BATTLE OF THE MAGICIANS: PRELUDE

The more we research Houdini's time in Paris the more it comes into focus as a major turning point in his life, especially his intellectual life. Paris has that effect, notably on impressionable young Americans with talent, ambition and scuffed shoes. 

In London, Harry had been happy hanging around with strongmen and coin manipulators. Infected by Paris, "capital of the world," he developed serious literary and historical pretensions.

Houdini was a hit in Paris, but he never achieved the public acclaim he got in Germany, where they compared him to Goethe, or in England, where he was heralded as the Yank who Yanked the Yard. The main reason he did not rise to superhuman heights in Paris, no doubt, was that he dared to attack the reputation of Robert-Houdin, dean of the French magicians. 

Poster showing Robert-Houdin's complete stage setting.  French lithograph, c. 1845. From Houdini's collection.

 Robert-Houdin was a hero in France, considered as much a scientist as a magician.

Years after Harry’s death, the Academie Francaise was still vilifying him:

Deeply influenced as a child by Robert-Houdin’s autobiography, a charming memoir (ghostwritten, Houdini says), Harry picked up the threads of the Frenchman’s narrative the minute he got to town. 

We’ve written extensively about Harry’s fascination with Cagliostro and the Diamond Necklace Affair of 1784. 

An early chapter of Robert-Houdin’s book recounts how he became a magician because of a lucky accident that threw him into the hands of a friend of Cagliostro's, a traveling magician named Torrini. 

Click to enlarge.

As Robert-Houdin told it, Torrini, under the name deGrisy, had become the archrival of the famous Professor Pinetti, court magician to both Louis XVI and Tsar Nicholas I. Pinetti had spent much of his life in mortal, or magical, combat with his enemy Torrini, Robert-Houdin's benefactor and teacher. 

Torrini revealed all Pinetti’s secrets to Robert-Houdin, who then plagiarized them: "the orange tree, the vaulting trapeze automaton and, in fact, the majority of the tricks later claimed by Robert-Houdin as his own inventions,” Houdini wrote in The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin.

When Houdini became the  avowed enemy of Robert-Houdin, he also became the champion of Pinetti. The enemy of my enemy is my friend - especially if they’re all dead!

Next:  T. Bolin in Russia educates Houdini about his “hero.”

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