HOUDINI THE ENIGMA, INTERMEZZO

Houdini with Doyle & family, Atlantic City 1922

We promised last week to provide part two of Arthur Conan Doyle's long and revealing essay on his friend Houdini. While continuing our research on these two friends & geniuses we ran across the following - a profound meditation on fear and intuition. We thought it would make a good bridge to part two, which we again promise for next week.

 I had an interesting talk to-day with Houdini about his wonderful powers. Very naturally he gives nothing away, for a trick explained loses its virtue.

I am quite sure that if the Davenport Brothers had done their performance as if it were a conjuring trick, and never told the honest and unpopular truth that it was of psychic origin, they would have amassed a comfortable fortune and been far wiser from a worldly point of view — which, after all, is not the highest wisdom when the end of the story comes to be told.

Houdini has done marvellous leaps from high buildings, and on one occasion a spring from one aeroplane to another in mid-air. He is sustained, he says, by his perfect confidence that he really can do it. "It all comes as easy as stepping off a log."

But when he stands above some awful place from which he will spring he has to wait patiently — sometimes for many minutes — until something within him tells him that the time is ripe for his effort. 

This, he says, is universal among all men who do such stunts. If you don't wait for that moment you "have about as much chance as a celluloid dog in Hell."

He was tempted once to trust himself instead of his unseen guides, and then he nearly broke his neck.

"You stand there," he said, "swallowing the yellow stuff that every man has in him. Then at last you hear the voice, and you jump." 

It may be the subconscious self which assures itself that all is well. It may be spiritual, but the fact is worth recording. If you jump into water from a great height, even a floating match may cause a wound.

-- from Our American Adventure, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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HOUDINI THE ENIGMA