My first experience as a public conjuror and card manipulator dates back somewhere about five-and-twenty years. Sheer necessity drove me to it. A slim, shy youth of sixteen, or thereabouts, I was out of a job at the time, with no prospect, so far as I could see, of getting into one.
This was awkward, because I was practically the sole support of my widowed mother, who was a cripple, and four young sisters. So, as a last resort, I determined to tramp down to some seaside town, and try and earn a little money busking on the sands.
As a boy I had worked for a while as a telegraph messenger, one of those blind-alley occupations that lead nowhere, and I had frequently watched peripatetic conjurors giving their shows at street corners and elsewhere. These exhibitions had always had a great fascination for me, and I presently started to try and copy their tricks.
It was difficult at first, for I had no one to teach or advise me, but I persevered, and was able in time to do quite a variety of simple stock tricks with cards, coins, etc. My audiences were small but appreciative, consisting as they did of my fellow telegraph messengers attached to the old Buckingham Gate Post Office in the Buckingham Palace Road—long since done away with—where I was then stationed. Afterwards I was sent to the Castelnau Post Office, Barnes, which was situated at a chemist’s shop.
Here I had plenty of spare time on my hands, telegrams being comparatively few and far between. The distances I had to travel to deliver them, however, were often considerable, and this gave me an idea. I was at the time the proud possessor of an ancient solid-tyred bicycle. This I requisitioned in order to cover the ground more quickly, a complete novelty in those days, when cycles for post-office work were not even thought of.
My “boss,” the sub-postmaster, was particularly struck with the innovation, and he wrote to the Postmaster-General about it, with the unexpected, and to me very gratifying result, that I received from the Department an extra allowance of three shillings and sixpence a week for the upkeep, etc., of my machine. Afterwards the practice received general official sanction, and in time became well-nigh universal. But I can, I believe, truthfully lay claim to having been its originator, and I was certainly the first telegraph messenger-boy to ride a cycle for the Post Office in an official capacity.
From Barnes I was sent to Battersea, where our family had also gone to live, and it was here that my too-enterprising spirit led to the severance of my connection with the Post Office Service. It came about in this way. When Christmas came round I was given a temporary job as auxiliary postman. We boys used to hear the regular postmen talk a lot about their Christmas-boxes and the fine harvest of tips they expected to reap, and I did not see why, as I was doing my share of the work, I should not share in the pickings.
So, very early on Boxing Day morning, before the regular postman had started out to “box his walk,” I went round and collected the gratuities, or at all events a considerable portion of them. I didn’t say I was the postman, but simply knocked and asked for a Christmas box, and being a tall youth the money was mostly handed over to me without demur. Later on, of course, when the regular postman called round, there was an awful row, and I was called upon to resign; a polite way of investing me with the “order of the sack.” In this dilemma, as narrated above, I purposed turning to account my knowledge of conjuring in order to earn a livelihood, or try to.
As a preliminary I went and begged the lid of a cheese-box from a near-by shop. This I covered with a bit of old cloth my mother gave me, and trimmed it round with a yard or so of penny-threefarthing ball fringe. Next I set my transmogrified cheese-box lid on top of three thin bamboo canes, arranged tripod-wise, and behold I was in possession of quite a pretty little table, such as street conjurors affect.
Next I procured a rabbit—all conjurors had to have a rabbit in those days—and some balls and tins for what is called the cup-and-ball trick, together with a pack of cards, and a few other simple paraphernalia, not forgetting half-a-dozen pennies—in conjuring parlance “a pile of megs”—for palming and working disappearing coin tricks. Thus equipped, I set out. I had been told that Southend was the best place to go to, and as I had no money to pay my fare I had to walk there, carrying my poor little “props” with me.