The Magician and the Spirits

by Deborah Noyes

  Houdini proved himself with gusto, and on March 14, Beck sent a telegram from Chicago: “You can open Omaha March twenty sixth sixty dollars, will see act probably make you proposition for all next season.”

  Houdini kept the telegram and later scribbled on it for posterity: “This wire changed my whole Life’s journey.”

  In a year’s time, he would be on his way to becoming a household name, a famed star of American entertainment . . . but certainly not as a mind-reading spirit conjurer.

  TWO

  Dealings with the Dead

  “Spiritualism is the Science, Philosophy and Religion of continuous life, based upon the demonstrated fact of communication, by means of mediumship, with those who live in the spirit world.”

  —SPIRITUALIST MANUALOF THE NATIONAL SPIRITUALIST ASSOCIATION OF CHURCHES

  People have believed since ancient times that spirits can survive death and exist outside the body. This wasn’t a new idea—even back in 1848—but the popular religious movement known as Spiritualism got its start in that year with two bored young girls.

  No one could explain the strange rapping and bumping noises that were coming from the walls and floor of the Fox farmhouse in Hydesville, New York. John and Margaret Fox hadn’t slept for days and were already jumpy on the evening their children—Maggie, fourteen, and Kate, eleven—made a show of rapping back.

  When the sounds started up as usual that chill March night, their youngest sat up in bed and repeatedly snapped her fingers. The intruding presence—in later reports, Kate called him “Mr. Splitfoot”—rapped back the same number.

  The Fox sisters (left to right: Maggie, Kate, and Leah).

  Not to be outdone, Maggie cried, “Now do this just as I do,” and clapped her hands four times. Four brisk raps followed.

  A frightened Mrs. Fox called in neighbors to bear witness. The crowd devised a simple code by pairing a set number of raps to each letter of the alphabet; using it, the ghostly communicator claimed to belong to the corpse of a murdered peddler buried beneath the house.

  Men took to the cellar with picks and shovels and dug for days but hit groundwater and had to stop. A flood of pilgrims arrived, meanwhile, on foot, in rented carriages, and by horse and buggy. They pitched tents and trampled the fields around the farmhouse, lit bonfires, peered in the family’s windows, and trickled in at night for their turn with the spirit while Maggie, Kate, and Mrs. Fox interpreted.

  When public curiosity assumed the proportions of an invasion, John and Margaret shipped the children off to relations. Not surprisingly, wherever the sisters went, the raps went, too. The girls proved able to enter a trance state and confer with those on the “other side.”

  Before long, sensing an opportunity, their much-older sister, Leah, got involved. A struggling single mother who taught piano in Rochester, Leah had access to the city’s progressive elite. Her pupils were the children of Quakers, suffragists, abolitionists, and other social reformers, forward thinkers open to spirit communication and the bold possibilities it suggested. At a time when the United States was mending from civil war and growing fast, Spiritualism—which straddled the boundary between science and magic—seemed to many a visionary movement destined to help rebuild society during a period of political and religious uncertainty.

  Within a year, the Fox sisters were showing off their strange talents at Corinthian Hall, Rochester’s public auditorium, with hundreds lining up at dawn to hear the “rappings” and witness spirit phenomena.

  Ambitious—and by Maggie’s report, exploitative—Leah became her younger sisters’ official manager, guiding their shared career as celebrity mediums, booking demonstrations in Manhattan and around the country, and spreading the gospel of Spiritualism.

  Where Do We Go from Here?

  Spiritualism exploded around the time of the Civil War in America, when death was a profoundly visible fact of life. At the same time, scientific progress was indirectly challenging religious doctrine. In his revolutionary 1859 book, On the Origin of Species, geologist and naturalist Charles Darwin theorized that life on earth was created not all at once but over billions of years. Plants and animals descended and adapted from common ancestors in the way-distant past, he proposed, which many read as an attack on God’s creation of all living beings as described in the Bible. If the very origins of the earth and humankind were in question, what other religious beliefs were at risk? What about eternal life and heaven? His theory of evolution by natural selection was a revelation so startling, Darwin admitted, that writing it was “like confessing a murder.” The Fox sisters had tapped into growing public unease and a longing for evidence that death wasn’t the end and that the dead were not lost.

