CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

ALL CONJURERS ARE CRAZY!

IN the summer Of 1936 I attended a dinner given in my honour by members of the Magicians' Club, under the chairmanship of my good friend Will Goldston, the greatest authority on magic in the world today. There I heard some very complimentary speeches about myself, one of them by a former President of the Club, Louis Gautier. In the course of his speech he mentioned it as his opinion that my Indian Rope Trick was not up to the standard of my other great illusions.

When I rose to reply I thanked him for all the nice things he had said about me and for the information he had given me about the Indian Rope Trick.

"I am like a very sick man," I went on: "I am always glad to take medicine." And then I told them of Allan Dale's criticism when I was appearing at Coster and Beil's, New York: criticism which led me to develop a new silent act and so brought about my first big success.

"You must excuse my lack of modesty," I said, "if I venture to agree that my great illusions such as 'A Woman Sawn in Half' are very good indeed. In that trick alone fifteen new principles are applied, and I believe that it would be very difficult to find anything as good. The Indian Rope Trick I believe to be a worthy successor to those other illusions.

"Throughout my forty years' experience on the stage I have made it a point never to try to please both the conjurers and the general public. That is why I am not unduly worried by tonight's criticism. If I can please the public, then I say 'To hell with the conjurers'. To be brutally frank, I believe ninety per cent of them are envious.

"Further, I am inclined to believe the theory put forward by my friend Carl Brenner, of Philadelphia--that all conjurers are crazy." Then I went on to tell this story.

I met Carl Brenner some years ago, and in the course of conversation he told me that he seriously believed that all conjurers were demented. I told him that I found that hard to believe.

"Well," he said, "you know that the half-moon affects people who are mentally deranged? There will be a half-moon in seven days' time. I want you to come with me to a shop where they sell everything conjurers want. You will see crowds of them there, illusionists, crystal-gazers, hypnotists; and none of them will know what he wants, and they will all be acting in the maddest fashion."

I went with him to that shop, and I found that he was perfectly right. It looked like a crazy market-scene. There were men feverishly turning over the stock, or making strange hypnotic motions in corners. Some of them were talking together in a queer jargon. Some were kneeling down; some were sitting; nearly all had their coats off. None of them seemed to have any idea of presentation. It was as if they had been smitten by some disease.

In fact, I think conjuring, amongst amateurs at least, is some form of disease. Since that experience in Philadelphia I have kept my eyes open and I have found confirmation of the theory everywhere. Lawyers, doctors, and business men are all affected. As soon as they hear I am a magician they say, "Have you ever seen this?", and then they start the most terrible conjuring.

I was once playing in the town of Carlsbad, in Czechoslavokia, where one may drink eighteen different kinds of water. I had a four weeks' engagement there and I decided that I might as well see if the water would do me any good. I went to see a doctor to ask him which water was the most likely to be beneficial to me.

When I arrived in his waiting-room I found there were fifteen other patients ahead of me, and I settled down to a long wait. But no sooner did the doctor hear that I was there than he sent for me.

He shook me warmly by the hand, and then he showed me a book about magic which contained a photograph of me. Next he opened a drawer and took out eleven tricks, which he began to do one after another.

That went on for one and a half hours, and I began to feel very sorry for the poor people who were waiting outside. I managed to interrupt him, and suggested that I come back the next day.

At our next interview precisely the same thing happened. I was shown one bad trick and then another bad trick. I began to be sorry that I had ever let it be known in that doctor's house that I was Horace Goldin, the magician.

I visited that doctor constantly throughout my four weeks' stay in Carlsbad, and never once did I manage to ask him about the water I should drink--not until near the end of my visit, when he assured me that I was quite all right and that there was no need for me to have any of the water.

I did not look to see, but I very much suspect that there was a half-moon at that time!

I want to end this book with a story of a conjurer who was not so crazy after all, a story of a magician who had to wait thirty years to win a bride.

It was in San Francisco when I was twenty-one that I first met my wife. She was then studying with Fred Belasco, the brother of the great producer, David Belasco, and was preparing to become an actress on the legitimate stage. I was topping the bill at the Orpheum, San Francisco, but had no hopes of attracting this young lady's attention. For all that, I fell in love with her at first sight.

Magic or no magic, I could not find a method of persuading Miss Helen Leighton to look favourably on my suit. It was not that she showed any dislike to me; she was not interested in variety artistes. I was just another man and of no great importance in her scheme of things. I asked her to join my show, but she refused.

I found out one of her weaknesses--she was interested in card-games. I showed her different pretty ways of shuffling a pack of cards. She was interested in that, but she did not seem any more interested in me.

My life as a trouper took me away from San Francisco and I lost touch with Miss Leighton. I did not forget her, however, and was overjoyed when we met again in Chicago years after, in 1914. I proposed again, and again I was rejected. Eight years after that I tried again, and still I was rejected.

You will have gathered from this that I was very patient and very persistent. I would not take "No" for an answer, and at last I was rewarded. Miss Leighton travelled to England as manager to Ula Sharon in 1927--the dancer who made such a hit with Jack Buchanan in "Sunny"--and they appeared at the Palace, Manchester, while I was at the Hippodrome.

I took every opportunity of pressing my suit. If any other man spoke to Miss Leighton you may be sure that I was there, distracting her attention, hoping to shine by contrast. I must confess that I was thoroughly miserable throughout the engagement in Manchester.

But towards the close of the week I proposed again, and this time I was accepted. I had wooed for thirty years and had been successful!

Neither my wife nor myself has any reason to regret that day. She has been a very real helpmate to me, and is always interested in the life of the stage, in my performances, and in my new tricks and experiments. She has helped me in the execution of many of my illusions and she comes to look upon some of them as "her tricks", for she knows all about them and delights to perform them, unseen by the audience.

I can think of no better close to this book than a tribute to my wife, a magician of magicians, I often think, and a wife in a million.

THE END