Lovecraft first saw the Handcuff King on stage circa 1898, and she would have been on stage 27 years later when Howard and Sonia Lovecraft saw them at the Hippodrome in New York in 1925 ( Letters to Family & Family Friends 1.238). From then on, she would be his partner and assistant in his magical act as well as his wife ( The Secret Life of Houdini 30-31).īess was no doubt Houdini’s assistant when H. After a very brief courtship, Bess and Harry would be married. In 1894, stage magician Theodore “Dash” Hardeen of the Brothers Houdini act, arranged a blind date with two of the sisters for himself and his brother Erich…better known by his stage name, Harry Houdini. Her father died when she was young, and she worked at a brother-in-law’s tailor shop, then as a seamstress in a traveling circus, where she joined a song-and-dance act called the Floral Sisters with the name Bess Raymond. Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner was born in Brooklyn in 1876, the daughter of Roman Catholic German immigrants.
Yet she was there from the beginning of Lovecraft’s relationship with Harry Houdini, and she would be there at the end, her final word a brief telegram. Most readers overlook the fact that Bess Houdini was briefly a Lovecraftian character-even if mentioned only briefly and in passing. From that point I proposed to visit the principal historical localities of lower Egypt before leaving finally for Australia.
A liberal time being allowed for the trip, I determined to make the most of it in the sort of travel which chiefly interests me so accompanied by my wife I drifted pleasantly down the Continent and embarked at Marseilles on the P.
In January, 1910, I had finished a professional engagement in England and signed a contract for a tour of Australian theatres. Lovecraft to Frank Belknap Long,, Selected Letters 1.311-312 It seems that once Houdini was in Cairo with his wife on a non-professional pleasure trip, when his Arab guide became involved in a street fight with another Arab.
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