The Secret Life of Houdini (43 page)

“I want to be first. I vehemently want to be first. First in my profession…For that I give all the thought, all the power, that is in me. To stand at the head of my rank: it is all I ask. When I can no longer, good-bye the joy of life for me!

“So I have struggled and fought. I have done and abstained; I have tortured my body and risked my life, only for that—to have one plank on the stage where they must fall back and cry ‘Master!’…

“You will think I am vain to tell you these things; but I am a Magyar, and Magyars are vain. American born, Magyar descended; my parents came from Austria; my father was a clergyman in Wisconsin. My name, Ehrich Weiss; my height, about 5ft. 7in.; weight, about 12 stone; 36 this month of April. Only 36, but I feel old; I have done too much in order to be, in my poor little way, Columbus.

“I am strong, as you see; strong in flesh, but my will has been stronger than my flesh. I have struggled with iron and steel, with locks and chains; I have burned, drowned, and frozen till my body has become almost insensible to pain; I have done things which rightly I could not do, because I said to myself, ‘You must’; and now I am old at 36. A man is only a man, and the flesh revenges itself.

“Yet the will is its master when the will is strong enough. Do you think that these religious martyrs—the willing martyrs—those in India, say—who torture themselves by driving hooks through their flesh and swinging suspended—do you think they suffer pain? I say ‘No; they do not.’ I have proved it in myself. To think vehemently of a thing, of the feat, of the object of the feat, that conquers the pain—some kinds of pain. If the thought is intense enough, the pain goes—for a time. Sometimes the task set me is very hard. Not every night, but sometimes. I must fling myself down and writhe; I must strive with every piece of force I possess; I bruise and batter myself against the floor, the walls; I strain and sob and exhaust myself, and begin again, and exhaust myself again; but do I feel pain? Never. How can I feel pain? There is no place for it. All my mind is filled with a single thought—to get free! get free! And the intoxication of that freedom, that success! is sublime.

“Afterwards? Oh, afterwards. I do not say. It is the afterwards that makes me feel old at 36.

“It is good for me that I am not a tall man. Why? Because I must be quick! quick! and a tall man is always slow. It is so all through the profession: The best men are not too high. A tall man is easy-going, good-natured; a short man is sometimes good-tempered, more often not so. All the mean, cunning men that I have known—short! All the keen, eager, ambitious men—short! And for work—the tall man has too much to carry, he is too far from the ground, he cannot lose and recover balance as it is necessary, in a flash.

“Balance—and tempo—and nerve—the three things we all need in the profession. Sometimes an acrobat will lose his tempo, the time that he carries in his head for every trick; he does not know why. It is like a verse of poetry you cannot remember. What is it? What is it? You knew it yesterday; but today! and the audience is waiting. Pass!—better luck next time.

“Everyone learns to balance on the feet—but a performer such as an acrobat learns to balance in time—just as if he did it to music he carries in his head. One, two, three! and at every beat your body and limbs must be just so. Lose the tempo, and they are all astray; the trick is spoiled. Still worse when you lose nerve. Again you do not know why. You feel well in yourself, but suddenly you feel you cannot do the trick. But the audience is waiting; you drive yourself to do it—suicide! That is the way the performers of dangerous feats die. I have leaped from a bridge knowing I could not leap, knowing I would strike the water flat and be killed. But in the air my nerve came back. Almost too late, but I was able to do a little turn in the air. Only two black eyes that time!

“Some of us have superstition—yes; but I no longer. I have succeeded; my wife is la mascotte; ever since I married I have been lucky. Yet for many years I carried the Ten Commandments in a little bag, written very small. They wore out three or four years ago, and I have not troubled since.

“Of fear I do not think—or courage. In the profession it is just habit—and nerve. Take a case. You are not frightened of falling from your feet; you balance on your feet. A good acrobat learns to balance on his head just the same way. Then he will balance on his head on the top of a 20ft. pole—easier there than on the ground, because you feel it sooner when you lose balance. Dangerous of course; and very few can do it. But those who can, they do not think of the danger; they began as little boys, and have practised every day; it is habit.

Bess served tea to the flying men in Australia.
Library of Congress

“Then one day they fall—ah! That is the test—that is the courage. Always after that they have the thought of falling; it has never really come into their heads before. To face that thought, and fight it down, and do the trick—that is courage. And to do the trick knowing that you will fall—because you must—because the audience is waiting—that is greater courage still. You feel the body shaking like a leaf, but your spirit drives it on. I was shaking so when I made my aeroplane ascent at Melbourne; why not? A mistake—and I was dead. But I looked the calmest man on the ground….

“Travel helps us a lot—it is education. The agents and the managers educate. They would buy you cheap—you must sell yourself dear. When you have been bested fifty times you learn something. Three things are needed for the audience—the trick, the man, and the advertisement. Fifteen years ago, when I was 21, I was a better man than I am to-day. Youth, nerve, skill—nothing could defeat me. But I had only the trick and the man to sell, and I had trouble in getting £5 a week. Now I am well known I ask £50 a night—I sell the advertisement. Of course, behind the advertisement there are still the trick and the man; the advertisement is no good without them. But all three together—that is success, fame, money!…

“So I take care of my tricks, I take care of myself, and I take care of the advertisement. The aeroplane—that was my sport, my hobby; but it brought me advertisement. It is all around the world: ‘Houdini flew in Australia; yes, we know Houdini, £50 a night!’…The newspapers do not matter to me now as formerly; but to a beginner—very much! It is not that the good word helps greatly, but the bad word is so damaging. Many in the profession are jealous, each striving against the other; they repeat the bad word, and it may kill a really good man. So, not for myself, but for others, I would say to gentlemen of the press: Have a conscience in your criticism, and knowledge, and appreciation of the conditions. Condemn us if we deserve it, yet remember that a hasty word may go far to ruin some poor wretch. Do not kill us only for sport!”