  Charles Darwin, circa 1858.

  Light and Marvels

  Throughout the century and into the new millennium, scientific advances and unseen forces—the telegraph, the radio, X-rays, electricity, and radioactivity—seemed like miracles to the average person. If invisible light could show the skeleton beneath flesh, if messages could travel on electrical wires across an ocean, who could rule out the possibility that human intelligence lived on and could be contacted after death or that the departed might be eager to talk back? Along with pastimes like mesmerism (hypnotism) and phrenology (the study of human personality using the shape and character of the skull), Spiritualism had found its moment.

  The first medical X-ray, 1895.

  The fever spread. With its promise of a direct channel to the divine and to lost ones “beyond the veil,” Spiritual-ism was especially attractive to mothers in an era when women primarily oversaw the home. In New York State, some half of deaths were of children under five. Grieving parents sought consolation in the Spiritualist idea that death wasn’t an end but a change, like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. Believers wore white at funerals, where mediums fielded messages from souls relocated to Summerland, the Spiritualist name for heaven.

  Soon it seemed everyone was hosting parlor séances, delivering messages from Beyond, tipping tables, levitating objects, and conjuring spirits. By 1853, there were tens of thousands of spirit mediums at work, and Maggie and Kate Fox, the movement’s figureheads, were the most famous of all.

  Like magicians and other performers, the sisters toured a more or less established circuit, conducting séances in hotel suites and performing demonstrations in auditoriums around the country and abroad. Along the way, they encountered acclaim but also suspicion and intolerance, even threats of violence.

  Theatrical poster advertising magician Harry Kellar, 1894.

  The worst of their detractors branded them witches or plotted to tar and feather them. More civilized skeptics elected investigators and committees. These challenged the girls to produce their raps under scientific test conditions, a process that could involve humiliating searches or having their wrists and ankles bound. But the Fox sisters kept investigators and audiences guessing, and their fame grew. (It would be decades before Maggie revealed their methods, in a stunning 1888 confession at New York’s Academy of Music, and they were fully “exposed.”)

  Onstage or in a packed music hall, Spiritualist phenomena made for good theater. It took place in the dark, and “manifestations” were eerie and thrilling. Magicians soon jumped on the bandwagon, borrowing Spiritualist tricks and “apparatus”—equipment and props like luminous hands, floating spirit lights, and unfurling curtains—to up the drama at their own shows.

  Golden-age magicians (mid-1800s–1920s) like Harry Kellar, Robert Heller, and Howard Thurston appeared to conjure spirits, get teakettles talking in ghostly whispers, or summon bloody script on their bare arms. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement: showmen borrowed from Spiritualists; Spiritualists borrowed from showmen.

  Ghostly effects became so common at magic shows that in his 1868 book, Les Secrets de la prestidigitation et de la magie (Th
e Secrets of Conjuring and Magic), pioneering French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin designated “the Medium Business—Spiritualism” as one of the six branches of conjuring.

  Inspired by the investigations mediums like the Fox sisters endured to prove their abilities, magicians working with spirit themes brought audience-controlled test conditions into shows voluntarily. They had themselves bound with rope, closed into trunks or cabinets, or handcuffed to suggest to audiences that their feats were magic—not mere sleight of hand—and that they weren’t up to mischief in the dark.

  But, of course, they were. Stage mediums and magicians who produced their phenomena under test conditions were early “escape artists.” Under cover of darkness, or otherwise concealed, they freed themselves long enough to creep from their seats, create effects, and steal back again, giving the impression that they hadn’t budged, and the credit went to spirits.

