Note 20 — Chapter III · HANDKERCHIEF TRICKS.

These promised explanations were never given. The effect of the “Orange Tree Trick,” as described by Robert-Houdin himself in his “Confidences d’un Prestidigitateur,” was as follows:—

“I borrowed a lady’s handkerchief. I rolled it into a ball, and placed it beside an egg, a lemon, and an orange upon the table. I then passed these four articles one into another, and when at last the orange alone remained, I used the fruit in question in the manufacture of a magical solution. The process was as follows: I pressed the orange between my hands, making it smaller and smaller, showing it every now and then in its various shapes, and finally reducing it to a powder, which I passed into a phial in which there was some spirits of wine. My assistant then brought me an orange-tree, bare of flowers or fruit. I poured into a cup a little of the solution I had just prepared, and set fire to it. I placed it near the tree, and no sooner had the vapour reached the foliage, then it was seen suddenly covered with flowers. At a wave of my wand, the flowers were transformed into fruit, which I distributed among the spectators.

“A single orange still remained on the tree. I ordered it to fall apart in four portions, and within it appeared the handkerchief I had borrowed. A couple of butterflies with moving wings took it each by a corner, and flying upwards with it, spread it open in the air.”

Without professing to give precise details, it is easy to form a general idea of the working of this very artistic trick. The borrowed handkerchief is of course exchanged for a substitute, and the original “passed off” to the assistant, who places it in position for the dénouement, and then brings forward the orange-tree. Meanwhile, the performer, partly by sleight-of-hand and partly by the aid of traps, causes the successive disappearance of the substitute handkerchief, the egg, and the lemon. (See the “Secrets of Conjuring and Magic,” pp. 284 et seq., and “Modern Magic,” pp. 437 et seq.). The orange is then changed for others of smaller size in due succession, and finally vanishes altogether. (For description of similar effects in the Crystal Balls, see “Modern Magic,” p. 426.) The supposed solution of the orange in the spirits of wine is, of course, merely a part of the boniment or mise en scène. The orange-tree, which is a marvel of mechanical ingenuity, is constructed as follows: The oranges, with one exception, are real, and are stuck on small upright spikes, and concealed by hemispherical wire screens, covered with foliage, which, when released by the upward pressure of a piston, make a half turn, and so disclose the fruit. The flowers are hidden behind smaller screens, similarly covered; in this instance, however, the screen does not revolve, but the flower rises above it. A single orange, near the top of the tree, is artificial, and made to open in four portions; while two butterflies flutter out one on each side of the tree, and draw out of the orange the borrowed handkerchief. The butterflies are attached to the upper extremities of two light arms of brass, at the back of the tree, working on a pivot at their lower ends. A mechanical arrangement compels these arms to rise up behind the tree, at the same time spreading apart, and so causes the butterflies to appear.

The handkerchief cut up and restored has been worked, in various forms, by successive generations of conjurors. (See “Modern Magic,” pp. 246-249.) Doubtless, the method adopted by Robert-Houdin bore (as indeed did everything he touched) the stamp of his original genius; but unfortunately we have not been able to obtain any note of his special working.

The instantaneous combustion was probably produced by means of what is now known as a “flash” handkerchief, i.e., a handkerchief so treated with a mixture of nitric and sulphuric acid as to transform the fabric, in effect, to gun-cotton. A handkerchief of this kind held to a lighted candle, or merely touched with a hot glass rod, disappears with a flash, leaving not even a shred of tinder behind.—Ed.