According to his autobiography, Jean-Eugene Robert was sent to college at Orleans at the tender age of eleven, and remained there until he was eighteen. He was then placed in a notary’s office to study law, but his mechanical tastes led him back to his father’s trade, watchmaking. While working for his cousin at Blois, he visited a bookshop in search of Berthoud’s “Treatise on Clockmaking,” but by mistake he was given several volumes of an old encyclopædia, one of which contained a dissertation on “Scientific Amusements,” or an exposition of magic. This simple incident, he asserts, changed the entire current of his life. At eighteen, he first turned his attention to magic. At forty, he made his first appearance as an independent magician or public performer.
On page 44 of his “Memoirs,” American edition, Robert-Houdin refers to this book as an encyclopædia, but several times later he calls it “White Magic.” In all probability it was the famous work by Henri Decremps in five volumes, known as “La Magie Banche Dévoilée,” or “White Magic Exposed.” This was written by Decremps to injure Pinetti, and it exposed all the latter’s tricks, including the orange tree, the vaulting trapeze automaton, and in fact the majority of the tricks later claimed by Robert-Houdin as his own inventions.
In 1828, while working for M. Noriet, a watchmaker in Tours, Jean-Eugene Robert was poisoned by improperly prepared food, and in his delirium started for his old home in Blois. He was picked up on the roadside by Torrini, a travelling magician, who nursed him back to health in his portable theatre. Just as young Jean recovered Torrini was injured in an accident, and his erstwhile patient remained to nurse his benefactor and later to help Torrini’s assistant present the programme of magic by which they made their living. His first public appearance as the representative of Torrini was made at Aubusson.
Torrini was an Italian whose real name was Count Edmond de Grisy. He was a contemporary of Pinetti. In all probability, during the long summer of their intimate companionship, Torrini not only initiated his fascinated young guest into his own methods of performingtricks, but also into the secrets of Pinetti’s tricks. In his “Memoirs,” Robert-Houdin makes no secret of the fact that both Comus and Pinetti, together with their tricks, were topics of conversation between himself and Torrini.
When Torrini was able to resume his performances, Jean-Eugene returned to his family in Blois. During the next few years he mixed amateur acting with his daily labor, leaning more and more toward the profession of public entertainer. But his ambitions along this line were nipped in the bud by marriage. Mademoiselle Houdin, whose father was a celebrated watchmaker in Paris, visited old friends in Blois, their native town, and became the fiancée of young Robert. As the new son-in-law was to share the elder Houdin’s business and naturally wished to secure such benefits as might accrue from so celebrated a family of watch and clock makers, he applied to the council of state and secured the right to annex “Houdin” to his name, Jean-Eugene Robert, and thereafter was known only as Robert-Houdin.
His life between 1838 and 1844 was divided between reading every work obtainable on magic, and his duties in his father-in-law’s shop, where he not only made and repaired clocks, but built and repaired automata of various sorts. His family shared with him many financial vicissitudes, and about 1842–43 his first wife died, leaving him with three young children to raise. Earlier in his “Memoirs” he speaks of having four children, so it is more than likely that one died before his wife. He married again soon, and though he gives his second wife great credit as a helpmate he does not state her name.
By this time he had acquired more than passing fame as a repairer of automata, and in 1844 he mended Vaucanson’s marvellous duck, one of the most remarkable automata ever made. Doubtless other automata found their way to his workshop and aided him in his study of a profession which he still hoped to follow. During these discouraging times he was often assisted financially by one Monsieur G——, who either advanced money on his automata or bought them outright. In the same year, 1844, he retired to a suburb of Paris, and there, he asserts, he built his famous writing and drawing figure.
The next year, 1845, he was assisted by Count de L’Escalopier,