Groundbreaking Excerpt From The New Gibeciere - FREE!

[Conjuring Arts]

Hello!

Conjuring Arts is very pleased to announce our 10th Anniversary issue of Gibeciere.

In this issue we reproduce in full The 52 Wonders by C.H. Wilson which features a couple of very intriguing sleights found 25 years later in Erdnase and a few other similarities. This interesting pamphlet was recently discovered by Tyler Wilson. Knowing that many on this forum don't subscribe to Gibeciere we are giving Tyler's article away FREE and it also includes the complete facsimile of The 52 Wonders.

Download it here now.

If you enjoy the article, please consider getting the whole issue which features a number of other fascinating articles!

Thanks and enjoy!

Best,

Conjuring Arts

[Richard Hatch]

Just got the download and this is really a terrific find! Thanks to Tyler Wilson for finding it and CARC for sharing it!

One small error spotted in footnote 10: Martin Gardner's interview of Marshall Smith that revealed Smith's estimate of Erdnase's age at the time of their meeting was not conducted by phone but in person at Smith's residence.

[Bob Coyne]

This is really interesting and great that Conjuring Arts made it available! I just downloaded it and read Tyler Wilson's intro, and the one thing that immediately caught my eye was that there are only two known copies of this book -- the one he first found at Stanford and the second located by Bill Kalush at Berkeley's Bancroft Library. The Berkeley library apparently had no record of how they acquired the copy. Given that Wilbur Edgerton Sanders (my fav Erdnase candidate) retired to Berkeley California and the similarities of the two books (and hence the possibility of direct influence of the CH WIlson book on Erdnase), it raises the intriguing possibility that Sanders/Erdnase's copy ended up there. Pure speculation of course, but something to consider.

[Richard Kaufman]

What jumped out to me is that the so-called "SWE Shift" is described.

[Tyler Wilson]

Hey Richard,
Thanks a ton for setting me straight with the Smith info. That error is entirely on my shoulders. The Gardner-Smith Correspondence doesn't mention where their discussion took place, but a letter from Smith offers to discuss the topic of Erdnase with Gardner over the phone. Because the discussion happened the very next day, I wrongly connected the dots to assume the discussion happened over the phone as Marshall suggested. Thanks again for filling in those blanks.

All the best. And even better.

Tyler Wilson

[Dustin Stinett]

I have no doubt at all that this is 99-percent coincidence, but that one percent might be worth a follow up by researchers: According to Robert K. DeArment's Knights of the Green Cloth, there was a gambler and conman named Clay Wilson who was active during that period. He was born in Ohio, but he spent his adulthood in the west.

His entries in the book are brief and only definitively place him in Colorado, Nevada, and Alaska (he was part of Soapy Smith's crew for a while). But he was clearly an itinerate gambler who got around, so suspecting that he made his way to San Francisco—a Mecca for the "sporting class" during that period—is hardly a stretch.

But it is the main entry that raises the eyebrow:

A native of Ohio, Wilson had come to the frontier at the age of sixteen and taken at once to the sporting life. His dark good looks, quick intelligence, and extensive vocabulary set him apart from the general run of short-card men and grifters working the camps. But it was Wilson's notebook that really distinguished the young gambler and aroused the curiosity of his fellows. Wilson seemed to be constantly pulling out the little book and making mysterious notations in it. Once Jim Moon caught a glimpse of a page over Wilson's shoulder and was asked what he had seen. "Chicken scratches, that's all," grunted the big man, dismissing what he could not understand with an impatient wave of his hand.

In 1881 in Denver, Wilson was arrested—but not convicted—in the shooting death of Moon (the squabble between the two men was over a woman, not gaming). While in custody, the police determined that the notebook was a journal of Wilson's "criminal history." The "chicken scratches" were Sanskrit. This was not your average, uneducated "sporting man."

Of course this flies in the face of C.H. Wilson's claim that he only recently gained the ability to communicate well enough to write his book. Of course, since when has prevarication not been in the toolbox of scoundrels?

As I said, perhaps worth a look.

Dustin

[Bill Mullins]

Clay Wilson is also mentioned in Houdini's "The Right Way to Do Wrong" and in "Our Rival the Rascal" (1896).

On June 16, 1881 in Denver, gambler Clay Wilson shot and killed James E. Wilcoxen, alias Jim Moon. Accounts in Colorado papers in September say that Wilson was acquitted, by reasons of self-defense, and that his full name was "H. Clay Wilson". H. C. Wilson is pretty close to C. H. Wilson.

[Dustin Stinett]

I think we might be down to a much lower percentage of coincidence now. In fact, I'd say this is a serious lead worthy of someone's time. Thanks Bill.

[Ted M]

Wow. Many thanks to CARC for making this available to everyone!

[richardingram]

Interesting article in Cambridge Tribune from 1905 that refers to a magician C.H. Wilson. This is across the country, but may be useful in narrowing the lead regarding this author's history.

http://cambridge.dlconsulting.com/cgi-bin/cambridge?a=d&d=Tribune19050121-01.2.56#


Edit:

Found another reference 1 year later in Mass., again:

https://books.google.com/books?id=NH1RAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA760&ots=VWKIJ7D4zp&dq=%22ch%20wilson%22%20magic&pg=PA760#v=onepage&q=%22ch%20wilson%22%20magic&f=false

[Bill Mullins]

And The Sphinx, for Dec 1902 p. 111 in the Boston section says "C. H. Wilson, who has been ill for some months, is once more getting about. He played five dates during Thanksgiving week."

Mahatma July 1898 p 111: "Chas. H. Wilson, of South Boston, is a great lover of mechanicalmagic, and an early reader of MAHATMA."

An Apr 1962 article on David Price and his Egyptian Hall Museum in Genii said he had a Lyceum folder for magician C. H. Wilson.