I
T WAS PAST LAST CALL IN
the smoking room aboard the
Manuka
but that didn’t stop Houdini. Bess needed another drink and that was that.

He called the steward over.

“My wife would like another whiskey and soda,” Houdini said.

“I’m sure she would,” the steward snapped back, cheekily. “I’d like to be the skipper. But the chances of either of those things occurring are nil.”

“You listen to me, young man. I’m Harry Houdini and I demand that my wife be served,” he said, raising his voice.

“I hope you have your picks with you because the liquor cabinet has been locked for the night.” The steward shrugged.

Houdini began to stir up such a row that, shortly, Captain Phillips walked over to the table. When he was apprised of the situation, he joked that Houdini was “evidently suffering from his liver,” which sent Houdini into a rage.

“I’ll have your job. How dare you treat me like an ordinary passenger? Do you know that I have been entertained by royalty all over the world? I’ve dined with the kaiser and the king of England. The royal family of Russia are intimates of mine. I’m not going to sit here and take this abuse,” he said, and grabbing Bess, he stormed off to his cabin.

Houdini evidently felt bad about his flare-up, because he apologized to the captain before they disembarked at Vancouver on June 2, almost a month after leaving Brisbane for home. In better spirits, he challenged the local divers when they reached Suva, in the Fiji Islands. It was a tradition of the young natives to row up to the giant boat and dive for coins tossed overboard by the delighted passengers. One diver would continually surface from the sea with the coin in his mouth, as if he had caught it on its way to the bottom.

Always competitive, Houdini offered to wager that if the native’s hands were tied behind his back, and Houdini’s were handcuffed behind his back, and if two coins were thrown overboard, he could come up with both coins in his mouth. Houdini changed into a bathing suit and both men’s hands were restrained. They stood on the side of the boat, the coins were tossed, and the men dove headfirst into the shark-infested waters.

After a minute, the native resurfaced, gasping for air. Fifteen seconds later, Houdini came up, feetfirst. When he was pulled onto the deck, with the fins of some very interested sharks circling nearby, he smiled, displaying both coins in his mouth. Both men were freed from their restraints, and Houdini gave the youth both coins. Later, he told some passengers that he simply released one of his cuffs, picked up both coins in his hand, and transferred them to his mouth. When he was asked if he was afraid of the sharks, he replied “yes and no.” He had kept an eye out for them, but if he couldn’t outswim them back, well, he was a fatalist. He had just wanted to demonstrate that he was as good a swimmer as any of those Fiji Islanders.

Houdini had already won three first-place prizes in sports contests onboard the ship. Seventeen days out, he won the Swinging the Monkey contest, which rewarded the passenger who could swing the longest from a rope suspended above the deck. Nobody came close to him in the Skipping Rope contest. If the handkerchief that he had tied around his ankle hadn’t come loose and interfered with the rope, he would have easily surpassed his 439 consecutive jumps. And he won the politically incorrect Whistling Coon contest. To achieve victory, the man had to race across the deck to his female partner, who was holding an envelope with the name of a song in it. He would tear the envelope open, whistle the tune in her ear, and she would write the song title on the envelope. The first man back to the starting point won. Houdini not only won, “I beat Bess out of her prize,” he boasted in his diary.

Houdini caused another ruckus onboard when he raged at the ship officials for awarding the first prize at the Fancy Dress Ball to a fellow passenger instead of Bess. Eschewing the fairy queen costume this trip, Bess got herself up in beautiful stage attire, but the judging committee felt that a dress that had been sewn on the voyage was more original and awarded the seamstress the prize.

Houdini did perform during one of the ship’s concerts. Chief Officer Doorly had interviewed Houdini in his cabin when he was lining up the show. He placed some of the ship’s “irons” on Houdini’s wrists. Houdini slipped his hands under his coat and, later, returned the open cuffs to the officer. Doorly asked Houdini to do a straitjacket escape but the magician begged off, claiming it was too much of an effort. When he had first donned the jacket, it had taken him six hours to effect his escape, he told Doorly. Now he had reduced it to a minute or two, but it was still hard work. They finally compromised on some card magic.

Houdini fully expected to fly again. He was in constant communication with Montraville M. Wood, who was modifying and perfecting his own airplane with a unique gyroscopic stabilizing system. Their correspondence showed Houdini’s penchant for secrecy. After being berated by Houdini for showing a fellow magician some of his letters, Wood meekly noted that the letter in question merely recorded Houdini’s purchase of his Voisin and “what you thought of it.” “Never have I ever spoken of getting letters from you regarding any secret work, let alone showing them,” Wood promised.

Houdini’s plans weren’t exactly secret. At the beginning of August, Houdini attended an auction of the curios from the recently defunct Huber’s Museum. He bought an Egyptian mummy for $3 and spent $6.50 for the first working electric chair. “I made my debut here years ago, at next to nothing a week. I want this chair for sweet sentiment’s sake. It came while I did my first week at Huber’s,” Houdini said. He also told the press that he would fly in America before he went back on tour in England later that month. It doesn’t appear that he attempted a flight, but he did bring the Voisin to England. And after an American named John Moisant broke a propeller on his way to a record Paris to London flight, and was stranded south of London, Houdini wired him a few days after disembarking in Liverpool. “Have 2 complete sets of alum. propellers that I use on my Voisin biplane fitted for an E.N.V. Motor also all kinds spare parts & all sizes of wires if you wish them am pleased to let you have them with my compl so that you can complete your journey.”