Wyman The Wizard
ONE OF THE FINANCIALLY SUCCESSFUL MAGICIANS OF THE HISTORIC GIFT SHOW ERA
By HARRY HOUDINI
Copyright 1919 by Harry Houdini
The name, Wyman the Wizard, means nothing to the present day public, and very little even to the Magician, nevertheless he was a far more than ordinarily successful Magician, and man of business, and his life reflects credit on our mysterical profession.
John W. Wyman, for, perhaps, the greater part of his career was a gift show man. He was absolutely honest personally, and the public always got a square deal at his hands. That the same public, however, after getting a high opinion of the gift show through such men as Wyman was sadly disillusioned by men of the Alleyn type, whose masterpiece of magic consisted of an escape through the back windows with the gate receipts.
The exact date of Wyman's birth is not known, but it occurred at Albany, New York, about the year 1816. I have been unable to learn anything of his earlier years or just when he entered the magical profession. An old friend of his, Mr. H. B. Spackman. of Tuckerton, N, J., says that the Professor never mentioned his parents.
JOHN W. WYMAN
From the Houdini Collection
He began in a very small way, playing small town schoolhouses and the life, to the mystified delight of crowds of children between the ages of eight and eighty, and these minor successes seem to have colored his entire future, for he preferred the small, but certain profits, rather than the gamble of the big cities. Thus we find records of only one engagement in New York City; that was. in 1850, under the management of P. T. Barnum. With this exception, I have it on the authority of Mr. Spackman, that Wyman never had a manager; always conducting his own business affairs, making his own contracts, in fact he was the whole works, chief cook and bottle washer.
His program in the earlier days included Magic, ventriloquism, and Marionettes, but later on he went abroad in search of novelties and returned with a very complete magical outfit, and from that time on he seems to have given much greater prominence to his magic. He also purchased a large part of the apparatus of Anderson, which included a number of the very best tricks of the time.
Readers of that perennial treatise, The Magicians' Own Book will recall an early form of the bullet catching trick which bears the title "Wyman's Gun Trick," but the records show that he was not entitled to this distinction, as that trick was bought from Anderson, and its genesis as a stage trick really dates back to 1784, at which time it was performed at Astley's Circus, in London, having been invented by Atsley himself, who claims in his book, Natural Magic, or Physical Amusements Revealed, by Philip Astley, Riding Master, Westminster Bridge, 1785, to have invented this trick in 1762, when two of his friends fought a duel in Germany, in which he acted as one of the seconds and thus had an opportunity to remove the bullets by the same method used in the early form of the stage trick, and he was enabled by this means, as he writes, "To happily preserve, most probably, the life of one or both of his friends."
Rare 184 Bill from the Houdini Collection
That it was unnecessary to resort to crooked methods in order to succeed in the gift show field is evidenced by the fact that Wyman accumulated a very respectable fortune, as fortunes went in his day, which enabled him to spend the latter years of his life in comfort in a beautiful home. There were a few others whose success stands as a proof that there was always money in magic, if honestly followed, but the majority of those whose life story is familiar to us, either died in want or very close to it. To mention a few at random: Augoston was found dead in the streets of Berlin, practically from starvation; Heubeck was supported by charity; Holden lost everything; John Mahr MacAllister was buried in Potter's Field; H J. Sargent in an infirmary at Leeds. England; the Harrington, of our own days, had his trunks held up in many hotels and died in a Chicago hospital, friendless and forgotten.
But to return to Wyman. Notwithstanding the comparatively recent date of his death, 1881, it seems impossible to obtain anything like a complete history of his life. This is through no fault of Wyman himself, however, as he was a most methodical man, and kept a very complete scrap-book up to the close of his professional career.
After Wyman's death this book came into the possession of J. H. Birch. Jr., whose father was manager of the opera house in Burlington, N. J., for many years. Mr. Birch sent the book to George M. Cohan, and, not having heard of its arrival, concluded that it had best be given to my collection. Upon investigation, however, it was discoveredthat the book had vanished, and Mr. Cohan tells me that he never even heard of it. So that most valuable book is lost, the express company cannot trace it, but perhaps some day it will be discovered for sale in some book shop.
If you find it, please don't forget that it belongs to the writer of this article.
A complete description of Wyman's Stage-setting, as well as a reproduction of one of his handbills, will be found in Kit Clarke's The Story of the Gift Show, in M. U. M., of January, of the present year. In the later years of his professional career he caught the fever of the day for highsounding titles, and billed himself as:
PROF. WYMAN!
Monarch of Magicians, in a Grand Coup d'Etat
in Necromancy and the Magical Art of Scientific
Diablerie.
In the same bill, to a long list of gifts valued at from 50 cents to 50 dollars, he adds the testimonials of many persons who had received building lots in New Jersey. These lots may not have had a great money value, but you may depend on it that the titles were clear, if Honest John Wyman said so.
After his retirement he resided in Philadelphia for a number of years and then removed to Burlington, where he invested quite heavily in real estate, and there died on July 31, 1881. Only his wife and Mr. Spackman were with him in his last moments, and together they took the body to Fall River, Mass., for burial among his wife's relatives.
Wyman is almost unknown to the present generation, but there are still among those whose hair is silvered by the snows of many winters, a few whose pulses quickened at the mention of his name.
Originally pubished in the M-U-M in Vol. 8, No. 72 in New York, March 1919.
