{300}VII.Cazeneuve, better known asle commandeurCazeneuve, the great card expert and magician, was born in Toulouse in 1840. He adopted magic, after witnessing a performance of that original genius, Bosco. His chivalric title (commander of the imperial order of Medjidie) was conferred upon him by the Sultan of Turkey, with whom he was a favorite. At the Court of Russia he and his charming wife made a great sensation with the second-sight trick. When the Franco-Prussian war broke out, Cazeneuve returned to Toulouse and raised two companies of soldiers, one of which was composed entirely of theatrical people. He served as captain of the 1st regiment of Tirailleurs d’Elite, under the command of Colonel Riu, and fought bravely for France. After peace was declared he prepared a new programme of magic and toured Europe and the Americas. He has a handsome home in his native city of Toulouse, where he has collected many rare curios. In the year 1905, Cazeneuve was touring Algeria with a magic show. He is a member of several scientific societies, and manifests great interest in physics.I first saw Carl Hertz in Baltimore at the old vaudeville theatre “across the bridge,” some twenty years ago. I remember him as a clever, good-looking young fellow, possessed of considerable dash, and very neat in the performance of card tricks. His specialty was the “bird-cage trick,” which he did to perfection. He was born in San Francisco, of German parents. His first manager was M. de Frère. Hertz has traveled extensively in the Orient. With the bird-cage trick he puzzled the best informed fakirs of India. In Borneo he met with a most romantic adventure. He is probably the only man who has had to offer himself as a burnt-offering to escape an amorous Princess. He was giving a series of magical entertainments before a Malay Sultan and Court, and not only succeeded in fascinating the yellow-skinned monarch, but his daughter as well. The young princess proposed marriage to the conjurer. “On Mr. Hertz informing the lady, through an interpreter, that he was already wedded, she replied that made no difference to her, as she would rule his other ladies. Here was a fix. However, with the{301}connivance of the British Vice-Consul, Mr. Hertz took the place of his lawful spouse in the Phœnix illusion, and jumping into the blazing caldron waved an affectionate adieu to the astonished and dismayed Princess. Mrs. Hertz had to keep up the delusion by weeping copiously while her husband was being conveyed to the coast in a basket.”In the Sandwich Islands, on one occasion, a chief leaped upon the stage where Hertz was performing and began worshiping him as a god. How very real must have been the effect of Hertz’s magic upon the untutored mind of that simple native.In the year 1904, a troupe of Hindoo jugglers, acrobats and snake charmers were brought to the United States to entertain lovers of the marvelous at the St. Louis Exposition. Among them was a man with an unpronounceable name, whom the management dubbed “Alexander.” I met the dusky necromancer at Martinka’s in the summer of 1904. He went about the streets of New York garbed in his rich Oriental costume. The street gamins always followed him from his hotel to the Palace of Magic and stood about the doorway in crowds, awaiting in breathless astonishment some feat of wizardry. But the impassive Hindoo paid no attention to his youthful admirers, but went on blowing wreaths of smoke from Egyptian cigarettes, and making purchases of magical apparatus with which to astonish the natives of his beloved India. Taking magic tricks to India is like carrying coals to Newcastle. But Alexander had a very high opinion of Occidental conjuring, and fully realized the fact that the sorcerers of the West, aided by all the resources of modern science, were the superiors of the Hindoo fakirs, except perhaps in one particular—feats of hypnotism and apparent death. I saw Alexander, in Martinka s little back shop, support a couple of heavy iron weights, which were fastened at the ends of a cord, upon his eyelids. The cord rested on the lids, the weights dangling at the ends of the string. The pressure upon the eyeballs must have been tremendous. Alexander presented Dr. Ellison with a wand—the thigh-bone of a sacred simian from the famous monkey temple of India. The bone was inscribed with cabalistic characters and Sanskrit sentences. The monkey is famous for playing{302}tricks, and the thigh-bone of a sacred monkey consequently ought to make an admirable mystic wand for a conjurer. The doctor prizes this unique relic very highly, and is thinking of building a shrine of Benares copper for its reception. In the future, crowds of wandering wizards will doubtless make pilgrimages to this shrine to gaze in ecstasy at the holy relic, just as crowds of East Indians visit the temple where Buddha’s wisdom tooth is displayed for the delectation of the faithful.
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Cazeneuve, better known asle commandeurCazeneuve, the great card expert and magician, was born in Toulouse in 1840. He adopted magic, after witnessing a performance of that original genius, Bosco. His chivalric title (commander of the imperial order of Medjidie) was conferred upon him by the Sultan of Turkey, with whom he was a favorite. At the Court of Russia he and his charming wife made a great sensation with the second-sight trick. When the Franco-Prussian war broke out, Cazeneuve returned to Toulouse and raised two companies of soldiers, one of which was composed entirely of theatrical people. He served as captain of the 1st regiment of Tirailleurs d’Elite, under the command of Colonel Riu, and fought bravely for France. After peace was declared he prepared a new programme of magic and toured Europe and the Americas. He has a handsome home in his native city of Toulouse, where he has collected many rare curios. In the year 1905, Cazeneuve was touring Algeria with a magic show. He is a member of several scientific societies, and manifests great interest in physics.
I first saw Carl Hertz in Baltimore at the old vaudeville theatre “across the bridge,” some twenty years ago. I remember him as a clever, good-looking young fellow, possessed of considerable dash, and very neat in the performance of card tricks. His specialty was the “bird-cage trick,” which he did to perfection. He was born in San Francisco, of German parents. His first manager was M. de Frère. Hertz has traveled extensively in the Orient. With the bird-cage trick he puzzled the best informed fakirs of India. In Borneo he met with a most romantic adventure. He is probably the only man who has had to offer himself as a burnt-offering to escape an amorous Princess. He was giving a series of magical entertainments before a Malay Sultan and Court, and not only succeeded in fascinating the yellow-skinned monarch, but his daughter as well. The young princess proposed marriage to the conjurer. “On Mr. Hertz informing the lady, through an interpreter, that he was already wedded, she replied that made no difference to her, as she would rule his other ladies. Here was a fix. However, with the{301}connivance of the British Vice-Consul, Mr. Hertz took the place of his lawful spouse in the Phœnix illusion, and jumping into the blazing caldron waved an affectionate adieu to the astonished and dismayed Princess. Mrs. Hertz had to keep up the delusion by weeping copiously while her husband was being conveyed to the coast in a basket.”
In the Sandwich Islands, on one occasion, a chief leaped upon the stage where Hertz was performing and began worshiping him as a god. How very real must have been the effect of Hertz’s magic upon the untutored mind of that simple native.
In the year 1904, a troupe of Hindoo jugglers, acrobats and snake charmers were brought to the United States to entertain lovers of the marvelous at the St. Louis Exposition. Among them was a man with an unpronounceable name, whom the management dubbed “Alexander.” I met the dusky necromancer at Martinka’s in the summer of 1904. He went about the streets of New York garbed in his rich Oriental costume. The street gamins always followed him from his hotel to the Palace of Magic and stood about the doorway in crowds, awaiting in breathless astonishment some feat of wizardry. But the impassive Hindoo paid no attention to his youthful admirers, but went on blowing wreaths of smoke from Egyptian cigarettes, and making purchases of magical apparatus with which to astonish the natives of his beloved India. Taking magic tricks to India is like carrying coals to Newcastle. But Alexander had a very high opinion of Occidental conjuring, and fully realized the fact that the sorcerers of the West, aided by all the resources of modern science, were the superiors of the Hindoo fakirs, except perhaps in one particular—feats of hypnotism and apparent death. I saw Alexander, in Martinka s little back shop, support a couple of heavy iron weights, which were fastened at the ends of a cord, upon his eyelids. The cord rested on the lids, the weights dangling at the ends of the string. The pressure upon the eyeballs must have been tremendous. Alexander presented Dr. Ellison with a wand—the thigh-bone of a sacred simian from the famous monkey temple of India. The bone was inscribed with cabalistic characters and Sanskrit sentences. The monkey is famous for playing{302}tricks, and the thigh-bone of a sacred monkey consequently ought to make an admirable mystic wand for a conjurer. The doctor prizes this unique relic very highly, and is thinking of building a shrine of Benares copper for its reception. In the future, crowds of wandering wizards will doubtless make pilgrimages to this shrine to gaze in ecstasy at the holy relic, just as crowds of East Indians visit the temple where Buddha’s wisdom tooth is displayed for the delectation of the faithful.