THE VEILED LADY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 7840, 8 January 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE VEILED LADY.

A TRICK WHICH IS PUZZLING EAS TERN AUDIENCES. i

■-'.' - [New York Letter.] We have bad an unusual number of clever and otherwise noteworthy actresses performing in New York this week—Janauschek, Bowers, Langtry, Ward, Morris, Cameron, and Davenport are names familiar on the fences. But each of these women had to confine herself to one audience at a time, and, therefore, could not oompete for popularity with the Vanishing Lady, who was simultaneously on six stages, from those of two legitimate Broadway theatres to those of Bowery variety houses. She is an actress capable of entertaining all sorts of audiences, but she speaks never a word, her only essential qualification being the physical one of attenuation, She can be duplicated to any extent. Hitherto the cost has been £20, or the price of the peculiar chair which she uses, but anybody can make the article of furniture for himself after reading my directions.

The Vanishing Lady is the wonder of the town. She was invented by Luatier do Kalts, a Paris conjuror, and r.he has been performing at the Eden Theatre there. She is also puzzling the public in London and Berlin. The secret of her illusion has been kept in those cities, and scientists have written theories about her as learned and conjectural as, those which Poe devoted to the Chess Automaton. The inventor has an agent in New York to sell her at £20 per copy. He has made a dozen sales. Every purchaser is astonished by the simplicity of the trick he has acquired, and puzzled anew to command the manual skill to utilise it. Dexterously performed, the feat is like this :—The necromancer appears in full dress. A pretty girl accompanies him. He talks to her pleasantly while he moves about the stage, and presently he picks up a ohair. With seeming carelessness he places it in about the middle of the stage, on an open newspaper. The girl seats herself, assuming the ordinary, womanly, restful position. From a table he takes a large piece of foulard silk, a fabric not transparent, but sufficiently soft to show the form of the girl after it has completely enveloped her and the chair. Still talking, ho in an instant quickly lifts the veil. The girl is not there. The chair is left exactly as it stood before she sat in it; the newspaper is beneath it, precisely as it was placed. No sounds have been heard in the meantime; there is no darkening of the stage; even the silk covering has shown no shrinkage, but preserved its form up to the moment it was lifted by the fakir.

How is it done? Very simply. Everybody correctly guesses that a trap is used, but the investigator stops there, defeated. The chair, the newspaper, the trap, the confederate below the stage, and a bright, slim girl are the things that aro used. The chair is not, as it looks, an ordinary article. It ib of the heavy, old-fashioned, mahogany kind, without rounds, thickly upholstered on the seat, with an open back. It is so built that by touching a concealed spring the seat is made to drop down from the rear on a hinge, leaving the girl free to sink down the trap, which is manipulated by the confederate below the stage. There being no rungs on the chair, the girl has an easy job. When the illusionist has seated her he throws over her head the silk veil. At the moment she feels herself completely covered, she works another spring, which causes a thin wiro framework to rise up from tho back of the chair, and spread itself about her form, thus preserving undisturbed the outlines of the cloth, and deceiving the audience into the belief that she is still seated. The mystery of the open newspaper spread under the chair, to kill any suggestion of a trap, is even simpler. The paper has been deftly cut so as to contain a trap opening in itself, It is so handled by the operator as not to reveal the slit, and, when he gathers it up after the trick, he is careful to fold it, partly at least. His work consists of, first, in spreading the newspaper so that the trap cut in it shall cover exactly the trap in the stage, and, second, in setting the chair precisely over both traps. He ought to be clever in talking to divert the spectators' attention from both newspaper and chair, and the more he speaks of the absence of a trap the better he can puzzle those who are watching him. Of course, he cannot submit either the chair or newspaper to inspection. The trap used in the stage is the ordinary demon's drop, of good size. After the girl has passed through, the confederate below the stage pats his hand up and springs to its place the hinged seat in the chair. Then he raps, and tho illusionist above knows all is ready for him to pull away the veil. Added mystery is gained by making the girl run out into the auditorium as soon as she can. A neat sleight-of-hand man can also cause the veil to disappear up his sleeve after he has lifted it.

The Vanishing Lady is a multiple actress of sudden renown, and she must submit to critical exposure.