CHAPTER VII.

VENTRILOQUISM AND ANIMATED PUPPETS. Ventriloquists may, according to their specialties, be divided into various categories. Some devote their talent to the imitation of the cries of animals, the songs of birds, the noise of tools, etc.; others imitate the sound of musical instruments; some mock the noise produced by a crowd, a regiment, or a procession; while others, again, make dolls or dummies speak. Certain ventriloquists imitate the sound of musical instruments, from that of the violin up to that of brass instruments with the most piercing notes. Others excel in imitating the noise of the plane, saw, etc. Certain ventriloquists, while hidden by a screen simply, have the faculty of making their audience believe that several persons, or even a crowd, are in the vicinity. At Egyptian Hall, London, a magician recently made his appearance upon the stage, carrying a doll, with which he held a somewhat uncouth conversation. The lips of the doll were observed to move, and the illusion was complete, when all at once the doll’s head was strangely transformed. The magician had just opened his hand, showing that it was the latter alone that--inclosed in a white glove upon which were a few colored marks--formed the doll’s head. In our engraving may be seen two methods of arranging the fingers for forming a doll’s head with the hand. The illusion is produced by making a few simple lines with charcoal, and wrapping a handkerchief or napkin around the hand; then, if one has a little aptness for ventriloquism, he may hold a conversation with the head. In our time, most ventriloquists who exhibit in public considerably facilitate the illusion that they desire to produce by using large articulated dummies, which they make speak and sing, and talk to one another--each in a different voice. These figures are so constructed that the ventriloquist’s hands can move their arms and legs, turn their heads to the right or left, give their shoulders a shrug, open or close their eyes, and move their lower jaws in such a way that their mouths seem to utter the words that the spectator hears. We may say, in a general way, that these ventriloquists, thanks to the use of their dummies, succeed in producing so complete an illusion that people are frequently persuaded that the voice heard actually comes from the mouth of the figure, and that it does not proceed from the ventriloquist standing near the latter, but from a confederate hidden somewhere about, whose voice is heard through the intermedium of a speaking-tube. [Illustration: METHOD OF MAKING FACES WITH THE HAND.] There is one trick that always tends to confirm the spectator’s illusion, and that is this: in the little prefatory speech that the ventriloquist makes, he gives out that he is a foreigner, and does not speak the language of his audience well; in fact, he expresses himself with difficulty and with a strong accent. His dummies, on the contrary, answer in very good French or English, as the case may be; and when the auditors hear them, they are led to believe that ventriloquism counts for nothing in their answers or conversation. _Explanation of Ventriloquism._--The art of ventriloquism is primarily based upon an acoustic phenomenon--the difficulty that the ear experiences in determining the exact point whence comes the sound that it hears. That there is such an incertitude as to the direction of sounds is easily verified, and the following are a few cases in proof of it. Mr. Stuart Cumberland, a mind reader, who exhibited at Paris a few years ago, performed a little experiment in the drawing-room, after his “second-sight” séances, which usually resulted in surprising and amusing his auditors. In this experiment, a willingly disposed person, being seated in the middle of the room, allowed his eyes to be bandaged. Then Mr. Cumberland took a five-franc piece and made it jingle by striking it with a hard object, say a key or another coin. The person submitted to the experiment then had to tell the direction from whence the sound emanated, and to give the distance at which it seemed to him to have been made. In almost all cases the individual guessed a direction and distance very different from the real one, and the error, which was ofttimes great, naturally provoked great hilarity from the spectators. Moreover, Mr. Cumberland, by varying the position of his hand in such a way that the latter formed a screen between the coin and the ear of the blindfolded person, caused the latter’s perception as to the direction of the sound to vary, although, as a matter of fact, the experimenter had not budged from his first position. At a _soirée_, we