Читать книгу The Old and the New Magic - Henry Ridgely Evans - Страница 12

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Pinetti’s repertory was very extended. However interesting it might be to pass in review the whole series of his feats, I must here limit myself to a few, which appear typical of him and of his public.

There was first the wonderful automaton known as “The Grand Sultan,” also called “The clever little Turk,” which was about forty centimeters in height, and which struck a bell with a hammer, or nodded and shook his head, in answer to questions propounded. “The golden head and the rings” was as follows: In a glass, the bottom of which was covered with coins, a previously shown, massive head was placed. A cover was then placed on the glass. The head answered yes or no to inquiries, or counted numbers by leaping in the glass. In a second glass borrowed rings were laid, which moved in unison with the head, as though by sympathy. The “Clever Swan” was put into a vessel of water, and varied its course according to the will of the onlooker. Moreover, when a spectator had drawn a card from a pack of inscribed cards, it spelled the word written thereon, by moving toward the appropriate letters, which were printed on strips of cardboard hung about the vessel.

A kind of sympathetic action is shown in the following experiment. A lighted lamp was deposited on a table. As soon as a spectator, stationed at a considerable distance, blew through a reed, the lamp was immediately extinguished. Another: a live dove was fastened, by means of two ribbons about its neck, to two opposite columns. On the instant when a picture of the dove, or even the shadow of the suspended bird, was pierced by a sword, the dove itself was beheaded, although it had not been disturbed, and the severed and still bleeding head, and the rest {27} of the body, fell separately to the ground. This experiment, called “Theophrastus Paracelsus,” recalls an old super­sti­tion, namely, that evil can be wrought upon a person by injury to a picture of him, accompanied by a spoken incantation. It is the so-called “Picture charm.”

Fettering and binding experiments were shown, but of a simpler nature than modern ones. To each leg of the magician was fastened a ring, and through each ring an iron chain was passed, its ends locked on a pillar. “The Prisoner” seemed aided by some external power to release himself, for in a very short time he was free from his bonds. More difficult was another experiment, wherein a chain was fastened by a strip of cloth directly about the leg, and secured to the pillar; but here also, a half minute sufficed the “Galley Slave” to free himself of the shackles. The most pleasing was the following trick: Pinetti allowed both thumbs to be tied together with a cord, and his hands, so bound, to be covered with a hat; hardly was this done than he stretched out his right hand, seized a flask of wine and drank to the health of the person who had tied him, and tossed the emptied glass to the ceiling, whence it fell as a ball of finely-cut paper. At the same instant, he allowed the hat to fall, and displayed his hands, still as closely bound as at the beginning of the experiment.6 Also, the well-known trick, in which several borrowed rings are passed over two ribbon bands, the ends of which are knotted together and held by some of the spectators; nevertheless the rings can be drawn off without severing the ribbons. This was hardly new, but merely a variation of a trick described in 1690, in a work by Ozanam, in his Récréations Mathematiques, and exhibited by the jugglers of that time under the name of “My Grandmother’s Rose Wreath.” They made use of small balls, strung on two cords, from which they were withdrawn, notwithstanding that the cords were held by strangers. To-day this trick is explained in most books of games and amusements, which fact does not hinder the public from being quite as much astounded when the feat is performed la Pinetti, with rings or a watch, accompanied by clever patter. {28}

6 There is nothing new under the sun. A Japanese conjurer, named Ten-Ichi, at the present writing, is creating a sensation in our vaudeville theatres with this same thumb-tying trick.

PINETTI AND THE DOVE. (From an Old Print.)

Pinetti’s magical bouquet was a very pretty trick. In a vase were placed the dry, leafless stems of a bunch of flowers, tied together. At the magician’s command, leaves, flowers and fruit appeared, transforming the bouquet into a thing of beauty; but all its splendor disappeared again at the command of the performer. His feat of the “recovered ring” was as follows: A ring was borrowed from a lady and fired from a pistol into a casket, which had been previously shown empty and devoid of preparation. When the casket was opened, after the shot was fired, a dove was seen within, holding in its bill the ring. But, in addition, the pretty bird knew precisely the possessor of the ring, for it shook its head in rotation at each lady to whom the trinket did not belong. When the owner appeared, the dove {29} voluntarily presented the ring to her in its beak. In Naples, where Pinetti’s theatre was situated directly on the sea shore, he varied the trick by firing the pistol loaded with the ring out of the window. On opening the casket a large fish was seen, bearing the ring in its mouth.

Another clever experiment was the mechanical bird, which, when set upon a flask, fluttered its wings and whistled any favorite melody called for by the audience, also blowing out a lighted candle and immediately relighting it. It would accomplish these feats just as well when removed from the flask to a table, or when held in the performer’s hand upon any part of the stage. The sounds were produced by a “confederate who imitated song birds after Rossignol’s method, by aid of the inner skin of an onion in the mouth, and speaking trumpets directed the sounds to whatever position was occupied by the bird.” Though the two last described feats were the most celebrated of Pinetti’s masterpieces, the most remarkable, without doubt, was the one he called “The stolen shirt.” In spite of its somewhat unseemly appearance, it was shown before the king and his family, and consisted of this: A gentleman from the audience, not in league with the performer, came upon the stage and, at Pinetti’s request, unfastened the buttons of his shirt at the neck and cuffs, and Pinetti, with only a few movements of his hand drew the shirt from his body, though the gentleman had not removed a single article of his clothing.

PINETTI’S CARD TRICK.

Pinetti eventually revealed the process by which this surprising result was obtained. He was moved to do so, because all those who saw the trick performed in the Theatre des Menus-Plaisirs held the conviction that the other party to it was in collusion with him. The public was not to be blamed for this erroneous conclusion, for not only at that time, but much later, many of the astonishing feats of the magician were effected through the complicity of assistants seated among the audience. Such confederates were called by the French, Compères and Commères, which translated into the vulgar vernacular, stand for “pals,” “cronies.” These gentlemen brought articles, of which the magician possessed duplicates, and loaned them—apparently as unrelated spectators—when such articles were asked for in {30} the course of the experiments. Robert-Houdin ended this régime of confederacy. When he asked for the loan of an article, he genuinely borrowed it, and exchanged it for a substitute by sleight of hand. This is the modern method. The following is Pinetti’s explanation of the shirt trick: “The means of performing this trick are the following—only observing that the clothes of the person whose shirt is to be pulled off be wide and easy: Begin by making him pull off his stock and unbuttonning his {31} shirt at the neck and sleeves, afterwards tie a little string in the buttonhole of the left sleeve; then, passing your hand behind his back, pull the shirt out of his breeches and slip it over his head; then, pulling it out before in the same manner, you will leave it on his stomach; after that, go to the right hand and pull the sleeve down, so as to have it all out of the arm; the shirt being then all of a heap, as well in the right sleeve as before the stomach, you are to make use of this little string fastened to the buttonhole of the left sleeve to get back the sleeve that must have slipt up, and to pull the whole shirt out that way. To hide your way of operating from the person whom you unshift, and from the assembly, you may cover his head with a lady’s cloak, holding a corner of it in your teeth. In order to be more at your ease, you may mount on a chair and do the whole operation under the cloak.”