005): 265–296; and Richard Wrigley, The Politics of Appearances: Representations of Dress in Revolutionary France (Oxford: BERG, 2002). On the social and political dimension of nineteenth-century fashion in France, see also Philippe Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, Magie et physique amusante: œuvre posthume (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1877), 30.
Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations, 289–296. For a description of the bottomless bottle and the horn of plenty, see Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, Album des soirées fantastiques de Robert-Houdin au Palais-Royal (Paris: Impr. De Guiraudet, 1851).
Susan McCosker, “Representative Performances of Stage Magic, 1650–1900,” PhD diss. New York University, 1982, 169.
Le Cicerone Parisien, indicateur industriel, commercial et artistique, guide de l’étranger à Paris (Paris: Imprimerie Ph. Cordier, 1847), 33.
For a list of distinguished attendants at the shows, see “Robert-Houdin’s Soirees Fantastiques,” The Morning Post (May 19, 1848): 6.
Robert-Houdin, Confidences et révélations; 305–351. On Robert-Houdin’s time in London, see also Geoffrey Frederick Lamb, Victorian Magic (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1976), 32–34.
“Robert-Houdin,” Le Petit journal (June 24, 1871): 1; Charles Armand Klein, Robert-Houdin: Prestigieux magicien de Blois (Chambray-lès-Tours: CLD, 1988), 93; Fechner, The Magic of Robert-Houdin, vol. 2, 229–247; and L. Chesneau, Robert-Houdin à Saint-Gervais (Blois: Impr. de Blois, 1932).
Houdini had been a great admirer of Robert-Houdin, even adopting a version of his name as his own stage name. Years of research, however, proved to him just how many embellishments had gotten into his hero’s memoirs. Enraged and feeling betrayed, Houdini wrote a bitter exposé on the topic: Harry Houdini, The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin (New York: Publishers Printing Co., 1908).
On present-day ambivalence in the conjuring trade regarding Robert-Houdin and his legacy, see Graham M. Jones, Trade of the Tricks: Inside the Magician’s Craft (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 203–210.
On Hamilton’s shows and his Cosmorama, see, Hamilton, Le Monde avant le déluge. Formation du Globe ou les 46 époques de la création démontrées par Hamilton (Paris: Imprimerie de Jouaust et fils, 1864). See, as well, Soirées fantastiques de Robert-Houdin, séance par Hamilton (Paris: Imp. Guiraudet et Jouaust, n.d.); Julien Lemer, “Théâtres,” La Sylphide (May 10, 1854): 206–207; G.-Y., “Hamilton,” La Syphide (June 20, 1854): 271; “Soirées fantastiques de Robert-Houdin,” La Syphide (June 20, 1854): 207; “Aux soirées fantastiques de Robert-Houdin,” Le Journal pour rire (June 10, 1854): 6; Théophile Deschamps, “Nouvelles diverses,” Le Monde dramatique (November 10, 1859): 4.
On Cleverman, see “Recueil factice d’articles de presse concernant l’illusioniste Cleverman,” Bibliothèque Nationale de France; Henri Tessier and L. Marcel, Almanach théâtral (Paris: Impr. De G. Chamerot, 1874), 133; Christopher, The Illustrated History of Magic, 152; Fechner, The Magic of Robert-Houdin, vol. 2, 171; Alphonse Baralle, “Nouvelles diverses,” Le Foyer (January 11, 1866): 7; and Théodore Deschamps, “Nouvelles et faits divers,” L’Indépendance dramatique (December 23, 1868): 4.
Brunet, Le Théâtre de boulevard. 7–12; and McCormick, Popular Theatres of Nineteenth-Century France, 15–16. On the redesign of Paris under Haussmann, see David P. Jordan, Transforming Paris: The Life and Labors of Baron Haussmann (New York: Free Press, 1995).
J. Caroly, “Les Prestidigitateurs célèbres,” L’Illusionniste. Secret des prestidigitateurs, amateurs et professionnels 1, 2 (1902): 1–2.
