With the popularity of the current television series,
Houdini (The History Channel), I thought I would mention one of
Harry’s predecessors. Robert Heller was a Victorian-era magician. He also
happened to be an idol of Harry Houdini’s. Houdini, who reached his prime after
1900, referred to Heller as the most versatile magician who ever
lived.
Robert Heller (1826 – 1878), whose real name was William Henry
Palmer, is buried in Philadelphia’s Mount Moriah Cemetery (on the Yeadon, PA
side). I visited his grave last year. Doesn’t sound like much of a feat, given
the fact that I only live ten miles away! However, for many years, his
headstone was missing. Not the act of a conjurer, but rather ground subsidence,
or maybe vandalism. A group of magic historians had been trying to locate it
for the past several years, no doubt to pay homage to the person who
single-handedly popularized theatrical magic in America.
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| Houdini at Heller's grave, Mount Moriah (ref.) |
Around the time (2011) that the Friends of Mount Moriah
Cemetery, Inc. (
FOMMCI) began restoration efforts at this massive, formerly
abandoned cemetery (the largest cemetery in all of Pennsylvania, at 380 acres),
interest in Heller’s grave was renewed. The grave had actually been lost and
found and lost and found a number of times since Heller’s death in 1878. Harry
Houdini himself found it around 1910 (here’s a photo of him standing next to
it). After that, it disappeared (fell over and was covered with weeds) until Donna
Morelli found it again over a hundred years later, in 2013.
Donna (on Facebook,
The Haunt of Mount Moriah) is a board member of the
Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery, Inc. After
running across the photo of Houdini next to Heller's grave on the Internet, she and other volunteers located the plot through burial records and old plot maps (Section 135, Lot 189). The
section of the cemetery in which Heller’s grave resides looked like this at the
time (see above photo, which I borrowed from Dean Carnegie’s blog, “
The Magic Detective”).
In the fall of 2013, Donna and Board Treasurer Ken Smith cut
back all the weeds and trees around the grave, and raised Heller’s headstone
from the earth. Section 135 is an area of the cemetery that had probably not
been maintained by the previous cemetery owners since the 1960s. Now it has been cut back, cleared of weeds and is regularly mowed. (You can see the current state of each section in this
landscape plot map; Section 135 is at far right, center.) In
fact the
FOMMCI, with its thousands of volunteers on regularly-scheduled
cleanup days, are only able to keep about 25% of the 380-acre cemetery grounds
maintained (this will change soon, as cemetery ownership is expected to be transferred from the defunct original association to a new corporation).
A few weeks after Heller’s headstone was raised and reset, I
visited the grave site. Ken Smith had conscientiously cleared a path the width
of a car lane back from the main road of the cemetery to the outer reaches of
the northernmost end so people could gain access to the site. Which is not to
say I did not have some difficulty finding it! A plot map is wonderful (you can
see them on the
FOMMCI website), but it’s not very easy to get your bearings in
an old overgrown cemetery. For one thing, section markers may be missing or
hidden by weeds so you cannot even tell where the corner of a section is! Once
you’re in a section, you need to count out the plots to get to your
destination. That said, if the entire section is overgrown or grave markers are
missing, the task becomes exceedingly difficult.
The northern end of Mount Moriah is so overgrown currently that if
not for the old roads bordering the sections, it would be impossible to guess
where one section began or ended. Turned out that I initially mistook Section
132 for 135 and spent an hour crashing through a dense thicket of small trees and
eight-foot tall Japanese knotweed stalks looking for a headstone the shape of
the one in the Houdini photo. I didn’t realize at the time that Ken had cleared
a path directly to the Heller headstone – you couldn’t actually see Section 135
from 132 through the thicket. Bear in mind that I was there in the fall, when visibility through the foliage is at its best!
