The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin by Harry Houdini

Author:Harry Houdini [Houdini, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Magic tricks -- History, Robert-Houdin, Jean-Eugène, 1805-1871, Magicians -- France -- Biography
Published: 2013-05-15T16:00:00+00:00

A Schmidt programme of 1821, featuring the “Bottle of Sobriety and Inebriety.” From the Harry Houdini Collection.

Next the bottle turned up in 1835 in London, where it was presented by a German who styled himself “Falck of Koenigsberg, Pupil of the celebrated Chevalier Pinnetty,” and who introduced the programme with which Döbler made such a sensation in 1842.

Poster used by Falck of Koenigsberg in 1835, featuring the trick of exchange of wine. From the Harry Houdini Collection.

Mr. Falck opened at the Queen’s Bazaar, Oxford Street, London, November 8th, 1835. Before opening, however, he gave a private performance for the press, and received quite a number of notices. A half-column clipping in my collection, dated November 4th, 1835, which I think is cut from The Chronicle or The Globe, mentions the trick among other effects like “Flora’s Gift,” “The Card in the Pocket,” etc., and adds that the “exchange of wine was so that if once in Mr. Falck’s company, we should not wish to exchange it, for he poured three sorts of wine, Port, Sherry, and Champagne, out of one bottle. Then he put them together, and from such a mixture produced sherry in one glass, and port in another.”

From this notice it will be seen that Falck had “The Inexhaustible Bottle,” and had some method of returning all the liquors not drunk back into the bottle and then pouring out two different kinds of liquor.

Perhaps he resorted to chemicals, but one thing is evident—the bottle was used for six different kinds of liquors at one and the same time.

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