CHAPTER TWO

MAKING MY WAY IN THE WORLD OF MAGIC

Horace Goldin at the beginning of his carrer

AMERICA in the 'nineties was the country of opportunity. A man might be worth three cents one day and be able to bank a million dollars within a week or two. Success was in the air, and it was a heady draught for any young man.

I was twenty when I left Balthasar, who had given me my first real lessons, and went out to conquer the world all by myself. I had plenty of confidence. I knew my job fairly well after the tour I had made of the small towns playing with Balthasar. My experience as a commercial traveller had made me something of a showman. I knew how to spin a tale. Above all, I was sure that I was going to succeed.

Looking back, I marvel at my own audacity. I had thrown up a safe job and could hardly expect to return to it. If I was "down and out" there was no one who could give me a helping hand. However sympathetic my parents might be, they had their hands full with their family and the business in Nashville; they could not help me much. I had had no real experience in producing my own show and had not enough money to buy effects.

What it all amounted to was that I had to sell myself.

I decided that Washington was the best place to start in, so that was where I went.

The result of the first few applications I made knocked some of the conceit out of me, and I saw that I was not going to become a top-line performer in a day. Magic might be the line which would eventually bring me to success, but at present it was not likely to fill my stomach. I decided that for a while I must look elsewhere for a position and keep plugging away at the magic business in my hours off until I had the "lucky break" which I was convinced would come my way soon.

A drapery store gave me my first occupation in Washington. It was one of those stores which stay in a town for only about three months. They do a roaring trade by somewhat questionable methods for the period of their stay and then they vanish when things become too hot for them.

I learned a great deal while I was there. Even now, when I am influencing a person on the stage so that he does what I ask of him, I reflect that I first learned these methods behind the counter in that Washington drapery store.

That business kept me busy during the day; in the evening I did my real work. I saw that I needed influence if I was to be a success on the stage. I set to work to make influential friends, and I soon succeeded.

Washington, then as now, was one of the social centres in America. There were parties given continually throughout the season by the wives of senators and other important people. I managed to get several engagements for these private entertainments, and added considerably to my experience. My pocket also benefited.

One of my best friends was a Mrs. Winter, then very prominent in political circles. She it was who obtained for me my first public appearance. It was in an entertainment given to the sailors in the navy yard, and my show was by no means the least successful of the turns put on.

For all this activity my main resources were drawn from my work in the drapery store, and when it was announced that they were moving on I was in a quandary. I was not yet in a position to rely only on my magic for my living, so eventually I followed the firm to Philadelphia. There I settled down to serious practising. Every night I stayed up late while I worked at sleight-of-hand tricks. I invented several small tricks, and enlarged my repertoire as much as I could. My resources were limited, and I could only dream of some of the things I would do when I had made my real start in the theatre.

It goes without saying that I haunted the theatres during this apprenticeship of mine. Whenever a conjurer was on I was to be seen in the gallery, and I also haunted the stage door. It was through this habit that I first learned the egg-in-the-bag trick.

While I was in Washington I met Herbert Albini, an Englishman born in Manchester, and a very clever manipulator who held the audience spellbound from the time he came on to the stage until he finished his act with this egg-in-the-bag trick. He was really the inventor of this very clever trick, and it made a great sensation at the time.

I went to see Albini after the show; he received me kindly and during his week's engagement we became friends.

When I arrived at Philadelphia I bought an egg-bag from a man named Yost, a magic-dealer, for a shilling, together with the usual printed instructions, which, after reading once, I threw away. Soon I thought I could do the egg-in-the-bag trick. I practised anywhere, at any time. Yet I knew that I had not Albini's finishing touch, his ease and fluency.

I often performed the trick to perfect strangers, on railway-stations when I was waiting for a train. Still I could not please myself thoroughly.

I met Albini again in New York, and at that time I idolized him as a performer. I got hold of a double-crown lithograph of him and hung it up in my bedroom; I had it there for months. During one of our meetings I told him that I had been practising shadowgraphy and suggested that he come to my room to see what I could do. He agreed.

When he entered my room and saw the lithograph I had hung up he was very much touched, for he realized the great admiration I had for him.

I lit a candle and put the lights out and proceeded for an hour to show him different figures of shadowgraphy with my nimble fingers. He said that he thought I was good and that if he were as good he would show his skill to the public. He then asked me how long I had had the lithograph in my room, and when I told him about a year he was amazed.

"I'd like to do something for you," he said. With that he took a photograph from his pocket and wrote on it, "You are the only man in the world to have my permission to do the egg-in-the-bag trick," and he signed it.

He then took my egg and my bag. "There's the egg and there's the bag. I'm not going to do this trick the ordinary, mug's way. I am going to do it my way."

When he had done it I had to confess that he had baffled me.

"Hold my wrists, then perhaps you'll see."

He went through the trick with my hands round his wrists and my nose right near the opening of the bag. Still I did not guess the secret.

He smiled. "Don't worry about that. I've fooled plenty of experts with that."

Albini then showed me his own version of that famous trick, and that is the one I have had in my repertoire ever since. I have baffled thousands of people with it. Kings and queens have held my wrists while I performed. All are agreed that it is one of the best tricks they have ever seen.

I owe Albini a great debt, and I am sorry to have to say that bad feeling soon spoiled the friendship between us. Some years later, during an engagement at the Great Northern Theatre, Chicago, he tried to stop me. He issued a challenge that I could not do the trick as well as he could. This Mr. Salisbury, the manager of the theatre, persuaded me to take up, offering himself to stand surety for the five-hundred-dollar stake.

When the time came Mr. Salisbury announced the challenge from the stage and placed the money on a table in full view of the audience, who were to be judges of the better performance. Albini was in the audience, but he would not come on the stage to do the trick. He called me a liar and I called him a gentleman, and so we stayed unfriendly for many years.

If he had acted in a friendly way and asked me not to do the trick, I should have been glad to please him. But he was rather fond of a certain beverage, and when he had had too much he acted in a very rough fashion. After all, I had his permission, and I believe I acted rightly in standing up for my rights.

Later on, when the bitterness of the animosity had worn off, we met, and I am glad to say that we became friends again--but not the close friends we had been before.

I learned the egg-in-the-bag trick soon after I had decided to devote myself entirely to magic as my profession. I moved from Philadelphia to Gloucester, New jersey, where there were seven theatres, all giving free shows. I was afraid to try O'Brien's, the best, so I started on a tour of the other six. Disappointment met me in each manager's room. Six theatres did not want a magician. That left O'Brien's.

Summoning up all my confidence, I entered O'Brien's and demanded to see the manager. I was shown into the holy of holies. There sat the fearsome manager, O'Brien himself.

"What do you want?" he snapped.

I told him that I was a magician and that I could be of use in his theatre.

"Let's see your act."

I showed him sleight-of-hand. I showed him the "Dancing Skeleton" which Boldey had taught me.

I showed him a new trick I had invented in which I shot a canary from a pistol into a bird-cage. Not one of these tricks seemed to interest him. He had an air of complete boredom, as if he had seen everything plenty of times before and he could not be expected to take the least interest now.

I decided that I must do something to rouse him from this lethargy. I asked him to take out his hunter watch and to turn the hands round and round as often as he wished.

"Now," I said, "you are quite certain that I can't see the face of the watch?"

He grunted that it was so.

I then took the watch from him, and without opening the case protecting the face I said, "The hands are pointing to twenty minutes past six." He opened the watch and found that I was exactly right.

That really did interest him, and he engaged me on the spot. My wage was to be a dollar a day, and I had to appear to fill the gap between the matinée and the evening performance. My show ran for an hour, and I had to rely entirely on hand-tricks. My newly acquired egg-in-the-bag trick was the great feature of the show.

For three weeks all went well. I was good, and knew I was good. When a summons came for me to go to the manager's office, I went full of hope. This was a big rise, probably.

"Look here, Goldin," said O'Brien, "I'm going to give you the sack."

Somehow or other I managed to ask him why.

"You're too good for this show."

"But, Mr. O'Brien, that's no reason for giving me the sack."

"Oh yes, it is, my son," he told me. "I'm losing money all through having you here. You're so good that people forget to order drinks, and how do you think I run this theatre except by selling drinks? You've got to go."

There was nothing for it but to pick up my things and go. It had been my first big chance, and I was a failure because I was too good.

New York saw me next, for I decided that I must try the big places and see if I could not push my way through the dozens of other aspirants who were besieging managers?

I was lucky straight away and started in a place in South Beach, Long Island. I had to give eight shows a day and for that I got twenty dollars a week.

The theatre was built on the beach, and when the tide was in the waves beat upon the wall behind the stage. During my first five shows the tide was out, but when the sixth show started the waves began their incessant dashing, and my act was inaudible. The audience began to complain, and my act was cut short.

The manager summoned me. When I found I had got the sack again, I was very angry. I did not see why managers should continually break their agreements at my expense. I walked off to consult a lawyer.

His advice was not to take a penny from them. "Don't you worry about the money for those five shows," he said. "We'll get the money for the full period of your engagement."

I never saw that money. I wished afterwards that I had taken the money for the five shows which the manager had offered me.

South Beach is a summer resort, and naturally it was full of schools for the children of the wealthy. My next job was with a Punch-and-Judy man named Oscar Still, who put on shows especially for these schools. He used to advertise the show with placards, which read: "Every scholar who attends will get a rabbit." When the children were inside the hall they would see a notice which read somewhat differently: "Every well-behaved child will be given a rabbit." In practice no rabbits were given away.

I was not in a position where I could pick and choose my employment, and so I helped this fellow with his Punch-and-Judy show. All went well. for a time. We played to small children aged eight and nine, and they thoroughly enjoyed the show and forgot all about the promised rabbit. But we were riding for a fall.

One day we were due to play to a boys' school, and they were anything from twelve to sixteen years old. They came along to the Lyric Hall, Sixth Avenue, Forty-second Street, where we were playing, with the fixed intention of having a live rabbit each. When it became obvious to them that they were not to have even a rabbit amongst them, they made it pretty clear that we were to suffer for the lack.

They stormed the stage, and when that happened I decided that my presence was not absolutely essential. I took to my legs, and a number of the boys, entering into the spirit of the chase, started after me. "Now," I decided, "I've to decide between a good run and a good hiding." I had the good run all right.

Next day I set out to find my employer. I asked at his lodgings, but they had not seen him all day. I visited one or two restaurants where I thought he might be. No one had seen him. I began to be weary through looking for him.

Then I decided to try the hall. There again no one had seen anything of him since the day before. I wandered into the building thinking I might see what sort of a mess the boys had made of our show.

There was my employer standing in the middle of the floor, his clothes covered with dust, his whole appearance most woebegone.

"Hullo," I said. "Where have you been hiding yourself? I've been looking all over the town for you."

"My God!" he said. "I was so dead scared that I got underneath the stage, and there I've been the last twenty-four hours."

That experience convinced me that I was wasting my talents on Mr. Oscar Still, and I decided to try my luck with the museums.

New York was full of these strange places at that time. People seemed to have a passion for the unusual and the fantastic, and all the queer people and misshapen animals in the world seemed to congregate in these museums. Magicians were taken on as well, to give variety to the entertainment.

The Globe Museum, where I eventually found a Position, was typical of them all. The floor was covered with platforms, on each of which there was a freak. I was engaged to take my place on one of these platforms, to do my conjuring tricks. I had to give from fifteen to twenty-five performances a day, and for this I received a salary of from ten to twelve dollars a week.

When I applied, for this post I found that there was another applicant, a young fellow named Houdini. My experience as a commercial traveller and behind the counter in drapery stores stood me in good stead, and I convinced the manager that I was the better man. After that Houdini bore me a grudge, and he was constantly trying to do me harm. At one time he actually ran a paper for the purpose of "roasting" me.

This grudge was intensified by an incident which happened some years later. The manager of Keith's Theatre, Providence, Rhode Island, splashed the town with placards. "SEE HORACE GOLDIN. KELLAR, HERMANN, CHING-LING-FOO, AND HOUDINI OUTDONE." Houdini thought that this was my work, although I knew nothing at all about it. For fifteen years he refused to speak to me when we met. Then, at a meeting of the National Vaudeville Association in New York, Houdini passed me when I was in conversation with the very manager from Providence. I thought it was time I tried to stop this silly feud.

"Look here, Houdini," I said, "what's the matter with you?"

"You know perfectly well what is the matter," he answered.

"Certainly I don't," I told him.

"A man who bills himself as better than me can hardly expect to be my friend," he said.

At that the manager chipped in.

"If you mean that placard in Providence, Houdini," he said, "that was my work. Goldin knew nothing at all about it."

That eased things for a while, but I cannot say that Houdini and I were ever warm friends. For all that, I have the greatest respect for his memory. He was certainly a very fine artist.

To return to the Globe Museum: I was given a platform between the Girl with Six Thumbs and the Half-Man, Half-Woman. This latter was an ingenious fraud. It was, of course, a man. He had a disfigured limb, which could be made to look like a woman's leg. He placed an artificial breast under his tights and there was the Half-Man, Half-Woman.

At that time William Morris, later to be famous as an impresario, was working for an agent named Lehmann in offices on the corner of Fourteenth Street. I ran into him outside the museum one day.

"Hello, Goldin," he said. "You working here?"

