The Secret Life of Houdini (4 page)

Dr. Lynn was a magician and a good one. His thrice-daily shows at London’s famous Egyptian Hall had captured the imagination of the British public. Lynn performed many of the then-standard effects—decapitation and restoration of a pigeon, spiritualistic table-rappings, rope ties, and aerial suspensions—but what set Dr. Lynn apart from his contemporaries was his marvelous stage patter. Lynn would crack deadpan jokes, tell long shaggy dog anecdotes, slyly insult volunteers from the audience, all the time diverting the audience’s attention from the effect he was performing. After thus mystifying the crowd, he’d solemnly pronounce, “That’s how it’s done,” which had become an instant catchphrase in England.

So when Dr. Lynn came to Milwaukee during a U.S. tour, Rabbi Weiss, cognizant of Ehrich’s budding interest in magic, brought his twelve-year-old to the show. The effect that forever changed the young boy had the grandiose title of “Palingenesia.”

Dr. Lynn solemnly announced that he was going to “cut somebody into pieces.” At this, a somber-looking young man appeared onstage, carrying a large scimitar in his right hand and a black cloth over his left arm. He could have easily been mistaken for an executioner.

Dr. Lynn kept up a steady stream of patter, maintaining that he was working “strictly in the interests of science to expand our knowledge and to show that a man might be decapitated and then be as good as new, once his head is restored.”

He turned and gestured to an assistant near the rear of the stage.

“Here is a young man who came with me from England. He isn’t of much use, so I might as well cut him up.”

An upright board with two thick cords hanging from hooks was set up at the back of the stage. A screen was pulled in front of the board and Dr. Lynn invited two volunteers to go behind the screen and watch him tie up his assistant. They did and then the screen was pulled aside and the audience saw the assistant facing them, standing with his back to the board, the two cords tied around his body. The two volunteers, at Lynn’s urging, confirmed to the audience that they saw the man being tied up. And to suggest that this was no illusion, the trussed-up assistant stroked his mustache, moved his foot, and briefly spoke to the audience.

Then Dr. Lynn went into action. “What will you have?” he asked one young volunteer. “A wing, eh?” He poised his scimitar over the hapless assistant’s left arm, and, as the ladies in the audience covered their eyes with their handkerchiefs, he lopped the whole arm off and carried it over to the seated young volunteer and placed it on his lap.

“And you?” He turned to the other volunteer. “What will you have? A leg, eh?” And he severed his assistant’s left leg, again bloodlessly, and handed it to that volunteer.

“Now I’ll cut off his head,” he screamed and, throwing the black cloth over the victim’s head, he slashed at the neck with his scimitar, and bundled it up into his black cloth. Now he advanced on the footlights.

“What lady desires the head?” he said mournfully.

There were no takers. He waited a second and then shrugged.

“Well then, I’ll throw it away,” he said and opened the cloth. It was empty. Back at the board, the headless torso, with his one good arm, pointed toward the doctor and then toward the vacant spot where his head had once resided.

Dr. Lynn moved back in front of the half-man. “He wants his head,” the doctor said calmly and threw the black cloth over the torso. When he pulled it away, his assistant’s head had been restored, and the man rubbed at his eyes as if he had been asleep.

Lynn tossed the arm and the leg into the enclosure and pulled the curtain back over it. “There, put yourself together.”

He had just gotten the words out of his mouth when the man stepped out from behind the screen, wholly restored. And then the theater’s curtain dropped.

Ehrich sat there, too numb to talk. Rabbi Weiss smiled at him.

“Did you enjoy that?” the rabbi wondered.

The two of them got up and started walking out of the theater. Ehrich had read about magic and even fantasized about what a real wizard could do, but this was different. This was real.

“I
really
thought that the man’s arm, leg, and head were being cut off,” he told his father, and he kept walking in silence, visions of magic dancing through his head.

It wasn’t out of character for Rabbi Weiss to take his son to see a magician perform. He would often regale young Ehrich with stories of another great conjurer, whose elegant demeanor and brilliant showmanship had propelled him to such wealth and fame that his portrait still hangs on the wall of a national museum in Austria. The rabbi described his wondrous magic, but he also was able to relate to his son intimate details of the magician’s life off the stage. And why not? His first marriage had made him the great Compars Herrmann’s first cousin. Compars was the most famous magician of his time. He had performed at the White House, and presented his illusions before the royalty of almost every country in Europe. The idea of becoming a professional magician had not crystallized in young Ehrich’s mind, although he did begin to perform simple magic on amateur nights at the old Litt Museum on Grand Avenue in Milwaukee. Developing his magical skills had to take a back-seat to helping his family through very difficult times. Rabbi Weiss could never get a full-time position with a congregation in Milwaukee, and his private “Hebrew school,” which operated out of his home and probably consisted of tutoring a few youngsters, was a dismal failure. Cecilia was forced to repeatedly apply to the Hebrew Relief Society for such bare necessities as coal and cash for provisions.

Compars Herrmann.
Conjuring Arts Research Center

Ehrich was always ready to help the family. His industriousness and maturity beyond his years were evidence of the strong work ethic that his parents had instilled in him. Years later, he would write to his friend Jim Bard and proudly recall a school song that had become a credo to him:

Keep working, tis wiser then waiting aside,

Or crying, or wailing and awaiting the tide.