After some persistence, however, I located Section 135. In a
small cleared area of 135 bordering Section 137, I found the stone in
question. It really is like finding buried treasure, when you find a grave
marker that no one has seen for decades or more. When I also realized that I
was standing in Harry Houdini’s footsteps, I had to set up my camera and take a
picture. I must say it gave me an odd feeling, like it was standing in a sacred place. I
suppose all graves are, or should be, anyway.
It is interesting to note that Houdini himself was dismayed
at the condition of the cemetery, and especially Heller’s grave, when he
visited around 1910. At that time Mount Moriah had been in existence for 55
years. Apparently, conditions were bad at that point. By the 1960s, cemetery conditions
worsened, and reached a deplorable state in 2011 when the FOMMCI took over and
began to organize massive clean ups and restoration events.
So why all the fuss about clearing Heller’s grave? Who ever
heard of him, anyway? Isn’t Houdini the superstar? Well, yes, but everything
has a history, including magic as popular entertainment. In the blog,
The Magic Detective, author Dean Carnegie offers:
“What affect did Heller have on the world? For one,
according to drama and theatrical people of the time [1860-1870s], it was
Heller that put conjuring in a new light for American audiences. In the way
that Robert Houdin modernized magic for his period by changing his costume and
bringing magic indoors, Heller did a similar thing in America by adding other
elements such as comedy and music. I'm sure his affect was felt all over the
globe when he performed.”
Robert Houdin? Who was he and why does that name sound so much like “Houdini?”
Harry Houdini was in fact the stage name of one Ehrich Weiss. Like William
Henry Palmer, who adopted the stage name “Robert Heller,” Weiss
changed his name to “Harry Houdini.” The name "Houdini" was a nod to the French magician,
Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, who was
famous in the generation prior to Houdini’s. Apparently Robert-Houdin was quite influential, as Robert Heller actually changed
professions in 1848 from professional musician to professional
magician after
seeing Robert-Houdin perform! (In 1874, when Houdini became more experienced and famous, he wrote a book debunking Robert-Houdin, called
The Un-masking of Robert-Houdin! Robert Heller, however, was always held in high esteem by Houdini.)
Heller moved from Britain to America in the 1860s,
where he began his successful career as a magician. “
At first an imitator of
his more famous contemporaries,” says the
Encyclopedia Britannica,
“
Heller eventually emerged as an entertaining
and witty performer whose most famous act was a second-sight (mind-reading)
presentation."
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| Promotional poster from Robert Heller's theatrical performance (Ref.) |
Speaking of “
second sight,” when I finally located Heller’s
grave, I was a bit taken aback by what appeared to be a crystal ball on the
ground nearby. Upon further investigation, however, it was merely a granite
decorative sphere from a neighboring plot, which had probably fallen off an old
gate post. Heller’s grave site, as well as the area immediately surrounding it,
is not pretty. The ornamental grave plot fencing is long gone (seen in the vintage photos of Houdini at the grave). A rusting wreck of an old truck sits nearby – the last one still
to be removed from the old cemetery. Trees, vines, and knotweed grow wild
outside the cleared area, headstones have fallen. While the FOMMCI and thousands of volunteers
routinely perform amazing feats of magic in keeping the flora under control, there is
so much more to do!
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| Houdini at Heller's grave, c. 1910 (Ref.) |
If any magic aficionados, historians, or magicians themselves are
reading this, come to the next cleanup day at Mount Moriah Cemetery and lend a
hand! Help us preserve the history of the person Harry Houdini called (in his
Conjurer's Monthly Magazine) "
the most versatile magician who ever
lived." So while we must thank Friends Donna Morelli and Ken Smith for
reintroducing Robert Heller to a new generation, let us not forget that “
Had it
not been for Houdini, the whereabouts of Heller's grave would likely be lost
forever because it was Houdini who had rediscovered the grave." (
ref.)
How to Help:
The Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization
dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Mount Moriah Cemetery by
honoring the memory of those interred here through community
engagement, education, historic research, and restoration. For a schedule of cleanup days,
click here! All are welcome to attend any cleanup event!
References and Further Reading:
