Houdini’s exhibitions in Rosehill were being monitored by George Taylor, the founder and secretary of the Aerial League of Australia. Taylor was a fascinating shadowy character who was in the forefront of promoting the military applications of both aviation and wireless technology in Australia. Trained as a builder, he worked as a cartoonist for a periodical named Punch in the 1890s and then segued into town planning. A pupil of Lawrence Hargrave, the Australian who had designed the box kite that had been modified into the Voisin, Taylor was the first man on the continent to fly a heavier-than-air machine, navigating a glider on December 5, 1909. Earlier that year, on April 28, he had founded the Aerial League of Australia in Sydney, a pressure group intent on promoting the military applications of aviation.
While pressing his aviation theme, Taylor also founded the Wireless Institute of Australia on March 11, 1910. Two weeks later, on March 28, while Houdini was in Australia, Taylor transmitted the first military wireless signal in Australia. His work on both aviation and wireless communication earned him a position as lieutenant in the Australian Intelligence Corps.
According to the Australian National Aviation Museum, Houdini brought his Voisin to Australia at the invitation of Taylor’s newly formed aerial league, which was convinced that flights by Houdini could be of enormous help in promoting their military aviation agenda.
If Digger’s Rest was the dress rehearsal, away from the prying eyes of critics, Houdini’s flights at the Rosehill racetrack were a spectacle. Before cheering crowds that filled the grandstand, Houdini began a week’s worth of demonstrations somewhat inauspiciously. His first trial went well, but on his second attempt to ascend, the plane just hugged the ground, mystifying Brassac. Undaunted, Houdini made a third attempt and got airborne. After some harrowing lists to the left and right, Houdini straightened out the Voisin, but his landing was so rough that he was literally thrown from his seat, landing on his hands and knees some distance from the machine. Luckily, both Houdini and the plane were intact and he made many other successful flights during that week.
Houdini’s racetrack engagement was extended into May. And the publicity was exactly what Taylor and his aerial league had hoped for. “People who scoff at the idea of warfare in the air ought to have been at Rosehill race track on Sunday. Shortly after noon, when, with a roar like a thousand maniacs released, the Voisin biplane, which had been tugging at its moorings for a week in vain endeavor to break away, was released by command of the pilot, Harry Houdini,” The Daily Telegraph reported. After a vivid description of Houdini’s flight, the paper noted that “men tossed up their hats; women grew hysterical and wept for sheer excitement. A hundred men rushed toward the biplane, pulled the happy aviator from his seat, and carried him, shoulder-high, mid deafening cheers and salvos.”
Houdini had been earlier lauded by Punch for raising the consciousness of the dangers of aviation advances. “Here is Houdini, who is an amateur, a beginner. He has taught himself to fly here amongst us, and shown us what his machine can do. He may be doing it for advertisement; he may be doing it out of mere love of adventure. The reason does not matter…When his great machine was circling and whirring round like a gigantic bird, the great thought was ‘What of the future?’ We in Australia are remote from the great world centres. We are peculiarly exposed to attack…We are building ships and training men…We are making no provision to defend ourselves against an enemy in the air. Yet the battles of the future will go to whoever is strongest in the air.”
On April 29, Taylor and his aerial league honored Houdini at a special meeting at Town Hall. The crowd had been warmed up with a screening of Houdini’s flights, so the magician, who had rushed over directly from his show across town, entered the hall to a standing ovation. He was presented with the trophy, a scroll in the form of a plane and a wooden plaque with a winged bas-relief globe that depicted the Australian continent.
Houdini was the perfect spokesman for the wonders of flight. “Aviation is the most wonderful thing in the world today,” he told The Brisbane Daily Mail. “To fly in an aeroplane is an experience worth living for.” Summing up his flying experiences down under in a periodical Taylor published called Building, Houdini wrote, “I was proud to fly here first, proud for myself and proud because I speak the same tongue as Australians, because I come from that great United States that was British born.”
Houdini’s mission was a great success. It put the debate about flying on the front pages of the newspapers. The next year, the Aerial League of Australia published a twenty-page booklet by Lieutenant George Taylor (Australian Intelligence Corps), titled “Wanted at Once! An Aerial Defence Fleet for Australia—A National Call to Australians.” Peppered with pictures of both Taylor and Houdini flying, it again warned of the threat to Australians from a Japan that was on the brink of modernizing an air force. All this agitation worked. Australia’s minister of defence, George Pearce, visited the United Kingdom in 1911, and after conferring with colleagues at Brooklands, the home of British aviation, decided to set up an aviation school in Australia under his ministry. He ordered four planes from the British government and chose two instructors to begin preparations for what would become Australia’s air force.
The Aerial League appreciated Houdini’s work. From the collection of Dr. Bruce Averbook
By 1916, the newly formed Australian Flying Corps was accomplished enough to send a complete flying unit to fight alongside the English in the Middle East. By 1917, three more squadrons were fighting with distinction in France. Its Third Squadron was engaged with the German air force the day that Manfred von Richthofen, “The Red Baron,” was killed, a devastating blow to the morale of the German air corps. Even up to the last day of the war, the No. 2 squadron of the AFC was bombing the German army, which was retreating on the Western Front. “These pilots came down and fairly strafed the Hun, they bombed him and attacked him with machine guns from only fifty feet, flying amongst the tree tops; they were magnificent, they reveled in this work which was great military value to all,” General Trenchard, the commander of the Royal Flying Corps, remarked. All told, 460 officers and 2,234 Australians served in the AFC during the war, and 178 were killed, a substantially smaller casualty rate than most armies. Houdini’s inspiring flights over Australia had made a contribution to helping the Allies win World War I.
By 1910, Houdini had been at his game almost twenty years, and it was finally taking its toll. On his arrival in Australia, reporters were shocked to see a thirty-six-year-old whose hair was turning gray, an outward manifestation of the battering of both his body and his psyche. Perhaps it was because of the remoteness of Australia; perhaps it was with the perspective that was gained by being one of the few human beings on the planet who had soared like a real-life Icarus into the sky; maybe it was just homesickness, but Houdini seemed more vulnerable than ever when he sat down with a reporter from The Daily Telegraph in Sydney. It seemed like he wasn’t as much answering questions as unburdening his soul.
“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!”
14
The Emperor of Sympathy-Enlisters
IT 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.
The Secret Life of Houdini Page 29