  An Earnest, Lifelong Endeavor

  When young Ehrich Weiss set out to be a professional magician in the early 1890s, he took the stage name Harry Houdini. “Harry” echoed his childhood nickname, “Ehrie.” “Houdini” was a nod to his idol, French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin (1805–1871).

  Known as the father of modern magic, Robert-Houdin made the stereotype of the fusty old “wizard” in trailing robes vanish. He cut an elegant figure onstage in formal eveningwear, and his effects were inventive, dazzling audiences with electricity, magnetism, and automata (clockwork figures).

  In his 1858 memoirs, Confidences d’un prestidigitateur (published in English as Memoirs of Robert-Houdin), Robert-Houdin describes his worldly adventures, his rise as a sophisticated performer, and his thoughts on magic as an evolving art form. Houdini pored over these pages, and Robert-Houdin became his “guide and hero,” lending magic “a dignity worth attaining at the cost of earnest, life-long endeavor.”

  But his adoration wouldn’t last. Within a decade, Houdini would reduce the man he’d crowned “The Shakespeare of Magic” to the “prince of pilferers.”

  When he set out to write “The First Authentic History of Magic Ever Published,” an encyclopedia of great magicians, Houdini regretted to inform readers that the legendary Robert-Houdin was “a mere pretender” who “waxed great on the brainwork of others.” Published in 1908 with the title The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin, Houdini’s encyclopedia turned into a ruthless exposé of his former hero. All the master’s signature effects, he claimed, hailed from earlier magicians.

  Colleagues winced at this assault. Some published counter-arguments. Magicians in France read Houdini’s attack as a national insult. The brash American did more than question his elder’s honor and originality; he denied that Robert-Houdin had brought about “a complete regeneration in the art of conjuring” and accused him of exaggeration and “supreme egotism,” charges often leveled at Houdini himself.

  Robert-Houdin had dropped in his esteem, but it was too late to drop the name. In fact, in 1913, Ehrich Weiss legally changed his name to Harry Houdini, one of the most famous titles in the world.

  Ira and William Davenport, billed as the Davenport brothers, performed one of the most famous spirit acts. With their quiet stage presence, twin goatees, great drooping mustaches, and signature mahogany cabinet, they bewildered audiences by having a committee from the crowd shut them up in the cabinet, lashed to their chairs with a shelf of musical instruments inside. Raised and set back from the wall to rule out trapdoors (through which stealthy “confederates” might steal in to assist), the cabinet was seven feet long and six feet high, with three doors. The volunteers formed a tense circle around it all through the presentation to bar against trickery, but once the doors closed, a racket sounded: guitar strings vibrated, tambourines tinkled and thumped, and bells jangled. When the doors opened again, there sat the deadpan brothers, their bonds intact, the musical instruments quiet again on their shelves.

  The secret to their success (the “Davenport Rope Tie”) was closely guarded, and Spiritualists and skeptics squabbled over the nature of the brothers’ gifts. Were they true psychics? Or just ingenious players? The brothers kept the truth under their hats, letting audiences form their own conclusions. This added mystery to mystification, and wherever they went, applause and headlines awaited. So did controversy, angry mobs, brawls, and lawsuits.

  The Davenport brothers and William Fay with their spirit cabinet, circa 1908.

  At a tour stop in Liverpool, England, the brothers complained that the ropes the audience had used to bind their hands were too tight, stopping their circulation, and had an assistant cut them loose. Feeling cheated by brash American showmen, the crowd smashed the brothers’ cabinet to pieces, and a riot broke out. Splinters from the famous wardrobe were later sold in the street as souvenirs.

  The Davenports regularly performed for royalty—from Napoleon III and Czar Alexan-der II to Queen Victoria. They were sensational and dramatic and admired by fellow magicians, including Houdini, who would one day befriend the elderly Ira and, during a 1910 visit to Australia (where Ira’s brother had died in 1877), spruce up William Davenport’s neglected gravesite.