have seen a member of the Institute, who had cheerfully submitted himself to the experiment, extremely surprised, when his bandage was removed, at the gross errors in auditory perception that he had just committed. The illusion that it is thus possible to produce by varying the positions of the hand in which a coin is jingled is, in the main, analogous to that obtained through ventriloquism. Another example: If several persons be standing in the same line, at a few feet from a spectator, and one of them emits a prolonged sound--a vowel, for example, say _a a a_--that requires no motion of the lips, the spectator will be unable to determine from which of the persons the sound proceeds; or if, moreover, he tries to point the one out, he will be almost certain to commit an error, the person designated by him being the third or fourth to the right or left of the one who actually produced the sound. In the choruses of operas, an endeavor is made to have an agreeable aspect in addition to vocal qualities; and, as a beautiful voice is not always accompanied with a pretty face, it often happens that in the first row of a chorus they will place pretty supernumeraries, who, although not obliged to sing, open their mouths and make believe pronounce words, while in reality the singing is being done only by their companions in the rear. This fraud is very rarely detected by the audience. If a man standing near a child should, without moving his lips, speak with a squeaking voice, while the child was making believe pronounce words, it might easily be believed that the words heard were being spoken by the child. It is possible to teach a dog to open his mouth and follow the motions of his master’s hand; and if the master be any sort of a ventriloquist, he can easily make believe that he has an animal endowed with speech. The ventriloquist who, standing near his dummies, succeeds in keeping his facial muscles absolutely immovable, while his figures become animate and move their lips and seem to speak, produces such an illusion among the spectators by virtue of the acoustic principle that we have just noted; that is, the difficulty that the ear experiences in determining the precise point whence emanates the sound that it hears. It is to be remarked that the chief difficulty in the art of ventriloquism is to keep the countenance immovable, and to speak without causing any of the facial muscles to act. The ventriloquist who talks with a dummy that is interrogating him, addresses his questions in an ordinary voice, articulates distinctly, and plainly moves his lips; but when the dummy answers, the ventriloquist’s face no longer contracts, and his lips scarcely part except to smile. The facial immobility preserved by him while he is really speaking, then, can be explained by recalling a few principles of grammar, which are merely applications of the physiology of the voice. Articulate speech, which separates the language of man from that of the lower animals, is divided, as grammar teaches, into sounds and articulations. The sounds or vowels are made up of all the continuous and uniform noises that the vocal organs can emit. Thus _a_, _e_, _i_, _o_, and _u_ are vowels, because they may be infinitely prolonged; _a a a a a a_, for example. There are a greater number of vowels than is usually admitted in writing; it is possible, in fact, to modify them to infinity, so to speak, by a slightly more open or more closed sound. They may be classified in the form of gamuts, each having a typical vowel, the entire corresponding series of which is but the result of a more and more pronounced contraction of the lips, without the tongue and other vocal organs having to undergo the slightest modification. +-----------------------------------------+ | FIRST SERIES, VOWEL A. | | | | ---- á | | ---- a | | ---- à | | ---- â | | ---- ó | | ---- õ | | ---- ô | | ---- ou | | ---- oû | | | | SECOND SERIES, VOWEL E. | | | | ---- è | | ---- é | | ---- ée | | ---- e | | ---- eu | | ---- eûx | | | | THIRD SERIES, VOWEL I. | | | | ---- i | | ---- î | | ---- u | | ---- û | +-----------------------------------------+ FIG. 2.