One evening in the spring of 1920 during a quiet dinner at his home in London the conversation drifted toward Ectoplasm. I told Mr. and Mrs.[95] Feilding about attending a Sunday meeting of the London Psychical College through the courtesy of Hewat McKenzie. At this meeting Mme. Bisson and Mlle. Eva were introduced by Fornieur d’Albe and Mme. Bisson while delivering an impromptu talk seized the opportunity to resent the attack of a French magician and to explain in unmistakable tones her antagonism toward prestidigitators.
Mr. Feilding assured me I was correct about her antipathy towards magicians and suggested that the only way I could ever hope to attend one of her seances was to convince the medium that I was not one of the biased prestidigitator class, and proposed as a means to attain this end a theatre party to see my performance and thus enable Mme. Bisson and Mlle. Eva to judge for themselves. This was arranged and the night they came to the theatre to see me I did the Torture Cell Mystery, in which I am completely submerged, head foremost, in a tank of water, and it is a physical impossibility to obtain air while locked in the device. They were so much mystified that they expressed a desire to attend another performance of mine sometime in the near future. I had just accepted a challenge to escape from a packing case which was to be built on the stage by experienced carpenters and thinking that it would be an interesting performance for Mme. Bisson to witness I extended her an invitation and received the following letter in reply.
“May 19, 1920.
“Dear Mr. Houdini:
“We, Mlle. Eva and I, shall be charmed to see you at the performance of which you have spoken to me, on next Wednesday. Since you have had the great kindness to offer us several tickets, it gives me great pleasure to accept, and if you wish, you may send us four, as we expect to join in the applause with Mr. and Mrs. Feilding.
“I also wish to tell you something else!
“You know that we give seances here, showing the phenomena of materialization. These are not spirit studies. They are scientific.
“It would interest Mr. Feilding and ourselves to have at our seances a master in the art of prestidigitation, but I have always refused to admit to my house, an ordinary prestidigitator, or even one of better rank. Our work is serious and real, and the gift of Mlle. Eva might disappear forever, if some awkward individual insists on thinking there is fraud involved, instead of real and interesting facts, which especially interest the scientific.
“For you this does not hold! You are above all this. You are a magnificent actor, who can not call himself a prestidigitator, a title beneath a man of your talent.
“I shall therefore, (rather we shall) be proud to see you attend our seances and hear you tell us all, after you have been thoroughly convinced yourself, that their merit is far beneath your own, for these manifestations depend merely upon allowing the forces of nature to act, and lie simply in truth of fact. Whereas with you, it is your merit, your talent, and your personal valor that have enabled you to attain the place of King in your art.