A Celestial Celebration
QUEEN MARIA HENRIETTA
“Protégé of the Herrmanns”
There is, of course, a long tradition of celebrities dabbling in magic. Famous actors (like Cary Grant), comedians (like Johnny Carson), writers (like Charles Dickens), and royalty (like Prince Charles) have been noted for practicing sleight-of-hand, and those are just a very few that could be mentioned. But the list of famous women who have claimed magic as a hobby is much shorter. It includes a few actresses (Ingrid Bergman and Barbara Stanwyck, for example) and Teddy Roosevelt’s feisty daughter Alice. Queen Victoria was a fan of magic and witnessed performances by several of the era’s leading lights, but one nineteenth-century royal who went from spectator to student was Maria Henrietta, Queen Consort of Belgium, who had the unique distinction of learning magic from both of the Herrmann brothers.
Born in Budapest on August 23, 1836, Maria Henrietta was the daughter of Archduke Josef of Austria and a cousin by marriage to Queen Victoria. She married Prince Leopold of Belgium in 1853 when she was seventeen, and together they had four children. Upon his father’s death in 1865, Leopold II became King, and he remained on the throne for nearly 45 years until his own passing in 1909. Their political marriage was unhappy, and especially after the death of a son in 1869, they essentially lived separate lives. Maria Henrietta’s primary hobbies were equestrian, but an interest in magic was sparked by a visit to Brussels by Compars Herrmann (1816-1887). For information about this famous encounter, I am indebted to an 1887 article published in Cassell’s Saturday Journal (reprinted in Frances Marshall’s book Those Beautiful Dames).
“When in 1882 the famous magician, Professor Herrmann, arrived in Brussels on his way to the sea baths at Ostend, one of the Queen’s chamberlains called at his hotel and inquired if he was the same Professor Herrmann who had formerly given sleight-of-hand performances at the palace of the Queen’s father, the Archduke Palatine of Austria. On ascertaining such to be the fact, he informed him that her Majesty would be glad to receive him in private audience the next day. The Queen received him most kindly, and after talking of old times expressed a wish to learn sleight-of-hand. Professor Herrmann gladly consented to teach her his tricks, and during the following four weeks he spent daily hours in initiating her as an adept of the black art.”
The article goes on to say that Herrmann refused payment for his services, but the Queen sent a bracelet and pair of diamond earrings to his wife. According to his nephew Leon Herrmann in The Sphinx, Compars only had three students: his brother Alexander, Queen Henrietta, and Leon himself. Some additional details are provided in an article titled “Many Women are Deft in Magic,” published in the Rochester Post-Express and reprinted in the November 1905 issue of Mahatma. This article claimed with obvious exaggeration that Herrmann had spent six months instructing the Queen:
“The royal pupil displayed a remarkable aptitude for the art. She was assiduous in practicing the thousand and one details that are necessary to a mastery of the art, and when Carl Herrmann at length resumed his professional tour the Queen was able to present a program of magic almost as well as any professional conjurer in Europe. The Queen had a stage built in her palace and in this little theatre she practiced for the amusement and recreation of her family and attendants. Through all the pathos and sorrow of her later years, Queen Henrietta never lost her love for magic, and in it she found a never-failing solace.”
She would certainly not be the first nor the last person to find magic to be an amusing escape from life’s misfortunes.
Three years later in 1885, the miserable monarch had the pleasure of receiving conjuring lessons from yet another famous Herrmann. Alexander (1844-1896) was the younger brother of her illustrious tutor and was on his way to becoming the most celebrated magician of his era. As he and his wife Adelaide (1853-1932) toured Belgium that year, they were invited to the royal palace. Adelaide recalled the visit in her memoirs:
“Queen Henrietta was especially gracious. She was herself a very clever magician, possessing considerable natural dexterity, and having been instructed in the art by my husband’s brother Carl . . . During our engagements in Brussels, Alexander was always a welcome guest at the palace, where he would perform his newest effects in sleight-of-hand, and later, to her majesty’s delight, instruct her in the method of their presentation. The poor queen’s private life was very unhappy, and I think it afforded her not only pleasure but relief to beguile her leisure hours with the amusement which Herrmann’s lessons provided.”
While Alexander gave magic lessons to the Queen, Adelaide took advantage of the beaches at Ostend, where she ran into King Leopold. It was an awkward encounter. The king, she said, “was in the habit of strolling up and down the beach admiring the prettier of the feminine bathers.” Leopold seemed enamored with Adelaide but chose an odd way to show it. He presented her with a “tiny revolver from the famous Belgian ammunition works,” which he suggested she carry with her for protection during her travels. Thirty years later, she donated it to a charity bazaar for French soldiers wounded in World War I.
The Herrmanns returned to Brussels in February of 1886, where Queen Henrietta occupied the royal box at the Theatre Royal du Parc for their performance. She proved a most enthusiastic spectator. Again quoting from Adelaide’s memoir:
“After the illusion, ‘Le Songe Arabe’ (The Arabian Dream), with which we concluded the first part of the program, the Queen stood up and leaned over her box to present me with a large bouquet of red roses, tied with ribbons of a corresponding shade, while the audience applauded wildly. She afterward sent for Herrmann to compliment him on his performance and its great success, and requested him, in the event of his again visiting Ostend, to be sure to come to the palace.”
One year after witnessing his brother’s spectacular show, the Queen sent Compars Herrmann a letter congratulating him on his 70th birthday, adding, “Do not be afraid. I have not divulged your secrets to anyone.” The older Herrmann died later that year in Vienna. Alexander continued touring in the United States and was at the height of his fame when he died of a sudden heart attack in 1896.
Their royal student Maria Henrietta lived six more years and died in Spa, Belgium, on September 20, 1902, at the age of 66. Riding home from one of her memorial services, King Leopold survived an assassination attempt. He was an unpopular monarch. As founder of the Congo Free State that extracted rubber and ivory from the Congo region of Central Africa at the cost of several million African lives, Leopold II has gone down in history as a notorious villain. What shadow (if any) of her husband’s crimes should fall on his Queen I do not know, but her serious interest in magic has preserved for her a place in the annals of this art.
A version of this article originally appeared in the October 2007 issue of The Linking Ring and appears here by permission. The quotations from Adelaide Herrmann are from Adelaide Herrmann Queen of Magic, edited by Margaret Steele and published in 2012.
Stargazing
In case you are wondering if there are any other women in magic whose names begin with Q, the answer is yes. I know of two. There was a German magicienne from the 1930s called Quitta, whose real name appears to have been Anita von Kuster. More well-known was Trixie Queen (1906-2003), the stage name of Englishwoman Ida Emily Want, who performed in variety as a male impersonator until 1944 and afterward as a magician in male evening dress until retiring in the 1950s. Her story is ably told by the late Amy Dawes in Those Beautiful Dames.