--CLASSIFICATION OF THE VOWELS. These type-vowels and their descending gamuts are shown in Fig. 2. If, in pronouncing each of these vowels, we draw the base of the tongue toward the back of the throat, without changing the position of the lips or tongue, we shall obtain the _nasal_ sound thereof. The chief of such sounds are: _an_, nasal sound of _a_; _on_, nasal sound of _o_; then, _en_, _in_ nasal sound of _é_; _eun_, _un_, nasal sound of _eu_. The vowels _i_ and _u_ have no nasal sounds, because of the back position that the base of the tongue naturally occupies in pronouncing them, and which is but slightly modified when we endeavor to give them a nasal sound. What precedes may be called the theory of the vowels. From the standpoint of ventriloquism, we must remark that, in order to pronounce the vowels, no motion of the lips is necessary; but it will suffice to allow the latter to remain slightly parted in order to give passage to the sound--this being generally done by the ventriloquist through the aid of a smile, that seems to be provoked by the interest that he takes in the talk of his dummies. All the modifications in the organs necessary for passing from one vowel to another, as in the diphthongs _oa_ and _aé_, or when they suppress certain intermediate articulations, are easily obtained by the ventriloquist by the aid of the tongue and the interior organs of the mouth, without causing the lips and facial muscles to undergo the slightest motion or the least contraction; or, in other words, without any visible sign exhibiting itself to the eyes of the spectators. The pronunciation of the vowels, then, constitutes no difficulty for the ventriloquist. The same is not the case with the articulations or consonants, the pronunciation of some of which is a difficulty that the ventriloquist can overcome only by virtue of practice and skill, or again by an approximate pronunciation--the articulation difficult to pronounce without moving the facial muscles being replaced by another which gives nearly the same sound, but which is obtained with the internal vocal organs of the mouth. The consonants may be classed by categories, according to the vocal organs employed for pronouncing them. In each category they are divided into strong and weak, and, as regards ventriloquism, they comprise two series. A classification of them is given in Fig. 3. Upon examining this table, it will be seen that, in the entire first series of these consonants, the tongue, acting upon the pharynx, bearing against the teeth, or taking different shapes, can act and articulate without the aid of the lips, and without the necessity of the facial muscles contracting. The ventriloquist, then, will be able to pronounce any word in which none but these vowels and consonants enter, without moving his facial muscles. The same is not the case with the consonants of the second series, that is to say, with the five labials, _f_, _v_, _p_, _b_, _m_. The ventriloquist’s art consists in pronouncing these without moving the lips or facial muscles. With a little practice it is easy to reach such a result with _f_ and _v_, which may be pronounced by causing only the interior muscles of the lips to act; _p_ and _b_, and _m_ especially, present a greater difficulty, and we may say that, in most cases, ventriloquists who wish to keep their lips perfectly motionless pronounce none of these three consonants distinctly, but usually substitute for them a sound bordering on that of the letter _n_. It is partly for this reason that ventriloquists succeed much better in imitating the language of children, or that of persons of slight education. So, upon the whole, the illusion produced by ventriloquists is the result, primarily, of an acoustic phenomenon, the uncertainty of the sound’s direction, and, secondarily, of a habit acquired of speaking without moving the facial muscles. Those ventriloquists who, without accessories, have the power of throwing their voices almost anywhere, succeed therein by utilizing the same principle of acoustics that we have explained above. As for the exact point whence the sound proceeds, the ventriloquist usually takes care to show that by an expressive motion and by looking in that direction, and by designating it, too, with his finger, while his face expresses great fear, interest, or surprise. So the spectator easily persuades himself that the sound does really come from the exact spot that is thus pointed out to him in a seemingly unintentional manner. The words are often pronounced very indistinctly by the mysterious voice, but the ventriloquist takes care, as a general thing, to render them intelligible by repeating them in his ordinary voice, by accenting them, and by commenting upon them. He thus persuades his auditors that these are the very words that they heard. +-----------------------------------------------+ | FIRST SERIES.--CONSONANTS FORMED BY THE | | INTERNAL VOCAL ORGANS. | | | | Strong. Weak. | | Gutturals _c_ _g_ | | Palatal linguals _l_ _ill_ | | Dental linguals _r_ | | Dentals _t_ _d_ | | Palatal dentals _n_ _gn_ | | Dental sibillants _s_ _z_ | | Guttural sibillants _ch_ _j_ | | | | SECOND SERIES.