The accusatory finger from the strange man with the square beard nearly stuck right into Houdini's eye! Our scrappy hero eventually gave it back twice as hard to the man who became his archenemy in the summer of 1903, Robert Lenz (aka Roberta, aka Lentz).
We were never so grateful to our Russian professors at the University of Michigan as this week, which we spent looking through various Lenzes of the last century. Who was Robert Lenz? Why did he and Harry hate each other?
As to the first question: he looks a lot like his caricature above, the guy whose beard is tickling ancient Russian script that reads "Roberta Lentz."
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| Robert Lenz, 1849 - 1912 |
According to information pieced together from various Russian, French, German and Iranian (!) sources, Lenz was a regular at the famous Nizhni-Novgorod World's Fair since the year 1871. That was the year his brother-in-law, the Persian conjuror Mohammed Ismail, fell ill and died.
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| One of the casinos at Nizhni-Novgorod, c. 1903, the year Houdini performed there. |
Lenz was a Persian by birth, it seems. His middle name was Ismail. He acquired German name and nationality when his father became a croupier in a German casino.
From 1871 to 1896 he was, according to Russian historians, court conjuror to the Shah of Persia.
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| Nasreddin Shah and the royal family at the Albert Hall, London 1889 |
During this same period he perfected his Russian and his magic act, crisscrossing the Russian Empire from Siberia to the Crimea to the Caucausus. He performed in Persian costume in the provinces, and in a suit in the cities. Among other things he did a "black art" act, in which he caused audience members in the front rows to disappear!
In the Memoirs of a Russian Nobleman, Anatol Kotenev recalls him as a Persian, not a Russian, artist:
"I remember the performance by Persian magician Robert Lenz. His doves, flying out of his pocket, had been an amazement to me...."
This performance took place in Port Arthur, on the Yellow Sea, sometime between 1900 and 1904. The timing is interesting because that was the moment Russia was building its naval forces on the Yellow Sea for its impending war with Japan. Could one suppose that Lenz was a secret agent, working for the Persians? Or perhaps the Germans? Or the Russians themselves? Or all three?
That would explain why Lenz was on hand at Harry's escape from the Siberian prison wagon, in the cartoon above. He was at least a part-time agent of the secret police, like those gawkers looking through the fence. He was tasked to explain how Houdini escaped, and he could not.
Houdini himself wrote that the hatred began with Lenz, from jealousy over Harry's success with the Russian royal family following his triumphal performances at the Yar (which Harry misidentifies as "Establishment Yard"):
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| From Houdini on Magic |
The above extract, incidentally, should clear up the controversy in the blogosphere over Harry's friendship with Grand Duke Sergius, aka Sergei Alexandrovich. He was indeed the military governor of Moscow, and it was indeed he who forbade Jews to live or work there without special permission. He was assassinated, as Houdini notes above, in 1905. But in fact he did befriend Harry in 1903, for reasons which we will make clear in future posts, and explore in detail in our upcoming historical novel THE ESCAPE ARTIST: Harry Houdini in Russia.
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(Sources: London Graphic, magicpedia.ru, Houdini on Magic, Memoirs of a Russian Nobleman, Magicians Ancient & Modern [Vadimova & Trivas])
Sensational work here! I've always wondered about that cartoon.
ReplyDeleteThanks, John. The cartoon first appeared in the Courant, and was then captioned in English by Houdini, according to the Russian historians.
ReplyDelete