Continuing on with
my blog of the history of magic and the magicians that made it happen, I want
to write about John Henry Anderson, “The Wizard of the North”. Anderson was
born on a tenant farm in 1812, in the north-east part of Scotland, a few miles
from Aberdeen. Unfortunately, his parents died while he was young, and he would
get an apprentice job with a blacksmith. He then became involved with a troop
of actors and would start traveling with them as a call-boy. He stayed with the
action troop for several years as an actor and he knew that he was meant to be
a performer. He loved acting, especially in the dramas of the time. A conjurer
would eventually join the troop. His name was Ingleby, and he sparked the young
actor into learning magic. Anderson spent years trying to work out the secrets
of Ingleby’s magic, and he finally decided it was time to leave the acting
troop and strike out on his own.
By the time
Anderson was seventeen, he was working in the local inns and village town halls
in the north of Scotland. His tour brought him to Brechin, and there he caught
the eyes of a local laird, Lord Panmure. Panmure thought that young Andreson would
be a great magician to entertain his guests at a dinner party in Brechin
Castle. The dinner was a disaster, because the young magician didn’t know the
ins and outs of society and the dinner guests thought he was a fool, until the magician
started to perform his conjuring. The following day he received a 10-pound
banknote (the first he had ever seen) along with a note:
Brechin Castle, 12th March, 1831
Sir, - Your performance last night at Brechin Castle much
delighted myself and party. You far excel any other necromancer that I have ever
seen either at home or abroad.
I am, Sir, yours etc., PANMURE.
Anderson took this letter,
and had it subsequently printed on every poster that he made for years as a
testimonial of his skill, yet he had problems securing larger venues. He
eventually teamed up with another performance troop. He would marry the stage
manager’s daughter and take his young wife on a performance tour of Scotland
and England. During this tour he would take on the mantle of “The Great
Caledonian Magician” and play over 103 nights in Edinburgh and 80 nights in
Manchester. By 1840 he would be appearing at the new Strand theatre and was
known as “Professor Anderson, the Wizard of the North”, a title that he will
keep for the rest of his life.
During his travels, he
would have many ups and downs, as magicians do, but he always found a way to
land on his feet. There is a story that while he was at a masked ball in Russia
he ran into the Tsar and since he didn’t recognize the Tsar he didn’t
apologize. Instead of being sent to Siberia, the Tsar had him entertain the
court a few days later. He then said that the Tsar showed him a magic trick
involving the production of a bowl of water. A trick that Tsar learned from a
tribe known as the Khirgizians, near the Chinese border. Later the Tzar gave
Anderson a robe which Anderson wore on stage. Now, whether this actually
happened is mostly hearsay, but it’s great publicity. It was Anderson’s
greatest trick, the trick of self-promotion, which rivaled that of Houdini
himself. Anderson traveled with his own printing press and townspeople would
wake early in the morning to find posters all over the town, and even the
pavements would be painted with the words “ANDERSON IS COMING”. He even
concocted the story that it was Sir Walter Scott who gave him the moniker of
the “Wizard of the North”. Now that would be grand if Scott hadn’t died while
Anderson was just a child. Sometimes a magician, especially a stage magician,
needs to have more chutzpah than actual skill itself.
Anderson was skilled
indeed, as noted in a letter from Charles Betram, another great Victorian
conjurer commenting on Anderson’s skill in the 1860’s:
Amongst others he performed the great gun trick, the trick
that really made him…I fear that towards the end of his performance my mind was
so confused with the seeming miracles I had seen that I am unable to remember
all the items of his programme. I have never seen any performance so brilliant,
or any stage so lavishly fitted as that of the wizard.
John Herny Anderson
gave the world what it wanted to see in magic and then some. Not only did he master
the Bullet Catch but Anderson is credited with one of the most known tricks in
a magician’s arsenal, that of producing a rabbit out of a hat. James Henry
Anderson died in 1874 at the Fleece hotel in Darlington, County Durham. He was
buried next to his mother. The same year that Anderson died, Erich Weiss was
born in Budapest. Erich Weiss will become the famous magician, Harry Houdini.
Houdini revered Anderson and thought of Anderson as an inspiration. In 1909,
Houdini took over the upkeep of Anderson’s gravesite, which had fallen into
disrepair, and did so until Houdini’s death in 1926.