--LABIAL CONSONANTS. | | | | Strong. Weak. | | Sibillant labials _f_ _v_ | | Simple labials _p_ _b_ | | Aspirated labials _m_ | +-----------------------------------------------+ FIG. 3.--CLASSIFICATION OF THE CONSONANTS. In order to produce a muffled sound that seems to come from afar or from an inclosed place, the ventriloquist arranges his tongue in such a way that its base, upon bearing against the soft palate, shall form a sort of diaphragm that allows but very little of the voice to pass. If, then, the ventriloquist articulates his words with a strong guttural voice, the sound will appear to come from the earth, from a grotto or cavern, or from a box, or cask, or closet. If, on the contrary, the tongue being in the same position, the ventriloquist speaks with a sharp voice, he will produce the illusion of a voice coming from the ceiling, or from some high place, such as the top of a tree or the roof of a neighboring house. But, in both cases, in order to effect the emission of this muffled, somewhat indistinct, voice, the ventriloquist keeps his lungs distended, and emits as little breath as possible in pronouncing. Richerand, the celebrated physiologist, who had an opportunity of examining the ventriloquist Fitz-James, says: “His entire mechanism consists in a slow and graduated expiration, which is, after a manner, protracted, and which is always preceded by a strong inspiration, by means of which he introduces into his lungs a great volume of air, which he carefully husbands.” As for the modifications to be introduced into the usual position of the organs in order to obtain the voices of aged people or children, hoarse or nasal voices, the cries of animals, sounds of musical instruments, the noises of tools, and so forth, they are easily effected, owing to the mobility, perfection, and resources of such organs; and it is by practice and feeling his way that the ventriloquist comes to know them and repeat them, so as to obtain the voice that he desires, with certainty. Moreover, in order to get a good idea of the modifications that may be introduced in the voice by regulating the breathing, the opening of the pharynx, and the position and curvature of the tongue, it is only necessary to devote ourselves to this exercise for a few minutes, when the processes used by ventriloquists, and the illusions that it is possible for them to produce, will be easily understood. Perhaps, indeed, such an exercise will reveal to the experimenter that he has an aptness for ventriloquism that he was far from suspecting. ANIMATED PUPPETS. [Illustration: FIG. 1.--BERTRAND’S ANIMATED PUPPETS.] Puppets have been in use since antiquity, and when skillfully constructed and operated the effect is very amusing. The French painter M. G. Bertrand devised some very ingenious puppets, which he calls “animated models,” which he exhibited for a long time in Paris. When the characters make their appearance and walk and approach each other, they appear to be real. One of the most charming of the puppets was a violoncellist who bows, rubs resin on his bow, and plays a march. After the player has finished, he bows and repeats the piece for an _encore_. M. Bertrand’s _danseuses_ are no less wonderful. Fig. 3 shows one of them while she is executing a difficult scene. The little puppets are about half life size, being twenty-two inches in height. They are suspended from the upper part of the theater by very fine wires fixed to a rubber spring. Left to itself the puppet is suspended about three feet from the floor of the stage. It is from beneath that the operator holds it by means of wires attached to its feet, which keep it on the floor and make it walk, jump, or dance. Lateral wires are attached to the hands, and are manipulated from the side scenes. Each figure is built up on a skillfully wrought skeleton. [Illustration: FIG. 2.--LA RENCONTRE (SECOND SCENE).] [Illustration: FIG. 3.--AUTOMATIC DANSEUSE.] The fifth figure shows that the fundamental osseous framework is made of hard wood, and the articulations formed of steel springs. When this wooden skeleton is made to dance upon the stage, it has the attitude of an animated being; all of the articulations operate of themselves, with perfect suppleness. The covering of tow and dress materials give the external human form. Our last engraving shows the clown, who, at the rising of the curtain, recites the prologue. He is capable of showing his own skeleton to the spectators and of saying, “This is the way I am made. Look at my framework!” [Illustration: FIG. 4.--THE TOILET OF A DANSEUSE.] [Illustration: FIG. 5.--TOM MINOR THE CLOWN AND HIS SKELETON.]