In Lifes earnest battle those only prevail

Who daily march onward, and
NEVER SAY FAIL

In December of 1885, the family suffered a horrific blow when Herman, Mayer Samuel’s son from his first marriage, died in New York from tuberculosis at the age of twenty-two. Herman’s death sent the rabbi into a tailspin. He became bedridden, sick with grief, but he was profoundly impressed when his eleven-year-old son Ehrich offered up his life savings of $10 to pay for his half brother’s funeral.

The rabbi remained disconsolate for months. Ehrich was about to turn twelve and he felt that there were no opportunities for him in Milwaukee. He wanted to strike out in the world to seek his fortune, and then, of course, share it with his family. On the boy’s birthday, his father called him to his bedside.

“My boy, I am poor in this world’s goods, but rich in the wonderful woman God gave as my wife and your mother—rich also in the children we have brought into the world and raised to sturdy manhood,” he said gently. He took a well-worn book of the Torah from his bed stand and handed it to Ehrich.

“Promise me, my boy, that after I am gone your dear Mother will never want for anything. Promise that you will make her declining days as carefree and comfortable as I have tried to make them.”

Ehrich bowed his head and placed his hand on the holy book.

“I promise. With all my heart and soul,” he said.

And with that promise on his twelfth birthday, a year before his Bar Mitzvah, Ehrich became a man.

He was gone before dawn, making sure not to wake anyone in the house. He had a small bag packed with the essential accoutrements of a twelve-year-old boy—some books, his lockpick, a deck of playing cards. He also carried his shoeshine kit to finance his trip into the wider world. Ehrich had heard the U.S. Cavalry was on their way westward, and it was a perfect opportunity for him to strike out from home and follow reallive soldiers, shining their black leather boots for spare change.

When the cavalry got to Delavan, Wisconsin, they encamped at the town armory. Curious to see “army life” firsthand, a young local boy named Al Flitcroft tiptoed up the steps of the armory building but was shocked when he got to the top of the stairs and found a bushy-haired, disheveled ragamuffin fast asleep on a pile of old burlap bags. Soon, the young hobo was awake and regaling Al with his tales of travel. When he mentioned that he was starving, Al suggested that they go back to his South Sixth Street house, where his mom could feed them.

Houdini poses with the Flitcrofts, a Delavan, Wisconsin, couple who took him in when he ran away from home at age twelve.
Library of Congress

The visitor introduced himself as “Harry White” (an indication that at least one Weiss knew how to assimilate in this country). Hannah Flitcroft, who had two sons of her own, was captivated by this charming, curly-headed little urchin, and she immediately began a makeover. He was fed, bathed, and his filthy, ragged trousers were washed and patched. The guest was shrewd enough to claim that the warm, soft bed that Mrs. Flitcroft tucked him into was the first one he could ever remember occupying.

The cavalry left town but at Mrs. Flitcroft’s insistence, Harry (which was a logical variant of his nickname “Ehrie”) stayed with the family and looked for work. Pickings were slim for a twelve-year-old then, so she suggested he try nearby Beloit. She packed a bag full of sandwiches and slipped him some money, and Harry hopped a freight train for the bigger city. After a few days of fruitless searching, and without funds, he walked the twenty-five miles back to Delavan. When Mrs. Flitcroft asked him if he had received a letter of encouragement that she had mailed to him care of General Delivery in Beloit, Harry left the next day, again on foot, and walked to Beloit and back, just to retrieve the first letter that anyone had ever sent him.

Harry would never forget the kindness that “old” Mrs. Flitcroft (to the young boy, the forty-five-year-old mother was ancient) had tendered to him. When he settled in New York about a year later and held down a paying job, he sent her a blouse that had a dollar bill tucked into each of its four pockets, with another single pinned to the front. He’d often send her beautiful presents from around the world and when, years later, he had returned from Europe and received word from Al that his mother was gravely ill, Harry and his wife rushed to Delavan to see Mrs. Flitcroft, who died shortly after his visit. Harry’s love for his own mother spurred him to embrace motherhood in all its varieties.

While Harry set out to seek his fortune, Rabbi Weiss left his family behind and traveled east, looking for work. His dutiful heir apparent joined him there sometime in 1887. Ehrich and his father shared a room in Mrs. Leffler’s boardinghouse at 244 East Seventy-ninth Street in Manhattan. The rabbi’s meager income from tutoring Hebrew students was far from sufficient to bring his family to New York so Ehrich was compelled to get a job as a messenger boy. Apparently Harry believed that his oath to provide for his family wouldn’t have to wait until Mayer Samuel’s demise. By 1888 they had saved enough to rent their own second-floor cold-water flat in a tenement building at 227 East Seventy-fifth Street and reunite the family. Ehrich met them at Grand Central Station and escorted them to their new home.

Even though both Mayer Samuel and Cecilia were more comfortable in a large city, life was anything but easy. The first winter was a harsh one. They not only ran out of coal but the landlord was threatening eviction also, if the rent wasn’t paid in a few days. Rabbi Weiss was distraught but helpless, pacing up and down the room, reduced to murmuring, “The Lord will provide. The Lord will provide.” Not content to rely on divine intervention, Harry, realizing that the Christmas season had already put people in the holiday spirit, went to his messenger job the next day with a neatly printed sign pinned on his hat: