Paul Daniels salutes a hero of magic

Thousands of people would have heard that dramatic call when it went out across Edinburgh 100 years ago. They would have seen the colourful posters; they would have recognised the Great Lafayette’s name; and they would certainly have heard of The Lion’s Bride, which the magician had been performing for many years. Now, finally, they could see it for themselves.

And so for eight days from May 1, 1911, the Great Lafayette gave the crowds what they wanted and performed the trick on stage at the Empire. The climax of the illusion was Lafayette appearing on horseback just as the lion reared up over his assistant Lalla Selbini -- and then: the lion whipped back his head to reveal it was the Great Lafayette in a costume all along! It was a remarkable trick which had taken more than 10 years to perfect and the sell-out audiences were astonished.

And then, on May 9, the magic went wrong. Just at the end of the trick, a gas lamp fell -- or was knocked-- over, and the stage caught fire. At first, the audience thought it was part of the act -- now the Great Lafayette will escape the flames! -- but then the safety curtain came down and panic spread. Lafayette himself escaped, only to head back into the building. “I must rescue my horse,” he said. Not bad, as last words go. A few days later, a body was found in the rubble, identified as Lafayette and cremated in Glasgow. But it wasn’t him at all. It was a body double who’d been dressed as him; Lafayette’s remains were still lying in the wreckage of the theatre and it was another few days before they were found. It was a final trick, an encore, another vanishing act after the final curtain.

And now, 100 years later, the Great Lafayette is performing a great act of reappearance, a resurrection in a cloud of smoke in the traditions of the best magicians. It will happen at The Great Lafayette Festival which starts today at Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre, which stands on the site of the old Empire. On the 100th anniversary of his death itself, there will be a mock seance attempting to contact Lafayette, and tonight a magic show with Paul Daniels recreating some of Lafayette’s finest tricks.

Daniels has always been interested in Lafayette (he once owned a piece of the waistcoat the magician was wearing when he died) and the origins of magic. Lafayette, he says, wasn’t necessarily doing anything new in magical terms -- but what he was doing was bringing a dramatic style to it.

“Lafayette brought a flamboyant style to the stage,” says Daniels. “He was German, and possibly gay, and he was very Liberace-like in his styling. When you go to see a magic show, you go to see an actor who can apparently do the impossible. He’s playing the part of a creature of fable who can make things appear and disappear or read minds, anything that defies the laws of physics. But it’s never really about the secret of a magic trick; it is always about the presenter, and Lafayette was a great showman.”

It was this skill as a showman that made Lafayette -- whose real name was Sigmund Neuberger -- a lot of money (in today’s terms, somewhere between £3-4m a year). Magicians were the headline acts of the day, the A-listers, and like A-listers now, there were all kinds of rumours and stories about their lives. One newspaper story called Lafayette the most hated magician in the world (although Daniels thinks this was spread by a resentful rival) while others focused on his obsessional love for his dog, Beauty.

Beauty had been a gift from Harry Houdini, Lafayette’s friend and fellow magician, and Lafayette fell in love with her at once. She ate at her master’s table, wore a collar decorated with diamonds and outside Lafayette’s home was a sign that made his feelings clear. “The more I see of people,” it said, “the more I love my dog.” Lafayette eventually incorporated Beauty into his act as his success grew and grew.

Ian Robertson, the co-author of The Death And Life Of The Great Lafayette, says that by the time the magician arrived in Edinburgh in 1911, he was at the peak of this success and was booked up 10 years in advance.

“He was known sometimes as the Man Who Was Many Men,” says Robertson. “He was brilliant at quick-change routines and he was a visionary in terms of his performance.” The magician’s team in 1911 included his leading lady, Lalla Selbini, and a 15-year-old girl called Alice Dale who operated a mechanical teddy bear. Lafayette, says Robertson, was generous to them all.

“He was loyal to people who were loyal to him,” says Robertson. “He paid them well and looked after things like medical care and suchlike for them. He was extremely rich -- everything was luxury -- but he was also generous.”

However, there was another, harder side to his personality. “Nobody else would come in with suggestions,” says Robertson. “He masterminded what was performed and he was precious about that. If you disagreed with him, you were out of there. It was basically: my way or the highway.”

Kevin McMahon, a magician and director of the Edinburgh International Magic Festival, can empathise with Lafayette’s perfectionist streak because, he says, most magicians possess it. McMahon is presenting a show during the festival called Would Lafayette Wow The Ipod Generation? and says the answer to the question would almost certainly be yes.

“I think his show nowadays would be a bit different to what it was,” says the Edinburgh-based magician, “but he had vision, drive and attention to detail, and I reckon with those qualities he would have done an amazing job.”

Since stumbling upon the story of Lafayette three years ago, McMahon has been fascinated by the magician, his extraordinary quick-changes, his eccentricity and his place in the story of magic. “He was the most famous person in the UK,” says McMahon. “It’s phenomenal to realise that magic was one of the premier forms of entertainment.” The problem now, says McMahon, is that magic has declined from that top spot and needs a reinvention, a rejuvenation of sorts. “It’s changed a little bit -- maybe not as much as it should have done -- and has a lot of changing to do in the next 10 or 20 years to properly survive as a legitimate and respected artform.”

There are signs of that out there, says McMahon. He’s seen some great female performers, for example -- and they are still a rarity -- and inventive new tricks, some of which incorporate iPads.

Paul Daniels says magicians, including Lafayette, have always used technology in this way. In his show tonight, Daniels will try to capture some of that excitement, although he won’t be recreating Lafayette’s show exactly. One of the tricks has been inspired by the mix-up over the cremation of the body that turned out not to be Lafayette -- although like a proper showman, he won’t be drawn on the details.

Daniels says he has thought a lot about this final part of the Lafayette story and what happened after the magician’s death; the hysteria, the mystery, the show that didn’t stop. He has even been to visit the magician’s grave in Piershill Cemetery in Edinburgh, possibly because it’s one of the few parts of this eccentric story that you can still see and touch, the one element of the magician’s life that hasn’t disappeared.

The grave itself sits just inside the gates to the cemetery, up on a small hill. It’s about 10ft high and engraved on the front are the words: “Sacred to the memory of the Great Lafayette. Born 25th February 1871, died 9th May 1911.” It’s the slab of stone beneath the memorial that’s really interesting, though, because this is where Beauty is buried. She died -- possibly from besotted overfeeding -- just a few days before Lafayette himself and the magician convinced the cemetery authorities to let him bury her at Piershill on the condition he was buried there too. The macabre twist is that Lafayette fulfilled that promise only a few days later.

The magician’s funeral itself was as big and eccentric and expensive as his stage shows. The principal mourner was Lafayette’s other dog, a dalmatian called Mabel, and the two men who played the slaves in The Lion’s Bride stood on the running board of Lafayette’s Mercedes, which followed the horse-drawn hearse. The procession went down Lothian Road, Princes Street and out to the cemetery, the route lined with people, eight deep in places. The police had to send reinforcements to manage the crowds.

The spectacle continued at the cemetery itself with huge floral tributes. The largest was around 6ft tall and was in the shape of theatre curtains being pulled back. There were also flowers from Houdini in the shape of a dog’s head, with the words: “From your best friend who gave you your best friend.”

Daniels believes this spectacle, this public gawking was partly because the city had seen its biggest theatre burned to the ground -- with the loss of 10 lives in all, including Lafayette -- but also because the magician was such a great showman, the biggest star in the last days of the golden age of theatre. He also thinks it might be because of the public fuss over the death of his dog a few days before, but he isn’t sure -- and that’s what the story of Lafayette is like: full of uncertainties.

In fact, Ian Robertson thinks this is how it will always be with Lafayette. We’ll probably never get to the heart of who he was, never really work out his personality because it was like one of his tricks: complicated, confusing and prone to disappearing, suddenly, behind a tricksy mirror.

The Death And Life Of The Great Lafeyette by Ian Robertson and Gordon Rutter is published by New Lands Press, priced £10.