  Fifty-Five Kings

  Houdini insisted on setting himself apart from other magicians, but his rivals—to his profound irritation—copied him anyway, trading on his hard work. Despite his threats and protests, imitators with names like “Hourdene,” “Whodini,” “Cutini,” and “Stillini” swiped his handcuff and water-torture methods, his wardrobe style and press poses, and even his publicity. On tour in England, he heard of some fifty-five Kings of Handcuffs: “If you throw a stone in the air,” he grumped, “it will fall down and hit someone who has a handcuff key in his pocket.” Houdini pasted competitors’ ads and reviews in his scrapbooks and would spy on, humiliate, and ruin them if he could, even spill their secrets (the cardinal sin of magicians). “If you are in a fight,” he once said, “hit the other guy first.”

  Theatrical poster advertising Miss Undina with her version of Houdini’s Water-Torture Cell Escape.

  By the time young Harry and Bess Houdini turned up on a street corner in Garnett, Kansas—fifty years after the eerie raps on the walls of a farmhouse in Hydesville—the play between mediums and magicians was a long-established tradition.

  Naked Ambition

  Houdini’s escapes were strenuous and clever, he’d admit, but they were about bodybuilding and burglary skills, not psychic talent. Houdini almost always worked in broad daylight, giving the impression that his feats were an open book—more method than magic. He often left his bonds or casings undisturbed; the crate he’d escaped from remained mysteriously nailed shut, the jail cell still locked. And like high-profile mediums—who were often taken aside and searched in the nude before a séance to ensure they weren’t smuggling in props—Houdini tackled jail escapes in the buff. No one could accuse him, then, of sneaking keys or lock-picking tools into a cell.

  Houdini in chains, circa 1900.

  Houdini was nothing if not an original (“With due modesty,” as he put it, “I recognize no one as my peer”) and, with Martin Beck guiding his vaudeville career, distanced himself from the medium business early on. He borrowed its escape element, but made it his own, repeatedly outdoing himself while never claiming (or silently letting his audience suppose, as the Davenports did) that his feats were paranormal.

  The success of his early spirit act with Bess is no surprise, but neither is the fact that Houdini cut the talking dead from his show.

  Deceiving the public as a fake spirit medium never sat well with him. His father and an older brother had died when Houdini was a young man, and it may be that he felt real empathy for his “marks,” often people mourning the loss of a loved one. “I most certainly did not relish the idea,” he said, “of treading on the sacred feelings of my admirers.”

  And in 1913, he suffered another loss, one that would lay the groundwork
for, if not exactly trigger, the crusade of a lifetime a decade later.

  THREE

  The Mother’s Boy

  “I who have laughed at the terrors of death, who have smilingly leaped from high bridges, received a shock from which I do not think recovery is possible.”

  ~Harry Houdini

  Houdini woke early on the summer morning in 1913 when he and Bess would sail from Hoboken, New Jersey, to Hamburg, Germany, for a European tour. From Hamburg, the partners would continue on to Copenhagen, Denmark, by rail. Houdini would perform for the king of Sweden at the palace in Stockholm and also make a stop in Budapest, where he was born.

  But first, there were good-byes.

  Finding it difficult to leave his adored mother, Cecilia Weiss, behind on the dock as he and Bess boarded, Houdini kept circling back, dimly aware that Cecilia’s health was failing, that “the Great Dissolution was gradually taking place.” As paper streamers rained down all around, and the crowd began to sort itself into passengers on deck and well-wishers below, he was magnetically drawn to the spot where his mother stood in her dark clothes beside his mother-in-law and one of his older brothers, Bill—specks in a vast, milling crowd.

  Houdini with Bess and his mother, Cecilia Steiner Weiss, 1907.

  “Ma was worried and told me to remain on board,” he wrote later, “but I kept coming back and embracing her.” When he kissed her good-bye, his mother met his eyes and said, in German, “Ehrich, perhaps I won’t be here when you return.” She had said such things before, so he joked it off, and she steered the conversation to ordinary matters, asking him to fetch her back a pair of woolen slippers from overseas, size six.