 |
| Nizhni Novgorod - an army is raised to battle the Tartars |
As faithful readers know, we’ve spent many years researching Houdini’s time in Russia. He and Bess lived and worked there from May through September 1903. Our long-awaited historical novel about this Russian adventure, Houdini Unbound, will be out soon, God willing (lately, we’ve learned to say this frequently).
The last two weeks of Houdini's tour were spent in Nizhny Novgorod, a medieval city on the Volga River 300 miles from Moscow. In Houdini’s day it was the commercial center of the Russian Empire, and the site of the world’s premier international trade fair.
 |
| Main building of the international trade fair. |
According to Jules Verne, even in the 1800s the fair did a hundred million U.S. dollars worth of business every year, despite the atmosphere of a nomadic bazaar in which traders of all nations set up makeshift posts to hawk their goods:
“Each group of these booths, of all sizes and shapes, formed a separate quarter particularly dedicated to some special branch of commerce. There was the iron quarter, the furriers' quarter, the woolen quarter, the quarter of the wood merchants, the weavers' quarter, the dried fish quarter, etc. Some booths were even built of fancy materials, some of bricks of tea, others of masses of salt meat—that is to say, of samples of the goods which the owners thus announced were there to the purchasers—a singular, and somewhat American, mode of advertisement.”
-- J. Verne, Michael Strogoff; Or, The Courier of the Czar
Houdini’s writings from Nizhni, in the Sphinx and the NY Dramatic Mirror, are colorful and charming and they have driven the Russian Houdiniphiles crazy. We've posted previously on their tracking down details about Houdini's Russian nemesis, Robert Lenz.
 |
| Houdini's arch-rival in Russia, Robert Lenz |
Our Russian comrades have been trying to trace Harry's description of a certain ‘rounder,’ a professional card sharp who made the rounds of Nizhni's innumerable gambling halls.
 |
| Gambling club at the fairgrounds. |
Houdini showers the Unknown Rounder with praise:
“According to the passport of one young man playing here he is not allowed to play cards, for he has the reputation of being a 'crooked card player.' I have seen his card work and he does some nice card-sharping tricks, though I have witnessed better; but for nerve, he's a champion, and that I admire.”
Calling him “a man of undoubted interest to the history of domestic illusion,” stalwarts of the Russian magical fraternity set out to find the name of this man who had so impressed the great Houdini. As
so often happens in this esoteric work, they were unable to find anything but blind alleys and red herrings for many years. Then came along one Mr. Andrei Fedorov, who published his tiny earthquake in the Russian blog "Conquering Houdini."
Honestly, I did not expect to restore the name of an unknown Russian gambler - it seemed raw data was very scarce, almost impossible to find. But, as often happens, it came about by accident.
One day, looking through a book by Anne Nekrylova, Russian Urban Folk Festivals, Entertainment & Spectacle in the XIX to XX Centuries, I came across an interesting phrase on page 174:
"In Nizhny Novgorod there was unprecedented interest in a 'curious sessions' gambler, a certain Dmitriev: he demonstrated all card-sharping techniques without revealing them. As he told the Orlovsky Herald, he could not enlighten anyone in the audience who might have evil inclinations."
"It was like an electric shock," Mr. Fedorov wrote, describing a sensation we know well. "But it required validation." Fedorov combed Moscow's libraries for the appropriate copy of the Herald. On page two, under the heading "Miscellany," he found the title "Curious Sessions." Quoting from the article, he writes:
In Nizhny Novgorod have begun sessions of one Dmitriev. These sessions are so interesting, new, and most importantly instructive! Dmitriev exposes swindling gamblers. When you see and hear Dmitriev, you leave in amazement. Up to what high art cheating has been brought!
Mr. Fedorov has pursued his investigations and remains fairly confident that this Dmitriev is the same man Houdini admired. For our part, we admire Dmitriev (though we're sure he's a sticky second compared to Darwin Ortiz or Ricky Jay), but we're much more impressed by our fellow Houdiniphile, Mr. Fedorov.
RELATED:
WHO WAS AQUAMARINE?
AT THE RUSSIAN CIRCUS
BESS IN RUSSIA
HOUDINI, RUSSIA, 1912
HOUDINI IN RUSSIA, 1913
HOUDINI'S RUSSIAN ENEMY
HOUDINI & ORSON WELLES
HOUDINI AT THE YAR
HOUDINI IN MOSCOW
HOUDINI THE SPY
No comments:
Post a Comment