1. CONJURING makes too heavy a demand upon the faculties of the spectators to admit of being unduly prolonged. It is a well-known fact that attention too long sustained often degenerates into weariness. Comte, an authority of the highest weight upon the subject of public exhibitions, was of this opinion, as is sufficiently proved by the invariable title of his own entertainment - "Two hours of magic;" two hours being the precise duration of his performance.
2. The most elementary rule of a conjuring entertainment is to arrange the programme after the manner of the feats exhibited in bygone days on the stage of Nicolet - de plus fort en plus fort - i.e., always to make each trick more surprising than the last.
3. Nothing is so catching as good spirits; the conjuror therefore should do his utmost to meet the public with a hearty, genial manner, taking care, however, to keep rigidly within the bounds of propriety and good taste.
4. Some artists commit, when performing, a fault which cannot be too carefully avoided; they lay aside their animated and genial expression the moment the trick is over, as if they were mere smiling machines, set in motion and stopped at the touch of a spring.
5. However skillful the performer may be, and however complete his preparations for a given trick, it is still possible that some unforeseen accident may cause a failure. The only way to get out of such a difficulty is to finish the trick in some other manner. But to be able to do this, the performer must have strictly complied with this important rule: never announce beforehand the nature of the effect which you intend to produce.
6. However awkward the position in which you may be placed by a breakdown, never for one moment dream of admitting yourself beaten; on the contrary, make up for the failure by coolness, animation, and "dash." Invent expedients, display redoubled dexterity, and the spectators, misled by your self-possession, will probably imagine that the trick was intended to end as it has done.
7. Do not, under any circumstances whatever, ask the indulgence of the public. The spectators may fairly say that they have paid their money to find you skillful, up to your work, in good health and spirits; that they expect, in these particulars, their fair weight and measure, and that you have no right to put them off with complaints.
8. Although all one says during the course of a performance is - not to mince the matter - a tissue of falsehoods, the performer must sufficiently enter into the part he plays, to himself believe in the reality of his fictitious statements. This belief on his own part will infallibly carry a like conviction to the minds of the spectators.
9. Nothing should be neglected which may assist in misleading the minds of the spectators: ergo, when you perform any trick, endeavor to induce the audience to attribute the effect produced to any cause rather than the real one; thus, a feat of dexterity should be presented as resting on some mechanical or scientific principle; and again, a trick really depending on a scientific principle should be offered as a result of sleight-of-hand.
10. Many conjurors make a practice, in the course of their performances, of indicating such and such expedients of the art, and of boasting that they themselves do not employ the method in question. "You observe," they will remark, "that I don't make the pass-that I don't change the card," &c.; and yet, a moment later, they use in some other trick the expedient they have just revealed. It follows, as a natural result, that the spectator, being thus made acquainted with artifices of which he would otherwise have known nothing, is put on his guard, and is no longer open to deception.
11. It is not unusual to see conjurors affect a pretended clumsiness which they call a "feint." These hoaxes played on the public are in very bad taste. What should we think of an actor who pretended to forget his part, or of a singer who for a moment affected to sing out of tune in order to gain greater applause afterwards? I do not here refer to the "feints" employed in conjuring to imitate some act which is designed to mislead the mind or the attention of the spectator. The feint, in this latter case, being executed with extreme dexterity, has no existence for the spectator, but passes in his mind for a genuine act. An artifice of this kind is one of the most effective aids in the performance of a conjuring trick. We shall recur at proper time and place to this subject.
12. Some conjurors use an excessive amount of gesture in order to cover their manipulations. This is wrong. Genuine conjuring demands perfect simplicity of execution. The more simple and natural the movements of the performer, the less likely is the spectator to detect the trick. It is true that in this case a very much higher degree of dexterity is required than in the former.
13. I cannot suppose that any conjuror would for one moment dream of employing confederates among the audience. This sort of joint hoax has now gone quite out of fashion. A trick performed on this principle is out of the pale of conjuring altogether; it is at best what schoolboys would describe as a "good sell."
14. As a matter of course, a conjuror should speak with perfect grammatical correctness. He should, moreover, avoid coarse "chaff," personal observations, and practical jokes, and should in like manner eschew pedantic and affected language, Latin quotations, and especially puns. The only wit for which the public gives a conjuror any credit, is the wit of his dexterity. In the words of one of our chroniclers, referring to an artist who was extremely chary of his speech, but very skillful as a performer :-- "How many people would be glad To have the wit his fingers had !" "Combien de gens voudraient parfois Avoir tout l'esprit de ses doigts."
15. It will be hardly necessary, I imagine, to dilate upon the absurdity of wearing the long robe of a magician. Let us leave tinsel and high-crowned hats to mountebanks; the ordinary dress of a gentleman is the only costume appropriate to a high-class conjuror. The most probable result of assuming the conventional garb of a wizard will be to make the wearer an object of derision.
--- "Les Secrets de la Prestidigitation et de la Magie" by Robert-Houdin, 1868. From the English translation by Professor Hoffmann (London, George Routledge And Sons, 1878)
Yours Magically
Solomon
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