“Programme des spectacles du 8 décembre 1865,” Courrier des hôtels et guide du commerce réunis. Moniteur de l’exportation (December 8, 1865): 4.
Henri Robin, L’Almanach illustre de Cagliostro. Histoire des spectres vivants et impalpables. Secrets de la physique amusante, dévoilés par M. Robin (Paris: Pagnerre, 1864–1865). On the various shows, see Les Beaux-arts (July 1, 1863): 286; Les Beaux-arts (January 1, 1864): 127; Programme pour tous (February 26, 1863): 1; Le Tintamarre (January 24, 1864): 7; Le Tintamarre (February 15, 1863): 7; Le Tintamarre (May 28, 1865): 7; Humbert, “Avis a ceux qui veulent déserter la Sorbonne et le Collège de France,” Le Tintamarre (December 27, 1863): 4; L’Union des arts (Septembre 10, 1864): 4; L’Union spirite bordelaise (January 1, 1866): 111–112; and “Récréations scientifiques au théâtre-Robin: L’astronomie mise à la portée des enfants,” “Recueil. Cirques et foires. Métiers classés de A à S,” Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Henri Robin, L’Almanach illustré de Cagliostro. Histoire de spectres vivants et impalpable. Secrets de la physique amusante dévoilés par M. Robin (1864): cover page; and Georges Moynet, Trucs et décors. Explication raisonnée de tous les moyens employés pour produire les illusions théâtrales (Paris: La Librairie illustrée, 1973), 276–277.
Humbert, “Avis a ceux qui veulent dés erter la Sorbonne et le Collège de France,” Le Tintamarre (December 27, 1863): 4.
Robert-Houdin, Magie et physique amusante, 110–112. On Robert-Houdin and Robin’s relationship, see Fechner, The Magic of Robert-Houdin, vol. 2, 148–169, 177–189. On Robin and Pepper’s ghost, also see Mannoni, Le Grand art de la lumière et de l’ombre, 235–237. On Pepper’s ghost, see Jim Steinmeyer, Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear (New York: Carrloo & Graf Publishers, 2003), 25–43; and Bernard Lightman, Victorian Popularizers of Science: Designing Nature for New Audiences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 202–205.
Fechner, The Magic of Robert-Houdin, vol. 2, 100–103. On Lassaigne, see “Recueil factice d’articles de presse concernant l’illusioniste le professeur Lassaigne,” Bibliothèque nationale de France. On the story of the escargots sympathiques, see Louis Figuier, Histoire du merveilleux dans les temps modernes Tome 4 (Paris: L. Hachette, 1860), 242–251.
“Recueil factice d’articles de presse concernant l’illusioniste Cazeneuve,” Bibliothèque nationale de France; and Pierre Saliès, Le Commandeur Marius Cazeneuve (Toulouse: Éd. Milan, 1983).
Graham Jones makes this same point in Graham M. Jones, “Trades of the Trick: Conjuring Culture in Modern France,” PhD diss., New York University, 2007, 87.
Guide des plaisirs à Paris. Paris le jour, Paris la nuit. La Tournée des Grands-Ducs. Comment on s’amuse. Ou l’on s’amuse. Ce qu’il faut voir. Ce qu’il faut faire (Paris: Edition photographique, 1899), 47.
Jacques Deslandes, Le Boulevard du cinéma à l’époque de Méliès (Paris: Les éd. Du Cerf, 1963), 20–21.
Alfred de Caston, Soirées artistiques de M. Alfred de Caston. Petite préface dédiée à tout le monde (Dijon: Impr. De A. Grange, 1866), 7.
“Le Théâtre scientifique,” Le Prestidigitateur 2, 21 (1920): 162.
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© 2015 Sofie Lachapelle
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Lachapelle, S. (2015). Science Meets Magic on Stage. In: Conjuring Science. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137492975_2
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