I told him I was.

"Like a better job?"

"Of course."

"I can get you a job at ten bucks a week, playing with Lyman H. Howe. He's at Wilkesborough just now."

Lyman H. Howe was to be quite a great man later. He was very successful with motion pictures when the idea was still new, and he made a fortune in a very short time out of travelogues. At the time of which I am writing he was touring the country with a new invention, the gramophone.

When I arrived at Wilkesborough I found that Howe was playing a dozen records, and that made up the first half of the show. He wanted me to fill the second half. We had a long talk, and at last he agreed to put up the money for the apparatus I should need. I agreed to select and build it. I was to have an assistant for the road show, and a very good assistant Jacobs turned out to be.

The road show was a wash-out. The gramophone idea did not seem to catch on. At the end of two months I was owed seventy-five dollars, and my assistant had not seen a single cent since the beginning of the tour. We both felt that we had had enough of playing for nothing.

I tackled Howe about it. I put it to him: "What about our money?"

"Now, I'm sure sorry about that little matter," he told me. "I'd pay you today only I'm in a spot of trouble. That adviceman of mine has gone on the booze again and he's left the advertisements in a barber's shop. But just you wait until I have another lot printed and then I'll pay you the whole lot, and Jacobs as well."

That sounded a pretty tale. Jacobs and I put our heads together and decided that we had had enough. It was Jacobs who had the bright idea.

We were in a small town in Pennsylvania at the time, and when we stole out of our lodgings into the snow-covered streets at four o'clock in the morning there was no one about. At the theatre we selected tricks to the value of seventy-five dollars and left a note for Mr. Lyman H. Howe saying that we had taken our wages and hoped that he'd have a pleasant tour without us.

By five o'clock we were at the railway-station, having carried the heavy cases through the snow by ourselves. We had no money to buy the tickets, but Jacobs, who was always a most resourceful man, assured me that it would be all right.

"Don't you worry, now, Horace," he said. "I'll fix it."

When the train arrived he rushed on to the platform as if he had not had time to buy the tickets. He threw the trunks into the baggage-van and then, calling on me to follow, jumped into the coach.

Naturally I was nervous as to what would happen when the conductor arrived, but Jacobs was quite imperturbable. He called the man aside and whispered in his ear. I thought he looked at me somewhat apprehensively, but, however that may be, we arrived in New York safe and sound. I have never discovered what it was Jacobs said.

We stood on New York's pavements and counted our money. That did not take us long. I had ten cents, and Jacobs had nothing.

"Don't you worry," said Jacobs in his usual fashion; "just you go along to the Bowery and buy two glasses of beer. There's a place there which gives you a free lunch if you buy two glasses of beer. I'll be along about three o'clock."

I did as he suggested, and sure enough he arrived on the stroke of three.

"Good news," he said, as soon as he saw me. "I've met a man who wants us to put on a show for the soldiers of the 69th Regiment."

"And where may they be?" I asked.

"Over at Columbus Avenue."

"I've got seven cents left," I told him. "How are we going to get to Columbus Avenue

"Maybe we could walk," he said.

I was not at all keen on that idea, but when he told me that they were serving a big dinner, I agreed to go. So I had another opportunity to put on my own show. This time it was to be a lucky appearance.

When we arrived at the barracks I had practically no effects, for we had not been able to carry the trunks we had brought from Wilkesborough. I had a great idea in the middle of that long walk, and it was this idea which made the show a success.

I walked on to an empty stage, and I carried nothing with me. By the time I had finished, the stage was covered with junk: flags, handkerchiefs, and the like.

When the news of that show spread offers began to come in. I had six or seven offers for engagements at ten dollars a night, and one was for seventy-five. I began to feel that Horace Goldin might be making his way at last.

I practised terribly hard in those days. If I was walking down the streets I would move my hands about, keeping them supple and performing imaginary sleight-of-hand tricks in my pockets. I practised in barbers' shops, and often the assistant would stop completely astonished when he looked at my hand and

saw four billiard-balls where only one had been before In a café I would take up a glass and do a trick with it. When I was lighting a cigarette I would make the match-box disappear, swallow the cigarette, and then take it out of my ear.

These little habits of mine led to one amusing incident. It was in a train, and the gentleman opposite me had been drinking rather too well. Almost unconsciously I did the trick with the match-box and cigarette, not realizing that anyone was watching me.

Suddenly I heard a startled exclamation from the gentleman opposite. "Suffering Jupiter!" he muttered. "I've got 'em again. It's that damn' rye that does it."